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Jung Hoseok is horrible at first dates.
Seokjin likes to joke that the unfortunate souls his friend corrals into going on dates with him are his victims, but that joke usually results in a pouting Hoseok, so he keeps it to himself when he hears the all-too-familiar sound of his friend entering their shared apartment with a loud sigh.
“How’d it go tonight?” Seokjin calls out after a moment of silence. The only answer he gets is an alarmingly loud groan from the entryway, the sound followed by a pair of heavy footsteps shuffling their way toward the kitchen.
Hoseok appears around the corner only a few moments later, a pained expression tugging at his features as he collapses into the chair across the table from Seokjin with a huff. “Bad.”
“I don’t understand how you managed to fuck this one up,” Seokjin sighs in exasperation. “Literally everyone gets along with Namjoon. He’s, like, the nicest person on the planet. What did you even do ?”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Hoseok defends, pointing an accusing finger at Seokjin. “I’m offended that your first instinct is to blame me. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I was the one who rejected him ?”
Seokjin levels him with a cool stare. Hoseok drops his gaze to the table before mumbling, “I accidentally set my sleeve on fire.”
“Jesus,” Seokjin groans, “Hobi, how the hell do you manage these things? What the fuck ?”
“I’m sorry, okay!” Hoseok cries out, “It’s not my fault that they put a candle right next to the basket of breadsticks! What kind of restaurant uses real candles anyway? This is the 21st century! Fake candles exist for a reason, you know!”
Seokjin sighs. “This is the last time I ever set you up on a date.”
“Aw, come on,” Hoseok pouts, “That’s not fair. I promise I won’t fuck up the next one; I think I’ve got the hang of dating now. Really!”
“Hobi, I literally have nobody else to offer. You’ve run through my entire collection of single acquaintances in the span of a few months.”
Hoseok blinks. “What? No way. You have to have at least one more single friend. You know, like, everyone .”
Seokjin raises an eyebrow. “Hoseok, you have a problem. It’s time to accept it.” He pauses. “But I think I have an idea on how to fix it.”
“No, no, I know what you’re thinking,” Hoseok interrupts. “I wear an earpiece. You sit at a table nearby, you speak into a mic, you tell me what to say on the date. It’s a great idea, Jin, but let me tell you something—it never works. Taehyung and I tried that a year or two ago and it didn’t end well.” He pauses. “At least, I don’t think it did. I’m not sure. I think my brain blocked out that memory for my own mental stability.”
“That’s…” Seokjin trails off before shaking his head. “Nevermind. My plan was for us to go on a few practice dates together so I could train you to be less nervous on your real dates.”
“Oh.” Hoseok’s face lights up. “That’s a way better idea! Good thinking, dude.”
“Please never call me dude again.”
“Would you prefer if I called you daddy?”
Seokjin pinches the bridge of his nose. “Get out.”
“You can’t kick me out of our apartment,” Hoseok pouts, “I live here too, you know.”
“I reserve the right to kick you out when you’re acting like an idiot. It’s stated in section thirty-five of our friendship contract.”
Hoseok curses under his breath. “I knew I never should’ve signed that thing.”
“Well, you did. And you’re gonna have to live with the consequences if you do stupid things like calling me daddy when all I’m trying to do is help you out.”
“Alright, alright,” Hoseok frowns, “I’m sorry.” He pauses. “But you have to admit, it does kind of suit you—”
Seokjin groans. “Fucking hell.”
***
Their first date happens about a week later. Hoseok shows up at Seokjin’s doorstep with a bouquet of flowers, which isn’t saying much, because they already live together—but he thinks it’s the thought that counts.
“Will you hold my hand over the console?” Hoseok asks with twinkling eyes as he grins at Seokjin from the passenger seat.
“No,” Seokjin deadpans. “I don’t hold hands on the first date.”
“But this is a fake first date,” Hoseok pushes, giving his friend the biggest puppy-dog eyes he can muster. “Surely you can break a few rules here and there.”
“Hoseok, the very fact that this date is fake is only more reason for me to reject your hand-holding offer. I’m not in the business of sharing cooties with friends.”
Hoseok slides down in his seat with an irritated grumble. If Seokjin doesn’t want to hold his hand, that’s totally fine. He’s okay with that. He doesn’t mind at all.
Noticing the dark cloud that seems to have materialized over his friend’s head, Seokjin relents with an exasperated sigh, flopping his hand palm-up over the console in an offer to Hoseok. “Fine. But if I crash this car, I’m blaming it on you.”
Hoseok grins from ear to ear as he excitedly threads his fingers with Seokjin’s. He tries not to think too hard about how perfectly they fit together.
***
The evening has been… a struggle, to say the least. Hoseok managed to knock his chair over when they were being seated, which would have been fine, except when he tried to pick it up, he ended up tripping over the legs and falling face-first into the aisle beside their table.
Seokjin had been hopeful that the chair debacle would be the most eventful happening of the evening, but that hope had been squashed when Hoseok knocked over a vase of flowers with his elbow during an attempt to pull out a stack of notecards from his pocket. The water had gone everywhere—including his notecards—and the waitress had given Seokjin a pitiful look as she swept up the broken glass that decorated the floor.
(The stack of notecards was mostly blank, Seokjin eventually discovered. The ones that did have writing on them had subjects like ‘windmills’, ‘circuit boards’, and ‘wyoming’ scrawled in messy loops across the front. When Seokjin gave Hoseok a questioning look, he’d explained that they were possible topics of conversation, in case he ran out of things to say.)
And now, half an hour later, Hoseok is finishing up a very long and very boring speech about elephants, looking at Seokjin expectantly as the latter sits in stunned silence.
“Wow. That was… a very thorough explanation of the stages of elephant pregnancy.”
“Thank you,” Hoseok beams. “I did lots of research. Now, onto the history of the zipper—”
“Okay, you know what?” Seokjin interrupts his friend with a tight smile, “Just… ask me a question about myself. Try to get to know me.”
“Okay,” Hoseok nods, tossing the stack of notebook cards over his shoulder haphazardly. “Okay, I can do that. Easy.” He blinks. “Uh…. I…” He stares blankly for a few seconds before dropping his head into his hands, voice muffled as he mumbles dejectedly, “God, I can’t think of anything to ask you. My mind is blank . Where are my notecards?”
“Just—Just ask me the first thing that comes to mind,” Seokjin encourages with only a hint of exasperation, grabbing Hoseok’s attention before he can reach for the soggy lump of paper sitting on the corner of the table.
Hoseok lifts his head, staring blankly for a moment before his face lights up and he blurts out, “How big is it?”
Seokjin sighs. “Really?”
“Oh my god,” Hoseok wails, “This is hopeless.”
“It’s not hopeless,” Seokjin tries to comfort with a furrowed brow. “You just… need to learn how to calm down. That’s all.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to be a nervous wreck,” Hoseok laments, sullenly snacking on a breadstick. “I just… I get so nervous, you know? My mind starts to run through all the things that could possibly go wrong and I get so desperate trying not to do or say the wrong thing that I forget what the right thing is.”
Seokjin sighs, giving his friend a sympathetic look. “Try not to get too down about it, alright? We still have all the time in the world to go on these practice dates to help you get to the bottom of whatever this problem is. It’ll all work out okay, I promise.”
Hoseok perks up a bit at that. “Thank you, Jin,” he thanks, glancing between the elder and the breadstick in his hands for a few moments before tearing it in half and offering a piece to him with a big, goofy smile.
Seokjin takes it with twinkling eyes. It’s kind of pathetic, really, that as much as he teases Hoseok, there’s absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do to keep that heart-shaped smile on his face.
***
Seokjin takes a different approach on his second fake date with Hoseok.
After the disastrous first date, the elder had been left wracking his brain for reasons why Hoseok is the way he is. It’s a bit of an ambiguous question, and many people would simply shrug it off as Hoseok being more nervous in social situations than most—but Seokjin knew that there was something else at play.
Hoseok is a well-liked guy. So well-liked, in fact, that when Seokjin is out perusing the town with his best-friend-slash-roommate, he finds that they’re stopped at least twice a day by complete strangers on the street because of him. Granted, the strangers aren’t quite strangers to Hoseok—they’re usually acquaintances he met at the gym, the coffee shop or even the zoo—but the point is that Seokjin doesn’t think there’s a single living thing on this planet that Hoseok isn’t friends with.
Even their houseplants prefer the younger of the two. (Hoseok vehemently denies this, but Seokjin knows it’s true. He thinks it’s because they’re attracted to the sunshine that Hoseok seems to emit every time he flashes his heart-shaped smile their way.)
The point is that Hoseok is most definitely not a nervous person, at least when it comes to platonic human interaction. The younger man is bright and loud and happy all at once, his cheery aura serving as a welcoming beacon to everyone that crosses his path. He has the largest circle of friends Seokjin has ever witnessed, and he’s even been involved in a few long-term relationships over the years.
So why can’t Hoseok seem to just act normal on first dates?
After another conversation with the man himself and a bit of reflecting on their disastrous first date, Seokjin deduced that he still had absolutely no idea what was going on inside Hoseok’s brain. However, he did manage to come up with a new plan for their second date—one that Hoseok was most definitely going to hate.
Exposure therapy.
Of course, Seokjin wasn’t going to tell Hoseok about his plan before he enacted it. That would defeat the point of it all. So, when Hoseok shows up two minutes late to their fake date with a worried expression and a mouthful of apologies, Seokjin levels him with a disinterested stare.
“You’re late.”
Hoseok’s hair is sticking every which way, a few of the sandy-colored strands plastered to his forehead. His fancy dress shirt is one button off from being correctly centered, and his pants are a bit rumpled up from something , the crinkles standing out starkly against the dark material.
“I’m so sorry,” Hoseok apologizes profusely, eyes shining with genuine guilt as he takes a nervous seat across from Seokjin. “I, uh, had to… take my... niece... to.... badminton practice?"
Seokjin hums. “How lovely. Tell me, Hoseok—what’s your niece’s name?”
"Um......... Fuckson? No, no, that's not right... Chlorissa? Torple? America?" Hoseok gulps. Shakes his head. "That—that was a lie. I don't have a niece. Is it hot in here, or is that just me?" He loosens his already uneven tie, glancing nervously towards the bathrooms behind him. "I've gotta use the... the whiz palace. You know. That place. Where you go do your business. Yeah."
Before Seokjin can say another word, Hoseok is tripping out of his chair and making a mad dash for the restrooms, stumbling all the way there. Seokjin winces when his friend takes an accidental turn into the women's restroom rather than the men's, waiting for the accompanying shriek that usually comes alongside Hoseok's all-too-common accidents.
But instead of a terrified scream, Seokjin is met with the face of a nervous Hoseok peeking out of the doorway, his eyes wide and frantic as he makes eye contact with his fake date across the restaurant.
"Bathroom!" Hoseok shouts, ignoring the stares of the other patrons in the room. "It's called a bathroom! Hah!"
Seokjin throws the staff an apologetic smile before dropping his head onto the table dramatically. They have long, long ways to go.
***
“Hoseok is…. in worse shape than I thought,” Seokjin admits quietly, glancing over his shoulder when he hears the sound of familiar laughter echoing from the table a few feet behind him. Hoseok is sitting by himself, laughing at… nothing. Seokjin turns back to the bartender, a close friend named Jimin, with a look of disbelief. “Is he practice laughing?”
“Maybe you should take a different approach?” Jimin muses, eyes sparkling as he glances at Hoseok over Jin’s shoulder. “Try showing him what a bad date would feel like so he doesn’t psych himself out anymore?”
“I already did that,” Seokjin groans, “I don’t know what else to try. Seriously. He just… ran off to the bathroom. After lying about having a niece.”
Jimin hums. “Maybe try laying it on a bit thicker. You’re still being too nice; you’ve gotta channel your inner asshole. Think about all the shitty dates you’ve been on in your past.”
“Isn’t that a bit mean, though?” Seokjin asks. “I’ve been on some pretty bad dates; I don’t want to traumatize him.”
“Hoseok isn’t made of glass, Jin,” Jimin smiles. “He’ll be fine, I promise. Besides, he knows how much you care about him. He’s not gonna take anything you say or do to heart.”
Seokjin sighs in resignation. “You’re right.” He glances over at his friend once more. “I guess I should get back to him before he breaks anything else. Or has another conversation with an imaginary date.”
“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Jimin grins cheekily, “Have fun bullying your fake date!’
Seokjin flips him off before making his way back to the table, already in character when Hoseok greets him with a warm smile and bright eyes. He finds it hard not to immediately melt at the sight—not for any reason in particular; Hoseok just has that effect on people—and when he takes his seat across from the younger man, Seokjin has to push down the urge to smile back.
“What did Jiminie have to say?” Hoseok asks cheerily, fingertips drumming nervously against the tablecloth. Seokjin ignores the question and reaches over to take a french fry off of Hoseok’s plate. The younger man blinks at him in confusion, the ever-present smile on his face slipping slightly. “Jin? Is everything al—”
“So,” Seokjin interrupts loudly and leans over to snatch another fry from Hoseok’s plate, still chewing on the first one he stole as he speaks. “How do you feel about sex on the first date?”
“Uhh…” Hoseok trails off uncomfortably, shifting a bit in his seat. “I’m sorry, w-what?”
Seokjin pauses in his chewing and stares at Hoseok silently for a few seconds before swallowing dramatically, eyebrows raised in slight annoyance. “I said ,” he drawls, “How do you feel about sex on the first date? I need to know if tonight is gonna be worth my time.”
“That… that’s....” Hoseok murmurs in disbelief, “Um. Wow. Okay then.”
A few beats of silence pass, the two men staring at each other uncomfortably until Seokjin breaks the silence. “Another important question. How do you feel about full moons? I love them. Personally, I feel really connected to wolves. I’m pretty sure I was a wolf in my past life, actually.”
“Wolves are… cool, I guess?” Hoseok agrees, the end of his sentence twisting to sound more like a question than a response. “They look fluffy.”
“Fluffy?” Seokjin splutters, “You’re kidding me. They’re ruthless killing machines, Hongjoong. The epitome of what an alpha male should be. I was definitely an alpha wolf in my past life.”
“Hongjoong?” Hoseok asks, pointedly ignoring whatever the hell else Seokjin just said.
“Oh. My bad. I have a date with my boyfriend later tonight—his name is Hongjoong—and I got your names kinda mixed up.” He pauses. “Wait, what’s your name again?”
“Hoseok,” he grits out.
“Ohhh,” Seokjin grins lazily, “I remember now! You’re the dude with the flat ass. Your profile said you were a dancer, though, so I thought there was a good chance you’re good in bed. We all have to make sacrifices, I guess. You get it, right?”
Hoseok’s jaw drops to the floor. It’s going to be a long, long night.
***
“I can’t believe you’d say that, Seokjin,” Hoseok murmurs, his eyes widened in disbelief. “That dog was my best friend, it crushed me when we had to let him go—”
“Brring brring,” Seokjin interrupts, holding up his phone before pretending to talk to someone on the other end of the line. “Oh, hey Hongjoong. Yeah. No, I’m not busy. Just on a date with the flat ass guy I told you about.” He’s silent for a few moments, never once breaking eye contact with Hoseok as he speaks into the receiver. “Yeah. Hold on, I’ll ask him.” He covers the receiver with the palm of his hand. “Hey, wanna watch a porno with me and my boyfriend tonight?”
Hoseok sits there in shocked silence for a few moments before a line of anger creases his brow, eyes narrowed in irritation as he sends a disgusted scowl Seokjin’s way. “No, Seokjin, because you’re disgusting. I am disgusted.”
Seokjin stares blankly for a few seconds. “So, it’s definitely a no?”
“I don’t understand why you’re being so horrible!” Hoseok raises his voice, gesturing wildly as he groans in frustration. “We’re just two people trying to go on a date. It’s supposed to be fun !”
“You’re right,” Seokjin grins, placing his phone down on the table. “It is just a date. Well done, my friend.”
Hoseok tilts his head, brow furrowing in confusion. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry I was so rude to you,” he explains, “But now you see that even if everything goes wrong, you’ll survive. Dates are meant to be fun, Hoseok—there’s no need to put so much pressure on yourself.”
“Oh.” Hoseok blinks. “Ohhh,” a grin begins to stretch across his face as he leans back in his chair, “I see what you did there, you sneaky, sneaky smurf.”
Seokjin shakes his head, watching with a small smile as Hoseok immediately delves into his opinion on the newest Scooby-Doo live action movie. Some things never change , he thinks to himself, unable to keep the wave of fondness that washes over him at bay.
***
It’s on the third date that Seokjin realizes he loves Hoseok.
Now, in a normal situation, Seokjin would agree that the third date is a bit soon to be making such powerful declarations. But this isn’t a normal situation, and Seokjin is pretty sure that he’s actually been in love with his best friend for a long, long time.
He isn’t sure why it took him so long to figure it out, nor does he know why the sight of Hoseok laughing at a joke he made while sipping on a strawberry milkshake is The Moment™ that the realization dawned upon him—but that doesn’t matter; not really. Because Hoseok is smiling at him with crinkles by his eyes and dimples on full display and he thinks his heart is about to beat clear out of his chest.
Seokjin isn’t an absolute disaster on first dates like his friend tends to be, but he hasn’t had a long term relationship since moving in with Hoseok two years ago, either. He never really took the time to think about why that is—he always assumed he just hadn’t found “the one” yet—but looking at it in hindsight, it’s because nobody compared to Hoseok. Nobody compares to him now, sitting across the booth from Seokjin with his twinkling eyes and excited hand gestures.
Hoseok is doing far better than he did on their past two dates. Seokjin managed to convince him to leave the notecards with topics of conversation on them at their apartment, and while Hoseok was nervous that he’d run out of things to discuss without them by his side, he soon realized he had nothing to worry about.
He had nothing to worry about, because Seokjin is completely and utterly enamored by every little thing that Hoseok says, clinging to the words that fall from his lips no matter how silly they might be. Because Hoseok’s words have a warmth to them; they’re instilled with pure joy, spoken with a bright smile and sprinkled with love.
“Jin?” Hoseok’s voice breaks Seokjin out of his thoughts. He’s waving his hand haphazardly in front of his face, peppering in a snap of his fingers every so often for added effect. “Anyone home?”
“Cut it out.” Seokjin bats away Hoseok’s hands, fighting the smile creeping onto his face.
Hoseok pouts. “You weren’t paying attention to me.”
If only you knew, Seokjin thinks to himself. Instead, he says: “You haven’t done anything yet to grab my attention. By now, you’ve usually broken at least one inanimate object and offended at least two workers.”
“That means I’ve improved!” Hoseok points out with a grin, chomping down excitedly on a curly fry dipped in ranch. “I think I’m just about ready for a real date, Jin.”
Seokjin freezes. “You are,” he agrees slowly, trying to fight the sinking feeling in his chest.
“You know, there’s this cute boy who gave me his number the other day at the ice cream shop,” Hoseok babbles mindlessly as he scrolls through his contacts, “I could shoot him a text. He seemed nice enough, and it’d be a great way to test my improvement out in the real world, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Seokjin murmurs as he fidgets with the strings on his hoodie. “Yes. That sounds great, Hobi.”
The fake date carries on like normal. Seokjin rolls his eyes at Hoseok’s antics one too many times, and the younger man laughs a little too enthusiastically at his cheesy puns and dad jokes. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for their fake dates—except this time, Seokjin finds himself wishing it was real.
***
It’s been a long time since Seokjin has allowed himself to sulk, but he’s pretty sure that being hit with the realization that he’s in love with his best-friend-slash-roommate and knowing that his feelings aren’t returned are good enough reasons to dig into his emergency stash of ice cream.
Hoseok is out on a date tonight. A date that isn’t with Seokjin. He left about fifteen minutes ago, Sekojin notes as he glances at his watch in dismay. He’s probably out cracking jokes and knocking over chairs and breaking water glasses and embarrassing himself—all with a stranger.
Not Seokjin.
Never Seokjin; at least, never again .
His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of knuckles rapping clumsily at his front door. He sets his ice cream down on the coffee table with a huff, because he has a sinking feeling that his perfectly valid plans for a lonely night filled with self-pity are about to be interrupted. He just wants to eat his ice cream in peace, dammit—not to mention he hasn’t even had time to be sad about Hoseok’s date yet.
But when Seokjin opens the door to see Hoseok standing there with a smile on his face and a bouquet of flowers, his heart can’t help but tremble.
“Hobi. This is literally our apartment, you don’t have to knock.”
Hoseok winks. “I know.”
“Did you forget your keys or something?” Seokjin asks, the hint of exhaustion tinging the edge of his words suddenly fading away to make room for confusion when the smattering of pink, yellow and white flowers in Hoseok’s arms suddenly registers in his mind. “Wait, why do you have flowers? I thought you were meeting that boy from the ice cream shop? Oh my god, did you already run him off, that has to be a new record for you—”
“I’m the one who called off the date,” Hoseok interrupts, his grin never fading as Seokjin continues to look at him with growing uncertainty.
“What? I thought you liked him?”
Hoseok shrugs. “I went to buy him flowers before we met up, but I realized that I didn’t really want to be buying flowers for him after all.”
“I… don’t think I’m quite following what you’re saying, Hobi,” Seokjin drawls, eyes wide and brows raised. “You called off the date because you didn’t feel like buying flowers?”
“I called off the date because I realized that I wanted to be buying flowers for you , not the cute ice cream guy,” Hoseok says cheerily, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. “I wanted to be buying a bouquet of flowers for you. I wanted to be meeting you at that restaurant, for a real, actual date.”
Seokjin blinks. Hoseok carries on.
“You see, I was looking at all the different colored roses and I thought ‘Hey, these colors remind me of Seokjin’, and then it hit me that I’m kind of in love with you. Like, really in love with you. Head over heels. Absolutely bonkers. Unbelievably enamored, if you will. Hey, has anyone ever told you that you have really kissable lips? They’re, like, super soft and shiny and pretty. I really wanna kiss them. Can I? Is that too forward of me?”
Hoseok finally halts his rambling of words with an excited grin, completely oblivious to the way Seokjin stands flabbergasted just a few feet in front of him. His chest feels warm and fuzzy and he doesn’t think twice before reaching out and pulling Hoseok into a kiss. It’s messy and uncoordinated and their teeth accidentally clash when Hoseok makes a loud noise of surprise, but it’s perfect, their bodies fitting together like two missing puzzle pieces as they sink into each other’s embrace.
And when Seokjin finally pulls away after an indiscernible amount of time, he finds that the only words he can manage to say are, “That was the least romantic confession I’ve ever heard.”
“Sorry,” Hoseok grins, not actually sorry at all. “Does this mean that you like me back, though?”
Seokjin throws him an incredulous look. “I literally just made out with you in our front doorway. Where all the neighbors can see us.”
“Bros kiss all the time, my dude. I just wanted to make sure that was an ‘i’m-in-love-with-you’ kiss, not an ‘i-know-we’re-bros-and-all-but-i-kinda-wanna-kiss-you-because-you’re-hot’ kiss.”
“Why would it ever be the second option?” Seokjin asks, dumbfounded. “Wait—which of your ‘bros’ have you been kissing? Why didn’t I ever know about this?”
“Jungkook. Only when we’re drunk, though.”
“Oh my god ,” Seokjin groans, “Is that where the two of you would run off to every time we went to a house party together?”
Hoseok snickers. “Maybe.”
“I did not need to know that. Please, take it back. Wipe my memory away with one of those little Apple TV remotes from Men In Black.”
“Don’t worry, Jin,” Hoseok laughs, leaning forward to press a light kiss to his lips. “You’re the only person I wanna sneak off with now. Besides, Jungkook has his eyes on Taehyung these days.”
“Whatever,” Seokjin grumbles in a voice that the both of them know isn’t truly bothered. “And to be clear, that kiss earlier was actually a ‘you’re-an-idiot-but-for-some-reason-i-love-you-too kiss. Now get back over here and let me kiss you again.”
//
Seokjin and Hoseok’s dates still manage to end in disaster more often than not. But Hoseok always reacts with an embarrassed giggle and a smile on his face, and Seokjin wouldn’t want to have it any other way.