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It’s not a thing.
It’s not a thing, but Jeongguk decides that he has to call Yoongi out on it one Saturday morning at the breakfast table.
“So, hyung,” Jeongguk says in between bites of convenience store hotteok that he’d run out to buy before Yoongi had woken up, “is it, like, a thing for you?”
“Hm?” Yoongi sets his coffee mug down and starts to work on the plastic wrapper of the hotteok.
“My...nose? You’re always, like, touching it, or kissing it, or whatever.”
Yoongi’s fingers still on the wrapper. He stops, and considers. “I always touch and kiss you, don’t I?”
Jeongguk scrunches up his nose in the way that makes Yoongi’s stomach hurt sometimes, and fine, maybe Jeongguk has a point, because when Jeongguk had returned to the apartment with the hotteok earlier this morning, Yoongi had grabbed the bag and leaned in to kiss his nose without a second thought. Maybe Yoongi’s fascination with Jeongguk’s nose does extend beyond the realm of normal aesthetic appreciation, and edges into something that’s almost reverential. It’s just...a cute nose.
“Hyung, you know what I mean! You’re obsessed with my nose, specifically. If it’s, like, some kind of kink thing, I’m sure we could talk it out.” Jeongguk punctuates this with a shit-eating grin, and Yoongi wants to squish his face between his hands until Jeongguk laughs, which doesn’t take much, from personal experience.
“I dunno,” Yoongi says, and he knows he’s gazing at Jeongguk in a way that’s too open and too soft, but he can’t bring himself to care very much about. “Maybe it’s just a good nose.”
Jeongguk scrunches his nose again, and Yoongi has to resist the urge to coo. Min Yoongi does not coo at anything except small dogs, and now, apparently, anything and everything Jeon Jeongguk does. “It’s too big though, isn’t it?”
Yoongi frowns. “It’s not.”
Jeongguk sighs dramatically in a way that tells Yoongi he’s not really serious, and says, “I kinda wish I had a nose like Jin-hyung’s. Don’t you ever tell him I said this, but I think his nose is, like, so good.”
It’s hard for Yoongi to stop the smile creeping across his face. “Maybe I will tell him, just to see his reaction.”
“Yeah, and I’d never hear the end of it,” Jeongguk huffs. He pitches his voice an octave higher in an honestly commendable imitation of Seokjin. “Yah! Jeon Jeongguk, to think your disrespect all these years was really just to mask your sordidly uncontrollable love for me! Aish, Yoongichi will be heartbroken, as expected when I’m the true object of your affections!”
Yoongi’s snort is followed by the laughter Jeongguk seems to be drawing out of him an awful lot these days. Jeongguk grins, big and pleased, and gets out of his chair so he can come over to plop himself onto Yoongi’s lap.
Yoongi gets his hands on Jeongguk’s face like he’s been wanting to all morning, and says, mock-seriously, “Sordidly uncontrollable love? How am I supposed to compete with that, huh?”
Jeongguk leans in and rubs his nose all over Yoongi’s face, like a puppy. “You don’t, obviously.”
Yoongi hums. “For the record, I like your nose better than Jin-hyung’s. Yours has more character.”
Jeongguk plants a smacking kiss on his cheek. “Does it have a complete story arc with emotional development and proper closure?”
Yoongi leans in and kisses him right on the round tip of his nose. “Jin-hyung’s nose is like, the flat side character that gets killed off to further your nose’s story arc of revenge and anarchy.”
“Are you saying my nose is Sasuke?”
“Hm, am I?”
Jeongguk giggles. “All I’m saying is that it’s totally a thing for you.”
“Not a thing,” Yoongi says, in between tiny fluttering kisses that he gives and gets in return, “I just think you have a good nose.”
*
Yoongi thinks Jeongguk has a good nose.
They meet for the first time in a little coffee shop right off campus, while Jeongguk is squished up against Taehyung and Jimin in a tiny booth in the corner.
Jeongguk turns and laughs at something Jimin’s said, and his entire face scrunches up with it. Yoongi notices his nose first, and is struck by the inconvenient—and weirdly arresting—feeling of wanting to press his finger against it, the strong bridge that rounds into a little flat tip.
Jeongguk isn’t model-handsome like Seokjin, or glamorously beautiful like Taehyung, or sharp and pretty like Jimin, but he’s soft and open in a way people usually try to seem, but usually aren’t. And he is blinking his big doe eyes up at Yoongi expectantly, and Yoongi realizes with mild mortification that he’s just been asked a question that he hadn’t heard.
Yoongi clears his throat. “Sorry, um, could you repeat that?”
“Hyung, do you want to come to noraebang with us Friday night? Tae has a room reserved already, and everything.”
Yoongi blinks. He actually has a Modern Lit paper due at midnight on Friday, but if he rearranges his schedule a bit and puts in some extra hours at the library this week, he’ll be able to finish by Thursday night, probably. Some non-insignificant part of his brain is screaming at him that his procrastinating ass has never once finished a paper early in his entire university career, and that he’s only considering this because he is stupid and the way Jeongguk scrunches up his nose is really cute, and that Tae and Jimin are looking at him from across the table with an ill-concealed glee that tells him he’s going to be interrogated within an inch of his life later, and Yoongi viciously pushes all of this down and says, “Yeah, sure, Friday night works for me.”
Jeongguk beams.
So, yeah. That’s how it begins.
*
Yoongi kisses Jeongguk’s nose for the first time on their third date, when whatever that’s between them had become something that allowed nose kisses.
It’s just late enough in autumn that the wind has become biting, and Yoongi can tell that Jeongguk is regretting his decision to forgo a scarf. He is so stubborn though, admirably clenching his teeth against the cold, like he can fight it off if he just tries hard enough. The thing that’s growing between them has traitorously made Yoongi soft and mellow, and he now has to wrestle back the fondness that threatens to bubble up inside him like champagne.
Their gloved hands have been brushing every three steps for the past forty-five minutes, just little fleeting moments of contact, like dipping into and withdrawing from a pool over and over—a little yearning, a little helpless, a little inevitable dance. Yoongi, warm in his chest from the cider they’d had earlier, and also from this growing tangle of feelings, makes the leap (tiny hop, really, with the way things have been going) and reaches for Jeongguk’s hand with this own, for real this time, and threads their fingers together. He thinks he can feel the heat of Jeongguk’s hand even through two layers of fabric.
Jeongguk goes still for a moment, but then he squeezes their tangled fingers and lets out a little ahhh.
Yoongi turns his head toward him. “Hm?”
Jeongguk ducks his head, a little bashful, a little embarrassed, the collar of his coat doing nothing to hide the flush on his cheekbones. “Nothing. Just...happy, you know?”
The frightening thing is that Yoongi does know, and he’s allowed his traitor heart to beat a steady rhythm of what if, what if, what if, unchecked. He tugs on their hands to get Jeongguk to stop walking, and Jeongguk does, even as he gives a curious little blink that makes something fragile and tender unfurl in Yoongi’s ribcage.
“Jeongguk-ah,” Yoongi says, to mask the incessant pattering of his heart, “you’re going to catch a cold.”
Jeongguk shakes his head, making his bangs flop over his forehead. “Hyung, I’m fine. Are you my mom or something?”
Yoongi huffs and unwinds the fluffy grey scarf from his neck. Jeongguk starts to protest, but Yoongi fixes him with a stare that’s proved to be rather effective up until this point, and reaches up to drape the scarf once, twice, around Jeongguk’s neck.
“But now you’ll be cold,” Jeongguk protests, even as he buries his chin into the soft wool of the scarf.
“I won’t,” says Yoongi.
“How do you know?”
Yoongi says, “I just do.” He doesn’t say, I’ve been feeling awfully warm lately, Jeon Jeongguk.
Jeongguk is still blinking at him, bangs too long and falling into his eyes, and Yoongi thinks this is less of a sight and more of a feeling; he thinks he will remember this moment later not by the way Jeongguk looks, exactly, but more so by the way his own chest feels like it’s constricting, like something weighty and insistent is pressing down on it, caving it in.
Those are thoughts for later, though. Right now, Yoongi knows this: they are walking along the river at night, and it is cold. It is so cold that they’d bought cider from a street stall earlier to keep warm. It is so cold that Yoongi had to give his scarf to Jeongguk, and the absence of it now makes the chill nip at the underside of his jaw. It is so cold that Jeongguk’s nose has turned a bright red, and it probably stings.
It’s a dumb, embarrassing thought to have, but Yoongi thinks Jeongguk’s nose looks like a strawberry like this, all red and lovely.
Yoongi raises his hand so it hovers somewhere in the vicinity of Jeongguk’s cheek, and says, “Can I, um.”
Jeongguk’s eyes are wide and shining, reflecting the light from the harsh yellow street lamps around them. He nods, once.
Yoongi rises to his toes and presses his mouth to the bridge of Jeongguk’s nose, and then moves down to the tip, kisses the lovely round end of it, the curve of it so sweet under his lips. He pulls back.
Jeongguk is staring at him, a little shocked, mouth parted sweetly. Yoongi aches all over, like the thrum of this terrifying want doesn’t know where to settle, so it’s spreading all over until no part of him is left untouched.
Yoongi has to try a couple of times before the words make it out of his throat, which is dry from the cold and something else entirely. “Was that—yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jeongguk says it like he’s letting out a breath that’s been held for too long. “But I thought you would, um,” he raises his fingers to touch against his own lips.
“I could, if you want.”
“I want, um. I really want.”
The feeling grows from a thrum to a loud electric buzz, and Yoongi feels it in the tips of his fingers as he reaches up again, to Jeongguk’s lovely waiting face.
*
Movie nights at Tae’s and Jimin’s fall on a spectrum ranging from mild, half-hearted attempts at making things interesting when they’re all too tired to do much else, to absolute batshit madness conjured from the deepest corners of hell.
Tonight, mercifully, falls on the lower end of that spectrum, when Jimin opens the door only mildly tipsy, revealing the rest of their friend group crammed into the tiny living room. Classes had been shit today, and Yoongi is exhausted, had considered not showing up. But he hasn’t seen all of his friends like this in nearly a month, and a shitty day isn’t nearly enough reason to call all of this off.
Jeongguk spots Yoongi immediately, and his face opens up in a way that Yoongi, embarrassingly, has started to liken to the feeling of being hit directly in the face by a beam of sunlight. “Hyung!” Jeongguk calls, and Yoongi is drawn to him by an invisible reel, because he’d never had any chance of resisting to begin with.
Yoongi ducks his head to kiss Jeongguk, murmurs, “There’s nowhere to sit,” and ignores Tae’s loud exaggerated coos next to them.
Jeongguk gets up from the couch and gestures to the empty spot he’s left behind, eyes bright and expectant. Yoongi laughs and sits down, and pulls a giggling Jeongguk onto his lap so Jeongguk’s feet are tucked against the arm of the couch. Now with Jeongguk tucked into his arms, and his friends all happy and loud around him, Yoongi feels the stress of the day slowly melt away.
Jeongguk kisses him again, and their lips catch a little as they break apart, as if they’re unwilling to separate. “Hey, hyung, you okay? You looked a little sad coming in.” He’s blinking at Yoongi with such open concern, bottom lip jutted out in a little pout, and god, Yoongi’s poor heart.
Yoongi takes Jeongguk’s face in his hands and holds his gaze. “Bad day, is all. Don’t need to worry about me.”
“What if I want to worry.”
Yoongi wants to kiss him until he doesn’t anymore, but the circumstances are far less than ideal, considering all their friends are in very close proximity.
Yoongi settles for pressing a kiss to Jeongguk’s nose, feeling it scrunch up under his mouth. “Don’t need to worry,” he repeats.
Jeongguk wiggles deeper into the circle of Yoongi’s arms, until his nose is buried in Yoongi’s collarbone, and the top of his head brushes the underside of Yoongi’s chin. He mumbles something unintelligible into Yoongi’s chest.
Yoongi shifts to make him more comfortable. “Hm?”
Jeongguk’s head pops back up, and he looks ruffled and a bit disgruntled. It’s adorable. “I said,” Jeongguk begins, pout deepening, “worrying isn’t a burden for me, so—so stop trying to tell me to stop.”
During sophomore year, Yoongi had taken a Bio class, and there’d been a lab where they had to dissect a cow’s heart. Yoongi had listened to the professor explain how the heart expands and contracts while looking down at the mass of sinew on the metal tray, and had felt a very distinct, visceral detachment.
Now, Yoongi thinks he can finally visualize all the ways in which the heart works, as his own is currently straining under the weight of all this rushing, overwhelming feeling.
“Okay,” Yoongi rasps, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Okay, Jeongguk-ah.”
Jeongguk hums, seemingly satisfied, and smushes his nose back into Yoongi’s collarbone, completely unaware of the not-insignificant emotional crisis he’s just caused.
Jimin gets to pick the movie tonight, Train to Busan, which Hoseok whines that he’s too sensitive to watch, to which Jimin sticks out his tongue and responds, aloofly, that Hoseok is more than welcome to leave the premises if he so wishes, with Taehyung to escort him out of the building.
“O-kay,” says Namjoon, adopting the voice he does when he senses things are on the verge of spiraling into chaos, “We watch the zombie movie tonight, and Hobi can have my pick for next time.”
Hoseok sniffs, apparently mollified, and Jimin settles back into Tae’s side with a smug look.
The movie plays, and every time a zombie comes up on screen, Jeongguk pretends to be scared, and nuzzles his face into Yoongi’s neck. “Ahhhhh,” he whisper-yells, clutching at Yoongi’s shoulders, “hyung, save me, I’m so delicate—”
“Mm-hm,” Yoongi says, and runs his fingers through Jeongguk’s soft hair, playing along. “C’mere, baby.”
Even in the dark, with no light except from the TV, Yoongi can see Jeongguk’s blush. This is something new for them, baby, though Jeongguk would rather go furiously red with embarrassment than admit that he likes it. Jeongguk stubbornly presses his mouth against Yoongi’s, and pulls away. “Not a baby.”
Yoongi hums, and presses a kiss to Jeongguk’s nose. “Baby,” he says again, just to watch Jeongguk squirm. Jeongguk shifts in his lap and makes a sweet little noise as Yoongi kisses his nose again. On the next kiss, Jeongguk intercepts Yoongi’s lips with his own, and opens them sweetly. Yoongi can taste peach soju and soda on his tongue.
“Still not a baby,” Jeongguk sighs into his mouth.
“Sure,” says Yoongi, kissing Jeongguk’s sweet nose over and over. Jeongguk squirms happily, and Yoongi presses more kisses to the warm flush of his cheeks, the smooth little space between his eyebrows, the lovely tiny curve of his cupid’s bow, his nose again.
“Yah!” Seokjin calls from somewhere on the floor. “If all you’re going to do is make out and be gross, maybe you should take Jimin up on his offer and just leave.”
Jeongguk sticks his tongue out. Yoongi settles his hands into the dips of Jeongguk’s waist, and hides his laughter into the nape of Jeongguk’s neck.
*
A can u come over text from Jeongguk sends Yoongi right out of his apartment and into Jeongguk’s, no questions asked.
“Hey, hey,” Yoongi says, hushed, as soon as Jeongguk opens the door. Jeongguk doesn’t reply, barely waits for Yoongi to toe his shoes off at the doorway before dragging him through the apartment and into his bedroom.
Yoongi gives a soft oomf as he’s shoved unceremoniously onto Jeongguk’s tiny twin mattress, and pushed against the wall as Jeongguk burrows up into his side.
“Hey,” Yoongi repeats, “you doing okay? Anything I should be worried about?”
Jeongguk shakes his head. At this proximity, with their entire bodies touching from chest to toe on the tiny bed, Yoongi can feel Jeongguk’s every movement against him. “No,” says Jeongguk after a brief silence. “My roomate’s out for the weekend. Just wanted you to come over.”
He’s wearing a massive black hoodie, and it makes him look so small and soft despite his considerable height and bulk. Yoongi pushes the hood down with both hands, and gets Jeongguk’s face between his palms. His cheeks are warm, and he smells like strawberries and vanilla. “Your roommate’s out, huh? Jeon Jeongguk, did you lure me over to compromise my virtue?”
Jeongguk huffs and pushes at Yoongi’s shoulder as he blushes. “I didn’t want you to come over because of that,” he stops and considers, “Well, not yet, anyway.”
Yoongi tries to ignore the pointed look Jeongguk gives him at that, and just squishes Jeongguk’s cheeks harder between his hands, just to see his lips pucker up in a pout.
“Enough,” Jeongguk mumbles, and finally, finally, leans in to kiss Yoongi.
Their lips touch softly, just a brief little flash of contact, but as Jeongguk parts his lips to invite something more, Yoongi pulls back.
“Hyung,” Jeongguk whines, “why’d you do that—”
Yoongi shushes him, brushing his too-long bangs off his forehead. Over the past few months, Jeongguk has let his hair grow out, and now it hangs in longish waves down the sides of his face, and he has to incessantly brush it out of the way. Jeongguk claims it’s kind of annoying, but Yoongi loves it—loves how it makes him look so soft and pretty, loves how he can curl his fingers into it when they kiss.
“Shhh,” Yoongi leans in and kisses Jeongguk again, but not on his mouth. He instead presses tiny kisses to Jeongguk’s nose. It’s not a conscious thing, for him. It’s just that sometime between their first meeting and now, Yoongi has developed a marked fascination with Jeongguk’s nose. It’s big and has a strong bridge, and seeing Jeongguk’s face from the side throws it into captivating profile. Yoongi just likes looking at it, sometimes; likes kissing it, too, in times likes these.
Jeongguk wiggles against him, squirms a little, his nose scrunching up under the attention. Ah, there it is, Yoongi thinks. The nose scrunch that makes Jeongguk look so small and sweet, like a bunny. He curls up further into Yoongi’s side; Yoongi gets one hand over his back, tracing along his spine, and the other hand in Jeongguk’s soft hair.
“Baby,” says Yoongi, “sweetheart.”
It’s a testament to how tired Jeongguk is that he doesn’t even protest at the endearments, just shoves his nose into Yoongi’s neck and holds it there. “Why’d you stop,” he mumbles, nudging at Yoongi’s hand, which has stilled in his hair.
Yoongi gives a breathy laugh, basks in the gentle tenderness of all this. “Sorry, baby,” he says, and resumes running his fingers through Jeongguk’s hair, fingernails catching along his scalp in the way he knows Jeongguk loves. Jeongguk gives an honest-to-god snuffle, like a tiny woodland creature, and Yoongi lets all the tenderness overtake his heart, lets it turn him into warm melted golden mush. It is so nice to touch like this, Yoongi thinks as he drifts off.
They wake up the next morning wrapped together like tangled earbuds, with Jeongguk’s leg thrown over his hip and arm around his waist, locking Yoongi into place. “Mornin’, baby,” Yoongi says against a yawn as Jeongguk commences the Herculean task of waking up. Yoongi watches him as he wakes up in stages: first, the slow blink of his eyes open, squinting against the bright cool sunlight; then, the little sniff of his nose, like he’s just come out of winter hibernation; finally, the sweet pout of his mouth as he says, “Hey, hyung,” in a voice that’s slightly rough from sleep.
Jeongguk in the morning is a little sluggish, Yoongi has learned. He lies on his side for a bit, occasionally cracking an eye open before the sunlight becomes too much to bear, his hair splayed about his head in a fluffy cloud. He looks so sweet; he looks so beloved; Yoongi wants to inhale him.
Jeongguk reaches out blindly until Yoongi takes his hands in his own, and kisses the fine skin of his knuckles one by one, pressing his mouth into each divot between the bones. Yoongi leans in closer and kisses Jeongguk’s nose—it’s always the nose.
“Aish,” Yoongi says quietly, and doesn’t succeed in keeping any of the fondness out of his voice. “Jeon Jeongguk, what am I going to do with you?”
“What d’you mean,” Jeongguk mumbles.
“Ignore me,” says Yoongi, “dunno what I’m really talking about,” and how can he, in the face of something this wondrous and soft and monumental?
“That’s a weird thing to say, if you don’t know why you’re saying it.”
Yoongi just leans in and presses his mouth to Jeongguk’s nose, again, again, once more.
*
And, huh.
Maybe it is a thing, Yoongi thinks later, after Jeongguk has returned from class and is now promptly passed out against Yoongi’s side on the couch.
Yoongi sees Jeongguk and wants to kiss his nose every single time, without fail. He wants to kiss Jeongguk’s nose to watch it scrunch up happily, wants to kiss it to make Jeongguk laugh, wants to kiss it very frequently. Always, even. His friends would tell him that it’s because he’s gone soft, to want to kiss someone’s nose all the time. Yoongi would respond that it’s none of their business. Case in point:
“Our grumpy kitty Yoongi-hyung’s been domesticated,” Tae had said gleefully last week, at the coffee shop. Jimin had slapped Tae’s shoulder to get him to stop, even as he’d nearly keeled over from laughter. This was done in the face of Yoongi’s rapidly-deepening frown, even as he, privately, had to admit to the assessment.
Jeongguk wakes up sometime later, and Yoongi watches, completely enamored, as he blinks awake.
“Hi,” Jeongguk says, everything about him tender and sweet. “Sorry I drooled on your shoulder.” He doesn’t sound very sorry at all.
“Hm,” says Yoongi, brushing Jeongguk’s hair out of his face, thumbs stroking against his temples. “How can you ever repay me for the sweatshirt Jin-hyung got for free at a university function, and gave to me because it didn’t fit him?”
Jeongguk giggles, front teeth peeking out and poking into his bottom lip. “I dunno, you tell me.”
Yoongi leans in and presses his mouth to Jeongguk’s—yes, he’s accepted it at this point—nose, and watches with tender raptness as Jeongguk’s entire face goes teasing and bright. “You could buy hyung dinner, for once.”
Jeongguk nudges his face against Yoongi’s shoulder so his words are muffled when he says, “Nah, I think I’ll pass. And besides, you love me too much to make me pay.”
And—yeah.
Yeah, he does.
*