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On nights like this when Jungkook was a little kid, about 13, his dad would take him out driving. They would hop in the family’s battered honda civic and drive for hours down the coast, listening to vague American artists his dad listened to in college. They would belt Pink Moon by Nick Drake like it was hard rap instead of a quiet heartbreak song and roll the windows down. His dad would say “Did you know that Nick Drake …” every time. Jungkook would stick his whole head out, no mom to tell him to be more careful, and close his eyes and yell. He never looked, but he could feel his dad’s wild smile pressing to the side of his cheek. They would stop at a shady looking gas station an hour out of Busan and his dad would buy him chocolate milk so he looked like he was drinking coffee too. They would sit on the curb while the car filled. The excess energy that always bubbled under Jungkook’s skin would turn from bloody boil to a pleasant simmer.
They’d come home to a flickering porch light and two cups of ginseng tea on the table.
Jungkook is older now, he’s 18, so he drinks beer instead of chocolate milk. He’s older now so there aren’t any drives. He’s older older older so instead of driving and wind tears and weird in between gas stations there’s just this.
This is 3 am in some apartment in Italy and no one is awake. This is Jungkook doing silent one arm push ups in the kitchen because the living room floor creeks and he can’t leave for a drive because he could get caught. Because he’s a somebody now (though sometimes it feels more like a something). Because he can’t drive. So. Push ups.
The kitchen tile is cold and you would think that after 238 (a new record for manic push up-ing) push ups, Jungkook would be all out of energy. Instead he just feels it boiling higher and higher. Sometimes even when he’s at his most tired, when words become grunts and the manager pulls him out of rehearsal because ‘you can’t keep competing with your hyungs kid, it isn’t sustainable’, he’s still churning. Jungkook is butter. He’s all mush, all melt, all give, but he’s holding solid form. Little microbes crawl over him and he feels constantly oily, like yellow film clings to him. He opens the fridge. Closes it. Opens the freezer. Sticks his face in. Closes it on his face so that his cheeks are squished between cold.
“Jungkook?” someone says behind him. Seokjin-hyung. Gravel under tires is Yoongi. Gas into the tank is Namjoon. Chocolate milk and coffee is Seokjin-hyung. Chocolate milk and coffee is a mocha. Hoseok is … fluorescent station lights, maybe? Wait, Seokjin-hyung?
Jungkook pulls his cheeks out from the freezer door and turns his head over his shoulder very slowly. Sure enough, Kim Seokjin is standing behind him in a very expensive silk pajama shirt and the ugliest pair of flannel pajama pants Jungkook has every seen in his life. He’s got a little spike at the crown of his head like that anime character … shit … what’s his name? Whatever. His Hyung looks silly.
He looks good though. He always looks good and something in Jungkook loosens a bit. It’s not the heat under his skin, the nerves in his belly that tell him to move move move, but it’s something. Seokjin always does that for him. Jungkook used to think that he would never love anyone like he loved Kim Namjoon, but then Kim Namjoon spilled an entire vat of Taiwanese Hot Pot on 15 year old Jungkook's lap and burned him so bad he had to go to the hospital. He hadn’t known hot water could extinguish flame like that, but his little candle snuffed easily. Besides, Namjoon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung have lived together for six years. (Besides, Seokjin-hyung held his hand all the way to the hospital and kissed his forehead for the first time. Besides, Seokjin insisted Namjoon let Jungkook speak informally to him for a week.)
Somewhere between the time Jungkook realized that there was actually words for how he felt when Seokjin-hyung smiled (like strawberries in the summer, like clouds in blue sky, like … like roses and ponies and all the gayest cliches) and Jimin coming home to share his first time bottoming (“Kinda like shitting, kinda like heaven,” Jimin said. “So cool,” Taehyung said. “Ew Jimin-ssi,” Jungkook said, thinking of nothing but Seokjin and going entirely red), he had grown up. And growing up meant learning that love wasn’t for everyone. Or not always. Not even sometimes. That there was nothing wrong with loving Seokjin, but there was something wrong with him loving Seokjin. That men could love Seokjin, did love Seokjin if the hickies Ken gave him were anything to go by, if he was self destructive enough to remember the awards show where his strong hyung disappeared with Kim Taemin for over an hour and came back with a limp, but Jungkook couldn’t. What was it that that movie Namjoon hyung made them watch because they were coming to Italy said? I want to be man and woman for you, or neither, but I want to be all you ever need? Is it better to speak or die?
Oh right. Seokjin-hyung said his name. Seokjin has been standing there with that silly worried look on his face kinda like he ate something that wasn’t great wasn’t terrible for three minutes while Jungkook has just been sitting here thinking his thoughts.
“Hi hyung,” Jungkook says and winces, voice loud and crackly in the witching hour. “Why are you up?”
“I’d ask you the same thing bun,” Seokjin says, sliding into a chair. “Get the wine and two glasses. Let’s go on the balcony.” Maybe this is why balconies were invented, Jungkook thinks. For drinking wine with men you can’t have on a tour you can’t be bothered to get nervous for anymore.
He does what he’s told.
Seokjin is beautiful against the skyline. It’s weird to travel so much, even if the band has started getting apartments instead of hotels. Jungkook always feels less like a boy and more like a character in a book when they travel, like everything he does holds much more weight on his person, but Seokjin was meant for travel. Seokjin was meant for the world. He looks like a man, hard and well-read.
Jungkook is meant for drinking this whole bottle of wine so he doesn’t have time to say anything stupid.
There’s no chairs on the balcony so they sit with their feet dangling through the slats like real adults. They’re drinking wine out of water glasses. Jungkook is starting to feel that pleasant outside of his head feeling that he gets when he drinks. Not like he’s out of control, just like he’s at the wheel instead of the car itself. He checks and yes, the boiling under his skin is gone. It’s just him and Seokjin now, pressed together except for where Seokjin shoved the bottle between them, muttering about room for Jesus. They’re not Christian. Weird at 3 am Seokjin is somehow just as attractive and it’s a damn curse.
“So.”
“So,” Jungkook says back, turning to look at his hyung. Seokjin's not looking back. Story of his life.
“You’re 18. Congratulations Koo.”
Jungkook melts at that nickname. It’s not fair. He’s always weak to that nickname. It brings out the honesty in him.
“I’m 18 hyung,” he whispers, “and I’ve never felt more out of place. Why do you get smaller as you get older? I thought getting older meant growing up. I thought it meant touching the sky. I think the closest I ever was to the sky was when I was playing astronaut in kindergarten. I think I’ve been getting closer to the ground every day since.” There are tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. Seokjin leans over and wipes them off, taking his chin between his fingers and tilting him up so that Jungkook's whole world view is just his hyung’s eyes and his reflection in them. He feels like he’s swimming in care. He feels like he’s drinking safety juice. It doesn’t make sense, but it does, and that’s enough.
“Have you ever read The Phantom Tollbooth?” Seokjin asks, and Jungkook shakes his head. “It’s an American book that Namjoon gave me. It’s good.” He pauses and moves back for another sip of wine. His fingertips leave depressions on Jungkook's skin. “There’s a boy in there who’s born with his head at the tallest height he’ll ever be. He grows down from there, but for most of his life he walks through the sky. He knows for sure what he’s going to be, or at least how he’s going to be. He moves assuredly because he knows that no matter what, he’ll always see from where he’s seeing.” Seokjin smiles sadly. “I envy him a lot.”
“But hyung, isn’t that even sadder?”
Jungkook flinches under Seokjin’s gaze. His hyung is solely concentrated on him for once, not distracted by another member or a call time or the constant pressure to excel, and it’s so much. It’s all over. It happens so rarely that Jungkook still gets nervous. Good nervous, but nervous all the same. Like moths beating at a lampshade. Jungkook can feel it in the dimples of his back but he continues anyway.
“If he always sees from the same height, he’ll never see anything differently. He’ll always see from the same vantage point and he won’t see that there's more to something than seeing it head on. It’s like when you first get big enough to ride without a car seat. Everything is smaller and bigger because you don’t have the extra boost but suddenly you can move your whole torso around because it’s just a seat belt and when you look out the window you see sky, not houses.” He’s not making any sense so he finishes up lamely. “If you don’t change you don’t learn.”
Seokjin blinks. Jungkook downs the last of his first glass. He’s pink and it isn’t from the alcohol. For all the time he spends in a fishbowl, Jungkook is terrible with attention from the people who matter.
“You’re so smart Jungkook-ah. When did you get so smart?” Seokjin asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ve always been smart.”
“Well, smart boy, tell me something else.”
“Anything?” Jungkook asks, untucking his legs from the slats and turning to face his hyung in criss cross applesauce. (That’s what it's called. He’s a grown up but he doesn’t have to be grown up.)
“Anything,”
Jungkook leans forward into Seokjin’s space. He makes a choice. He puts a hand on either side of his hyung’s hips and fumbles his way into the older man’s lap. Seokjin’s eyes widen but he makes no other move, like he knows if he so much as coughs Jungkooks going to run inside and lock himself in the bathroom (they have a jacuzzi tub). “Hyung, do you know … “ Do you know that I hid your favorite tea three days after you bought it for weeks so you’d ask me to come buy more with you? Do you know that I used to sneak the food you’d put on my plate when we didn’t have enough money to eat back onto yours? Do you know that I spent all of 2014 in Yoongi’s studio so that I didn’t have to watch you fight with Sejin-hyung about my workload? Do you know that I sing for you? “Do you know about the bees hyung?”
Seokjin leans forward a little, pressing their foreheads together, their noses together. Jungkooks breathing Seokjin’s breath. His hyung brings a hand up to his thin white shirt, plays with the edge. “What about the bees, Koo?”
“They’re …” Jungkook starts. He sways against Seokjin so their noses slip and then their lips are barely touching. Neither of them move. “They’re … hyung,” he breathes and on his next inhale Seokjin is there and they’re kissing. “Hyung,” he mumbles, throwing his arms around his neck and chasing sweetness clumsy clumsy clumsy. “Hyung. Hyung.”
Kissing Seokjin in Italy is everything. Jungkook’s vibrating but it isn’t like earlier. He doesn’t need to do push ups. His blood is on fire but he doesn’t want to run from it. He doesn't need to run from it. He needs to stay right here and blaze, here where his hyung can make sure he doesn’t burn.
Seokjin’s licking along the seam of his lips and he’s whining and there’s a tongue in his mouth and it tastes like wine and sleep and he likes it so much. So much when Seokjin’s fingers move under his shirt to hold his waist. So much when his hyung falls back so they’re lying on the concrete and Seokjin’s legs are still hanging off the end of the balcony.
“Jungkook …”
They’re just breathing together now. Their lips are just barely pressed together and they’re just breathing. It’s hot and weird and wonderful and so so Seokjin.
“Jungkook, do you know?”
And he does.