Chapter Text
Jungkook doesn’t know what he’s expecting to see when he looks up from the case of overpriced macarons and heartbreakingly golden danishes, but every other scenario is blasted out of the way by the shit-eating grin plastered on his best friend’s face as he joyfully clacks a pair of tongs together.
“No way,” Jungkook manages.
“Yes way,” Jimin says—joyfully—and clacks the tongs together once more. Jungkook groans.
“Why didn’t you tell me you got the job?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise! They called me yesterday and told me to come in at six this morning—it was a bit of an ambush, honestly. Also, you’re holding up the line. The usual?”
Jungkook eyes the case again, contemplating if he should deviate just to spite Jimin, but the temptation of his favorite is too much and he finds himself nodding instead. Jimin swiftly grabs a chocolate croissant and slides it into a paper bag, moving toward the register.
“Don’t be upset, Kookie. I’m sure it was just my extra customer service experience and the fact that I was actually on time to my interview.” Jimin smirks. “Also, maybe the fact that I’m cuter.”
“Hey—!”
“Three eighty-seven, please.” Jimin takes his card as Jungkook sulks. “Kidding, by the way. You’re cute. You’re the cutest. Any bakery would be lucky to have such cute staff.”
“Yeah, sure, hyung.”
Jungkook is still frowning a little when Jimin hands him the bag. Amelie’s is the only bakery on this side of the city that makes decent croissants and he and Jimin are frequent customers, or, were, until Jungkook really, actually looked at his account balance and decided that he had to cut back his daily pain au chocolat intake. He had his trembling hopes set on scraping by with an employee discount but apparently Jimin beat him to it.
“What time do you get off?”
“Three,” Jimin replies. “Meet you at the park?”
“Sure,” Jungkook says. “But you better bring quiche or I’m sending your new boss those pictures, y’know, the ones where the only thing covering your bits is a dollop of—”
“How did you get those?!” Jimin shrills, cheeks approaching the color of the red velvet macarons on the counter.
“I dunno, hyung, how do birds fly? How is the sky blue?”
“Out. Get out of my house.” Jimin stomps back to the next customer in line and Jungkook can’t contain his grin.
“Quiche Lorraine, please!” Jungkook calls as he leaves the bakery. He thinks he sees Jimin throw him a (not very) discreet middle finger, face still blazing.
He bites into his chocolate croissant, late May sunshine whispering down onto his shoulders. It’s starting to smell like warm berries, even in the city, and some of the college students have just come home from school to spend the summer scooping ice cream. Heat waves dance off of busy streets and the residential areas are lush with drooping, leafy branches, the kind that make walking through them feel like living in a pop-up book.
Yep, Jungkook thinks as the chocolate melts the bitterness in his chest. Still good.
o - o - o - o - o - o - o
“So,” Yoongi begins while Jungkook digs into his hard-earned quiche Lorraine. “I have some good news and some bad news.”
“Bad first,” Jimin says through a mouthful of raspberry tart, just as Jungkook says the opposite. Yoongi looks between them and then pushes up his glasses.
“The bad news is that I’m moving to L.A.”
“What?!” Crumbs fly out of Jimin’s mouth, his explosion turning heads at the picnic benches nearby. “When?!”
“Two weeks.”
“Hyuuung...” Jimin instantly goes into pout mode, lower lip drooping. “That’s so soon!”
“Yeah, hyung, why didn’t you tell us?”
“Well.” Yoongi looks down, fiddles with the corner of their picnic blanket. “An old friend of mine got in contact with me and the whole thing was kind of time-sensitive, so...I just—you both know how hard I’ve been trying to get a place down there—”
“Of course, hyung,” Jimin says, suddenly mature, his eyes kind but smile a little lacking. He glances at Jungkook, quick, almost so Jungkook doesn’t catch it. “And we’re really happy for you. Aren’t we, Kookie?”
Jungkook nods despite the squeeze in his stomach.
“You’re gonna be amazing, hyung. Doing what you’re meant to do.”
He receives one of those rare eye-smiles from Yoongi, the kind that makes Yoongi’s mouth go all soft right along with Jungkook’s insides.
“Thanks, Kook.” Yoongi reaches for an orange macaron. “Now, since I’m moving out, I bet you can guess what the good news is.”
“A decrease in the number of DTPH?”
Yoongi scowls.
“What the fuck is DTPH?”
“Death threats per hour—ow!”
A lean hand smacks him at the back of the head and somewhere Jungkook can hear Jimin giggle.
“No,” Yoongi growls, “and it’s good news for you specifically, so you better shut up and be grateful.”
“For me?” Jungkook is interested now, still rubbing the back of his head.
“Oh my god,” Jimin says with a grin. “Yoongi-hyung’s moving out.”
“Yeah, so?” It’s Jungkook’s turn to pout, looking back and forth between his hyungs. He’s about to open his mouth to whine when he gets it.
“Oh,” he breathes, because Yoongi, the artistic genius that he is, likes to surround himself with other artistic geniuses, which means that he lives in a place that’s made for artistic geniuses, a place that Jungkook, for the life of him, has been pining after since his very first visit.
“My room at the Laurelton,” Yoongi confirms, “is going to be available. And since the apartment manager is in love with me, I have, ehh, maybe more than a little say in who gets to take my place.”
“Everyone is in love with you, hyung,” Jimin remarks, breezily, and Yoongi actually blushes. Jungkook ignores them.
“Wait, so are you, like, offering it to me?”
“You’re still looking for a place, right, Kook?”
Of course Jungkook’s still looking for a place. He loves Jimin, and sometimes even loves living with Jimin, but after only four weeks of sharing space they’re both going a little crazy. And Yoongi’s not offering up just any apartment, no, this is an apartment with a waitlist that’s had Jungkook’s name on it for two years and counting.
“Yes.” Jungkook leans forward to grasp Yoongi’s forearm pleadingly. “Hyung, if you give me your room at the Laurelton, I will—uh...” Jungkook looks around for inspiration. “I’ll get you a lifetime supply of macarons. With Jimin-hyung’s discount.”
Yoongi scrunches his nose up.
“Who the hell needs a lifetime supply of macarons? I’m planning to die by caffeine, not by sugar.” He knocks Jungkook’s knee with his own. “I’ll try and get you the room, out of the goodness of my very pure and very massive heart. Provided that you don’t spread those pictures of Jiminie around—”
Jimin throws up his hands in disdain.
“Why do I even try keeping anything to myself anymore? What’s the point?”
“I won’t, hyung.” Jungkook locks eyes with Yoongi as Jimin grumbles into another tart. “You can count on me.”
“Good,” Yoongi says. He holds out his pinky. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Jungkook echoes, hooking his little finger around Yoongi’s and then stamping their thumbs together. “No blackmail nudes.”
“If you two are done negotiating my dignity, can I go? I was supposed to meet Taemin-hyung at the studio, like, ten minutes ago.”
Jungkook gets up and stretches while Yoongi collects the remaining pastries in a paper bag.
“Are you doing more choreo with him?”
Jimin nods at Yoongi’s question.
“Mhm. And it’s hard, so we’ve been practicing at practically every hour of the day.”
“Is that why you’ve been texting me at two a.m. to get McDonald’s? I’ve never been so underslept in my life.”
“Well, I’d stop texting you if you’d stop answering me.”
Their conversation blurs in Jungkook’s ears and he lets it, admiring the deep shade cast by a grove of trees by the street. He snaps a picture of it on his phone and one of the cottony clouds, too, filing it away in his ‘references’ folder. Oils for the trees and maybe watercolor for the sky, he thinks, picturing himself sitting by the window at Yoongi’s—no, his—apartment at the Laurelton. He’d start with the clouds first, taking reference from the photo only at the beginning before switching over completely to the view from his window. Then he’d sigh out onto the fire escape with his brush in hand and swim through the viscous liquid of the sky—
“Hey, Jungkookie.” Jimin is punching him in the shoulder, hair looking not too far off from the clouds in Jungkook’s head. “Leaving. See you at home.”
“Bye, hyung. Tell Taemin-ssi hi.”
“I will.”
Jimin hugs Yoongi and waves goodbye, leaving Yoongi and Jungkook watching his back as he heads off toward the bus stop.
“Need a buddy, Kook?”
“Sure.”
They start in the other direction, clouds melting down the napes of their necks.
o - o - o - o - o - o - o
“Wow,” Jungkook croaks, “am I fucking glad I don’t have a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah.” Jimin stands triumphantly in the center of Jungkook’s belongings, breathing easily. And absolutely fuck him, by the way, because even though he’s tiny he’s a dancer and therefore has unbelievable muscular and cardiovascular strength packed into his bean body. “I’m kinda glad Yoongi had to work today. I think your dresser would’ve killed him.”
“Why the fucking fuck didn’t I just get a new fucking dresser?”
“Uh, because your mom would kill you . I’ve seen the look she gets in her eyes around that thing.” Jimin’s hands clasp together as his face goes all dreamy. “ Ah, Jungkookie, I’m so glad you decided to keep that, you know, your father— ”
“Fuck my mom.”
“Jungkook-ah!”
Jungkook doesn’t care. He muffles his collarbone’s screaming with his mattress, which cushions him as he falls back on it.
Seeing Yoongi’s place empty of everything except a rug, a mattress, a dresser and some boxes makes Jungkook uneasy but he’s soothed by the fact that his new home was his home long before he moved in. It’s a little cramped, just a tiny, black-and-white tiled bathroom attached to another living space that serves as a kitchen and bedroom. But Jungkook can still catch a whiff of Yoongi’s residual cedar-oil scent and the fire escape where he and his hyung often curled up in lavender blankets beckons him back like it knows it’s his now.
“Also,” Jungkook says, still face up on the mattress, “why is Yoongi-hyung working today? Shouldn’t he have quit by now? He’s leaving in, what, like—”
“Two days, yeah.” Jimin traces the edge of Jungkook’s godforsaken dresser. “That’s hyung, I guess. He didn’t want to waste any time.”
“What about spending time with us?”
Jimin shrugs.
“He can’t afford it.”
Disappointment is plain on Jimin’s face even though he’s trying to hide it.
“Well,” Jungkook says, “at least we’ll get to see him tonight.”
Jimin brightens.
“I’m so excited! I miss hanging out with you guys. I love the bakery but working is the pits.” He sticks his tongue out, jabbing his thumb down. “I’d much rather eat my way to unconsciousness while singing along to Mamma Mia .”
“Hyung, we are not watching Mamma Mia tonight.”
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion.”
With that, Jimin makes for the door, leaving Jungkook dusty and sore and half cursing himself for quitting physical activity cold-turkey. He meets Jimin in front of the Laurelton, where Jimin’s thumbs are flying across his phone screen.
“Yoongi-hyung?” Jungkook asks, and Jimin confirms with a nod.
“He’s on break. He also says that we are absolutely watching Mamma Mia and you have no say in the matter because it’s his going away party and you’re a peasant.”
“Yoongi-hyung’s never called me a peasant.”
“Well, I’m sure he would agree with me.” Jimin swishes his phone into his back pocket and pulls Jungkook in for a long hug. Jungkook knows Jimin needs it so he holds on, squeezing tight despite his clavicle protesting, until Jimin pulls back.
“Are you gonna be okay tonight?”
Jimin sighs.
“Don’t ask me that. I haven’t been okay at all for the past two weeks.”
“I can, like, not come if you want me to.”
“ Jungkook .” Jimin puts his hands on Jungkook’s shoulders. “Yoongi-hyung is your friend too and you’re every bit as important to him as I am. Of course you’re coming.”
Jungkook can’t help but smile although he still feels guilty for taking up Jimin and Yoongi’s time alone.
“Hyung’s staying with me until he leaves,” Jimin says, reading his mind. “We’ll have plenty of time together.”
“Okay.” Jungkook gives Jimin one last hug before bidding him goodbye.
“Good luck at your training!”
Jimin is walking away from him, shouting over his shoulder.
“Good luck hiding all your banana milk from me!” Jungkook shouts back, and warms at the sight of Jimin shaking his head in laughter.
o - o - o - o - o - o - o
Jungkook watches Taehyung’s hands the best that he can, but his eyes can’t seem to keep up with those two blurs attached to the end of Taehyung’s arms at all. Jungkook’s counting—it takes about six seconds for Taehyung to grab two handle bags, double them up, octopus-arm every item from the hunk of salmon to the sweet-smelling strawberries into them, and then set the bags on the counter to wait for the receipt. Perfectly rectangular, no crinkles, everything packed in like goddamn tetris , and Jungkook can’t help but let his mouth hang open a little because, wow, that’s...
That’s really something.
“Wow,” Jungkook says, “that’s really something.”
Taehyung glows.
“I know,” he says. “But you won’t be able to do that for a little while. That’s about thirty-four months of cardboard paper cuts plus a head start of many years of professional amateur air hockey.” Taehyung does a chopping motion with his hands and accidentally hits Jungkook in the stomach. “Oops. Sorry.”
“No prob,” Jungkook wheezes, because Taehyung can, unsurprisingly, pack a punch.
“Come on back and I’ll show you where to grab handle bags from.”
Jungkook follows Taehyung down the produce aisle. Taehyung is so in his element, weaving through customers and offering big smiles to other employees, some of whom playfully swat at him as he goes past. Another manager, Seokjin, ruffles Taehyung’s hair and tells Jungkook to keep him out of trouble.
Seokjin had been the one who hired Jungkook—the store-owner’s son, Jungkook remembers. The store itself was one of the last standing Mom-and-Pop groceries in the whole city, nestled on the corner of a street that led down to a popular lake beach. It was tight-knit and everyone’s closeness to each other intimidated Jungkook, who’d never had a job before, much less one where his coworkers flirted with and talked shit about each other so easily. But Taehyung, who was training him, seemed all right, and he was friendly to Jungkook in a way that disregarded the fact that Jungkook was a newcomer.
“How long did you say you’ve been working here?” Jungkook asks him when they reach the basement. “Three years?”
“Just about.” Taehyung slaps a hand on top of a thick stack of bags. “But people get close here fast. I was only four weeks into this job when Jin-hyung saved me from getting arrested.”
Jungkook blinks. What?
“Oh...?” he says instead, strangled, and Taehyung offers him a good-natured smile.
“Yeah. I was just a dumb teenager, seventeen then, and I was going through some shit. I hated the foster parents I was with, I was closeted, and I didn’t feel like I was worth anything, much less deserving of anything. So I got drunk a lot. One night I got so drunk that I blacked out, and when I came to the next morning I was in Jin-hyung’s living room on the sofa. After puking my brains out I learned that I’d been yelling in the street at one a.m.—but not just any street, you see, because little did I know that Jin-hyung and I were neighbors. So I was yelling outside of Jin-hyung’s house in the middle of the night and woke him up, and when he realized it was me he got me inside before the cops came.”
“Huh.” Jungkook eyes Taehyung. He’s bright, full to the brim with whirlwinds and firecrackers and definitely not the kind of person Jungkook would suspect of getting blackout drunk and warranting a noise complaint. Well, actually, he could see Taehyung warranting a noise complaint while sober, but that seemed like a whole different story.
“Jin-hyung was angry at first,” Taehyung continues, “but after I told him why I was out drunk so late at night he got this look on his face. He said that he would take the price of new couch cushion covers out of my paycheck and let me keep my job if I called him every night for a week to prove I wasn’t drunk.” Taehyung shakes his head. “It was more than he needed to do and probably more than he should’ve done, but it really saved my ass. And that’s just how we are around here. We’ve got each other’s backs.”
“Wow,” Jungkook says again, because everything about Taehyung is kind of ‘wow’. “That’s...that’s really cool. I mean, like, it’s way more than really cool, because it’s such a meaningful thing and it seems like it kinda changed your life, but, uh—”
“No, it is,” Taehyung says, and that glow is back on his face, but much softer this time. “It is really cool.”
Jungkook follows Taehyung with a stack of handle bags balanced in his arms, almost losing his balance on the stairs but catching himself just in time to hear Taehyung’s friendly laughter. He lugs the stack to the back checkstand where Taehyung shows him how to unload it, making sure all the bags open the same way.
The rest of the training leaves Jungkook’s feet protesting and his head spinning, but constant reassurance from Taehyung keeps him cheerful enough to joke a little with the other managers. The cashier at the next checkstand is a high schooler named Bridget who has hair with blonde highlights and long, white-painted nails. Jungkook feels entirely incompetent as he watches her slide item after item after item toward her bagger, whose hands are almost as blurry as Taehyung’s. After his shift is over and everything has been cleaned, Jungkook limps to the bus stop—he’d banged his knee on the box baler earlier—and admires the sunset from under drooping eyelids.
He thinks about taking a picture for his references folder but he decides to save his energy.
“How was it?” Jimin greets him as he shoves a carton of banana milk into Jungkook’s hands, which Jungkook knows means he looks as exhausted as he feels. Yoongi is in the living room belting out “Dancing Queen” and Jungkook can only hope for the sanity of Jimin’s roommate that the house is otherwise empty.
“Mrf,” Jungkook answers as he suddenly finds a key lime macaron in his mouth, courtesy of Jimin’s fast-moving bakery hands. He chews, speaking around it. “‘M tired.”
“Aww, poor baby.” Jimin pinches his cheeks and then grabs a chocolate macaron for himself. “Was it that bad?”
Jungkook shakes his head.
“The guy who trained me was cool—he’s in school for composing. Also, I think he’s gay. Or at least, like, bi. He talked about being in the closet.”
“Well, that’s something.” Jimin leads him to the couch, which Yoongi is currently standing on.
“—young and sweet, only seventeeeeeeen!!” Yoongi pulls Jungkook up onto their makeshift stage.
“Dancing queeeeen!” Jungkook yells.
“Feel the beat of the tambouriiiiiiiiiine, oh yeah!”
Jungkook is aware that Jimin is losing his shit at the foot of the sofa but suddenly all of Jungkook’s energy has returned and he rips through the final chorus with Yoongi, holding hands and jumping up and down and forgetting entirely that he’s supposed to pretend like he hates Mamma Mia .
But Jungkook doesn’t really, because it reminds him of when he was a terrified high school freshman and cautious at his new friend Jimin’s house for the very first time. An underslept-looking college student named Yoongi had slouched through the front door halfway through their hangout and after that it was easy—and by easy, Jungkook means dancing to “Voulez Vous” and crying discreetly when Meryl Streep ran up the staircase while waving a red scarf.
It was the first time in a long time that anything in Jungkook’s life had been easy, so from that day forward he spent as much time at Jimin’s house as he could—
Which, to say, wasn’t a lot.
This time Jimin sobs, overdramatically and predictably, as Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep sing about the passage of time, and Yoongi and Jungkook serenade him from both sides like they always do. Jimin hits them for it like he always does and Jungkook tries to ignore the twist in his gut that makes him want to cry too, because even though he knows he’ll see his friends again something about it feels like the last time .
After the movie they all squeeze into Jimin’s tiny bedroom and crash on his bed, Yoongi in the middle. The only light in the room dances softly from the pink fairy lights lining the window, casting a rose-colored spell over the three of them piled on top of each other. It’s still easy, Jungkook thinks with a jolt in his stomach. It’s still the easiest anything has ever been.
“Are you scared, hyung?”
Yoongi takes a deep breath as he contemplates Jungkook’s question.
“Maybe.” He purses his lips. “I don’t know yet. Haven’t had much time to think about it.”
“Yoongi? Scared? Psh,” Jimin scoffs. “Fear is afraid of him.”
Yoongi slaps a hand over Jimin’s mouth, which Jimin licks, sending the human pile into exhausted hysterics. Jungkook can sense Jimin shaking with unvoiced giggles long after their laughter has died down.
“I’m scared for you to leave,” Jungkook says quietly. Yoongi sighs.
“You’ve lived without me before, for a whole school year.”
“Yeah, but that was when I knew you’d be here when I came home to visit.”
Yoongi turns to him, wraps a lean arm around his shoulders.
“Well, now you can be here for me when I come home to visit, Jungkook-ah. How about that?”
“Mmf.”
Jimin’s hands join Yoongi’s on Jungkook’s back and they stay like that until Jungkook falls asleep, Jungkook’s head pressed to Yoongi’s chest, Jimin curled around Yoongi’s back. During the night Jungkook is awakened to Yoongi shifting to is other side, murmuring to a quietly crying Jimin and stroking his hair.
That’s the thing about Jimin—he only cries for real if Yoongi is the only one watching.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”
And that’s another thing about Jimin—
Sometimes he’ll pretend like he never cries at all.
Jungkook stuffs his head under one of Yoongi’s six pillows—for his neck, Yoongi always insists, although Jimin says it’s because he wants to feel like a princess—but Jimin is persistent and grabs Jungkook by the ankles. He yanks, hard , until Jungkook can no longer bear to claw at the edges of the mattress and surrenders to the floor.
“I’m making pancakes,” Jimin offers as he breezes out the door, leaving Jungkook in a mess of blankets with his cheek smashed into the carpet.
o - o - o - o - o - o - o
The driver of Jungkook’s bus shoots him a genuinely worried look as he plods on in the morning, eyes red and puffy from the few hours of sleep he’d managed to catch and the considerable amount of crying he’d done at the bus stop. Jungkook can only manage a nod in return as he taps his card and shuffles to the back, fighting the urge to nod off right there next to the lady lecturing the empty seat next to her on the ferocity of seagulls.
Jungkook caught Yoongi with his arms wrapped around Jimin that morning, pressing a kiss to his neck as Jimin burned the pancakes. The sight alone was enough to make Jungkook choke up in the doorway, heart splitting down the middle for his two friends who had no idea what to do with the fact that they were in love with each other.
Jungkook wants to line them up and curse them out for being so stupid, but he knows that wouldn’t do anything but tangle things up further—and with the amount of detangling that already needs to be done, Jungkook thinks he has enough on his plate.
Through his haze of fatigue, the Laurelton is a welcome sight. Jungkook can hardly process that this is his now , that following years of pining after a tiny two-room apartment he’s finally made it.
His mattress is still on the floor but he doesn’t give two shits, he just wants to be dead to the world until approximately three minutes before he has to run out the door to his second training shift. Probably with one shoe untied because, dammit, he always forgets to double knot.
Solid on the best plan he’s ever come up with, Jungkook crumples onto his mattress. He’s wondering if anyone will mind that his work shirt is already wrinkled when--
He opens his eyes. He’s not hearing things, right?
Against his better judgement, Jungkook sits up, perking his ears to the sound of a honey-colored voice dripping onto his windowsill. The window is open partially because it’s stuffy as hell inside and Jungkook likes the breeze that tumbles lazily in--but now there’s a melody joining it, surfing on its golden wave.
He goes to the window.
It’s starting to become that muffled kind of warm outside but the lyrics that caught Jungkook’s attention are still clear. He looks both left and right and finds closed windows to his neighbors’ apartments, so he scans the ground for rogue guitar players and picnickers.
Nothing.
The melody drizzles down again after a moment of solitary guitar and Jungkook tilts his head up as if to catch it in his mouth. He finds himself thrusting one leg through the window to perch dangerously on the fire escape, all the while craning his neck toward the sky to capture another drop. If sounds had taste, Jungkook thinks, this one would be smoky, a bite at the back of his throat following the syrupy ooze of sweetness.
It’s his upstairs neighbor, then. But Jungkook remembers the apartment above Yoongi’s being empty.
Jungkook reaches for the railing of the fire escape to try and lean out, maybe get a better view of the window above his, but the metal scorches the palm of his hand and he flings himself backward with a squawk. He trips over his untied shoelace, foot banging into the stairs, but manages to catch himself on the windowsill before he whacks his forehead against the glass.
“Ow, fuck ,” he whispers, nursing his sore toes, and notices that the music has stopped abruptly. It’s been replaced with what he thinks might be airy laughter and the idea makes Jungkook stiffen, rushing to clamber back into his apartment where he almost eats shit on the floor again.
Safe on his island of a mattress, Jungkook takes his shirt off and pushes aside the laughter, thick air pooling like mercury in the valleys of his back. It’s still late morning but the birds have long since stopped singing, stifled by the sluggish beast of heat that has made a seat of the city. The dog days of summer have come early this year and their grip is vice-like, pressing people and birds and even the once-lively heat waves flat to the pavement with the force of their lethargy.
Jungkook presses himself flat to the swiftly-retreating coolness of his sheets, heartbeat slow. He lies there and tricks himself into thinking that he’s waiting to fall asleep but only lets his eyes close when a smoked-sugar voice finds its way back to his ears.