Chapter Text
Of all the places you expect to spend Christmas Eve, the hospital never really comes to mind, but here he is: sitting in the waiting room outside the ER, drinking peppermint cocoa and doing a shitty holiday themed crossword.
It’s more common than people think, going to the hospital around the holidays. Tensions are high, people are frazzled, there’s lots of drinking, the whole shebang. In Namjoon’s case, it’s a classic case of lowered inhibitions and a mild case of get me out of this house before I make gramma cry .
To make it short: he went into the kitchen for five minutes and his genius brother and his boyfriend took three shots and decided to go “ice skating” on the frozen lake behind their house so they could escape the parents. They had, inevitably, fallen down and hurt themselves. Jimin called him, laughing hysterically into the phone, saying oopsie! And Namjoon had to carry his not-so-little brother to the truck and drive both of the idiots to the ER because Jungkook totally broke a leg and Jimin probably has a concussion.
So, cue Namjoon, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, drinking machine-made hot chocolate, doing a crossword from a puzzle book somebody left on the table. He’s doing horribly: he doesn’t know what the name of Jesus’ fifth apostle is, or what the three kings brought.
The hospital staff are playing cheesy Hallmark movies on the TVs and the waiting area is decorated with paper snowflakes and such, trying to create a fun holiday atmosphere despite the overbearing smell of antiseptic.
This is probably the worst Christmas Eve Namjoon’s had in his short life, but he must admit, getting away from aunt Miyeon was a blessing, so he’s not actually in a rush to get home. He’s cherishing his alone time, which is rare these days, since his whole family decided to fly to the States to visit him and Jungkook for the winter season (they’d been here over a week now, and had over a week left, also known as, they’re here for way too long and Namjoon should have seen this coming).
He’s alone, and then, some guy walks in the door of the waiting room, holding a large tote bag, and sits down right across from him. As if there aren’t plenty of open seats elsewhere.
“Mind if I sit here?” The guy says, after he’s already sitting. He moves his bag around until it’s not in the walkway, and Namjoon just smiles and gestures broadly at the chair the man is already in.
“Thanks!” The guy chirps out, “you seem like the least offensive person here, so please don’t prove me wrong. Are you here for some tragic life-threatening illness or did you cousin fall off a ladder in a last-minute attempt at decorating the house for Santa?” He pulls a big tupperware of cookies out of his bag.
Without thinking, Namjoon practically shouts, “fuck, are those snickerdoodles?” And the guy stops moving, he actually almost drops the cookies (which are, in fact, snickerdoodles), and stares right at Namjoon. He’s clearly surprised, both at the sudden loudness of Namjoon’s voice, but also his ability to recognize the cookies from where he’s sitting.
“Uh, do you want them to be?”
“I mean, yeah, but it’s probably a little presumptuous to think you were going to offer me some, so sorry.” Namjoon laughs, trying to make things a little less weird (it doesn’t really work, but they pretend it does).
“I actually was, funny enough. I made a whole bunch because my cousin loves them, but he’s in there,” he gestures behind the ER doors, “so I don’t think he’ll be having very many tonight.” He holds the open container out towards Namjoon, “are these your favorite kind?”
Namjoon nods, mouth already full of cookie. “These are good, damn.”
“Thanks. Kim Seokjin, 27, baker. Nice to meet you, mysterious hospital man.” He reaches out to shake Namjoon’s hand; his are rougher than Namjoon’s, but he works with them all day, so it can’t be helped.
“Kim Namjoon, 25, fashion designer. I tried to bake a cake once and ended up on the other side of those doors.” He grimaces a bit, remembering the time his chocolate cake just wouldn’t bake, so he got upset and tried to take it out of the oven to see what’s wrong, and ended up burning his hand and spilling molten chocolate on himself. Trying to explain that to a nurse was an ordeal, especially with a flustered Jimin standing next to him asking if he was going to die or not.
“So, a regular here, then. What brings you in today? I assume it’s nothing too horrible since you’re not really that upset or anything.”
“My dumbass brother went out on the ice and fell down. Broke his leg. His boyfriend fell, too, but was drunk enough that he actually became invincible.”
Seokjin laughs, imagining a slightly smaller version of Namjoon having a few too many and deciding to become a figure skater. “My cousin, who was not drunk, put up a ladder on our icy driveway, which is on top of a hill, because he decided we didn’t have enough lights up this year. He said Santa wouldn’t be able to find our house if we didn’t put more up.”
“And how old is he?”
“23. His belief in Santa is ‘ironic,’ or so he says.”
A nurse pokes her head out of the reception window, “Kim Namjoon?” He stands up and heads over to see what’s up, “We need you to sign some paperwork for us, since the patients aren’t legally capable right now.” She ushers Namjoon into the back, before he can even wave goodbye to Seokjin.
The nurse explains what happened to Jungkook’s leg (a simple break, nothing horrible) and says he should be able to go home soon. Jimin is totally fine, but they gave him an IV to help him sober up, which Namjoon is thankful for.
She then leads him to Jungkook and Jimin, camping out in a room with a few other occupied beds in it (some old man in the corner, sleeping like the dead; one playing on a switch, looking way too bored for the bandages on his arm). There’s somebody in the bed next to Jimin, telling a story complete with wild gestures liable to knock something down soon.
“Hyung!” Jungkook yells when he sees Namjoon (the old man in the corner groans). “I broke my leg, hyung!” He laughs, and Jimin follows suit, with the third guy just sitting there, patiently waiting for things to settle down so he can finish his story.
After Namjoon gets settled into the chair between Jungkook and Jimin, the latter turns back to the stranger, “Tae-tae, what happened after you put the roller skates on?”
Tae smiles and continues his story, which Namjoon only hears the second half of, but he’s able to gather some key points: Taehyung was at this house party his first (and only) year of college, and accidentally smoked some weed laced with something, announced that he used to play roller derby (he didn’t), was told to prove it, so he went and found some old roller skates in the garage of whoever’s house it was, put them on, rolled out of the house and down the street, not sure how to stop, and eventually got stopped by a cop (read: ran into a cop), who then arrested him for “public idiocy,” which Taehyung insists is not a real crime, and then called Tae’s “parents” who ended up just being his older cousin who lived nearby, to take him home.
The story is funny, but the way Taehyung tells it is what really makes it work. He’s making gestures and little sound effects and impersonating the arresting officer. It’s hard not to get caught up in his aura, in the way he commands attention, and Jimin is certainly enamored.
Another nurse comes in, unhooks Jimin from his IV, and scolds him for drinking way more than anybody needs to, and then takes Jungkook to another room to get his leg plastered.
Namjoon and Jimin are ushered to another waiting area, outside the ortho room Jungkook is in, and once he’s done there, they can all go home. He texts his mother to let everybody know that the boys are just fine and that Christmas Morning will go as planned, much to the family’s relief (they’ve never done Christmas before, but they flew all the way to California to experience a real American Christmas, so by god, they want one!).
Even while texting his mother, Namjoon can’t stop thinking about Seokjin (and his cookies), who is probably still sitting outside the ER, waiting to find out how fucked up his cousin got from falling, eating his cookies by himself. Or maybe he found somebody else to share them with, which makes Namjoon feel worse than him being alone, which makes him feel shitty for thinking that, which makes Jimin notice that he’s distracted, which is impressive because Jimin has not put his phone down since they got to the waiting room.
He’s been texting away, laughing at whatever’s on screen, but he looks up long enough to tell Namjoon, “snap out of it, he’s not dead, plus he’ll be on pain meds for a bit, and we can make fun of him.”
He looks back down at his phone and laughs out loud, so Namjoon can’t help but ask who it is. Jimin happily informs him that it’s “cute concussion guy” which is, really, not a surprise at all. The surprising part is that they’re already texting so much, since Jimin (apparently) likes to play it cool and wait a bit.
“He’s just so funny, you have no idea. And I don’t even think it’s the concussion scrambling his brain or anything, I think he’s just like this. I’m going to go out with him if it kills me.”
“Min, you’re dating my brother.”
“Kook doesn’t mind sharing and neither do I.” Jimin says with such confidence that Namjoon doesn’t even respond, and it’s not like Jimin really needs him to anyways, so he just leans back in his chair and dreams of snickerdoodles.
The next day, or really just later that same day, is a fiasco , to say the least. According to the google search his mother did, Christmas morning is at eight am sharp , which means being dressed in matching pajamas and eating bagels around the tree at eight. This does not happen. His mother is annoyed. Everybody tells her it’s okay, that any time in the morning is good enough, and then they spike her coffee, so she calms down.
Jungkook is barely conscious, and when he is, he keeps complaining about how much his leg hurts. Jimin is annoyed because the doctor told him not to drink any alcohol for “at least a week” in case he does have a mild concussion, and “no offense, really, but how am I supposed to deal with your mother without a glass of wine,” and Namjoon is forced to deal with all of that and his mother. Not even a gallon of wine would help.
The only saving grace is that, since this is the first time Jungkook has let anybody meet his family, most of the familial attention is on them. Namjoon can, occasionally, slip out of sight and sneak a few blissful moments of solitude. He takes those moments and tries to relax, relishing in the near-silence of the bathroom, or the closet under the stairs, or the patio or even the trunk of the car, but it doesn’t work. If he’s alone for more than a moment, his mind drifts back to the cookies from last night.
Those might have been the best snickerdoodles Namjoon’s ever had, and he doesn’t even remember the guy’s name. He can’t stop thinking about it and he’s not even sure what he wants more: to find the cookies or the man who made them. But, it doesn’t matter, since he can’t have either.
He hops out of the trunk, grabs the blankets he was sent out to get ten minutes ago, and goes back inside. There, he finds Jungkook trying to climb on top of the counter with his busted leg while Jimin is pointing out which bottle of wine to grab.
Namjoon just sighs and shoos Jungkook off the counter, grabbing the bottle himself. “ One glass, Jimin. One. ”
Jimin nods, eagerly reaching for the bottle with both hands, and proceeds to fill his glass all the way to the brim. He winks at Namjoon and takes a huge gulp, then runs off into the living room where grandmother is telling some story about Jungkook as a child that Jimin really wants to hear.
“What’s up with you, hyung?” Jungkook asks a Namjoon pours himself a glass somehow bigger than Jimin’s. “You seem distracted.”
“I’m just tired. Long night, you know. And there’s a lot going on today.” He smiles at Jungkook and takes a drink, admiring the lights strung around the kitchen, “I love the holidays but honestly, I can’t wait to have the house to ourselves again.”
“About that,” Jungkook looks nervously at his older brother, “I was wondering what you’d think about, maybe, possibly, sometime soon, like not right now , but,”
“Just say it.”
“What if Jimin moved in?”
“As long as he helps with utilities and doesn’t fuck with my figurines, I don’t see why not. He’s always here anyways, plus you’ve been dating long enough that you’re actually letting halmeoni talk to him alone right now.”
“Wait, she’s what ? Oh no.” Jungkook sets his class of apple cider on the counter, “I gotta save him.” Namjoon just laughs as Jungkook tries to hurry out of the room, pushing through the slim archway on his crutches.
It’s only a few days later when Jimin makes it his personal mission to get Jungkook to go with him and visit Taehyung at wok. It’s some vaguely nearby cafe, locally famous for the cupcakes and the cute outfits the baristas wear, and this is what Jimin uses as his selling point: not only would they get to see Taehyung in a little pink apron and hat, they would be eating award-winning cupcakes while they do it.
Jungkook puts up even less of a fight than Jimin expected, eager to see Taehyung in his uniform, and before Namjoon can blink, the two of them are off to pretend like they drink coffee.
As it turns out, Taehyung isn’t even wearing his apron, but he is wearing the cute hat that hides his hair and shows off his forehead, which is honestly, just as good. He lights up like the Christmas tree still tucked into the corner when he sees them come in and almost overfills the cup he’s holding.
Taehyung is stuck behind the counter until his break (which is, thankfully, soon), so Jimin and Jungkook order and grab a table with a good view. When Taehyung finally joins them, he comes bearing sweets: some of those cupcakes he was bragging about, a few cookies, and a slice of carrot cake.
Jungkook makes a face when he sees the carrot cake and Taehyung is quick to inform him that it’s not for him anyways . “I happen to love carrot cake, so be careful what you say next, young one.” He deadpans as he pulls out a comically small fork and digs in. “I brought you two some cupcakes: smores and chocolate. You have to eat them or my cousin will fight you.”
Jimin laughs, not taking it serious. “No, literally. He’s watching.” Taehyung gestures behind him, to the man who took over the espresso station, staring at them. Jungkook grabs a cupcake and takes an oversized bite.
The sound that comes out of his mouth when he tastes it can only be described as mildly pornographic, a moan that would fit better in a bedroom late at night than in this cafe in broad daylight. Taehyung just laughs, loud and uncontained, “You sound just like hyung. His last boyfriend told me that he makes the same sounds while eating and fucking.” Taehyung looks at Jimin and winks.
Jungkook blushes and shoves the rest of the cupcake into his mouth.
They end up hanging around until Taehyung’s shift is over, almost three hours after they get there. When he gets off shift, he comes bounding over to their table with a tupperware full of snacks and a cup of hot chocolate.
“So, y’all wanna go somewhere? We can play some games at my house, if you want. We might have to deal with my loud roommate, but he’s harmless, kind of like a saint bernard.”
“Do you have Smash Bros? That’s pretty much the only game I know how to play.” Jimin quirks his neck and smiles up at Taehyung.
“Of course I do! Who do you play?”
“Kirby! He’s the cutest one.”
Taehyung laughs, “I should have known. He’s cute and round, just like you.”
Jungkook smiles and nods, “He’s right, peach. You basically are Kirby. Your little cheeks are perfectly round and pink and everything.” Jimin shoves his shoulder, “You know I’m right.”
“Well, yeah, but you don’t have to say it.” Jimin pretend-puts and looks to Taehyung to defend his honor.
“Blame it on the pain meds.” Jungkook stands up and grabs his crutches from where they’re leaning against the wall, “Tae, I’d love to go to your place and crush you in Smash.”
He directs them out of downtown to a cute little townhouse a few blocks away, Jimin just about missing every turn he was supposed to take on the way there. When they arrive, Taehyung swings the door open with a grand gesture.
“Welcome to my humble home, travelers.” He shows them where to put their shoes and excuses himself to change out of his work clothes, leaving them alone to wander around the living room.
Jimin pokes his head into the kitchen, where he sees a tall man with honey blonde hair rifling through the fridge. “Hi! Are you Taehyungie’s roommate?” He’s so enthusiastic, but the man doesn’t even flinch, turning around and smiling (beaming, really) at Jimin.
“Jung Hoseok, at your service.” He sticks his hand out for Jimin to shake, “Are you the hospital boy?”
“I am!” He’s thrilled that Taehyung told his friends about them, “One of them, at least. The other one is my Jungkookie. He’s on the couch.”
Hoseok peeks his head through the doorway to see Jungkook sitting on the couch, looking a little lost, “he’s cute, where’d you find him?”
“Principal’s office, senior year, busted for smoking pot behind the gym.:
“And why were you there?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“He was the one who sold it to me!” Jungkook yells from the other room.
Hoseok laughs, walking into the living room, sitting unnecessarily close to Jungkook. “You two seem a riot. You’ll fit right in around here.”
Jimin’s still standing in the kitchen doorway when Taehyung comes barreling down the stairs, two at a time, landing right in front of him. “Tae-ah! Your house is so cute. It is just the two of you here?”
“Oh, no,” Taehyung laughs (it seems like he’s always laughing), “we have a full house here. There’s four of us, if you count Yoongi-hyung as his own person, which I don’t usually. But anyways, he’s in Daegu right now and Jin-hyung is at work, so it’s just me and Hobi-hyung right now.”
“I like him. Will he play games with us? Then we can do two-on-two!”
“Oh, he doesn’t know how games work, so he’ll probably just watch.”
“Shut it, kid, I do too know how games work. I’m just not any good at them.”
“That’s how Minie is, too. He’s fully aware of how to win. He just can’t.” Jungkook smiles, front teeth on display, as Hoseok and Taehyung laugh at his joke. Jimin just huffs a bit and sits on the plush chair next to the couch.
They break out four controllers, forcing Hoseok to play because he’s there anyways, and him and Jimin are no competition for the other two. Jimin plays as Kirby but he’s woefully unaware of how to eat things and take their powers, while Hoseok plays as Pikachu because “pika pika!”
It’s nearing nine when Jimin realizes the time and texts Namjoon to see what he’s up to, which turns out to be not-much-of-anything. “Kookie, Joonie-hyung wants to know if the cupcakes were as good as expected.”
“Just recreate the noise he made when he ate them. That’ll let your friend know how good they were.” Taehyung says in between button-smashing to throw Jungkook off the stadium screen.
“I’m not recreating my boyfriend’s weird cupcake sex noises to his brother. That wasn’t in the job description.” He types up a text that leaves out any mention of the moaning, opting for a simple yeah, they’re great! you’ll have to try them instead.
Namjoon responds with a smiley face and asks when they’re coming home. It’s impossible to say, with Taehyung and Jungkook smushed into each other on the floor in front of Jimin’s feet, neither ready to admit defeat quite yet. It’s unbearably cute, watching Jungkook (as Fox) try to beat up Taehyung (as Sheik) and actually struggle for the first time to win.
Namjoon, left to his own devices for a little too long, has decided to find the baker man, who’s name is almost-certainly Kim something. His main hope is that the guy wasn’t just visiting from out of town, since that would make a nearly-impossible task actually impossible.
His current plan involves googling local bakeries, finding which ones make cookies, and then literally going into every place until he finds the cookies, and therefore, the man. It’s a fairly good system, except that most bakeries don’t actually advertise online and even fewer have a menu.
This, however, does not stop his extensive research and planning. He’s left with ten for-sure contenders and a lot more maybes. His contenders all have five-star ratings (because there’s no way that guy would work for a lesser store!) and at least two kinds of cookies in their pictures. It’s not a good plan, but it is a plan, and tomorrow, it begins.
Except it’s still that weird period between Christmas and New Years where all the local shops are closed unpredictably and business hours mean nothing.
When Jimin and Jungkook come home a little past eleven, they find Namjoon slumped over his computer, a half-drank cup of coffee and a notebook full of scribbles next to him. They set the tupperware of goodies that Taehyung forced on them on the counter and leave Namjoon alone to rest, however uncomfortable he might be all hunched over like that.
He wakes up early the next morning, the sun shining in through the kitchen windows, right onto the counter was just resting his eyes on, just for a moment. There’s an unpleasant crick in his neck that proves his moment was closer to a full night’s sleep. His computer is beyond dead, just like his phone, so he gets up with a heavy sigh and makes a pot of coffee while he tries to massage the kinks out of his neck.
He quickly gives up on being awake, going back to (an actual) bed for another few (seven) hours, waking up in the early hours of the afternoon to the noise of Jimin trying to cook something while Jungkook yells that he’s doing it wrong.
This spurs a heated internal debate: on one hand, he absolutely cannot help them, but on the other, if he doesn’t even pretend to try, they might not feed him.
That thought wins immediately. It’s well past lunchtime and Namjoon might just die if he had to make his own food right now, so he pulls himself out of bed and into the common area, trying to convince himself that two pm is a perfectly reasonable time to be getting up.
When he gets into the kitchen, he sees that Jimin is not actually doing anything wrong and Jungkook is just being a punk, which is a huge relief. He’s got a cookie shoved in his mouth but is still talking, manners out the window in his rush to tell Namjoon all about his night.
“It was so much fun, you have no idea. Tae is way better at games than than you two combined,” he swallows the last bit of cookie, “and he’s got this roommate, Hoseok, who is the funniest guy I’ve ever met. And he’s so nice, too!” Jimin nods in agreeance, “Oh! They gave us some cookies and stuff from the cafe before we left. I think there’s only brownies left, though. Sorry.”
He doesn’t sound sorry at all, but Namjoon doesn’t care much. Free brownies are free brownies, after all.
“Okay boys, I have made lunch, and I expect you to eat it with smiles on your faces. Compliments are appreciated but not required.” Jimin pulls out three bowls and passes them around, watching the other two start eating with possibly-fake smiles.
“You’ve outdone yourself, doll, really.” Jungkook says between bites. “This is the best packaged ramen I’ve had in, well, my entire life.” Jimin smacks him on the shoulder and Jungkook feigns injury, and things feel ridiculously normal despite the chaos of their family barely being 36 hours ago. Namjoon swears he can still hear echoes of his mother’s you need to eat more and his father’s you’d get more work done if your studio was cleaner .
Jungkook just thinks he’s a little crazy, and maybe he’s now wrong. Namjoon certainly isn’t the most calm or collected guy around, despite his ability to look perfectly functional in public. He’s what you’d call a contained mess, but it works for him, so nobody bothers to tame the whirlpool.
Jungkook, on the other hand, is more like a hurricane, if hurricanes were like amusement park rides with big goofy smiles. People let him be because how could they look at his face and tell him to calm down? (and really, once he looks at you with his best puppy-dog impression, you’d thank him for stealing your car.)
So maybe they’re both a little much, and Jimin certainly is for loving them, but the sentiment remains: Namjoon is eternally thankful for the love of his family, but also for the holidays to be on their way out and things returning to normalcy in front of his eyes.
“How’s concussion boy, everything you hoped he’d be?” Namjoon changes the subject back to what he knows they both want to be talking about.
“Ugh, you saw him, so you know that he may just be the most gorgeous man to ever walk the earth. But that’s not even all! He’s an artist and a photographer, and he’s smart as hell , hyung. He’s coming over tomorrow and you totally have to talk to him. You can nerd out together, he’d love to hear about your fashion stuff. He’s done shoots at fashion shows before!”
By “fashion stuff” Jimin means Namjoon’s job, as an actual fashion designer, not just some guy really into couture.
“He works at the cafe part time but spends most of his time in his studio. He has a pet chameleon named Chameleonardo Da Vinci, but he just calls him Vinny most of the time.” Jimin leans forward, his hands under his chin as he gets lost in his description of the one Kim Taehyung. “He loves his friends so much, which is great. I don’t trust anybody who wouldn’t die for their friends, and I can tell he would.”
Jungkook laughs, “what Min means is that Taehyung is a really nice guy and a lot of fun to be around. You’d really like him, since you have so much in common. He’s worked with a bunch of fashion companies, doing photoshoots for them, working shows, stuff like that.”
“Well I can’t wait to meet him. Does he know you two want to eat him alive, or does he think this is something pure and innocent?”
Jungkook blushes and Jimin giggles, “oh, don’t worry. He knows we’re interested.”
Namjoon doesn’t want to know what that means.