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Namjoon has to enter the café’s WiFi password thrice before it takes; he had to guess at the spelling a little bit, but he’s glad he doesn’t have to call the waiter over and ask him to type it in. The look he got for asking for an Americano was bad enough. While he waits for Jungkook to pick up his FaceTime call, he carries his chair around the little table so that he’s facing the inside of the café instead of out towards the square, then tries to prop his phone up against the little cairn of dubious structural integrity which he’s made on the table by piling his wallet on top of his battery bank and his book du jour (the third of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, because, well, Italy).
As he’s thus occupied, his screen switches over to a shaky image of the walls of Jungkook’s room in the dorm. “Hyuuung,” Jungkook whines, his voice a little too loud through Namjoon’s IEMs, as his face comes into view.
It’s only been a couple weeks since he left Seoul, but the more you do on holiday, the more time and space distend. It’s so good to see him.
“Jungkook-ahhh,” he croons, playing up the aegyo lilt. “Happy birthday!”
Jungkook scrunches up his nose with the force of his grin. Cute. “Thanks, but you didn’t have to post those photos, hyung, seriously.”
“No, I think I did,” Namjoon laughs. “It’s okay, you can take revenge in eleven days.”
“You’re going to regret saying that,” Jungkook threatens, but with his long hair fanned out around his head on his pillow like a fluffy halo, it’s hard to find him menacing. Namjoon wants to take a screenshot, but Jungkook is so relaxed and unselfconscious now that it would be criminal to disturb that.
“I’m sure I will,” he says anyway, placating. “Anyway, it’s cute! ARMY thinks so too. I saw the comments.”
Jungkook sighs petulantly, but lets it go. “Where are you?” he asks. “It looks pretty behind you.”
“Yeah!” Namjoon enthuses. “I’m in Venice! In St Mark’s Square. That’s Saint Mark’s Basilica. I wanted you to see it.” It’s so beautiful here, in a way that’s just a little bit life-changing; it feels, also, like it means something that he’s here in September, which he’s always thought of as his month. His, and Jungkook’s. He pauses in the middle of his excited recounting of the moment he laid eyes on the basilica’s glittering gold mosaics as the waiter comes with his order.
Jungkook giggles at the face he’s making. “What? What is it?”
“I tried to order an Americano,” Namjoon explains wryly. He picks up his glass to show Jungkook what the waiter had brought, which is decidedly not an Americano. “He said they don’t serve American drinks here, and suggested something else, but I didn’t catch what he said so I just said okay.”
“That’s not even coffee, hyung.”
He’s no connoisseur, but he has looked through enough aperitivo menus now to have a passing familiarity. “No, I think it’s a Spritz.” He tries some. “Yeah, I think it is. It’s definitely alcoholic. Good, though! Carbonated.”
“But that’s, like, the opposite of coffee,” Jungkook laughs. “You’re too nice.”
Namjoon smiles into his probably-a-Spritz. “Well, you know, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Actually, it’s past five o’clock here.”
“Ah. It’s—well, you know what time it is here.” Jungkook rolls over, resting the phone on his pillow so he’s smiling sideways at Namjoon now. His hair comes to rest in a new, even fluffier configuration.
“Tell me if you want to go to sleep, okay?”
“Yeah, hyung,” Jungkook says, but he doesn’t seem sleepy; his eyes and face are bright and dear. “Not yet; I want to talk to you. How’s Europe? How’s hyung?”
He means the manager-hyung who came to Europe with Namjoon. “Hyung says he’s going to shop a little more until dinner, but I think he just wanted to let me call you in peace. Europe’s great. Lots of pigeons. So many museums; I’m in heaven. There’s like twenty in every city. I barely know which to go to. I should have scheduled more days for each place, I guess, but there’s so much to see.” He says ‘scheduled’, but there isn’t much of a plan; they’ve just been flitting from place to place.
“Museums,” Jungkook says in dire tones. Namjoon knows Jungkook teases precisely because he reacts to it, but can’t help pouting in response. Jungkook laughs at his expression, but says, “No, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. I hope you give hyung a break from museums once in a while, though.”
“He likes museums too,” Namjoon whines. “He bought so many art postcards.”
“What for?” Jungkook asks. “He can see art in real life whenever he wants! That’s his whole job!”
“Oh my god, stop.”
“Wait, when you look at a painting in a museum, is it art-ception?” Jungkook continues relentlessly. Namjoon can feel a violent flush travelling up his neck. “Actually, no, it makes sense! Of course you like going to museums. That’s your natural habitat.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No, someone should be hanging you up. I’m gonna call the president of the Louvre and tell him to move you into Mona Lisa’s spot.” The video feed shakes along with his laughter. Namjoon finds himself making the face that Yoongi teases him about sometimes. His Jungkook face.
“What are you going to do today?” he asks, transparently changing the topic. He knows his tone is all wrong, too soft, but he can’t help it. Maybe he should want to, but he doesn’t. He’s had such a nice, healing time on holiday, but after talking to Jungkook for a few short minutes, his entire body feels discernibly more relaxed. He could almost melt into the floor.
Jungkook grins. “Maybe I should go to SeMA to see you.”
“If they want to display me, they’re going to have to arrange something with the Louvre,” Namjoon says loftily.
Jungkook laughs but, brat that he is, drops the joke now that Namjoon’s decided to play along. “You know, ARMY is going to cafés and stuff for my birthday,” he says, fond and shy. “It’s cute, right? I wish I could go. Imagine their faces if I turned up and asked for a cup sleeve.”
“What will you do if they ask you to prove that you’re a fan first?”
“I’ll go in my Cooky pyjamas, of course. And a headband.” Namjoon imagines Jungkook head-to-toe in pink, like he was in Bon Voyage, and can’t help but snort. “And I’ll sing the whole of The Truth Untold without checking the lyrics on my phone. They’ll have to believe me then.”
“You should go busking in your Cooky pyjamas,” Namjoon says. “Outside the café. Give them some business.”
“People will run away!”
“No, they won’t. They’ll flock to your voice in droves, even the ahjussis. You can make new ahjussi fans!”
“Ah, but hyung, you’re the only ahjussi fan I need.”
“I’m really hanging up this time,” Namjoon threatens, mock-stern.
“Okay, okay. No, I think I’ll just work on my song a bit more—”
“I love that song,” Namjoon interjects. Jungkook stumbles a bit but carries on talking, blinking too much and not quite looking into the camera anymore—the same evasive thing he does every single time Namjoon praises his song. Namjoon has, so far, managed not to comment on this, but it’s always a near thing.
“—um, go to the gym, maybe. Call my mom. And Hobi-hyung said we’ll have a party at his apartment in the evening.”
“Party,” Namjoon says dubiously. “He doesn’t even have much furniture there.”
“Isn’t that better for a party? The dancing kind, I mean,” Jungkook muses. “Nah, it’s just us, maybe some of the 97-line. I think that was supposed to be a secret but Bambam texted me that he and Yugyeom were coming. It’s probably gonna be, like, cake and beer. You know.”
“Sounds nice,” Namjoon says. “I’m sorry I can’t be there.” He is, too, even though he also wants—needs—to be here. Before their long break, he’d taken little butterfly-sips of rest when he could, visiting parks and looking at art on their rare days off, but it was another thing to feel his mind expand into unfamiliar cities, with time laid out before him in a long, languid stretch. To—and perhaps it was conceited to feel this way, but he did, if obliquely—to connect to the centuries of humanity and art that foregrounded his own artistry.
“No, don’t be sorry. Have fun! We can have another party on your birthday, if you’re back by then.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Jungkook laughs, then yawns. “Ah, I’m a little sleepy now.”
“I should let you sleep,” Namjoon says, reluctantly. The sunlight had been growing dim for a little while now, and the shadows were starting to reach. “I think hyung should be done soon, anyway. He gets cranky if we eat too late, but here if you don’t grab a seat when the restaurants open around 7 it’s impossible to find anywhere to eat until 9.30.”
“That’s tough,” Jungkook agrees. “Okay. I’ll talk to you when you get home?”
Home. “Yeah, Kook, let’s talk when I get home.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Namjoon is the one who laughs this time. He feels entirely at peace, which is dangerous, because in moments like these, his heart speaks. “Well, happy birthday, baby. I love you.”
“Um.” Jungkook blinks, his cheeks turning pink. “Um, th-thanks, hyung,” Jungkook says, his voice shrinking and shrinking in volume until it’s just a tiny, curled-up thing. “I love you too. Have a nice dinner with hyung!” And he hangs up.
After dinner (during which he had listened with half an ear to his hyung’s story about the Venetian mask craftsman he had met, and duly admired the mask he had bought, thinking all the while of nothing but his stupid blunder) Namjoon lags behind on the way back to their hotel, stalling on every tiny footbridge to take photos. A lot of Venice is crafted for the flocks of undiscriminating tourists (and he definitely counts himself among them), but the old city is always just a step away from the fun commercial hustle.
It’s hard to be distracted when faced with a view like this. Looking down the strips of narrow, glittering canal between the little old buildings, he thinks he can still hear the strains of violin from the busker he’d passed a few minutes ago, floating quietly through the night, and thinks about the city slowly sinking into the sea, about sakura washing past the Philosopher’s Path in spring. His phone vibrates.
It’s almost 3 am in Seoul. Namjoon takes in a deep breath of courage and magic and, butterfly heart in his too-big hands, taps out a reply.