#ot7smut

With a smile playing at the corner of your lips, you drop your clothes on the floor and, taking his hand, step into the shower. 

The water, pouring from a waterfall showerhead, is divine: hot, stark. Taehyung steps back to let you have the bulk of the stream. As it runs over you, it warms the chill you haven’t been able to shake since you found yourself outside last night, and eyes sliding shut, sigh into the sensation. 

You feel the roughness of his fingers brush against your face, tugging a stray lock out of your eyes. You open yours. 

“Hi,” Taehyung says, searching your face. 

“Hi,” you whisper back, arms coming to wrap protectively—from the cold?--around your torso. “Is this allowed?” 

“Of course it’s allowed,” Taehyung responds. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“I dunno.” You take a step forward and trace a finger up his chest, collecting beads of water. Watching the water run down the broad planes of him is much easier than looking him in the eye when you say this next thing: “Here we are taking a shower together—when we were once in love. Don’t you remember?” You give him a teasing grin, trying to hide the sharp truth of your words that lays just beneath the surface. 

Taehyung only hesitates for a moment. “How could I forget?” A softness tinges his voice. He takes your elbow in his hand as you continue to trace lines across his chest, flattening your hand against him. 

“Does that make all of this strange?” You ask quietly. 

“You tell me if taking a perfectly utilitarian morning shower with your ex is strange—when the rest of the house is fucking or falling—” He stops himself. “Well, you know.” 

“Do I know?” You ask, brushing away the water falling into your eyes. 

“If you don’t, you will soon.” Again, that cheeky grin. “C’mere.” Taking a clean wash cloth, he holds your hands in his and gently washes them. He does not scrub at them like you did—it’s more of a caress. Then he takes you by the shoulders and spins you around, allowing his touch to rove over your back. He is gentle with you as he washes you, the kind of care that only comes with years of love. You hum in satisfaction as the warm water encompasses you and his touch brings a shiver to your skin. 

“Maybe this is a little strange,” he murmurs when he’s done, turning you around to face him again. 

“It is,” you say. 

“Well, I’ve never been a stranger to strange.” 

“That—I know is true.” 

Standing in front of him, looking into his eyes, it feels like you are looking back through time, to that first moment he stood under the awning to your apartment and dawdled so long, that it took you turning the knob and beginning to step inside for him to grab your hand, pull you back, and kiss you. Back then, his hair flopped into his eyes in a similar way it does now, dripping with water. Back then, his eyes held the same kindness you see now. Back then, they held the same desire you see burning behind his iris. 

You look away from him, your gaze trailing to the floor. 

He tilts your chin up. “Wherever you’ve just gone…let go.” 

“What?”

“Whatever it is you’re holding so tightly to, you can let go of it.” His words are soft, kind. What is it you’re holding onto, after all? Is it what the two of you once had? What you’ve had between the two of you since then—tension, moments of uncertainty, and other moments of intense proximity? Or are you simply holding onto a veil of distance that has long since unfurled between you?

“Can I kiss you?” he asks. You nod, and, using the finger beneath your chin, tilts you towards him. “This all feels different than before,” he says, hesitating, stalling. 

“I think it feels the same,” you whisper back, eyes flicking down to his lips. 

“I mean, you feel different.” 

And then he kisses you. 

His lips are kind, soft, against yours. He is cautious almost, but only in the sense that you can feel him testing your edges—waiting for you.

With the cold air at your back, you find yourself chasing his warmth. Your hands slide around his torso as you press yourself close to him. Together, you find a rhythm—mouths moving in synch—that feels old and new all together. When he feels you chase him, he lets go of any hesitation, one hand coming to cup the side of your face, his other hand wrapping around your waist and pulling you even closer. 

As you gasp against each other, he carefully takes a step forward, pushing you back, but never releasing the divine nearness of your bodies. Gently, he presses you against the cold tile wall with a sigh against your lips. With the wall at your back, the water streaming over both of your bodies you dive in even closer, your hands roving over his body. 

You’re chasing his warmth: the hard shape of his body, the sweet, dark brown of his eyes which flutter open for a moment, the feeling of his attention on you, yours—again—finally. It’s more than pleasure though. There’s something building in your chest. It sings clear and sweetly and—

His fingers are between your legs. 

You gasp, arch against him. 

“Missed this,” he says, that youthful smirk dancing at the corner of his lips, and suddenly you are both young again and dumb and fumbling in the dark for each other’s bodies for the first time. 

As he touches you, your body rises to meet his. You chase his touch. And as pleasure builds in your body, so does that lush warmth in your chest, it has you chasing more than just the delightful sensation of his fingers against you—it has you chasing him. 

Through the valley of your memory. Through the space that’s between the two of you. You lean towards him to capture his lips and the kiss is rushed and deep and wanting. 

You almost jolt back from him when you realize it: the love is still there. It still feels as young as when you were in a relationship, and yet, there’s something aged, more there. The friendship built over years. The trust. The care. It radiates out from the center of you like the sun would. It almost comes to your lips, easy, so careless.

Instead of speaking it, you kiss down his neck to where his pulse hammers with desire. You say his name with desperation, and he locks eyes with you as his fingers take you to the edge and let you descend into pleasure. As you call out, he smiles with that knowing smile, like you’ve just given him the best gift at Christmas. 

“I’ve been waiting so long to get you alone,” Taehyung says, kissing your forehead as you come down from your high. “And now I only want more.”

When he touches you, it feels like an undoing, the years apart untangling between the two of you, your body unwinding beneath his touch, his voice—the one for months you knew only over the phone—toppling something hard and firm in your chest. 

You gasp against his neck. 

When you left each other it was with the understanding that the two of you, when fit together, didn’t quite add up to one whole. But now it’s been years. Now you’ve grown from adult by name to adult by trade, growing into your skin, your identity—your voice. When he hums against you, that deep tenor vibrating through you, you find a new body on the other side of the kiss. His—knowing, known. Yours—speaking back.

—

He comes up behind you as you’re tugging on clothes for the day. You’re yearning for something warmer today: thick, sturdy. Something that will hold you. After all, there’s a growing chill in the air. 

The dirt has been scrubbed out from under your nails, Taehyung removed a leaf from your hair earlier, and now there is little left on your body from the strangeness of the night before—other than the cold that still lingers in your bones. 

“Where did you go last night?” he whispers as the warmth of your kiss in the shower still pulses through you. 

Coughing in frigid air. On your knees, soft earth beneath them. Dirt, smudged into the lifeline of your palms like you’ve been praying on the forest floor all night. How did you get there? How did you get here? The forest pushed you. Urged you back towards the warmth. 

“I don’t know,” you respond. You wonder if you should tell him more. “Ever since we arrived here—I swear, there is something so strange about the forest outside this house.” 

Taehyung nods knowingly. “I agree,” he says, his voice low in a whisper. 

Your eyes widen. “You do?” 

He nods. 

“You see it too?” you find yourself whispering too. 

“Yes,” he says. 

You grab his arm and grip him tight. “Oh my god—” you gasp. “Oh my god. I’ve been thinking I was totally crazy this whole time. I should have just said something.” 

He laughs. “Yes, you should have!” Something relaxes in your chest. Oh my god. Oh my god. You can’t believe it. Taehyung, too, has seen the ever-going forest, the trees that sprawl on and on—he’s seen the road, eaten up by the forest, maybe he’s even seen the dreams—“Jin keeps teasing me because I won’t shut up about how far the trees go.” 

“Yes!” you exclaim, clutching at him. “Yes, exactly. It goes and goes, and it swallows up the whole world.” 

Taehyung nods. “It’s especially strange when the sun is setting, and you stand where you can see the peaks and valleys of the mountain range. Living in the city for so long, I forgot what it’s like to be surrounded by so much nature. But god, when the sun rises in the morning—to see the sunrise hit the town and turn it pink and orange. That is just idyllic.” 

The breath in your lungs freezes. “What?” you whisper. 

“The town—It’s beautiful to watch, nestled in between the forest and mountains.” Your stomach drops. Your hands fall away from him. “I will never get used to this view, or what it’s like to stare into the unending wilderness in the middle of the night.” He faux shivers. “Especially when you know there are things looking right back at you.” He grins and ruffles your hair. “Hey, don’t be so serious about it. You’re safe—here in the house with us.” 

He squeezes you, kisses your cheek, and with a whispered promise of all the things he still wants to do with you, disappears back into the bathroom to finish getting ready.  

—

You slip out of Taehyung’s bedroom while he’s still messing with his hair, and make your way to the kitchen where Jungkook is cooking up a storm. There’s a dozen bowls out, all filled with a mysterious liquid. There’s the sound of swearing and pots and pans clanking. There’s even a little bit of smoke. 

“Jungkook?” you say tentatively, as you step into the large room. He hardly glances up at you. 

“You took your time,” he notes. “Busy with Taehyung?” He says it as if it’s just another day. Your cheeks are still warmed from your conversation—and ensuing activities—in the shower. 

“Yes—no—I mean—” 

“So you didn’t have sex,” Jungkook observes. 

“...No.” 

“Goddamn that’s surprising. Hasn’t it been like, two million years?” 

“More or less,” you say.

“And here I was thinking that the two of you would be the first to hook up out of all of us. Aren’t you just dying for it?” 

“Jungkook, you were the first.” 

He shoots a shit eating grin over his shoulder. “Hell yeah I was.” Something sputters and spits from the stove, over which Jungkook is still thoughtfully hunched. He curses. “You know, I realized something very important while making breakfast,” Jungkook says over his shoulder as he stands at the stove. 

“Something important? What’s that?” 

“Well, in the middle of making that goddamn hollandaise sauce, the sauce broke. Tried googling how to fix it, re-emulsify it, whatever, and realized.” 

You laugh gently. “What did you realize, Jungkook?” 

He tugs you against his chest, your bodies pressed closely together.

“That I’d much rather lick the sauce off your body than feed it to everyone else at breakfast.” 

Jungkook swipes his hand through some jam and dots it on your nose. 

“What—” 

And then he licks it up. 

It doesn’t take long before your joking devolves into kissing, and then into stripping down to your bare skin, and then Jungkook pulling down your sweatpants until they pool around your ankles and getting to his knees.

“What the hell is taking so long with breakfast?” Yoongi’s voice sounds from the front of the kitchen. Your head snaps up to find Yoongi looking very disgruntled. Hangry, even. He doesn’t look one bit surprised to find Jungkook kneeled between your legs as you lean back against the counter. “Jeez, we charge you with making breakfast one time and you decide instead to pursue your vendetta of fucking our good friend as many times as humanly possible in the kitchen? The one space in this house that is supposed to be some mild level of sanitary? Are you trying to force feed the rest of the house your come?” He eyes a bowl of unnamed contents suspiciously. 

Jungkook looks flustered. 

“Sounds like a consent issue to me,” you whisper to no one in particular. 

“Sorry hyung,” Jungkook begins. “But the sauce broke. And then I got distracted.” 

“I’ll say,” grumbles Yoongi. He steps into the kitchen, tosses some bacon in a pan, and gets to cooking. “Stop all that. And clean up.” 

“But hyung—” 

“Don’t you worry,” Yoongi says. “I have a better idea, anyhow. Better than eating cold hollandaise sauce—disgusting by the way—off those tits.” 

“Hey!” you hiss. 

Yoongi looks you in the eye. “Darling, I would never call your tits disgusting." He nods to Jungkook. “That young man, however, I’d call him a lot of things.” 

Jungkook wriggles out from between your legs and steps up to Yoongi. He plants a kiss on the back of the older man’s neck. From the counter, you can see Yoongi flush with surprise. 

“What?” 

“Our friend is no appetizer anyways, Jungkook. If anything—the main damn course.” 

And that’s how you start the day, laughing, and kissing your two friends in the kitchen. Thank god no one except Taehyung shows up looking to be fed. He grins as he bites into his bacon, watching the three of you giggle and find pleasure in each other. 

It all almost entirely clears the fog that’s been following you the last few days. It almost makes you forget that there’s one invitation you haven’t yet responded to: Namjoon’s offer. 

As Yoongi wraps an arm around your waist and whispers into your neck the dirtiest of promises, you hear Namjoon’s voice in your head.Stay. Stay.

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Plants. Plants everywhere. With concrete firm beneath your feet, rows and rows and rows of plants of all kinds stretch from floor to ceiling. They are stacked like bookshelves might be—plants on top of plants, succulents crammed next to cacti. And to your right, a pocketed wall blossoming forth with herbs—rosemary, sage, basil, tarragon, marjoram—and their sweet, loamy aroma. Above your head, grape vines stretch across the ceiling, tangling and full with red and green fruit. The little bouquets of sweetness hang in clumps just out of arms reach. From behind the vines, brutalist grow lights rain down. 

In fact, this light is leaching out of every corner of the room. 

It’s a greenhouse. An indoor, basement greenhouse. 

You wander slowly through the hallway of plants, small pots turning into larger hydroponic vertical towers. Cabbage, lettuce, squash, tomato, and more sprout from the walls. 

It is a cornucopia of culinary wealth. 

You emerge from the towers of green to find wooden tables filled with rows of pots and damp soil. Hanging grow lights float above the just-emerged little sprouts. You’re not sure what they will become yet. 

Then, Jimin appears from around the corner, a ceramic pot in his hands. 

Seeing you, he gives a little screech and drops the unpotted plant he’s holding. Thankfully, the ceramic doesn’t crack, but you both drop and scramble quickly to grab the poor soil-freed stem. In your haste, your heads knock together. 

“Ow!”

“Fuck!” 

You knock back, landing on your butt. Jimin clutches his head. “Ugh,” he groans. One hand rubbing his temple, he reaches for you and helps you up. 

“You found me,” he says, pain still in his voice. You’re not sure if the correct answer is “yes,” or or “I went looking for you. I wanted to find you.” 

So instead you ask: “What is this place?”

“It’s a greenhouse.” He says, as he places the pot carefully back on a shelf.

“Well, I gathered that,” you say, gesturing to the ocean of plants that surrounds you. “But where—when—?” 

“Huh?” Jimin tilts his head in confusion. 

“I never knew this was here.” 

Jimin lifts a brow. “It’s been here the whole time.” 

“Why didn’t I know about it?” 

“You never asked. It—never came up.”

It’s in that moment that you realize you had never asked a question that might lead him to telling you about this place. 

You watch him as he makes a few more adjustments to the tipped pot on the table. He moves with a certain kind of comfort and knowledge in this room, and it’s clear he’s spent more than a few hours tending to and working in the greenhouse. You understand, as he turns and takes a soil-streaked apron off a hook and dons it with ease, that this is his space.

“How did you think we were coming by that much fresh fruit and vegetables when we’re only going to the grocery store every week or two?” Your jaw drops at this. “Jin may be our chef,” he continues. “But I’m the supplier.” He winks and your gaze falls on a plant with serrated leaflets. He notices. “Don’t worry,” he whispers. “It’s Mother Wart, not what you think it is.” Something eases within you with that playful wink, but you’re quickly distracted: Your eye wanders to a back corner where the metal plant shelves give way to something a little more natural. The vines overhead grow thicker, tangle. Concrete turns to moss. It looks like there are several plants rooted directly into the ground. And in the corner, stands the twisting trunk of a knotted and gnarled—but stout—tree. Red jewels of fruit hang from dark, pointed leaves. 

A pomegranate tree. 

Where your eye goes, you go. You drift towards this corner where the sounds of running water shift from mechanical to natural. There is a little water feature singing in the corner, a fresh stream emerging from the wall and tumbling over a gathering of riverrocks. 

“What is this place?” 

“I call it the garden.”

“Why not garden outside?” you ask almost dreamily as you drift towards the tree.

“It’s so hard to grow healthy, happy plants in this alpine environment. The soil is dry and rocky. The air gets so cold at night. But here, things grow exactly to my liking.” 

”Hm. I never expected you to be the kind of person who’d want to get their hands dirty.” 

He frowns at you. “I can always wash my hands, you know.” 

“But I’ve never seen a single spot of dirt under your nails—I’ve never noticed any mud on your clothes—”

Jimin does actually roll his eyes at this. “Have you ever heard of a nail brush? Or a washing machine?” He motions to a wash station nearby, which, too, is pristine. “Just because I don’t like to show up messy doesn’t mean I don’t like to get dirty.” He says the word with a kind of smile in his voice. “It’s mine,” He adds softly, as if to explain it all.  

So this is where he goes when you can’t find him, where he sweats out his stress, where he finds calm in the chaos of his mind: it’s here. It’s been here, all along, and you didn’t even notice. You didn’t even bother to try to notice, let alone ask, how you’ve been fed all these weeks. The same is true for the whereabouts and interests of your friend.

You’ve been so in your head. 

You’ve been so tangled in your own desires and thoughts that you couldn’t even see. 

“This is my world,” he says, shaping the disturbed stem back into place and patting the soil down around it with a gentle sense of care. “The one place I have total control.” 

Why does hearing this make your heart break? As the silence stretches between you, you realize you can’t put it off any longer. “I’m here to apologize,” you say. “I messed up. I was a total ass to you yesterday after you finally opened up to me.” 

He looks at you, taking you in. You can see the hardness, the walls that Jimin threw up inside yesterday softening slowly. But he still hesitates. 

“I shouldn’t have shut down when you changed the conversation to be about my feelings. You put so much trust in me by sharing your struggles with quarantine, and I totally let you down.” Jimin nods. It hurts, and there’s a part of you that wishes he would just say, It’s okay, and release you from the responsibility of all of this—but you know that’s not the right thing to do. “You deserve more from me,” you say, feeling the awkward distance between the two of you, and noticing the way he’s still staring into the pot.

“I did,” he says, finally looking up. “And you deserve more from yourself.” 

Ouch.

He steps closer to you, watching you cautiously. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, letting the oxygen that fills your lungs form you into shape. It feels like acid is stewing in your stomach. It feels like everything is going to break again. But you know—you’ve already begun to break everything. 

And the only true way out of this—is by going into it. 

“I don’t know how to do this—” you wave your hands around your head. You knock a branch on the tree, which loosens a pomegranate. Jimin reaches out with one hand to catch the ruby fruit, and with the other, stills the branch you disturbed. “Shit, sorry, Jimin.” He shrugs, and begins to pick at the pomegranate with his bare hands. “I know me just saying I’m sorry isn’t enough. I want to make it up to you, too. I will make it up to you—but I don’t know how to do the whole thinking-through-thing, and especially not the talking-about-all-of-this thing.” 

“Talking about what?” Jimin glances up at you before looking back down at the red fruit. You know he’s testing you. 

You grimace. “Talking—talking about what I actually think, and what I actually feel.” 

He raises an eyebrow.

“And about the…” Relationship, “...situation, we have. Between us. Happy?” 

“Somehow, no. But better.” 

You take a step closer, and place a hand on his, stopping his focus on peeling and picking at the fruit. He almost looks shocked, hands frozen in midair, pomegranate still held. “I think I know how to be your friend. I know how to be here, with you. The rest feels really confusing.” 

Jimin looks between your hands, and then up into your face. He searches you for a moment, and then he smiles sadly, and grips your hand tight in his. “That’s all I really wanted from you. You—with me.” You do your best not to read into those words. 

You do your best not to read into those words. 

“I know.” 

“Then what’s the problem?” 

“Everything feels like it’s changing,” you whisper. “Taking this step into sex as a friend group, I don’t know who I am supposed to be any more. The abstraction of friends with benefits feels so big. Even just the weight of expectation of sex can feel so complicated—like when you mention it, it could mean a thousand different positions, or you eating me out with my underwear on, or, or, even what kind of appearance I’m supposed to put on for my partner—sex partner, I mean. I could be sexy or flirty or mysterious or dominating or honest or wide open.” You wince at the double entendre. 

He doesn’t notice. “I would take any of those versions of you, you know that. But I haven’t met you, ever, as someone who’s wide open.” 

That hurts. But you know he’s not wrong. “I just need you to tell me who you want me to be. What you need. From sex. From our friendship. From who we are together. If I know, I can give you it. I promise.” 

But Jimin is shaking his head. “I need you.” His brow furrows. “I don’t need you to playact some…some role or Barbie doll you think I want. I don’t need you to become something, just to make me happy. I want the true you. I want my friend.”

“But there are so many different me’s,” you say, your voice rising, your words rushed. “It sometimes feels like I’m an entirely different person with each of our friends. How am I supposed to know which one of them is the true me?” 

Jimin is still shaking his head like you aren’t understanding. “What’s the problem with being a little bit of all of them?” 

Your head spins with the thought of that. Bookish and hard thinking with Namjoon. Playful with Jungkook, comfortable and cozy with Yoongi, wanting with Taehyung and Jin. Messy, near needy with Hoseok. Daring with Jimin.

Jimin continues, clarifying. “I think you’re getting lost in the details. Maybe you’re not made of one, single true self.” His voice softens. “Any relationship—any friendship—is chemistry. Two entirely separate people come together from their own vastly different lives and become, together, some kind of new, third thing. Another person makes you laugh differently, or look closer at the world. Each person you meet will open different doors for you to walk through—if you want to.” 

Your voice breaks when you say it: “But if that’s true, then how am I ever supposed to figure out who I am?” 

He presses his hand to your cheek. “I don’t believe that’s something that any of us are ever supposed to know. I don’t think there’s a single, static version of you. And that’s not what I’m asking of you.” 

“Then what do you want?” you whisper, reaching for his face. 

“I want your honesty,” Jimin says. He takes a step forward, pomegranate in one hand, his other hand wrapping around your waist. “What I want—what would make all of this up to me—is to know you’re being honest with yourself. I don’t think that’s happening even right now.” He says it so softly that you think you could break open. 

“I don’t know if that’s something I can do,” you admit in a whisper. 

“I believe it is,” he says. “You don’t have to be everything all at once. Not for me. Not for anyone. You don’t even have to be good. But you do have to be willing to let what’s going on in here,” he taps your forehead, and then your chest, “--out. And once you’ve let it out, you need to be brave enough to follow it.” He looks at you, his gaze flickering between both of your eyes. “I believe it’s something you can do. Even if you have to learn it as you go.”

You swallow a thousand contradictions, all of the dusty, old fear that rises inside you like a specter, all of your old pathways, your no’s to pleasure, your rigidity and fear—you swallow it all down and say: “I want to try.” 

He’s so close. “That’s all I need from you.” 

He kisses you then, slow and softly, like a first kiss. In a way, it is like your lips are meeting for the first time as all of the pretenses drop away between the two of you. It is kissing like learning a name, the testing of sounds, the hesitation of potential mistake, the hope of what’s to come. 

“I just want you to have what you want,” he whispers against your lips. “That’s how you make this up to me.” 

As he kisses down your neck, you stop him and try to return the favor. He laughs.  

“If you keep stopping me from giving you what you want, how can you also give me your honesty?” 

You had never considered any of these questions to be a question of honesty or dishonesty. You had thought of it as more of an art, shaping yourself into whatever suited your purpose: pleasing someone else, protecting the stories that raged on inside of you, or even hiding the things that you desired most deeply. 

“I want to,” you tell him. “I want that. As much as I’ve shown you I haven’t, I’m afraid that way of living has made me quite miserable.” You say the last part with a bit of a dry laugh. 

He chuckles a little too. “I know.” Your brows shoot up in surprise. “Of course I’ve seen that. You’re a lot easier to read than you think you are, even if you think you’re keeping all of your little secrets in there.” He pokes you right over your heart.

“I think that’s enough pulling back the layers for one day,” you say, laughing. “I want you to kiss me.” So you step forward again, gripping his face in your hands and you kiss him fierce. 

“I want you,” you say. “That’s what I want.” 

He smiles against your lips, his teeth nipping at your lower one. “And what else do you want?” 

“I want to be good to you.” A peck on his check. “I want to listen.” A kiss on his forehead. “I want to tell you what I’m thinking.” 

“And now, right now? What do you want?” Jimin asks. When you go to plant a quick kiss on his lips, his hands reach for your face and hold you there, deepening the kiss, asking you to go farther, deeper. 

“I want you.” 

“I need more.”

“I want your lips everywhere, I want you, right here on this goddamn dirty floor, and I want you to fuck me, finally, please.” You feel a little breathless after all of that. “I am so tired of being teased.”

“Yes,” Jimin says, and there’s no fight in his voice, there’s no negotiation, there’s—at last—no game to play, no rules, but to be here, with him. 

He kisses you again, hand wrapping around the nape of your neck as he slowly guides you to the ground. He doesn’t separate from you as he kneels between your spread knees and pulls you against him. He doesn’t leave your lips as he gently lowers your back to the soft plush of the moss. He doesn’t pause as he settles his weight over you, arms bracing on either side of you. 

You stay there for a while, sinking into the earth, sinking into each other. His breath brushes your lips, your neck, your ear. He kisses wherever he can reach before slowly crawling down you. 

“What are you doing?” you ask. 

“You said you want my lips everywhere,” he winks. There’s something about the mischief and warmth on his face that reminds you of that first week up in the mountains when the two of you had gone on that hike and he had landed between your legs. Now, he shimmies your pants down—you lifting your hips to give him leverage—and settles between your legs. 

It begins with a broad swipe of his tongue before he takes your clit gingerly into his mouth and swirls around it. The motion has your back arching off the bed, and you gasp, “--Too fast, too fast—” To which he responds appropriately, slowing his motions and backing off just enough. 

He continues to lick, suck, swirl, swipe, and work you up into a panting, groaning mess, before he slips one finger inside you. 

“You’re already so wet,” he laughs. “Is it really that easy to get me going? You’re not going to give me a challenge?” 

Panting, as he continues to slowly push his finger in and out of you, you say, “I don’t want to challenge—you—anymore—.” 

He only grins up at you from between your legs. 

“No—challenge me,” he says. “But don’t cut me out anymore.” You swallow, nod, groan his name.

It’s not long before you’re pulling at his hair, the fabric of his shirt that hugs his shoulder, urging him to come up, come back to you. 

He does, climbing back up your body, before pressing his lips—which taste very much like you—to yours. 

“I want you, now,” you whisper against him. 

“You have me now,” he whispers back, a smile pulling at the corner of his lip. 

“You know what I mean.” 

“I don’t.” And then he levels his gaze at you, daring you to say it. 

“I want you inside me.” 

“And?” 

You pick at his shirt, somehow unable to meet his gaze. “I want you slow. Gentle at first. Until I beg you for more.” 

He smiles, and it’s not that wicked, mischievous grin you know so well—the one he wears before he begins to play your body like an instrument. Instead, it’s soft, like sunlight filtering through clouds. It’s the warmth you’ve been missing since yesterday, the same one that nearly shattered you when you realized you might lose it. 

There hangs that echo of loss around his movements as he strips down and then pulls your shirt over your head, exposing you to him. He too, is bare, and the shadow of the future where you didn’t have this only makes him, now, here, with you shine brighter. 

You end up on your back again, one of your legs wrapping around his hip as he slowly sinks into you. You both groan when he’s fully within you, your abdomen already pulsing with a snug heat. He watches your face as he withdraws and eases back in, his cock stretching you divinely. 

You allow his slow movements to build you into an open, vibrating, mess of need. You find a disastrous and warm rhythm that slowly tears you into bits of pleasure.  The two of you groan and gasp the other’s name, chanting out your desire into the large room until it surrounds you entirely, blurring the edges of your rapture and his. 

Above your head, the pomegranate tree sings with vibrant light, red fruit framing Jimin’s head as he grinds into you, as he moans for you, and soon it too is all a blur. 

It builds slowly and climbs higher and higher. Each time you think you can’t feel more, he presses deeper. Each time you think you’ve reached the ceiling of pleasure, he pushes you farther, opening doors within your own body that you didn’t know were there. And then he follows behind you, chasing sensation, chasing the connection that comes alive in the space between your bodies. You never have to ask for more—he brings you there, and there, you meet him. 

You whisper what you want, the things you like most about him in his ear, and little sighs of praise. You run your hands down his back and he shudders in the sensation. You lift your hips to meet him, to take him deeper. He says your name again, again, again. He tells you how good you are for him, how good you feel. 

When you think you can’t take anymore, he slows his thrusts, allowing your pleasure to plateau and beam through you. Then he reaches for something over your head and you hear him bite into something near your left ear. When he kisses you, sweet, tart juice rushes into your mouth coating your tongue. As the seeds of the pomegranate fill your mouth, you think you’ve never tasted anything so urgent, so full of life. 

Fingers stained red, he reaches between your bodies to rub at your clit, and warmth soon becomes radiance. Your back arches, your hands grip onto his shoulders. You’re making sounds, but you have no idea what they are, except that they drive him further, faster, deeper, your bodies grinding together in perfect synchronicity as you finally find your end within minutes of each other. 

—

The warmth does not dissipate all at once. Instead it ebbs back slowly, leaving you basking. 

Jimin has slipped out of you, and lays now on your chest, chin propped on his flattened hands, looking up at you. A piece of hair falls in his face, which you brush out of the way with a gentle caress. You don’t speak, only smile and murmur faint sounds of bodies settling and joy. 

Simply, there is little to say. 

You are somehow surprised by this—how by being honest, you have somehow stolen the need for extraneous language, the need for the constant riddling and spiraling around ideas. In its place, a gentle hum of contentment takes its place. Around you, a simple understanding hangs in the air, and you find yourself, somehow, more satisfied than simply sexually. You begin to wonder and wander down that path of thinking—

And then you stop. 

You watch dark lashes flutter against Jimin’s cheeks, the moisture on his brow giving him a kind of glow. You trace the shadow of a smile on his lips. 

When his eyes open, you jolt a little when his gaze meet yours. When he looks at you—through you—you let him. And you hold his gaze. 

You fall asleep there, tangled in one another, on the strangely mossy floor of this underground greenhouse. It is the kind of sleep that reaches up for you, takes hold, and floats you between worlds. Jimin curls around you, draping the apron over your two bodies before falling asleep himself. 

—

Waking comes soft, warm. A murmur of contentment and surprise at the unexpected nap, the swirl of unsure time and being—the not knowing of what has transpired in sleep—if you spilled your secrets or spoke the dreams of forests and disappearing figures into the quiet room.

Conversation bubbles slowly, naturally again, like the water feature in the corner of the room. Where it has traveled from on the other side of the stone, you’re not sure. Where it goes when it disappears beneath plants and thick tree roots, you’re not sure, but you allow it anyway. The same is true with your conversation with Jimin.

“Can I ask one more thing about what happened yesterday?” Jimin asks softly, tentatively. 

“Yes,” you say. Though a part of you screams, no, absolutely not, there’s nothing left to talk about any more. 

The two of you revisit the event, him apologizing for pushing you, and you reminding him it was what you needed. When a silence smears long and flat between you, you know he is choosing his words carefully. 

“You told me in the tub about the beast, monster—what did you call it?” 

“A monster.”

“Yes. Is she still there?” 

 You close your eyes and look inside yourself. 

“Yes,” you say. 

She is still there, in the clearing. But her eyes are open. A low, sweet sound emanates from her throat: contentment. For just a second, curiosity, rather than fear, grips you as you look into her gaze. 

She looks directly back at you.

“Mm,” Jimin nods, and thinks for a moment. “Whoever she is, whatever she is—I have the sense you need to run towards her, not away.” Jimin’s gaze levels with yours. It feels like he is tearing into you. You want to look away, you want to cover your face, you want him to leave. And you don’t want him to leave. You really don’t.

You pull him closer to you, your bodies notching together and finding fit against each other. 

Maybe there was a time when this—all this running, all this avoidance—worked for you. And maybe, too, you thought you had gotten over it all, that you had left this terrible pattern behind. 

But the truth sits plainly in front of you: You are here again, stuck in your own terrible history. No matter how hard you run, it is the same cycle. Maybe months ago, you had done your thinking about it on the floor of your small apartment with Taehyung on the phone, whispering in your ear: Just maybe, it’s time to think about the way you push people away. You had thought about it. You had put words to it. But now, you have to do something about it. 

Whatever this is, this impulse, this hurt that spirals out from you, it has been holding you back from everything that you love. Want. Everything that you want. 

You understand now. 

The beast never told you to run. You saw her, her fierceness, the incredible strength of her desire—and you decided to run. 

Your voice quakes as you say, “I don’t know how to do this.” 

Jimin nods, a softness in his voice as he whispers, “You don’t have to know how, at least not right now. You just have to take it one decision at a time.” It’s not what you want to hear, but you know he’s right. “And—I’ll be here every step of the way.” 

“What if—”

“Hey.” He looks at you firmly. “You can’t lose me now.” 

Your mouth hangs open at the words. It’s everything you needed to hear and everything you’ve been afraid of all this time. But you close your mouth. You steel yourself. You take a deep breath, then release it into the humid room. 

“Alright,” you say, and as your voice echoes into the room, it’s like a deal has been signed. 

Jimin’s arms tighten around you. He kisses you from where your hairline meets your forehead down to the center of your chest. That is the ink of the signature. When he lifts himself up to kiss your lips once more, you know the deal is done. Something softens in your chest. 

It’s then that the door to the greenhouse slams open with a bang, and a voice calls, “Jimin, I was thinking about your proposition—” 

And Jimin calls out— “Hey, I’m not alone.” 

Yoongi appears from around the corner, a look of surprise on his face. He stops when he sees you and Jimin tangled on the floor. 

You find yourself using Jimin’s apron to cover up, despite both of the men in the room already having seen all of your various states of undress in the last few weeks. 

“What are you doing here?” Yoongi says with awe in his voice. “You never come down here.” 

“And you do?” you ask, bewildered. Did everyone else know about this place except for you?

“We were all wondering when you were finally going to find him here.” 

“And you weren’t going to tell me?” 

Yoongi shrugs. “Not everything is ours to tell. Some things you gotta figure out on your own.” 

You glance between the two of your friends. “What proposition?” 

Yoongi shrugs, his gaze dashing to Jimin and then back down to his shoes. “He was going to show me how to repot the pothos growing in my room.” 

You narrow your eyes. “Right.” 

Jimin nods and stands to dress. For a moment he’s entirely bare in front of Yoongi and you, standing proudly and unashamed. Both of your gazes flick to him, to his—and then both of you look away, like you’re not supposed to be looking. 

Jimin sees this and chuckles. “Now that you’re here, Yoongi, you can help me harvest some things for dinner.” 

“I can help—” you offer, but Jimin waves you away. 

“I bet you have other things to take care of.” He looks above his head and gestures. “Namjoon’s offer, for example?” 

“How did you—” 

“He asked me before he spoke with you. He wasn’t sure what you would say.” 

That hurts a little. You’re realizing that your trail of decisions has led you towards an aching mess only you can untangle. 

You dress, and Jimin walks you back to the front of the greenhouse to gather some tools. He yells some instructions back to Yoongi. 

You pause in the doorframe, the dark hallway waiting for you. You watch as Jimin delicately selects a pot from a shelf, his hands lithe and careful. As you watch him, the care with which he moves around the room, something stone and cold in your chest cracks wide open. It floods you with warmth—a terrifying feeling. 

“I love you, Jimin,” you say, and the words have an entirely new edge. 

He doesn’t look up from the tool box he’s pulling a gardening shovel and a measuring cup out of. However, you see Yoongi peek his head around the corner. “Love ya, too,” Jimin says. “Now go get cleaned up.” 

When you stand there just a moment too long, trying to carve Jimin’s face in this moment into stone, you find there is no wall up inside you. Instead of resistance, there is something acidic and clear. 

Fear. 

It is freeing. The clouds have dissipated, and there it is, pure and simple and pulsing. 

You are so afraid.

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 Somehow it’s grown taller. The base of the trunk is wider. You see the book you were reading, perched on a limb, just out of reach. You do your best to scale the rough bark, but every time you get a foothold, you end up sliding back. 

The sounds of the forest are deadened. You have the sense that the entire world is watching you. 

When you turn, a voice calls your name, carried on a cold wind. Is it coming from the house? You try to place it. Jimin? The voice calls again. It’s distinctly a woman’s. 

You circle the tree, trying to find a way up, but you end up stumbling deeper into the forest, deeper into the dark. 

—

It’s the light on your face that brings you back. It warms your skin, but shines far too bright, causing you to blink and wince as you open your eyes. 

Your neck aches with a crick, and your hips too. As you blink into awareness, you realize there is a hand on your hip and a body pressed close behind you on the couch. You also become aware of the trail of drool that leads from your lips…right onto the arm you’ve been using as a pillow. 

The house is oddly quiet. You can even hear the song of a bird serenading the morning chill beyond the house. But other than that—the quiet unsettles you. When was the house last this quiet? 

“Good morning,” Yoongi grumbles, his voice low and graveled with sleep. As he speaks into your neck, you’re warmed by the sound and sensation: it’s been too long since you’ve heard that voice. You find yourself missing it. 

“I drooled on you,” you admit in a horrified whisper, shame riddling through you. 

“Good,” Yoongi says. “That means you were getting the rest you needed.” 

You flip over to face him. 

“Thank you,” you say.

“For what?” he asks, his face betraying genuine confusion. “For letting you drool on me?”

“For being you. For listening. For holding me. For being here.” You snuggle deeper into his chest and into the blanket laid over the two of you. “And for the blanket.” 

“I can’t take credit for that last one,” he says. “Someone else must have laid it on us after we fell asleep.” You like the idea of that: Namjoon or Jungkook creeping in and quietly tucking the two of you in for the night before heading off to their own beds. Maybe it was Hobi. 

You stay there for a while, warming up to the idea of waking up for real and leaving this cocoon, before finally sitting up. 

“I smell breakfast,” you grin, and Yoongi smiles back. 

—

When you walk into the eerily silent dining room, every single one of your friends is seated around the table. They all look up when you enter, except for Jimin. The room freezes for a silent second, Jin with a fork halfway to his mouth, Taehyung with a mouthful of blueberries, Jungkook with an entire, plate-sized pancake folded up and halfway to his mouth. 

Then the room bursts into sound.

“Oh thank god you’re finally awake,” Jungkook says. 

“You slept for so long,” Taehyung groans. 

“Do you know how hard it is to cook and wrangle this herd into breakfast quietly?” Jin snaps, his words coming hot and quick and fast. “You expect unpaid world-class chef-ery and silent miracles?” 

“Maybe it should be illegal to sleep in the common areas without a vote of consensus,” Hoseok says. “Plus you’re leaving so many perfectly acceptable beds lonely and cold.” He winks at you.

“New house rule!” Jungkook chimes in. “No sleeping when someone wants to talk!” 

“No one will ever catch a wink of sleep in this goddamned house with all you chatter bots around!” Taehyung cuts back.

You can’t keep the giggles in as the room bursts into chatter and playful arguments, like all of the words that they hadn’t spoken in the last hour now have no choice but to burst forth from the dams of silence they had built up for your sake. Everyone is talking—except one person. 

Jimin. The man pushes a single blueberry around his plate with his fork. His eyes remain glued to his plate. 

“Jimin,” you say. When he doesn’t lift his head, you say it louder. “Jimin.” 

But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even meet your eye.

Taehyung leans over towards Jimin and they speak in hushed tones while Jungkook makes a loud sex joke and Jin chortles like a teenage boy. 

“What are you two whispering about?” Namjoon pries, watching Jimin and Taehyung closely.

“Hobi,” Jimin calls across the table. “Didn’t your friend—Sora, was it?--use to work in construction?”

The table falls to a hush. 

Your eyes widen and your limbs stiffen. Sora. Sora from the postcard. Sora, I’m not going to give up the chance to have you again, Sora? Sora, I can’t get you out of my head? That Sora? Hobi’s Sora? 

You watch as Hoseok coughs on his water. You watch him closely, trying to trace the flickering emotions that dart across his expression. “Sora? Oh, uh,” he laughs nervously then, his eyes quickly flickering over to you. “I haven’t heard that name in a minute.” 

Then why on earth was a postcard with her name on it fluttering around the house? But maybe it was from a while ago—maybe an ex from before you and Hoseok got close. Or worse. An ex that, while you were good friends, Hoseok never told any of you about. Your heart quickens. 

But then why bring the postcard all the way to the mountain house? What kind of memento has that kind of sentiment if it’s not someone important to him? 

“But yeah—Sora. Damn, yeah I totally forgot about that, she definitely did work in construction. I think she used to be a building site manager. And she always had a knack for carpentry. But at some point switched to working mostly with kitchens.” 

Taehyung and Jimin converse in hushed tones for what seems like a long minute. Your gaze jumps from person to person—trying to read their minds. What on earth is going on? Construction? Sora? Kitchens? 

“Kitchens have lots of gadgets,” Jimin says. “Yeah. That might work. Do you still have her number?” 

“Um, yeah, I do—I just—well—” Hoseok trips over his words.

“We just have some questions about the basics of building,” Taehyung says. 

“And some intricacies, too.” Jimin adds.  

Everyone squints in confusion at the two men. Hoseok seems to consider this for a moment before acquiescing. 

“New hobby, eh?” Hosesok asks as he pulls out his phone. 

“Old hobby—rebranded,” A shit-eating grins paints his face as wicked mischief plays across his features. 

“You know, if I remember correctly, Sora’s actually from around these parts. She moved to the big city before we met. Said she had to get out.” Who would want to get out of a place like this? you think, then, remember the bear. And the cliff. And the cold that comes in swift. Then, more thoughtfully, Hoseok adds, “I wonder if she’s still around these days—if she came back when the virus showed up in the city.” 

“Who is from these parts?” Jin asks. 

Hoseok shrugs. “Sora, I guess. And Namjoon’s aunt. That’s two right there.” He sends the text, and a chime echoes from the direction of Taehyung and Jimin. “When you actually take a look around up here, there are a few little towns.” He sends a text and Taehyung’s phone lights up.

“Thank you, hyung!” Jimin calls, pulling Taehyung up from the table and running off. 

“We owe you one,” Taehyung adds—and off they go, leaving words unsaid hanging in the air, and a thousand questions to underline your thoughts. 

Don’t say anything, don’t say—

“Sora—she was your friend from a couple of years ago, right?” You turn to Hoseok to ask this question. You simultaneously need to know the answers to your questions, and also need not to. Hoseok seems shocked by the question. Or maybe he’s shocked you’re asking the question. 

“A little more than a friend, eh?” Namjoon waggles his eyebrows and elbows his buddy in the side. But when he catches your gaze, he looks down and apologizes quickly. “Sorry that was weird.” 

“Yeah—a friend—” Hoseok says. “We met through one of my dance classes.” 

“She was a student?” — You realize you’ve said that out loud. You also realize everyone is looking at you now, and the sharp tone that’s risen in your voice. 

“No,” Hoseok says. “She was dating one of my adult dancers, and came by every once in a while to pick them up. Until, you know, they broke up. And, uh, we started dating.” 

The room drips in silence. 

“What?” Hoseok looks around at the silent faces in the room, surely surprised from hearing all of this for the first time. Taehyung, however, looks like he’s heard this story before. Hoseok continues to explain: “Her ex switched studios after the breakup. It wasn’t a conflict of interest or anything. Is there a problem with that?” Now he sounds a little defensive.

“No,” you say. What a mess! you think. “Not a problem at all. I’m going to get some coffee now.” And you walk with a purpose to the kitchen. 

You shake your head as you walk away. This is stupid. Stupid! Here you stand, in the same house that you asked for unattached sexual relationships with your friends, and you’re still looking too closely at your friends’ sexual histories and getting all worked up over a postcard and an old lover. It’s hypocritical, frankly. 

Anyhow, what are you even worried about? That a little piece of paper or the distant memory of an ex could take Hoseok from you? As if he were yours. As if you were—And—afterall, Sora’s not even here. 

So, really, you have nothing to worry about. 

—

The soft, rich scent of recently ground beans rises from the coffee maker. Coffee first, you think, steeling yourself for what’s to come. Then I’ll find Jimin. But after you’ve poured your coffee and emptied the pot, when you go to refill the canister, you realize that the jar of grounds is entirely empty. 

“We’re out of coffee,” you groan. 

“We’ll have to go into town,” a voice says from behind you. “There’s a couple of other things we needed anyways.” You feel the touch of a gentle hand drifting down your back and turn to find Namjoon behind you. 

“You look like you’re thinking far too hard about something,” he says softly. “What is it?” 

Your gaze drifts to the window over the sink and you step closer to peer at the mountains sprawling in late fall glory. 

You decide to lie. 

“The mountains,” you say. “And I saw Taehyung and Hobi talking last night—I was wondering about that.” You change your mind about lying. “And,” you sigh. “I’ve been thinking about Jimin.” 

Namjoon settles beside you, arms propped up on the window ledge for the full experience. “Taehyung and Hobi will do what they do, there’s no use bothering with that—but what’s going on with Jimin?” 

You chew on your lip for a moment before answering. “I kind of freaked out on him last night. Or clammed up. Froze. Whatever you want to call it.” You sigh. “I shouldn’t have done that.” 

“Hm,” Namjoon hums. “As strong of a front he puts on, I think he really hates it when people are closed off to him. It’s just not how he operates.”

“I know,” you say, acid in your voice. He had even told you that, right before he turned his attention to you. You can still feel his eyes, burning into you in that tub. “He’d finally opened up to me about where his head has been all this time, and my response was to totally kill the vibe.”

Namjoon nods, chewing on your words. “So what are you going to do to fix it?” 

You wince. “I do have to do something about it, don’t I?” 

“You do. Just like Hobi did with you. This is what we agreed to.” 

“Oh fine,” you say, sigh, and straighten your shoulders. “Yes. I mean—yes. It’s what he deserves.” 

“It’s also what you deserve,” Namjoon adds. “You deserve repair too—whatever happened. You deserve to have that closeness again. Or to at the very least, you deserve to offer yourself a chance to rebuild that closeness again.” 

You want to hug Namjoon so tightly to your chest, you want to squeeze out the tears threatening to break—you want to leave.

You want to leave because you don’t know what to do with all this overwhelm. You don’t know where to put the soft things bubbling up in your chest.

Namjoon makes the decision for you. He comes up behind you and wraps around you tightly, drawing you into his chest and resting his head upon yours. The comforting smell of him, that scent of coffee and earth and clean laundry fills your nose. You take a deep breath.

“Maybe now isn’t the right time to bring this up—” 

“No—,” you say. “I don’t want people to feel like they have to tiptoe around me.” 

He nods, steeling himself. “I was thinking—”

At that moment Jin bursts into the kitchen. “Coffee, now,” he orders, beelining it for the coffee maker. “They make me cook for them and then they don’t even pour me a cup before they dig in.” Jin holds the empty carafe up to eye level. 

Namjoon frowns. “I’m so sorry, Jin—we’re out of grounds.” 

“And they don’t even save me a cup.” The despair in Jin’s voice is apparent. You think he might even begin to cry. He throws the carafe back in the coffee maker, and begins pacing around the kitchen, opening cabinet doors. “We don’t even have caffeinated tea?!” 

“We are, unfortunately, a caffeine free household at the present moment,” Namjoon says, sounding genuinely apologetic. 

“Hey, hey,” you say, catching up to him and catching his wrists in yours. “We’ve gotta go to the store anyway. We’ll add it to the list and someone will pick it up later.” 

“This is a now issue,” Jin says, wrestling out of your grip with all of the drama of a tantruming peacock. “You know what? I’m going! Text me the list!” Then he pauses, turns and looks at you, and says, “You want to come?” 

You blink back at him. “To town?” you ask. 

Jin laughs. “Of course, ‘to town.’ Where do you think we’ve been getting all this food from? Some secret garden?” 

You’d forgotten. In the weeks since your arrival, you’d rarely stepped out of the front door, let alone had a hand in coordinating the logistics of feeding eight adults.

“I’ll go with you,” you say. “No use letting you drive when you’re all worked up.” 

“I am not worked up!” Jin cuts back, but you’re already pushing past him and walking towards the front entrance.

“Hey!” Namjoon calls your name. You pause, remembering his hesitation, and the lingering question he’d begun to bring up before Jin derailed it all with his show stopping performance of devastation. “I still need to talk with you,” he says. 

You scurry across the kitchen and place a kiss on his cheek, reaching up to squeeze his shoulders. “I’ll be back soon. I promise we’ll talk then.” 

His face darkens in shyness at the kiss and he nods.

—

You prepare for your trip to town, dressing and shoving two masks in your pocket for when you enter town. Ever since quarantine was called, you felt, as if a new sense had developed, the boundaries of your “personal bubble.” Even just the thought of being in a store with other, strange humans had you imagining the way a single breath could carry across the aisle, how a misplaced touch could pick up the virus. But since your arrival at the house, you hadn’t thought about it once. 

Now you do. You rub the two masks in your pocket together, a reminder of all the precautions you’re taking.

You meet Jin at the front door. 

“Ready?” Jin asks, extending an elbow like a gentleman. You slip your arm into it. 

“Ready.” You smile at him. 

Though you haven’t yet found a moment to be alone with Jin since that fateful night the eight of you shared in the living room, he seems to have grown ever-warmer in your mind’s eye. Throughout every stage of this process he’s been level-headed and clear on the direction the group needs to move in. More than that, you trust him, maybe more than anyone else in the house, to know which way to go. 

But when you step out the front door, there it is: the sprawl of turning trees, interspersed with dusty blue evergreens, and the glittering, burning gold of aspens. But that’s not the problem. 

The problem is that as Jin leads you down the stairs, you notice that instead of the gravel driveway you remember from your first day, the soft green edge life of the forest begins. Dried pine needles, moss, and fallen branches cover where you swear the road should begin. 

The problem is, that in the little nook of the valley, where the small mountain town should lie, the town that you definitely remember stopping in on your drive up to the house, a carpet of multicolored forest canopy stands instead. The problem is, the glinting asphalt winding through the forest that you most certainly drove all those weeks ago is gone. The entire world’s a forest.

You blink. You rub with one hand at your eyes. You squeeze them shut. You open them again. 

Nothing has changed. 

Nothing has changed. 

A part of you had thought that your last tryst in trying to exit through the front door, and your encounter with the unending forest had simply been a symptom of high stress and the unknown of your relationships with these seven men.

You’re not sure if you’re going crazy or if Jungkook and Jimin’s secret project includes taking up the title of house jesters and projecting unending wilderness up on a too-large projector screen. You’re not sure if you’d rather be fooled by a giant canvas screen or falling off your rocker. The former sounds preferable though, if absurd. 

“Jin?”

“Yeah?” He looks concertedly down at you, brows pressed together. He’s notices your shift in demeanor, the dark quietness that’s settled on your shoulders as you work to parse out the world before you. 

“You’re going to town?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“And how are you planning on getting there?” you ask quietly. 

Jin smiles that signature shit-eating grin and gestures towards where a car presumably should be standing. “With my flying pegasus, of course. In a winged chariot! In my roof-down porsche! Hoverboard?” There is no car. There is no road. There is no town. There is only here, where you stand on the steps, and there, where Jin stands at the edge of the forest. 

When you look more disturbed than confused, he sighs. “Quarantine is really getting to your sense of humor. We’re taking the Volvo, obviously.” He, again, gestures at the wall of trees. You see a squirrel hopping from branch to branch, but there’s no sign of any automotive life. 

“Is there anything, um, wrong with town?” You say, scanning the treeline again for any sign of road or village. 

He looks harder at you, then makes the command decision and begins to tug you towards the forest. Where the forest begins, the shadows are deeper, more rich, and shifting with the light, like they learned some kind of dance you could never keep up with. “What are you getting at?” he asks, but you don’t budge from the stairs. “Nothing is wrong with town—well a lot is wrong, with the world, with the pandemic—but nothing new is wrong.” 

Everything in your body tells you to go back inside. Even the trees lean towards the house, almost ushering you back inside. 

“I think I’m going to stay,” you say. “Hobi should go with you instead. He’s a better navigator than me.” 

Jin’s brows furrow in confusion. “Yeah, sure, but not by much.” But then he shrugs. “Whatever you think is best. I won’t say no to Hobi’s company.” The smile that lights his face is perhaps a little too bright. 

Fear squirms in your gut, and you hurry back up the front steps and through the front doors, slamming them behind you and then slumping against them. And then feeling terrible to have left your friend with that spooky forest. But when you peer out the window, he’s just standing there on his phone, likely texting Hobi. 

That’s how Namjoon finds you: pressed against the doors, peering out like a spy. 

“Hey,” he says, taking your elbow and pulling you away from the door before looking out himself to see if everything is okay. He turns to look at you with a wash of concern across his features. “What’s wrong?” he says, taking your hands in his. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

Can a forest have a ghost? You’re starting to wonder if this one does. 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” you lie. “I just realized I didn’t want to go into town.” You offer a half truth. 

“Really?” Namjoon asks, leading you back into the kitchen, where he begins preparing a cup of herbal tea. “It doesn’t seem like nothing to me. Talk to me.” 

“I can’t tell you,” you say, rather quickly. 

His movements freeze for a moment, then he rights himself, shaking his head. “Oh, um, okay. I mean you don’t have to talk to me, I guess.” 

You reach for his hands. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that I can’t.” You wouldn’t know how to. You have no idea how to paint a picture of the world that exists for you, the encroaching forest every bit as real as the door behind your back. You have no idea how to convince him that something has happened without sounding entirely insane, knowing that the world he sees is somehow entirely different than yours. 

Something shifts, then softens in his eyes, and suddenly he’s reaching to cup your cheeks in hand. 

“Is it—Have the thoughts come back—” He freezes, searching your face. 

“No, no,” you laugh, trying to break the tension, but feeling it tighten its grip around you. “I’m okay. Mostly okay. But it’s not that. I feel perfectly sound.” That’s questionable. 

“Okay, good.” He seems relieved, but he doesn’t let go of your face. His gaze flickers between your eyes—dips down to your lips, still a tinge of concern lingers on his face.

“Joon,” you whisper, and the longing you feel for him sings in the base of that syllable. 

He pulls away. “Let’s get you some tea and something warm. I don’t know why you were thinking about going out in that anyway.” He nods at the wind breaker you’re wearing. He turns and pulls an array of tea—non caffeinated—and offers you his overflowing arms. “Which one would you like?” You pick one at random, based purely on how pretty the flowers are that decorate the box, and he makes the tea for you, stirring in the exact amount of honey that you like without asking. He slides the tea across the counter. 

“You told me you needed to talk to me,” you say as you pick up the mug. 

“Oh. Yeah…” Namjoon busies himself with washing the spoon he used and picking up the tea boxes. He won’t look at you. “It’s been a lot, in the last couple of days. But it’s also been really nice. I have…enjoyed it.” You raise an eyebrow at his ever politically vague comments. “Having you all here. Being here with you.” 

You chuckle. “Get it out. What are you trying to say, Namjoon?” 

Finally, he turns, and leans against the counter, square on with you. “Well. With how good things have been going, and how much they’ve improved—I mean, communication and all that—and everyone’s general contentment. I mean, I think everyone’s more content, though you still need to talk to Jimin—” 

“Namjoon.” 

He sighs and squares his shoulders. “I’m going to stay here, at the house, at least through the winter. I know things are only getting worse in the city, and it seems silly to go back to that tiny apartment now when we have all this.” He takes a deep breath. “And I don’t want to be here alone. I know I invited you for a few weeks. But I want—I want you to stay.” 

Oh. 

It’s true. Two weeks has turned into several without you noticing. 

And it’s also true that when you left, you had nothing permanently tying you to your apartment, and nothing keeping you in the city. If anything, you were dying for escape from that brand of claustrophobic, fear-ridden quarantine. On top of that, you can work remotely from the mountain house—well, with the little work that you have. And, everything you ever wanted from a home is here too: beauty, luxury, quiet—every ridiculous amenity you can imagine. And, last, but certainly not least, Namjoon would be here. 

“It would just be the two of us?” you ask. 

“I don’t know…” Namjoon rubs the back of his neck. “You’re the first one I’ve asked. I haven’t talked to the others yet.” You nod, biting your lip. “You’re hesitating, why are you hesitating?” 

“I—I don’t know. I feel like I should say no, like I should turn this down.” 

“Like you should? Or like you want to?” 

“Like I should.” 

“So you want to stay.” 

You look away from Namjoon while your hand plays with the band of his pants, fingers gracing across the smooth, hard planes of his stomach. You let your attention wander there for a moment. You let the want rise to the surface of your attention. 

When you look up at him, his eyes are wide and eager. You think you see hope there. As you look at him, all you want is to give him a yes. 

“I’m, of course, going to ask the others, too,” Namjoon clarifies. “You know. So it doesn’t have to just be me and you. We could all stay up here together. We’re better together.” 

We’re better together. Jimin had said it only a few days ago, and you find yourself needing the reminder. 

You want to gnash your teeth and scream at the part of you that says you ought to go, simply because it’s the “proper” thing to do. The part that says that you’ve overstayed your welcome. That by being here you’ll only eventually mess it all up. That there is something, somehow inherently wrong with this sexual set up that you’ve got going on with these seven, lovely, incredible friends of yours. 

“Are you really going to run again?” Jimin had asked you in the tub. And you wonder—are you? 

And then it really is his voice carrying across the kitchen. “Are you really going to run again?” Here—now. 

You twist from behind Namjoon’s figure to see Jimin standing in the entranceway of the kitchen. 

“Jimin,” you gasp. “I—”

When he speaks there’s no venom in his voice. But his pitch is empty—his voice flat. “We all know what you’re going to say.” 

“Jimin, I went looking for you,” you say softly. “I couldn’t find you. I know I—” 

“Don’t string the man out,” Jimin says, dully. “Tell him what you really want.” And then he turns his back and as swiftly as he had appeared, he is gone. 

You immediately begin to move in Jimin’s direction, and you catch a glimpse of Namjoon’s forlorn face as you twist out of his grasp. As you do, his hand catches yours.

“Namjoon, I have to—” 

“Will you stay?” It’s said so softly that you hardly catch the words as they disappear back into thin air. But you do turn back to him, and let hope—and sadness—curl at the edges of your eyes. 

“Let me sleep on it. We can talk about it tomorrow.” 

Namjoon’s face falls a little, but he lets you go, nonetheless. You follow Jimin into the darkness of the house. 

—

No matter how you run or call his name, it seems you can’t catch up. He disappears down hallways, around corners. It’s like one of those dreams where no matter how much you urge your legs to go forward, forward, you simply cannot get where you’re going. 

Soon, you lose him.

You find yourself at the top of the staircase that Hoseok had led you down to reach the ballroom. It is the same staircase. But you notice on the tread of the stairs, people walking among the woodland creatures you remember. Two are wrapped in a near intimate embrace. 

You grip the handrail and descend down. 

There is no music playing, so you know Hoseok isn’t down here. The lights are dimmed. No natural light shines through the windowless passage way—except what is captured by the open door behind you. 

The sounds of the house deafen. The air grows colder. 

You emerge into the hallway, and there, at the very end, the door to the ballroom stands shut. 

But before that, about halfway down the hall, stands another door, carved into the wall. You don’t recall this one. Did you not see it before? Did—did someone add it to the house since the last time you were here a few days ago? 

The door is cracked and a liquid green light pours out before dispersing through the hallway, tinging the darkness with a touch of ghostly green. 

You have no choice. Forward is the only way—it is the only way closer to Jimin, and it is the only way your curiosity will allow you to continue. 

The handle is warm as you pull it towards you, and a roll of mist and humidity hits you like a wall. 

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In return, Jungkook offers you his empty room for the night. “I don’t know why none of us had thought of this sooner.” Even though Hoseok pouts just a little bit (silently, to his credit), after everything that had happened today—Namjoon’s offer, standing at the edge of the forest with Jin, and the emotionality of your conversation with Jimin, you think a night alone might not be a bad idea. Afterall, when was the last time you’d spent more than an hour or two alone since arriving at the house? 

So you take him up on the offer. 

After dinner, Taehyung slips beneath the dinner table and takes Jungkook’s cock into his mouth, while the younger man grips the edge of the tables, knuckles turning white. Yoongi watches, leaning up against the kitchen counter, while Jimin and Namjoon kiss—tentatively at first, then slowly and sweetly, until Namjoon becomes flustered and excuses himself. Jin and Hoseok are nowhere to be found. 

After you said goodnight, the whole affair continued as a lazy and muddy embrace. While you get ready for bed, your seven friends move in and out of a slow, gentle exploration. After these weeks together, there’s no rush any more, though the eagerness still grows in new directions. There is no urgency, only the simple question of pleasure—and the answering call of who, who?

Like the owl perched on the tree, watching the warm glow of the house from the hushed forest. 

Like you, staring in the mirror of the ensuite bathroom, mouthing the question, who the fuck am I? 

Jungkook’s bed smells like him: leather, sea salt, and the hint of a remaining summer musk. It feels easy to make yourself at home among his things, even if you side eye the blow up mattress laid on the floor next to the queen sized bed. You don’t know if the second mattress is some kind of sex thing, or simply a material extension of Jungkook’s predisposition for abundance in the bedroom. You decide to take the real bed. 

Now that you’re alone for the first time in weeks, you feel every edge of yourself: where your chin brushes the duvet, where your shoulders peek out of the covers. And beyond that, you sense the enormity of the house. 

For a moment, you only hear the rush of your own breathing—and then, every single sound in the house slowly fills your awareness. 

With the door just barely cracked, every sound is blanketed by a warm mutedness. In the room you lay, the wind shoves itself against the window. Down the hallway, floorboards creak with age as the temperature shifts. There are footsteps, socked and moving slowly, down the same hall, surely someone making their way to bed. Beyond, a tea kettle screams and the baseline of some song threads, muted, through the walls. 

Beyond the edge of craving a body to wrap around yours—any, really—only after that craving leaves you—

Sleep comes like a whisper. 

—

Jin’s cellphone lights up. 

hs: you wanna come over? it’s just me tonight

Jin rolls his eyes and types quickly. 

jin: why do you always text me after everyone is asleep? 

The response comes immediately. 

hs: do not. 

jin: you do. 

hs: it’s been a little while since yn and i slept together, do you want to come over or not? 

jin: also you’re always explaining yourself, like you need a reason to want me. have you SEEN me? you don’t need an excuse to want me. you could have yn seven times a day and you’d still want me. 

jin: and my very pretty dick

hs: 🙄

hs: i didn’t say anything about your dick

jin: you didn’t need to

Jin rolls over—reaches across Jungkook—and presses a hand to a gently snoring Taehyung’s back. “Babe?” 

“Mm?” 

“I’m going out.” 

“Mm.” 

Jin’s not sure why he bothers, but he gets fully dressed, pulling on the clothes he had picked out last night for the next day. He even—breifly—checks his hair in the moonlit mirror. Handsome as ever. 

As he squeezes the door open, attempting not to wake Taehyung or Jungkook any more than he already has, he hears a pillowed-muffled: “Don’t fuck him too hard. He’ll want to be able to walk tomorrow.” 

Jin chuckles. 

—

When Hoseok opens the bedroom door at the sound of a soft rap, light pours out around him and into the dark hallway. Hoseok is still dressed, or maybe redressed—like Jin—but he’s wearing a dark button down, with the top few buttons peeled open. Jin’s eyes graze over the exposed skin, but before he can really and truly appreciate it, Hoseok is ushering Jin in quickly. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to sneak me around,” Jin says. 

“Am—am not.” 

“Oh?” Jin steps forward and lets his hand trail up Hoseok’s shirt until he reaches the top most closed button. He toys with it. “So then you won’t mind if I brought up your late night texts at breakfast tomorrow? In front of everyone?” 

“Why would you do that?” Hoseok asks. 

“Why shouldn’t I do that?” Jin retorts. 

“Well, it’s not like I need my sex life broadcasted on the kitchen table.” 

“Oh, so we’re having sex now?” Jin raises an eyebrow. 

Jin’s got him there. Up until this point, Jin has joined Hoseok several times late at night. But things have never descended past conversation. And kissing. And a good bit of handsy groping. 

Hoseok gulps. “Do you…want to have sex?” 

Jin hums and steps further into the large bedroom, eyeing the space as if distracted. The perfectly made bed. The fire burning in the fireplace. Hoseok always kept his spaces clean and tidy. This room was no exception. Still, Jin could spot traces of Hoseok around the space: his notebook, open on the sofa table. His earphones left on the foot of the bed. Three or four spare pens resting on tables, seats, and one on top of his luggage. 

“You’ve been writing,” Jin says, and when Hoseok doesn’t respond, he makes his way to one of the armchairs, near the roaring fireplace. It’s been getting progressively colder outside, but the sky still hasn’t broken open with snow. The sky has been holding her breath, along with everyone else. 

Jin tilts his head, waiting for Hoseok to join him. He does, but only after hesitating. He comes to stand before Jin. “You want to have sex?” Jin asks. 

Hoseok’s jaw clenches before he admits: “Yes.” 

“Was that hard to say?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why?” 

“I don’t know,” Hoseok says. 

“That’s okay,” Jin responds. “I’m glad you told me.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m going to need you to show me that you want it. I’m not really into anything other than an enthusiastic yes. And you seem to still have some, hm, questions on your mind.” 

“No…no more questions,” Hoseok says. 

Jin’s only answer is the prodding raising of his eyebrows. 

Hoseok’s eyes glint in the firelight, the deep, near-black iris glowing with internal warmth. He steps forward, stepping between Jin’s spread thighs and forcing the older man to sit up against the back of the chair. He lifts Jin’s chin with one finger. 

“Alright,” Hoseok says, and slowly sinks to his knees. Without breaking eye contact, he flips Jin’s belt open, then pops the button, before smoothly gliding the zipper open. With only a half second of hesitation, he runs his palm across the bulge between Jin’s legs, a thumb dipping under the fabric of his jeans and rubbing over the too-thin fabric, where Jin’s head waits.

“Does Taehyung know?” Hoseok asks quietly. 

“What, that you’ve been dying to suck my dick?” Jin chuckles. “Who doesn’t?”

“No—Does he know that you’re here.” 

“Mm,” Jin groans lightly as Hoseok squeezes around his dick. “Of course. I mentioned that I was going out.” 

“Just that you were going out? So am I a secret too?” 

Jin leans closer. “Baby, the whole house is fucking. It’s hardly a secret.” 

Hoseok warms, a bit of embarrassment flooding his face. He’s not sure why it feels so uncomfortable to let his friends know his needing, his desire. 

“You don’t have to stay so far away from me,” Jin says gently. “This doesn’t have to be so complicated.” Then— “I want you to have what you want.” 

Hoseok reaches for Jin’s face, pulling him down to kiss him. Their tongues twirl, their breath mixes.

“I want you,” Hoseok says.

Gracefully, to the surprise of both men, Hoseok slips Jin’s dick out of his briefs and lowers himself to it. Slowly, he takes the head of Jin’s cock into his mouth, swirling a little around the sensitive tip. Jin throws his head back and groans. 

“Just like that,” he says. “So good—” He looks down at Hoseok, who’s looking up at him with wide eyes, his mouth full. “So good for me.” 

This trips up Hoseok. He pops off, wipes his mouth. “The door is still open,” Hoseok says. “I should close it.” He begins to stand but a firm hand on his shoulder stops him. 

“Keep it open.” 

“What?” 

“Are you afraid of someone seeing?” Jin asks. 

Hoseok nods. 

“Would that be the worst thing?” Jin asks.

Hoseok shakes his head no. 

Things soon move to the bed, Jin slips a leg between Hoseok’s as they make out, laying on their sides. Hoseok bites on Jin’s lower lip, moaning into his mouth as Jin grinds on him. Their cocks are pressed together, though Hoseok’s still got his pants on and Jin’s member has slipped back inside his underwear. Still, his hefty bulge presses through the fabric. And through all those layers, electricity still zings between them. 

For Hoseok, it feels like he’s breaking some kind of rule. He doesn’t know which one. 

Maybe it’s the rule that says he should only be dedicated to one person. Or the one he made up all those years ago that says he doesn’t fuck around with guys (they’re quick to fuck and even quicker to leave). Or the one that says you aren’t supposed to fuck your best friend’s boyfriend. 

Still, here he lies, groaning into Jin’s mouth as the latter snakes an arm around the former, gripping the back of his neck and pulling him closer. The fire that burns in Hoseok’s stomach is welcome but unfamiliar. He’s not used to wanting like this: unfettered, unburdened. He’s not used to his want being answered. 

“You gonna let me fuck you, baby?” Jin asks, his hand trailing down to where the dark button down is tucked into Hoseok’s pants. He tugs gently on the fabric. “Or should we wait for another night? After everyone’s asleep and none the wiser?”

Hoseok groans as Jin’s fingers dip below the band of his pants, teasing the sensitive spot where his cock meets his pelvis. It only leaves him wanting more. 

“I don’t know,” Hoseok says, and Jin pulls back just a bit, his hand still roving over Hoseok’s stomach. 

“You don’t know?” Jin asks curiously.

“I don’t think I want to be fucked,” Hoseok says. “I mean,--just not tonight.” 

Jin peppers Hoseok’s cheek with gentle kisses. “That’s more than okay. You wanna do something else instead?” He lazily plays with Hoseok’s hair, pushing it out of his warm forehead. The two men are so close together that their noses nearly brush. “I could suck you off,” Jin offers. “We could get off together. Or, if you wanted, I could find a Jungkook or a Jimin and ask them to join. And eager to please.” Jin grins, then pauses, to read Hoseok’s face. “Or, you know, you could fuck me.” 

Hoseok’s eyebrows lift. “I don’t think you’d want me to fuck you.” 

“Why would you say that? How well are you acquainted with what I want?” 

“I dunno, maybe I just assumed. Didn’t think it’d be your kind of thing.” 

“Sex is my kind of thing.” Jin kisses Hoseok then, his tongue sliding salaciously inside Hoseok’s mouth, exploring him as his hands explore his body. “Pleasure is my kind of thing. And sometimes a little pain.” 

“You don’t want to be on top?” Hoseok murmurs, his heartrate quickening. “I thought you were a dom or something.” 

“Who says I can’t top from the bottom?” Jin chuckles. “Not everything has to be about power play.”

“I want you to tell me what to do,” Hoseok whispers. “I like when you do that. I like—” he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to speak the following words. “I like getting to let go a little bit.” 

Jin nods, and lets his hand trail up Hoseok’s torso until he gently grips his shoulder. Slowly, he pushes Hoseok back down onto the bed, then sits up fully to straddle the younger man. 

“Do you really?” He nibbles down Hoseok’s neck, fingers working on the button’s of the dark shirt, popping them open slowly one by one. “Then let me help you let go.” 

From there, things move quickly, bodies pushing against each other, Jin whispering in Hoseok’s ear what he wants, what feels good, how good Hoseok feels. There is a gentle but commanding tone he takes with the younger man, a softness that inspires the edge of his usually dominant approach. 

There’s something about the way that Jin speaks to him, with that signature dark glint in his eyes, that shows an undeniable and clear current beneath each utterance: Jin wants Hoseok. He wants him bad. And Hoseok can’t help it. He loves feeling wanted. 

In that moment, pleasure spiraling through is body, the sounds of sex filling the room, Hoseok gives in. 

As he pushes into Jin, he finds the same ringing warmth he thought he could find with only one person, and a gasp escapes his lips. Hoseok kneeled and pressed against Jin’s back, the older man sitting in his lap, lowering himself onto Hoseok’s cock. After a moment, the two find their rhythm, staccato breath mixing as they chase pleasure together. Jin leads the way—reaching back to place a hand on H’s hip here, a soft word ushered to give direction there—but Hoseok is sprinting right alongside him. He’s panting in Jin’s ear, he’s telling him just how good he feels, he’s asking Jin for what he wants. 

Hoseok wonders: is this how you felt when you joined the others in their beds? Like you could just let go and sink into a pool of desire and sensation? Does Jin treat you like this? Do the others? He wonders if he should ask you about it. If maybe it’ll be something to share in common, something to talk in hushed tones about after the sun is long gone and the early hours of the morning ghost by. But telling you about this feels like it breaks some kind of rule.

He’s not sure which one. 

This line of thinking leaves a hunger aching in his center—for what, he doesn’t know. When his eyes flash in the mirror across from the bed, Jin sees it. But before the older man has a chance to prepare for what it means, Hoseok is pulling out and flipping Jin onto his back. Hands on either side of Jin’s face, Hoseok leans over him and kisses him hungrily, passionately. Then he reaches down and resheaths himself within his friend, the two moaning in synch. He grinds into him at a glacial and graceful pace, his dancer’s hips wielding a painful control. 

When he presses in to the hilt, he stops. “I’m going to fuck you now, you understand?” 

Jin is frankly a little taken aback, but quickly collects himself, gaze narrowing in on the man above him. “Oh really? You think your pretty little dick can give me what I really need?” 

Hoseok pushes in—hard, and smiles at the cry of pleasure that leaves Jin’s mouth. “Of course I can.” 

—

When it’s all over and when both of them have chased their pleasure to the final end, there isn’t much laying around. 

Still a bit short of breath, Jin gets up and begins to get dressed again, all while watching Hoseok carefully. He’s sprawled out on the ruffled sheets, cock soft and heavy against his abdomen, one hand thrown behind his head. 

Hoseok knows Jin is going to leave. Why wouldn’t he? Especially when Taehyung is alone and waiting for his partner. Why would Jin stay with him? But that doesn’t stop the pang of hurt that flickers through his chest. 

“Just gonna fuck and run?” Hoseok asks before he can stop himself. It’s said in a teasing manner, but both men hear the core of hurt behind the statement. 

Jin chuckles. “I have a boyfriend waiting on me who will be wildly pouty if he wakes up and I’m not there.” 

“Maybe he’s too needy,” Hoseok says, and then immediately regrets saying it. 

“I don’t think that’s fair of you to say,” Jin says, pausing to flash Hoseok a dark look before finishing buttoning up his shirt. 

“Yeah—no, you’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” 

Hoseok lets his eyes flutter closed. It’s easier to not watch Jin go. At least when you came to the bedroom, you stayed over. Even better, whenever you and Hoseok slept in the same bed, he’d always wake up to you chasing the heat of his body across the bed. So when you were there, you were never too far. He likes that about you. Jin leaving feels, well, uncomfortable.

Jin watches his friend close his eyes and drift somewhere else, somewhere away from him. Jin’s jaw twitches. This feels horribly familiar for the older man. 

He remembers the early days with Taehyung, when it was nothing more than sex. At least, that’s what Taehyung would remind him of each time they saw each other, Jin only showing up to Taehyung’s apartment after 10pm, after a drunk text, after everyone else was gone, after logic and inhibition waned. Jin only showing up when Taehyung remembered to invite him over. At least, that’s how he had perceived it in the early days. 

Something about the way Hoseok pretends nonchalance reminds him of leaving Taehyung’s apartment again and again all those years ago. He remembers the small distance that would grow as he climbed out of bed and redress while Taehyung stayed put, warm and blissed out under the covers. He remembers that ache, the sweet, beautiful ache of having fallen mercilessly, messily in love. The ache of loving and being kept someone’s secret. And the ache of leaving the one he loved each night, with a casual, “See you later, dude.” 

Of course, Jin knew even at that time that Taehyung never meant to hurt him in that way—Tae’d only just gone through a breakup with one of their mutual friends, you, a week before the first time they’d slept together. Taehyung had only just lost his first love. Of course it was going to be messy. What made it so painful was that Jin knew exactly what he wanted then, and he knows exactly what he wants now. 

After a moment of watching Hoseok’s forced expression of coolness, Jin struts across the room and straddle’s Hoseok’s hips. 

The younger man’s eyes shoot open in surprise. “Wha—” Jin’s hand comes down to grip Hoseok’s chin as he kisses him—full and needy and open mouthed. 

“I’m your little secret, aren’t I?” Jin breathes when they break for breath. He’s saying the quiet part out loud. 

“Yes,” Hoseok says, needily, his cock already hardening again between the legs of his older friend. 

Jin pulls away. “Well, too bad,” he says, his face stretching in a grimace. “Because I don’t want to be your little secret.” 

Hoseok’s mouth hangs open as Jin gets up and strides across the room, slipping his house shoes back on. Is Jin really leaving? Like that? After everything that just happened? 

When Jin reaches the door, a hand reaches from behind him to shut the door. The older man pauses. “I want to go to bed now,” he says. “Let me go.” 

“I’m being a total asshole,” Hoseok says instead. “I don’t know what this fucking house has done to me, but I’m being a complete and total asshole.” 

Jin turns slowly. “Yes, you are.” 

“I am.” Hoseok nods, swallowing slowly. “And you don’t deserve that.” The two men are standing so close, toe to toe. “You don’t deserve it because it’s not about you.” 

“Then what is it about?” Jin whispers. 

“I’m nervous,” Hoseok whispers. “Everything is happening so fast.” 

“Well that’s just what—” Jin stops himself from saying love is. “That’s just what these kinds of arrangements are. Unpredictable. Chaotic. A lot is unpredictable right now.” 

Hoseok nods. 

Jin tilts the younger man’s chin up. “Hey,” he says. “We can slow down.” 

Hoseok shakes his head. “No, no.” 

“That’s not what you want?” 

“No. I want this. I want you,” he says. “I just—I need to learn to catch my breath.” 

“We can do that.” Jin smiles. He mimes a deep breath with a hee-hoo, hee-hoo exaggerated breathing along with it. Both laugh. 

And then they are falling into one another, Jin’s plush lips meeting Hoseok’s, Hoseok pushing himself up against the older man, and the door closing behind him again—Jin’s hands roving over Hoseok’s naked torso—Hoseok gasping into his friend’s mouth. It’s not long before they’re back on the bed again.

—

The tender flesh of your hands scrape against rock, gravel, grass that rips beneath your grasp. Your fall is stopped as you desperately grab onto a larger rock. As your feet dangle into open air, you tighten your grip. Your hands feel sweaty but strong, and time seems to slow. 

Below you, the forest spreads. A voice calls up from below, sounding your name so sweetly. 

Don’t they know I’m falling?—you want to say. The voice calls your name again. It sounds like Hoseok, but when you look down, Jimin stands at the bottom of the great ravine, his arms spread wide. 

“Come on!” he yells. 

You’re at the cliff again, but this time you want to fall. This time, you know if you do, Jimin will catch you. 

Hands grip your wrists, and Hoseok hoists you up from where you dangled. Soon the two of you are speeding through the thick of the forest. It’s like the one just outside the house, but the trees are so close together, you’re nearly gripping Hoseok’s back just to stay together. The trees lean together, something cold envelopes you—water, wind? 

—

You wake up coughing as frigid air fills your lungs. You’re on your knees, soft earth beneath them. Nearly in a prayer position, the hum of the forest at night rises grand and looming before you. The hoot of a great horned owl calls from just out of sight. The house stands dark behind you. 

There’s dirt, smudged into the lifeline of your palms like you’ve been praying on the forest floor all night. You don’t understand how you got here. You’d never been the type to sleep walk, though Namjoon once told you he’d heard you singing in your sleep while on a camping trip. 

Knees aching, you pick yourself up from the cold, damp earth, and with your arms wrapped tight around your torso, shuffle back towards the house. You feel the forest, large, dark, looming, at your back. Pushing you. Urging you back towards the warmth. 

Inside, the house is so quiet. As you look down the hallway towards Jungkook’s bedroom, a chill passes through you. Instead of climbing back into an empty bed, you trek through the house until you find Taehyung’s bedroom and ease the door open.

In the dim light of the hallway, two figures lay twisted and huddled close together, Jin and Taehyung, you imagine. You don’t hesitate as you crawl up from the foot of the bed, wiggling between the two of them. 

“Jin?” Taehyung grumbles, lifting his head from the pillow, his hair tousled and sleep-curled. 

“It’s me,” you whisper. 

Jungkook’s head pops up from beneath the blanket on the other side of you. “What are you doing here?” Jungkook’s lids are heavy with sleep and sex. 

“Bad dream.” 

That’s enough information for the two of them. With a shuffle of blankets and limbs, you are soon engulfed between the bodies of your two friends. You settle into the comfortable mattress on your side, pressed into Taehyung’s chest, Jungkook curling around your back, his arm thrown across the two of you. 

There is a soft familiarity of Taehyung’s scent, and for a moment, you hang suspended between time—young and dumb and in love with the dark-haired man once more, and here, now, years beyond the breakup: his breath holding no more meaning than breath. 

When you meet your dreams once more on the doorstep of consciousness, they are warm and scented with the familiarity of the two men wrapped around you. 

—

A bead of sweat trickles down Jin’s back as he pushes into Hoseok, whispering praise and pleasure in the other man’s ear. 

When they collapse into each other’s arms in the early morning light, Jin waits a few minutes before apologetically telling Hoseok that he owes it to Taehyung to at least let him know he’s not coming back tonight. 

Hoseok pouts a little when Jin leaves, even if it’s only a few minutes. By the time he’s showered and is getting ready to climb back into bed alone, he’s telling himself Jin got distracted and decided to sleep in Taehyung’s bed—that Jin so quickly forgot him.

Then the door clicks open, and Jin is there again, chuckling. 

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Hoseok says. 

“Even if I wanted to sleep in my own bed, there would have been no space. Taehyung and Jungkook acquired a new friend since the last time I was there.” 

“That quickly?” 

“It’s been five hours.” 

“Oh.” 

The two smile at each other. When they climb into bed and pull the covers up over themselves, the sheets don’t go still for hours.

—

In the morning, Taehyung and Jungkook ask about the dirt smeared into the lines of your hands and under your nails. 

You have no answer. 

Jungkook walks with you to the ensuite bathroom. He hugs your back as you scrub and scrub and scrub your hands. 

“Hey,” he says, finally, turning off the water and taking the towel from your hands. “I think you got them clean enough.” 

“Sorry—you’re right,” you say. “I got lost in thought.” 

“It seems you might have gotten a little lost last night too.” His brow is pressed in concern. 

You smooth a thumb over the lines forming between his brows. “Everything is okay. Sometimes I just have bad dreams. Or sleepwalk, I guess.” 

“I never knew you to be someone who sleepwalks,” Taehyung chimes in, entering the bathroom. He drops his pants without a second thought and steps into the shower. You avert your eyes. “You sure you’re okay?” 

“I’m okay,” you smile, and pat Jungkook’s cheek. “How could I not be, with all of my favorite people in the world in the same house with me?” 

Still, your stomach sinks at the thought of the forest, the dream, the waking. 

“Jungkook, remember you’re on breakfast duty today,” Taehyung calls. 

“Shit!” 

Jungkook is out of the room in a flash.

“Join me?” Taehyung asks, offering a hand from the shower. 

The question hangs in the air. You look between his hand, the place where the curtain obscures his lower abdomen, and back up, to his lips. The lips you haven’t kissed in years. 

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There is the careful portrait you allow everyone else to see; the self that appears polished and in control. Even the chill, cool-girl facade comes from a kind of careful grooming, a filtering of all of the filtering, messy, confusing bits of you. 

And then there is the beast that lives inside you. The creature that croons the names of your seven friends, again and again, in your dreams and in the quiet moments of your waking life. This creature that wants and wants and goes on wanting. The creature that—if you give her what she truly wanted, would turn wild and rip through your carefully built life, destroying everything in her wake. You had worked so hard to build this shelter, this sanctuary of friendship and you believe, with your entire self, that giving this beast what she truly wants will shatter it all. 

You wish things were simple and straightforward for you—like Yoongi or Jungkook, two men who chase what they want, who hold immeasurable depths but surface quickly and with honesty. You wish you could have waltzed into this life with ease, but that was never the case.

As you sit with Jimin in the bathtub, you picture the beast, laying in the center of a forest clearing of sorts. She sleeps, her chest slowly expanding and falling in a gentle rhythm. A flurry of snowflakes falls thickly around her, like static, keeping things quiet, keeping things still. 

You wonder if you stand still long enough, if the snow will cover her entirely. If she will disappear beneath a blanket of snowdrift if you leave her undisturbed for long enough. 

And you know that to answer Jimin’s question is to wake this beast. 

So when he says, “But what is it?” with the floral aroma drifting up with the steam from the bath, you say, “I don’t know.” 

And Jimin says nothing. He does that thing again, where he just holds your stare. There is no coldness in his gaze, in fact, there’s something soft, like sympathy or understanding lighting the back of his eyes. And there is firmness in that warmth. That is what terrifies you.

He waits. 

And finally, after what feels like minutes, you whisper, “It feels like a monster.”

He tilts his head just a little. You have the eeriest sensation that he can see right through you, into the snowy clearing with the beast, where the flurries are falling even faster now. “Why is she there?” he says, finally.

“What?” your voice shakes. 

“Why is she there?” he repeats, as if your question has expressed that you haven’t heard him, not that you don’t understand. “Where did this monster come from?” 

The snow is falling faster. It’s harder and harder to see straight. The ache in your chest is beginning to burn. 

“I—I—” How do you know why a beast is a beast? How do you know what makes a monster? How do you trace something sick back to its root? You want to dunk underneath the water—you want to drown out the pressing tone of his voice—but for a moment your stubbornness wins. You stare back at him. 

His eyes are soft. 

You know your eyes are cold. 

“Do you want it?” Jimin asks quietly. “Do you want to keep running?” 

It’s like he can feel your muscles tensing, ready to stand up out of the tub, drip your way angrily and resentfully across the tile and through the rest of the house until you’ve put a league of distance between you and this question. 

And him. 

But before you can, he reaches out to you and grasps your hand. You flinch when he makes contact. He wraps your hand in his. 

The snow stops. The flurries freeze in mid-air. Your breath halts in your lungs. The beast in the clearing is stirring, stretching her sleeping limbs, a little sound escaping through sharp teeth. 

And then—finally—you say something true: “No,” you say. “I don’t want to keep running.” 

The words echo too loud through the bathroom, and the clearing, and the whole house. 

The beast opens her eyes. 

Your chest feels like it’s going to break open. 

Jimin leans towards you, pulling you between his legs and into his arms. You are stiff against his movements, but he folds your bodies into one another, his legs and arms wrapping around you. His breath, slow and steady, brushes against your ear. You squeeze your eyes shut and wrap your arms around your chest. How can he breathe so easily when something is about to break inside your chest? 

“What are you so afraid will happen if you let yourself feel?” Jimin whispers. The question takes up all the air left in the bathroom. It echoes around like a ghost, like something you’ve heard before. Like a voice spoken from the cold of the mountains just beyond the room that you sit in, a haunting from a far-off winter. 

Instead of responding, you choke out a rattled breath. 

He pulls back his face far enough to get a good look at you. It feels like he’s looking right into you, right through you. Like with that heavy gaze he sees every little bit of you. But he’s not turning away from you, or what he sees in you. He’s not running from you. 

How come? 

Your mouth gapes open and closed like a fish. You are looking for words. You are looking for air.

Jimin repeats the question, slowly, holding your gaze. “What are you so afraid will happen if you let yourself feel?” 

Within you, the beast, stands. Stretches. She is ready. 

But you aren’t. 

You can’t—

You start to pull away from Jimin. You make to stand up from the tub, but Jimin holds you firm. 

“Don’t,” he says, and your rebuttal rises within you. But he surprises you. “I’ll go,” he says. “You stay.” 

You’re not sure if that’s disappointment flickering in his eye, but there’s also clarity there. He sees what you can’t—and that terrifies you. 

Jimin leaves you silently. You remain in the tub. The bathroom suddenly seems gigantic. 

You press yourself back against where the tub meets the wall, the chill of the tile a stark, cold contrast to the warm water, and wrap your arms around yourself. It’s not the same as Jimin wrapped around you, but it’s quiet. The scent of rose drifts up from the water, reminding you of summer, which has entirely disappeared from the air in the last weeks. 

Maybe it’s too quiet. 

Plink. A drop of water falls from the faucet, hitting the water. 

You stare at your hands through the water. They are wrinkled and pruney, and shift lighter beneath the water. These hands which have brought you all this way. These hands that have held each of the men in the house. 

It was a gift Jimin gave you, you realize. He gave you the choice to have space and silence without making you run away from him to access it. A hollow opens in your stomach as you look at the contents of the day. The sweetness of your moments with Jimin, juxtaposed with the seeping coldness that spills out from you now. 

You see it clearly now. 

Jimin’s absence—the too-large space remaining in the tub—the loud silence of the bathroom—the empty air—is a new kind of separation. 

And your stomach begins to sink anew. 

You find yourself standing up out of the bath. Towel-less and clumsily, you knock your shin against the tub as you clamber out. You drip water and rose-scented soap onto the bathroom floor. 

“Jimin?” you call as you open the door. But the bedroom is empty and dark. 

He has laid out a towel and set of clothes for you, both folded neatly on the bed. The bed has been made, the curtains opened. There is a new freshness to the room. But he’s not here. 

You try to dress quickly, attempting to pull a t-shirt over your head. But you fail. The water has the fabric clinging clumsily to your skin.

When you leave the bedroom, you force yourself to walk: you fight the urge to run through the halls, calling Jimin’s name. 

—----

He’s nowhere to be found. And when you can’t find him, and begin to think maybe he doesn’t want to be found—at least by you—you give up. Maybe too quickly. 

You make your way back to the living room after combing through the house. The place feels mysteriously empty; you hadn’t run into a single friend or fuck-buddy in your wanderings. 

Your chest still feels unsettled and restless, and you think of that one overused quote you see all over Pinterest and Instagram: The mountains are calling and I must go. You think, in that moment, that you understand anew what John-whatever-the-fuck meant in that long-ago letter: when everything inside you feels without a home, there is direction in the mountains. They simply cannot be ignored. As the sun sets over those broad peaks, the rivets and valleys of the great range before you call in a way that feels all too physical. It’s magnetism, this place, this land that calls your name.

And yet—

You have wet hair. 

And you cannot help the sinking feeling that this place does not want you. 

As much as this place has trapped you here. 

Stuck between the conundrum of wet hair in the cold autumn wind and the burning sensation in your chest that cries for cool air, you compromise: you beeline for one of the large windows overlooking the firepit, and throw it open.

Hands gripping the sill, you lean out, testing your balance. Your wet hair is plastered to your scalp and face in, what you can only imagine, is an unsightly manner, and your t-shirt clings in odd damp spots to your warm skin. You’re sure you look like you’ve just been through half of a laundry cycle, but you don’t care. 

The bathroom was too quiet. But here, the wind howls and howls until you can no longer hear the call of the beast. 

You try to remember all the things you’ve learned along the way, you try to cobble together the pieces of what you know now. 

Inside you, your chest swims with muddiness. A swirl of snow, leaves, detritus. It seems as if the beast has left you entirely. Everything you said to Jimin, that too, lies before you. 

What have I done?

You cannot help but think of Jimin’s face, open and afraid, as he had told you about what he feared most all these months. The fear that he had shown to you—trusted you with—and that you had chosen to slam back in his face with the brutal clang of a great thing breaking. Something once carefully built up, now crashing down. 

All those months ago, on the floor of your bedroom while you talked with Taehyung, you thought you had made a change. In that moment, you believed you had taken a critical turn on the long path of isolation that you had created for yourself. But as you look at the wreckage behind you—in the direction of Jimin’s room—you realize you had never really stopped running. At least, not in the way that you needed to. Not in the way that loving—op, living with—these men required you to.

You are surprised when a spot of rain slips down your cheek. You lift your finger to touch it, finding the trail from your eye to the drop—are you crying? As the tears slip silent down your face, you realize. 

I am unhappy.

You squeeze your eyes shut. 

You suck the alpine air into your lungs. In. Out. The burn of the cold is the antidote—chilling your mind, slowly, slowly, stilling the storm. Or, stuffing the beast back into sleep.

You jolt as a body wraps around your back, a head notching on your shoulder. Breath brushes your tender neck, and hands run down your bare arms. 

“Christ, you’re freezing,” Yoongi says. 

“It feels good,” you say, automatically. Your system shudders with shock as a memory from long ago rises to the surface. A balcony. Yoongi wrapped around you. A secret lingering on your tongue. A hidden relationship. How is it that so much time has passed—how is it that everything has changed—and yet you still feel just like you did that January night almost a year ago? 

“Why are you always chasing the cold?” Yoongi asks. 

“Why is everyone always asking me so many questions?” It comes out harsher than you meant. You cobble yourself together, and think this is a question you think you can answer. You soften your tone: “The cold lets me feel.” 

Yoongi nods against your shoulder like he understands immediately. “I don’t have to ask any more questions,” he says, a note of disappointment in his tone. 

You feel him begin to pull away from the one sided embrace, so you wrap your arms around his that snakes to your front and cradle it—and him—against you. You don’t want him to go. He tenses, as if surprised, then relaxes and wraps himself further around you. You still haven’t opened your eyes. You fear, if you do, everything will shatter. “I won’t ask what’s going on,” Yoongi says. “But can I assume—if it’s alright with you—that you’re less than okay right now?” 

You find yourself nodding, praying that he hasn’t seen the quiet tears on your cheeks. 

“That’s okay,” he says. “I’m here. I’ll stay here.” 

You nod again. Yes. Yes, please stay. You feel like a hypocrite, subtly asking Jimin for space, and then falling into Yoongi’s arms. The difference is, Yoongi has seen you like this before: raw, open, yearning. You’ve never shown this side to Jimin before. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, your voice thick. “I just don’t have words for it.” 

“And that’s okay too.”

So, he just holds you, his arms wrapping even tighter around your belly, pulling you in closer to him. You find your head tilting back to rest on his shoulder. He places a chaste kiss in the hollow of your throat—and you know, suddenly, that he means the gesture as reassurance, he means it as a response to all the words that you cannot say. 

At your front, the mountain howls. 

At your back, Yoongi stands firm and steadfast, the heat of his body bringing yours back into balance. Your breath calms. The tears dry. You are breathing together. In. Out. 

“Thank you,” you whisper to Yoongi, finally, finally opening your eyes to the night before you. But when you do, you’re surprised by what you see. 

At the fire pit just beyond the house, two figures huddle around a blazing fire, figures darkened in contrast with the flickering red flame. After a moment, you realize it’s Hoseok and Taehyung. They’re talking, but you can’t hear them no matter how you strain. In a flash, you feel suddenly nervous. What could they be talking about? 

—------

Tonight, with the brisk wind that rushes down the mountain side, it seems as if the stars are huddled closer to earth than ever before. Hoseok thinks they shine a little brighter tonight, like they are leaning in to hear what he has to say. 

Taehyung and Hoseok sit close together on one of the benches that surrounds the fire pit. The rest of their friends—Jungkook, Namjoon, and Yoongi—had abandoned them a few minutes before for bed, refreshed drinks, or the more reliable warmth of the house. Silence had settled over the pair as they gazed out over the scenic view, the sun only just disappearing entirely from the sky. For Taehyung, it was a comfortable silence. 

For Hoseok, his words mulled and churned as he searched for the right iteration, the right pattern. And then it had all come out like a flood, a bursted dam: a rushed question that only Taehyung could answer. 

“I dunno dude.” Taehyung rubs the back of his neck in response. “I didn’t realize you were that down bad after—” 

“It’s not bad, is it?” He answers the question for himself: “It’s bad. I know it’s bad. It looks bad, right?” 

“Nah,” Taehyung chuckles and grips the arm of his friend squeezing him in reassurance. “Nah, it happens to the best of us.” 

“It does?” Hoseok asks. Taehyung nods vigorously. But before he can respond, Hoseok continues: “You’re sure I’m not asking the wrong person about this?” 

“I mean, to be totally honest, it is a little weird but—” Taehyung sighs. “I want you to be able to talk to me about these things. You’re my friend. It’s important for you to talk about them. Actually—it’s important for all of us.” 

Hoseok nods solemnly, wringing his cold hands before speaking. “I just don’t know what to do,” he says. “I want to show her that I can be the kind of man that she wants.” 

His friend gives him a long, appraising look and sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, I get it. I remember that—wanting the same thing—like it was yesterday. She deserves the world.” 

“Do you…still feel that way?” Hoseok asks slowly. 

“Are you asking, do I still feel the same way I felt when we were nineteen?” Hoseok nods. “Hell no.” 

But Taehyung glances to the ground. Fiddles with his fingers. Hoseok tries to read whatever’s going on in his friend’s head—but before he can understand what Taehyung is thinking, his friend speaks abruptly: “You know, she’ll want space to grow. Smothering her is only going to make her freeze up. But man, I don’t think you have all that much to worry about. I see the way you look at each other. 

Hoseok’s brow presses in confusion or interest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Taehyung chuckles and lightly slaps his friend on the shoulder. “My friend, you’re worried about something you have no need to worry about. You’re already five steps ahead in this game.” 

“What game?” 

“The game of loooove.” This, Taehyung says with a childish tone and a handsome smirk. 

Hoseok looks shocked. “I—I didn’t—We didn’t—But—” He collects himself. “We agreed as a house that this is all only sex. Anyways, I said nothing about love.”

“You didn’t have to.” 

“Do you really think…?” Hoseok asks, his eyes wide with hope. 

Taehyung shrugs, then picks up a stick to poke at the fire with. “I dunno. I can’t promise you the future—no one can. But I see something… I see things starting.” 

Hoseok nods as if he understands the vague statements of his friend. When he stands to walk away, he walks with the particular stride of someone who finally sees the light through the end of a hedge maze. 

—-------

You watch as Hoseok strides inside while Yoongi is still wrapped around your back, speaking softly in that deep lilt of his about his day. 

While you hadn’t heard what the two men discussed, you did feel a strange sense of watching something you weren’t supposed to be seeing. 

Yoongi’s warmth has brought you back to earth. When his breath brushes just-so against your neck, you find yourself shivering in his grasp. 

“Are you finally getting cold?” he asks. You hear the smirk in his voice—and the tender care too. 

“Maybe,” you say. “Yes,” you correct as a deeper chill settles within you. “Warm me up?” you ask softly. 

He leads you back into the living room, where he wraps a blanket around you and settles with you on the large couch. 

“Come here,” you insist. “I need your body heat. All of it.” Never quite the one to indulge in—or, better said, initiate—cuddling, Yoongi hesitates like he’s calculating where to fit his limbs. Then, he settles with a jolty, awkward collaboration of limbs into a spooning position with you tucked into him. 

It’s there, wrapped up in his arms while he tells you about the song you’re working on, that you slowly start to drift towards a deep sleep. 

—

As Hoseok strides back into the house, he wears a smug smile on his face. He’s a man on a mission, a guy with gusto, a dude with direction. He’s chosen his path—he’s walking it now. 

As he swings open the back door to a dark hallway in one of the lower levels, he notices a figure, lingering against the wall. The hallway is dark. He can’t make out the figure’s face. 

“Oh—hey,” he says anyways, making himself smaller to scootch right on past. 

But the man steps into the center of the hallway, effectively blocking Hoseok’s path. “I was looking for you,” the figure says. “But I didn’t want to interrupt. It looked like whatever you were talking about seemed quite important. I haven’t seen Taehyung that serious in a minute.” 

Hoseok shifts back and forth. “I guess you could say it was.” Then he shakes his head, as if to clear it. “But to be clear, I wasn’t making a move on Taehyung—nothing like that—I promise—” 

The man steps closer, and Jin’s handsome face comes into the dim light of the singular bulb that burns outside. 

“I wouldn’t mind it if you were.” Hoseok’s mouth flops open and then shuts again. Jin takes another step closer, tipping Hoseok’s chin shut. “Though maybe I’d like you to tell me if you were, first—just to know what’s going on between the people in my life. But why are you suddenly so nervous, Hoseok? Have you done something you’re not supposed to be doing?” 

Hoseok flounders for an answer. “I—no, I mean, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe we aren’t supposed to be doing things like this or—” He shuts himself up. “No, no I don’t think there’s anything wrong.” 

Jin tilts his head, scanning Hoseok’s flustered gaze. 

“Then why do you seem so nervous?” He takes another step towards Hoseok and suddenly Hoseok’s back is up against the wall and Jin is impossibly towering over him. “Do I make you nervous, Hoseok?” 

“You keep saying my name like that—” 

“Like what?” Jin’s thumb traces Hoseok’s chin, then wanders upwards, tracing around the bottom of his lip. Hoseok swallows loudly. “Like I want you?” 

“Do you want me?” Hoseok asks. “Really?” 

“I do.” It’s such a simple phrase and it makes Hoseok’s mind go empty. Jin places a kiss right below the younger man’s ear, his plus lips warming the tenderness there. “And if you don’t want me—tell me to stop.” 

Hoseok says nothing, but his hands come up to grip Jin’s shirt, implicitly pulling him closer. 

“What about Taehyung?” 

“What about him?” 

“Won’t he be upset?” 

Jin pulls himself up from where he had begun kissing down Hoseok’s throat, leveling his gaze. “Why? Do you plan to take me from him?”

“Not him—”

“Then tell me to stop or kiss me, goddamnit.” The decision is as simple as Hoseok tipping his chin towards his friend. And as Jin’s lips descend on Hoseok’s, the younger man nearly smiles. 

—-

Yoongi watches carefully as you drift towards sleep. He chooses his words carefully, too, to be simple and mundane enough to soothe the storm he sees warring within you. 

You mumble mmms and oh?s as he tells you about the way the music moves in his mind—how sometimes it is like water flooding him through and through—and how other times it is also like water, but only arrives in a trickle. 

He knows you’re only catching a few of his words, but he likes how they fill the dark, large room. He sees more of himself in speaking it all aloud in this way.

When he tells you about his most recent song, you too feel the water in him lift up and sing. It is simple, passion. And you can do nothing but lift your lips to his and kiss him, softly, like finding your way in the dark. 

He hesitates in surprise, and then leans in. 

Your mouths move gently with one another like curiosity, or learning someone’s body anew, and you find your breath filling your entire chest. Your arms wrap around him. You find that in you, too, everything has turned to water. You find that you can give Yoongi this—messy, tender, uncertain. You find that you are giving him exactly what Jimin asked you for, and a door in your chest creaks open with a painful creak. 

Light shines in through the crack. 

When the kiss is done, which—as many kisses do—arrives softly and sweetly and with finality, you tuck your head into his shoulder. Together, you breathe without saying anything. 

“I need to find Jimin,” you murmur as sleep comes over you. 

“Soon,” Yoongi says. 

As you cross that final barrier into sleep, Yoongi kisses the tear that slips across your cheek—the one you thought you could hide from him. 

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As a child, home was multiplied and many. It was the many places you lived, as you moved often, following your father around with his job. But it was also many in the sense that you learned at a young age that home didn’t have to be a place you lived. Home was between the worn and finger-marred pages of the books you fell in love with, home was the wisping scent of fresh (if not often burnt) pastry in your grandmother’s kitchen each time you visited, home was the place you yearned to travel to but never made the time to visit. 

But as you close the book in your hands, the words echo in your mind: 

Are you going to come home? 

You feel far away from home, even though you find a great deal of comfort in the walls of Namjoon’s mountain house. Ahem, mansion. Confusion riddles little holes of worry through you. Where is home, anyways? The small apartment you left empty in the city? The question opens a void in you. Why bother with home anyways? Sure, home could be anything if you tried hard enough, but couldn’t the opposite be true too? That if you tried hard enough, you wouldn’t need a home?

Still, void and all, the question nudges you. 

Unsettled, you clamber down the tree and make your way back towards the house. The sun has risen higher in the sky and breaks through the chill ever so slightly. Worried that you’ve just abandoned Jimin this morning and that he’ll wake up alone, you quicken your pace. You creak the door open, waving at Jungkook and Jin and Taehyung in the kitchen, who are huddled over the coffee, waiting for it to finish brewing. 

“A watched pot never boils,” you call out to them, noting that Jungkook looks a little cheerier than he had the past several days. Jin’s hand rests on Jungkook’s lower back and a little wave of joy jolts through you as the older man throws you a little smile. 

“Watching it actually makes it go faster,” Jungkook says, his eyes glued to the coffee. “A little motivation and encouragement always lends a helping hand.” 

You smile at that and continue making your way towards Jimin’s bedroom. You pass one room—a gym of sorts filled with a few cardio machines, a set of free weights, and a large mirror, and you’re surprised you didn’t notice it before—and pause. 

Namjoon is spotting Hoseok as the latter bench presses what looks like an unreasonably heavy weight. 

As you watch them, the dream from last night floods back to you. 

The music filtering through the night. The tightness of each man’s grip on you as they spun you through the ballroom, the floorboards creaking beneath you, the high of attention sitting heady in your chest. 

And too, you can’t forget, the way they stared at each other in single-minded competition, hackles raised, teeth gritted. You can’t forget the darkness that swirled at their feet, and you wonder too, if you’re letting your dream drift into the world of the living too.

But here they are, fondly smiling at one another. Had you made it all up? Well, of course you made it up. It was a regency-era dream for god's sake. But the tension? The competition? As Namjoon helps Hoseok lower the weights to the bar and hauls him to his feet, you’re sure it’s all in your head. 

“Nice, man,” Namjoon says, grinning and clasping Hoseok on the back. 

Before they see you, you continue on. Just as you’re about to open the door to the bedroom you’ve been searching for, it swings open before you. Jimin steps out. 

“Oh. You’re awake!” you say.

“I am indeed.” 

“I’m sorry I left this morning—“ 

“It’s okay,” he says, but there’s a tinge of sadness in his voice, a little dust mote of it that you catch. 

“I went to go read in a tree,” you offer quickly as an explanation, hoping it will make up for the disappointment of waking up alone after not spending a night together in a while. 

“In a tree?” 

“In a tree,” you confirm. 

He chuckles. “That seems like a good enough reason to abandon me. I gotta be honest though—“ He steps closer, lets his gaze flicker down, and toys with the hem of your shirt. “I was looking forward to waking up beside you.” 

“Were you?” you smile. 

“I was. I was even looking forward to potentially getting to wake you up.” He says it with a mischievous grin. 

“Oh? And how would you have woken me up?”

His hand drifts lower, beneath the band of your leggings. “You know, it’s really easier to show you, rather than tell you—” His hands pause. “What’s this?” Jimin sends you a knowing look. 

“What?” Your mind sputters as you struggle to come up with what he might be talking about. But he steps closer to you, a hand drifting down to your hips, a finger pulling your shirt up. With his other hand he plucks at the band of your panties. 

“This,” he emphasizes. 

“Oh.” 

You’d nearly forgotten the promise you’d made to Jimin. But now it all comes rushing back, how he’d made you promise in those early days in the house to forgo any underwear. At the time it’d been a silly dare, but the seriousness in his eyes makes you reconsider. 

“What? Do I have to remind you every day?” he says gently. “Or perhaps I haven’t been spending enough time around you, and you’ve forgotten your promise to me?”

“N-no,” you say. “I mean maybe. Maybe I want you around more.” You sidle up to him, running a finger up his chest. “Maybe… I want you to remind me.” 

Jimin steps closer to you, pressing you against the bedroom door. You gasp when he leans in close, close enough to kiss you, but doesn’t. 

“I think you forget too quickly that  I told you there’d be a punishment if you ‘forgot’ about our little rule.” 

“Oh?” You tilt your head as you look at him. “What kind of punishment?” Panties or not, it seems like you win. 

“Like I mentioned earlier, I think I’d rather show you than explain it to you. Let’s just say I’m a hands-on kind of teacher.” 

You think he’s going to kiss you, but instead he presses close, his lips a centimeter away from yours, his hands cupping your cheeks before wandering down to explore your body. You reach for him, struggle to bring his lips to yours, but he shifts his attention elsewhere, leaving you hanging. His hands rove over your body, his lips dip out of reach. So you change your plan of attack too. You let your hands wander over him. When you feel his breath quicken against you, you release him, dipping your head below his chin.

You glide your lips down Jimin’s neck, slow and intentional; a calculated move. You let your breath whisper against his skin, and you can’t help but think back to that night with Yoongi and Namjoon in which sensation—even the lightest of touches—had meant so much to you. To your body. You want to play Jimin like they played you. 

His hands tighten in your shirt, knuckles whitening. 

“Inside,” he gasps, and the desperation in his voice makes you think that he’s lost a bit of his fine-tuned control. His eyes are blown wide. He looks like he could eat you up. “Inside,” he repeats, but enacts the command himself as he pulls you through the door with him, making it sound a little more like a plea than you think he intends.

The pair of you tumble onto the bed, a mess of limbs and lips, teeth, hands. 

He captures your lips, finally, kissing you. The kiss is anything but gentle, nearing the edge of pain, his teeth knocking against yours, nipping at your lips. You groan into his mouth as his hips cant against you. 

It’s not long before he begins to tug at your clothes. 

Then he pauses, lifting your head from his lips. You’re sprawled atop him and you lift yourself up on your hands. 

“What?” you inquire curiously.

“I’m going to ask you to do something.” 

“Alright.”

With a leveled gaze, he says, “Strip.” 

He pushes you off of him, and you kneel at the foot of the bed, pausing a second, before making the executive decision to stand and undress. It’ll be more, well, graceful that way, you think. The alternative is flopping around on the sheets like a beached hammerhead shark trying to get your pants off. 

So you do as you’re told. There’s something about undressing before him, as he leans back against the headboard, watching you. There’s something about undressing for him, while he watches on, his gaze drinking you in that has sparks running through your body.

Slowly, slowly you slip off your top, and wiggle your leggings off your legs. You try to make it a little sexy, glancing up at him from time to time, to find that warm darkness swirling in his gaze that you love so much. You trip once, because you’re staring too much. 

“Keep the panties on,” he says when you go to pull them down.  

“Oh. Okay.”  Your brow furrows and you can’t help but let a little bit of the disappointment you’re feeling into your voice. You’re a little confused why he would ask you to keep them on when they were the problem that started all of this. 

He stands then, walking towards you. You hold your breath. He finally arrives before you and places his hands on your hips. His fingers toy with the trim of the panties, and goosebumps race along your skin from the delicate touch. 

“What are you going to do?” you ask, your voice breathy.

“You’ll see.” 

With that he hooks a finger under the band of your underwear and lets it snap against your skin. You cry out, more in surprise than anything else. 

“Did that hurt?” 

“No, not really.” 

“Good.” He grins. “Now, I want you to be honest.” 

“I’m always honest.” You correct yourself: “Most of the time. Most of the time I’m always honest.” 

Jimin chuckles at that. 

“Fair enough. But I need your most-of-the-time-always honesty now.” You nod, your hand drifting upward to grip his forearm. 

“Of course.” 

“I want to try something out with you. Something new.” 

“New?”

“A new kind of play.”

Your mind reels with the possibilities. What could he possibly suggest? Chastity kink? Tittyfucking? Technojizz? Ballcuzzi?  

“I want to use you like a toy,” he whispers. “I want to fuck you like a toy. I want to talk to you like a toy, treat you like one.” Your eyes widen when he says it. His eyes go wide too, drinking in your every microexpression, as he waits for you to respond. 

“A toy?” 

“Yes.”

“Where did this come from?” you say it with a little smile, and trace your finger along his jawline. He relaxes at the touch. 

“I saw the way you reacted during group play. When Jin was talking to you, saying things like, ‘You want to be our slut. You want to be our whore.’” Just hearing Jimin repeating Jin’s words sends a shiver through your body. “He didn’t say it like I would have said it, but I knew he wanted to.” He presses his lips to your ear while his hands rove over your body. “You want to be our toy, don’t you?”  

The answer is easy. “Yes.” 

“You want to be used by us, don’t you?” 

“Y-yes.” 

He chuckles. “That’s what I thought. So tell me. Tell me what you want to be.” 

“I want to be your toy.” 

“Good.” He grins. 

He lets his hand drift down to your underwear again, fingers trailing along the inside the elastic hem before plucking at them once more. He seems to like the way you flinch. 

His fingers wander down your skin. He traces your hip, before flicking his fingers beneath the hem that circles your thigh. Slowly, he creeps closer to where you want his fingers most, but before he can touch you, he pulls his fingers away. You nearly groan, and a fleeting grimace crosses your face. Jimin catches it. 

“Patience would look so pretty on you,” he says, and the sting of his words is delightful. 

“Hmph.” 

His fingers continue to explore the thin piece of fabric that separates you from total nudity. They’re not a particularly pretty pair of underwear: they’re nothing more than a tan color brief. 

You say as much to Jimin, and tell him you wish you were wearing something sexier. Lace, maybe. Something black. 

“True,” he replies. “But you know why I like these?” 

“Why?” 

“Because I can see you dripping through them.” 

You warm at the implication.   

“And when I push my cock against them, I’ll see me on them too. I’m a visual man, you know.” He kind of chuckles at that last bit, like it’s some sort of inside joke with himself. 

When he drops to his knees, like that first day in the forest with him, you gasp. Finally, finally, he’s going to touch you. 

But when his tongue presses against you through the fabric of your underwear, it’s only half the sensation you need from him. Still, it feels good, a gentle warmth spreading through your abdomen as he licks and presses against your clit and vulva. 

“You taste so good,” he murmurs against you. 

“I’m—“ 

“You’ve soaked your panties through.” 

You warm at the thought, such little stimulation getting you so ready for him. You wonder if he’ll fuck you hard and fast or if he’ll take you sweet and slow. If he’ll take his time with you. Whatever he decides to do, you know you’ll be happy to have him fill you as you currently clench and tighten around nothing. It’s an empty feeling that sifts through you. 

When he’s thoroughly soaked your underwear with his mouth, he stands and kisses you. You can taste the ghost of yourself on him, and it reminds you of the smell of first summer light hitting the ground at dawn. A space when it is neither day, nor night, but some third plane of existence. Like that, in this moment, you feel like some third kind of creature. Neither yourself entirely, nor Jimin, but some other, third thing that you could only become in his presence. You can feel the shit-eating grin that glides across his lips and presses into yours as he walks backwards, leading you back to the bed. 

There’s something different, too, about all of this, about the way he kisses you today. There’s an edge of desperation, of frustration that you can taste on him. His movements are quicker, less languid. His lids are lidded. His breath comes quicker.  It’s delightful. 

But it’s also brand new. It feels like he has let a part of himself loose from under his usual state of control, and you wonder if your most recent conversation with your friends—where you discussed emotionality and feeling—had anything to do with what he was going through. What he wanted. 

An edge of anxiety tickles at your throat as you think of it. Does he want something more? 

He seems to notice your hesitation. 

“I just want you right now,” he says, as if he’s read your mind. He stops you at the edge of the bed, turns you so that the back of your knees hit the mattress.  You’re not sure if he’s a mind reader or what. 

You fall back into the bed, Jimin leading you down gently with a hand against your back until you sink into the soft bedding. You can’t help but giggle at the gentleness. Not that you have anything against it, but in this moment you feel anything but a toy. The way he looks at you makes you feel, well, precious. 

He breaks his gaze to kiss you again, tongue pressing against your lips. 

“Open up for me,” he says. “Like a good kitten—Like a good toy.” 

You do as you’ve been told, opening your mouth and letting him swirl his tongue through you, swiping at the roof of your mouth and sending tingles down your spine. 

His hands drift down your body before slipping beneath your panties. You glow, so eager for his touch, groaning as his fingers swipe against your clit. Just once. But as if he’s just realized a mistake he’s made, he rapidly pulls his hand out. 

“Oops. Got a little caught up.” 

You pout. “What, you’re not going to touch me like that? There? At all?” 

He pulls back enough to flick his gaze between your eyes and your lips. “Be a good toy and just do what you’re told.” 

“Oh?” The bratty part of you flickers and rises up.

He silences you with a kiss, his fingers circling around your clothed entrance before trying to press in through the thin fabric of your underwear. It’s like he’s trying to finger fuck you through the wet cotton, pushing it into you with his fingers. The pressure surely is something, but it’s not even a hint of enough, and you find your hips bucking up against him, seeking more attention, seeking more pressure. 

“So needy. So desperate.” 

He continues until the yearn within you aches.

“Stop playing,” you gasp. “Just give me your cock. Want you. Want your cock. I’ll be your toy, just–just use me like one.” 

“Don’t good toys say please?” 

“Please, sir.”

He freezes above you. 

“Sir?” 

“I—I… It just slipped out!” 

He grins. “I kinda like it.” He hums, as if contemplating it, then nods. “And since you’ve asked so nicely—“  

Jimin leans back enough to begin unbuttoning his shirt. He takes his time, while the knot in your belly begins to recede. You sit up, eager to help him out of it, but he quickly swats your hands away. 

“Patience, kitten.” 

You don’t say it, but your crossed arms and pout say, “Fine, sir,”  loud and clear. He laughs at your expression. 

“Don’t you worry,” he says, tilting your chin up. “I’ve always taken care of you, haven’t I?” 

He takes his cock out, stroking it once, twice, his hand gliding expertly over the soft and sensitive skin. 

“I’m going to use you like you’re good for.”

“Like I’m good for?” You echo, desperate for him. 

“All you’re good for,” he whispers in your ear and the words send a shiver of pleasure down your spine.  

With one hand, he takes your ankles and pushes them over your head.

“Hold them.” 

He then settles between your legs, hand wrapped tightly around his cock. With a movement that seems far too familiar to him, he slaps your pussy with his hard and dripping cock, and you groan. Fuck. 

Lowering himself to you, so your thighs press into his shoulders, he finally aligns his cock with your clothed vulva. 

And then with one careful movement, he grinds against you. The simple movement is enough to make you cry out. 

“Fuck, Jimin.” 

At first it’s slow, his cock pressing against your vulva in rhythmic pulses, your clit. At one point he pulls back and presses the head of his cock to your clothed entrance and presses in. 

You whine against him, but he doesn’t acknowledge you. He simply returns to continuing his thrusts. You’re just as wet as he is hard, soaking your panties, his precome painting them too. 

“Maybe I would have woken you up like this. Wouldn’t you have liked that? Waking up to my hard cock pressing against your clit, me ready to come, just from rutting against you? Wouldn’t that make you happy, to know how good you make me feel?”

You look down to where your bodies are pressed together. His cock rhythmically pokes up, the head dark and heavy. Sometimes though, the head of his cock gets stuck on your underwear, pushing the fabric higher and tighter around you. You groan at the sight. 

“Don’t you love how good you make me feel?”  

Your hips buck together, finding a desperate, shared rhythm. Your breath, too, matches up. 

For a moment, your eyes lock. All you can think about is how damn pretty he looks when he fucks, his dark hair falling into his face, his cheeks flushed, his plush lower lip caught between his teeth. And he looks back. 

But then his eyes flicker away from yours. 

He fucks you over your panties, murmuring how good of a toy you are for him, how he wishes he could fuck you properly, fill you up.

“Please,” you gasp, desperate for more. “Fuck me.”

“When you behave,” he grunts. “I will.” Another thrust. “When you follow my rules, I will.” 

When he comes, he presses the head of his cock to your clit. You can feel it twitching against you as he groans and sighs, his come painting your panties white. 

With the head of his cock pressing so rhythmically against your clit, you’ve built up to a delicious pleasure, so close to coming. 

“Jimin, Jimin, I’m so close. Please.” Your hips tilt up, searching out the pleasure he keeps denying you. 

But Jimin just grins at you and sighs dramatically. His breath still comes a little quickly, he seems a little winded.  

“If only you hadn’t been so intent on misbehaving earlier. Maybe I could have let you come.” 

“Oh, come on,” you groan, about a second away from throwing your fists on the bed in proper tantrum form. “You’re in charge. You write the rules. Who said you can’t let me come?” 

“The rules I wrote say so, actually.” 

You huff. 

“Well then. Maybe I’ll just have to take care of it myself.” 

In a swift action, Jimin leans over you, pinning your hands above your head. Your breath leaves your lungs in a quick gasp. 

“Wha—” 

“I think you know you’re not even supposed to be thinking about that, let alone doing it.” 

You tilt your head.

Jimin laughs, a hint of playful hardness in his voice. “Don’t you remember?” You shake your head. “You’re forgetting all of your promises today, aren’t you? Jin had you promise that you wouldn’t be coming unless it was because of one of us.” 

Your eyes widen. 

“Shit. I forgot.” 

“I know you forgot.” 

You throw your head back and groan. “But I thought you said you’d always take care of me.” 

“I did. And I do. But sometimes it’s good for you to wait a little for your reward. Today you took your punishment—” He tilts your head up so you’re looking at him and the pout that had taken over your face fades a little. “And tomorrow, I’ll give you your reward.” 

You roll your eyes. 

“Fine.”

“You think you can do that? Wait until tomorrow?” 

“Yeah.” You sigh. 

“You’re so good for me,” he says, pressing a kiss to your lips. His hands glide down to your hips, dipping beneath the band and you think, oh, maybe he’ll do it now. But your hopes are quickly dashed when he tugs on them and says, “Maybe it was a good thing I had you wear these afterall.” He shimmies your come-stained underwear down your thighs. “Easy cleanup.” 

You can’t help but laugh at that, always surprised when Jimin’s practical side pops out alongside his gregariousness. But he balls the panties up, and before tossing them into the laundry basket near the door, holds them up in his hand, shaking them, as if directing attention to them. 

 “I should remind you why I asked you to do this?” 

“I know why you asked me to. You liked the secret of it—?” You think back to what he had said to you, all those days ago, though it feels like a lifetime ago:

“I like walking around, knowing I’m the only one who has your sweetness on my tongue. I love talking to the others while getting to taste you still. Getting to remember the way you squirm underneath my touch. I do it because I want to.”

You still shiver, thinking of those words. But that had been before everyone knew about you and Jimin. 

“I did like the secret of it,” Jimin says, breaking through your reverie. “But there’s more than that, too.” 

You raise an eyebrow, prompting him to go on. 

“There’s knowing you do it for me.” 

He grins, before strutting to the bathroom. You watch his ass as he goes. Plump, you think. When he returns, he’s cleaned up and still grinning. Mulling on what he’s said—”for me”—an image of all eight of you on the living room floor arises. What are the boundaries between one person and another with this set up? What are the lines? What is owed? Your head spins, and you settle into the pillow. You’re still humming in the sensation of your dwindling pleasure, receding far away from your orgasm, and you sigh. 

“If the only way people are going to punish one another around here is by giving them blue balls, I’m going to get tired reeeeal quick,” you murmur to yourself.

“Is that so?” Jimin says from behind you as he collects your clothes. “If that’s the case, we better start coming up with new forms of punishment.” 

“Yes, maybe you should,” you say, mock-grouchily. 

“I’ll start thinking up new and innovative ways. Maybe I’ll consult Jin—he seems creative when it comes to this stuff—especially if you’re going to be so quick to forget what you promised him.” He helps you into your clothes again, but remains naked himself. 

“But—” 

“No buts.” He seals your silence with a kiss. “Just do what you’re told.” The statement stings through you like a bolt of electricity. As much as you hate to admit it, you love when he tells you what to do. Even if you love fighting against it just as much. “You know why you should do what you’re told?” He continues, as he kisses down your throat.

“Why?” 

“Because then I can reward you. I can make you come again and again until you’re crying to stop, or hold you at the edge long enough that when you’re finally ready to tip over, it’s the best fucking orgasm in your whole life.” 

You can’t help but giggle. “Are you saying you’re the best fuck of my life?” 

“No. Not yet. But I can be.” He pulls away from you enough to see the shit-eating grin on your face. 

“I think some of your friends might fight you for that position.” 

“Maybe they should.” 

“Maybe they should what?” a voice comes from the door. 

“Hoseok—” 

Hoseok stands in the doorway, a confused look on his face. You imagine what he must be seeing, a naked Jimin in bed, and you, now entirely naked, too, now that Jimin stripped you of your panties, tangled up in each other. 

“What’s going on here?” Hoseok asks. 

“Do you really want to know?” Jimin asks.

“Um. Not really.” Then his gaze focuses on you. He lingers on your face, reading you, trying to figure you out. But then he catches himself. “Uh, maybe I should come back later.” 

“No!” you say, perhaps a little too eagerly, sitting up. “What is it?” 

“I just was looking for you,” Hoseok says, a little shyly. “I was hoping to steal you away.”  

“Let me get dressed.” 

You stand up, and pull your clothes back on, noting how Hoseok’s gaze flickers to you just in time to see you pull on your leggings without any panties on underneath.  

Jimin sits up quickly, pulling a pillow over his crotch for the sake of Hoseok’s modesty. “Just so you know—if you’re going to go together—I already said that if someone was going to wear panties that someone wasn’t going to be able to come.” He turns to you. “So don’t you go running off to lover boy, thinking you can get your rocks off.” Jimin turns his attention back to Hobi. “This one is very much not allowed to come. At least for the rest of the day.” 

Hoseok coughs. 

“Oh, I, uh, I wasn’t, I wasn’t presuming.” 

“Yes you were, asshole,” Jimin laughs. “We’re all presuming.” 

Hoseok flushes red all the way to the tips of his ears at the implication, but you find it charming. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Hoseok says.

You glance at Jimin, who leans back with his hands laced behind his head. He looks like the perfect image of relaxation and… is that pride? There’s a soft smile curving at the corner of his lip, a kind of jesting smirk. 

“Go on,” Jimin says. “I’m already taken care of.” 

You roll your eyes. 

“Asshole.” 

But you stand and make your way to Hoseok nonetheless. 

“You have time?” he asks.

“I have all the time in the world.” 

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For a long time, you didn’t like the color purple. You found it garish. Didn’t love the associations with royalty, that a color could belong to a class of people defined by something as fickle as wealth or birth. 

But like many things in your adulthood, the color purple eventually grew on you. You had to admit: the soft gentle violet of a sunset—the color that dances between other colors, here a moment, gone the next—it was thrilling to chase it through the sky as the light sank low on the horizon. And you also had to admit that baby-soft lilac color, doting on the first flowers that pressed up through the tough winter grounds in early springtime, reminded you that winter does end. Warmer days do come. And finally, when you realized purple felt like a memory visiting you again, sweet and warm, you simply couldn’t withhold your affection for the color any longer. 

Purple reminded you of the flickering feeling of life beneath Hoseok’s skin as his hand clamped down on yours above your head as you touched each other in the early hours of the morning all those days ago, a bead of sweat perched on the bridge of his nose as he thrust into you, the quiet sounds of sleep rising from the friends sprawled around you in the living room— 

You shake yourself back to reality. 

For someone who’s getting fucked pretty much everyday, you sure do daydream a lot about getting fucked. 

But joy—purple—lilac, whatever: that color has been flirting at the edges of your reality these past few days. After your conversation with your friends about the difficulty of the early days of quarantine, a weight feels lifted off your shoulders. It had felt like you were hiding some kind of secret—or even yourself—away from the people who loved you most. You hadn’t realized how guilty you felt about that until the truth had been revealed. And since telling them about your struggles with mental health, not a single member of the household had treated you any differently, like you were broken or wounded. Instead, you noticed them coming to sit with you and talk with you about what happened, how they can help. They asked you questions, they wanted to know what it was like. But that you don’t mind. 

On top of that, things with Hobi have been so easy. 

Things have been easy with everyone. 

Since your time spent with Jimin the night after the bonfire, you had felt a kind of kinship with him. Shared glances across the dinner table, even when Hoseok’s hand is wrapped around yours beneath the table. Jimin seemed to hover closer, gifting you with little touches, his hand on your lower back while you wash the dishes, plucking a hair off your lip before dinner with a small smile. Small moments of laughter, an inside joke about underwear, shared with a whisper in your ear when no one else can hear. 

But despite that proximity, you also can’t help but notice that despite your new casual ease with him, since the bonfire, he has seemingly pulled back from the others. At the dinner table, he’s quieter. When you all are cleaning or taking care of household chores, he’s much less directive than he usually is. He had even forgotten about his promise to make you come the day after your last romp. But when you remind him , a cheeky smile on your face when he comes in after a hike (and fail to mention that Hoseok had made you come several times in the wee hours of the morning), he grins and pulls you deeper into the house, away from the prying eyes of your six shared housemates. 

Jimin is kissing down your neck in the hallway after dinner one night—you make a mental note about how he loves to kiss you where anyone can stumble upon your intertwined forms—his hands slipping under your shirt, down your leggings. You gasp when his fingers tease at your folds. You can tell he’s going to take his sweet time with you. 

“Jesus, can we just fuck for once?” you gasp into his mouth as his index finger slides inside you. You don’t even bother to lower your voice. “I’m wet enough, I need you. No more games.” You give him your best doe-eyed plea.

He hesitates, deciding if he wants to drag things out for his own fun or give you what you want. “Is that what you want? No games, no waiting, just me?” 

“It is,” you say, trying to keep the sexual frustration from making you sound too whine-y. 

“Then that’s what you’ll have.”  

He doesn’t even bother to take you to his bedroom. There, in the hallway, where anyone might find you, it’s fast and hasty work, pulling your top off, shimmying your pants to the floor.  Jimin too, makes quick work of his button-down, while your gaze traces over his torso, the tattoo right above his ribs, and the little happy trail that leads exactly where you want to go. 

“See something you like?” Jimin asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Always,” you say, capturing his lips for a kiss that, after the fact, feels wonderfully—wonderfully?—domestic. Slow and gentle and warm. Time slows. The air stills. Then, the pace shifts again and your mutual clothes are tossed hither and thither across the hardwood floors of the hallway and your greedy hands reach for one another once more. 

Undressed now, Jimin flips you so you face the wall, your hands pressed against the cool plaster, your back to him. He steps between your legs, using his foot to push them a little further apart so he can fit between them. His hand comes down to your lower back, pressing ever so slightly so that you arch into him, pressing your ass back just enough to meet the hard flesh of his cock. 

You gasp as it meets the slickness of your center, the burning warmth of him sending shivers down your spine. 

Does this ever get old? 

He doesn’t tease you much this time, just glides his cock through your folds to collect the moisture there, uses one hand to spread it across his dick, and begins to press in. 

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he asks. “Me inside of you? Filling you?”

“Yes, Jimin, god yes.” 

He slides home, his cock spearing through you, the head of it tugging at your walls, which tighten around him. He grunts, and you drink up the sound. Jimin, to your previous surprise, wasn’t the most vocal in bed, but today something seems like it’s loosened inside of him, and sounds of pleasure begin to fall from his lips as he fucks you. 

He’s thick inside of you, and your fingernails dig into the wall as you search for something to hang onto as he rams into you at a quick and desperate pace.  

“I knew you’d like it,” he says. “Fucking where anyone can see you, anyone can walk in and find you writhing on my cock, calling out my name.” 

“Yes, yes,” you pant. 

It’s true. 

There’s something about the risk of it all. The thrill of not knowing. The high of being fucked by one man only to have another walk by and want you just as much. 

“Op!” 

The note sounds from the end of the hallway, and you tilt your head just enough to see Jin standing at the entrance, a pan of steaming muffins gripped between two large oven mitts. He seems to be on his way to do a round through the house, offering baked goods like a trolly cart lady.

What timing.

His gaze roves over your joined bodies, drifting downward to where Jimin’s cock is plunging into you. He lets his stare linger. You warm beneath the blatant attention, his obvious interest in what’s happening before him. You can see him hardening through his jeans. 

Then, he clears his throat, stands a little straighter. 

“I’m going to assume you two don’t want muffins.” His voice is low, smooth, and sweet like pastries. There’s a kind of even-tempered curiosity, backed by his usual confidence. 

Jimin’s pace doesn’t cease, doesn’t falter, despite the intrusion. It’s like his movements are saying, you’re all his, and no one else’s. And not even the temptation of a fresh-out-of-the-oven blueberry muffin or a very broad shouldered friend of yours can take that away from him. 

“Maybe later,” Jimin grunts. 

“Later, yeah,” you gasp as Jimin grinds into you from behind.

Your cheeks are warming from the mix of Jimin’s ministrations and Jin’s near-casual but definitive interest in your coupling. Jin watches like he’s taking you in, and behind his calculated gaze, you can see his mind spinning, figuring. Perhaps he’s imagining himself joining your pairing, but more likely than not, you think he’s thinking up a new way to tease you later—with a laugh at the end of the sentence or with his fingers inside you.

You’re trying to hold back a whine and simultaneously hold onto any last bit of dignity you might have remaining. Though, when you think of it, every day that goes by you believe you might have less and less. But who is chasing dignity these days anyways? When the world has stopped spinning entirely?

Jin catches the small sound of pleasure that finally eeks out of you and he smirks, his eyes flicking from where yours and Jimin’s body’s join up to your eyes. He says nothing. He doesn’t have to. But you understand. He doesn’t want you to look away. There’s something even more indulgent in this gaze, his eyes meeting yours. Though he’s no longer looking at your sex, you somehow feel even more naked: your pleasure, bared to him, and his pleasure, taken in yours. 

Though the small gesture has dropped your mouth open as new sounds of pleasure emerge, though you’re now gasping in surprise as Jimin pushes deeper and Jin holds your gaze—you feel more present than ever. Alive—like your lungs are full, like you’re breathing fresh air. 

As Jin reached down to adjust his belt—it’s just a flicker of movement as he adjusts his now hard cock—you understand the promise in Jin’s eyes. You. Me. Soon. 

“I’d ask to join you all,” Jin says, again, even-toned. You clench around Jimin, an action that doesn’t go unnoticed, as he chuckles from behind you. “But I have more pressing matters to attend to: Taehyung is hangry.” 

Jimin nods behind you, his hips still hammering into you. 

“‘Course.” 

“Well. It was lovely chatting. I’ll leave you to it. Maybe I’ll catch up with you again later.” He sends you a directed wink. 

Your heart skips a beat at the thought. Since the orgy, you still hadn’t spent any one on one time with Jin. Or Taehyung, for that matter. You wonder if there’s meaning in the distance between you three—or if you’ve merely been distracted. After all, how are you supposed to reasonably split your time between seven very horny, very lovely men? 

“Uh—uh—y—eah.” Your voice is jolted from you in time with Jimin’s thrusts. “Please.”

As he turns, he refuses to take his eyes from yours, a pleased smile lighting on his lips. For a moment the shared gaze reminds you of something far off, yet familiar: something from the world that has come to pass you by. Perhaps it reminds you of the feeling of meeting a stranger on the street or in a crowded bar. The spark of recognition, of seeing someone new light up with something old: desire. He wants you. And now, more than ever, you want him. He knows this, and it’s what makes him smile.  Jin disappears again, and you’re left with nothing but Jimin’s hard cock pounding into you. He leans closer, pressing his pouty lips against your ear to whisper, just to you: 

“You were so good, baby, you didn’t even ask me to stop when he came by,” Jimin grunts. “You just took it like a good little kitten. Did that feel good? Having him watch me fuck you?” 

You don’t say anything, just whine as he continues to fuck you, harder now, his balls slapping against your clit. With each hit you feel a spike of pleasure flood through you. It’s enough to make you, somehow, even more needy than you already are, but not enough to satisfy you fully. 

“I watched the way his eyes went down to where I’m fucking you. I know he was imagining himself inside you. How does that feel? Knowing he wants what I have?”

You moan.

“Answer me,” he says, one of his hands winding around your throat. He pulls you up so your back is pressed to his front, and he’s squatted slightly between your legs, thrusting up into you. It’s an animalistic, needy positioning, and you feel lightheaded with it all. 

There’s a kind of possessiveness in Jimin’s language that feels brand new. He’s hitting that soft spot inside you with each thrust and it feels so good it almost hurts. As the ache and pleasure melt together, you can’t help the burning building in your belly, flashing with white light with each of his thrusts. He slips his hand around your front, fingers toying with your clit. 

“Fuck—It feels so good, Jimin.” 

“You’re in a house full of men who want you, who would fuck you like I’m fucking you in the middle of the hallway, in the kitchen, in the pool—wherever they could get you if they got the chance. How does that make you feel?” 

It makes you feel a thousand things. But all you manage to speak is: 

“Wanted.” 

“Good. Because you are.” 

There’s something about those words that hit an entirely different soft spot—one in your chest. Your heart aches, but your attention is quickly pulled away. You clench around him and he moans in your ear. His pace quickens, grows harder. There’s a desperation to him you haven’t seen before. Like he needs this. Like he needs you. 

The thought is enough to push you over the edge and, hands falling forward to brace your fall against the wall, you suck in quick gasps as your orgasm rockets through you. Knees wobbling, you clench tightly around Jimin, a movement which prompts a growl and a moan from him as his pace stutters. 

“You want my come? I know you do, I know you do—“ 

He presses himself against you, filling you from the inside. He holds himself there, his grip tightening around you. You’re coming down from the height of your orgasm, your body warm and ringing in sensation as he fills you up, hips pumping ever so slightly. 

He murmurs against your neck, slumping forward. 

You’re not sure how long you stay like that, his front pressing to your back, sweat mingling, breaths synching—the only sound in the long hallway. You hum as your skin cools from hot to warm against his, as his hands trace over your body. Finally, he pulls out. You can feel his come shift inside of you. 

“I like when you’re full of me,” he pants, slouching against the wall next to you. “Keep me inside.” He pats your pussy, where his come is beginning to slip out and down your thigh. 

“That’s what all of you say,” you giggle, but in reality: you like it too. It makes you feel marked. Wanted. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Jimin says, pulling his pants on, and, throwing his shirt at you to cover up (as if now, of all times, is the proper time to dress yourself). He leads you through the house back to his room after scooping up your belongings. You hastily button the shirt—well, two of the buttons—and follow after him. Without looking behind at you, he reaches behind him, his palm opening, fingers spread wide: an invitation for you to hold his hand. You take it. 

You pass Yoongi in his studio. He glances up at you from his work, his hand half lifting to say hello before he realizes the state of you and Jimin: sweat-studded, warm, and marked all over by sex. His hand freezes. His eyes lock on Jimin. You’re not sure if you’re imagining it, but you think you see Jimin falter for half a second, before leading you on. No words are exchanged, just that long, long glance. 

When you arrive in Jimin’s room, all the blinds are shuttered and the bed is unmade. It’s a little unlike Jimin, you think. But while he struts to the ensuite bathroom, you tread toward the windows, tugging on the blinds so that the windows pop open to reveal the mountains washed in nightfall. As you watch the moonlight shift over the rolling terrain, something in your chest shifts, opens. This view never ceases to make you feel at peace, you think, as your breathing slows and your body relaxes. There’s not a place on this earth that you’ve visited that makes you feel the way looking at the mountains does.  

Jimin announces his return with a slight cough and holds out a washcloth to you.

“Want me to do it?” he asks.  

“S’ okay,” you reply and take the washcloth from him, reaching between your legs and wiping yourself down. “I thought you wanted me to ‘keep you inside.’”  

“Sometimes I say things just because they’re hot,” Jimin says, as he makes his way to the bed and flops down. “And sometimes I say things because it’s important to be hygienic.”

You watch him for a moment. Your gaze catching on his movement, off somehow: his weary eyes, his tired limbs. 

Since you initially arrived at the house, you had been the receiver of the most delightful aftercare you’d ever been privy to, even with your more experienced sexual partners of previous years. There was something about a friend who knew you, really knew you, that added a personal and knowing touch to satisfy the physical and emotional aches that followed sex. 

But as you look at Jimin, you realize: when had he ever received that kind of aftercare? You were so wrapped up in your own experience, that you had forgotten to check in with him. He opens his arms, inviting you into bed with him, inviting you into his embrace.

“Hold on,” You say, holding up a hand. “I have to take care of something. Just give me ten minutes and I’ll be back—In the meantime, close your eyes a little?” 

Jimin nods. A little smile flickers at the corner of his lips. But he lets his head fall back onto the pillow and his eyes flutter shut. You can’t help but stare for a moment too long before you’re turning on your heel and skidding through the hallways, past Yoongi’s studio—empty now—past the spot where just minutes ago, you’d been fucked against the wall. You don’t pause. 

You’re on a mission. 

You stop by the kitchen first, surprising a closely pressed Namjoon and Yoongi, who break apart when they notice you entering. 

“Oh, sorry—” Namjoon hastily apologizes. “I mean, I’m not sorry—I mean, welcome.” 

“Welcome?” Yoongi raises a questioning eye. 

“Yes. Welcome to the kitchen.” Namjoon answers, opening his arms wide in an awkward reception.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” you say, grinning. “Proceed.” 

“We weren’t doing anything,” Namjoon says, perhaps a little too quickly. You look between the two. You notice how Yoongi’s hand is immediately next to Namjoon’s, his fingers flickering, as if yearning for touch. And Namjoon’s foot is halfway between both of Yoongi’s. Perhaps they weren’t doing anything, but it’s clear that that statement wouldn’t be true for long.

 But you just smile and gather your intended materials and set off, knowing they’re both watching you and your half-covered ass as you leave the kitchen.

Next, you head to the master bedroom, the room where Hobi (and sometimes you) have been sleeping. You traipse into the bathroom, rifle through the cabinets. 

“What are you doing?” a voice calls from behind you. 

“Hobi.” You smile, turn, and step towards him, pressing a kiss to his surprised features. 

“Are you staying here tonight?” There’s a bright light of hope dancing in Hoseok’s eyes. 

“Ah, I dunno,” you say truthfully. “Probably not. I’m just getting some things for Jimin.” 

“Oh. I see.” You can’t help but notice the little note of disappointment in his voice. “Tomorrow? Can I have you tomorrow?” 

You grimace at his choice of words. 

“Sorry—can I steal you away tomorrow?” 

You nod, pecking his cheek and gathering your materials into your arms. 

“Tomorrow.” 

You leave Hoseok in the bathroom with your second set of materials and hurry back to Jimin’s room. 

“Okay, okay! I’m back!” You call from outside the door. “But close your eyes! Don’t look!” 

You can hear the peals of Jimin’s light, sleepy laughter echoing out from the bedroom. 

“What on earth are you doing?” 

“It’s a surprise! Are your eyes closed?” 

“Yes!” 

With your foot, you push open the door and creep inside, slipping quickly into the bathroom where you deposit all of your goodies. You quickly set it up, but Jimin is impatient, calling every other minute from the bedroom, checking if you’re ready yet. You shoo him off enough times, until finally you’re ready. You give your project one final look-over, and with a satisfied nod, open the door. 

You slide into the bedroom and pull him from the bed, pressing your hands over his eyes as you shuffle him to the bathroom door. 

“Okay… now, open!” 

You release Jimin from your grasp and let him take in the scene of the bathroom. For a moment, he’s entirely silent. Then he says: 

“What is all this?” 

“It’s for you.”

Before him waits a steaming bubble bath and a little tray filled with snacks and a hot mug of tea. Soothing, spa-like music croons from a small speaker. You’ve laid a freshly laundered bathrobe near the tub too, but it’s just then that you notice he has his own, hanging on the door behind you.

“I mean I hope so,” he chuckles. “But really, what is it?” 

“Aftercare,” you say. “You’ve been so good about checking in and taking care of us, and I wondered—I didn’t know if anyone was doing that for you. I wanted to do that for you.” 

Jimin grins and turns back towards you. He wraps you up in a hug, before pulling back enough to kiss you. 

“Thank you.” 

There’s a softness in his eyes you’re not used to seeing. 

When you undress Jimin this time around, there’s nothing sexual in the act. And that kind of scares you. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you as you undo his pants and slip them off, and is silent as you help him into the bath, though he groans indulgently at the feeling of the steaming water meeting his skin. He sinks in, up to his shoulders in the deep tub filled with bubbles and bath perfumes. 

“This is perfect.” 

You settle behind him, on the outside of the tub. “Can I wash your hair?” 

“Really? You want to?” 

“Yeah.” 

“No one’s done that since I was a kid.” 

You smile. “Really? Then it’ll be my little gift to you.” 

“This is more than a little gift,” Jimin says, swishing his hand through the water to point to everything all around him that you’ve set up. And then more quietly, “It’s almost… romantic,” he muses. You stiffen at the words, and if he can sense your discomfort, he continues, “It’s just… nice. Kind. Good. Thank you.” He twists towards you, grabbing your dry hands in his wet ones. “Thank you. Really.”

You smile at him and twist his shoulders back so he’s facing forward once more. 

“Now. Let me take care of you.” 

You settle behind him and roll up your sleeves, grabbing the bottle of shampoo and squeezing some into your hand. You lather it up, enjoying the silky smooth glide of the liquid between your palms before massaging some into his hair. You’re careful, gentle, with your movements, fingertips circling on his scalp. His inky black hair parts like a dark sea between your fingers, and you soon get lost, mesmerized in the repetitive action. When he groans softly, the utterance pulls you back to the present, and you can’t help but think it’s one of the sexiest sounds he’s made. 

When you’re done lathering up his hair, you reach for a cup, dipping it in the water. 

“Tilt your head back,” you guide, and he does, exposing his neck and the round bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. You see the strain, so you reach with your hand behind his head, tangling fingers in hair, and hold him firm.  Carefully, you pour the water over his hair. A steam of suds run and sink into the field of pinkish bubbles. 

“Hmmmm,” he hums as you repeat the action, and you watch as his eyes flutter shut and his shoulders loosen, dropping. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen him this relaxed. It makes you smile, thinking that you’re the one doing all this. Maybe you do enjoy being in control more than you thought.

When you’re done with his hair, you stand and wipe your hands on a towel. 

“Well. I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your bath—“

A hand wraps around your wrist. 

“Don’t go.” 

“What?” 

“Don’t go. I’d pull you in right about now if I wasn’t worried about you slipping and getting a concussion.”

You laugh. 

“Join me,” Jimin says. “There’s plenty of space for both of us. And I bet you need it as much as I do.” 

You eye the bathtub. He’s right in both regards. The bathtub is huge, still steaming, and your body is yearning for a nice long soak right about now. 

“But I want this to be about you,” you say. 

“It can be about me. And what I want right now is for you to join me.” 

“Ha, fine.” You nod, and begin to unbutton the shirt he’d given you. Carefully, you slip into the bath, settling at the other side of the tub, directly across from him. 

He presses his toes to yours. Smiles at you. 

“Thank you for this. Really.” His foot pushes against yours, almost playfully. 

You sit in silence for a long moment. His head lolls back against the wall of the tub, and you watch him. He’s so beautiful like this: resting, relaxing. When you reach out towards him to run a hand across his leg, inching higher, he grabs your hand and stops your movements. He intertwines your fingers together, and there’s a small bolt of panic when you realize this moment isn’t intended to be sexy. It’s just supposed to be the two of you. You ease your thoughts by reminding yourself that this is just your friend. Your friend, naked in a bubble bath with you, his hand caught in yours. So you shift your attention to him, instead.

There’s an ease around him that you haven’t seen in a couple of days. On one hand, you don’t want to spoil the moment, but at the same time, you can’t help but speak up. 

“You know, I can’t help but wonder,” you begin, swirling a hand through the bubbles. “When we were having that discussion the other night, around the fire. When I shared—That there was a time when I, um, didn’t want to be here anymore.” You’re not sure why the words are suddenly heavy, difficult to get out. But you continue. “And you were there, and you looked so incredibly sad, like what I was saying meant something more to you. More—like—” You brush your hand across your face. “Goddamnit, I don’t wanna assume—and I can’t get the words right. Like it meant what it meant to me.” None of your words are making sense. You try again. “That it meant something personal to you. But then you never said anything. During the conversation, you never said anything at all.” 

Jimin looks down. Blinks. He lets go of your hand. His mouth twitches like he’s going to say something, but then he presses his lips together. 

“I, um.” He trails off. 

“It’s okay,” you say hurriedly. “We really don’t have to talk about it. I’ve just been noticing you pulling away a little more since then. How quiet you’ve been. And the shades in your bedroom. They were drawn.”

“The shades?” Jimin’s brow presses in confusion. “What do the shades have to do with anything?” 

“When I walked into your room there was something off. The room was so dark. Maybe it’s silly. Maybe I’m just making assumptions though—” 

“What?”

You take a breath and steel yourself. Out with it. 

“It feels like you’re pulling away.” 

Then, you hold your breath as you wait for him to reply. There is a long moment where you fear everything will shatter. And then he laughs, but there’s an edge of tension, like a chord pulled taut, ringing through the usually twinkling sound.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” you say quickly.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I should, I mean, I probably should talk about it. It’d probably be good for me. But I don’t want to just unload on you. I don’t just want to leave you with all… this.” He motions to himself with a circular motion. 

You reach forward, and grab his hand again. Give him a little squeeze.

“All this—“ You motion to him in the same manner. “Is exactly everything I want to deal with.”

“It’s too much,” he smiles sadly, splashing his hands in the water, not looking at you.

“You’re not too much, Jimin. Your feelings aren’t too much.”

He sighs. 

“Thank you. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way—but, thank you.” You two share a long gaze before his shoulders slump and he leans forward, resting his head in his hands. The water stirs around him. “Where do I even begin?”

“I dunno. At the beginning?” 

He nods, and you watch as his gaze shifts and he seems to go somewhere far away. 

“I guess the beginning was alright. Of quarantine, I mean. I thought there was a sense of freedom to it all. Not having to go into the office. A disruption in the routine. All expectations and plans and requirements taken off the table. Which felt like freedom. It was like suddenly no one was looking at me any more, no one was expecting anything from me except to just live, day by day. But then there was this anxiety that set in.”

You nod and he looks to you for validation before continuing. “Like I felt like I needed those things to be a person. The expectations, the shoulds, the pressure to go where, when, with who. I think I needed them feel like a person, or to feel like I knew where I was going. All of a sudden, all of the places and people and ideas and expectations that had shown me where I needed—where I should go—were gone. I was wandering my apartment in circles, going crazy, missing everyone, feeling like I was missing out on everything, even when there was nothing going on. And I knew the whole time that what I was feeling wasn’t real—but I couldn’t shake it.” 

You nod sagely. 

“I understand that. That sounds really difficult.” 

He nods blankly, and you can tell that it’s about to pour out. 

“And it sounds so stupid, but I missed sex. I missed sex so much.” 

“That’s not stupid, Jimin.” 

“It felt like a part of me was taken away. Like a huge part of the way that I communicate— it just disappeared. And I was left with nothing. I thought you guys would laugh if while you all were baring your hearts to each other, I was just sat there like, ‘I missed fucking.’ That it would be offensive to compare it to what all of you were going through.” 

“Jimin, whatever you were going through, we want to hear. We wouldn’t have laughed.” 

“Maybe you should have though.” 

“C’mon. You can’t just sit here and say that being stripped of your entire social life, the way you connect to people, to the world, you can’t say that loss is worth laughing at.” 

Jimin is silent for a long moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” 

“I mean, everything, everything disappeared. I feel like what you’re describing isn’t just about sexual gratification or getting your rocks off. It’s everything. We went from this world where, living in the city, every day is full of these little bumps with strangers, right? You go to the grocery store and flirt with the girl by the oranges. You go to the bar and you hear about someone’s breakup, and then you make out with them in the bathroom.” You get Jimin to crack a smile at that—remembering together. “We lost so much. The sex. The flirting, sure. But there was something else, too. The connecting with strangers. The connecting with people we loved.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Sex is important, but what you’re describing is connection. Direction. Your whole world changed. How can you say that that’s not a huge loss?” 

Jimin finally looks at you. He blinks. He stays silent. Then: “It was so lonely. I was so lonely.” 

“Of course you were.” 

“I think I didn’t know who I was without sex.”

“Don’t you think it goes a little deeper than that?” 

“I didn’t know who I was without all the relationships in my life.” 

You nod. You understand. What you say next almost surprises you. “I don’t think we’re meant to know that kind of thing. I don’t think we’re meant to be so distant from everyone.” 

He nods, then says, “Then why do you make yourself so distant?” 

Oh.

Fuck. 

“We’re talking about you, Jimin,” you say quickly. 

“We’ve talked about me. We can talk about you too.” 

“I don’t want to—“ 

When Jimin says your name, it rings right through you. It quiets you. It sends you somewhere soft and silent. You sink down in the water, letting it come up, just above your nose. You look at him from that level, that quiet piercing gaze going right through you. He just waits. And waits. When you can’t hold your breath any more, you push up, letting the water glide off you. 

“I don’t know, Jimin,” you say, finally. “But whatever it is, I don’t know what to do with it.” 

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Namjoon calls your name from within a door. 

He jogs out before you have a chance to respond. “I’ve been looking for you!” he says with a grin. 

“Have you?” 

“I need a hand organizing some of the books in the library.” Then, sheepishly, “I thought you might like looking through some of them. I was hoping you’d help me.” 

You glance between Namjoon and Hoseok, trying to read their expressions, wondering if this is some remnant of your dream or if this is simply a perfectly normal conversation. 

“Hobi-hyung!” Taehyung calls, appearing at the end of the hallway. “I’ve been looking for you.” 

You and Hoseok share a look. “Apparently we’re quite popular,” he muses. 

“It seems,” you reply. 

“Sorry—” he mouths at you, as Taehyung slips his arm through Hoseok’s and tugs him away. You watch each other until the other disappears from view. 

Looking at Namjoon shakes loose the dregs of the dream from last night—the swirling mist of early morning, the possession in his eyes—as Namjoon leads you to the library. You watch his face closely for any recognition that the person you saw in your dream is the one standing before you. But his face is open– happy, even–taking in the sights and senses around him. 

“Is there a reason you keep pulling me away from Hoseok?” you finally ask Namjoon.

“No—why would you say that?” Namjoon asks, his brow furrowing. You shrug it off. 

“No reason.”

The day speeds by in a blur, and before long you find yourself at the dinner table, crowded around with your friends. Jin has whipped up a fusion meal: gochujang parmesan pasta with a whole brown butter spatchcocked chicken. It’s rich, creamy, and zings with acid at the end of the palate. You all coo over Jin’s culinary accomplishment, which he happily soaks up.

Jimin is a little quieter than normal, but when he’s not staring at his hands beneath the table, he’s consistently glancing at you, like he’s looking for something.  You offer him small smiles when you catch his gaze. He quickly looks away. It doesn’t feel like him. You have the sense he’s standing across a bridge from you, a forest, large and looming at his back. 

Where are you, Park Jimin?

—--------------

When dinner’s done, you all stay seated for hours around the table, laughing, talking, sharing small moments from your day. Jungkook shares that he tried to find a way onto the roof, which procures a very large, very enthusiastic scolding from the rest of you, Taehyung found some paints in an unexplored closet and has begun painting in his free time, and Yoongi sheepishly shares about a new song he’s been working on, in very vague, humble terms. You and Namjoon excitedly detail your work in the library, sorting books, and the discovery of a locked box of books. Everyone is enchanted by the story, and Jungkook offers to try to break the lock with a hammer, to which Namjoon shudders deeply.  

Though you never explicitly agreed to it, it’s become a tradition that you all eat dinner together each night. As the conversation winds down, your cheeks are heated from laughing, talking, and smiling so much. The gang breaks apart, some of you shifting back into the kitchen to finish dishes and tidying after Jin’s masterpiece. You and Jungkook tag team the table, collecting remaining dishes and napkins. 

Jungkook pauses, and leans across the table towards you. 

With a smile, he asks, “Wanna stay over tonight?” He waggles his eyebrows. 

“We’ve been meaning to have a moment alone,” Hoseok cuts in. You look up from your dishrag and spray bottle to find him standing in the doorway. You wonder how much he overheard of your conversation. We, you think. Hm. “Do you mind?”

You glance between Jungkook and Hoseok. 

“I did promise him earlier,” you say with a shrug to Jungkook. 

“Don’t you worry, Jungkook,” says Jimin, who also appears from the kitchen and lounges against the door. Somehow he manages to make every position—seated or horizontal or standing—look luxurious and effortless. “Why don’t you come hang out with me tonight?” 

“Really?” Jungkook says, his eyes lighting up. “Yeah—yeah, I’d like that.” 

“Mind if I join you two?” Yoongi chimes in. He, too, has emerged from the kitchen. Jungkook and Jimin nod, Jungkook’s face reddening slightly. You can read on his face what he’s imagining: the three of them tangled up in bed. 

This is may be the first time you’ve noticed Jimin and Yoongi being so straightforward with each other. You had always noticed the way that Yoongi would watch Jimin a little bit extra carefully than the others, his eyes tracking Jimin’s movements and the immediate surroundings whenever the latter was present. Before your group agreement you had always attributed it to Yoongi’s protective side, how he looked out particularly close for Jimin, despite Jimin’s lack of need for a guard dog. It had always seemed to you to be some kind of disagreement in perception, one you couldn’t always understand. Jimin had never needed protecting, not with his quick words and sharp judgment. But now, alone, stranded in the wilderness, who was Yoongi protecting Jimin from? 

“I, um, wanted to do some reading tonight anyways,” Namjoon chimes in, poking his head through the entryway. You exchange a glance, your gaze asking what no one wants to ask aloud: Do you want to be alone? He nods in response.

With arrangements settled, Hoseok slips his hand into yours. You look down at it, a little surprised. 

“Come on,” he says, and leads you to the back of the house. 

In the bedroom, you take in the sight of what is supposed to be your room (even if you share it). The last time you were here, you were getting ready for the dinner party that changed everything. The room remains unchanged, and yet it feels entirely different than the last time you were inside. 

You wonder where that red dress went. Knowing Namjoon, he probably returned it with a careful touch to its proper home shortly after the orgy. 

Standing in this room, something in you feels older, a little more mature. That’s not the word…

—Bigger?—

Yes, like you had grown, larger, more expansive, around the edges of your previous self. Has it really only been a couple days since you left your belongings here and began wandering the beds of the house? (Officially, and with everyone’s knowledge, that is.) The distance between now and then feels like it stretches weeks, time itself stretching taut and thin, despite it only being a handful of days.

Time seems to move so strangely here, in this house, like a river, barely moving in some places where it collects, stills, and becomes cold in the far reaches of its depths. And yet, there are other days that speed by with the quickness of a white water rapid. Right now, there is a part of you that feels caught in the eddies: whipped along and holding your breath. 

“You probably just want to just go to bed, don’t you?” Hoseok says as he strips off his sweater, revealing a simple t-shirt beneath. “You must be tired.” 

You come up behind him and wrap your arms around him, standing on your tiptoes. With your head on his shoulder, you look at him in the mirror. 

“Mmm. A little. Not too tired though.” The end of your sentence remains unspoken, but still understood: Not too tired to touch you.

You catch his gaze in the mirror and hold it for a moment. He smiles. A sense of ease and affection flutters in your chest. 

After a moment, though, that warmth becomes too warm, searing into your cheeks and making your heart flutter, and you break away, your hands falling to your sides as you take a step back. 

“Almost everyone in this house has asked something of me today, but I never learned why you pulled me out of Jimin’s room in the first place,” you say. 

“Do I need a reason? I just wanted to spend some one-on-one time with you. Is that too much to ask?” 

You startle, but gather yourself.“Never.” 

You both get ready for sleep, as if there’s nothing else to do. And when you have very thoroughly brushed your teeth and washed your face twice, instead of climbing into bed, you grab the book you were reading earlier in the tree and Hoseok promptly grabs his journal. You are avoiding the bed. 

You settle on the couch by the fireplace, sprawling out comfortably. The two of you lay there for a while, both minding your own business. It feels awfully domestic. Like you’re a married couple already settled into routine. The difference is—not a single word of the page in front of you is sinking into your mind.

 The difference is—you’re burning up, your whole body tuned to how close he lies—where his hands are (they’re playing with the edge of the page)—how his foot brushes against yours—how deep his voice resonates when he apologizes for nudging you. 

The difference is—you notice every edge of him. 

“Don’t apologize,” you say firmly. 

“Sorry—Don’t? Why not?”

You laugh. “I don’t ever want you to apologize for touching me. If anything I want you to touch me.”

“You do?” He stares blankly at you. 

“My god, Hobi,” you say, rolling on your side and discarding your book. “Sometimes you can be so thick.”

“Me?? I’m the thick one? And what about you? I’ve been waiting for days for you to pull me into a closet or a spare room or—god forbid—just kiss me out there in front of everyone—”

You reach for his hand, pulling it away from his book, and into yours. For a long moment, you both stare at each other, as if waiting for the other to make a move. And then, making a decision, you both move at the same time, hands reaching for faces, lips magnetized towards lips. 

Hoseok’s hand trails down your body, slipping beneath your pajama pants. Your hand wraps around his wrist, stopping his movements. 

“But—Jimin—” He said, I’m not allowed to come.

He chuckles. “It’s so sexy when you say another man’s name in my bed.”

You roll your eyes. “Behave,” you remind him. “But I did make him a promise. And in all honesty, I have no interest in being punished again. Today was enough.” 

Hoseok’s brows raise, and for a moment you think he’s going to ask about what happened between you and Jimin, and will end up hurting himself by wanting to hear the gritty details. But instead, he shakes his head and continues. “You know, not everything about sex has to be about orgasm,” Hoseok says, raising and waggling an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” 

“Sometimes sex can just be about pleasure. Instead of trying to chase something down, like a goalpost or, um…” he searches for the words. “Like some kind of race, where the only objective is to come. It can just be about the sensations along the way. Gentle pleasure.” 

“Edging, you mean,” you say, a little bit of disappointment in your voice. You have had enough of edging in the last weeks to last you an entire lifetime. You would consider yourself the resident expert of edging, considering how many orgasms you’ve been denied since arriving at the doors of this mysterious house, though you have a sense Jimin or Jin might try to come for your title. 

“No, not quite.” He frowns, trying to find the words. “I think edging brings you right to the cliff of an orgasm and hangs you over the drop for as long as you can hold out. The thrill is in not knowing if you can hold on or not.”

“Oof, all this talk of edges and cliffs hits a little too close to home,” you giggle.

“Okay, yeah that wasn’t the best way to say it.” He smiles. “But you know what I’m trying to get at, right?” You nod. “What I’m proposing, we just get to feel each other. Make each other feel good—without running. Running towards a finish line, I mean.”

That sparks an idea in you. “Where did you learn all of this?” 

Hoseok flushes. “Oh… You know.” 

“I don’t.” 

“It doesn’t really matter. Former partners. Reading.” 

You pass quickly by the first answer and focus on the second. “You read… about sex?” 

“Yeah. Sex. Psychology. Sexual health. Namjoon is my dealer.” 

You laugh. “Your dealer?”

“My book dealer,” he grins. You nod knowingly, well aware of one of Namjoon’s favorite activities: shipping his friends books during quarantine in the city. He sent the books out wrapped messily but compactly in brown construction paper. You can picture his notes, scrawled in pencil in the margins. He hated the thought of permanently marring a book with an ink pen, but in the same moment, couldn’t shut up with his brilliant ideas, even if it was received by the silence of a page. 

Namjoon had always been the designated librarian of your friend group, and was ever enthused to coerce anyone into reading whatever book suited his most recent interest with him. He had been trying to get a book club with you all up and running for years now, and yet—

“Never thought much about what it was that Namjoon was reading,” you murmur. 

“He’s got a diverse taste, that’s for sure,” Hoseok chuckles. “So, what do you say?” He leans in close, his fingers gliding over your belly. “Want me to make you feel good?”  

You’ve never really thought about the possibility of sex without a goal, without an orgasm to reach for at the finish line. But you nod, and smile, and his fingers slip beneath your pajamas again. 

At first he just explores you, his fingers tracing around your lower lips, pressing here, circling there. He doesn’t kiss you, but lays close enough, watching your face as you try to hold it together. But you can’t help it: little gasps slip out and pattern the silence. A gentle warmth begins to build in your belly. But without the urgency, the rush, the goalpost of it all, you find yourself focusing on the sensations in a deeper way than usual.

“Hobi—” you breathe. “It feels good.” 

“Good,” he grins. You reach for him, to slip your hands into his own pants, but he stops you. “Just let me make you feel good, okay?” 

That’s when he slips a finger inside you. He begins by pumping shallowly and oh-so painfully slow. You can feel every inch of him as he slips deeper on each thrust, opening you up for him. He’s careful, deliberate. 

“Close your eyes,” he whispers. “With your mind, I want you to trace where I’m touching you. Focus on the sensation of it all. Put all your attention there.” 

His other hand wanders your body, a gentle finger tracing your collarbone, a palm cupping and pressing against your breast, swirling touches against your belly. Your attention follows his. You feel your skin brighten, warm. All of it culminates in a sensation that he’s exploring you, learning you with a careful sense of duty. You can feel his diligence. 

“I want to be closer to you,” you gasp as he adds a second finger to you. And you mean it in more ways than one. But he answers the surface request, pulling you flush against his chest, lifting your leg over his hip. Your fingers cup his face, tracing over his features. 

He builds you to a slow, radiating heat, one that sifts through your whole body. You burn like embers, flushed and gulping for air. 

“Where are my hands?” he asks gently. “Follow them. Tell me what you feel.” 

“Warm. So warm, Hobi. Like sunshine.” 

Where he touches light radiates through your skin, down to your bones. It’s sex like nothing you’ve had before. There’s a part of you that keeps wanting to shift away from the slowness and sense of it all, to grab for more, to beg him to let you chase pleasure. It is the same part that has whispered since you arrived at the mountain house: run, run. The whisper turns to a shout: run, run. But when you breathe in deep and bring your attention back to touch—his finger circling your nipple, your bare feet brushing against the soft cotton of the sheets, his lips biting down on the soft flesh of your earlobe, his fingers moving slowly in and out of you—there is a new awareness, golden and bright. 

You take a deep breath. You settle into the feeling. 

It feels like forcing open a door, hinges rusted shut from disuse. 

It is a door that leads into your own body. It’s traitorous territory. But you breathe once, then again, sinking deeper, deeper, led by his touch.

You let your hips move against him, a slow grind. His hand is now between his and your pelvic bone, and you know that as you rock against him, he can feel it too. You shift closer, so you’re intentionally pressing against his groin, your hands tangling in his hair, raking slowly against his scalp.

The closer your bodies move, the more his touches blur into pleasure against your skin, the more the lines between you blur too. This is what you had all anticipated a few days ago, right? The muddling, the mess. You had told everyone you wanted to lean into it. But as sensation bubbles to the surface of your skin, so does something else within you: something dangerously warm. Something dangerously happy.

When he groans into your mouth, echoing your own pleasure, you know you’ve gotten what you want. 

Tonight, it’s so easy to find a quiet rhythm with him. It feels like it was never any other way. Without the element of chasing down an orgasm, there’s nowhere to go except here, now. Nowhere to go except towards him. 

That’s how you fall asleep, your bodies slowly grinding against each other’s, gasping against the other’s mouth, the other’s neck, the other’s chest until sleep swallows you whole. 

-----------

When you wake up Hoseok is pressed close to your face, his eyes wide open, a grin on his cheeks. 

“Oh my god are you watching me sleep?” You roll over, away from him, sleep fogged and groggy. 

“Come here,” he rolls you back towards him. “I was waiting for you to wake up. I have something to show you.” 

With his urging, you quickly get dressed, grab some coffee and something quick to eat, and head out. You’re sure he’s going to bring you outside.

“Hobi, maybe we shouldn’t,” you say. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, a look of genuine confusion on his face. 

“I don’t think any of our stints outside were any good,” you say. “Can we stay inside today? Please?” 

Hoseok nods. “That was the plan anyways. No outside for us, at least not for a while. We’ll stay inside today.” 

You smile at him.

He leads you to the back door, but instead of going outside, he takes a turn down a narrow hallway that you hadn’t noticed before. It leads to a spiraling, narrow staircase descending down into the unknown depths of the house. Though the white walls of the passageway are narrow, as if they might lead to a basement or root cellar, the steps shine as if they’ve been polished recently. As you step onto the first step, you notice a thin carving on the edge of every stair. A woodland scene: a bear, an evergreen forest, a collection of tree-loving creatures. The wood itself is gorgeous: a reddish lumber that glows in the dim light. A delicate handrail leads your descent.

“Where are we?” 

You’re in shock that even after all this time in the house, there are still parts you haven’t explored. A dark basement is hardly something you’d like to explore alone, but you trust Hoseok, so you give him your hand and let him lead you down the stairs, trying to ignore how they seem to melt into the darkened floor below.

The sound from upstairs dampens, the voices of your friends blending into silence as you journey deeper. 

The temperature too, drops, raising goosebumps on your skin.

You emerge into a dark hallway, and Hoseok’s grasp tightens around your hand. 

“This way,” he whispers. 

There’s a doorway at the end of the hallway, a simple thing, and you know that’s where you’re headed. 

Hoseok pushes the door open and light spills all over you. 

The room that opens before you is walled by a thousand mirrors, an oak-golden floor, and a sweeping modern chandelier dangling from the ceiling. To your right, a wall of windows looks over the valleys and peaks of the mountains. Today the light is bright and warm, and as it spills over the changing leaves, you feel like you are held in the center of a pendulum. 

You’re standing in a ballroom. 

“This is it.” 

“Goddamn, Hoseok, this is beautiful.” You step away from him to wander the room. In one corner is a baby grand piano, and you run your fingers over the keys. Perfectly tuned. 

“I thought you would like it.” 

“I love it.” 

There’s something about the open space and the reverberating light that fills you with energy. 

“Yoongi showed it to me,” Hoseok says. “I bet he loves coming down here.” He plinks a key too. “Where he can play and sing without anyone listening.” He smiles fondly, and then turns his attention to you. “I thought maybe today I could give you a dance lesson?” Hoseok offers. “It’s something we could do together. You know. Without having to fight off a rabid bear or dangle off a cliff.” 

“Risk management. I like it,” you laugh. 

“But also selfishly—I was missing dancing with someone. And I’ve been working on a new piece of choreography, and, well, it needs two people. Will you help me with my little experiment?” He gives you those doe eyes you know better than to say no to. Still, you hesitate.

“You know I’m no dancer.” 

“But you’re good enough.” 

“Are you saying ‘I’ll do?’” you laugh.

“Yes, basically. But also, I wanted to do this—”

Hoseok steps closer to you, wrapping his hands around your lower back. 

You had danced with Hoseok in the past,  stepping in when he needed a hand or wanted to practice teaching a new dance before bringing it to a studio. You were decent, you could admit that, but you were no professional. 

“You just want to touch me, don’t you?” you tease. 

“Of course I do.” 

“And last night wasn’t enough?”

“Of course it was enough. And now I want more.”

“Ah…” You trail off. “I dunno. I’m not at the level you’re used to.” 

“You’re at the perfect level,” he grins. “Please? For me?” 

You sigh and nod. “Fine. But you owe me.” 

“I owe you times a hundred! Yes! Thank you!” 

He bounds away from you, before flicking on a stereo. A remix of an old waltz comes on, synths and electronic iterations dotted throughout the classical sound. He pauses, puzzling over how to start. You can see it in his eyes, all of the steps of the dance existing at once, the story of the dance, and the logistics of how to pull it out of the trenches of his mind to share with you. And then it clicks.

“Maybe we can just start out with a basic waltz? Just to warm up?” 

“Absolutely,” you say, and offer him your hand. He messes with something on his phone—speaking of, when was the last time you checked your phone?—and the song changes to a traditional waltz. He sweeps you into his arms. 

And like that, you’re off. His left hand holds your right tightly, while his right hand presses gently against your back. You’ve done this with him before, and the steps come back quickly and easily. Before you know it you’re laughing gleefully as you twirl around the room. 

You can’t help but compare it to the dream. There’s that same warmth, the way both dream Hoseok and real Hoseok had felt identical. Or no-–that wasn’t it. You had glowed identically in their presence. 

That was it. 

“I dreamt about this,” you blurt, before you can think of what you’re saying. This is the first time you’ve spoken about the recurring—and intimate—dreams you’ve been having about your friends to anyone beyond Jimin.

“So you’re dreaming about me now?” When you don’t answer, he asks, “What did you dream?” 

“That you wanted me—to marry you or something. It was some old timey thing. There was a barn. And lots of candles. And you teased me, endlessly. And you wouldn’t kiss me.” 

“I’m sorry—” 

“Hobi, it was my own imagination that didn’t kiss me, not you.”

“Well dream Hobi was right about one thing.” 

“What’s that?” 

“That I want you.” 

You flush, letting your eyes drift down. 

The dance comes to an end and Hobi puts the original song back on. He shows you the dance once from beginning until end, miming a dance partner in his arms, before he walks you through his choreography step by step. Tongue caught between your teeth, you follow him painful step by painful step, over and over again, until you’ve gotten the movements down. 

“Now we try it all together?” 

“That wasn’t all together?” 

At first it’s stumbling and awkward, but it doesn’t take too long for you to catch the gist and begin moving in tandem with him. As your hips roll, so do his. A perfect mirror. As you turn, he’s ready to catch you and pull you into him. As you step towards him, he steps back. 

Your bodies move as one and it feels so easy, too easy with him. The movement of the dance feels so natural that you find yourself blurting out: “You’re easy.” 

“Excuse me?” He stops moving, an incredulous laugh breaking free from him. 

“Shit, no sorry—I mean. You feel easy.” 

He tilts his head, still not understanding. 

“These past couple of days. Everything has felt so nice with you. So simple.” 

He nods slowly, finally unraveling what you’re getting at. “Yes, I, well, I agree.” He steps away to turn off the music and all at once, as the gargantuan room around you settles into silence, you’re struck by the profound quiet. Although it’s frequently quiet in the house, you usually have at least a passing awareness of the other people in it, a shuffle from the hallway, a cough from the room next to you. Now, all you hear is your breath, and his. Now, it’s just you and Hoseok. 

You nod. You’re not really sure where you’re going, what thread you’re trying to pull at. You follow him across the dance floor. 

“I’m confused that it’s so easy.” 

“You’re confused?” He turns back to you. “Aren’t these kinds of things supposed to be easy?” 

“Yes—I mean, gosh.” You run a weary hand over your face. “It was so hard. After we fucked the first time. Not hard. It was so goddamn awkward. And in all honesty, painful too.” 

Hoseok grimaces. “Yeah, I—Even though I was shitting on everyone else and, you know, the whole ass dynamic, I don’t even know how to put into words how uncomfortable it was for me too. Even though it was my own fault, I hated it. I hated every moment of it.” 

You nod and squeeze his hand. 

He continues. “It feels so stupid because I can’t even remember what was holding me back from you,” he clears his throat. “From you all, I mean, when right now it feels so easy. It makes me think that I was a complete and entire dummy.” 

You chuckle. “You were a complete and entire dummy. But then again we both were.” 

You want to say that you’ve been holding back too, but you swallow the words down. This moment, everything, him, it feels like it’s drawing short. Like it’s so fragile that at the arrival of the wrong word or touch it would shatter around you, leaving you too, broken into a million pieces. 

“We work well together, you know,” Hoseok says. “We’re good partners.” 

“It is really easy dancing with you!” 

“I don’t just mean dancing.” 

You stop. “What do you mean then?” You ask tentatively.

He pulls you close, runs his nose against your neck, nips against your ear. “I mean, I think you and I work really well together. It’s so natural it makes me wonder.” 

“Wonder what?” 

He laughs. “What it would be like to lean in—to explore this connection. To keep making it work.” 

“Well, of course–” you stop yourself. Well, of course we can keep exploring and making it work. You swallow the words, swallow the promise of offering him something more than what you can give. “Well, of course there are the others too. It feels so wonderful to be connected to you as well as to the others. Like it feels like it’s not supposed to work? But it totally does.” 

“Yeah, uh.” Hoseok steps back, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “The others. Totally.” 

You notice the tension but you’re too worried to step into it and interrogate it, lest you upset the precarious balance you and Hoseok hold these days, the tightrope between past and present that it feels like you’re constantly walking. 

“I mean it, Hoseok. It feels like this should all be a disaster but—it’s been the best part of my year.” 

You get him to smile at that. “I know. It’s been really special for me too.” The two of you grin at each other for a long moment, and then Hoseok is blinking and stepping away, moving towards the speaker to flip it on again. “Again? I think we can really get that final move down.” 

“Alright,” you sigh. “Again.” 

This time, when you go through the steps, you really feel the core of them. You understand the story behind it. You keep catching Hoseok’s eye in the mirror, and find his gaze glimmering and full of admiration. Sweat beads on your forehead with the effort of it all, but you’re exhilarated. In glances and glimpses in the expansive mirrors, you watch two bodies—bodies so familiar you might mistake them for those of a pair of old lovers—glide across the floors. Behind your figures, the valleys stretch, cavernous and deep. The mountains radiate with the kind of sun that only spills right as the seasons are in shift.

And then, you are back in the moment, trying to remember the next move, and the next, and the next. 

When he pulls you against him, he slips his leg between yours and raises an eyebrow, pausing longer than the dance calls for. The command is clear: Grind on me. 

You give a tentative swivel of your hips against him, gaze stuck to him, his form. 

“That’s all you got?” His hand on your hip presses against you, showing you the way. Showing you how to move your hips. You lean forward, so your lips are at his ear. Your breath ghosts over him, and you can feel him shudder beneath you, before his strength returns and he continues guiding you. 

“Like this,” he says. 

Sure, the move is part of the dance, but not quite like this. 

“Again,” he breathes. 

This time you shift your energy, bringing your focus to your hips. With careful deliberation, you grind your hips forward, pushing your pelvis to his, letting his thigh press up to your core. It’s the perfect amount of pressure to have you shuddering against him. 

“Fuck,” you groan. 

“I love when you have that filthy mouth on you.” 

You smile into his shoulder. His hand continues to roll your hips against him, matching the beat of the music. 

And then he shifts, his weight pulling away, pulling you with him, resuming the dance. But this is different. As you move, your bodies are pressed together without air, your lips ghost over one another’s, your fingers dig into each other’s flesh, desperate for more. When the dance dictates that he’s at your back, he presses his pelvis to you and you feel him against you. In the mirror you catch his gaze and he smirks. 

“This okay?” he whispers against your neck. 

“More than okay,” you reply. 

There’s a darkness swirling in his gaze, a contradiction to the usually sunny disposition you’re so used to. It’s a warm darkness, one that beckons you near, one that sings sweet promises of drowning oh-so gently. 

Do you want to drown?

In the next step you’re spinning back into him, and all choreography forgotten, you kiss him, hands flying to his face, pulling him down to you. He seems surprised at first, but soon relaxes into you, his arms wrapping around you, hands splayed across your lower back. Your kisses are hungry, needy. 

It’s like you’re making up for lost time. You devour each other, lips mashing together messily, hands wandering, clutching, gripping. Time slips past you like a stream. 

He begins to walk you backwards, until your back hits the cold surface of the mirror. You gasp at the cool sensation, your body split between the heat of exertion and the livening shock of the glass. His lips devour yours, his tongue scraping against the roof of your mouth. You pull him as close to you as possible and whisper in his ear: 

“I want you.” 

“Fuck. Forget the dance. Bed. Now.” 

— 

You sprint through the halls and up the stairs, laughing, giggling, Hoseok pulling you forward, forward. When he kisses you against the wall of your bedroom, you melt. When he slips under the covers with you, ignoring the knocking on the door and the sound of one of your friends calling your name, you turn into liquid in his hands. As he fucks you with his fingers, while you take him into your mouth, you hum with pleasure. 

Still at the back of your mind, the knot of a question sings: Why don’t we ever talk about what happened that night, all those months ago? It’s repeating like a chant, in tune with the sounds of pleasure that he pulls from your body over and over and over again.

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