Archive of Our Own ^beta

“what, i sometimes wonder, would it be like if i lived in a country where winter is a matter of a few chilly days and a few weeks' rain; where the sun is never far away, and the flowers bloom all year long?” - anna neagle

(“oh, how lonely and barren it would be!”)

so it’s not uncommon knowledge that jeongguk is genius lab’s most frequent visitor.

yoongi’s inability to refuse the younger—whether it’s about cleaning his bedroom or washing up after himself or taking care of himself or paying for lamb skewers—is also the furthest thing from a secret.

seokjin and jimin take to playfully prodding him about it on days where it’s tolerable. hoseok doesn’t shut up, taehyung whines about preferential treatment, and namjoon… namjoon just looks at him with his stupid, all-seeing eyes and tells him, on a regular basis, that yoongi’s sweet on him, hyung. smitten.

and yoongi denies it as much as he can, but taehyung’s archive of incriminating evidence makes it difficult to argue his point. there are a lot of things that yoongi’s said that he regrets only slightly when they’re thrown back in his face: he’s hardworking, he’s talented, isn’t jeonggukie handsome? jeongguk-ah. jeon jeongguk, are you listening to me? come back inside or grab a jacket and a scarf before you catch a cold, brat.

but jeongguk has said things too. said things that made yoongi think, think about things that he can’t think of without burning up, warm and red and wanting. this hyung is the most good-looking when he’s working on a song. yoongi-hyung told me to eat it! (hoseok pouts and pushes jeongguk’s hands away from the prize: it’s food, again, unsurprisingly. jeongguk turns to him, plaintive, and yoongi shrugs, ears red.) hyung, hyung, hyung. will you treat me?

there is, without a doubt, a lot between them. little implicit nuances that they’ve both grown into.

yoongi squeezing the back of jeongguk’s neck to help the younger relax.

jeongguk being endearingly careful whenever he’s teasing him. asking, as if yoongi could say no.

impulsively, yoongi pulling him close by the lapels of his jacket during their billboard appearance and murmuring something into the tiny, somewhat improper amount of distance between them. gibberish, probably. jeongguk’s nose scrunching as his lips—mottled from biting but painted over with glossy pink—teased a smile.

(yoongi thought there were no cameras, which was why he did it. but then he saw the pixelated video making rounds on twitter, watched himself tug jeongguk close, close, so close, closer , watched jeongguk’s hands skitter through the air towards yoongi’s hips before shying away. not wishful thinking. )

jeongguk stealing his shirts, his sweaters, his jeans, his beanies, his underwear. somehow finding the other’s clothes in his own drawers and wondering whether their maknae’s been doing his laundry separately from the rest because when he puts them on, they are always soft and smelling of sunshine. from being hung out on the line , yoongi tells himself. but jeongguk smells of sunshine always, even when he’s not wearing his own clothes.

yoongi letting him into every version of himself—the little broom closet of a studio back in ‘13, his first personal studio years later, the spacious, tinkery one with the thick carpets and huge foam cones glued to the walls.

now, four years after their debut: genius lab.

genius lab is—well, it’s something yoongi didn’t dream of having until he had it.

it’s big but not overbearing, quaint but not outdated, with whitewashed walls and wood-panel flooring. the fogged-glass door is tucked into the corner of the room and opens out into the hallway so that it doesn’t bump against the keyboards laid against the wall. a grey leather couch squats in the corner, pushed directly beside the door. it has low armrests, at the perfect height for him to rest his head on.

the rest of the space is also occupied with big things. yoongi is the proud owner of three enormous hd monitors, sprawled out across his equally enormous desk. the apple mac he still hasn’t managed to sell sits on the side table. a mixing console sporting a million dials and levers that reminds him of the maschine mk2 he owned five years ago is probably the most well-used thing in the room apart from the couch. a large and slightly unnerving collection of KAWS figurines, on the shelves behind him and above the sofa and on the elevated bench behind his worktable. four enormous speakers. all the better to hear you with, dear.

and because there’s so much—there’s a life-sized model wearing chicago bull merchandise that regularly scares the life out of him whenever he comes in late at night—yoongi has made a conscious effort to fill the lesser spaces with little things.

the striped baseball jersey he wore to the hanshin tigers game is draped over the back of his chair, and the air conditioner is nearly completely covered in little stickers and bangtan paraphernalia. the number of yellow notebooks he’s finished could pack several bookcases; he has a new six-pack in one of his drawers. on the monitor stand is a small crowd of frames with photos from their trip to europe. around the neck of his favourite KAWS toy—it’s ugly, but in an endearing way—is a necklace jeongguk bought for him way, way back, so far in the past that he’s probably already forgotten about it.

it’s here that yoongi finds himself, most nights. but it’s not lonely, for the most part, because jeongguk usually worms his way in as well.

the first time it happened, it was because seokjin sent jeongguk back to the bighit building to retrieve yoongi from his self-inflicted prison cell of a studio. the members didn’t know about yoongi’s so-called ‘soft spot’ yet, but what they did know was that jeongguk was—and still is, but in smaller doses—chronically shy.

so maybe seokjin was onto something. yoongi doesn’t know how the eldest knew, but that night was the night he came to a realisation: he was, and still is, weak for voices like jeongguk’s. soft, breathy, pretty, a little shy, overridden with worry. hyung, stop, please. you’ve been working for the entire day. come home with me. for, um, for dinner.

it didn’t come as a surprise to either of them when yoongi refused, obstinate as a mule. he didn’t shout or raise his voice at all—not at jeongguk, never—but the message was clear: he wouldn’t leave until this song was past the halfway point. the very clear implication was that he would continue subsisting on cups of shitty instant coffee and maybe sneak in a ten-minute nap later, once jeongguk gave up and left.

“then,” jeongguk said, “then i’ll stay with you.”

“go home, kid.”

jeongguk frowned. “i’m not having dinner until you do.” a pause. “hyung.”

needless to say, yoongi lasted a record time of exactly nine minutes and seven seconds until he threw his hands up, turned off his three monitors, and threw his coat on, grumbling all the while.

the way jeongguk smiled made him feel like he was losing at more than just their little competition.

“you’re stubborn,” yoongi said, once they escaped the building and shuffled under the bus shelter. he chanced a peek at the younger and instantly regretted it; at that exact moment, it began to snow, and jeongguk looked—yoongi glanced away, neck warm. “put your gloves on.”

jeongguk pursed his lips. “it’s just a bit chilly,” he said, which might have been more convincing if he hadn’t sneezed immediately afterwards. his hair was damp, melted snowflakes making the strands shine under the lamplight like sweet donut glaze. yoongi paid too much attention to detail. “and i didn’t bring them. i forgot them at home.”

shuffling, and then: “wait, hyung—”

it wasn’t very gentle, seeing as yoongi had to grab the younger’s wrist and force his stupid, lumpy, woollen gloves over jeongguk’s knuckles and around his freezing fingers, but it was awkward and fumbling and very—yoongi. very authentically and unapologetically min yoongi.

once yoongi pulled away, jeongguk’s cheeks were red, bitten flush by the chill. the way his gaze wandered around yoongi’s face made him feel weird: it was too warm, too fond. yoongi remembers, very distinctly, wanting to die at that very moment. at the time, though, all he did was make a gruff sound at the back of his throat and hide his flushed cheeks in his scarf.

“just wear them until we get home.”

“okay, hyung.”

they sat together on the bus, shoulder-to-shoulder. jeongguk stared out of the window at the snowfall, eyes wide and childlike. yoongi stared at him, and then at nothing at all.

jeongguk returned his gloves the night after.

from there it was just a terrible, all-consuming downward spiral of yoongi overworking, yoongi staying at the studio past dinner, jeongguk worrying, jeongguk waiting, yoongi conceding. jeongguk shivering, yoongi lending his gloves. bussing home together, and then jeongguk returning the gloves and the whole process happening all over again.

at some point, jeongguk stopped returning yoongi’s gloves. at some point, jeongguk just comes, and yoongi lets him in, and jeongguk stays until they have to go.

it’s happened maybe half a dozen times.

midsummer. oranges are bright and sticky-sweet, ripe for the picking.

jeongguk wakes up at two o’clock in the afternoon on a saturday. he picks up one of his shirts from the floor and fits it over his head before stumbling blindly into the kitchen, eyes still swollen shut. the house is strangely quiet, the rest of the members enjoying their weekend off. moments of respite like this are few and far between, sparsely distributed over two to three business days.

pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes, jeongguk yawns. there is gunk stuck between his eyelashes, little black smudges in the periphery of his vision. still slightly disoriented, he pads into the bathroom to wash his face. he passes by his hyungs’ bedrooms as he goes, all closed except for yoongi’s. the curtains are drawn, the only source of light a scented candle burning on the end table.

there’s the gentle clinking of dishes coming from the kitchen — maybe he isn’t as alone as he thought he was. he moves towards the dining room, cracking one eye open and hoping that seokjin had the mind to hide the last family-size packet of banana kick from taehyung—

standing by the sink, elbows-deep in soapy water, is yoongi.

he is dressed in a huge black hoodie that seems to have swallowed both the broad line of his shoulders and the soft, warm-milk-and-honey scent of blankets. its sleeves, too long for his arms in the first place, are rolled up all the way to an inch below his elbows. a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses perch on the bridge of his nose. his forearms are so pale, jeongguk thinks, and bites down on a jealous pout when he thinks about the way the moon treats yoongi’s skin with reverence, about the way the sun turns yoongi into an illusion of spun gold and radiance.

without thinking, jeongguk ambles into hearing range and mumbles a timid, “hyung.”

yoongi doesn’t startle easily, but he’s still a bit disappointed when all he gets in response is a raised eyebrow and an amiable, “hey, kid.” yoongi’s voice is rough, scratchy with disuse, and about an octave lower than it usually is. jeongguk—likes it. likes it a lot. “sleep well?”

“sort of,” jeongguk replies, and says no more.

the maknae’s unusual taciturnity doesn’t seem to bother yoongi very much. he hums, reaching out to tame a cowlick sticking out above jeongguk’s ear. soap bubbles pop against his skin, ticklish. wordlessly, jeongguk presses the warm pads of his thumbs against the shadows gathering under yoongi’s eyes. they are not close enough to be sharing body heat—it’s too hot, the sun overbearing—but there’s not enough distance between them to ignore the way yoongi’s eyes turn soft and gooey, or the way jeongguk shuffles closer, hands seeking the warmth concealed in the folds of yoongi’s clothes.

yoongi’s face isn’t very expressive. usually it’s a bit slack, a bit blank, occasionally too haggard to hide behind the facade of bright-skinned makeup. his eyes are triangular, sharp and somewhat feline but soft at the edges, and it’s through the eyes that jeongguk sees the most emotion. even when the emotion breaks through, it’s through microexpressions, little nips and tucks in the corners of his cupid’s bow or in the tightening of his jaw or in the flash of his gums.

it’s very intimate knowledge, jeongguk thinks, but it’s hard not to pick up on it when yoongi is always in such close proximity, always hovering a little out of his periphery, always offering small parts of himself without really meaning to.

so it’s no surprise to anyone when jeongguk searches the planes and angles of the elder’s face and finds something off. “hyung,” he says, voice pitched low so that it’s not as painful to ease out of the comfortable silence, “are you okay?”

yoongi blinks. “you noticed.”

jeongguk nods. the elder looks a bit annoyed at himself, nose scrunching. “it’s stupid,” he mutters, and gestures at the near-full dish rack. “and i know it’s stupid, so i’m just—repetitive movement, you know? it relaxes me.”

“okay,” he says. of course yoongi wouldn’t tell him what’s wrong, not specifically. he knows it’s not because he’s the youngest, or because he might not be as reliable, but it stings all the same. “you can tell me, hyung,” he tries. “i can help. i will, if you’d let me.”

carefully, yoongi takes jeongguk’s hand in his, turning it over in his palm, eyes fixed on their feet, almost toe-to-toe. “it’s not like that,” he says, and it mightn’t have made sense if jeongguk didn’t know yoongi better. “i would tell you, guk, but it’s just—”

“hyung, please.”

jeongguk stares yoongi down until he relents. “it’s valentine’s,” yoongi starts, and shrugs to make it seem like it doesn’t bother him. he’s very easy to see through, if one has had enough practice. “seokjin-hyung forgot to buy us a cake, and namjoon isn’t going to be home until late. taehyung and jimin are god knows where. hobi is out with his sister.” he shrugs again, and laughs a self-deprecating little laugh. “i just thought we’d be doing the same thing we always do. it’s stupid, see, guk?”

“it’s not,” jeongguk says. possessed by an odd urge to get that—that expression off his hyung’s face, that expression that speaks of being lost and lonely, he untwines his fingers from yoongi’s and fishes his phone out of his pocket. without looking up, he asks, “hyung, what’s the name of that place?”

“what? what place?”

“the cake place.”

the situation seems to catch up to yoongi, then. he jerks forward, eyes wide. “no, guk.” and jeongguk is almost convinced, the sight of yoongi’s cheeks flushed red making his attention waver. “you don’t have to. we would be able to finish it anyway. not without the others here.”

jeongguk doesn’t even pretend to think about it. he types ‘valentine’s day cake special’ into the naver search-bar and scrolls down the page with his thumb. “then i’ll order half. c’mon, hyung, just the two of us. we can do it.”

“no, we can’t.”

“we can.”

they can’t. the cake is enormous, with about eight layers of rich, dense cream and a layer of icing so thick that it’s no small feat to cut through. yoongi stops eating one and a half pieces in, laying himself down slowly on the ground as jeongguk throws all manner of decency aside in favour of scooping at the insides with his bare hands. the elder watches on in mild disgust, specks of sweetness peppering the edges of his mouth, and comments on how neither of them are very good decision-makers.

“you’re just old. and weak.” jeongguk’s eyes water as he chokes down the last mouthful of cake. yoongi mumbles something incoherent, patting the length of carpet beside him. “happy valentine’s, hyung,” he says, before collapsing onto the carpet with a groan.

yoongi rolls over, slinging an arm over jeongguk’s waist. jeongguk twists around to face him and almost immediately regrets it, because for yoongi, jeongguk feels like—

(he knows it might not be love, but what he does know is that it’s not a crush. he’s not one to do things half-heartedly. this is something bigger, something deeper, something greater. something that makes him feel like a heathen but also like a saint, on top of the world and kicking stones off a precipice to hear them fall and crack into a million pieces at the bottom.)

—like he’s flying, except it’s less like flying and more like falling, only in the wrong direction.

at least he isn’t miserable about it anymore.

if someone were to ask him what he liked the most about yoongi, he wouldn’t be able to give them a straight answer. namjoon’s prodded him before, in a funny, roundabout sort of way, and there have been plenty of interviews where he’s been driven into a corner and answered falsely, out of obligation.

but there is a list. short. precise.

he doesn’t like to think about it, though, because when he thinks about all of the things yoongi is made up of, his mind wanders and doesn’t return quick enough for him to pretend he hasn’t lost himself to his own imagination. those thoughts are fickle and treacherous as the sea during a storm, little newspaper boats bobbing on the swell—

—“jeongguk-ah, can you help me with this?”

jeongguk blinks. yoongi has been talking to him, perhaps mistaking his unresponsiveness as a brand of silent attentiveness. the cake is gone, nothing left of it but a circle of crumbs and melted wax on the carpet.

“what?”

yoongi scowls weakly. “don’t ‘what’ me. help me with this. i think i’ve got cream on my—”

lips. around his mouth, mostly. jeongguk’s face betrays him, two spots of colour appearing high on his cheekbones. he hesitates before lifting himself into a sitting position, reaching over yoongi’s sprawled-out torso to snatch a few napkins off the coffee table.

he props himself up on his elbow and arches his back. “here, hyung.”

“thanks.” yoongi swipes messily at his mouth before lifting his chin for inspection. “better?”

“worse,” jeongguk replies, pointing to his own face. “there. a little lower… on the left side. my left, not yours—no, hyung. here, let me. napkin, please.”

yoongi wets his lips, throat bobbing. “no, guk, i can do it myself—”

“obviously you can’t! all you’ve managed to do is make a bigger mess of yourself! please, hyung, just give it to me—”

the carpet under his elbow slips forward, his balance staggering forward and to the left. jeongguk tries to right himself before he falls, tries to compensate for the shifting of weight, but yoongi does as well and their elbows collide painfully and then jeongguk tips forward, one of his hands fisting in yoongi’s collar and the other slamming into the ground, bent at the elbow so that he’s holding himself up on his forearm, barely stopping himself from crushing yoongi outright.

and now, now yoongi is staring up at him, lips slightly parted, chest heaving.

the impact probably knocked the breath out of his lungs, jeongguk reasons to himself, which is why the elder is a bit—breathless. that’s probably it. really, jeongguk is taking whatever excuse offers itself up because the alternative is too terrifying to even think about, the possibility that yoongi’s breathing is stuttered for the same reason his heartbeat is jackrabbiting in his throat.

dangerous territory, that.

(he ignores the fact that yoongi is statistically the fastest idol rapper in korea and probably doesn’t have a set of normal lungs to begin with. the official number is something like an average of 8.3 syllables a second, which is ridiculous and only three seconds behind the guinness world record.)

(this is, jeongguk realises, all irrelevant information, regurgitated by his brain to distract him from how if he just, if he just let himself drop down, he would be able to—)

hands push weakly at his shoulder. yoongi is very red, all the way from his ears to his neck. that’s—excusable. somehow. he’ll think of a reason later.

yoongi moves. it’s not helping, really. “jeongguk, can you…?”

“yeah,” jeongguk flusters, retaking control of his limbs, “yeah, okay, sorry—”

“it’s fine.” yoongi clears his throat and awkwardly extracts himself from beneath the younger. “hey,” he begins, and clears his throat again, averting his gaze as he scratches at the nape of his neck. “i’m going to—” he jerks his thumb at the sink, still not meeting jeongguk’s eyes, “—i’m going go, um, finish the dishes.”

“okay,” jeongguk whispers, and schools his face into a smile. “okay.”

something in him—wilts.

the next time namjoon tutors him in english, he asks him what the english equivalent of ‘unrequited’ is.

there is a silhouette on the other side of the door that might be the maknae.

the doorbell rings. suddenly, yoongi is absolutely certain that it’s jeongguk, because he’s the only one that bothers making his presence known at all before he enters genius lab. yoongi stands up, opens the door, and turns back to his desk when he realises the younger is holding a camera.

“is this the place that i’ve only heard about?” jeongguk says. “genius lab?”

yoongi slumps back into his chair and snorts, a helpless smile tugging at his mouth. “what do you mean, ‘only heard about’? you were here yesterday as well.”

jeongguk ignores him in favour of moving around, betraying his apparent unfamiliarity with how easily he fits into yoongi’s space. “why is there shampoo here?”

he turns, tucking his bangs into his cap, which is stuck on backwards on his head to hide his uncooperative hair. “i eat and sleep in here.”

“almost half the day?”

“no.” yoongi doesn’t know if jeongguk is teasing him or not. he spends far more than half-days in here. no more nights, though. “i just eat and sleep better in here.”

a vague yeah. jeongguk pans around, round glasses sitting low on his nose. “while we were preparing for the comeback, you basically lived here. that’s—cool.” his voice is nasally, hoarse. tired. “do you have anything to show us for the comeback show? piano?”

when yoongi watches the broadcast later, the screen reads, in black and white, subtly does everything asked of him. there’s no truer statement, really. yoongi would, for any of them.

the rest of the segment isn’t too interesting. jeongguk babbles about their fans and how they’d love seeing yoongi at the piano; yoongi keeps playing, fingers moving of their own accord; jeongguk asks questions he already knows the answers to— are you freestyling? from what age did you start using midi? thirteen? what was i doing at thirteen? —and yoongi talks about the past to an avidly listening jeongguk.

jeongguk leaves with a polite, “thank you, hyung,” and a satisfied smile.

what happens next doesn’t get into the cut, rightfully so; seized by recklessness, yoongi reaches out to grab jeongguk’s wrist, desperation bitter on his tongue. w ait, he wants to say. wait, don’t go, stay, stay here with me.

but then yoongi pauses, pushing aside his embarrassment to frown at the sheer warmth of jeongguk’s skin. jeongguk is a human space heater—yoongi knows from being pressed up against the younger on the couch during movie nights—but this feels different. it looks different too, once he leans in to inspect further, pressing his hand flat across jeongguk’s forehead. it’s a testament to how sick jeongguk is when he does nothing, simply stills under the elder’s cold palm.

“you’re burning up, what the hell?” he uses his free hand to brush jeongguk’s unruly bangs out of his eyes, and then retracts both hands to dig through his pockets for money, mumbling something about buying some medicine on the way home. “you’re not wearing socks? really, guk? it’s the middle of winter.”

there is no response. yoongi looks up, ready to scold the younger, realises the shockingly small amount of space between them, and steps back. it’s dark enough that the redness of his ears goes unnoticed. jeongguk lets out a slow breath, and maybe yoongi imagines it, but it sounds uneven.

the younger seems to struggle between a reassuring smile and something else, settling on a wry quirk of his mouth. “i should be the one worrying, hyung. you never call me ‘guk’ unless you’re drunk or tired out of your mind.”

yoongi is tired, stretched too far too thin, which is his best bet at an excuse when he draws back sharply to snap, “then i won’t. i’m not… i’m not hoseok or jin or jimin or tae, koo—jeon jeongguk.” he rubs the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact. “it’s not—it’s not easy for me either, but if you really want it, then i’ll stop calling you—”

“no,” jeongguk says, and then makes an aborted movement to cover his mouth as if he wasn’t expecting the loudness of his own voice. “no,” he says, again, and this time jeongguk’s flushed cheeks are as clear as day. yoongi swallows. “it’s okay, hyung. you can keep, um, calling me whatever you want. it’s—nice.” he makes a flustered sound. “sorry.”

“anything?”

“yeah. if you want to.”

oh, yoongi thinks. he’s so fond it feels like his ribs are crushing his heart. the weird, tingly feeling that he’s grown accustomed to enduring around jeongguk arcs up through his throat and washes over his tongue and onto his lips, which shape themselves into a hopeless smile, gums and all.

he can’t help it, really.

“okay.” yoongi brushes past the younger, raising himself up onto his tiptoes to unravel a scarf from the row of hooks beside the entryway. “c’mere. i can’t have you walking outside like that.”

the younger ambles over, all wrapped up in a navy turtleneck that yoongi has seen before, perhaps on broadcast. leftover residue from the snowfall has dampened the hair behind his ears. yoongi lifts his arms and fixes the scarf around jeongguk’s neck, bundling it tight before falling back on his heels.

jeongguk blinks slowly, mumbling his gratitude. the studio door shuts behind them, and yoongi has to do—something. he hasn’t said sorry for his outburst earlier, not explicitly, but whenever he looks at jeongguk and opens his mouth, nothing comes out but empty air.

yoongi, world-renowned lyricist yoongi, yoongi of the stone cold heart, won’t admit it to anyone but himself: jeongguk, to him, is a certain kind of pretty that speaks in the language of disasters.

the walk to the bus stop is short. it feels like a ticking time bomb; once they assume their usual positions on the iron bench beneath that bus shelter at the end of this street, yoongi’s tongue is going to be glued to the roof of his mouth and he’s going to be plagued with guilt forever. he’ll never live it down.

it’s not hard, it’s not hard, they’ve held hands before, it’s not hard. oh, but it is.

but, yoongi reminds himself, painfully aware that he’s psyching himself up just to hold someone’s fucking hand. but jeongguk is so forgiving, so selfless, the person to say i’m fine so much, so consistently, that namjoon once replied, you’re always fine —

so yoongi sort of jabs his hand out to grasp jeongguk’s, wrapping his fingers around the younger’s palm before shoving their joined hands into his coat pocket.

there’s a short window of time where yoongi stares with a distant sort of horror at his pocketed hand. once the initial terror wears off, he tugs them both forward, ears furiously warm, too overwhelmed to provide an explanation. jeongguk stumbles and slows, a beat behind him. it makes it easier for yoongi to keep his eyes forward instead of looking back over his shoulder to gauge jeongguk’s reaction.

they’re halfway to the bus stop when jeongguk suddenly digs his heels in, sending yoongi to a screeching halt. yoongi turns, tries to look at jeongguk, and finds himself incapable of lifting his chin. the chosen alternative is to direct his gaze to his toes, mortified. what was i thinking?

“sorry.” the apology is mumbled into yoongi’s scarf. he takes the mess of intertwined fingers and warm palms out of his pocket and loosens his fingers, ears red. “sorry, i’ll just—”

jeongguk says, more air than sound, “hyung,” and eases yoongi’s fingers back between his own. the tip of his nose is pink. the younger scrubs at it with the back of his free hand, shadows pooling under his eyelashes. he exhales a cloud of steam. “you can.”

yoongi wonders, not for the first time, how jeongguk is. how he can exist like this.

“yeah,” yoongi manages. “yeah, okay. let’s go.”

he makes a beeline for the bench as soon as the bus stop comes into sight, calves complaining. jeongguk turns to him, grinning like a loon, and asks him to take his other glove off. yoongi does.

it’s peculiar, seeing as the maknae is the most attentive out of all of them, when jeongguk doesn’t seem to realise that he hasn’t let go of yoongi’s hand yet. as a result, yoongi ends up bending almost in half, chest pressed to the tops of his knees, as jeongguk slips and slides to the curbside, reaching out, naked palm facing heavenward. a soft sound of wonder escapes his lips as his fingers curl in towards his palm, feverish skin recoiling at the first touch of falling snow.

there is soot polluting the air from the smokestacks nearby. it mixes into the snow, staining it grey.

“it’s snowing a lot, hyung.” the younger slowly turns to face him, hand cupped. yoongi reminds himself to inhale, to exhale.  “snowflake,” he breathes, and looks unjustifiably dismayed when the snowflake melts before yoongi can get a proper look at it. jeongguk huffs and casts his gaze up at the pitch sky.

“don’t pout, guk.”

“i’m not.” he is, and it’s cute — even though yoongi hates it with a raging passion whenever anyone else does it — but his lips are no longer pursed when the elder goes to point it out. “it must be really cold up there.”

“why?”

“snowflakes only form when it’s below freezing all the way down,” jeongguk explains. “otherwise they’d just clump together. did you know, hyung, that seoul only gets pretty snowflakes because the air is really moist? the colder it is, and the more water vapour there is in the air, the more intricate the snowflake will be.”

yoongi hums and runs his thumb over their knuckles, mind elsewhere.

his hands are bigger, his fingers longer and more knobbly, but jeongguk is taller. younger, a little less broad in the shoulders, more soft-spoken. nevertheless, it’s still a knock to his pride when yoongi has to look up to talk to someone four years his junior.

the coordi-noonas give yoongi as many insoles as he wants, which is something of a tender nerve once he goes to stand next to, say, taehyung or jeongguk or namjoon or hoseok or… or anyone who isn’t jimin, and still finds his eye-level an inch below theirs.

you look taller today, hyung. are you wearing insoles?

i’m not even wearing shoes right now, jeongguk. just socks.

how many pairs of socks?

listen here, brat—

it’s more obvious on broadcast, now, because all of the new rookie idols seem to be at least seventy-percent leg.

minho—the one who filmed that historical drama with taehyung—and his copious amount of leg gives yoongi war flashbacks to an episode of some obscure american cartoon where the main character’s aunt is legs . just legs, all the way up to her idiotic butt chin.

all thoughts scatter from his mind when he feels a pull on his arm.

he glances up, still a little disoriented, and is consequently blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car. yoongi almost trips over himself scrambling to his feet as he bunches his hand in jeongguk’s jacket and bodily wrenches the younger back from where his feet are planted too close to the road. jeongguk gasps.

“fuck.” yoongi’s chest heaves, expression frantic. jeongguk is fine. unharmed. he just needs to convince himself, and then he will go about untangling his fingers from jeongguk’s collar. “ fuck .”

chilly fingertips ghost along the fragile bones of his wrist. reassurance. “i’m okay, hyung, just a bit spooked. wait, are you—are you shaking? what? oh my god—” jeongguk shuffles closer, looking more panicked than he was when he was almost run over , “—sorry, hyung. please, hyung, i’m okay, just—”

“yeah, okay, okay,” yoongi blurts. it happens like that a lot; all at once, and everything at the same time. or maybe yoongi is just too aware of everything jeongguk does. “i get it. i’m stressed and tired, and a lot happened today. you can let me go. i’m fine.”

jeongguk doesn’t let him, fisting the back of yoongi’s jacket to keep him close. “i dunno, hyung. you’re still shaking.” he narrows his eyes, suspicious. “and you’re turning all red. you’re sure you’re fine?”

yoongi steps back far enough for his lungs to start functioning again and makes to release jeongguk’s hand, but the younger is having none of it, tightening his grip with a defiant tilt of his chin.

for fuck’s sake, yoongi thinks. it is not the right time to go around noticing how jeongguk’s lips are an almost unnaturally rosy shade of pink—slathered in that lip balm he carries around everywhere—and bruised from being worried between his teeth. usually they’re turned up sweetly at the corners, but jeongguk is upset so he’s pouting, sticking his bottom lip out, and—

it goes without saying that it doesn’t stop yoongi from noticing the hell out of it anyway.

“i am fucking peachy, thank you very much.” he sniffs, shrinking back into his scarf. “you’re the only who almost got flattened. why aren’t you freaking out?”

“i would, but you already did all of the freaking out for me, hyung.”

“brat,” yoongi says. as always, it comes out far less scalding than intended. “just pay attention, please.”

“i will.”

the lull in conversation doesn’t last long, because jeongguk takes out his phone, unplugging his earphones and pressing the pad of his thumb on the screen. the soft chords of debussy’s clair de lune wells up through the gaps in sound.

most of the time, yoongi dislikes the absence of noise. he has a conditioned reflex to be always listening to something, for something, always listening for some marvellous, life-changing chord.

he finds a new one every morning when seokjin toils away in the kitchen at dawn, pots and pans clanging together busily. there’s a curious one, not yet fully formed, in the low rumble of the laundromat next door. he likes the the constant buzz of the radio; it’s just a background murmur, the beginnings of a subdominant tone. in minor, perhaps, though he can’t be sure because the owner regularly goes out to scold the teenagers that have taken to smoking on the doorstep and it makes it hard to hear.

yoongi has written a song about a chord. he heard it first on the eight o’clock train to daegu, has heard it every time since. the melody, ever fickle, only visits in the morning when there are only a dozen people on-board spread sparsely between each carriage, and everything on the outside is dark and purple and heavy.

all it is: a peculiar clash of sounds that is somehow harmonious. thus came about spring day.

the thing is, silence with jeongguk doesn’t feel like the silences with the rest of the members, mostly because he doesn’t mind them at all. there’s a train of thought behind it that yoongi is not eager to explore.

whatever’s waiting at the end of that hypothetical rainbow is the root of all his problems.

(but yoongi has a feeling he already knows what it is.)

( wrong , for one.)

their bus coughs to a stop at the curb, the doors opening with a pneumatic hiss. jeongguk boards first, taking the seat at the far back. yoongi has to snatch at the overhead straps, staggering every which way as the driver stomps on the pedal and the entire vehicle leaps forward with a wheeze.

a hand seizes yoongi’s elbow and drags him down. yoongi opens his eyes; closes them again when he sees jeongguk leaning in close, grinning. “s-stop that. i’ll seriously vomit on you.”

“you wouldn’t.” the easy smile on jeongguk’s face ebbs as he glares at the silhouette of the driver. “that wasn’t very nice of her, speeding off like that while you were still standing up.” he sways, brought closer by momentum. “and she was glaring at you, hyung, when you were paying for your ticket. i saw.”

yoongi shrugs. “it’s late, she’s probably tired, and my hair is bleached blonde. c’mon, kid, cut her some slack.”

the real reason is because yoongi saw her eyeing jeongguk while the younger was fussing with his ticket, patting at his pockets and apologising profusely; saw her take the money and keep her hand over his for far longer than was professionally necessary; saw one of her little cockroach eyes wink at jeongguk as he passed by, happily oblivious.

since the bus was empty apart from the pair of them, nobody was the wiser when yoongi strode forward, leaned in, pointed at jeongguk’s back, and whispered, low and deadly:

hello, you wrinkled piece of shit. i could sue you for workplace sexual harassment and breach of contract — yeah, don’t think i didn’t see you short-changing him — but i won’t. you know why? because you’re not worth my time or the price of my ticket or the piece of fucking chewing gum on the sole of my shoe or the enormous shit my dog took on the couch this morning. the change? fantastic. have an awful fucking evening.

yoongi fishes in his jeans for the money and feels around blindly for jeongguk’s hand, pushing the coins into his palm. “your change,” he says. “you forgot it.”

“i did?”

“no. she short-changed you and you weren’t paying attention. again.” yoongi cracks his eye open, fixing jeongguk with a sharp look. “you’re tired.” it’s not a question.

the younger shakes his head. “i’m really awake, hyung. really. i skipped my nap earlier as well, the one i usually take after dinner, so i should be tired. i should be, but then i came to the studio and saw you and filmed you and i didn’t feel tired any—” he clears his throat. “i mean, the walk there was really cold. it woke me up.”

jeongguk is pink all over when he opens both eyes to look. yoongi wonders if his skin is cool or warm to the touch. whether his skin runs as hot as his blood.

“okay,” yoongi croaks. “okay.”

“show me your hands.”

“my hands? they’re right here, hyung. on the ends of my arms, where they’re supposed to be.”

yoongi scowls. “don’t push it,” he warns. he takes jeongguk’s hand in his, turning it over gently. there is a burn, about as long as his index finger and twice as wide, marring the centre of his palm. his scowl deepens. “when?”

“today,” he replies, after a pause. “i wasn’t paying attention, that’s all. i put it under the tap for a bit, like seokjin-hyung always reminds us to do if we get burned, but then the timer went off and i got distracted.”

“so you forgot about it?”

jeongguk flushes, shame filling his cheeks with colour, and nods.

yoongi unscrews the cap, applying the burn gel to the inflamed skin, touch feathery. it makes something inside of him twist. it’s the same sensation he had when jeongguk collapsed during concert rehearsal all those years ago, malnourished and in obvious pain. only this time, it’s about ten times less terrifying.

seeing jeongguk hurt scares yoongi enough for his voice to harden, a sharp edge to it that hardly ever surfaces otherwise.

“what for?”

the younger’s cheeks warm, spreading out from his nose and into his ears. yoongi holds his breath.

“i wanted to do something for the group anniversary, since seokjin-hyung goes to the trouble of making us his special seaweed soup every year.” he looks down, fiddling with yoongi’s bracelets. “so i made a cake. i bought the ingredients with my own money, and followed all the instructions really well! i was almost done, but then — ”

the elder reaches out helplessly, hands cold from holding the ice-pack to jeongguk’s forehead. jeongguk startles, staring up at him as he smiles fondly, brushing tousled hair out of his eyes.

“i’m sure it was great, jeonggukie. just — please.”

“okay, hyung.” jeongguk smiles, timid. “can i try again?”

“i think,” yoongi says, “that the right question is whether we can try again.”

once the cake comes out of the oven — jeongguk remembers to use oven mitts this time — it looks… well, to be perfectly honest, slightly radioactive, and definitely not safe for human consumption. yoongi looks up from where he is attempting to whip cream with a pair of chopsticks and frowns. jeongguk glances at him, then at the cake, and purses his lips.

yoongi hums. “it’s not…” he starts, stops, and has to try again, “it’s not… supposed to look like that, is it?”

jeongguk snorts, and then bursts out into laughter. it’s that particular brand of laughter that yoongi only ever gets to hear once in a while, loud and hiccuppy and brilliant. the laughter only gets more obnoxious when he staggers over to where yoongi’s feet are planted by the kitchen island and spots the mess yoongi has made of the icing.

“hyung,” jeongguk gasps, doubling over, “did you seriously use chopsticks to whip the cream?”

yoongi pouts. “what? it’s easier than using a whisk.”

“huh. let me try it.”

he keeps his gaze on jeongguk’s expression, a little curious as to how it tastes, when jeongguk sticks his finger into the bowl, licking the icing off. he smacks his lips, brow creased, and does it again. and again, and again, and again, until yoongi looks down and sees that the bowl has been mostly emptied, only a few meagre dregs of cream deflating miserably at the bottom.

yoongi looks up. “why are you like this?”

jeongguk grins and scoops up the rest of the cream on his index finger and, before yoongi can react, before yoongi can shove him away, smears it all over his nose and his eyelids and his lips.

he splutters, outraged. jeongguk cackles, scrambling out of the kitchen.

“fucking brat,” yoongi grumbles, having lost jeongguk in the midst of his senseless bumbling. the cream is making his eyelashes sticky, and he’s too scared to open them in fear of getting it in his eyes. “where are you, you little sneaky rat?”

the second eldest of the group continues like that for a while, stumbling around the house like he’s drunk. he manages to smash his shins against the coffee table twice and has a foreboding feeling that he’s about to stub his toe on something when he hears, breathed right into his ear:

“yoongi-hyung.”

it is almost comedic how quickly yoongi spins. he whirls around on his heel, waving his arms around in front of him. “where — what the fuck? jeongguk?”

“polo.”

“jeon jeongguk.”

“you’re supposed to say ‘marco’, hyung.”

“this is not a game anymore, kid. screw your stupid marco polo bullshit.” yoongi walks forward and fulfils his own prophecy when he rams his hip into the corner of something sharp. he swears colourfully. “this is your last warning, brat.”

he hears a giggle and hates himself when he immediately turns toward it, like jeongguk’s a siren luring yoongi to his inevitable death. it is a rather fitting metaphor, once he thinks about it.

“yoongi-hyung,” jeongguk sing-songs from his left, closer than before. “over here.”

he gives another warning, this time more of a peace offering than anything else. all he gets in response is another snicker, followed by the soft patter of socked feet against the floorboards. from behind his eyelids, yoongi sees the room go dark.

so jeongguk has turned off the lights. yoongi smirks.

“i know where you are, jeongguk-ah,” he says, striding confidently in the general direction of the kitchen. “the only working light switch is in the kitchen, and jimin snapped all of the curtain cords. give it up.”

jeongguk curses. his footfalls are louder now, and very, very close. yoongi extends his arms, searching. he curls his fingers around the edge of the counter when it brushes past his knuckles and edges closer, towards jeongguk’s panicked breathing, grasps the other counter, and —

the rough, woolly material of jeongguk’s sweater swipes across his nose. yoongi screws his eyes shut, blinking hard; cream sticks his eyelids together, his eyelashes clumped together. he flounders about, clutching at what feels like the jeongguk’s sleeve and wiping his eyes on it, grumbling all the while.

“hyung.” jeongguk’s voice has an odd, breathless quality to it. “you win. you can… ”

he trails off weakly. yoongi opens his eyes, and his breath hitches in his throat.

in their defence, proximity isn’t an unfamiliar premise. back in their rookie years, they’d shared a room with five other people, their company too small, too impoverished. they’d sleep wrapped around one another because it would help ward off the cold, two moth-eaten blankets spread over seven bodies. it wasn’t hard, not really, when they were so thin.

this, though. this is different.

this being yoongi and jeongguk; this being yoongi, caging jeongguk between his arms in the corner of the kitchen, the younger’s back curved towards him to incorporate the jut of the counter; this being jeongguk close, one arm being held captive by yoongi and the other pushed up against his chest, as if in defence; this being yoongi staring at jeongguk, russet lips slightly parted; this being jeongguk at midnight, hellish and heaven-sent, eyelashes catching moonbeams like raindrops in a spiderweb; this being yoongi and jeongguk, bodies nearly completely flush, breathing soft and stilted.

“found you.” yoongi’s eyes flicker down, linger, and dance away. “jeon jeonggukie.”

jeongguk flushes a ruddy red, teeth sinking into his bottom lip. his hands hover, uncertain, before touching ever so lightly down onto the inside of yoongi’s wrists, closing over the fragile, papery skin. his grip is loose enough to be nonexistent. yoongi’s eyes falter, fluttering shut. his nose grazes jeongguk’s cheekbone. he sighs.

“we — ” jeongguk swallows, flustered, “ — we should finish the cake, hyung . ”

yoongi hums, horribly amused. “yeah?”

“yeah.”

“you should clean this up first,” he says, pointing at his own face. jeongguk averts his gaze, shaking out his hair, a nervous tic that he’s strangely familiar with. yoongi tilts his head to the side, smug. “what, guk? you’re not going to help me?”

some of jeongguk’s despair escapes through parted lips in the form of a soft, breathy whine. his eyes remain stubbornly trained on yoongi’s mouth — whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is beyond either of them — as he curls his fingers over the cuff of his sleeve and wipes at yoongi’s stained face. he is oddly gentle with the delicate skin under yoongi’s eyes.

he’s about to start on yoongi’s lips, ears crimson, when the front door swings open.

yoongi jumps back, snatching a paper towel from the cabinet to scrub at his face, irritating the skin to a shade of red that is only slightly lighter than the red it had been before. jeongguk stays where he is, chest moving shallowly. yoongi doesn’t see how badly his hands are shaking.

it’s namjoon, back home late from a production meeting.

he peers at the two of them curiously, keys dangling from his index finger. “what are you two doing up so late?”

“baking,” is the first thing out of yoongi’s mouth. jeongguk’s breathing starts to even out, enough for him to shoot namjoon a shaky smile. yoongi adds, for good measure, “it’s black forest cake. for the group anniversary.”

namjoon says nothing; simply raises a single eyebrow at the two of them before disappearing into his room.

later, namjoon will ask all the right questions. later, yoongi will tell him everything. tell him about jeongguk, all about jeongguk and how he feels and what he feels and what jeongguk does to him, good and bad. later, namjoon will listen very patiently, very carefully, before telling him that yoongi is feeling something dangerous and very, very powerful.

they remake the icing — with a whisk, this time, and a large dose of awkward, terse silence.

yoongi falls asleep with powdered sugar on his tongue.

jung hoseok can play the trumpet, apparently.

hoseok spots him halfway through his epic rendition of the benny hill theme song and blows so enthusiastically on the mouthpiece of his trumpet—“where did you get that,” yoongi says, pained—that strings of saliva erupt from the foremost spit valve.

base survival instincts kick in before hoseok can fling his arms around him and plant a sloppy kiss on his cheek. yoongi scrunches his nose, suppressing a smile, and pushes hoseok’s offending face away, tugging the collar of his jacket over his chin to shield himself from any more unnecessary affection.

jimin picks himself up off the floor and bounds over to him. yoongi squints a little harder when he sees the tell-tale smudges of concealer beneath his eyes.

“you haven’t slept,” yoongi says, tone accusing. he reaches up to flick jimin’s forehead, rummaging through his coat for a hot pack. shoving it into jimin’s arms, he then proceeds to sock him in the shoulder. gently, of course. hoseok lets out a soft aww that yoongi ignores. “it’s winter break, you know. we have no schedules for a few days. rest.”

“but we’re still preparing for—”

“the end of year ceremonies, i know. doesn’t mean you should be working yourself into the ground, especially when the actual award shows are two months away.”

the younger man has the mind to look sheepish. he shrugs, thin shoulders jerking. “there’s always room for improvement, hyung. anyway—” yoongi notices the obvious attempt to change the subject but doesn’t mention it, just raises an eyebrow that jimin very gracefully ignores, “—have a listen. jeonggukie sung his part of the pre-chorus, but namjoonie-hyung thinks there’s something off.”

“that’s because namjoon is a fucking nitpicker. god knows if any of us have ever fucking impressed him,” yoongi gripes, taking the hard drive and flopping down in the corner of the practice room. “who cares if he can rap like jay-fucking-z. he can stick his damn egg head all the way up his pretentious ass.”

it is an exaggeration of the worst kind to assume that yoongi is even remotely eager to look over jimin’s composition. to say he’s looking forward to it tiptoes the line of grudging reluctance. this can be partly attributed to the fact that it’s ass o’clock at night and yoongi is subsisting on one cup of shitty instant coffee and two hours of sleep.

the first thing he notices is that jeongguk is straining. his voice is thin, the way it gets when he’s tired, and when he belts the final note of the verse, yoongi’s face contorts in a wince. jimin’s face tells him that he has noticed as well.

“what time did you record this?”

“this afternoon,” jimin replies, worried. “around two o’clock. he came straight to the studio after work.”

yoongi scrubs his face with his palms. “he sounds like crap.”

“i know.” jimin runs a hand through his hair, dyed a shockingly normal shade of dark brown. this comeback has been easy on his scalp. “that’s why i told him to stay home tonight, but yugyeom and mingyu wanted to go out and it’s… it’s probably good for him, right? because he doesn’t go out very much and he spends all of his time with us.” he turns to yoongi for support. “right?”

“where,” yoongi bursts out, already threading his arms through the sleeves of his coat. he grabs another jacket and a scarf as an afterthought, throwing them over his shoulder. “where did he go?”

jimin blinks, confused. “he, uh, he said he was meeting them at the t-club down in hongdae. why?”

“jimin,” yoongi hisses, “there is going to be a massive fucking snowstorm tonight and jeongguk didn’t bring his jacket or his scarf with him—of course he didn’t—and how is he going to get home? he doesn’t have his licence, or a car , for christ’s sake, and sejin-hyung is out of town—”

hoseok packs his trumpet back into its case.

“relax, hyung. gyeom and gyu won’t leave him out in the cold like that; besides, if worst comes to worst, he can just stay at their dorms.” hoseok grins. “you’re overreacting, hyung. you don’t have to worry so much. jeongguk can take care of himself.”

“i will worry about whoever i damn please, thank you very much.” yoongi turns, already halfway out the door. “what?”

jimin and hoseok share a look. it is a very poignant, very obvious look. yoongi thinks he might be witnessing the first telepathic conversation between two human beings; knowing hoseok, there is probably a lot of screeching going on. jimin’s left eye is moist and twitching and slightly out of focus. the sight is equal parts hilarious and horrific.

“nothing,” jimin says, finally. “it’s nothing, hyung.”

hand still hovering over the doorknob, yoongi squints at the pair of them, standing about a foot apart in the middle of the practice room. “you’re being weird,” he says. “what? you’re not—you know jeonggukie doesn’t like the cold. i’m just doing him a favour. picking him up before he catches a cold or something—”

“jeonggukie hasn’t caught a cold since he was five, yoongi-hyung.”

“—but there’s a chance, isn’t there? he can’t be sick now. comeback season is coming, and i don’t want to see him all, i dunno, all snotty and sad. you know how sulky he gets when he’s sick.” he cuts himself off, horribly aware of how the words sort of just stream out of his mouth, unfiltered. “jesus, i just—you know he’ll hate it if he can’t perform with us. you know .”

yoongi returns jimin’s growing smirk with a dead-eyed glare.

“okay,” hoseok says, quickly pulling jimin behind his back. it’s a good thing as well, otherwise yoongi would have to physically negotiate that vindictive little smile off jimin’s face. “okay, hyung, you should go.”

still bristling, the eldest of the three kicks the door open and storms down the stairs, too much pent-up energy to wait for the elevator. it’s a shitty elevator, anyway; management doesn’t bother fixing the buttons anymore, because namjoon always pushes them too hard, jabbing at the plastic until it cracks and they don’t light up anymore.

he should have pursued it further, but the thought of jeongguk huddled on the curb in one of his many oversized white t-shirts—yoongi wouldn’t be surprised if they were somehow capable of procreation, seeing as they seem to multiply like a strain of rapidly-evolving cancer—and a pair of jeans too distressed for the weather makes him—it makes yoongi worry, sure, but more than anything it makes him…

it makes him fond. it’s true that jeongguk doesn’t like winter, but not as much as he vehemently hates the sweltering heat of summer. it’s true that the maknae doesn’t dress properly for any kind of weather, choosing a simple shirt-and-jeans-and-boots over most of the designer brands lining his closet. it’s true that he’s told yoongi, i like the way you dress, hyung, and that became the basis for a lot of clothes-swapping. clothes-sharing.

it’s also true that yoongi is weak and dumb and foolish for jeongguk. surprise, surprise.

apparently enough to abandon the prospect of a freezing friday night on the couch in front of the flickering blue light of the tv to sprint—yoongi doesn’t sprint for anyone or anything, period—all the way to a small, funky little club on a snowed-on corner of hongdae’s entertainment district.

“i feel like i’m coming dangerously close to projectile vomiting,” yoongi manages when the bouncer looks at him worriedly. said bouncer takes a few steps back until he straightens and rakes a hand through his sweaty hair, still panting. “uh, did a group of three kids come through here? earlier tonight?”

through the cracks in the pavements comes the smell of hair product and alcohol and cigarette smoke. jeongguk would hate it. the snow only makes it worse, soggy and miserable.

“physical?”

“uh,” yoongi says. “they’re all tall, but, uh, one of them is a lot taller than what you see around here. he’s fuckin’ huge. and… and two of them might have looked a bit similar? small face, cute—i mean, strong nose, pretty eyes. huge eyes. huge eyes, and his hair—”

the bouncer chuckles, holding up a hand and mercifully putting an end to yoongi’s mindless gushing. he was gushing. jesus christ. “you mean mingyu and his friends? they left a few hours ago, man. said they were going to the arcade.”

so yoongi goes to the arcade. the janitor gives him the same response: a shake of his dreadlocked head and vague directions to a retro-american diner three blocks away. “y’mean gyeom? he lost at a game of air hockey—spectacular game until the baby-faced one threw his mallet through the window, see—and said he’d pay for their dinner.”

it continues like that until yoongi has visited a club, an arcade, a diner, a police station, a bike rental shop, a pet store, a library, two instrument stores, a red cross donation box, four banks, an op-shop, a church, and a laundromat.

he finds jeongguk’s clothes in one of the machines, splattered with bike grease and tomato sauce. the box of powder detergent on the floor is the same brand the youngest uses at home. yoongi waits for the load to finish before tucking the shirt and jeans under his arm and dropping down into a chair in front of a dilapidated convenience store.

this side of town, everything is dark and musty and alone.

he takes out his phone, calls the number, and drops his forehead onto the table when jeongguk doesn’t pick up. he doesn’t leave texts because they can be saved and looked at later, when yoongi isn’t half-hysterical with fear.

it goes to voicemail, and yoongi is—yoongi is so sore and so tired.

this time, he allows the tone to play out before opening his mouth to speak.

“jeonggukie.” the name is slurred in his mouth, tongue thick and unwieldy. “jeongguk-ah. where are you? on the adventure of a lifetime, i hope, judging by where you’ve been.”

yoongi stares, heavy-eyed, at the plastic bags hanging from his wrists, white noise in his ear. there are angry red marks biting through his skin, but he can’t feel his fingers anyway because this winter has been awfully harsh and unforgiving. flesh, it seems, is malleable in the face of cruelty. he spots the wrapping of jeongguk’s favourite chocolate peeking out from behind a carton of jeongguk’s favourite banana milk. he doesn’t even remember buying them.

“come home. seokjin-hyung left some ddeokbokki for you in the fridge. you didn’t bring your jacket or your scarf, you idiot, so i’ve brought it with me and i’m, um, i’m sitting in front of a convenience store in the middle of nowhere somewhere in hongdae because i wanted to come and find you before you got cold, but you’re—you’re moving around too much, jeonggukie, i can’t keep up. you’re leaving me behind.”

he wets his lips. lets out a sigh, shaky with exhaustion.

“i don’t think i’ll go home yet, anyway. work to be done at the studio. if you hear this, get home safely. if you can’t, ask yugyeom-sshi or mingyu-sshi to crash at their dorms, and call seokjin-hyung. i’m scared of what he’ll do if you forget.”

standing, knees complaining, yoongi ends the message and hails a taxi, giving the driver the address of the chemist down the road from his studio. the song playing on the radio ends on a high, wavering note, indistinguishable between vocal and violin. they pull up under a lamppost just as the radio commentary begins, crackling on about raffles and speed limits.

the face of his watch says it’s nearing two a.m. yoongi tangles his fingers through the lanyard in his pocket, keys jangling together as he stabs them once, twice, thrice in the direction of the lock and misses two out of three times.

he flicks the lights on, dimming them when his eyes start to sting and water. he strips off his coat and scarf, lethargic after being out in the cold for so long. the wind follows him in, the lethargic beginnings of a snowstorm.

in front of him: suga in white letters on a black background, rotating slowly on dual monitors. yoongi doesn’t really know what he’s doing. waiting? for what?

his eyes tire of staring. coughing the rasp out of his throat, yoongi spins on his chair and pushes away from his desk, stopping in front of his keyboard. reaching forward, out, he fits his fingers onto the keys, and it—it helps. it alleviates what little pain he hasn’t managed to bottle up.

major, decided, when jeongguk asked him to play a song for him. major means happiness unless you desire otherwise. he doesn’t play sevenths too often, the flavour of them bittersweet in his mouth. he swears against c major because it’s too artificial, but most of the time production value trumps sentimentality and he has to tinker with duplets as well, which is boring but sells great.

so jeongguk’s song, untitled, goes in f major .

he plays it slow.

“jeongguk, what the hell? how are you supposed to hit anyone with this?”

jeongguk cackles in his ear, eyes fixed on the screen where yoongi’s character — reinhardt, taehyung tells him, accent purposely thick — strides forward with his shield poised, bellows, “don’t worry, my friends. i will be your shield!” and then proceeds to be shot through the head by an enemy sniper.

yoongi swears. jeongguk laughs harder. “just … just point it in the general direction of the enemy team — the red ones, hyung! the red ones — ah, how can you be so bad?” his bangs tickle the junction between yoongi’s shoulder and neck. yoongi leans away. “what reinhardt lacks in finesse he makes up for with blanket ruination. i thought you’d like him.”

“wow,” yoongi deadpans. “wow. that’s so kind of you, jeongguk-ah. here, swap places with me.”

he stands, shrugging jeongguk’s chin off his shoulder and shoving the younger into the chair before leaning over and selecting a sleek, blue-skinned character. he draws back, arms crossed and a smug smirk on his face. “do your worst, brat. taehyung told me this is one of the hardest heroes.”

jeongguk starts to protest, mouth twitching dangerously, but then the game starts and —

well. yoongi shouldn’t have been surprised.

barely five minutes into the match, jeongguk has managed to slaughter four of the five enemy team members, running around on rooftops and hookshotting all over the map. yoongi watches on, slightly terrified, as he hunts for the fifth. an angel lady speaking in heavily accented english trails behind, healing him. jeongguk’s hero grapples up to what appears to be a bridge, and the scope overlay appears on the screen.

“i’m not that good at her.” the crosshairs skip over the body of a disproportionately large, armoured monkey. “she’s not even hard, either. i don’t know what taehyung has told you, but…”

jeongguk trails off, eyes narrowing as something flits across the screen, a split second of movement so quick that it’s just an afterimage on the back of yoongi’s eyelids. the younger tenses as someone yells something at him through the headset.

and then the fifth enemy player materialises in the sky above jeongguk’s head in a spectacular display of rockets and jetpacks and a valiant shout of, “justice rains from — ”

jeongguk pulls the trigger. something whimpers. it’s not yoongi.

the elder pushes his jaw closed and glares at jeongguk. “that’s not fair.” he jabs at the VICTORY sign flashing on the display with an accusing finger. “you didn’t tell me you were an assassin in a past life.”

jeongguk smiles sheepishly, taking off the headset and shaking his fringe out. “i’m not that good at her,” he says, again. yoongi scoffs. “what? you should see some of taehyung’s friends. anyway, hyung, it’s your turn again.”

the elder huffs as jeongguk grabs his shoulders and stuffs him back into the chair, fitting the headphones over yoongi’s ears. “what,” yoongi says, panicking as jeongguk picks a hero for him, too fast to see its name. “what?”

“just play, hyung. you’ll love him.”

he’s right. yoongi can’t stop playing this hero, this hero with his stupid, robotic head and his uncooked-spaghetti arms and his hilarious japanese quotes. for the next week, yoongi goes about memorizing genji’s quotes and regurgitating them at the most nonsensical of times.

“hyung, drink some water.” — “good idea, jimin-ah. my warrior spirit is burning.”

“hyung, take a shower.” — “yeah, joon. flow like water.”

“yoongi-yah, can you cut these onions for me?” — “my blade is ready to be released.”

or, “hyung, are you serious?” — “you don’t understand, jeongguk-ah,” he says, and then switches to horrible, broken japanese to holler, “THE DRAGON BECOMES ME!”

the first time he does it, jeongguk sinks slowly to his knees, covering his face with his palms.

yoongi stops straight away to crouch down, worried. “jeonggukie? are you okay? i can stop.”

“no, hyung,” he says through his fingers, grinning stupidly. “i just — i just need healing.”

yoongi doesn’t speak to him for rest of the day.

“hello,” says a voice. “hello?”

yoongi jumps, grace notes falling and cracking. he curses when his knee collides with the bottom of the keyboard and sends his sheet music scattering all over the floor. “what the fuck?” he whirls around. there is a person at the door. as far as yoongi is concerned, he’s the only one with a key to his studio. it’s too late to pretend he isn’t here. “who is it? do i need to call the police?”

there’s no reply. scowling, yoongi goes to wrench the door open, ready to scold the everloving life out of the poor drunken bastard for breaking and entering, but—but then yoongi halts, breath stuttering in his throat, as his visitor blinks his doe-eyes open and smiles, cheeks frostbitten.

“hi,” says jeongguk, the sole source of all of yoongi’s anguish. “hi, hyung. it’s so cold.”

except it’s not cold in here. it’s boiling, because yoongi turned the thermostat all the way up to ward off the cold. the elder bars the entrance, filling the spaces in the doorway with his knees and elbows.

“it’s really not,” he begins, strangled with relief and anger. mostly relief. “are you drunk?”

jeongguk giggles. “hyung, no . i mean, a little. pleasantly, but not, uh, not dangerously.”

“how’d you get in?”

“you gave me a key and told me to take care of it, remember? i haven’t lost it, not even once.”

yoongi wants to touch, just to be sure, but he doesn’t. not yet. “why didn’t you go home?”

“didn’t want to. you said in your voicemail that you’d be here, so i came. you sounded off, hyung, you said something like, ‘you’re leaving me behind’, and i didn’t think about it, i just wanted to see you and hear you and tell you that i wouldn’t. i wouldn’t ever. i’m—” here, jeongguk says something in garbled english that he doesn’t understand while pointing fervently at himself, “—you know?”

“ah. yeah, i get it.” he doesn’t. yoongi quivers. “so you’re not… hurt?”

he blabbers that english word again, syllables all jumbled, and then pats the left side of his chest, over where his heart is. “only here, hyung—”

the rest doesn’t make it off the ground as yoongi stumbles forward, pushes into jeongguk and pulls jeongguk into him in one semi-awkward movement. one hand fists in his shirt collar; the other snakes around his tiny waist, fingers curling into the back of his shirt to keep him close.

a moment of shuffling together, weight shifting perilously.

“fuck you,” yoongi says, muffled from how he’s talking into jeongguk’s shirt, “jeon jeongguk, you piece of absolute shit, you scared me so much. don’t do that to me ever again.”

nothing happens for a moment in time, just the two of them in suspended in space, until jeongguk smiles into his hair and says, “i won’t, hyung. i promise.” he pats him on the back, perhaps a silent request to stop clinging, but yoongi just holds on tighter, selfish. “hyung? hey, hyung, can i come in? i’m drunk. i think i caught a cold.”

yoongi thumps jeongguk on the back with his fist weakly. “no,” he says. “you don’t—you don’t know the password.”

“there’s a password?” jeongguk looks bewildered, pulling away slightly to look at yoongi full in the face. his breath is sweet and heady with liquor, eyes wide. “there is no password. you’re lying, hyung, you’re lying. what password?”

he’s so weak, he’s so selfish, so selfish, wanting everything jeongguk has.

the worst thing about this—this entire nightmarish situation where jeongguk is warm and yoongi is cold and the temperature between their bodies is hot—is that yoongi thinks, selfish love; thinks, he might not remember in the morning , and instantly hates himself; thinks, this, i want it, and it’s both petrifying and exhilarating, because he can’t unthink it.

so—so in this rare moment of weakness, this rare moment of indulgence, yoongi lets his hand wander to the sleeve of jeongguk’s shirt, curling there. nothing more. even this tiny gesture of affection. is too much for him. proximity is poisonous, vacuuming the air out of his chest.

yoongi mumbles, “there is,” masking the crinkle of fabric—his other hand, clasping in the other sleeve—with it, and tugs their bodies flush, breathing unevenly onto jeongguk’s collarbone. he leaves himself there for as long as it’s allowed, which is not at all, and then loosens his grip, bracing himself for the inevitable rejection.

something, a peculiar, shaky gasp of air, tickles the hairs on top of the elder’s head.

yoongi makes the first mistake of looking up.

their eyes wander and lock together, not long enough to be awkward but long enough to make yoongi wonder. wonder if jeongguk sees as much as he does, and in the same way, because—

jeongguk is pretty. objectively, subjectively, statistically, catastrophically.

but right now, jeongguk looks somewhere close to ethereal. there are snowdrops slipping down the slope of his nose and onto the sweet curl of his lips. his hair is soaked through and his eyelashes are clumped together and yoongi thinks: i’ve never seen someone so beautiful in my life.

“you know,” yoongi blurts, overwhelmed, “sometimes i let my eyes fall out of focus. i train them on an unfathomable point in the distance and i watch all the small things ebb and flow in the corners of my vision. they call it ambedo, jeonggukie, did you know? it’s like seeing snow for the first time.

“you know when there’s a thunderstorm outside and it’s raining so hard you can hear the piping rattling? you know how i always sit with you because you’re afraid of lightning? i love bad weather. i think so much about lightning and thunder and all that awful stuff. i love watching it. your room doesn’t have good windows so i can’t watch for lightning but i don’t mind.

“you know when we got to room together in bergen? that was so fun, jeonggukie, because you like the same music as i do and you don’t mind me or my awful personality or all those silences we shared. i still have a lot of photos of it. they’re all on my camera and i don’t usually photograph people, humans, but i took a lot this time. of you and of the others and that nice woman at the hotdog stand who gave you extra onions and mustard, remember?”

“hyung,” jeongguk tries, “yoongi-hyung, what are you saying?”

“i’m saying,” yoongi says, heart stuttering, “i’m saying that the password is a kiss. maybe.”

there is no such thing as absolute silence, but what other explanation is there for this all-encompassing nothing?

yoongi doesn’t move. i ruined it. “sorry. sorry, we should… you should go, i’m sorry—”

when it happens—and it does, it does, yoongi is thinking too many thoughts and no thoughts at the same time—it is very fast and also very terribly warm. just the shy press of jeongguk’s lips to his cheek. yoongi shivers unintentionally at the muted sound of jeongguk’s lips parting, and at the breath that ghosts past his cheekbone.

jeongguk draws back, flushed a furious red. yoongi stares, floored.

“good?”

“what?” yoongi clears his throat. “good. i mean, i—yes. that was, uh, very good.”

a small, demure smile crosses jeongguk’s face. “really?”

“yeah.” yoongi breathes in, screws his eyes shut, and throws caution to the wind with the next. “it was better than okay. fucking leagues better than okay, but the password isn’t strong enough, jeongguk. look, you’re going to have to enter more characters, otherwise whatever you have hidden in there isn’t going to stay a secret—”

he feels more than hears jeongguk will himself closer, a tiny, defiant sound leaving his throat. hands cradle yoongi’s face, fingers tucking themselves safely under the sharp edge of yoongi’s jawline, and then jeongguk leans in, whispers, okay, and pecks him on the nose.

yoongi lets out a low, fragmented breath. god , he thinks. he’s probably asleep at his chair again. this isn’t happening, not on the preferred plane of existence of reality, where the plush pink of jeongguk’s lips have touched his skin like this. if it is a dream, then it’s—it’s a good one.

that dream he had once: beautiful, intangible, cruel. something that he can’t have but desires all the same. false until proven otherwise.

this version of jeongguk: beautiful, tangible, cruel. everything that he can’t have but desires all the same. false until proven otherwise.

he wonders when they became so similar.

“again?”

fingers thread through the soft hairs at the back of his head. jeongguk kisses the spot between his eyebrows. he smells of wind and wide fields and gold-dappled sunlight.

yoongi wants a lot, but most of all he wants to stand with jeongguk, waiting for the train under an umbrella in the pouring rain. maybe watch him dance more often. maybe hear him sing impromptu more often. maybe hold his hand, if that’s permitted. maybe sit on his bed and watch him play video games on his computer, scold him if he shouts too loudly. maybe listen to and for things together. maybe just be.

small things. small admissions that flutter out of his palm like butterflies.

“again.”

jeongguk complies, pushing his lips once on his eyelid, and once again on the other.

big things, too. hellish things, darker things. just not yet.

there isn’t enough min yoongi to fit all of this great, big love into.

“jeongguk,” yoongi whispers, voice little more than silence. desperate—because if jeongguk is good at anything, it’s teasing his hyungs—but always waiting. always waiting, forever patient, because yoongi still isn’t certain. the sting in his chest gets sharper. real?

nothing else is said as jeongguk draws yoongi closer. it goes like this until every expansion and deflation of jeongguk’s chest can be paired with the in-out-in-out sound of his breathing. it is, unlike yoongi’s, deep and unhurried, settling in the hollow of yoongi’s collarbone.

impossible, impossible, impossible, yoongi thinks. says: “please.” jeongguk shudders in his arms.

and it is a grand feeling indeed, when jeongguk finally falls into him, real as anything.

yoongi is being brought to ruin, dragged into the ninth circle of hell by jeongguk’s hands, jeongguk’s closeness, jeongguk’s lips. they are chapped and taste of metal and cold liquor, the pink skin cracked open by the ruthless winter. yoongi is hungry for it, foolish enough to take what he wants, pushing too close too soon.

jeongguk breaks away, panting, to stare at yoongi through hooded eyes.

and he makes this—this sound , this sound which will take up permanent residence in yoongi’s deepest, darkest dreams for the rest of his life.

“hyung,” he whines, thoroughly indecent, “please, again, can i—”

yoongi swears, shoves his fingers into jeongguk’s collar, and all but crushes their lips together.

the kiss is, as expected, inelegant. it lands more on jeongguk’s teeth than his mouth, because he had been in the middle of a word. it lands, in any case. embarrassed, yoongi slows down just enough to regain his control, their noses bumping together.

this is nice. pleasant. slow, and gradually driving yoongi insane. he can cope.

and then jeongguk, jeongguk whose redeeming feature is definitely not patience, tilts his head just so, his fingers snarling themselves in yoongi’s hair, and kisses yoongi hard enough for his lips to tingle. yoongi groans into his mouth, falling apart at the seams. there’s so much force behind it that they stumble backwards together, tripping over one another’s feet. the backs of yoongi’s knees collide with his chair and suddenly they’re falling, jeongguk’s falling on top of him with a broken oh shit and shifting until he’s straddling yoongi’s lap, legs spread crudely. yoongi shoves one hand up jeongguk’s shirt, palm pressing into his teeny-tiny waist and into the dimples at the base of his spine, and uses the other to grip his upper thigh, fingers digging into flesh. jeongguk gasps, all lax, pliant lines, body arching obscenely into yoongi’s touch, and they don’t stop moving, they don’t stop kissing until—

“jeongguk-ah.” yoongi pushes feebly at jeongguk’s chest, dizzy. the younger retaliates by nipping roughly at yoongi’s bottom lip, whimpering when yoongi bites back. “ fuck, you’re so—” he gets cut off with a kiss that makes his head spin, halfway between wanting to do this forever and needing to stop before it goes too far. “jeonggukie, slow, slow down—”

and jeongguk does, reluctantly. he sighs sweetly, moving down to nose at the sharp, sweaty jut of yoongi’s jaw— you smell good, hyung —before pressing a kiss there, lips and tongue, and pulling away.

looking directly at jeongguk after what just happened sucks all the air out of yoongi’s lungs. his mouth is red and moist and puffy. his hair is mussed from the wind and also from yoongi’s straying fingers, and his collar is rumpled, stretched to the side, exposing the harsh line of his collarbone. when he opens his eyes to return yoongi’s stare, his expression is—dark. intense.

yoongi has no idea what he himself looks like, but he imagines he looks similarly wrecked.

jeongguk blinks, slightly out of breath, and trains his gaze on yoongi’s neck. “was that—?”

god, yoongi thinks. jeongguk must be the greatest feat of the devil. how he goes from shoving yoongi around and kissing him senseless to—to this , to blundering with his words, shy, is beyond all reason. yoongi never stood a chance.

“that was,” yoongi starts, and abruptly forgets every single adjective in the entire human vocabulary.

jeongguk looks at him expectantly, eyes wide and imploring. when it becomes obvious that yoongi isn’t capable of articulating what jeongguk just did to him, he blinks. blinks again, and then his eyes crinkle and his nose scrunches and he leans close to smile, wide and sweet, into yoongi’s neck.

“hyung,” jeongguk says. “that felt nice. for a first kiss.”

the feeling of jeongguk so close, so happy, makes something rear its head inside yoongi’s chest; simply roll over and expose its soft, vulnerable underbelly.

yoongi buries his nose in jeongguk’s hair to hide his moronic grin. “first?”

jeongguk wriggles closer, ears pink. “yeah.”

“i’m honoured. was it any good?”

jeongguk rolls his eyes. “good,” he mutters disbelievingly, lifting himself up to look down at yoongi. “yeah, it was. you were, um, good. you looked and sounded really—anyway, was it good enough for your password?”

“if you think so.” yoongi smirks. “i didn’t think you actually would.”

jeongguk blushes a deep, lovely red, all the way up his neck.

“i wanted to. i want to, still.”

yoongi kisses him again, between the eyebrows. it’s not really a kiss. it’s more of a pressing-his-smile-into-jeongguk’s-skin thing, but the younger doesn’t seem to mind very much at all, melting into the embrace.

“whenever you want.”

it isn’t that easy. yoongi knows that much.

but doubt is a bad look on the face of someone who feels like he does.

despite everything, jeongguk is young enough to throw himself into whatever this is—he wonders, sometimes, whether this is love at all when he thinks of dark things, filthy things, things that burn his fingertips like fire—with the sort of reckless abandon that scares the life out of yoongi.

“i don’t think so, hyung,” jeongguk tells him, lying next to him in yoongi’s bed. “i don’t think it’s because i’m young and stupid and reckless. i think it’s about—courage. about wanting so much that it doesn’t matter anymore.”

their fingers are interlaced. “i want you,” yoongi blurts. “if that’s what you’re scared of, me not wanting you.”

“i know.”

“do you?” jeongguk smiles and moves closer, eyes dark and pretty, so pretty, in the half-moonlight. yoongi swallows thickly. “i don’t think you do. you’re just—you’re a lot better than me.” unable to help himself, yoongi shifts until his lips brush against the younger’s eyelashes every time he speaks. “you’re… brave, jeonggukie, and that’s where we’re different. i want to hold your hand all the time, but—”

“oh, hyung.”

“—i’m not a warm person, guk, and i care a lot about what other people think. that’s just how i am. it’s not good, especially in a relationship. you could have anyone you wanted, but i won’t be an asshole and say that you deserve better. i’m not saying i don’t trust your judgement, but if there’s someone better, i wouldn’t fault you for leaving me—”

jeongguk presses his lips against yoongi’s, effectively shutting him up. his next words are spoken into yoongi’s skin, intimate. “stop talking about us like we’re going to end.” his ears are hot to the touch when yoongi goes to tuck a few stray hairs away from his eyes. “besides, if i could have anyone i wanted, then i don’t see the problem here. and you’re dumb, hyung, if you think you aren’t warm. you are. just in a different way.”

yoongi reddens. “you’re being unfair.”

“i’m telling the truth.”

“i didn’t say anything about lying. you’re just playing against the rules.”

“what rules?” he cocks his head to the side, birdlike. “i didn’t hear about any rules.”

“jeongguk.” yoongi smiles weakly, so full of unspeakable things. “you know, right?”

the younger grins back, coy. “yes. you could be a little less obvious about it, you know.” yoongi quirks an eyebrow, stretching the fabric of jeongguk’s sleepshirt between his fingers. “my birthday post, remember?”

yoongi flushes. even in the perpetual dusk of yoongi’s room, jeongguk sees it, brushing his knuckles across the reddened skin. “you say that like you would let me forget,” yoongi grumbles, and then lets a smirk grow on his face. “and i’m not taking lessons in subtlety from someone who said—what was it?—‘i want him’ in my birthday video, knowing that eleven million people would be watching.”

jeongguk makes a flustered sound, scowling. it’s all very endearing. “well, it wasn’t a lie.”

this, of all things, is what strikes yoongi speechless. he surges forward, leaning over the younger and pinning him between his forearms before kissing him full on the mouth. jungkook smiles into the kiss. yoongi feels it against his mouth and falls apart, too big for his own skin. greedy and half out of his mind, yoongi moves down, pressing his lips to jeongguk’s neck, nosing at the dip of his collarbone and the hollow at the base of his throat. the younger tips his head back onto the pillow, spine arching and fingers tugging at yoongi’s hair, and it’s so much, jeongguk is so much—

ever-doubtful, min yoongi mouths two questions into his skin: “jeonggukie, jeonggukie, are you okay? is this okay?”

“hyung,” jeongguk whines, “just kiss me if you want to. i don’t mind.” he bites his lip, eyes dark. “please. i really, really don’t mind.”

“god, you’re—you’re fucking unreal.” it’s true. yoongi can’t even look at him without losing his mind. “you can’t just say that, kid.”

“not a kid.” jeongguk threads his fingers into the soft hairs at yoongi’s nape and pulls, none too gently. “and so what if i did? what are you going to do, scold me?”

it is world-ending, how suddenly unafraid yoongi is. he thinks, i’m going to hell, leans in, in, in, dropping his voice to something low and husky and a little menacing, or a little suggestive—depending on one’s moral standards and where one stands on the matter—and whispers the answer-threat-both right into jeongguk’s ear:

“watch your mouth, jeon jeonggukie.”

and then yoongi doesn’t care, he’s so brave, he’s so selfish, he’s in love, where’s the surprise? he bares his teeth and bites, hard, before drawing back just in time to catch the tail end of what might have been a moan, bunny teeth digging into soft, kiss-swollen flesh. “you know,” jeongguk whispers, the words catching on a breath, “the thought of—hands, hyung, on me—it drives me insane, did you know?”

yoongi groans low in his throat. “jesus christ—”

“please stop talking, hyung,” jungkook says. “please, just shut up and fucking kiss me.”

hardly five minutes after they depart the studio, jeongguk asks if he can hold yoongi’s hand.

“you still would, even if i said no,” yoongi grunts. it is nearly four o’clock in the morning. clouds of steam billow from their mouths, curling around their faces. jeongguk takes his hand, snickering. yoongi rolls his eyes but twists their fingers together, tight, until his skin loses its perpetual layer of ice. “brat.”

jeongguk skips forward, impervious to the cold, boots crunching in the frost. the snowstorm had passed while they were indoors, freezing water now puttering through the gutters. yoongi had managed to wrangle a scarf around jeongguk’s neck before they left. the jacket, though, took a lot of negotiating—de facto play-fighting on the floor of the studio, and then some—what with jeongguk dodging around yoongi’s grabbing hands, but it’s for the better.

neither of them like the cold very much.

watching on with what must be a disgustingly fond expression on his face, yoongi reaches out to tug gently on jeongguk’s sleeve. the younger tries to spin on his heel but there’s no grace about it; he slips and stumbles, coming to a shaky stop before the elder. he blinks, curious, the tips of his ears pink. grumbling, yoongi adjusts his scarf around his neck, trying not to make his hammering heartbeat too obvious when jeongguk smiles, small and candid and entirely meant for just the two of them.

later, much later, but not too much, because jeongguk isn’t good at waiting:

“i like you, hyung.”

“cool. eyes on the road, please.”

“what? hyung, what?”

“don’t ‘what’ me. hey, what are you doing?”

“what do you think i’m doing? i’m parking this car and sitting in your lap. obviously that’s the only way i can get you to pay me any attention.”

“oh, god, please don’t.”

“why not? you can’t stop me.”

“oh, god. oh, shit, you’re so—this is so—jesus, guk, i heard you. i always hear you. it’s infuriating, how you’re just always on my mind, always. i’m actually taking weekly sessions with namjoon so that i can practice ignoring you. i need to do it or i’ll go insane but it’s hard, it’s hard when your eyes, guk, they’re so pretty, they drive me crazy whenever you even look at me, isn’t that so stupid? the thing is, the thing is that i can’t ignore you if you’re literally sitting in my lap, alright? i’m making an effort but you’re making it so hard—fuck. fuck, stop fucking moving, jesus.”

“sorry. that was, um, a lot.”

pause.

“hyung, do you really?”

“i do.”

“then why didn’t you say anything? do you not…?”

“no! no, i’m—shit, i’m in love with you, guk. is it not glaringly obvious?”

“…oh.”

“is that it? ‘oh’? get off me, and stop—stop smiling at me like that.”

“you’re blushing, hyung.”

“i am not. now shut up and sit down or i’ll drive this godforsaken car into a wall myself.”

they arrive at the bus stop.

jeongguk stands next to him beneath a lamppost at the end of a nameless street in the dead of night, winter sticking to his lips like sugar, and yoongi—

yoongi is like winter’s firstborn snow: already fallen.