Work Text:
They’re backstage after Bang Bang Con: The Live when the conversation breaks out. Hoseok is struggling to get out of his skinny jeans, and he’s put his Sunday morning playlist just low enough to hear anything his bandmates are discussing as they get off the stage.
“Ok, so correct me if I’m wrong but that Jamais vu concept is quite hard to grasp on?” One of the babies asks. Taehyungie, his brain quickly supplies.
“Not really; it’s just a phenomenon of experiencing a situation that one recognizes in some fashion, but that nonetheless seems novel and unfamiliar.”
Jeongguk almost sounds too detached, too distinguished. Hoseok wonders if he’s rehearsed those words before. It wouldn’t be the first time they catch their maknae reciting lines.
“Okay, but can you explain with an example?” That’s Taehyung again.
Hoseok imagines him frowning as he fumbles with the heart-shaped buttons of his blouse, and Jimin somehow might come to his rescue any second now.
“It’s like,” Seokjin says with eyes riveted on his switch, “Like waking up in an unknown world while everything else makes sense.”
“Like waking up on top of the world without remembering how you’d get there,” Namjoon says from some corner of the waiting room.
“Except something doesn’t make sense,” Jeongguk adds, “Something isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be.”
“A member called B instead of V!” Hoseok says. He hears a few laughter, a sound so familiar he wishes he could engrave it on his mind and play it on repeat.
“An eighth member,” Jimin suggests.
“A missing member,” Seokjin gasps over dramatically.
“All the members there but something doesn’t make sense,” Jeongguk ends up saying.
Taehyung is still frowning, “But do you know what’s missing?”
“Preferably.”
“You all are giving me a headache,” another voice intervenes.
Yoongi is laid on a couch, focused on his phone. Or so he seems. Everyone knows he always listens to their chatter even from afar.
“It could be that Jin Hyung is the leader!” Jimin adds after a pause.
“Please,” Jeongguk groans. Seokjin looks half as nauseous to the idea.
“Or I could be the maknae!” Hoseok says.
To be fair, he doesn’t know why he says that, maybe it is to tease Jeongguk, maybe it is something he’s actually thought about several times and that has only crawled back to his mind in that curious moment.
“You’d hate calling us all hyung,” Taehyung replies. And that is also very fair.
Still, Hoseok could get used to the idea of getting pampered all day.
Later when Jeongguk threatens to fall asleep on his shoulder as they get back home, lulled by the low rumble of the car, Hoseok whispers to him; “Don’t you think it would be fun not to be the youngest for a while?”
Jeongguk hesitates then, “But what would I be, then?”
“You’d be me, silly!”
____________
It first happens on that same night.
Hoseok wakes up with a start. He opens his eyes and fixes on the ceiling of the room a persistent glare through the haze of sleep. There’s immediately something that bothers him. Sure, he’s fallen asleep against a giant Mang plushie, and probably fought the bed covers in his sleep. What Hoseok doesn’t do, though, is sleep in the nude. Simply because his bandmates don’t know privacy and he’s never been too kin on traumatizing the babies with his morning boner.
Here, though, Hoseok is naked.
Hoseok is naked and contorted into the embrace of another naked body as a pink sheet is draped around them. And the thing is, Hoseok knows Jeongguk’s smell as much as he knows everyone else’s. So, he knows. He knows, despite keeping his eyes trained to the ceiling, wishing to wake up properly, chasing the nightmarish madness in a blink.
“Hobi?” Jeongguk asks. His voice is low, laced with sleep, still.
Hoseok turns towards him as a smile blossoms on Jeongguk’s face, and he knows something is wrong. Not because they’re both naked and touching in all places they’ve never touched before. Not because the only plushie on the bed is an overgrown Kookie one. But because Jeongguk’s brow is pierced, and there is a pool of dark grey hair spilling on his pillow.
“What the fuck,” Hoseok mutters as he takes a strand between his fingers.
Jeongguk smiles lazily while looking up at him. Something is wrong. It’s only when Jeongguk’s face gets closer, and his lips purse towards Hoseok’s clear with intent, that Hoseok realizes exactly how wrong it is.
“What the fuck!” He exclaims as he hurries outside of the bed. Of course, he knocks his knee against the bed frame in the process. Of course, he yelps and starts cursing profusely.
Jeongguk looks more amused than confused, which tells a lot about how fucked up this whole ordeal is.
“Babe, chill it’s only 6 a.m.”
“Where am I?” Hoseok demands.
He fell asleep in the dorm, he’s pretty sure of it. He has taken Jimin’s lenses off and repeatedly told him Jimin-ah, it’s late as he could hear him fumbling with his phone under his bedcovers.
“What do you mean? You’re home,” Jeongguk tells him.
But this isn’t home. At least, not the home Hoseok is used to.
“Hoseok, babe,” Jeongguk calls, still lying on his back.
“Hyung,” Hoseok corrects absent-mindedly.
“Yeah?” Jeongguk asks.
Hoseok wonders briefly what is wrong with him and elaborates, “Call me hyung.”
And then he gets the hell out of wherever he is.
First, Hoseok thinks rationally. It must be a prank. Run! BTS Directors have never pushed this far, though. And Jeongguk isn’t a good actor enough to play out his part without blushing. Hoseok would’ve woken up next to Seokjin if it really was a prank. Hoseok would’ve—
But it doesn’t make sense, does it?!
Why would they all be naked otherwise?
It is not a prank, but it is something. Something that isn’t quite right.
“Hey watch out!” Jimin tells him as Hoseok jolts in the middle of the hallway, “Almost spilled all my coffee on you…”
Hoseok doesn’t have time to figure why exactly Jimin has long brown hair and just addressed him so casually before his interlocutor pursues,
“Had fun last night when the hyungs took you for a celebratory drink?”
Hoseok frowns because he can’t remember anything about last night. But that information, at least, is something.
“I think I drank too much,” He replies belatedly.
“Yeah, I bet Jeongguk hyung couldn’t let you breathe…” Jimin replies grinning.
Hoseok stares at his bandmate. It’s Jimin. Jimin who just called Jeongguk, hyung.
Hoseok thinks he’s going insane. Nothing around here makes any sense. And he’s pretty sure he hasn’t touched alcohol in weeks, so if he’s really hangover it might be some severe type of case.
“Jiminie, what day are we?” he asks.
Jimin looks affronted. And Hoseok just stares as his bandmate scold him, “Yah, you could at least be respectful, brat!”
“Excuse you.”
“We’re the 15th,” Jimin finally says, and Hoseok thinks he could possibly murder him if he wasn’t ready to collapse, “Bang Bang Con was just yesterday.”
“How?”
“Wow,” Taehyung comments as he almost bumps into them and stares at Hoseok’s disheveled appearance, “what did hyung gave you?”
“What’s wrong here?” Namjoon questions as he enters the open kitchen as well.
Hoseok, by now, doesn’t know when all his members found time to dump hair dye on their heads since he last saw them.
“Hoseok-ah is having a mental breakdown,” Jimin responds as he twirls his disgusting mushy pudding type of thing. (That’s granola, Hoseokie!)
“What song did we sang yesterday?” Hoseok asks.
He’s onto something, he can feel it.
“What? You mean with Jin hyung and Jeongguk hyung?” Taehyung asks, “Jamais Vu!”
“And you guys sang Friends, and Yoongi hyung and Namjoon-ah sang Respect?” Hoseok says.
Namjoon flinches and turns towards Jimin and Taehyung with a grimace,
“Why is he being so shameless this morning?”
“He called me Jiminie,” Jimin answers with a shrug.
Hoseok feels the headache coming along with a dozen questions that tumble across his mind.
“Something’s wrong. Something doesn’t make sense. I need to lay down.”
Another voice asks,
“What’s up with him?”
“Drank too much,” responds another.
And then, finally, Namjoon says with a fond smile, “Aw, our cute maknae,” as he looks right into Hoseok’s comically large eyes.
____________
Hoseok wakes up with a start and a melody on his mind.
He’s back home. His legs are wrapped around the giant Mang plushie. He looks at his phone and sees it’s still the 15th. He dials a number without thinking and barely breathes as he waits for the person on the other end to respond.
“Hello? Hyung? Is everything okay?”
It’s Jeongguk. Jeonggukie with his voice laced with sleep and that unmistakable lisp Hoseok has desperately missed.
Hoseok has never been happier to hear him.
____________
The second time it happens is just a week later. Hoseok wakes up on a chair in the middle of a studio he doesn’t recognize.
Went for a run. Didn’t want to wake you up. X
He squints at the note splattered on the screen of the computer and decides it’s written just badly enough for it to be Jeongguk’s. He realizes belatedly he’s without a shirt and finds himself quite distressed of waking up in another level of undressed in yet another random place.
“Spent the night awake in your studio again?” Namjoon asks him with a gentle smile when he enters the studio a few minutes later and finds that Hoseok hasn’t moved an inch.
The pink strands of hair getting into Namjoon’s eyes are hints enough of how far Hoseok is from reality.
“I doodled more than I wrote lyrics, it seems,” He responds belatedly, showing off his notebook. He finds it odd to look Namjoon in the eyes, knowing that they don’t have quite the same age in that dream, not quite sure of how to address someone he’s grown too used to know.
“It’ll come. You’re still young!” Namjoon reassures him as he pats his messy crown of chestnut hair.
Hoseok finds himself instantly relaxing in the way only Namjoon achieves to soothe him. “And when you’ll be ready to share the songs you plan to put on your mixtape, you know I’ll be there for you…” Namjoon adds.
“My mixtape?” Hoseok repeats.
“Hope world.”
“I haven’t—I haven’t released Hope World yet?”
And of course, it makes sense. And of course, Hoseok can’t count the numbers of things that set this universe apart from the one he knows.
And of course, Namjoon looks at him like he just got himself a new pair of eyes.
“Forget it,” Hoseok tells him before the leader calls a medic.
They’re silent for a while. Hoseok watches as Namjoon pensively bites the end of his pen, and he recognizes in the leader’s stance the quiet kind of worry he’s seen a thousand times. And he wants to reach out, and he wants to share his friend’s burden but doesn’t know where to start,
“Am I a good maknae?”
The words escape him.
“Pardon?” Namjoon turns towards him.
“Am I a good maknae?” Hoseok asks again.
Namjoon raises an eyebrow with a thin smile, “Why would you even say that, did the two demons tease you, again?”
The two demons is actually a nickname Seokjin has found to point out the 95 liners and their tendencies to bully Jeongguk into doing weird shits for them. Hoseok can’t believe he’s the victim of these two in this dream.
“No, it’s just—I’m just asking.”
“You’re a good maknae, Hobi,” Namjoon says, “Sure, we wish sometimes you wouldn’t feel so pressured to put up a front with us, but you’re our kid, you know that, right?!”
Namjoon brushes the top of Hoseok’s mop of hair with a tenderness Hoseok doesn’t think he’s ever received from Namjoon.
And Hoseok, well, he feels adored.
____________
He’s almost disappointed when he doesn’t dream for another two weeks. Sure, he’s stressed while preparing for the Japanese promotion of their new album. He envisages starting to diet. He scolds Jimin for the state of their bedroom and finds himself moping for meaningless things such as not finding out his Snoopy mug in the dorm’s kitchen.
And on that night, as he just exits the bathroom after a busy session of dance training for their upcoming album, Jeongguk comes to him all Bambi-eyed,
“Hyung? Can I sleep here with you, tonight?”
Hoseok can’t refuse him anything.
____________
That night he’s back there. It is not so much of a surprise, really. But still, when he wakes up to the sight of Jeongguk sleeping with his grey hair tied up in a bun and a semblance of a grin at the ends of his lips, he almost laughs.
He likes this world; sure, everyone is a bit too invested in notions of respect, and Hoseok sometimes forgets himself. But it is also very satisfying to have his six bandmates hellbent for any of his desire. The one thing he doesn’t get, though, is why Jeongguk and he seem to be hinging on a dangerous territory each time he dreams.
Jeongguk remains a complete mystery because he’s the one who’s so far from Hoseok’s reality. He’s the one who looks so grown and changed. So broad and confident.
Jeongguk is the one who kisses Hoseok’s neck and asks him,
“What’s up with you? You’ve been weird recently.”
And Hoseok is the one fleeing bed in the morning with his cheeks flaming red, “Hum, yeah. I think I’m getting sick.”
“You don’t look sick,” Jeongguk comments, “Have you talked to any of the managers?”
“I don’t think it’s too—important.”
Hoseok regrets saying anything else when he sees Jeongguk’s frown, “You overwork yourself, and then you exhaust yourself on stage.”
“We haven’t had a concert in a long time, though,” Hoseok argues.
“Doesn’t mean I haven’t seen you slaving yourself in the practice room.”
“Stalker,” Hoseok teases.
“Only for you,” Jeongguk smiles back.
It happens so fast Hoseok isn’t sure to comprehend what’s happening until Jeongguk faces him, kneeling on the bed and presses his lips on his.
And the thing that shocks him the most—the thing that’s the most outlandish of all is how natural Jeongguk kisses him. Hoseok feels like he’s out of his body and it only takes him a minute before he registers exactly what’s happening and decides to gently push Jeongguk away.
“What’s wrong?”
“I—”
Yeah, what’s wrong Hoseok? His mind parrots.
“Hoseok, babe, are you okay?!” Jeongguk asks as he puts his palm against Hoseok’s forehead.
“I’m—I—”
Let me breathe. I can’t think when you’re looking at me with those eyes, he thinks, but also, what the heck?! What the actual heck?!
“You look pale. You should really see someone, baby…”
“Don’t call me that.”
Hoseok grimaces and sees the expression Jeongguk wears (one of open adoration) crumble.
“I’m sorry,” Jeongguk says, “I didn’t want to upset you.”
Hoseok wonders if this is something that should make sense somehow. Being so young, getting babied by Jimin, scolded by Seokjin, and kissed on the mouth by Jeongguk first thing in the morning. This dream is as weird as they come, Hoseok decides.
“Hey, are we okay?” Jeongguk asks when Hoseok does nothing but stare, and his hands find the sides of Hoseok’s head like it’s the most natural thing they do.
I don’t know, Hoseok almost says. What are we exactly?
“Of course,” he responds instead, for fear of seeing another frown on Jeongguk’s forehead. And he’s weak, okay?! He really is.
And when Jimin seats by his side on the couch and asks,
“Everything okay, baby?”
Hoseok doesn’t feel that same shock he felt once Jeongguk said it. Maybe because it seemed so out of character for Jeongguk to say those words, especially after attempting to make-out with Hoseok.
Hoseok turns towards Jimin with a nervous smile, “Jeonggukie—hyung, Jeongguk hyung and I, we’re quite the pair...”
Jimin shrugs, his eyes riveted on his phone, “I guess, just like Taehyungie and I.”
“Right,” Hoseok says though he doubts Taehyung and Jimin are at a point where they sleep together—
—Or maybe that’s just it, sleeping together as some good friends do. Letting off steam backstage. Kissing each other in the morning casually. Calling each other baby because they can. Doting on one another because they’re family.
“…but he still can’t be your favorite hyung. Not after all I’ve done for you…” Jimin continues.
Good friends who sleep together, Hoseok keeps thinking. That can’t be too weird.
____________
It is a bit weird, though.
They’re filming for RUN BTS! and Hoseok can’t remember the last time he slept properly because Jeongguk has taken permanent residency in his bed these days. They have to play some stupid games to determine three teams and Hoseok almost has an attack when he realizes Jeongguk is in his team.
That’s the first clue something weird is going on because no one would pass on the idea of having Jeon Jeongguk on one’s team.
And then, they have to choose a team name upon the director’s request.
“Golden,” Jeongguk exclaims, “For golden hyung and golden maknae.”
Jimin, Yoongi, and Seokjin choose Kim Seokjin while Namjoon and Taehyung choose Seokjin Kim. Hoseok declares that his team deserves two points for creativity and all hell breaks loose.
Amongst the chaos, he sees Jeongguk’s smile stretch wider than what should be physically possible.
“We’ll make the best team,” Jeongguk tells him quietly with his eyes so shiny Hoseok has trouble looking away.
____________
Hoseok doesn’t know when he starts thinking twenty-seven years old Jeongguk is cool as hell but that’s probably when things start to change.
And then, he starts dreaming each night.
____________
The problem of it all is that Hoseok sometimes spends more time asleep than awake, sometimes thrives for his bed, sometimes doesn’t want to let go of the illusory lie of his dreams. Wakes up in a foul mood with some things (something, someone) on his mind.
It starts to get overbearing on the morning Hoseok asks for salt during lunch and finds himself in the center of attention.
“What?” He asks as all his bandmates stare at him, expressions ranging from deeply confused to slightly amused.
It’s Seokjin who answers with a sly grin, “You just called Jeonggukie, hyung.”
And this is the moment when Hoseok is supposed to jokingly brush that information away. The moment he’s supposed to break into a fit of laughter.
He doesn’t do any of these things, though. In fact, he looks at Jeongguk whose eyes have not gone back to his plate, yet. The younger member seems frozen in his action to reach for the salt.
“Hoseok-ah, are you okay?” Namjoon asks, then.
“Fine,” Hoseok barely utters, “I’m fine.”
Except it happens again—
When Taehyung seats him and Hoseok tells him “this song would suit hyung’s voice well.”
“Seokjin hyung?” Taehyung asks, and Hoseok almost replies, “No, Jeongguk’s.”
—And again.
____________
Hoseok watches Bangtang Bombs the next time he dreams, he watches them dozen by dozen, lying under bed covers, pretending to be too sick to train. He doesn’t know what’s more mortifying; the fact that no one questions him because there would never distrust him or that they congratulated him for not pushing himself too far as he usually does.
He watches himself growing under cameras, going to high school in that horrendous yellow school uniform he knows well. He watches himself getting teased by Taehyung and Jimin, ear constantly tugged, head bowed to accept his hyungs’ kisses. He watches himself pressed into his hyungs’ embrace on his graduation’s day, flushed red with pride.
And then, there are all those memories tangled into something unknown yet so familiar, like sleeping with his head laid on Seokjin’s lap, refusing to touch a snake, improvising some dance moves behind the stage as his hyungs take times filming concert vcr.
All these moments that make sense.
And then he finds his vlog, the one he filmed during their break when he left Seoul for L.A for only a few days to film The Chicken Noodle Soup video. Except, the first thing he sees is Jeongguk hurriedly closing his traveling bag. He sees himself then, honeyed hair and large smile as he talks to the camera and says,
“Hyung is coming with me!”
Hoseok stops the video there, heart beating too fast.
Jeongguk, his Jeongguk, the one whose Hoseok has watched over for the past seven years, was supposed to come along to L.A.
Hoseok remembers video-calling him in his lonely hotel room in the early morning as Jeongguk laid in bed on the other side of the planet.
“I wish I was there,” Jeongguk had said, face crushed into a pillow.
“I wish you were here too,” Hoseok had answered softly.
Jeongguk had then pretexted some excuse and the call had ended there.
But here, older Jeongguk has been by Hoseok’s side for the entirety of the trip, even doing a cameo appearance at the end of the video amongst other extras.
And it doesn’t make sense until it does. Until Hoseok realizes older Jeongguk is not simply overly affectionate. He’s not just a good friend who sleeps with Hoseok. He’s not only a hyung looking after the maknae and babying him as the rest of Bangtan does. He’s in love with Hoseok.
And Hoseok has watched enough videos on that day to know from a glance alone that, here, Hoseok loves him right back.
____________
“Hyung, can I sleep with you tonight?”
Hoseok has always known Jeongguk’s hunger for physical affection grows as the comeback season approach. Because it is a hunger, and Hoseok has never known how to tame it. He’s never tried to before.
“Jeonggukie,” He calls when the lights are out.
“Hum?”
“Remember that conversation you had with Taehyung after BangBang Con?” Hoseok asks, “When you explained the meaning of Jamais Vu concept?”
“Yeah,” Jeongguk responds as he turns to face Hoseok on the other side of the bed.
“Where have you read all that?”
“Read?” Jeongguk frowns, “Hyung, you’re the one who told me all that?”
“When?”
“When I first came to the studio to record the song,” Jeongguk responds, “When you told me that song would suit Hyung and I’s voices well.”
____________
Hoseok takes pride in being observant. Being observant means that he sees right through the interactions of the people closest to him. That’s how he realizes how secretive his relationship with Jeongguk is. It’s a bit of a shock. A kick to the gut. Their members don’t know. Their best friends don’t know anything about their love.
That’s how Hoseok knows it’s only a dream; there’s no way his bandmates’ noisy asses wouldn’t know.
____________
In retrospect, Hoseok will later think that it was about time it went to shit.
Three months after BangBangCon, they give their first interview during Dynamite promotion. The members are well-rested, the interviewer is quite agreeable and Hoseok is in a fucking good mood. So, it can only go downhill from there…
“Leigh from England asks; do you have some fond old memories with the person seated next to you?”
“That’s some weirdly specific question,” Yoongi comments under his breath.
“Starting from the left,” Namjoon encourages.
Hoseok turns towards Jeongguk and feels a smile tugging at the ends of his mouth.
“Some memory of Jk?” Hoseok repeats. He hears the distant echo of Jk~ sang by either Jimin or Namjoon. Jeongguk fixes on him a long look, a playful smile dancing on his lips.
Hoseok answers with a smile of his own.
“Alright,” he says, clapping his hands together, “well, there was this time we went to a picnic for the first time, do you remember?”
Jeongguk simply smiles for an answer.
Hoseok knows the members are all hung up on his words, as well as the camera who purchases his lips. He adds, “It was a bit after debut back when we had that edgy concept.”
Yoongi snorts. Jeongguk, on the other end, is starting to frown.
“He took me to a spot he likes by Han river—”
“A bit after debut?” Jeongguk interjects.
Hoseok smiles, “Don’t tell me you don’t remember it, we laid on the grass, you sang that song—”
“What song?” Jeongguk asks, confused.
“Mirrors by Justin Timberlake,” Hoseok responds without hesitance.
“How does it go?” Seokjin demands.
“It’s like you’re my mirror, my mirror staring back at me…” Hoseok starts singing, but Jeongguk’s face is blank and his smile long gone. He looks funny, confused like that, and a giggle escapes Hoseok as he watches the maknae closely.
“C’mon,” Hoseok insists, “We ate grocery store’s ramen and ran back to the bus stop under the rain. That’s the first time you—”
Hoseok quiets.
No, he thinks. No, please, god. This can’t be happening…
“Hyung?” Jeongguk asks, “The first time I what?”
Hoseok looks at him and all he sees are dreams disguised as memories. Shadows of truth.
And he thinks, the first time you kissed me. The first time you held my hand and promised me we’ll make it. The first time you gave me purpose beyond dancing. The first time you eased my stage fright. The first night our bodies mingled.
And now, all the members have turned towards him. Still, Hoseok can’t find it in himself to end his sentence. Still, Hoseok can’t turn away from Jeongguk.
Hoseok distantly hears Seokjin says, “Looks like Hoseok is bugging. Well, my memory of Kim Taehyung-ssi…” and he thinks he’s never been this grateful.
Jeongguk keeps gazing back at him from times to times, and that’s just the worst thing. How real that souvenir seemed seconds ago, how dark and blurry it has turned now.
Hoseok feels like he’s gone crazy. And maybe, that’s it, right?! He remembers things that never happened with a concerning clarity. He’s surrounded by specters of past-lives. His dreams have made his life into this farce where all things morph into sleep and his mind is nurtured by memories he never lived.
Emptied of its fuel.
Distorted.
“Hey, hyung!”
Hoseok stops reluctantly as Jeongguk calls after him in the hallways at the end of the interview, “What was that picnic story? I never sang that song before.”
“I know,” Hoseok tells him.
“Why would you make that up, then?” Jeongguk asks. He doesn’t seem mad or even upset, but genuinely curious.
Hoseok hates it. He hates it. That night, he has no other choice but to go to sleep.
____________
They’re in bed this time when he asks Jeongguk,
“Why would you sing something like that to me? I was young, didn’t understand English at all.”
“I had a feeling you would get that, somehow you would understand what type of feeling this song conveyed,” Jeongguk responds as he brushes his fingers lightly along Hoseok’s shoulder.
“And if I hadn’t?”
“Well, I would have still asked if I could kiss you.”
It drives Hoseok mad sometimes how Jeongguk can say things like that, unabashedly. How Jeongguk loves him, here. How certainty has been embedded in his every move.
“Do you think we could’ve been together if it wasn’t for you?” He asks in the quiet.
“Hum?” Jeongguk frowns, “What do you mean?”
“You brought me to that spot, organized the whole picnic, and serenaded me. I don’t think I would have been this brave if I was in your shoes…”
“Doesn’t matter if it would’ve taken more time, but it would’ve ended all the same, with us together.”
“You really think so?”
You really think we’re meant to be? Hoseok wants to ask. You really think that this dream isn’t just a glitch in the matrix? You really think it didn’t just happen out of luck?
“What is it?” Jeongguk asks as he watches Hoseok’s expression closely.
I don’t want this to be luck, Hoseok thinks.
It’s not quite the epiphany he expected but it’s the sole thing he registers before he puts his mouth on Jeongguk’s—
—And suddenly here doesn’t matter. Because here is just a pretext and nothing has ever made more sense. And nothing has ever felt so real.
Jeongguk’s mouth is soft as it goes pliant under Hoseok’s gentle guidance, it opens eagerly. Hot and pink chasing his, chanting his name over and over again. Hoseok thinks, this instant is mine, and so he should cherish it as the falsity of a present that he desperately wants. The now he’s dreamed of.
Jeongguk kisses like he’s on verge of adieus. A demi-god on the eve of war. Hoseok feels everything at once. The way their mouths move in synch, their bodies rocked in a semblance of dance. Hoseok feels like he’s been possessed by the spirits of a dozen tribes.
“Can I?” Jeongguk asks as his hands halt at the hem of Hoseok’s shirt.
“Go ahead, please,” Hoseok begs.
This is mine.
Before he knows it, Hoseok is naked. Much like the first time. Hoseok is naked and flushed against Jeongguk. But it all seems so natural. And when Jeongguk disappears under the bedsheets. And when Jeongguk puts his mouth on him. And when Jeongguk kisses him. And when Jeongguk conquers every parcel of his body—
“Jeongguk, I—” Hoseok lets out in a whimper.
Here bleeds into now. And it’s just not a pretext, anymore. It’s a chance, one Hoseok should seize. One Hoseok has been waiting for, and he didn’t even know it until now. Here is where Hoseok leaves his heart—
“Jeongguk, I love y—”
WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD!!!
____________
“Wake up, sleepyhead!!!”
Hoseok wakes up with a start—
—And he grips at the bed covers. And he still feels the throb of his mouth. Hickeys printed into his skin, though is torse is blank as some new canvas. Though his bed is vacant. Though Jeongguk is gone—
— And here, his heart still beats like it’s on the run.
“Woah, easy there! Hyung, are you okay?”
It’s Jimin at the end of the bed, freshly showered and dressed for dance practice.
“Shit,” Hoseok says, “Shit.”
“Hyung?”
“Shit,” Hoseok repeats and he rummages through the sheets. And he searches for a trace of Jeongguk in his bed. And he searches for a clue, anything that might ease his heart.
“Hyung?” Jimin repeats as confusion leads the way to fear in his voice.
Hoseok looks at his roommate as if he just materialized before him. He looks at him like a mad man, and he kicks at the bedcovers, and that stupid plushie, and that fucking pillow too, and that’s madness, right?!
“Fuck, Jimin! Why would you wake me up?!”
Jimin opens his mouth and closes it like a fish, before replying, “Hey, I’m sorry but we’re late for practice!”
Hoseok thinks he’s never seen his bandmate so pale, and that achieves to wake him up properly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled,” Hoseok says, “Fuck, where’s Jeongguk?”
And he means his Jeongguk this time. The one who’s left his smell on his pillow.
“In the car, as everyone else, waiting for you to get ready,” Jimin explains.
“Shit.”
“Hyung, are you okay?” Jimin looks worried. Maybe he should be. Maybe Hoseok is really getting crazy by now.
“Yeah, sure.”
He can’t look Jeongguk in the eyes for the rest of the day. In fact, he has trouble looking at Jeongguk anymore.
He thinks of dark eyes bored into his, a tongue pressed against the hollow of his navel, his name turned into a song, a prayer. And a response on the tip of his tongue, go ahead, please, go ahead and love me.
____________
“Hyung? Can I sleep here with you, tonight?” Jeongguk asks.
Once upon a time, Hoseok would have coo. He would’ve mocked Jeongguk’s shy stance and welcomed him in his bed eagerly, crowned his head with kisses, intertwined his legs with his. My baby, Hoseok would have thought as his heart overflowed with joy to the sight of the maknae.
“Hyung?” Jeongguk asks when Hoseok keeps quiet.
The request has never been mandatory, and some nights Jeonguk simply slips under the bedcovers without so much of a hello. And some nights, he must see something on Hoseok’s face. Something that isn’t as familiar as a heart-shaped smile that beacons him home.
“I—I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hoseok tells him and sees Jeongguk’s face falling so fast, it might just break his heart.
“Oh, okay,” Jeongguk says, and it’s so unlike him to just give up without question, Hoseok almost go after him, almost tell him. But—
It’s not you, it’s me
And I keep dreaming of you
And I’m going insane, Jeonggukie, I don’t know what to do with myself anymore
None of these sound good.
____________
“You know I love you right?!”
Hoseok pauses mid-bite and looks up to Namjoon’s face,
“I guess?”
“Alright, now cut the bullshit,” Namjoon tells him.
“Oh—”
“What happened with Jeongguk?!”
“Nothing happened. Is it a trap?” Hoseok tilts his head to the side as he drops his chopsticks altogether, “Did you take me out for lunch to talk about that?”
The disappointed tone Hoseok employs usually kicks a sufficient dose of guilt into his members. Namjoon must be immune to it because he only raises an unimpressed eyebrow,
“And what is that, exactly? The fact that you have been glued to our maknae for all those years, only to flinch now when you have to touch him for a second for the sake of our new choreo?”
“I didn’t flinch,” Hoseok tries to argue. But he sounds unconvincing, even to his own ears.
“You did. And Jeongguk was hurt by it!” Namjoon retorts, “He told the management he would be fine doing that part with anyone else.”
“Wait—he did?” Hoseok asks.
And okay, this hurts. This hurts a whole fucking lot. God, Hoseok wants all of it to stop already.
“Yeah…” Namjoon says quietly.
“What did our managers say?”
“They said no, of course! Hoseok, do you even hear yourself? What is going on?”
Hoseok lowers his gaze on the table, “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not!” Namjoon exclaims, “Jeongguk has been crying himself to sleep lately!”
Hoseok feels his heart breaking again. He thinks of Jeongguk. My baby –but he’s grown, now. He’s an adult, now. He doesn’t need—
“He thinks you hate him,” Namjoon adds when Hoseok keeps his gaze on his food getting cold. “Is it because of that interview?”
“What interview?” Hoseok asks.
“When you said you two had a romantic picnic and he acted like it never happened?”
Hoseok recoils, “I never said it was a romantic picnic.”
“No need, we all saw your face while talking about it…”
Hoseok wonders if the fans who watched the interview on YouTube could tell something as well. Hoseok wonders if it matters when Jeongguk has looked so confused.
“That picnic…Never happened,” Hoseok admits finally.
“But you wish it did happen.”
Hoseok looks at Namjoon and all he sees is a friend. His same-aged friend, his confident. And the words find their way out before he can think twice.
“It’s just so real sometimes. It feels like it could happen to us, too. It feels like it’s just there, and then I wake up, and it’s so out of reach.”
“Hoseok-ah, what are you talking about?” Namjoon sounds lost.
“I’m having dreams, Namjoon. I’ve been having dreams for the past three months. And they’re so real.”
“What happens in them?”
“Everything is pretty much the same, except that Jeongguk is my age and I’m his. And—and we’re dating.”
“Ah,” Namjoon says.
“But Bangtan is still popular. And we do things alike. Sure, some things are missing from time to time but it’s a good alternate reality.”
“Do you prefer that alternate reality to ours?”
“No, it’s just—”
And Hoseok can’t find a way to end this sentence accordingly. Because it isn’t that simple! It’s just not a word over the other…
“Do you like that Jeongguk in your dreams?” Namjoon asks him, then.
“I mean, it’s Jeongguk,” Hoseok responds with a shrug but his heart’s beating so fast it feels like it’s ready to escape its cage. And Namjoon seems to read right through the impassive facade.
“Do you love him?”
____________
“Why are we a secret?” Hoseok asks as they lay in the dark, naked, and sated. Hoseok and the dozen tribes Jeongguk has awakened within him with a kiss.
“Hum?”
“Why don’t we tell the boys?” Hoseok insists.
Jeongguk looks at him, “I don’t know, you always seemed a bit scared of their reactions...”
“Me?” Hoseok repeats, “But they’re—they’re our family.”
“That, I agree,” Jeongguk says, “I think you were just nervous about the hyungs’ reaction.”
“Why would I be when Yoongi hyung is--”
Bi, His brain supplies but his mouth refuses to cooperate.
“Suga hyung? Yeah, what about him?” Jeongguk asks.
He doesn’t know, Hoseok thinks with growing horror. He doesn’t know because in this world Yoongi hasn’t told anyone. In this world, Hoseok hasn’t sat with Yoongi pre-debut and described exactly how he went down on his knees for a fellow male trainee and didn’t despise it one bit. In this world, Hoseok hasn’t been comforted by Yoongi who deemed this sexuality crisis normal. In this world, Yoongi hasn’t come out to the rest of Bangtan.
Hoseok registers faintly Jeongguk asking him if he’s okay.
“The sweetest. I meant to say, Yoongi hyung is the sweetest.”
Jeongguk kisses his cheek and begins humming the song shortly after.
'Cause I don't wanna lose you now
I'm looking right at the other half of me
The vacancy that sat in my heart
Is a space that now you hold
Show me how to fight for now
And I'll tell you, baby, it was easy
Coming back into you once I figured it out
You were right here all along
It’s like you’re my mirror—
Hoseok misses home.
____________
“Oh, hyung. Hi.”
Jeongguk sounds small and he shouldn’t ever sound this way. Jeongguk sounds unsure as he looks down at the decorated sneakers Hoseok wears and shyly into his hyung’s eyes. And he’s never looked at Hoseok this way.
“I owe you an apology,” Hoseok says, straight to the point.
“It’s okay,” Jeongguk mutters back.
“It’s not. I’ve been awful to you.”
“I knew you were going through a rough time, hyung, I just thought you were mad at me.”
“I could never be mad at you,” Hoseok closes the distance between them and takes the younger member into his arms, “I love you, Jeongguk-ah.” He says and it sounds more like a reassurance than a confession.
He doesn’t have time to take notice of the way Jeongguk’s cheeks flame up before he claps his hands together and declares, “Now, let’s rehearse that damn move.”
Jeongguk starts to smile.
And still—
—Hoseok has trouble looking away.
____________
Hoseok stops dreaming shortly after.
One night he tells Jeongguk that they should tell them. And as he looks into the older member’s eyes, and as he watches Jeongguk nod, he knows something has to give. He knows somehow, he has to let go and find his way home.
It’s been almost half a year.
The next morning, all that is left is a melody and that familiar ache in his chest.
____________
Hoseok once said Jeongguk’s existence is a gift and he’ll forever stand by those words. Still, when Jeongguk tells him, “Hyung, I’ve got a surprise for you!” he doesn’t expect his next words to be, “It’s a picnic. It’s been a bit long since we had one, just the two of us.”
And when Hoseok says, “You’re amazing,” instead of thank you’s and Jeongguk’s smile grow bigger than what should be physically possible, what he really means is I love you—
And when Jeongguk excitedly shows off what he brought like “These are grocery store’s ramen. Oh, and wait, I brought my guitar too...”
And when Jeongguk starts playing, and Hoseok thinks this is here. And so, this is where his heart takes over.
And when the first words out of Jeongguk’s mouth are;
It's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me
I couldn't get any bigger
With anyone else beside of me
And now it's clear as this promise
That we're making two reflections into one
'Cause it's like you're my mirror—
And when Jeongguk looks up to Hoseok’s face, there’s no smile to be found.
“Hyung! Hyung, are you okay?”
And Hoseok isn’t. Hoseok really isn’t. Hoseok is reminded of dark eyes, and good friends turning to secret lovers in the secrecy of their room.
“Have you read the lyrics, Jeongguk, do you know what they mean?” He asks.
“Yeah, I—”
“You can’t just sing these words if you don’t mean them,” Hoseok tells him and he feels the dampness against his cheeks, he hears his heart drums, “They’re precious.”
“But I do mean them,” Jeongguk responds, and he adds, “Yesterday, I had a dream.”
And god, no—
—Hoseok is on his feet before he knows it.
“Wait,” Jeongguk says, holding up his hands, “Please, listen to me—
“I have been having dreams for quite some time, now. Do you want to know what happens in them?”
And Hoseok doesn’t. Hoseok really doesn’t yet find himself nodding anyway.
“I wake up and everything’s pretty much the same, except I’m watching the six of you on stage while I’m in the waiting room with other six people I don’t know.”
“That’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare,” Hoseok declares.
Jeongguk smiles, “I agree. I hated it, I felt so invisible, replaceable somehow—”
“Jeongguk, there’s no way we could’ve made it without you!”
“Wait, I’m not done,” Jeongguk gets up as well, “I’ve been having these dreams where I meet Tae-hyung in the bathroom and quickly befriends him, and then I joke with Jimin-hyung backstage, and draw Yoongi-hyung’s eye somehow. And Jin-hyung and I host Show Champion together once. And Namjoon-hyung congratulates me on a performance at some award show. But you’re nowhere to be found...”
“Oh,” Hoseok feels his whole world shifting. Peace is so precarious, he thinks, when you love your best friend.
“You’re always so unattainable,” Jeongguk continues, “and I’m stuck desperately trying to find a moment alone with you. And then, last night, you saw me. Last night, you asked me on a date.”
They’re silent for a bit. Two still silhouettes under the halo of streetlights.
“What the fuck, Jeongguk,” Hoseok breathes out, “How long have you been dreaming of this?”
“Since BangBangCon. Since we talked about the—”
“The Jamais Vu concept.”
Now, Jeongguk smiles.
“In my dreams, we dated,” Hoseok ends up confessing.
“Really?”
“Oh, and I was the maknae!” Hoseok adds.
Jeongguk momentarily loses his smile, “D—does that mean I wasn’t in the group?!”
“Oh no, you were,” Hoseok responds, “You were our very talented lead singer. You were just born in 1994, though...”
“Does that mean I was friend with Namjoon hyung?” Jeongguk asks with his huge grin back to its place.
“Is that all you’ve gathered from all of it?!” Hoseok whines.
Now the silhouettes are moving towards each other, finding themselves in each other’s space.
“I’m so in love with you,” Jeongguk mutters as he looks down into Hoseok’s eyes, “I was so scared I would go to sleep and you’d wake up not knowing my name.”
“Was that why you slept in my bed every night?!” Hoseok teases him. Hoseok thinks he’s so happy he’d never get used to it. So happy he’d never able to put words on how lucky he is. So happy his mind short-circuits as their mouths collapse and—
Again—
____________
They’re in the van after the second ON:E concert when the conversation breaks out. Hoseok is seated by the window with Jeongguk right beside him, and he’s put his Sunday morning playlist just low enough to hear anything his bandmates are discussing as they debate on crucial matters.
“I’m sorry but I still don’t get anything about that Jamais Vu concept—”
“C’mon, Tae, not again!”
“—Hear me out for a second, it means we could all transform into cats—”
“Here we go again…”
“Tell me what about this situation would be a familiar factor, though?!”
“Well, we’d still be in a band. Like BangCats. We’d do pretty much what we’re already doing, except with tails and stuff—”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Jeongguk, don’t encourage him!”
“Suga hyung wouldn’t need a disguise, though.”
“OoOoOoh—”
“The burn!”
“I hate you all.”
____________
—And again
Hoseok wakes up home.
FIN