Chapter Text
"Do you think this is it, hyung? After this... After all we've been through, can we finally say that we've made it?"
"I mean... I won't stop you from celebrating–"
"–But?"
"But I don't think this is it, Jeongguk. I have a feeling that this is just our beginning."
With the BBMAs frenzy at large, Jeongguk was too preoccupied by the flashing lights and the ass-shaking on stage to really think about what he’d like to do in Vegas when the spectacle was over. He'd been too busy reviewing his English introductory lines (“Hello, my name is Jeongguk from BTS. It is nice to meet you.”) to think about what celebratory dish he’d order in the classy 5-star restaurant underneath their hotel, or what he’d like to do after the makeup was off and the golden award was protectively stowed in the luggage.
Turns out, he didn't have to.
At the end of the night, he doesn’t have to think—his body moves of it’s own accord, dragging heavy feet and an even heavier head to wherever it pleased. There were many things to blame, but Jeongguk pondered on the very likely possibility that the champagne he begged Yoongi to slip into his Sprite just a couple of hours ago was the main perpetrator of his recklessness.
“Jeonggukie?”
“Hi.” Jeongguk replies childishly as he clings on to the doorframe. His smile creases his eyes and exposes the extent of his bunny teeth. “Hi, hyung.”
He has no idea why his feet dragged him all the way here, of all the places he could’ve gone. Holing up in Jimin’s room was an option, so was sobering up with a snack and a game of Overwatch in Taehyung’s room… but his drunken state wordlessly paved the way for imminent disaster. Just moments ago, he flashed the bodyguard outside the hotel suite a toothy smile and the door was opened without another whim.
Given that this wasn't the first time Jeongguk snuck into a hotel room, perhaps the guards had grown used to it already.
Jeongguk watches as Seokjin’s sleepy eyes narrow in playful contempt. His hyung had already washed up and looked soft in the torn up shirt he often wore to sleep, head nestled on a pillow and tucked into the heavy sheets of the hotel’s bed. Blinking, Jeongguk feels a little bad for waking Seokjin, but at the same time, he takes pride in the fact that Seokjin’s face holds no trace of irritation.
He can't get mad at me, Jeongguk gleefully thinks. I'm definitely his favourite.
Jeongguk hops to the king-sized bed and flops down beside his hyung, and in a haze, he reaches out and begins to trace the soft, smooth skin under the large, ragged tears of Seokjin’s shirt. He honestly has no idea what he was doing.
“You’re still wearing this, hyung?” Jeongguk asks. His eyes are heavy, but his body feels even heavier. “You know I can-“
Seokjin stills Jeongguk’s hand, right above his broad chest.
“Yes, Jk, I know we can buy entire department stores, so yes, I know you can buy me a new one,” Seokjin murmurs. Through his hooded lids, Jeongguk feels his heart skip a beat when Seokjin’s mouth curves into a small, fond smile. “But Jjanggu chewed up this shirt, remember? So it makes me feel at home.”
Jeongguk pouts. “But hyung, you once told me I felt like home.”
“You’re such a little brat,” Seokjin grumbles, but his tone and hands betray him. Jeongguk feels his hyung’s crooked finger sweep his hair to the side, gently caressing his forehead and cheeks that were sore from all the smiling. “But you also had a little to drink, didn’t you? Was it Yoongi? Even if we’re in Vegas he shou—“
“Hyung, it wasn’t his fault,” Jeongguk murmurs, nuzzling Seokjin’s palm against his face. “Blame my puppy eyes. No one can resist my puppy eyes.”
Seokjin’s hand stills on Jeongguk’s cheek.
“Jeongguk.” Seokjin begins carefully. “Jeongguk, why are you here?”
Well, funny his hyung should ask, because—
He doesn’t know either.
He can’t for the life of him, understand why his drunken self had to get up from his comfy bed and walk in his suit all the way to the end of the corridor where bodyguards loomed and towered over empty hallways. He doesn’t understand why he had to plop himself down on Seokjin’s bed, face to face with his hyung, every so often inhaling the comforting musk that accompanied a freshly-showered Seokjin. He could barely understand why he had been staring too long at the curve of his hyung’s lips, or the gentle heaviness of Seokjin’s eyes—why he can’t speak for minutes as they stared at each other atop the hotel bed’s pristine white sheets.
But improvisation is something Jeongguk has been meaning to practice in his free time, so he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Because I miss this.”
Well… That isn’t a lie.
He misses the thrill and comfort of those nights when he would crawl into Seokjin’s bed with nothing but a soft poke and an even softer “hyung,” and the warmth of Seokjin’s chest cradling him from behind, making him feel safer than anywhere else in the world. He misses turning around in Seokjin’s arms in the middle of the night so he could shyly trace Seokjin’s face in the dark with nothing but his eyes and the dim lamp light... he misses his hyung blinking awake and making faces at him at 3AM when he knows Jeongguk is looking. He misses the tears that rolled down their cheeks and into their pillows as they tried not to wake Yoongi up with their laughs.
But now that Namjoon’s snoring is no longer an excuse for him to sneak into his hyungs’ room… now that their days were filled with schedules that left them with barely any time to sleep or eat… and now that they were getting older and Jeongguk is growing too big, too tall for the tired warmth of his hyung’s shoulders…
Jeongguk finds that he misses—
“Because I miss you.”
And that isn’t a lie either.
Slowly easing himself forward to bury his face in the crook of Seokjin’s neck, Jeongguk sobers into a realization—that maybe that is the biggest truth.
I miss you, it says. The affection is guilty with honesty.
In the soft yellow light of the suite, Jeongguk falls asleep to the smell of musk and home, to the smell of his first love… and to Seokjin’s soft sigh of “I miss you, too."