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he never feels as whole, as known and truly complete a person as when he’s alone with beyonce sunbaenim, just the two of them locked away in the practice room together.
beyonce would think he’s absolutely rocking these hip rolls, he knows that to be true.
in another life, he thinks, they’d have been best friends. and they’d have been happy.
but that’s not this reality.
and here, he can only dream of a life like that.
here, hoseok is barely getting three hours of sleep a night, so even dreaming is a luxury for him.
“yah, hobi. do you have a written copy of those latest verses? joon deleted the email by mistake.”
he hadn’t even noticed yoongi walking in, had been so caught up in the eye contact he was maintaining with himself in the mirrors that he hadn’t heard the door open.
it takes a minute for him to adjust, to make the switch between what he sees and who yoongi is addressing.
verses? emails?
oh, right.
hoseok is a rapper, now. hoseok is a rapper, too.
“i - yeah. they’re on my phone, but i’ve got ‘em in a notebook too, over there in my backpack, hyung,” hoseok says, gesturing with one hand and reaching for his water with the other.
yoongi doesn’t look away, his gaze doesn’t go where hoseok’s hand and words direct it because he’s standing just inside the door staring at hoseok instead.
except for how hoseok is still, for a moment more, in that in between place. he’s not completely hoseok, not yet. he’s not j-hope either. he’s in the space between. he’s nothing and no-one, when he moves between one and the other.
hoseok turns his back to yoongi, because no one should see him like this.
it’s like being walked in on when he’s getting changed, except it’s not, because his naked body is for communal viewing now and you can’t be walked in on when you’re never not expecting it, the way he has to, now.
it’s like being walked in on when he’s getting changed, except if instead of just his clothes, he’s taking off who he is. he’s stripped down to his bones because they’re the only thing that hoseok and j-hope have in common, the beginnings of both the same but what they each do with it so different, the end product in each case incomparable, side by side.
they can’t ever exist that way, but it’s still how he pictures it in his head.
he wakes up in the morning and there’s hoseok and there’s j-hope and he decides which to step into.
they’re about to go on stage and he doesn’t get to decide which he needs to be.
in a moment, in a split second, something is too much for one so he has to strip him back and layer the other him into being, let whichever one of him can cope in this moment spring into action, come to life.
but there is a moment in between. a pause. a place where he is neither.
he’s nothing and he’s no-one and he doesn’t let anyone see him like this.
after a moment, he hears the sound of a zipper - yoongi at his backpack, yoongi taking what he came for - and then the swish of the door swinging closed and then there is nothing and then he’s alone.
he’s hoseok, when he leaves.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
the rest of them reach out for hoseok the most. it’s hoseok they call for, hoseok they think they need.
sometimes he goes to them as j-hope but lets them call him hoseok, responds to that name though it isn’t who he is, then.
he can’t be hoseok if it’s j-hope that’s needed, because hoseok doesn’t measure up then or there.
j-hope is the star of the show.
hoseok is just the understudy.
sometimes, he’s not even that much.
he is very rarely good enough.
most of the time, he’s just whoever and whatever it means to be not enough.
that’s all he is. he is not.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
hoseok was born in 1994.
j-hope was born in 2013, onstage for the first time, before their fans. j-hope only ever lives there. he is alive, when who and what he is gets reduced to one stage, one song, one thing, one purpose. be adored. to be adored, he must be perfect.
(there’d been a gestation period preceding that. it had been years long. it hadn’t been an easy pregnancy.)
but someone else was born in the moment just before j-hope, backstage in the darkness that foreshadowed the light. or before that, maybe. at 3am in a practice studio. at a cross walk when he’d wondered if he was going to be able to make it back to the dorm. when he’d sat with taehyung as he’d cried, the first time. the fifth time. every time after.
when he’s neither, he is nothing.
j-hope is wanted and hoseok is needed.
he is neither. he is nothing.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
namjoon is hurt and he can’t do anything to help. he can’t make it better.
it’s a stage fault. gaps in the flooring that hoseok saw before they even did a practice run, a gaping space that j-hope almost fell into, even so. the rest of them had noticed it too and been quick to tell their managers as they filed off stage, but the fix didn’t fix a fucking thing and namjoon is hurt now, is going to be hurt and hurting for a while and he can’t do anything to change that. no versions of him know what to do. none of him have anything to offer, now.
“hey. hey, hope-ah,” someone says and he lifts his head only because the voice is close, not because he recognizes the name.
yoongi is on his knees next to him.
he looks into yoongi’s eyes and he’s just him but yoongi looks back at him, anyway. yoongi sees him.
“it’s gonna be okay, hope-ah. hyung is here. we’ll be fine,” yoongi says and hoseok believes him. j-hope does too. and so does he.
sometimes, with yoongi, it feels like he isn’t nothing, isn’t only no-one.
with yoongi, he’s something like all of him. all of them. but just one.
and everything is okay.
namjoon recovers quickly.
everything is fine.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
by the time they get their first win, he feels like he is so much more than he began as.
yoongi keeps seeing him, keeps looking right at him no matter who he is or isn’t or shouldn’t be or won’t be for much longer but every single time, no matter what, yoongi keeps looking.
they get spectacularly drunk, afterwards and it’s supposed to be a celebration.
he gets trashed and he and yoongi get alone and j-hope tries to kiss yoongi but yoongi kisses hoseok instead.
he starts to cry.
“you can’t do this,” he says and yoongi has his face in his hands, has someone’s face in his hands, has all of his faces in his hands.
“i don’t know how to be who you want me to be. i don’t think i can be what you want,” he says and the worry lifts from yoongi’s face and he kisses his closed eyelids, cups a hand to the back of his head and lets him hide his faces in yoongi’s neck.
“i don’t want you to be anything,” yoongi says into his hair. “i want all of you, just the way you are.”
tonight is supposed to be a celebration and it is, but it’s something else for him, too. for them.
it is the end.
and the other words for that too - the start.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
hoseok wakes up the next morning in yoongi’s bed. in yoongi’s arms.
one of yoongi’s hands is down the front of his tank top, curled warm and familiar around his rib cage. his face is pressed to the thin skin of yoongi’s throat and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the trailing, branching spread of yoongi’s veins, his life beneath his skin. the blue-purple thread of it is visible where it splinters out across his shoulder, goes deeper in him, goes where hoseok can’t see it anymore but can still know it’s there, because yoongi is here, stirring against him.
“mmm. morning hobi,” yoongi says and they smile at each other, still sleep dopey and happy.
it’s just the two of them, there. together.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
“hobi-hyung?” jimin is asking and hoseok goes to him, is beside him before he realizes he hadn’t paused to think, hadn’t thought to check.
“what do you need, jimin-ah?” hoseok says, grinning at him already because whatever jimin wants, he’ll give it to him if he can. and if he can’t, someone else probably can. that’s the beauty of there being seven of them. that’s the joy of them being only one thing for one another.
family.
everything.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
he finds seokjin and jungkook in a tangle, tumbled together in a beautiful knot of limbs that calls to him, their voices loud and joyous, their hands clumsy with love that’s too big for them to keep hold of, love that spills out all over them, all over them all.
hoseok falls into them, lets himself fall on top of them.
they pause, both stilling for a second and then it’s a race to pull him closer, a battle to win him.
they’re always fighting. they’ve been fighting for him since before he realized he needed to fight that same fight.
they’re screaming and shouting, kicking and yelling and laughing and this is what it feels like to be alive.
hoseok lets them win.
hoseok is the one who wins.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
sometimes there’s more than one of him, still.
some days, it feels like there could be hundreds of him and none of them would be any use at all.
but most days, more and more days lately, there is only him. they’re part of him still, but he’s the constant. he’s forever, even if they won’t be. and that’s okay, because he doesn’t need them, he doesn’t choose them anymore.
he responds to a handful of names, but he doesn’t let the word decide who answers anymore.
different versions of himself don’t respond to different situations now because anything any of them did was always his doing, all along.
he sees that now and he lives it. he doesn’t divide his life between what j-hope gets to live out on stage and what hoseok has to do - in the downtime, in the background - to make that work, to get them there, to survive until they find their way back out under bright lights that he used to think of as home, even though they were never kind to him, never welcomed him or held him close.
worshipped, is how he’d felt there. sought and special and wanted, wanting; thriving.
he still feels that way, sometimes. even now, even like this and it’s nice at times, fun for some things, in some ways, with some people - the right kind, the good ones, these ones - but he’s learned to recognize when it’s not.
yoongi calls him ‘hope-ah,’ calls him ‘hobi’ and ‘j-hope’ and ‘hoseokie’ and ‘my hope’ and other things, too. words that aren’t his name or even names at all but feel like they fit, anyway. fit better, sometimes, somehow, than real names do.
it’s a slow transition. an amalgamation of who he thought he had to be split down the middle, broken apart to make it easier to swallow.
it makes sense to yoongi, when hoseok explains it to him.
“it’s like … everybody talks about performances as a success or a failure. you worked hard or you made a mistake, even though those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. it’s complicated. it’s confusing. you try to make it simpler, make it make sense. you have to,” yoongi says, with his head on hoseok’s chest, his knee up over his thighs. “you divide it. good or bad. black or white. life and death.”
( j-hope and hoseok )
hoseok puts his mouth to yoongi’s hair. hoseok has his arm around yoongi’s shoulders. hoseok is warm, like this, on the outside but inside of himself, too. yoongi gets him. yoongi gets all the way inside him, gets past the broken parts, the ugly places, the things hoseok doesn’t want anyone to see. there’s things in him that yoongi hasn’t looked at yet, places hoseok hasn’t let him go. and he will. because they have time. it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing. it doesn’t need to be instant. it’s okay that it’s not always easy.
“it’s never completely distinct,” yoongi says and he’s looking out the window but his arms are anchored around hoseok’s waist. “it’s never really separate parts. we’re layered, hobi. we’re not ever perfect and that’s good.”
hoseok is never perfect anymore and that is better. that does feel good.
“you’re just you, hope-ah. you’re the best,” yoongi says and hoseok knows he doesn’t mean it comparatively, because yoongi doesn’t compare him to anyone else. yoongi loves him. yoongi sees him. yoongi knows him. yoongi understands him. and yoongi loves him.
that’s the beginning.
that’s what makes hoseok brave enough to let him know himself. to let himself be loved.
hoseok shows himself to others, to the rest of them first, to the rest of them the most.
and there he is.
he is known and he is loved.
he is.
and he is happy.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/