Archive of Our Own

hoseok slaps a leaflet down onto the table next to jungkook’s soggy cereal, which jungkook is eating and promptly spills, eighteen days into jungkook’s unemployment for the fourth time this year.

paid amusement park work, he reads, for the entire of the halloween season. possible permanent position. hoseok asks him with pleading eyes, lets him consider it, begs him, because it’s difficult to cover rent for two people when one of them can’t keep a stable retail job for longer than 6 months.

i can’t act, jungkook tells him.

tae can teach you, hoseok says.

and jungkook says no. is adamant. there’s no point in attending an interview he knows he won’t succeed in. the leaflet gets pinned to the fridge and hoseok gets another copy, sticks it to the back of jungkook’s bedroom door.

you can try, hoseok tells him.

—

jungkook gets hired at a haunted house amusement park on the 26th of september by the way of false-charisma, fake acting credits and the promise that he can totally have a costume reminiscent of the drowned woman in white ready by next monday, of course, sir.

(jungkook tells taehyung first. taehyung shrieks and hugs jungkook and pats at his hair, says, ‘i can’t believe my son is an actor,’ before jungkook pushes him out of his lap, but lets taehyung resume the hair-petting all the same.

‘it’ll be terrible,’ jungkook whines. ‘something will go horribly wrong. i’ll lose a limb from stress. my life will change forever but in a terrible way.’

‘you’ll be fine, you negative nelly,’ taehyung insists. ‘think of me. think of making new friends. think of the money.’

‘didn’t you say i’m supposed to like what i do for money?’ jungkook says. ‘throwing it back in the name of capitalism, and all that?’

‘did you like getting paid to clean other people’s dirty cutlery?’ taehyung asks, and the leave it at that.)

jungkook gets a job. and then life gets really, really weird.

—

jungkook’s room in the haunted house has water-soaked, mouldy floors, an overflowing bathtub with two mannequins painted to look like realistic children curled in odd angles in it. the creaking of water pipes is played in random intervals from the speakers behind a dresser. jungkook, himself, wears a costume destroyed by mould-coloured paint and a rough texture, torn socks, a ripped shirt. he has mussed and dried hair, and taehyung did his makeup at home—a gaunt face with bruised hands, a little bit of blood for effect.

they open for the first show in an hour, and in the room next to him, somebody plays a piano.

jungkook knows it’s not just a recording; there’s no static, it goes loud and soft. it never loops back around, and there’s been a progressive tune playing for ten minutes, slowing down and changing styles, robotic and then smooth, beautiful.

jungkook’s just here for work. he’s not really here for friends. but then there’s kim namjoon and min yoongi downstairs, selling tickets and simultaneously working the food truck, and their boyfriend, park jimin, who steals a bucket of cotton candy from under their noses and winks at jungkook to keep quiet. he has their numbers, now. he’s not very sure why. but he’s accidentally made some friends, which he hasn’t managed to do at a single job of his until now-

so maybe visiting whoever’s next door won’t be too traumatic.

he leaves his phone charging behind the cupboard and stands, opens the stiff wooden door. he hears dozens of voices chatting down at the entrance through the boarded-up window—half an hour till opening, maybe. he’s stuck amongst the smoke machines in the hall, the stereos hidden in the walls, the trapdoors for fake spiders and cobwebs and whatnot.

he turns down the corridor and stops where the piano’s loudest. he knocks twice on the door. the piano stops abruptly, with a moment’s silence.

‘what’s the password, you gremlin?’

huh. not what he was expecting.

‘um,’ jungkook says, because he’d recite the password if he knew it. maybe it’s an inside joke, or stuck up on a poster around the walls. everyone else has worked here past years, and jungkook’s new, and maybe this whole friend this isn’t worth trying for.

nope. he has hoseok at home, taehyung across the street. he has three new people’s phone numbers. that’s his quota met. he doesn’t need piano-man, too.

he’s backing away from the door with clunky footsteps when it’s pulled open, and—

oh.

ah.

hmm.

black hair pushed up and back from his forehead. dark eyes, wide, surprised, glittering. a scar on his cheek made of makeup, red and infected-looking, a bruise near his neck. delicate hands pulling at the collar of his white shirt, stained with fake blood and torn in places. a suit covered— covered in-

in flowers. on both jacket and slacks.

very kissable lips, jungkook notes, for anyone who’d want to utilise that. sparkling with the sticky, pink-tinted type of lip gloss.

‘ah,’ the man says—jungkook thinks back to the room listings posted in the staff room in the basement, and remembers a name, faintly, with the bloody groom— ’you’re not yoongi. or jimin. or namjoon, for that matter.’

he speaks in a warm way like a nursery rhyme, like he’s helping you break through the surface of a nightmare. he speaks how a caress feels, the warmth of hands, a sleepy body buried underneath a feather-weighted duvet.

jungkook tries for speaking, but the words get lost under his tongue, consonants and their tiny hands holding his mouth shut. he stares at the flowers on the suit and the way the man curls his fingers around them gently, like you would something small and living, emotional, trying to grasp and grow.

jungkook shakes his head: no, i’m not yoongi, or jimin, and namjoon, but i know them. they’re downstairs. sorry. you’re hot.

‘i see,’ the man hums. he drops his hands back to his sides, hidden slightly under a too-long dress shirt that pokes past his jacket sleeves. ‘what are you meant to be?’

‘well,’ jungkook starts, sounding all tripped up. ‘a- hm. a male version of the woman in white, i think?’

he gestures to himself, and does a little spin on the floor in a moment of awkward silence. the man grins, sweet, like he just saw a puppy scuttle across a cobblestone street, unstable on its tiny legs. ‘although gendering ghost stories is silly, i think. where did the information come from? i bet there’s been more than one person whose partner left them and was driven through so much grief that they drowned their children in a bathtub.’

the man laughs, a cute series of squeaks ripped from the back of his throat. jungkook’s stomach goes warm and mushy, sinking down to the basement.

‘i’m supposed to be the bloody groom, but i’m sure there’s been more than one, so i get you,’ he says, still huffing out leftover laughter. he leans into the doorframe and ignores how it groans with age. inside, jungkook sees it—the piano, the flurry of pages. ‘who is the bloody groom, anyway? did i murder my bride? is the blood a metaphor for the life i couldn’t live as a result of heteronormativity and social constructs?’

jungkook laughs. ‘shouldn’t you have done research? you know, to build your character.’

‘not all of us are so invested in our part-time work, i’m sorry to say.’

there’s a sprinkling of glitter, high on the man’s cheekbones, not part of the costume at all. there because he wanted it. jungkook didn’t notice it before, that little detail, now held between them like a secret.

the man smiles in a way that puffs his cheeks out. he steps away from the doorframe and spins back into his room. ‘come in! i have gummy bears.’

jungkook steps through the door. he feels like he’s somehow just made a very, very important decision, with a little tremble deep in his stomach. ‘gummy bears?’

‘oh, shit, is this your first year?’ the bloody groom spins around, light on the bumpy wooden floor like he’s floating above it.

‘i’m seokjin, nice to meet you,’ seokjin says, and doesn’t hold out his hand. he just smiles wide, close-mouthed, puffed-out cheeks and sparkly eyes. ‘this is my third time here.’

‘bring food every night, because sometimes it gets real boring if nobody comes down our hall and we need some sort of entertainment,’ seokjin tells him. he brushes a hand over the piano keys. this room is dark, with a bright light coming from a hidden corner and landing on the piano bench, casting shadows onto the walls, but there’s also a lamp turned on for now to make the room glow yellow. it looks abandoned, fake cobwebs and a trail of a dark liquid spun in circles on the floorboards. it feels old-timey, like you walked into a house from centuries ago and tried to live in it—except now, a handheld game console sits atop a stool. ‘bring a book or something, too. i have animal crossing.’

‘jeon jungkook,’ jungkook tells him, rattled easy off the tongue, and seokjin gives him a smile. he feels drawn into the warmth of it, and takes another step inside. ‘animal crossing?’

‘ yes, animal crossing. it’s the only videogame that matters.’

jungkook grins. ‘this is my first year, yeah. everything’s a little confusing.’

‘if you make kids hit you, you’re probably doing it right,’ seokjin tells him, like it’s nothing at all, and glances out through the mesh covering his window. ‘if someone’s a smartass then tell me, or one of the others. we’ll pick on them.’

jungkook frowns. ‘we can do that?’

‘oh, yeah,’ seokjin says, eyes wide and voice high-pitched, and he’s some kind of cartoon character, he has to be. so dramatic, easy to break ice with. ‘we’re here to scare them. scream as loud as you want to. run after them. go nuts.’

seokjin holds out a bag of gummy bears, and he’s not quite looking at jungkook but not quite turning away, either, still smiling kind and squishy. ‘they’re organic.’

jungkook decides he really, really likes it here. not even with the other actors, or the kids he’s entertaining, or as part of the job he has to keep—rather in this room, with this smooth-talking, handsome man and his glittery cheekbones.  

‘thank you,’ jungkook hums—and the conversation comes easy. he steps into the middle of the room as seokjin steps toward the wall. ‘you play piano?’

seokjin looks at him with eyes wide from momentary embarrassment, pink-ish ears. ‘you heard me?’

jungkook nods. ‘you’re good.’

seokjin looks at the piano, head tipped toward the folder of sheet music, and back at jungkook again.

‘i can play a little now, if you want me to,’ he suggests, shy how all artists are, and sits on the bench. ‘just until the kids start showing up.’

‘i’d like that,’ jungkook whispers, also sitting now, legs tucked up on the floor and hands warmed between his thighs.

seokjin gives him a grin and spins around on the bench, hands hovering above the keys. he pauses, though, turning to look at the wall but able to hear jungkook loud and clear. ‘sorry for calling you a gremlin.’  

‘you didn’t mean to,’ jungkook murmurs.

‘it still wasn’t very nice,’ seokjin tells him, incredibly sincere. ‘there’s no password. i just like to make yoongi think hard while he’s suffering caffeine deprivation. just knock once and i’ll know you’re not a manager.’

he plays his music. he ends one song and jungkook begs for another. he scuttles over to the bench and hovers behind seokjin just to watch his hands glide with an inhuman easiness, like the keys aren’t there at all.

jungkook’s late back to his room, moments before the first lot of kids climb the stairs, organic gummy bears stuffed in his pockets.

—

an advantage of the job: jungkook gets all food half-price with his employee discount, as well as a discount on all the other rides, as well as cheaper entry for friends with his code. a benefit of that little setup: jungkook gets to see namjoon and yoongi every day he works, when he trails down to the food truck before getting changed. there are lots of seaweed snacks that jungkook instead of anything that’s warm or cooked or puts him at risk of food poisoning.

‘seokjin said neither of you can cook,’ jungkook admits. ‘well, he said yoongi’s good. but yoongi works the cash register here. namjoon cooks.’

‘seokjin’s just mean,’ namjoon pouts, and slams the door to the mini-oven, nearly catching his fingers on the element in the process. yoongi and jimin both frown over at him when he makes a little pained noise and press quick kisses to each side of his face until he’s looking at the floor and laughing, and then they go back to work.

‘you’ve met him?’ jimin asks, moving to lean into the doorframe while he sneaks fries from namjoon’s lunch on the counter. he works in the house too; has a room on the first floor, and they’ve set him up to be some sort of haunted ballet mannequin, and he’s way too good at it and it’s extremely creepy. outside of it, he’s just stubborn and soft and squishy, even more so with his boyfriends.

‘he called me an asshole and then fed me gummy bears,’ jungkook tells them, and opens his chips and grabs a handful. ‘i could hear his piano through the wall. i went to visit.’

‘oh, you’re the kid,’ yoongi murmurs, looking like he’s had a revelation, and even namjoon turns around. he eyes jungkook as he moves, and jimin does so too, less noticeable but still trying to catch jungkook’s gaze. ‘he mentioned you. hey— if you’re in his room, try not to touch his sheet music?’

jungkook should ask about that later.

but he nods, and hands yoongi the money due, and trots off into the house.

jin greets jungkook for the first time that day when jungkook’s collapsed on the rug in the center of his room, manga open on his stomach, even though there’s a perfectly good room downstairs with a sofa to nap on. jin greets him and—

well. doesn’t really greet him, more like:

a knock on the wall. ‘jungkook,’ muffled and murmured.

a second’s pause, then two, then—

‘jeon jungkook,’ louder, insistent and whiny. three more knocks.

jungkook frowns at the ceiling. ‘yeah?’

a thump that rattles the lonely picture frame, barely hanging, and jin says, ‘there’s a walkie-talkie in your drawer, do not make me shout through the wall.’

so they talk through the walkie-talkies everyday instead. and it is everyday, even just small things like—

‘jung koooook, i left my phone downst aaaairs, please please please go—’

or on boring days, on monday’s, where everyone’s at work or school and the actors all scamper off to each other’s room like school kids on vacation, hiding from teachers down the hall—

‘i made a massive bowl of pasta and i need you to help me finish it right now —’

or—

‘is the guy that drops you off your roommate?’

‘yeah. that’s hoseok.’

‘tell him that i admire his shoes.’

‘i’ll tell him no such thing. they’re awful shoes! he doesn’t need that ego boost or he’ll go buy three more pairs.’

or—

‘jimin said there’s a group of assholes downstairs,’ jungkook says, quiet as a group of teens storm down the hall away from the clown room, yelling, knocking off jungkook’s door in their haste. ‘they shoved him into the wall when he scared them. tried pulling his hair, too.’

a moment’s pause, and then the static blip of seokjin’s microphone turning on. ‘assholes.’

‘do we kick them out?’

‘we could throw them out on their behinds, but jimin also has that power. he would’ve done it if he wanted to,’ seokjin explains. ‘idea?’

‘shoot.’

‘you hide behind my door before they get up here and then we scare them shitless. if jimin told you then he told management and we’ve pretty much got free reign.’

jungkook hesitant, but then he smiles small, wide, wider. ‘you sure?’

‘ yes,’ seokjin insists. ‘i’ll play piano and you can run at them with an axe. get over here.’

or on warm days—

‘you’re pretty neat, jungkook,’ seokjin says, and jungkook returns the compliment, and they finish up their night.

—

jungkook’s made it about halfway through the night when he starts talking into the walkie-talkie without any answers, which—weird, because this is seokjin. but jungkook leaves him be because who knows, it might be a bad day.

but then seokjin’s door opens, closes. heavy footsteps down the hall that never trail back.

he waits a good ten minutes before inquiring, which is a record for him.

‘jimin?’ jungkook says into the receiver, and jimin hums. ‘is jin downstairs with you?’

‘oh,’ jimin says—and he disappears for a few moments like he’s been caught off guard. ‘no. he, uh, he left early. felt sick.’

‘oh,’ jungkook mirrors. ‘he never mentioned anything to me.’

‘sudden illness,’ jimin blurts out. he doesn’t answer after that, and jungkook doesn’t ask again. sick, yeah, people can get sick. unreasonably attractive actors can suddenly fall ill. it’s reasonable.

they finish up late. jungkook gets changed, and takes all his makeup off, and then realises he left his headphones in his room. he goes up to get them.

he stops in the hall between his and seokjin’s rooms. considers.

they’re meant to lock up at the end of each day, but jungkook opens seokjin’s door without any hassle. there’s a backpack discarded in the corner, and a full container of pasta. and then there’s the piano, and the sheet music, and the folder.

jungkook figures he can text seokjin tonight. yeah, jungkook can ask him how he’s doing, and tell him he has some of his stuff. he decides this plan as takes the backpack and throws the pasta in, and slides the sheets back into the folder before carrying it all outside. he’ll tell seokjin he forgot to lock his door, and that he can come pick his stuff up from jungkook’s whenever—yeah, that’s what he’ll do.

he mentions this to hoseok. the drive is enveloped in peaceful quiet otherwise, and he leaves seokjin’s bag in the living room when they get home. he eats toast on the couch. he washes his plate. he collapses into bed.

—

jungkook dreams that hoseok’s screaming. it’s strange, because in his dream he’s simultaneously relaxing on a beach and working in a coffee shop with their only customer being one sleepy granny who orders the same kind of cappuccino every two hours, and hoseok’s nowhere to be found.

then he realises that hoseok’s actually screaming. real-life, terrified screaming.

jungkook topples out of bed, half-awake and aching, knocks his elbows off the door handle and throws the door open so hard it whacks into the outside wall. he stumbles into the living room where hoseok’s still screaming, but it quietens once jungkook’s there.

jungkook, sleep-hazy, grips at hoseok’s shoulder and grapples for his hand. ‘mm? you ‘kay?’

hoseok, eyes wide, doesn’t look at jungkook—he stares off toward the other end of the room, near the front door. jungkook blinks in the same direction, the room still dark save for a lamp and light from the window, and jungkook wonders where’s the murderer, or the fire, or the spiders.

but all he sees is seokjin. kim seokjin, in sweatpants. standing in jungkook and hoseok’s living room. one hand on the handle of the front door as he stands with his back against it, gaze flicking between hoseok and jungkook so quick he’s probably not seeing anything at all. but otherwise, he looks completely calm. confused. a little bothered, actually, like this has happened before. like he’s found himself in someone’s living room some other time without explanation and is pissed that it’s happening again.

speaking of: it’s four in the morning. seokjin’s in his living room.

‘you’re in my living room,’ jungkook says out loud, like the others aren’t aware of this, and he still isn’t quite sure what’s going on. hoseok locked the front door when they got home. seokjin broke into his house but he—didn’t break in? ‘you’re in—hm. you’re. yeah.’

‘jungkook,’ seokjin says, and steps closer to them, away from the door. he doesn’t look nervous but he does look pale. the room’s dark and it makes him look half-there. hoseok takes a step back and drags jungkook with him.

‘please leave,’ hoseok urges, trying to cover jungkook in protection but mostly just ducking to hide behind his shoulder. jungkook’s— apparently bare shoulder, because he was asleep and he had no shirt on, and he sleeps in his boxers, so now he’s just half-naked in his living room with his roommate and a burglar.

‘just—we won’t call the police. can you leave?’

‘the bolt’s still on,’ seokjin tells them. calm, like he’s trying to decipher something in his head. ‘i didn’t break in.’

hoseok and jungkook both squint over to the door and—he’s right. the bolt’s still on. given a glance, all the windows in the room are still closed. up until now, jungkook’s door had been locked, and the bathroom window’s too tiny to get anything through. hoseok had been in his room. seokjin didn’t break in. so then how—

‘jungkook,’ seokjin says then, eyes a little wider. ‘jungkook, did you— do you have my music?’

all at once, three heads turn toward the couch where seokjin’s bag rests—his pasta and his folder shoved inside. jungkook was going to text him in the morning.

jungkook speaks—

‘i was going to text you,’ jungkook tells him. ‘i was going to in the morning, i— you broke into our house for your music?’

at the same time hoseok speaks—

‘you weirdo, you absolute weirdo how do you know where we live! it’s four in the morning! you don’t need your music that badly—’

at the same time seokjin speaks—

‘oh my god. oh no, oh dear,’ and makes a move toward the couch for his things but pulls back when hoseok storms at him. ‘oh my god. no. you didn’t.’

‘didn’t what?’ hoseok yells.

‘you have my music,’ seokjin repeats, like it’s the most dreadful thing in the world. ‘you have— oh no.’

hoseok picks up a stray shoe from the ground. ‘please leave.’

‘give me my music,’ seokjin says, adamant, and hoseok goes flushed with anger.

he throws the shoe. in sleepy slow-motion, jungkook sees it leave hoseok’s hand, sail across the room, and hit the door.

it hits the door. but it goes straight through seokjin’s chest first.

jungkook’s forgotten to be defensive by now: he’s merely a spectator in the strangest moment of his entire life. he has no weapon. he has no clothes.

he comes back to himself when he sees hoseok’s ugly, ridiculously-expensive shoe sink through seokjin’s chest and rattle the doorframe behind him like seokjin hadn’t been there at all.

nobody speaks for a small lifetime.

‘ah,’ seokjin finally says, less shocked and more inconvenienced. ‘i was afraid that would happen.’

‘you’re—’ jungkook starts, and then cuts himself off. his mind’s a big, blank slate. he wonders if he and hoseok and having some weird fever dream, because just days ago seokjin walked jungkook to hoseok’s car after the night had ended. shared his pasta. played his piano.

hoseok has that dazed look in his eye that he gets when something so disastrous happens that he decides it’d be better to just fade out of the space-time continuum.

and seokjin is just—standing there. wearing sweatpants and a hoodie that hides his hands completely. soft, gentle-looking, and apparently not really here.

‘i got hit by a car on the way to a job interview when i was twenty,’ seokjin blurts out, ‘and this was back—about six years ago? seven? and the records all say i died, of course, but i didn’t. not really. i’m…tethered to the music i have? i was holding my folder, so some funky soul-binding stuff probably went on when the crash happened. i woke up on the street where the car hit me and nobody could see me, but i walked home and went to bed and said fuck it, maybe i’m just high, but i wasn’t high. i was dead? and now my home is wherever my music is.’

jungkook blinks.

‘took me about three years to hold a physical form. other ghosts i’ve met say people we were close to in our past lives can’t recognise us unless we want them to, so we don’t worry about that.’ seokjin sits down on the couch and pulls his backpack into his lap. ‘i could’ve possessed someone in the meantime but i’m icky about that—ethics and all. so now i can hold physical form for days at a time. sometimes i can eat, but it’s a lot of effort, and i have to concentrate on it or else i just turn into a dumb, invisible, floaty ghost. i wasn’t concentrating just now, and since my folder’s here, the universe assumed this was my new home and sent my form here, so. apologies.’

‘you’re—’ jungkook chokes. pauses. ‘ghost.’

seokjin nods. ‘good news: i didn’t break into your house.’

‘yes,’ jungkook says, monotone, even as several sirens start ringing in his head all at once. all about things that aren’t real, things that shouldn’t be happening: dead ghost dead ghost ghost ghost—

‘bad news: i’m…shit, how do i say this,’ he mumbles, and then pulls out his sheet music, tosses it onto the coffee table. he stands up to look jungkook in the eye. hoseok’s still worlds away, disembodied. ‘i’m attached to you?’

‘that’s creepy,’ hoseok mutters, but still stares off at the front door and sounds relatively unbothered. he probably just wants to go to bed and pretend this never happened, so jungkook puts a hand on the small of hoseok’s back and gives him a push toward his bedroom. he goes without struggle, zombie-walking through his door.

seokjin groans with exasperation. ‘not attached to you, just—the house? the space you occupy?’

‘so you’re…’ jungkook considers, frowning. ‘you’re stuck here? living here? with us?’

seokjin nods. jungkook nods back at him, as if to say: fuck it. yeah, sleep in my house if you want to. i’m two seconds away from having a stroke, but this is fine.

‘is that okay?’ seokjin prods. ‘this kind of thing is always uncomfortable. living humans don’t take well to ghosts, mostly. i promise i’ll figure out a way to leave soon.’

jungkook nods and says, ‘yeah, that’s okay,’ because if he tries to say anything else he’ll scream.

‘awesome,’ seokjin grins, and then lies down on the couch. turns over onto his stomach with a murmured, ‘nighty-night.’ and after a moment of consideration, ‘you should put some clothes on, by the way. you’ll get cold.’

seokjin, a ghost, falls asleep on jungkook’s couch at four in the morning while jungkook shivers half-naked in his living room and hoseok attempts to phase back into his body. jungkook steps away from the couch and peers into hoseok’s room to see him passed out in a tangled heap on his covers. he walks to his own room, closes the door, and crawls back into bed.

—

there’s still a ghost on jungkook’s living room couch the next morning. it wasn’t some hyper-real, exhaustion-induced hallucination that two people managed to share.

jungkook discovers this when the door to his room opens and hoseok steps inside. he curls up under the covers with his full weight on jungkook’s back.

‘there’s a ghost in our living room,’ hoseok says, some colour back in his voice.

‘that’s nice,’ jungkook says, and attempts to sleep himself into a coma for the next two hours with hoseok’s welcome warmth on top of him. but soon enough, there are footsteps in the other room.

‘i have work,’ hoseok mumbles into jungkook’s back. ‘i gotta leave really soon. you’ll be okay here?’

‘probably,’ jungkook says, muffled in the pillow. ‘i’ll manage. we’ll figure out…something.’

three thundering knocks on the bedroom door, disturbing the otherwise peace of the morning.

‘i made pancakes!’ seokjin yells through the wall. ‘a little bit burned, but hey—what can ya do. get yourselves in here. please be decent.’

hoseok tumbles off jungkook and onto the floor. jungkook makes a low whining noise as soon as he gets out of bed and feels the cold of the room, pulling on a shirt and pyjama pants, big and baggy around his feet.

the kitchen hasn’t burned down when jungkook steps into it, which is something.

‘good morning, jungkook,’ seokjin says, too chipper for the cold morning. he shimmies a frying pan before turning it over and flopping a pancake onto a plate.

he’s also hovering a few inches off the ground as he spins around and looks through all the drawers, but jungkook wills himself to ignore that fact.

‘good morning,’ jungkook mumbles in reply, and rubs at his eyes before sitting at the tiny table. he leans up on his elbows to watch seokjin’s back at the counter. he squints. ‘who said you could use our kitchen utensils.’

‘i thought it was one of those unspoken permissions. it’s nearly noon and neither of you were out of bed.’ he spins to slide a plate between jungkook’s arms, wiping his hands together. he looks better than he did last night—but jungkook doesn’t remember much of last night anyway. he suppressed it for his own mental stability. ‘and thank you for that greeting because hoseok didn’t even say good morning a few hours ago! i waved at him and he threw his shoe at me. again. ’

‘it hit the wall near his head and he screamed,’ hoseok hums proudly as he pulls on his shoes. seokjin crosses his arms with a huff and rubs at his chest. ‘speaking of—how did last night happen. and also you floating now.’

jungkook nods in curiosity as he leans up further on the table, blinking in the overhead light.

seokjin tosses a spatula into the sink. ‘there was a power outage in my apartment a few days ago, and that messed with me a little. things like power surges and thunderstorms make me all warbly and weird,’ he murmurs, embarrassed, and turns around to lean on the counter and face the two of them. ‘i left work early incase i started disappearing and one of the kids saw. that’d be tricky to explain.’

‘i can walk, but it’s more comfortable not to. i can sit down and sleep, y’know, all those typical human responsibilities. it’s just eating i have a problem with. and touching inanimate objects if i don’t concentrate. and every single thing about being around living people,’ seokjin muses, like none of it’s a nuisance, just a fun little story he likes to tell about his past death and his current problems. ‘if you try and nudge my shoulder without warning me two weeks in advance, you’ll just end up on the floor. ghosts are very touch-starved, actually. quite the epidemic.’

jungkook sits quiet, for a moment, as his entire world shifts.

‘i’m sorry,’ hoseok hums, and actually frowns—actually looks upset, at the same time jungkook blurts out, ‘that sucks.’

‘it does suck!’ seokjin exclaims, and points at jungkook to let him know his response was spot on: to show him fuck yeah, it sucks being dead. ‘you are absolutely correct.’

‘hey,’ jungkook says. ‘question.’

seokjin hums.

‘if you don’t eat, why do you always offer me your leftovers?’

‘maybe i just wanted to make you food,’ seokjin shrugs. ‘take care of my tiny coworker and all.’

‘i’m not tiny.’

‘and i’m not dead.’

‘this is so fucking weird,’ hoseok groans, head in his hands.

‘none of this would’ve happened if yoongi had picked up my stuff and brought it home yesterday like he was supposed to,’ seokjin grumbles. ‘that asshole.’

jungkook nods, nods again, until he processes it.

‘wait.’ he plays seokjin’s words over in his head and— wait. waitwaitwait. ‘yoongi.’

‘yes, min yoongi,’ seokjin hums, letting water fill the sink as he pushes all the used plates into it. ‘endearingly tiny. makes music and owns a food truck. looks cute wearing bunny ears, except don’t ask him about it, because he doesn’t remember that night at all.’

‘yoongi knows you’re a ghost,’ jungkook repeats, quiet with realisation that he was the only one out of the loop this whole time. ‘yoongi— wait. what about jimin? namjoon?’

‘oh, they know too,’ seokjin nods, and nods again when jungkook’s frown deepens. ‘they’re my best friends. none of them are ghosts, before you worry, they’re just terrifyingly in love. but i’ve been jimin’s roommate for about, ah…three years?’

‘you’re— they—’ jungkook sputters. ‘i don’t know why i’m surprised.’ he looks up when seokjin gasps, and finds him running a burned finger under cold water—ghosts can burn themselves. noted. ‘why did you choose to work in a haunted house?’

‘i liked the irony,’ seokjin shrugs, and then hurries over to the hob, flips another pancake onto a plate, and it looks like he hasn’t stopped moving around the kitchen once since jungkook came in. ‘strawberry or chocolate?’ he asks, to which jungkook replies strawberry, and hoseok says chocolate where he’s run off to get dressed in the other room. seokjin pours them their syrup and slides the plates onto the tables. hoseok strolls back in and slumps at the table.

a few seconds into eating, where seokjin isn’t actually eating anything and is just pushing more food onto jungkook’s and hoseok’s plates, he pipes up. ‘oh, warning: i’m pretty used to doing my own thing at home. so if i start gliding through walls and stuff, just ignore me.’

‘great,’ hoseok mutters, and stabs at his plate. ‘of course. fantastic.’

‘i may also come and go from time to time,’ seokjin tells them. ‘i do have my own apartment. i just can’t be away from here for too long or things might go sour.’

jungkook frowns at him, eyebrows knitted with concern. ‘what do you mean, sour.’

‘i might accidentally possess someone,’ he says airily, speaking with a smile as he moves to go clear off the counters, ‘which is basically a binding contract for at least a decade and is generally very messy. or i might just cease to exist. i don’t really want to find out which one’s more likely.’

somewhere nearby, hoseok chokes on his pancakes. jungkook just nods, because he’s been so stressed for the last twelve hours that he now knows nothing but calm. ‘i see.’

‘eat your food,’ seokjin lightly to hoseok, and gives him a thumbs up. ‘also, um, small clause. you can’t actually touch me. like, with the shoe? it’s that way for people, too.’

jungkook frowns so severely at the plate seokjin’s holding that seokjin’s eyes bulge.

‘oh!’ he rushes to drop the plate into the sink. ‘objects are different to people. objects don’t have feelings, you know? they can’t really grab onto me, and are usually smaller than me too, so that’s fine. it’s just—people. their general make-up. not good for ghouls.’

hoseok nods, convinced. seokjin starts washing up.

jungkook puts down his knife and fork with a nervous clatter, and wrings his hands, and cracks his knuckles.

‘...this won’t take long, right?’ he asks, and doesn’t know what answer he’s looking for. ‘you’ll figure out a way to leave. you’ll be gone soon, yeah?’

‘yeah,’ seokjin says, and doesn’t sound disappointed at all. of course he wants to leave. of course he wants to go home. ‘it won’t take that long. i promise. a few days.’

—

two weeks later, the three of them go buy a sofa bed for the living room.

—

the amusement park installs picnic benches outside the line for the haunted house during peak season. jimin and jungkook were set on having lunch, and then taehyung just— arrived, and said he was also going to be having lunch. and then namjoon and yoongi actually brought them their lunch and closed the truck for the hour to stay with them. the two of them hold hands with jimin under the table and try to maneuver around using forks and knives.

so jungkook is surrounded by taehyung, and the world’s biggest bunch of liars.

‘jimin?’ jungkook begins. ‘guys?’

namjoon, yoongi, and jimin all look over at him from the other side of the picnic table, where they’d been feeding each other scraps of lettuce and sausage rolls. taehyung stays occupied with some plant-watering game he downloaded the day before and eats fries from a bowl.

‘yeah?’ namjoon prods, and isn’t really looking over anymore, but nods to show he’s still listening.

jungkook breathes in. breathes out. ‘why didn’t you tell me seokjin’s a ghost?’

there’s a moment of pure, peaceful silence. and then the three liars across the table inhale so quickly and violently that they all choke on their various food items, and jimin’s foot flies out and he kicks jungkook in the shin, and taehyung finally looks up and turns fully around to look at jungkook with big, interested, gossip-loving eyes.

‘seokjin’s a ghost?’ taehyung says, and jungkook probably should care that taehyung, an outside to most of the situation, knows this. but he’s jungkook’s best friend, and he would’ve found out anyway. he grips the bench and scoots along it until his and jungkook’s noses are basically touching. ‘wait. who’s seokjin? is he the piano man you wanna elope to the caribbean with?’

‘we are not eloping,’ jungkook huffs, and thwacks taehyung’s head gently with his pointer finger, ‘and i want no such thing. but yeah. that’s him.’

‘seokjin’s not a— ghost.’ jimin’s still staring at him and coughing into his hand, wide-eyed, terrified, pale. ‘ghosts don’t exist. stop it.’

‘i took home his sheet music on friday and now he’s temporarily attached to my house,’ jungkook tells them, deadpan, ‘just so you know.’

another silence. three blinking sets of eyes, and taehyung to the side, eating his fries.

‘you dumbass,’ yoongi cries, and throws a chicken nugget in jungkook’s face. ‘i told you not to touch his music!’

jungkook hums. ‘so you admit he’s a ghost.’

yoongi pouts. ‘i never said that.’

‘why did you take his music,’ jimin also cries, holding his head in his palm and looking at jungkook like he’s never seen a more terrible situation in his life. honestly, he might not be that far off.

‘because none of you would tell me why he went home! and he left his stuff at work! i was going to text him!’ jungkook explains loudly, and everyone’s eyes go a little softer—the blame isn’t all on him. he shrugs, and starts eating again. ‘that doesn’t matter, though. what’s done is done.’

‘have the flowers appeared yet?’ jimin asks.

jungkook frowns, confused. ‘flowers.’

‘yeah. flowers,’ jimin repeats, and sits up taller at the table, ‘like, plants in pots. all over your window sills.’

‘why would there be flowers in my apartment?’

‘oh god,’ yoongi moans, and leans sideways until he’s halfway fallen into namjoon’s lap, covering his eyes with his hands and shaking his head. ‘here we go. joon, it’s the end of times.’

‘jungkook,’ namjoon says, running fingers through yoongi’s hair, and jungkook hums. ‘is seokjin alone right now.’

‘he said he had errands to run earlier, so probably. hoseok’s at work,’ jungkook tells them, and gets proceedingly more concerned the more their faces fall, all in sync, all horrified. ‘why?’

‘jungkook please go home right this second,’ yoongi begs. ‘stop his madness. please.’

jungkook stands from the table just because it feels like the right thing to do. taehyung stands as well.

‘what’s wrong?’ jungkook asks.

yoongi shoos him away, and jimin and namjoon packs up his and taehyung’s empty boxes to toss in the trash. ‘you’ll see, just—’

—

‘oh my god,’ jungkook breathes.

there are flowers all over the house.

and he is not exaggerating when he says all over the house. jungkook and hoseok have never owned any plants. they’ve lived their adult lives flower-free. but now there are at least three pots on each windowsill, some cacti in the middle of the kitchen table, one pretty flower growing strong on the coffee table at the end of the couch—which is largely untouched, considering seokjin’s music has taken up permanent residence there, and if any of them were to harm the folder in any way seokjin would also be harmed, which is something nobody wants.

jungkook flies around the house to see that his room and hoseok’s room have received the same treatment. if not actual flowers, then little bowls of lavender on their bedside tables or a sunflower pressed and presented in a picture frame on the bathroom wall.

flowers. flowers everywhere.

and jungkook’s heart is still violently thumping in his chest from sprinting up all five flights of stairs to get here faster. taehyung opted for the elevator, and now slams into jungkook’s back in his rush and startles jungkook further into the room.

when jungkook blinks seokjin’s standing in the middle of the room, having faded in through one of the outside walls. he’s unfocused as he floats, and then he looks up and spots jungkook. he smiles.

there’s one stray flower in seokjin’s right hand, another in his left. in his right: a pink rose, small and stubby with petals too big for its body. in his left: a rose, dark-blue, with a lengthy stem curling and twisting around seokjin’s hand and gripping tight. with a brush of his thumb, the flower unwinds and goes still in seokjin’s palm while he watches jungkook across the room.

‘riddle me this, kids,’ seokjin says. he takes a step forward and holds out his two hands, the flowers sitting upright and squirming. ‘for the bathroom: a vase of pink or a vase of blue?’

‘why is our house covered in flowers,’ jungkook murmurs, not really angry—a little bit dumbfounded, ‘and how much money did you spend.’

‘i like the pink more,’ taehyung tells him, and seokjin winks.

he disappears between one second and the next before fading back in through the ceiling again, this time with the pink rose in a tiny pot, and jungkook doesn’t want to ask where he’s finding random flowerpots from. ‘they didn’t cost anything,’ seokjin explains, and hurries over to the bathroom. ‘they’re part of me.’

‘you’re a gardener?’ jungkook asks.

‘you’re a flower?’ taehyung also asks, and then snorts at his own damn wit, and jungkook steps on taehyung’s toes with his heel as he moves to follow seokjin around the house.

‘i just have a connection,’ seokjin explains lightly, settling the flower on the windowsill and brushing the back of a finger over its petals, soft. ‘i can make them grow. thought the apartment needed some colour.’

it’s thoughtful. way too thoughtful, because hoseok had been murmuring about how the apartment always looked dull, and jungkook had agreed. and jungkook’s thankful. so much so that he’s been absentmindedly smiling since seokjin started talking, and his ears are pink, and he feels squirmy and embarrassed.

‘our theme is minimalistic,’ jungkook grumbles. ‘now the place looks like a forest.’

‘but you like it,’ seokjin grins, floating back into the living room and spinning to face the other two as they trail behind him.

‘i don’t…despise it,’ jungkook huffs. taehyung leans over his shoulder.

‘you’re in your youth, jungkook,’ seokjin says, and tilts his head to the side to see jungkook’s downturned expression. ‘paint the walls green. buy a fridge you can’t afford. cover your house with flowers.’

‘i’ll forget to water them,’ jungkook grumbles.

‘no need,’ seokjin tells him. ‘magic flowers, remember?’

‘you should make me a cactus,’ tae suggests, hands on jungkook’s waist as he pushes up onto his toes. ‘i’ll put it on my bookshelf.’

‘at least someone’s grateful!’ seokjin grins, and gestures with a pointed finger for tae to come over to him. tae does so, waddling in his big bulky coat until he’s right at seokjin’s side—with that little bit of ghost-proof space. ‘taehyung’s my new friend.’

jungkook folds his arms. ‘i’m not not grateful.’

‘this is a no-double-negatives household.’ seokjin grabs a shoulder bag from his collection of stuff accumulated while under hoseok’s and jungkook’s roof pile. he pulls on a coat and grabs his wallet, his phone, a spare key jungkook gifted him with, a scarf—even if the cold doesn’t do much to him.

‘stop fishing for a compliment,’ jungkook says, pouty and defensive but still warm and giggly inside at the flowers. the goddamn flowers. all over his goddamn house, pretty, stirring up his stomach. ‘i didn’t ask for this.’

‘yet you love it all the same,’ seokjin whines, and whips around to look at jungkook with a half-smile and low, expectant eyebrows. ‘c’mon. say it. taehyung, get him to say it. speak your mind, jeon jungkook.’

jungkook gets glared at for three seconds before he gives.

‘the flowers are nice,’ he murmurs, and gives them all another glance, on the island and the windowsill; the flowers are so nice. so damn nice. he looks up at seokjin and says, honestly, ‘you did a good job.’

seokjin smiles, big and toothy and crinkly. jungkook’s heart’s self-preservation goes floating through the ceiling.

‘this is the best day of my life,’ seokjin muses, and then drops onto his feet and starts toward the door, moving closer to where jungkook’s standing in the middle of the floor. ‘let’s go get you a cactus, kim taehyung.’

step, step, step: then seokjin hums, stopping in front of jungkook. he reaches into his bag and pulls out the previously-discarded blue rose, its stem now shortened and its petals full from seokjin’s energising touch. he looks at jungkook, tilts his head, purses his lips in concentration.

he tucks the stem, free of thorns, behind jungkook’s ear until the flower sits daintily against his hair. a contrast, the dark brown strands and the monochrome clothes and the bright, startlingly blue rose.

‘ah,’ seokjin murmured, soft spoken and admiring. ‘pretty.’

he doesn’t touch jungkook, because he can’t: but the way the petals squish against the curve of jungkook’s ear feels like a thumb brushing against it, warmth at his earlobe, before seokjin and taehyung hurry themselves out the door.

there are flowers all over jungkook’s house. there’s a rose in his hair. there’s a lingering warmth on his face, his ears, his neck, and it’s the closest they’ve ever been.

god. god. it’s the closest they’ve been.

jungkook runs into his bedroom and screams into the pillow for far too long.

—

it’s almost easy for jungkook to forget the whole ghost issue, most of the time. seokjin sleeps. he makes food—even if he doesn’t eat it. he goes to work, lets hoseok drive them. he wakes up some nights and paces the living room because he can’t sleep and the light from the billboard down the street goes neon pink somewhere near 3am, keeping him up. jungkook has an upsetting call with his parents where they try and bribe him into going to college, and seokjin floats through the wall and talks to him until they both end up exhausted and lying down across jungkook’s bed, all calmed down.

so sometimes it’s easy to treat it all as their new normal.

except there’s a storm today. nobody thinks anything of it until they get home.

it’s a sunday, and the amusement park doesn’t keep open on sundays, and a good thing for it—the rain pelts against the windows and the tv starts stuttering around two hours in, wind battering the petals and leaves of all the flowers and trees situated on the balconies of the opposite apartment block, tearing limbs away, knocking over construction cones on the road below, shop signs whipping round their poles.

hoseok determines it a stay in and cuddle day, so he gathers their collection of blankets onto the sofa and the three of them huddle under, jungkook pressed all the way into hoseok’s side. it’s such a routine that he doesn’t notice the way seokjin’s scooted himself over to the other end of the sofa, holding a blanket up near his chin, brows knit and eyes vacant as he watches the street through the window instead of watching the movie.

jungkook gives hoseok a look. hoseok nods and resettles his hand on jungkook’s waist: he’s noticed too.

a quarter of the way through the movie, seokjin stands.

‘i’ll go put some food on,’ he says curtly, and leaves the room with the blanket still draped around him. the other two say nothing because the situation is entirely unfamiliar, but they know all three of them had an early dinner not even an hour before putting the movie on. but they’ll let seokjin do what he has to.

they wait five minutes, and—

outside, lightning strikes. inside, from the kitchen, a plate crashes to the floor.

jungkook’s off the couch and running before he realises it and then stops, stumbles in the doorway when hoseok collides with him, looking over jungkook’s shoulder. they look at the plate, in multiple jagged pieces across the tiles. they look at seokjin, standing unnervingly still with his back to them, his head tilted down, skin washed out, little specks of blood on his socks where shards of the plate probably landed.

‘you okay?’ hoseok begins shakily, because the apartment’s gone so very quiet that jungkook’s scared of how much space his voice will take back, and hoseok has a tight grip on the fabric of jungkook’s shirt. ‘we can just clean this up.’

there’s no response, but seokjin’s hands do start to shake—spasming little movements that seem too fast and jittery, like the clothes in a washing machine turned up high, colours mixing together and everything jumping around, not really—human. not fully there.

jungkook gently detaches hoseok’s hands from his shirt and moves around the island to look seokjin in the eye. thunder still rumbles from outside, and the rain is thick and claustrophobic against the walls.

seokjin doesn’t look up when jungkook steps in front of him, nor when he gets down on his knees and porcelain shards start breaking skin through his pyjamas. nor when jungkook panics, and almost reaches for his arm, and then remembers.

seokjin’s eyes are completely vacant but there’s some lingering fear on his face, and his hands still shake like leaves, like he’s out in that storm, drenched and frozen, making himself distant to numb it. he’s so distant. jungkook doubts he’s even fully in the room.

‘jin,’ jungkook says, and then ducks down further so he can see seokjin’s whole face when he looks up. ‘seokjin. hey, you’re fine.’

the room gets cold. cold enough that jungkook’s shivering, and so is hoseok, when he runs over to open the lid on a water bottle before the water freezes completely and bursts it, and the drop is so sudden that a few glasses on the table get long, jagged cracks down their sides, and seokjin’s wracked by a full-bodied shiver when there’s another crash of lightning outside.

‘seokjin, hey, hey.’ jungkook wants to reach out and—and hold him, bring him back that way, gentle and warm. ‘hey, you’re okay. you’re in our apartment, me and hoseok’s. there’s a storm outside. i think it might’ve messed with you. come back to us, c’mon, yeah?’ he scoots closer, and— yeah, there’s definitely something sharp in his leg. ‘please, everything’s fine, ‘s just a storm. just a storm.’

jungkook’s bewildered by all of this, and his teeth chatter, and seokjin’s hands look like they’re tinted purple with the cold. the colour crawls up to his knuckles, his wrists, and hoseok’s wrapping the blanket tighter around himself and tucking his legs up underneath him on the chair.

‘please,’ jungkook murmurs, hands itching to grab him and bring him back, but he can’t, and it fucking sucks, and he doesn’t know what to do, ‘please, c’mon, you’re in our kitchen, please you’re freezing—’

the bulbs in the kitchen burst one-by-one until the only light comes from the tv in the other room. seokjin blinks and blinks and blinks before letting out a breath that goes foggy in the air, and his legs give out.

he hits the ground with a too-real thump, too heavy, too much like jungkook should lunge for him and catch him instead of letting him collapse into the kitchen counter, head resting on the handle, eyes closed, mouth open, socks bloody, breathing slow and icy.  

‘jin?’ hosek murmurs from the corner, able to provide more comfort right now than jungkook can, where he’s just sitting and staring at seokjin like he might up and disappear. ‘you okay? do you need anything?’

seokjin frowns, and then scrunches his face up. ‘storm,’ he sighs, rasping it like he’s been shouting for hours, and now the cold hits him: he curls into himself on the floor. ‘sorry, the storm, it’s…’ he blinks his eyes open slow, like he’s just woken up.

‘think i short-circuited,’ he huffs, and rubs his hands up and down his arms. ‘why’s it so dark? and cold?’

‘that was…kinda you,’ jungkook mumbles, and he hears hoseok rummaging in the press for a dustpan. seokjin nods. ‘you dropped a plate, and it got really cold and you were shaking. the lights went.’

‘oh,’ seokjin murmurs, and scans all the light fixtures on the ceiling. ‘sorry about that.’

‘it’s alright. you’re bleeding, though,’ jungkook says. ‘i’ll get you some bandaids in a minute.’

seokjin nods thanks.

‘how do we stop that from happening again?’ hoseok asks, coming over and sitting next to jungkook.

‘dark rooms works best,’ seokjin tells them. ‘some kind of mind trick, where if i can’t see what’s happening then it can’t affect me. oh, and not being able to hear anything happening is good. so, soundproof rooms or just really good earphones.’

hoseok nods. ‘we can do that.’

‘stay in my room tonight,’ jungkook encourages. ‘i have black-out blinds.’

‘you can borrow my headphones,’ hoseok offers.

seokjin looks reluctant to accept, but—

‘look, that was - that was kinda terrifying for us,’ jungkook admits. ‘and it’s probably terrifying for you as well. i’d rather we worked out how to deal with it than let it get out of hand. please stay in my room.’

it takes a moment but seokjin finally nods, and the three of them move to huddle around jungkook’s room with bandaids and blankets, the curtains drawn, seokjin with hoseok’s good headphones on, bandaging himself while jungkook and hoseok look after each other’s scrapes, and their nerves die down, and everything’s fine.

later after that: hoseok runs a warm hand down jungkook’s back as he gets off the bed, and nods at seokjin as he leaves the room. the door clicks shut behind him, and seokjin flops down onto the bed, eyes closed and body heavy.

‘you’re okay, now?’ jungkook asks, and for some reason—he lies down too, on the opposite pillow, the two of them staring up at the ceiling like they’d rather die than look at each other. or maybe that’s just jungkook, with his cheeks burning red.

‘never been better,’ seokjin says even if he sounds halfway to dying, still a little croaky. ‘it’s just been a while since an out-of-body experience. i’ll make sure to be less dramatic next time, you won’t have to worry at all.’

jungkook frowns. ‘we wanna help if it happens again.’

‘i can handle it myself, you know,’ seokjin insists, even though he really did not handle it earlier today. ‘i know you’re a little knight in shining armour, but - you probably have better things to do. i’ve already told you what helps soften the blow.’

‘we won’t just throw you in here and play some music and leave you on your own until it passes,’ jungkook tells him, and from the way he’s lying, he can see when seokjin glances over at him. his gaze lingers for a moment too long, like he’s judging jungkook’s integrity. ‘that’s a really shitty thing to do, honestly.’

‘ah,’ seokjin sighs, and it sounds like jungkook’s struck a nerve—an issue never solved. ‘i mean, probably.’

‘what about jimin?’ jungkook asks. ‘how did he deal with them?’

‘oh. well,’ seokjin begins— quiet, shy. he looks away again, back up at the ceiling. ‘he’s part of a dance company, he just does the amusement park on the side. so he’s not around lots of the time. either he’s working or he’s staying over with his boyfriends, so most of the time he’s never there for my…mess-ups.’

jungkook blinks. ‘you deal with this on your own?’

‘it’s a ghost’s way of life, jungkook,’ seokjin muses, stretching his arms out in front of him to stretch and aiming for nonchalance. ‘isolation prevails.’

‘i’m sorry.’

‘not much to be done,’ he shrugs.

jungkook doesn’t like that: the way seokjin resigns himself to the things he’s been forced to live through. the way he shrugs and says hey, what can you do. c’est la vie.

‘me and hobi will help you with it, okay?’ jungkook tells him, sincerity leaking from his voice and filling up the room, brimming to the ceiling. seokjin glances over at him again. ‘no more isolation bullshit.’

‘you sound like you wanna give me a hug,’ seokjin teases, but not really teasing. he sounds like he wants one. he sounds like the idea of it makes him bubbly, in the same way jungkook imagines wrapping arms around seokjin’s little waist and he turns into champagne.

‘i do,’ jungkook murmurs. ‘i just know i can’t.’

‘and therein lies my problem,’ seokjin sighs. his eyes trail back to the roof again. ‘i’m never really anywhere. barely real. ah, do you have a liquor cabinet?’

‘you’re not getting drunk,’ jungkook tells him, and seokjin huffs a laugh. jungkook pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed and then to stand. ‘get into bed. i’ll leave you alone.’

‘never knew you could be so serious.’ jungkook hears the duvet lift and drop while he darts around the room to collect glasses and plates and discarded bandage wrappers.

‘you collapsed in my kitchen half an hour ago, just told me you feel constantly isolated from the world, and then let on that you want to drink your pain away.’ jungkook looks at his lumpy figure under the duvet, head poking above it and curled up small, trying to hold onto the same playful smile. it drops now. ‘i think this calls for seriousness.’

seokjin waits a moment before nodding. he relaxes, hair splayed out on the pillow. maybe he’s feeling some of that same heavy weight in his chest like jungkook is, the kind you get after learning about things that can only ever be sad. jungkook walks across the room.

‘you’re a good kid,’ seokjin says, quiet enough that jungkook almost misses it when he pries open the bedroom door. he freezes.

jungkook turns around with a quiet, ‘you sure you’re okay?’

‘let me feel lethargic, you heathen.’ seokjin grumbles, pulling the cover up over his mouth. but then he looks up at jungkook with big, pretty eyes and says, ‘you’re good,’ like that couldn’t mean so many different things.

jungkook gives a tiny smile. ‘sleep well.’

seokjin hums as jungkook closes the door behind him. hoseok’s sitting up on the couch, eyes on him as he walks to the kitchen to deposit the plates and things. the whole room’s good as new, plate shards nowhere to be seen. jungkook tumbles out and back onto the couch, into hoseok’s waiting arms, and only then does he let himself shake.

‘he’s okay?’ hoseok asks, and jungkook nods against his shoulder, face turned in near his neck. hoseok runs a hand up and down his arm. ‘you’re okay?’

jungkook pauses. he nods. he thinks about seokjin sleeping in the other room, thinking he’s only ever been half-here, while jungkook’s consumed with the need for him to be okay and present, always. he squeezes his eyes shut.

—

jungkook’s dilemma overwhelms him after a month and a week of seokjin living with him, eating his food, sleeping on their new sofabed. his dilemma overwhelms him, and his dilemma is this:

the seokjin from before was someone jungkook could feel himself being able to stick around with. the seokjin he didn’t know completely, who played perfect piano and gave jungkook food and always kept himself at a distance but that was fine. seokjin was just seokjin, then, and he was jungkook’s friend, so there was friendly affection, the kind that could spark easily but never lasted long.

but now seokjin sleeps on their sofa bed. he makes jungkook and hoseok breakfast, and helps them with dinner before he and jungkook go to work, is kinder, is closer, falls asleep during movies and covered their apartment in flowers that seem to attract the golden-hour sunlight at any hour of the day.

the three of them go grocery shopping. they’re careful to never trip the lights and keep seokjin on one of their beds if they do, layered in blankets in pitch-black rooms during storms.

jungkook had been so ready for seokjin to go, at the beginning, so that his life could go back to normal and he could pretend the whole world was boring. but now things are different and he wants nothing more than for seokjin to stay.

so seokjin’s been living with jungkook and hoseok for longer than expected. and now there’s warmth in jungkook’s chest he can’t figure out, something he doesn’t want to deal with. and now he’s terrified that seokjin’s going to get up, one day, and leave. leave him. like he never really existed in the first place.

—

sometimes seokjin forgets that the way things are for him aren’t necessarily the way things are for everyone. sometimes jungkook forgets that seokjin, for the most part, knows what he’s doing and isn’t in immediate danger. they forget their respective things a lot.

jungkook’s normal week had turned into a bad week turned into a terrible week by wednesday. and now it’s thursday, and he’s already had his mom call him today to make fun of the amusement park work—and when jungkook slipped seokjin’s name into the conversation and got excited and rambled, her voice took on that slightly disapproving lilt and he shut up right away. and yesterday he didn’t get out of bed as early as he wanted to and didn’t eat breakfast and then he walked into a glass door in front of all the people at the coffee shop and nearly cried when a woman asked if he was alright, and then the shower would only run cold when he got home, and he collapsed into bed again with guilt in his stomach.

and on monday a kid spilled a drink on jungkook at the house after refusing to leave his room and trying to find all the hidden speakers and whatnots and then tried to say jungkook was harassing them, and on sunday hoseok’s car broke down and he had to walk home in the dark with a dead phone and jungkook was worried out of his mind at home while seokjin tried to calm him down.

so all in all—shitty week.

so seokjin suggests getting waffles.

‘i don’t need waffles,’ jungkook mumbles into his pillow from underneath his duvet, legs all curled up, one of his tiny teddy bears pressing weight into his chest.

‘you do,’ seokjin insists. he stands near the door and takes to throwing an assortment of jungkook’s squishy pillows at his lumpy figure under the covers, ‘and you need a day off. a day out. a good omen to keep your week from getting worse than it’s already been.’

jungkook whines and turns over in bed to face the wall, the duvet pulled tight in his hands. ‘can i not wallow?’

‘no,’ seokjin tells him. another pillow, thwacking jungkook in the forehead before bouncing off the wall and back onto the floor. ‘i’m leaving the house for you. get out of bed. i’ll go get my ghost on.’

‘you can’t say that every time you get dressed.’

‘i can and i will.’ he slams the door.

after the last week’s shitshow, jungkook gets very excited for waffles. he gets to go out and about with seokjin like they would’ve been more often if not for the ghostly dilemma, which means seokjin can’t eat and can’t handle all the people outside some days.

so jungkook’s excited, and gets dressed and dries his hair into a silky puffball on his head and falling into his eyes, and he pulls on a hoodie that bunches at the wrists so he can pull it over his hands if he wants to. he finds seokjin in the hall, whispering to the flowers like he always does.

the flowers, which jungkook’s forgotten how to live without. it’s only been a short while, a really short while, but he still passes them by with a hand out for them to curl around, which they do. they stretch out toward his fingers and curl themselves into his touch like a baby’s hand around a parent’s pinkie finger, and they get brighter when they do so, petals blooming out, sunlight in the room even with the curtains closed—constant golden hour, like always.

jungkook would never ask seokjin about the logistics of a ghost with some weird flowery magical power, so he just appreciates it. he also appreciates seokjin now, smiling fond, turning toward jungkook and throwing open the front door with a boosted spring in his step that he wants jungkook to feed off of and steal energy from.

he appreciates the little hole-in-the-wall café seokjin leads him to, as well as the waffles he gets with sugar and chocolate and strawberries, the plate they share—meaning they get cutlery for two, seokjin doesn’t eat anything, and then still insists they split the bill. it feels too formal, but in a good way that jungkook wouldn't mind if everything was a bit clearer. communication is important, and seokjin’s warm at his side even if they don’t touch. the day feels like a proposition even if nobody has said anything. all the things jungkook won’t think about, the clichés, walking each other home. i had fun today, me too, let’s do this again, goodnight kiss—

and then seokjin walks into traffic in the middle of the street.

time pauses, liquidates, dribbling condensation down the side of a glass. one second seokjin and jungkook are talking and not a moment later he’s stepping over the sidewalk and his coat trails in the wind and the lights aren’t red, and the cars haven’t stopped, and he’s fucking walking into traffic.

jungkook doesn’t think, he can’t. he doesn’t see anything but the back of seokjin’s jacket and imagines the thump of a body on pavement, the screech of brakes and a horn . he forgets everything else.

he doesn’t realise he’s shouting until seokjin, in this same slow-motion stupor of jungkook’s, begins to turn around. there are probably cars coming from somewhere, and every second counts, and jungkook runs out into the street after him. he tumbles forward with the need to get close to seokjin because he’ll die and he can’t die, he can’t—

and jungkook can get to him if he just hurries up he needs to be faster faster faster faster-

and jungkook puts his hands out to push seokjin away, and pushes right through him. a figment of his imagination, a hallucination, not there—a ghost.

he trips himself up and goes flying toward the other sidewalk, stumbling and falling, scraping up his palms and his knees, and his wrists ache with the force of his collision with the ground. he almost knocks his head against the tarmac but holds himself up just in time, shivering all over in seconds and terrified and confused and he doesn’t want to be out here anymore and he wants to be in bed, he wants the world to stop turning, he wants to stay underwater for a while and block all the noise out. and his hands are bleeding and so are his knees, and his jeans have a tear down the calf, and he really just wants to cry.

in this exact moment jungkook remembers with startling clarity that he’s never, ever been able to touch seokjin—if he ever wanted to push seokjin out of a car’s way, or pull him back from a cliff’s edge, or hug him tight, he couldn’t, and he still can’t.

the re-realisation washes over him like a tide. jungkook remembers just how powerless he is as he crawls further away from the road and turns to sit on the ground. he sees seokjin, slowly fading back into his physical form, staring at him from the middle of the road with absolute unmistakeable horror.

‘jungkook,’ seokjin mouths as he starts running, or maybe he says it—but jungkook’s underwater now and the quiet’s nice. he doesn’t need to breathe. he stays under here and floats around and gets all the sounds blocked out and it’s so, so nice. ‘shit, jungkook-’

seokjin drops down to his own knees and inspects jungkook’s hands where they’re limp and palm-up in his lap. jungkook’s watching seokjin like he wants an answer to something, anything. he wants things to be fine. everything’s so fucking new.

‘jungkook, hey. hey, can you hear alright? your head-’ and a strong hand hovers gentle near the back of jungkook’s neck but not touching, never touching, never ever ever. seokjin inspects for bruising or cuts or some blood. none’s found, and jungkook would have told him earlier that his head’s fine, had he a tongue or a mouth or a voice to speak with. ‘i’m sorry, i’m so so sorry, i forgot. i was so comfortable and i just- i forgot, jiminie knows and i forgot you don’t. cars only hit me if i want them to, you can’t touch me, your hands-’

jungkook watches seokjin fret with a phone and call someone, probably taehyung or hoseok, as he lets himself stop listening. someone with an apron on appears from down the street and tries to hand seokjin some tissues. seokjin motions for them to drop them in jungkook’s lap. jungkook doesn’t bother with them—he wipes his hands on his jeans once to smear the blood already brimming from the variety of scrapes, and then again, and again, like it’ll begin some backwards time loop that’ll take them back to this morning so that jungkook never answers that phone call and never agrees to waffles.

he thinks about what seokjin’s said.

thinks about how he wants to know seokjin’s really here, just once. wants to reach out and touch him and hold him down because he can leave whenever he wants to and walks through traffic without a problem and he wasn’t meant to know jungkook at all. jungkook’s here because of a fluke from a job. he’s too nosy. he should’ve kept to himself. he should’ve never applied for the job in the first place. seokjin’s never his, he’s never anyone’s, and jungkook can’t make him real. jungkook can’t make him stay.

he doesn’t remember getting back home. he remembers taehyung’s concern and his hands  cupping jungkook’s face, and he remembers hoseok speaking close and quiet and pressing gentle kisses into his hair as he helped jungkook into his car—now fixed. he doesn’t remember seokjin going home with them; he probably didn’t even get in the car. he remembers taehyung wiping at his hands and knees with disinfectant that didn’t even sting. there isn’t even much wrong with him, he doesn’t understand the fuss.

now he’s home. he’s in his room, in baggy clothing he hadn’t left the house in with bandaged hands and knees. the apartment outside is so quiet. seokjin didn’t get in the car with them. he walked into the middle of the street. he wasn’t hurt. jungkook tried to save him and got hurt instead. he didn’t come home.

seokjin might not come back, jungkook thinks, and then thinks of the music in the folder on the coffee table, and then discards the thought. he didn’t come home with them. he might not come back. this isn’t really his home, anyway.

‘yeah,’ jungkook whispers, answering himself: he’ll go, he will, he will, he will. his voice is grated and small. he’s still shivering in spurts. he’s alone. ‘yeah.’

—

when things start downhill they go downhill fast. it’s always been that way, and it’ll never change.

seokjin comes back to the apartment the next morning. he doesn’t speak to anyone. jungkook doesn’t know he’s home until he clamours out of his room and finds seokjin curled up under a blanket on the sofa. he stays frozen in place until hoseok comes out of his room and sees the two of them, and leaves a glass of water on the table for when seokjin wakes up and leads jungkook back to his room by the hand.

they don’t not talk. they help each other with dinner, and now that the leftover warmth from summer has faded into the first pinch of cold, october to november to december, they don’t have work until the amusement park reopens after christmas. money isn’t the biggest issue. they all eat together like they always did, and hoseok still goes to the studio for most of the day, and seokjin and jungkook still stay home. jungkook asks seokjin for help if there’s something in his room he can’t find. jungkook will fall asleep on the couch by accident and wake up with seokjin’s blanket around his shoulders, sometimes. but that’s only sometimes.

the comfort they’d established melts away little by little, day by day. it’s like they’ve both realised the difference in their circumstances and gave up on trying. jungkook slowly starts eating dinner in his room and seokjin slowly starts going out more and coming home later, sometimes with day-long gaps like he hadn’t told them how dangerous that was at the beginning.

jungkook wonders if this is what was meant to happen—maybe now that everything’s breaking, seokjin can break away. he isn't trapped here anymore. maybe that’s always been the plan.

and jungkook thinks about seokjin trying his hardest to leave until it starts to hurt him, an ache in his chest that pulses when he sees seokjin disappear into hoseok’s room when jungkook’s around, or when he doesn’t speak at all and jungkook doesn’t try either, and it looks like either one of them could break the silence but all the words and worries get tangled behind their tongues.

‘have you made any progress?’ jungkook asks but never meant to, him on one side of the couch and seokjin on the other, both of them pretending to watch a movie and watching the wall instead. there’s so much he’s wanted to say that now it’s all started slipping out.

seokjin tips his head, eyes landing over jungkook’s shoulder. ‘on what?’

jungkook tries to stop himself. tries to sugarcoat just a little, tries not to sound as blunt as he feels, tries and—

‘disconnecting yourself from me. going back home.’ it’s accusatory and expecting and sounds too much like get out, and for the first time in what seems like weeks, seokjin looks at him. it’s too late to backtrack. the words keep spilling out and they’re all wrong, and his eyes find the folder on the table. ‘it’s just…it’s been a couple weeks now. i just wanted to check in.’

check in, his says, and means: don’t leave. don’t go. tell me you don’t plan to. don’t leave me alone.

‘i’m working on it,’ seokjin says back, just as cold, and jungkook digs nails into his palm, opening and closing his hand. seokjin studies him quietly, squinting. ‘do you want me to leave, jungkook?’

he doesn’t. he never would. he’s so attached, but those aren’t the words he finds himself saying, doesn’t know how to say them so he just—

‘i mean, this isn’t- this isn’t your home. you don’t belong here.’

seokjin stares at him, and his eyes go wide, and he stares some more. jungkook breathes heavy. that wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but he can’t take it back. the words are out there now. there’s nothing he can do to reverse it.

he finds himself shrugging like it’s not his body. ‘do what’s best for you, i guess.’

stay, stay, stay, stay stay stay-

‘that’s what you think?’ seokjin asks quietly, a downturn to his lips, a furrow in his brow, shrinking into the couch.

jungkook nods, again and again. ‘i mean, this was just an accident.’

and that’s it. it’s said. it’s wrong. it’s a lie, but it’s also not. it was an accident, but now they have a sofa bed and an apron with seokjin’s initials on it. what was isn’t essentially what is now, and jungkook’s scared of what’s changed, too caught in whether seokjin likes the past or present better.

he kind of wants to crawl across the space between them and fall against seokjin’s chest and sleep against the warmth of his body but he can’t. there’s so much they can’t have. isn’t that always the way? a little thing that means everything, so out of reach?

‘ah,’ seokjin chokes, and his eyes go down to his hands to watch their constant fidgeting. jungkook’s never felt guilt so visceral.

he pushes himself up off the couch, moving back around the couch and off toward his bedroom door. seokjin hasn’t looked up.

‘i’ll let you sleep,’ jungkook says, and hopes it sounds like sorry. ‘goodnight, jin.’

a pause. then, soft and small and awful to the ears: ‘sweet dreams, jungkook.’

there’s a horrible weight in jungkook’s chest. ‘jin?’

‘hm?’

‘are you okay?’

seokjin huffs out something like a laugh. his shoulders go up with it before he leans back into the couch, and jungkook doesn’t think he’s smiling. ‘yeah.’

—

jungkook wakes up to hoseok pulling him upright.

‘jungkook,’ hoseok murmurs, and runs a slightly frantic hand through jungkook’s hair. jungkook tries to blink, eyes sticky with sleep, wondering about the time and date, if they’ll get pancakes for breakfast, except-

jungkook looks up.

‘koo, did you say anything to seokjin,’ hoseok asks. they’re both too tired for accusations but it feels like one. he’s still running a hand through jungkook’s hair. his smile’s a little off. something’s wrong. ‘were you two fighting? things have been weird, it’s just really important that you tell me if something happened. i’m not upset. i just need to know. please.’

jungkook blinks, and then rubs hands across his eyes. he stands up, and the duvet hangs halfway off the bed.

‘koo, hey-’

the clock on the living room wall reads six in the morning. the sofa bed’s all folded up.

oh, god.

on the windowsill, the flowers are beginning to die. on the coffee table, the folder is noticeably absent.

jungkook stares for far too long but moves when hoseok tumbles out into the living room after him. he runs into the kitchen where the flowers are dying too, small and hunched over and drooping in their vases. there’s just the stretch of clean counters and the smell of flowers—and a folded slip of paper next to a blue rose on the table.

hoseok appears behind him, his phone in his hand. jungkook grabs the page and unfolds it.

out of your hair, it reads.

‘oh,’ jungkook breathes, like it’s been pulled out of him. he puts the page down. he watches it, and reaches for the rose. his eyes sting, his throat full of stones, and he feels all the guilt swirl in him like it’s looking for a way to push outwards and contaminate the air. ‘oh, i- hobi, did he-’

hoseok’s there in an instant, tugging on jungkook’s arms and spinning him around so jungkook can tuck his face into hoseok’s neck, and he lets himself shake as hoseok holds him up, not realising he’d kept hold of the blue rose in his shock, curling the stem around his finger.

‘i ruined it, i need him here - i didn’t mean-’ jungkook rambles, and hoseok grips so, so hard on his waist, and jungkook starts crying without meaning to and finds it useless to stop.

soon enough there’s the jingle of keys, the front door opening. warmth presses against jungkook’s back as taehyung holds onto his tummy and rocks the three of them side-to-side.

‘i’m so sorry. oh- koo, honey, don’t cry,’ taehyung murmurs, soft and close to jungkook’s ear, and he starts to calm down once he’s surrounded by warmth but then he thinks of the house and how empty it feels without a fourth person here, and it’s miserable to know it’s all his fault.

it takes so long to quiet down. it’s been an awful string of weeks, and now seokjin’s gone. jungkook’s all weighed down, legs heavy, and he’s still clenching the blue rose tight in his hand.

‘i miss him,’ jungkook murmurs against hoseok’s collarbone, eyes shut and pressed down into his shoulder, hoseok rubbing at his back and taehyung rubbing at his stomach, moving up to his chest. they waddle into the living room as a unit but think better of it and head to hoseok’s room instead. ‘i never got to - i never-’

he uses his free hand to grab at hoseok’s t-shirt as they gently topple onto the covers. he ends up in the middle again after a lot of shuffling, and taehyung kicks off his shoes and takes off his pants and changes into one of hoseok’s baggy t-shirts. jungkook keeps his head pressed into hoseok’s chest as he pets his hair, and taehyung gets close against jungkook’s other side.

they lie in silence for as long as they need to, taking comfort in the warmth of bodies and the trust shared in the room. at some point taehyung moves to grab jungkook’s hand and comes across the rose.

‘what’s this?’ taehyung murmurs, and plucks it out of jungkook’s hand. except when he properly sees it he freezes, and jungkook feels like something important is about to happen, so he flips over to look up at taehyung instead.

‘was jin the kind of guy who liked hidden meanings?’ taehyung asks, and brings the flower close to his chest.

jungkook nods. ‘he would talk about what the flowers meant sometimes. like the sunflower in the bathroom.’

‘and he left this for you?’

jungkook frowns. ‘yeah. i think so. i might google it later, i dunno.’

taehyung nods, and reaches down to the floor to search for his phone. jungkook feels hoseok’s hand at his back.

‘what did the note say?’ hoseok asks.

jungkook muffles the words in the pillow.

‘oh, kook.’ hoseok moves closer, drapes an arm over his waist while taehyung holds his phone too close to his face. ‘what happened?’

‘i’m being selfish,’ jungkook murmurs. ‘he was your friend too.’

‘it’s alright. just talk to me.’

jungkook pauses. ‘we handled things well, didn’t we? with the storms and all that.’

‘we did.’

‘and if that was the only bad thing, it would’ve be fine. if there were loads of other bad things, they would’ve been fine too. it’s just - the car,’ jungkook murmurs, and both taehyung and hoseok are watching him now, where he’s curled up small on the duvet and staring off at the wall. ‘i realised we didn’t really know much about seokjin? not like the others do. we were never meant to meet him. he was never meant to be here. it was an accident. and i told him that and i think he thought i wanted him to go.’ he breathes out, shaky. ‘i really didn’t want him to go.’

taehyung frowns. hoseok makes a sympathetic little sound. ‘i didn’t think he liked it here,’ jungkook admits, ‘so i asked him when he was leaving. i didn’t want him to feel trapped here. and now he’s actually left.’

taehyung puts his phone away. ‘did you ever wonder if he actually did like it here?’

‘i don’t understand that,’ jungkook frowns. ‘i don’t know why he would.’

‘because he likes us? feels comfortable with us?’ hoseok muses. ‘feels comfortable with you?’

the addition of you is something jungkook would dwell on if his body wasn’t heavy and he wasn’t just saying the first things to come to mind. ‘but i- the car, and the storms. we aren’t good at this, i’m not, i never know what to do-’

‘i think the problem is,’ taehyung begins, and reaches out to run a hand through jungkook’s hair, ‘you aren’t letting yourself become good at dealing with things. you’re thinking too far ahead.’

‘you keep saying you don’t know seokjin but you won’t let yourself spend time with him. you’re scared to let a few months go by.’ taehyung stares over at the wall, scratching at the nape of jungkook’s neck. ‘there doesn’t have to be a….reason for everything. some things can just be.’

‘it’s different with him,’ jungkook whispers, and immediately wishes he could take it back.

hoseok hums intrigue. ‘how?’

‘i think i-’ he cuts himself off, scared to say too much. ‘i just. i wanted him to stay.’ he breathes in, shaky. ‘i wanted him to stay and i was scared that he’d leave when he wanted to. so i…made him leave.’

taehyung’s face falls. ‘oh, honey,’ he sighs, and wraps jungkook up in a tight hug again, the blue rose discarded on the floor where jungkook can forget about it completely.

‘i want him to be real,’ jungkook admits, and knows what’s coming next, and is terrified.

‘he is real,’ hoseok insists, confused.

jungkook ducks his head down and makes himself small, and with one last timid breath, ‘i want to hold him.’

everything freezes. ‘oh,’ hoseok begins, and then catches on—realises the implications. ‘oh, kook,’ and jungkook’s wrapped up all over again, legs over his calves and arms all around him and kisses in his hair, and he realises what he’s done.

—

after two days, the doorbell rings. hoseok opens it just as jungkook steps out of his room, just in time for him to see three people he honestly never thought he’d see again. he becomes terrified awfully quick, because he hasn’t seen them since work ended and has no reason to see them ever again, anymore.

‘i’m sorry,’ jungkook blurts out before he can help it, disrupting the apartment’s natural quiet. yoongi and namjoon look up at him. hoseok frowns where he’s closing the front door. jimin’s watching the flowers.

‘oh shit,’ jimin murmurs, and that seems to catch the others’ attentions too. he steps forward again, ducking down to peer at the coffee table and frowns. ‘yoongi, what’s jin done.’

yoongi steps up close, dragging namjoon with him with the hand he’s holding, and then he seems to spot the dying flowers too. he lots of a long, painful groan. ‘he’s a strain on my life expectancy,’ yoongi cries, and thumps his forehead against jimin’s shoulder. ‘god. god.’

namjoon looks over at jungkook, whose eyes are now bulging out of his head. ‘jungkook-’

‘no, i’m sorry,’ he repeats, and steps toward them with his head bowed, hands constantly moving, twisting the rings on his fingers. ‘i should’ve- you can hate me all you want, i know. i don’t know where he is, i’m sorry, i didn’t-’

yoongi looks over. ‘jungkook?’ jungkook startles a little and yoongi’s eyes go wide. he detaches himself from his boyfriends to waddle over and wrap jungkook in a small, squishy hug. ‘kid, it’s okay. jesus, no, we’re not mad at you.’

jungkook frowns. ‘you’re…’

namjoon trails over after them, a hand on jungkook’s shoulder once he and yoongi separate. ‘why would we be mad at you?’

‘seokjin left,’ jungkook explains. ‘i upset him and he’s gone.’

‘oh, i’m sorry,’ jimin breathes, and quickly wraps his arms around jungkook’s waist in another hug, different from yoongi’s, more like he wants to wriggle all the sad feelings out of jungkook instead of just comfort him.

‘why are you sorry?’ jungkook asks, but accepts the hug anyway.

‘because you’re sad, and you didn’t mean to say anything bad,’ jimin says, and pulls back to look at jungkook with a gentle pat on the back. ‘c’mon, let’s talk. yeah?’  

‘i’ll go nap with tae,’ hoseok murmurs, and runs a hand down jungkook’s arm as he smiles and retreats back to his bedroom, to where taehyung’s curled up right in the middle of the bed.

the other four of them get all squashed together on the sofa, legs thrown over laps and tucked under thighs, jimin’s pressed back into yoongi’s chest. ‘the flowers,’ jimin begins, and gives them another cautious glance.

‘they’re dying,’ jungkook nods.

‘the flowers aren’t just…’ he purses his lips before sighing, and taps at yoongi’s arm. ‘ugh, you explain it.’

‘seokjin likes big gestures,’ yoongi continues. ‘yeah, they’re his little power thing, but they’re always more than that. his and jimin’s place has always had some nice ones. we didn’t really expect your whole house to be covered in them, but seokjin likes to be grand and mysterious, so it didn’t take long to figure out what the flowers were for.’

jungkook frowns. ‘...what were they for?’

‘can’t tell you that, jimin says, gripping tight at a blanket previously thrown over the back of the couch. ‘he’ll kill us.’

‘no he won’t,’ is the first thing jungkook finds himself saying, too cold, too hurt. ‘he’s not here. and he can’t touch people, anyways.’

the others still. they’d be exchanging concerned looks if they weren’t looking at jungkook instead.

‘jungkook,’ namjoon says, but now he’s looking at jungkook in a different way, like he’s quietly figuring everything out and choosing his words with precision because of it. ‘seokjin’s been alone for a long time, not of his own doing. and he was really nervous when he first found us, and then he was equally as nervous when he found you. and you probably really hurt him, even if you didn’t mean to.’

‘yeah.’ jimin frowns, antsy as he glances away from jungkook and over at the wall. ‘and when he’s upset, if he really wants to, he can disappear for a while. the human equivalent of getting the world to stop turning. except now nobody can see him.’

‘oh,’ jungkook says, and it’s really not the weirdest thing this year has brought to him, but he’s had enough weird to last a lifetime, so now his brain’s kind of short-circuiting. ‘so he’s just - he could be anywhere. and we don’t know.’

‘he could technically be in this room, yeah,’ yoongi says, deadpan, and jimin elbows him in the ribs.

jungkook frowns. ‘so the flowers mean something but you won’t tell me what, but they were some kind of grand gesture. and seokjin was so upset about something i said that he turned himself invisible. and now he might be listening to what we’re saying.’

‘i don’t know if he can hear us, actually. i never really asked,’ yoongi muses, and jimin elbows him again.

‘this is fine,’ jungkook says, although it’s really not all that fine. ‘this is great. this - um. what am i meant to do with this info?’

namjoon sighs, but shifts toward jungkook to look at him with total sincerity. ‘i think seokjin’s done something really dumb, and is currently also doing something really dumb. but he wouldn’t do it unless he was completely certain about it.’ jungkook opens his mouth to question, but namjoon shakes his head. ‘i can’t explain it, because it involves you. when he comes back, just…be honest with him. one hundred percent honest. everything really depends on that.’

‘honest about what?’ jungkook asks.

‘everything,’ yoongi pleads. ‘just - communication, be honest, please.’

‘okay,’ jungkook says, and breathes in, preparing himself. ‘okay, i’ll…i’ll be honest?’

‘good.’ namjoon stands up, and the others follow suit, reaching for free hands again, entwining them. ‘good, okay. leave the flowers alone for a while, don’t dump them. and don’t cover any of your mirrors. and be honest. things might get really strange, but that’s normal. okay?’

jungkook’s frozen on the couch. ‘uh, yep.’

‘good luck!’ jimin cheers, and then the three of them hurry off toward the front door.

jungkook waits until they’re gone before he stands, goes to hoseok’s room, and collapses down in an exhausted heap across hoseok’s and taehyung’s backs on the bed.

—

there’s a full two weeks where jungkook feels like he’s mourning, but doesn’t really know for what. he looks for a new job, and he helps make the dinner more now that there’s two of them and not three, and he constantly leaves blankets and pillows out on the sofa, forgetting there’s nobody there to need them. yoongi makes a groupchat for him, jungkook, jimin and namjoon, and then never texts into it but reads everything. they really don’t hate jungkook, which is a welcome shock.

hoseok gets called to choreograph a song for a big-enough entertainment company, one that’s not made of money but has enough to pay for talent. jungkook considers going and working in a florist’s with an advertisement in the window, and then thinks better of it, and submits applications to multiple retail stores instead. he opens the websites for some colleges in the area and lingers on them for far too long. his parents don’t call. seokjin doesn’t come home.

and then—change, creeping up on him, in that small way changes often do.

jungkook watches the mirror as he brushes his teeth, and somewhere down the hall he hears hoseok ask if jungkook’s seen his keys—to which jungkook turns around and shouts top island drawer three times through a mouth of foam until hoseok understands, and then turns back around to the mirror.

and sees seokjin in it.

his toothbrush goes flying across the counter with surprise and he chokes on foam until he manages to spit it out, skidding backwards to lock the bathroom door, to know this isn’t some heartbroken hallucination, and to keep hoseok from walking in and freaking the fuck out.

he stands facing the large bathroom mirror, and sees seokjin staring back at him, in the exact same set of sleep clothes he’d been wearing when they argued, mirroring the ones jungkook’s wearing now that he found folded on the sofa and kept for himself. he looks tired, half-dead, face gaunt and pale and the shirt slipping from his shoulder as he frowns and frowns, and blinks like everything’s out of focus, like he’s trying to see through a dense fog.

‘jin,’ jungkook gasps, and takes a step closer, and seokjin still stares off at the tiled wall behind him. another step, and he can see the way seokjin’s form trembles with effort. another, and he stretches out a careful hand, and places it gently against the glass.

seokjin meets jungkook’s eyes like he’s never seen him before. he, too, lifts a hand. presses it down, finger by finger and then palm, right where jungkook’s lies.

it’s not a touch, but it’s the most they’ve ever had.

he smiles, and jungkook blinks, and seokjin’s gone.

—

jungkook gives his plan two weeks of thought. at the beginning of december, dressed in baggy sweatpants and a big knitted jumper, he watches hoseok leave for work through the front door before diving into his room and plucking the blue rose from his bedside drawer.

his plan is more of a last resort, because the feeling of missing someone vitally important to him has become a sort of resonant ache and he’s so tired of it, and nobody knows about the bathroom situation but him, so he has to assume seokjin’s in the house. he has to.

so he hurries into the middle of the living room. he clutches the rose in both hands, and wears the clothes that still smell faintly of seokjin, stretched out in the way he liked them, and his full-length mirror is stood in front of him, dangerously balanced against the back of the couch. this is it, he supposes.

‘i googled blue roses,’ jungkook begins, louder than intended so he quietens himself to a gentle, warm murmur. ‘i probably should have done that before but i forgot to. if you liked to tell me about the sunflowers and the pink roses, i should’ve caught on quicker.’

he hums. ‘ desire for the unattainable —you’re so dramatic. you could’ve - i was right there, the whole time. i know i messed things up at the end but you could’ve said something. i could’ve too, but you were - you were so much, it was so new, and that’s not bad. i just always thought you’d leave and i was so scared, so then i accidentally made you leave, and i didn’t think it’d hurt so much. it did, anyway. i thought you wanted to leave. i thought it was for the best and it wasn’t.’

jungkook looks around at the way the lights don’t flicker, the way the mirror doesn’t glow or shatter, but he has nothing to lose.

‘don’t leave,’ he whispers, and stands tall. ‘if you’re here, don’t leave. i want you to sleep here and come home every night and go grocery shopping with us and help pay our rent. i’ll go get waffles with you all the time, i’ll let you split the bill again, i’ll remember that you can’t get hit by cars and i won’t worry that you can’t touch me, just - i miss you. i miss you.’

i miss you, he’s thought everyday for the last month, and now that he’s said it aloud, something in him cracks. everything he feels pools within his lungs. ‘i wanted to write this down,’ jungkook explains, ‘but i don’t think it would’ve been as honest. i know what i want to say. i’m so sorry i made you feel like i wanted you gone. i want to see you all the time.’

nothing changes. he bends the rose’s stem around his pointer finger and begs, please please please.

‘the flowers are dying,’ he whispers, and eyes the little trimming of snapdragon that’s gone all discoloured and sad across the room. ‘i’m really scared to know what that means. i’ll be honest with you if you’re here, if you’ll let me be.’

he stands silent for five minutes, and doesn’t know what he expected in the first place.

he keeps the blue rose clenched tight in his hand. when he moves the mirror back into his room, he doesn’t turn in time to see the way the lights flicker.

—

the door’s off the latch when jungkook gets home two days later. hoseok stayed overnight with some of his trainees and said he wouldn’t be back until the evening, at least. he remembers closing it. only three people have a key.

jungkook sprints down the hall and opens the door and—the radio’s playing. he can hear the washing machine running in the storage room, even though he never put it on this morning. he hears the hum of the extractor fan over the stove, and then seokjin walks out of hoseok’s bedroom in a pretty purple hoodie with the hood pulled down and the sleeves flopping over his hands.

jungkook’s had such a long time to figure out what to say in this moment—had pages of explanations and so many different ways to say i’m sorry, or i love you, but he forgets them all now.

he watches seokjin fix a flowerpot on the island and watches him turn to watch jungkook and jungkook is in love with him.

‘did you hear me,’ is the first thing jungkook can come up with. seokjin leans against the counter. jungkook clears his throat. ‘the other day, did you hear me?’

seokjin hums, and nods. he fidgets with the ends of his sleeves like he, too, is nervous.

‘i’m sorry,’ jungkook says loudly, and seokjin just watches him with a confused, knitted brow. ‘i’m sorry for everything but i want you to stay.’

‘jungkook.’

‘i need you to - i really like having you around,’ he blurts out, as if he didn’t do this days ago and wouldn't repeat it for the rest of his life. ‘i’m so sorry, i don’t know if this is what you wanted but the rose, i googled the meaning and-’

seokjin walks over and goes to reach out and—stops. his hands hover around jungkook’s head and above his cheeks and he frowns. ‘you’re okay,’ he insists, and jungkook coughs wetly in relief, which makes seokjin frown harder. ‘don’t apologise - no, don’t cry, oh. oh, i left you alone and i hurt you and now you’re crying, please don’t cry, i thought you didn’t want me here-’

‘i just told you i wanted you here, you big dumb idiot,’ jungkook snaps, and crosses his arms, but he’s too relieved to be angry.

‘i didn’t know that a month ago!’ seokjin exclaims, and then his eyes catch on the plants in the windows—jungkook looks over too and sees colour, bright petals, strong stems. ‘oh, those flowers are back too. they’re all growing at different paces. oh, i’m glad.’

jungkook nearly bristles. ‘you disappear for weeks and you care about the flowers in our home ?’

‘they were peace offerings!’ seokjin argues, and throws a hand out toward them. ‘love confessions! wining and dining with no actual wining nor dining!’

‘love confessions.’

seokjin’s eyes go a little bit wide. ‘yeah,’ he breathes. ‘is that okay?’

jungkook nods slowly. ‘please elaborate or i might cry again.’

‘jungkook,’ seokjin says cautiously, as jungkook rocks back on his heels and pouts. ‘no, don’t cry—hey, koo. listen.’

‘what.’

‘you said our home.’ jungkook blinks. yeah, he did. ‘our home.’

‘oh.’  

‘yeah.’

jungkook looks up at him. ‘you called me koo.’

seokjin nods. ‘i did.’

and somehow, with just that—the establishment of ours, what’s become theirs, things start to slot into place.

‘i want you to stay,’ jungkook repeats, so so sure. ‘you don’t - have to. but.’

seokjin smiles small. ‘i want to. i need to figure some things out but…i will. i want to.’

and then he takes three large steps back into the middle of the room, and when jungkook goes to follow him he calls out, ‘wait, no, stay there.’

jungkook frowns. ‘what are you doing.’

seokjin wipes his palms on his sweatpants, and then messes up his hair, and then wipes his hands down again. jungkook gets increasingly more concerned.

‘i want to stay,’ he repeats, like they hadn’t already established that.

‘i want you here,’ jungkook tells him, and it sounds a little bit like a question because he doesn’t know what’s going on.

‘okay,’ seokjin breathes, and spins in a circle. ‘shit. shit.’

and seokjin slowly stretches out an arm. opens his hand and turns it up to the ceiling. looks jungkook in the eye.

‘jungkook,’ seokjin says. ‘hold my hand.’

‘no,’ jungkook says, and shakes his head over and over. ‘no, i - i can’t, we can’t.’

‘try.’ seokjin takes a step closer. ‘please.’

jungkook hesitates, but then he moves toward seokjin. he reaches for seokjin’s hand.

he holds it, and it’s warm. warm like the rest of him. jungkook extends his other hand to press light fingers against seokjin’s jaw and he can do that too, now. he exhales the softest little oh.

seokjin pulls jungkook close by their linked hands, curling an arm around his waist and burying his face into jungkook’s neck, the tip of his nose icy cold, squeezing so hard you can tell he wants this, needs it, hasn’t had it in so long. jungkook lets himself get wrapped up in it and presses himself as close as he can get, arms tucked into seokjin’s chest.

‘hey,’ seokjin murmurs. ‘i have things to explain to you.’

‘hi,’ jungkook whispers. he pulls back to trail fingertips up to seokjin’s face. ‘okay.’

‘i’ll stay,’ seokjin promises. ‘you can make waffles. we can eat them in bed. i’ll talk to hobi when he gets home.’

‘okay,’ jungkook says. ‘okay. waffles and bed.’

seokjin smiles, his hands on jungkook’s waist.

—

hoseok gets home late and texts jungkook five minutes beforehand. jungkook hides in his bedroom while seokjin hides behind the front door.

‘i’ll try give him a hug,’ seokjin grins. ‘it might work. we’ll see how he takes it.’

by the way the front door slams before hoseok promptly starts screaming, and the way they’re running around with seokjin’s legs hitched up at hoseok’s waist while hoseok holds him up as soon as jungkook steps into the hall—jungkook assumes he took it well.

—

‘what do you mean this was inevitable.’

‘don’t be mad,’ seokjin pouts, holding one of jungkook’s hands in both his own and playing with his fingers, and jungkook’s face is pressed into seokjin’s chest, a half-scream building in his throat and muffled in seokjin’s shirt. ‘you’re cute when you’re mad, but not at me. don’t be mad.’

jungkook huffs and leans up onto his elbows, free hand dangling over seokjin’s shoulder. their legs lay tangled down the other end of the couch, seokjin in a fluffy pair of pyjama shorts while he curls a foot down around jungkook’s ankle.

‘so you convinced me that this—’ he gives the hand seokjin’s preoccupied with a violent shake, and pokes at seokjin’s face until he’s fully looking at him—‘was impossible for ages and now you’re backtracking? you’ve been able to touch jimin and yoongi and namjoon for years? we just had to wait it out and you convinced me it would never happen?’

jungkook’s had a very busy week. seokjin gathered him onto the couch and then decided to tell him that everything he previously knew had been one big lie, so. that’s how this wednesday’s going.

seokjin yells, a loud and exasperated yah that bubbles into a laugh . ‘i was nervous! what if it didn’t work out and i’d given you false hope? i had to be sure!’

‘no, no, hold up,’ jungkook grumbles, and holds his head high. ‘so you told me.’

‘yes.’

‘that i would never be able to hold your hand. hug you. anything.’

seokjin hums.

‘all because you were scared you wouldn’t like me enough.’ seokjin opens his mouth to argue and jungkook pushes his chin up. ‘but you did like me, and then i indirectly told you to leave—’

seokjin makes a wounded noise. ‘very painful—’

‘shut it.’ he thumps a fist on seokjin’s chest and he almost wheezes. ‘i told you to leave, we kinda argued, and you assumed the connection would be broken. and then i was honest with you. and then you came back, and it wasn’t broken.’

‘correct.’

‘and this always happens when you get close to someone, and we didn’t need to fight, and you didn’t need to disappear for weeks. ’

‘there he is,’ seokjin murmurs, lazy-smiling, a hand dragging up to run through jungkook’s hair and scratch trimmed nails behind his ears. ‘my brightest student. Educated in the arts of miscommunication.’

‘you’re so annoying,’ jungkook insists, but doesn’t knock the hand away from his head and just presses an ear over his ribs. ‘dumb ghost. nearly got us both hit by a car.’

‘well. i wouldn’t have been hit—’

‘shut it!’

—

seokjin buys a wall piano and lets jimin sell his old one. they put it in jungkook’s room, away from the window so the sun doesn’t stain the wood. jungkook partly dreads being woken up in the middle of the night to the violent slamming of keys when any of the dozen folders of music seokjin had stored in jimin’s apartment inevitably fall from their shelf, but a few weeks later he doesn’t dread it at all.

a few weeks later and it’s the new year, and they start back work in a few days. jungkook wakes up with the sun and finds seokjin playing something low-register with the barely-there touch of his fingers, his shirt wide-necked and falling from his shoulder. hoseok and taehyung are asleep together across the way, in the other room—sorting themselves out. figuring out their intricacies, when somehow we’re just close wasn’t a believable excuse anymore.

jungkook gets out of bed and sits on the other end of the bench. he leans into seokjin’s side until he stretches an arm around jungkook’s shoulders and keeps playing with just the one hand. a featherlight kiss in his hair.