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Jungkook thinks he’s being haunted.
It all starts when he gets sick after rehearsal, a few weeks into award season. He can’t afford to be sick right now, and it’s the worst kind of sickness; muscle soreness, and a headache that makes his head feel like it’s full of pillows. Namely, just enough to keep him off his feet. It’s not serious, thankfully, but it’s enough to lay him out for a full two days, which might as well be an eternity with how much they have to do.
Or, it might have laid him out that long if he had told anyone he was sick. Which he didn’t. Obviously.
He takes everything a little bit slow, but since they’re conserving their energy for all their upcoming events with the few days’ rest they have at home, it’s not difficult to hide. It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell them, it’s just that his hyungs tended to be a little overbearing sometimes with their concern (or downright aggressive, in the case of one Min Yoongi, who had offered to fight an entire commercial airline for exposing him to a cold, once). He also knows that it’s nearly impossible to hide things from people he has spent the entirety of almost half his life with, but, over the years, he’s come up with strategies.
Which is why it’s so surprising when Jungkook wakes up, two days into his illness, with his alarm blaring, he somehow doesn’t knock his phone off his table when he flings his arm out with his usual sleepy grace. It’s been moved, in the night, to a safer place, a few centimeters back. He squints at the space between his bedframe and the side desk, where his phone should have fallen, and he sees a water bottle there, cold and full, with a small, individual package of pain meds neatly stacked on top. He feels badly enough that he just takes it without question and then snoozes his alarm for another ten minutes, though not before he gives Jin a sleepy, “Thanks, hyung,” since Jin, as his roommate and the person who he had spent the most time with over the past two days playing video games and watching shitty tv, was probably the one who did it.
“You’re welcome,” Jin replies, voice thick with sleep. “Now shut up. Ten more minutes.”
“Thanks again,” Jungkook says to Jin once they’re both awake, post-coffee, and waiting for the others to go to their few meetings today and then dance rehearsal.
Jin salutes him with his coffee cup. “You’re welcome,” Jin says again, and then pauses. “Wait, for what?”
“You know, for this morning? The water and painkillers?”
“Huh?” Jin says. “What water and painkillers? Are you hurt?”
Jungkook sighs. “I thanked you this morning for them, hyung! Why did you say ‘you’re welcome’ if you didn’t know anything about it?”
“I thought you were thanking me for existing. Which, again, you’re welcome.”
“Why would I thank you for that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
It doesn’t take long after that for Jin to wheedle out of him that he’s sick, and even less time for them to give him a group and then individual lectures about taking care of himself. He listens dutifully, and then allows himself to be manhandled into some breakfast. He gets no answers about his mysterious, thoughtful caretaker.
The incidents keep happening, not just when he’s sick, or injured, but little everyday things, too. Finding things right beside him right when he needs them. Things being done for him already that he’s forgotten about. Items being moved in places where he often hurts himself, like suitcases at the foot of his bed, or shoes too close to the bathroom door when he stumbles to it in the morning. He asks everyone who’s doing it, but all of them are confused as to what he’s talking about. It goes on for almost two months before he’s had enough.
“I think I’m being haunted,” he tells Taehyung one evening when they’re back in their dorms for a week long respite before they start filming their new Run episodes. They’re sitting on Taehyung’s bed while they both play a mobile game they’ve been into lately. Tae glances at him, upside down, where he’s sprawled on his back across the foot of his bed.
“Ok,” Tae says. Jungkook waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t and instead goes back to his game.
“Help me,” Jungkook says, in a way that definitely could not be counted as whining.
Tae rolls onto his stomach and puts down his phone, looking contemplative. “Have you bought any old objects recently, of unknown origin?”
“What?” Jungkook says. “No.”
“Any mysterious medallions, or amulets?”
“No?”
“Have you read any old inscriptions that you probably shouldn’t have read, or someone explicitly told you not to read?”
“No.”
“Did someone who holds a serious grudge against you die recently?”
“No!”
Tae shrugs. “Doesn’t sound like a haunting to me.” He shakes his phone at him. “It’s your turn.”
The next person Jungkook goes to for answers is Namjoon. Namjoon knows everything. He should have solutions.
Namjoon does know about ghosts, more than Jungkook even thought there was to know about ghosts. “It’s not a ghost,” Namjoon says with an amused smile that would be condescending on anyone else but holds such fondness that Jungkook can’t help but revel in it.
“Because they’re not real, right?”
Namjoon tilts his head and makes a considering noise. “I didn’t say that…” Namjoon says, and he gets a look on his face that tells Jungkook that he’s thought of something so existentially disturbing that it will probably mess Jungkook up for a good few weeks if he hears it. He makes a hasty retreat.
The next person he runs into is Yoongi, with a steaming cup of instant ramen in his hand, and because he’s desperate, he blurts out his predicament to him. Yoongi stares at him, blinks once, blinks twice, and says, “Sounds like an asshole.”
“Huh?”
“Keeps touching all your stuff without asking and then fucking off without telling you? This ghost is an asshole.”
“So you think it’s a ghost, too?” Jungkook asks.
Yoongi shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, as far as I’m concerned. An asshole is an asshole, incorporeal or otherwise. And people touching my shit without my permission, always assholes.”
“I don’t know, hyung. It’s really thoughtful.”
“Maybe you like assholes?” Yoongi says. Jungkook can tell he’s starting to get annoyed with this conversation. It’s only his affection for Jungkook that’s kept him here this long when he’s got ramen and what Jungkook assumes is a long night of recording ahead of him.
“Yoongi-hyung, please.”
Yoongi shrugs and offers him a conciliatory bite of his ramen, which Jungkook takes. “I don’t know what to tell you. Ask someone else. Let me know if you need me to yell at something.”
Jungkook considers going to Jin, but he’s asked him the same question, in various ways, for the last few weeks and gotten nothing out of him other than affectionate headlocks, teasing, and concern for his health.
The person he really wants to ask is Jimin. He’s been wanting to ask Jimin about this for weeks, but it’s been hard to talk about anything with Jimin lately without the words I might be in love with you, threatening to spill out of him at any moment.
But, he’s running out of options. Which is how he finds himself in Hoseok and Jimin’s room the next evening.
“So...what you’re telling me...is that you think that a ghost is reheating your leftovers?” Hoseok asks through crowing fits of laughter.
Jungkook pouts, indignant. “Yes?”
Hoseok loses it again, folding forward on his bed until his face is buried in the blankets. He flings out a hand waving it at the other bed where Jimin is sitting. Jimin, to Jungkook’s relief, isn’t laughing at him, but his relief is short lived when he spots the serene, if slightly sad, look on his face. Jungkook does wish he’d laugh at him, just to lighten his expression. “Jiminie, Jiminie, are you hearing this?” Hoseok says, voice muffled.
“Yes, hyung,” Jimin says, his smile snapping back into place, though it is more genuine than Jungkook is expecting. Hoseok’s laughter is contagious. “I think Kookie wants your advice.”
I want yours, too, Jungkook says, but can’t manage to say it around the thickness of his tongue as he stares at Jimin in his glasses. He loves Jimin in his glasses. He loves Jimin.
“Right, right,” Hoseok says, wiping away tears from laughing too hard. “Sorry. Advice. Have you tried asking Namjoon?”
“That’s your advice?”
“Yeah,” Jungkook says to Hoseok’s question. “And Yoongi. And Tae.”
“Yoongi?” Hoseok says with delight. “You asked Min Yoongi about your ghost problem?”
“Who else was I going to ask?” Jungkook says, a little defensive. Hoseok barks out another laugh.
“Hobi-hyung,” Jimin says, though now even Jimin is looking amused. “I’m sure Yoongi-hyung gave good advice.”
Jungkook thinks back to Yoongi’s advice. “Uh. Yeah. Sure.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Hoseok says.
“Look, if it is a ghost, there’s no telling who it’ll haunt next. It could be you, Hobi-hyung,” Jungkook says, a little too innocently.
“Don’t joke about that,” Hoseok says, much more seriously. To the room, more loudly and formally, he says, “I’m sure you are a very kind ghost, and I’m sorry for any disrespect. Please, do not haunt me.”
Jimin snorted. “Hobi-hyung, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“That you know of,” Hoseok says.
“Yeah, don’t ask Namjoon-hyung about that,” Jungkook mutters. Jimin raises an amused eyebrow. Luckily, Hoseok doesn’t seem to hear him.
“It sounds like someone is just trying to tell you how much you mean to them,” Jimin says.
“So it is one of you,” Jungkook says, suspiciously.
“That was always more likely than a ghost making you tea, Kookie,” Hoseok says.
“Why won’t anyone just tell me, then? We do nice things for each other all the time!”
“Maybe it means something different,” Jimin says, his voice quiet. “Maybe whoever it is can’t say it with words.”
Jungkook swallows his knee-jerk dismissal, and pointedly looks away from Jimin. If anyone could understand not being able to say things with words, it was Jungkook. He made a whole short film about what he can’t say.
“We shouldn’t hide things from each other,” Hoseok says, leaning back on his hands. He’s giving a significant look at Jimin that Jungkook doesn’t understand, and even though his gaze isn’t on Jungkook, he can’t help but feel residual guilt.
“Everyone deserves a few secrets, hyung,” Jimin says, purposefully light, but Jungkook knows them well enough to know that they’re having a separate conversation without him. It hurts a bit, to be left out, but he doesn’t begrudge them that. Jimin’s right. They’ve all earned a few secrets.
At least, that’s what mature, 9pm Jungkook thinks.
4am Jungkook is a bit different. 4am Jungkook is tired, crafty, and can’t stop thinking of what Jimin said. Maybe it means something different.
4am Jungkook has a plan.
For the first time in his life, Jungkook fakes being sick. He does it in the evening when he knows they have a few hours of downtime, and it won’t impact any of their work, and where, come morning, he can prove he’s feeling better. He starts making noises about a headache when he’s playing video games with Jin, and then, when they all decide to settle into a movie, excuses himself to go to bed early. They fuss over him, and he tries not to enjoy the attention, knowing that he should feel guilty for making them worry, but he can’t quite bring himself to when Namjoon makes him tea, Yoongi offers to let him listen to one of his new songs to help him get to sleep, Jin stuffs his arms full of blankets, and Tae silently passes him his favorite Chimmy plushie.
Finally, after many assurances that he’ll be fine, he goes to bed. Then, he waits.
He only has to wait for about an hour. He hears soft footsteps coming down the hall from the living room, and then the door cracks open, light spilling into the room. Jungkook keeps his eyes closed, and listens as the footsteps draw closer, and he hears someone open a box and place it on his bedside table.
He intends to call whoever it is out, then, but then feels a cool hand on his forehead checking his temperature, brushing back his bangs. His touch is soft, tender. Jungkook freezes. He knows that hand.
Jimin doesn’t say anything, and Jungkook hears him move his phone further back, take his hastily shoved computer out from under the bed and place it on his desk, and drape another, thinner blanket over his shoulders where the other blankets don’t quite reach. It’s one of the blankets that Jimin jealously guards, soft as bunny fur. He doesn’t let anyone use it. It smells like him, like his shampoo, and Jungkook is so dizzy with it, he isn’t sure his fake illness has turned into something real.
Jimin leaves, as quietly as he came. Jungkook lays there in the dark, his heart racing, hope blossoming in his chest and taking root with such ferocity it’s hard to breathe.
Maybe it means something different. Maybe whoever it is can’t say it with words.
Jungkook is out of bed before he can let him fully think of the consequences. He runs to the door and throws it open.
Jimin must have paused by the door when he left, because Jungkook almost runs into him. They catch each other before they both topple to the floor, Jungkook grabbing Jimin’s arms like a lifeline.
“Does it mean something different?” he asks, a little breathless.
Jimin looks shocked, and a little like he wants to lie. But then, fierce determination appears in his eyes and he nods. “Yeah,” he says.
Jungkook can’t help himself. A laugh bubbles out of him. “It’s different for me, too,” Jungkook says. He waits, watches the understanding come over Jimin in something like disbelief, his smile so luminous that Jungkook can’t see anything else. He really wants to kiss him. So he does.