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“What are you doing?” Seokjin murmurs from where he has his face burrowed deep into the plush of his hotel pillow, and Taehyung bites down on his smile. He’s been caught—had been so certain that Seokjin was already fast asleep—but that doesn’t stop him from running his fingers through Seokjin’s hair. It’s still a little damp from his shower, wonderfully soft and silky from the hair mask he used, and Taehyung loves the way the strands cling to his hand, the way they tickle against his palm.
Tomorrow, it will be coarse again, primped and pulled by stylists until the damaged follicles start to frizz, and while that would never stop Taehyung from playing with it (they are both more than accustomed to the brittle feel of bleach-fried hair in their hands), he’s determined to enjoy this while he has it.
Even if he should be asleep by now.
Even if they both should.
“Meditating,” Taehyung replies loftily, grinning impishly at the way he can make Seokjin’s hair stick straight out from the back of his head.
Seokjin makes a series of gurgling, grumbling sounds, twisting his face into the pillow until a single sleepy eye is squinting out at Taehyung. It makes the angle slightly awkward on his wrist, but Taehyung refuses to relent his attentions.
“Your meditating feels a lot like you petting me,” Seokjin mumbles, the words almost entirely muffled by the pillow he still has mashed against most of his face. His mussed hair—his mussed purple hair—is crisscrossed over his forehead and into his eyes, and Taehyung wants to brush it away.
So he does, still marveling at the way the color looks against the tone of his skin.
“I didn’t say stop.” Even without being able to see his mouth, Taehyung can tell that Seokjin is pouting just from the way his one solely visible eyebrow furrows. He hums thoughtfully, pushing Seokjin’s bangs up and away from his forehead so that he can lean forward and kiss that very furrow. Seokjin makes a soft, needy sound in the back of his throat, his eye fluttering closed as Taehyung’s chest squeezes with affection.
“I like it,” Taehyung says apropos of nothing, and for what might be the millionth time since he first saw Seokjin’s hair that morning. He pinches a strand between his fingers like he’s examining it, and Seokjin’s eye crinkles with the force of a smile that Taehyung can’t see.
“Do you?” Seokjin glances at Taehyung through his eyelashes, squirming against the bedding like he has to fight to free his nose and mouth from their cotton prison. Taehyung combs some purple strands back against the stark white of the hotel sheets—thinks of when his hair was dyed blue, and the way he ruined one of Seokjin’s pillowcases when the dye bled those first few nights.
They should lay a towel down—but then, the damage is probably already done.
“I had no idea,” Seokjin teases, his voice still soft and sleep-heavy, and Taehyung purposefully pulls a section of hair to his mouth and kisses it as noisily as possible. Seokjin’s nose scrunches when he giggles, more breathy huffs than actual sound, and Taehyung closes his eyes and presses his smile against Seokjin’s forehead.
It hadn’t really been a surprise when Seokjin had linked arms with a stylist and dramatically declared he was going to have his hair done that morning—these days, he rarely ever went blonde unless it was the first step towards something else. But he’d waved goodbye like a soldier going off to war and not like he got to go off and sleep in a chair for two hours, and it had made Taehyung curious as to what, exactly, they planned to do to him.
Not that any of them bothered to ask. Seokjin likes his surprises, and was almost always more prone to make up something completely ridiculous in place of telling the actual truth. And so, as usual, Taehyung (and the others) were left to wonder.
He’d all but fallen on Jimin, arms looped loosely around his neck as he watched Seokjin disappear through a door, his expression pensive when he’d asked, “What color do you think he’ll be when he comes back?”
“Probably brown again,” Jimin had murmured almost dismissively, not once looking up from his phone in the process, and Taehyung had sucked on his teeth and tried to see through the door with x-ray vision and wondered—right up until the moment Jimin began to shake beneath him with barely contained laughter. “Tae-Tae, look at this.” And that had sort of been the end of that.
By the time Seokjin seemed to magically materialize in Taehyung’s vanity mirror several hours later, he’d almost forgotten about the whole thing—which is probably why the image of his boyfriend standing behind him, all smug smiles and freshly dyed purple hair, startled Taehyung so badly that he promptly dropped his phone and lost it somewhere in his make-up chair.
“So?” Seokjin had asked, long fingers curling over Taehyung’s shoulders as he leaned closer, and Taehyung had swallowed and wet his lips and nodded and said, “I like it.”
Taehyung kisses Seokjin’s forehead, and when he inhales, he can still catch the faint, familiar tang of the chemical dye even beneath the nutty, floral scent of the hair mask he’d used. The color already isn’t quite as vivid as it had been, washed out to something a bit softer that will no doubt quickly fade into a pretty pastel lilac.
“How long do you think you’ll keep it this time?” Taehyung asks, carding his fingers through Seokjin’s hair and watching the way the color changes depending on how the pale light of the bedside lamp catches it. He knows Seokjin prefers darker colors—natural colors. Colors that don’t show growth quite so easily, that don’t need those frequent, tiresome touch-ups. He likes to keep his hair smooth and shiny and all the things that are impossible in their line of work, especially when it’s dyed a different color half a dozen times in the span of a year (or, in Taehyung’s case, six months). He’d only been that peachy orange color less than a month, barely letting it fade to blonde before he’d dyed his hair back to something darker. But then, he’d been pink for awhile… So maybe there’s hope.
“Six and a half days,” Seokjin responds without opening his eyes, and Taehyung’s huff of laughter fluffs his bangs up, makes the corner of Seokjin’s mouth curl up in the smallest of smiles—at least until Taehyung flicks him gently in the side of the head. His eyes flash open, nose wrinkling as he levels Taehyung with an aggravated expression. “Yah—!”
“You’re so annoying,” Taehyung chides, tugging on Seokjin’s hair again.
“Me?” Seokjin scrambles up onto his elbows and nearly head-butts Taehyung in the process. “You just flicked me!”
“Not hard,” Taehyung insists, and Seokjin’s mouth hangs open in a look of such pure, unadulterated outrage that Taehyung can’t really help but lean in and kiss his befuddled lower lip.
“Stop it,” Seokjin says against Taehyung’s lips, pushing at his face with absolutely no force behind it. “I’m not done being mad at you.”
“Why are you mad at me?” Taehyung asks, kissing the corner of Seokjin’s mouth.
“You flicked me,” Seokjin murmurs, turning his head to catch Taehyung’s lips in a brief, proper kiss.
“Mmm.” Taehyung kisses him again, lingering just long enough to feel Seokjin start to melt into him before pulling back. Seokjin blinks up at him slowly, his indignation battling with his bone-deep exhaustion, and Taehyung smiles sweetly before gently tapping their noses together.
“Just because you’re cute and sexy and I love you doesn’t mean that I’m going to let you get away with everything,” Seokjin grouses as Taehyung loops his arm around Seokjin’s waist. “Respect me,” he demands as Taehyung eases him down onto his back, and Taehyung chuckles under his breath as he presses his lips to Seokjin’s temple—the same place he’d flicked not minutes before.
“I’m sorry,” he says into Seokjin’s eyebrow, raising up to meet his eyes again. “Will you ever forgive me, hyung?”
“Brat,” Seokjin bites without heat, twining his arms around Taehyung’s neck and tugging him closer until they’re chest-to-chest. He’s so beautiful like this—soft and sleep pliant, hair splayed in a silky purple halo against the sheets, an overwhelming fondness shining through his eyes that makes Taehyung’s heart feel full-to-bursting.
“Hyung,” Taehyung murmurs, brushing the hair from Seokjin’s forehead as he gazes up at Taehyung with sweet, hooded eyes. Taehyung threads a strand of Seokjin’s hair between his fingers, tickling the end of it back and forth against the bridge of Seokjin’s nose thoughtfully. “I—” Taehyung gives a single, purposefully tug to his hair, “—purple you.”
There is a brief heartbeat of a moment before Seokjin snorts, his entire laugh seeming to come out of his nose in one, quick burst. It would probably be gross, if it wasn’t so endearingly dorky. Seokjin’s fingers weave together tightly on Taehyung’s nape, pulling him down into a kiss that is more laughter than anything else.
“That took so long,” he groans into Taehyung’s mouth, and Taehyung jerks back in confusion, blinking furiously in his bewilderment.
“What?” Taehyung had been anticipating the laughter—aiming for it, even—but he hadn’t expected this particular reaction.
“I dye my hair purple and it takes you almost an entire day to make that joke,” Seokjin tsks, using his leverage on Taehyung’s neck to bring them nose-to-nose. “I owe Yoongi-ssi ₩20000 now.” They’re so close that when Seokjin pouts, their bottom lips touch.
“That’s what you get for using me for monetary gain.” Taehyung nips playfully at Seokjin’s lip, making him smile despite his best efforts to look annoyed.
“I would have split it with you,” Seokjin promises, batting his eyelashes demurely. Taehyung could devour him—would, if his bones didn’t ache, if his muscles weren’t so heavy, if they both didn’t have to perform the next day.
(Maybe tomorrow.)
“Oh, well, when you put it that way.” Taehyung threads Seokjin’s hair through both of his hands, gripping it just tight enough that he can adjust the angle of Seokjin’s jaw—of his mouth.
“It’s too late,” Seokjin laments, his breath hot against the corner of Taehyung’s mouth. “We lost. I thought my penchant for bad jokes had rubbed off on you, but I was wrong. Yoongi-ssi clearly knows you better than I do.”
Taehyung rolls his eyes and slots their mouths together.
“You should be the one to pay him,” Seokjin says in between kisses, and Taehyung simply hums noncommittally. “Stop it,” Seokjin murmurs, even as he tightens his hold around Taehyung’s neck, even as he hooks his leg around Taehyung’s hip, even as he whines petulantly when Taehyung does go to move away before getting insistently pulled back in. They kiss, for a few long, breathless, wonderful moments, before Seokjin pulls back just far enough to mumble, “Turn off the light.”
Which is easier said than done, really, when Seokjin is sucking Taehyung’s bottom lip into his mouth and Taehyung would much rather continue doing this than attempting to do that. But Taehyung still reaches out blindly to the side, in the direction he’s pretty sure the bedside lamp is in, his fingertips only skirting against empty sheets as his attention is drawn between the task at hand and the downright sinfully delicious way Seokjin is kissing him.
He tries to clear his head a bit, tries not to think too hard about the thing Seokjin is doing with his tongue, tries to reach a little further—and ends up upsetting the precarious position him and Seokjin are so carefully balanced in. Without really knowing how it happens, Taehyung ends up flat on his back on Seokjin’s other side, blinking dazedly up at the ceiling as a startled laugh pops out of him.
He was right, though. The lamp is on this side.
“You’re hopeless,” Seokjin says with a sigh as he rolls on top of Taehyung, pressing the rest of the air out his lungs. He gives an exaggerated wheeze, drawing out one of Seokjin’s fonder smiles.
“You’re purple.” Taehyung scrunches his nose playfully, brushing at Seokjin’s hair again, and Seokjin huffs and rolls his eyes. “You purple me,” Taehyung continues in a sing-song, and Seokjin groans this time—one long, sustained note as he drops his forehead against Taehyung’s collarbone. But he’s laughing, Taehyung can feel it as he wraps his arms around Seokjin’s waist and squeezes tightly.
“Hopeless,” Seokjin reiterates against the skin of Taehyung’s neck, but he punctuates it with a gentle kiss before reaching over to shut off the light. He’s warm and malleable in Taehyung’s arms now, his head tucked right beneath Taehyung’s jaw and his hair tickling Taehyung’s nose and Taehyung—
Loves him. Closes his eyes and kisses the crown of his head and loves him so ridiculously that sometimes his body doesn’t feel big enough to hold all of it.
Seokjin’s lips dot their way up the column of Taehyung’s throat, and he shifts his head to meet the kiss he knows is coming. Feels the slide of Seokjin’s fingers against the side of his face, relents to the tongue that brushes against the seam of his lips, and knows they should both go to bed even as they giggle into each others mouths in the deep dark of the hotel room.