Work Text:
Whoever said love endures all things never saw the BTS tour schedule.
They’re in the Netherlands today. Or - Belgium? It’s next to an ocean, which is all Jungkook saw on the red-eye from London before passing out inside of his hoodie. He’s also seen the bus to the hotel, the hotel elevator, and the hotel room. He’s sure the rest of it is fine.
He's the first one here, wherever that might be. So ‘they’ in the royal sense, ‘they’ as in, Jungkook is them, and they are here, except they aren’t. The concert isn’t until tomorrow, so the oldest three stayed behind in London for a photoshoot. Taehyung’s drama schedule has him flying back to Seoul for filming in between every tour stop, and Jimin…
Is in Japan for work. Or Seoul, to see his mom. Or somewhere out there in a part of the world that isn’t this hotel bed, which is where Jungkook is now.
Jimin told him where he was going, and if Jungkook was better he would remember. Better at paying attention. Better at being a boyfriend. It’s just, Jimin left at an hour too early to legally call morning, no time for a kiss - no time for anything lately - but time to whisper into Jungkook’s ear I’ll call you. He’d said it quiet enough that it could be mistaken for something else, if your hearing was bad. Jungkook, who had his ears checked out last month, burrowed deeper into the covers.
This hotel is nicer than the last one. Better color scheme, pricier mini-bar. Bigger rooms. But the rooms are always big now. On the first tour they had to triple up, played rock-paper-scissors to see who got stuck rooming with the managers. Now it’s private elevators that go all the way up to the top, individual suites which unlock with fingerprint scanners. A bed that’s bigger than his room at the first dorm, and a whole lot of silence to fill it.
I’ll call you. That’s what Jimin told him. He also told him You don’t have to say it back, and seemed like he meant it just as seriously. Jimin keeps his promises.
Jungkook distracts himself unpacking, which kills a whole five minutes. (Socks, shoes, the expensive cologne Cha Eunwoo gave him for his birthday.) Then he bullies some of the bodyguards into going to the gym with him. Søren, who’s head of their European security, spots him through a new PR and then deadlifts double without breaking a sweat.
Forty minutes on the treadmill followed by thirty in the sauna, where the steam seeps into his brain and makes everything go foggy. After that he showers, cleanses, moisturizes. Spends 15 minutes deciding between room service and a day-old protein bar he found in his gym shorts.
The TV guide is helping him pick out a soothing nature sound when Jimin calls. Instinct tells him to answer right away, but his thumb hovers over the call button. It's only been two days. But it’s been two days.
A while ago he was at some club and the girl at the table next to them picked up her phone. (The ringtone was one of their songs; that’s why he looked over.) She glanced down at the caller ID and then sighed, loudly, as if the person on the other end could hear. Jungkook isn’t interested in eavesdropping on strangers, but the look on her face was too weird to ignore - disgusted, but also fond in the worst kind of way, which is pitying. He and her friend both leaned closer, eager, rubbernecking, and she’d rewarded them with a mean smile.
“He calls me back right away,” she’d said in a voice which was nearly triumphant. “Like he’s sitting at home waiting for me. It’s pathetic.”
Jungkook counts out the rings, one, two, three. He mistimes the last one and has to call Jimin back.
“Jungkook-ssi, Jungkook-ssi! Did I wake you up?”
It’s morning wherever Jimin is. He’s backlit by sunshine and has to squint to see the screen. The light washes out all but his most distinctive features, which are lit white-gold. Jungkook can't tell if he's been made up for a photoshoot or if he’s naturally angelic. If he wanted Jimin to bite he’d say that out loud. But he doesn’t really need Jimin mad right now, so he doesn’t.
Instead he rolls onto his back so that he can hold his phone above his head, the best angle for video calls. The bed is big and fluffy and makes it look like he’s curled up in a snowdrift, minus the hypothermia.
“Yup. Been asleep for hours.”
“Good. You need beauty sleep.”
Jungkook offers up his most brilliant smile. “Bite me, hyung!”
Jimin laughs. He sounds normal. They’re normal. They’re fine.
“The hotel is okay? - The bed?”
“Hmmm.” His hair is still damp from the shower; the back of his neck is hot and wet. The gloss on Jimin’s lip is pink and catches in the light. The last time they were alone they fell asleep in petulant silence. The last time Jimin hooked his fingers against Jungkook’s bottom teeth and laughed at his whine was four tour stops ago. “The bed is good.”
Jimin’s opening his mouth - his pink lips - when somebody calls his name and he turns, leaving Jungkook with his cheek, ear, the fuzzy line of his neck. There’s loud, real laughter around the edges of the screen, as further away a different voice calls for lighting. Work, then.
Jungkook kicks out his legs, trying to touch the edges of the bed with his heels. While he misses by a few inches, the stretch lets him appreciate how muscular his legs have become. Søren was right, the calf raises are helping.
“Sorry,” Jimin says, “they wanna start shooting, we only have another hour before the light changes. And it’s freezing.” He grimaces cutely, inviting Jungkook to share their collective disappointment. Jungkook is warm and in a bath robe and on a different continent. But Jimin is being nice about everything - doesn’t even seem to be pretending - and Jungkook is (trying to be) a good boyfriend.
So he arranges his face into something appropriately sympathetic, which much look nice, because Jimin’s cheeks squish upwards like they do when he’s happy but trying not to show it.
As he speaks, though, he’s careful, plasticky, a voice for radio interviewers and eavesdroppers. The laughter has gotten closer. “I called because I wanted to tell Joochan-hyung, but phone is off.”
Jungkook waits.
“If you see him tomorrow, can you remind him my connection got changed? They have us on standby in case of that weather… storm… thing. In case there’s a storm. I don't want him to hang around the airport?” He raises his voice at the end into a question, as if during their separation Jungkook has become an expert in meteorology and tour scheduling.
Jungkook shrugs. “Yeah, sure.” He tends to zone out when Jimin - when any of them - talk this way; he trusts his bandmates to pay attention and relay the information relevant to him as it becomes so. Besides, knowing Jimin, Joochan and their managers have already been emailed his new flight info, and can expect another reminder before he boards tonight.
It’s totally irrational to wish Jimin would call just for the sake of calling. It’s been less than two days apart, they’re in the middle of a maybe-fight, they’ve already talked twice today. Jungkook has broken up with people for less clingy behavior. The thought of Jimin demanding that sort of closeness makes his skin feel tight.
But the heart wants, or. Whatever.
They get off the phone quickly, both offering platonic bye!s even though there isn’t anybody around to hear Jungkook say anything sweeter. The words dissolve on his tongue like candy, hyung, come faster, hyung, I miss you. He tries to swallow them down, but they stick like a lump in his throat. Jimin leaves a pause before hanging up, a graceful blank for Jungkook to fill in however he’d like. By the time Jungkook’s throat is clear, though, the line is dead. He doesn’t know what he would have said.
He rolls onto his stomach, burying his face in an oversized pillow that smells like laundry detergent and nothing. At home all of his pillows smell like Jimin. The back of his teeth hurt. The bed is too big. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.
Sleep eludes Jungkook, not that he spends much time chasing it.
He wastes half an hour lying to himself before giving in and unlocking his phone. He scrolls through the 97ers group so that the messages will show as read and Kim Mingyu can’t bluster at him. Attaches a thumbs up sticker to the new routine from his physical therapist in Seoul. Stares at the message sitting unread at the top of his chat log so long that he’ll be able to see it against the back of his eyelids.
Park Jimin
love you
Search his phone history and those words appear again and again, in group chats and voice memos, mocking and sentimental, before and after. But this is the first time since-
Since “You don’t have to say it back,” and “Don’t look so sad, I’m not,” and “It’s okay, dummy, it’s okay.”
The words were so small. The silence was so kind. What kind of person is Jimin, and what kind of person does that make Jungkook?
He turns over his phone. The light seeps out around the edges, accusing, blinding. It’s still there when he closes his eyes.
The hyungs sans Jimin arrive mid-morning. There’s no time to wait before launching straight into practice; Hoseok hurt his ankle during the second London show and they need to modify formations to cover him. Jimin’s a fast learner, he’ll pick it up. And if he doesn’t, well, he has to.
(Three days without him. Twenty minutes of conversation: 11 video chatting, 4 on the phone, 5 trying to pick out the perfect gif to say ‘I love you but maybe not 100% the same way you do but let’s still date!’ He settled for a bear holding a big pink heart. Everything’s fine.)
They’re not having an off day, but they’re still off. It’s Jimin, it’s Hoseok, it’s Jungkook. His body isn’t working right. It’s exhausted. He passed out somewhere around 3 and woke up with his phone plastered to his face. One new message from Jimin, but to the group chat, ‘nrt ➡️icn’ and a sun emoji. Normally Jungkook gets a good morning or a wake up dumbass even after he’s left Jimin on read. Nothing today.
He considers staying in this bad mood, but sleepy and mad sounds too hard right now, so he lets the feeling slink off to the back of his mind, where it prowls but doesn’t roar.
During the morning break Hoseok and him sulk in the upper balcony. Or, Jungkook sulks, and Hoseok does the responsible member thing where he checks how well the fans in the cheap seats will see. They’re so far from the stage that everybody else looks like tiny, handsome ants scurrying around in the dark. He’s pretty sure they would make a good ant colony, if they could get themselves in one place long enough to be productive. Not that ants travel long distances. Or do long distance.
“Jungkook-ah,” Hoseok says carefully, “are you doing okay?”
His voice is pitched up in that worried but trying to be cool about it tone that only Hoseok and Namjoon can achieve, but his eyes always, always betray him.
Jungkook doesn’t like it when Hoseok looks that way, especially not at him, so he lifts the seat divider so that he can shove up into Hoseok’s space, lets Hoseok give into his primal self and pet him into pseudo-submission.
They were up here the first time Jimin said it. Not here here - it was in Paris, or maybe Madrid. There’s another drop added to this endless well of guilt. People should remember where it was, the first time somebody says I love you. Even if they’re international superstars. Even if they have to check their phone in the morning to remember what continent they’re on, have to roll over to see if their boyfriend is lying beside them.
Wherever it was, whenever it was, Jungkook remembers that Jimin had sounded so happy. He’d been so happy, to tell Jungkook that he was loved.
If Jungkook was better at this he would have just lied and said me too. It’s close enough to the truth, and Jimin would have forgiven him the hesitation. He’s so good at forgiving Jungkook.
But all Jungkook could think of was next morning, when he would roll over and see an empty space that hadn’t been there the night before.
Jimin ended up having to forgive him after all. He did it with just as much grace as Jungkook had expected.
“Hyung,” Jungkook mumbles into the crook of Hoseok’s arm, “can we stay like this? Until we have to go?”
Hoseok’s hold tightens. Jungkook can’t really tell what the emotion in his voice is, and he’s too tired to figure it out.“Yeah. Yeah, we can.”
It’s warm underneath Hoseok’s arm, and makes him happy, to be touched gently and with love, but not happy enough.
He knows what would. It’s not here.
Their managers break the news to them at the end of lunch when they’re too tired to do more than grumble. Jimin’s second flight was delayed and he won’t be here until late tonight. Jungkook lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Seokjin, who must mistake it for disappointment, leans over the table, touches his elbow. “It’s only until later.” He smiles, inviting Jungkook to laugh at himself: “You can make it without him that long, right?”
Jungkook ducks his head, pretends to re-ruffle his hair so that Seokjin can’t read his expression. “Uh-huh. It’s not that, it’s, I, I don’t wanna be stuck here all night.”
“- Sure.” Seokjin has always seen right through him. But instead of making Jungkook talk about his feelings like some people might, he just shovels more vegetables into his bowl and spends the rest of lunchtime hounding him about his PT exercises. Jungkook likes him the most.
Yoongi follows him into the bathroom at the evening break. He fixes his bangs in the mirror while Jungkook turns the cold water all the way up and then sticks his head directly underneath the spray. Jungkook closes his eyes. Lets the hard water fuck up his scalp.
He imagines dark rocks beneath a waterfall being slowly weathered away over years and years and centuries. Nobody to tell them where to go, what to do, unless they want to. They will only become sand if they want to be sand. Only break down and drift downstream when they want to, and even then the eddies will swirl them together, sink them down into the river mud and clay where they can once again sit, undisturbed, until the breaking urge comes back.
(Is that how rocks work? No. Maybe. He should tell Namjoon to read a book on minerals and then talk at him about it.)
If he stays down here much longer someone will pull him out, although maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll let him turn into sand as well.
When he emerges, Yoongi offers him a fistful of paper towels, an awkward smile, and nothing else. Jungkook likes him the most too.
lmk when u land, Jungkook texts. (He doesn’t count how many text messages are on the left and how many are on the right.) (15:1.)
After a few hours the 1 disappears, but he doesn’t get a reply until after their manager has been dispatched to pick him up, a thumbs up sticker and the default red heart. Jungkook stares at it blankly and then shoves his phone back in his sweatpants. Out of sight, out of mind. … Is a fucking lie, but it’s fine.
It’s late-late, so Jimin was taken straight to the hotel. The dance director keeps them another hour before setting them free; Jungkook’s ankles are aching, but in the good way which reminds him that his body is a machine which was built to move, and move well. The director tells him ‘good job’ as he passes by; he manages a mostly real smile back.
In the shuttle back Seokjin and Hoseok chatter about steam baths and Swedish mattresses. A crowd of the backup dancers are going clubbing, Namjoon says, sounding intrigued, but the manager driving them gentle-sternly reminds him of how early call time is. Namjoon shrugs, seemingly unbothered.
Jungkook leans his head against the window. The streets are dark and empty. Lights flash by seemingly at random, offering brief spyglass-shots of a city at night: a crooked little man being walked by his poodle; two women, each holding the hand of a wobbling but determined toddler. A group of friends not much younger than him, laughing about something that’s probably dumb, but which still makes them happy.
Jungkook watches them until they disappear back into the dark. He wants to follow them. He wants to down a shitty domestic beer, and dance without needing it to be perfect. He wants to get tired before his friends, and look at whoever’s going home with him across the bar, and then go home with them; and then in the morning lie in their bed and not have to get up for hours and hours, lock the doors, pull down the blinds, marinate in the sheets until they stink; check their phones days later to zero missed calls or international manhunts. He wants time, more time than will ever be allowed. He wants to wake up in the morning to Jimin still there. He wants to wake up without already being lonely.
When he enters his room, most of the lights are off. The one remaining is a cooled gold color which makes the shadows turn syrupy. Jimin’s stretched out on the bed with an arm pillowed behind his neck, his face soft with sleep. He - or somebody from hotel staff - left his luggage in the room he’s booked in, but a small bag of toiletries sits open on the dresser. Cleanser Jungkook got him. A headband with two nubby bunny ears he says he hates. Boyfriend stuff.
He’s on the right side of the bed, which is where he sleeps in Jungkook’s apartment, because it’s further from the window and the birds who sing loudly at dawn. His body makes a comma, curving towards where Jungkook will lie. Jimin wants him there, even in sleep, even when their bodies have become used to being apart.
There’s a little noise from the front of his throat as Jungkook crawls into bed. Shifts onto his side so that when Jungkook opens his eyes in the morning his face will be the first thing he sees. Jungkook lies on his side too, and watches Jimin right now. Watches his chest rise and fall in deep and then short bursts. There are words on the tip of Jungkook’s tongue whose meaning he cannot decipher. Even if he tried to speak, they would come out mispronounced and misunderstood.
But there they are, in his mouth, when he looks at Jimin sleeping.
Jimin’s propped against the pillows when Jungkook wakes up, his legs making a tent out of the covers as he scrolls through his phone. Jungkook, who could be legally classified as a heat-seeking missile, nudges up into his side. Jimin lets out a huffing noise but lifts his arm so that Jungkook can be properly tucked against him. His body aches. His head hurts. But he’s warm.
Jimin keeps his phone screen on full brightness even in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep; Jungkook, who’s too lazy to argue, pulls the blanket up over his eyes. As if rewarding him for docility, Jimin reaches beneath the duvet. Gropes around for the top of his head - snorts when Jungkook snaps at his fingers - and then starts stroking his scalp, soothing little circles and downstrokes which run down Jungkook’s spine cracked-egg chilly. Fuck. It’s too early, and they have to get out of bed at any second, but he lets himself luxuriate in the sudden heat in his stomach, breath. He pushes his head up into Jimin’s hand. Pretends that could be any other day.
“Feels good.”
A laugh vibrates through his whole body. “We don’t need to get a cat, we have you.”
“You’re - we’re getting a cat?”
“Maybe. No. We could.”
“We could get a-” A yawn garbles half his words; he pinches Jimin’s thigh at his laugh, then nuzzles back in as annoyingly as possible. “We could get anything. If it’s imaginary. A lizard.”
Jimin hums thoughtfully like he does when he’s mocking Jungkook. “Is that your next birthday present? I’ll do it. I’ll tell Hoseok-hyung to do it. Then you have to accept. Take care of it. Feed it flies.”
“Hobi can feed it, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. For sure.”
“Cool.”
Jimin’s got nice fingers, perfect to pet Jungkook with. He was made for this - he told Jimin that once, the night they won an award they spent their careers chasing: “You sing okay, but this is your real talent.” Jimin had scowled, but his hand hadn’t stopped moving.
It’s so easy when they’re like this. The two of them, no distractions, the rest of the world hidden compressed into just this, a bed, and a hand in his hair. It’s when they have to face the rest of it that it all starts going bad.
Sleep, a violet, dusky thing, creeps back in around the edges of his vision. They haven’t had a morning like this together in a long time. It’s too precious to be examined too closely - if he looks at it for too long he’ll be drawn in by the illusion, and then it will hurt too much when it goes away. So instead he makes his head go fuzzy, and he sinks down deep into the calm.
Then he hears it. Too close, too sweet to be ignored. “I love you.”
And Jungkook’s awake.
His whole body tenses, an animal haunches-up between fight or flight. He forces himself to relax his muscles top to bottom, but this close together there’s no way to mask the effort. The hand on Jungkook’s hand falters, too, and then resumes. Jungkook exhales through his nose. Tries and fails to read intent into the short, even strokes. Jimin’s short, even breathing.
The lack of response stretches on, and, on, and on, turning the air hot and thin. The covers aren’t a refuge anymore. The only tactile sensations down here are the too-soft hotel linens and Jimin’s body, touch, over-loving presence. Everything is too close. His skin is too close.
But where else could he go? Sealed in down here he can pretend like he didn’t hear anything; down here he’s safe from whatever expression is on Jimin’s face. Down here he doesn’t have to explain anything, to Jimin, to himself. Down here is where he wanted to stay. But down here the air burns.
He should know how to respond by now. He should have a response by now.
Jimin settles the matter, as he does with so many other things: an alarm chirps on his phone, and he sighs, turns it off, withdraws his hands and pushes the blanket back. Cool albeit stale air washes over Jungkook like a sudden rainshower.
Jungkook blinks rapidly at the lamp clicking on. These shadows don’t look nearly as nice this side of morning.
They have so little time together these days. Of course he fucked it up immediately.
Jimin’s bent over his bag. He’s doing that thing he does when he’s upset but doesn’t want to acknowledge it: he carefully takes out his shoes, moves the laces around so that they’re lined up perfectly, then takes out his sweatpants next. He folds them military-regulation even though he’ll be putting them on immediately. Busies himself so that he doesn’t have to look at Jungkook.
It makes Jungkook feel good, and then nauseous, that Jimin is just as uncomfortable.
When he finally turns around - when Jungkook’s sat up in bed, and forced his face into something neutral, and swallowed the lump that’s stuck in his throat as best he can - when he finally turns around he meets Jungkook’s eyes head-on, because Park Jimin has always been the brave one. He even tries to smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but he’s trying, which is more than Jungkook can say for himself.
“We have rehearsal,” he says. It’s cowardly. Jimin’s smile slips, but he nods. So they go to rehearsal.
Practice goes about twenty times better with Jimin back. For all that the myth-makers get wrong about them (the royal them), it’s undeniable that this thing only really works when it’s seven.
That deep muscle ache from yesterday is back in the best way. He doesn’t ever want to stop moving. Somebody once told him once birds can fly because of their hollow bones. Jungkook is so light he thinks he could jump off the stage and never come down.
Jimin’s giving him space, which is… kind. He gives him a condescending pat on the head when he’s tying his shoe, and Jungkook catches him watching with dark, appreciative eyes during his solo rehearsal; but today’s chin rest of choice is Taehyung, and when Jungkook drifts towards them he keeps a respectful half-foot of distance between them, as much as he’d allow any of the hyungs.
It’s - fine. It’s sweet. It’s what a good boyfriend would do, considering the… thing. A few years ago Jimin would be trying to make his head explode with his mind powers; this distance, this space, it’s grown up of him. A TV interviewer said that to them a few weeks ago, “You’ve all grown up into such mature young men.” Jungkook thought it was bullshit, but she probably only meant some of them.
Not him, though. Jungkook isn’t mature, isn’t a good boyfriend. Maybe he isn’t a good person.
Because he wants Jimin to glare at him. He wants Jimin to ignore him until he gives the right answer; he wants Jimin to crowd him in a bathroom stall and refuse to let him out until he says something that isn’t I’m sorry. He wants Jimin to get mad, and to get mean, and to break something which can’t be put back together, because at least then they’d have to look at it. He wants Jimin to make him look at it.
He doesn’t want Jimin to crowd him. But he wants Jimin to want to crowd him.
His head hurts.
“You didn’t say it back?” screeches Taehyung.
His head really hurts.
The rest of them went to the hotel to shower and change. Jimin briefly touched the back of Jungkook’s neck, their carefully rehearsed signal for ‘I’m horny and/or wanna go lay silently in bed with you for an hour.’ Jungkook shrugged his left shoulder up, another signal (‘Also horny but too sweaty to make it good, gonna lie down right here and die.’) Jimin had just laughed and walked away, which was a - good reaction. It was what Jungkook wanted. He thinks.
(Is he the problem? If he misses Jimin so much, why isn’t he spending the precious few moments he has stuck to him like paper on glue? Why doesn’t he say the words which will make him want to stay?)
Taehyung and him are stretched out in the middle of center stage, staring out at the sea of empty seats. It started as a cute, nostalgic, “look how far we’ve come” thing, but it turns out that Taehyung is a liar and a traitor who waits until Jungkook’s guard is down to soothe his secrets out of him and then rip him a new asshole.
Now is as good a time as any to develop latent teleportation powers. Fiji, he projects into the universe, I’m lying on a beach in Fiji. He opens his eyes. Taehyung’s glaring down his nose at him. Fuck.
“I’ve said it before.” He looks down at the stage so he doesn’t have to look at Taehyung, starts picking at loose electrical tape. “You’ve heard me. I say it sometimes, and, uh. With actions, and stuff.”
Taehyung continues to glower, which isn’t nice. But he’s also compulsively unable to sit; he starts to peel the other end of the tape, which is nice. It’s like a project that they’re managing together. You can’t be mad at your co-PM.
“We’ve all said it, dumbass. Not like that. Not,” he lowers his tone, does a little hand flourish that only succeeds in tangling up the tape, “romantically.”
“Ugh.” Jungkook scoots a few inches away from him. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Romantically.”
Jungkook carefully folds up his end of the tape over and under itself until it’s a perfect cube, which he lobs straight at Taehyung’s ear. It misses, but Taehyung still flinches, so, score.
“No, listen,” Taehyung says later, after they’ve sincerely apologized to the crew for fucking up their stage markings and’ve been banished backstage, where they wait for the others to come back. “It was different this time, right? The way he said it to you. It was different.”
Jungkook eyes Taehyung, growing unease blossoming into full-on suspicion. “You talked to him,” he accuses wildly. Taehyung flinches again. Twice in an hour, what a day.
“Noooooo,” Taehyung lies, ducking out of the way of Jungkook’s meanest glower. “Okay, yeah, but he brought it up first. No, don’t hit me, it’s true-” He throws the pillow back at Jungkook, who ducks out of the way with a dancer’s grace. “You’re being a brat today. Remember when you were cute? Do that again.”
“I was never cute.”
“You’re always cute to me,” Taehyung says, sulking. Jungkook chooses to ignore this.
They sit like that, both silent, one fuming, until the quiet starts to sour. Jungkook decides he’ll be the bigger person, as always: “You talk about me a lot? You and him?”
“... Yeah? We talk about all of you. No, don’t look at me like... It’s not…” Taehyung lets out a lungful of air in stutters, deflating gracelessly. “It isn’t mean. He just needs to talk stuff out sometimes. Okay,” he tacks on at Jungkook’s sideways glance, “all the time.”
Jungkook pokes his thumb through a hole in the couch cushion and then breaks apart the crumbly yellow foam inside. This small violence feels good on a day like today.
“What did he say?”
“What did who say? Ow, stop. I can’t tell you.”
“You’re not a doctor. You don’t have, um, medical ethics.”
“I could. Like, personally. No, stop, you’re so heavy- Really, really, I can’t say. He made me promise.”
Jungkook frowns, but he knows the weight of that, a Jimin promise. Still sulking a bit, he retreats to his own couch cushion. Taehyung relaxes exaggeratedly.
“He could talk about it with me,” Jungkook mutters. “He should.”
“- Hasn’t he?”
Before, when they were younger and Jungkook was half-feral, he would have lashed out claws first at Taehyung’s soft look, his softer voice. If it was Yoongi, or even Namjoon, the dry edge would have evened him out, made it easier to take the pity, because if they were laughing at him he would have an excuse for bristling. But the TV host said they were mature, and now he has to be thankful, that his friends are nice to him.
So he slouches further into the couch, pokes deeper into the cushion until the tip of his thumb touches an exposed box spring, too blunt to break skin no matter how hard he presses down. “He… said he understood. That it was. Um. It was okay if I didn’t feel the same. That I shouldn’t worry about it. He said everything was fine.”
And that’s how Jimin’s been acting - like everything is fine. Which, okay, it is. They’ve been in fights before, and this is absolutely not that. Especially given that the whole thing started with an ‘I love you’ - once, Jimin and Taehyung almost got into a fistfight over an I love you, but Jimin said it in this prissy, mean way, and Taehyung already had him in a headlock about something he’d said before which was way meaner and, in Jungkook’s opinion, 100% justified the punch.
But Jimin doesn’t say I love you to him like that. Every time Jimin says it lately it’s like. Like he’s giving Jungkook a gift that he’s handmade and hand wrapped. A gift offered with absolutely no thought of reciprocation, just out of a desire to be given.
(The last part is the thing which really annoys Jungkook, if he slows down enough to think about it: he’s so charitable about it. His face falls at the silence, but it isn’t surprised. He expected this of Jungkook. It’s not the whole reason there are bees crawling all up and down beneath Jungkook’s skin, but it’s a piece. He doesn’t like jigsaw puzzles.)
Jungkook is lucky to have somebody to love him like that. Especially in this line of work. Especially considering - who he is. Who they are. It’s one in a million, the chances that they could find each other. That Jimin would want to love him.
So he tries to be gracious. To be thankful at what - who - he’s been given.
It’s just hard, with this lump in his throat. This buzzing beneath his skin.
Taehyung is still talking. Jungkook, against all his better instincts, makes himself pay attention. “Okay… and so when he said he loves you… and you didn’t say it back… you talked about it?” He’s saying it in this really annoying voice, with really annoying fake doctor-pauses, which is how Jungkook knows he’s wearing his feelings on his face. Taehyung only tries to annoy him out of a mood like this when it’s bad-bad.
He pulls a yellow lump out of the couch hole. Pinches it, lets it go, feels it push apart his fingers as it expands. “Uh. I picked a fight about some other stuff and then we went to bed? And then he flew to Japan? Which is another problem. That he’s gone so much. And when he’s not gone, I am. One of us is always not there. And with. All of this,” he gestures to himself, to Taehyung, to the universe watching them, “I don’t know how long it’s gonna be until, until we can both be in one place, for good. So it’s hard to even think about how I feel about him - like that, when I have to spend all of my feelings missing him. Um.”
“... Jungkook-ah.” Taehyung sounds weary, ancient. He’s had two girlfriends; both of them broke up with him over text. Jungkook would throttle him, except he feels so tired. “Sometimes when you’re in a relationship you gotta talk about your feelings. Which doesn’t mean saying them out loud. It means, like. Talking about what the words mean, and how they make you feel.”
Jungkook is annoyed at how much sense that makes, and the fact that it makes sense means he’ll probably have to do it, so he scowls. “Talk about how my feelings make me feel?”
Taehyung makes a face that’s supposed to be wise but really just looks like he wants to call him a dumbass but can’t, because Jungkook is in his hour of need. Instead he pulls some foam out of his own couch hole, like a copycat, and lobs it at Jungkook’s face. Gently, though, so it isn’t bullying. “It was in a book I read. People who write books are smart.”
“You’re smart,” Jungkook grumbles. It isn’t a good insult, because it makes Taehyung smile, which makes Jungkook smile, which sucks. He’s grateful to have Taehyung as a friend, but this whole thing is embarrassing and annoying, so he leans over and very deliberately throws some of the gross yellow couch stuff in his face. Nothing like what a mature young man would do. Still satisfying.
Jimin does end up crowding him, not into a bathroom stall but one of the small rooms they store the costumes in, racks of feathers and mesh, and Jungkook, now, against the back wall. Jimin came back from the hotel rested but restive. He gets like this before concerts, when even down here they can hear the rumble of anticipation building and building and building above, feel the air swelling heavy with anticipation. it does something to all of them, but Jimin especially.
Normally Jungkook doesn’t mind. Who would mind this: three fingers bruising the soft part of his hips, leaving red stripes to be catalogued later in the bathroom mirror; a leg wedged between his thighs, not high enough to give him any room for satisfaction but enough to keep him in place. Biting his jaw but not hard enough to show, and telling him that he’s good, he’s so good for him, which is normally what Jungkook wants to be.
The part of Jungkook that wants to get off now is screaming at him through a bullhorn as he puts his hands on Jimin’s chest (he takes a moment to appreciate that he’s been working out with the bodyguards, too) and pushes him off.
“Hyung,” he says, taking care to keep his voice soft, “can we talk?”
Jimin doesn’t raise his head but shifts infinitesimally so that it’s resting on Jungkook’s shoulder instead, which can’t be comfortable even if Jimin says it is. “Why so nervous, Jungkook-ah?” his tone is light, and his fingers still rest teasingly on his waistband, but there’s a wariness that’s started to tense up his posture.
“I just…” Jungkook swallows down his nerves. chokes a little, but carries on nevertheless. “I think we should talk.”
Jimin startles away from that, the same way he’s been startling away the whole day. There’s something important in that, but Jungkook doesn’t know what it is. “We’re going on in a few minutes, can we just…”
He reaches out to touch Jungkook again, just on the arm this time. Jungkook has spent days aching for it, but he still jumps back like he was shocked. His skin feels like static electricity.
Jimin’s hand freezes suspended in midair between the two of them for a second too long. He runs it instead through his hair, and then frowns when he realizes that he just fucked up the coif his stylist spent 30 minutes perfecting. Jungkook snorts, and Jimin turns the frown at him, but it’s a little soft around the edges. Jungkook can still feel his heartbeat in his throat, but it makes it a little better, to see something which could eventually turn into a smile.
It’ll be gone soon.
“I hate this,” he says emphatically.
Jimin, to his surprise, laughs. It comes out kind of desperate, but it’s still a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah.”
It’s a stupid way to start. But Taehyung’s dumb book said that this was the best way to do it; and besides, Jungkook is so tired of silence, distant looks and fleeting touches, aborted phone calls and short texts. He has this bubble, this precious little island, where he can say anything without fear of the call being dropped, or sold for a king’s ransom. This is a gift. He needs to treat like one.
God, Taehyung is gonna be so annoying about what a good influence he is.
“When you say,” he starts. “When you say it.” He pauses. Tries to think about what he wants to say, but finds nothing there. soldiers on anyway. “When you say I love you. it’s not that I don’t… it’s not that I don’t want to say it back.”
Jimin twitches a little, but says nothing. He never did like to make things easier on Jungkook.
"It’s just. It’s just that it feels like things are gonna be like this forever, you know? I call you and you call me and then we see each other for 24 hours, and then you’re gone…” Jimin’s opening his mouth but it’s like someone lit a fuse in Jungkook’s mouth and he’s already going off, there’s no way to stop him now. “And we have, you know, breaks and stuff, but that’s not enough? It’s enough but it has to be enough, but we barely have time to say hi to each other, it’s not like I can figure out if I really, if that’s how I feel, the love stuff, when I just want to spend the whole time I’m with you with you, you and the whole time you’re gone all I do is think about missing you. There’s no room for other feelings, just the missing stuff. So I want to say it back, I do. Just. There isn’t room. um.”
Somewhere in the middle of Jungkook’s rant Jimin leaned forward again, like he’s poised to rush at Jungkook or sweep him back up in his arms, but thought better of it mid-spring. His eyes are narrowed; Jungkook can’t tell if that’s anger or concern, or some heady mix of both. He looks down at his hands to avoid having to figure it out.
“Yeah. Okay. You’re right, of course you’re right. But things will settle down in the future?” Even as he says that he trips over the words, the same way all of them wince away from talking about the former member period of their lives, so far away but at the same time closer than they could imagine. But he’s brave, he’s brave Park Jimin, so he keeps going: “We won’t be like this forever. it’ll be better later on.”
“The future isn’t. That’s not a date.” Jimin being mature at him makes him petulant. He wants Jimin to be desperate and mean; he wants Jimin to be hurting the same way he is. “Don’t act stupid.”
There, there’s the cracks starting to form. “I’m trying to make things better, Jungkook-ah, I know it’s bad. I know! but at least I’m trying.”
“I’m not?” Jungkook snarls, unable to help himself. He looks at Jimin, and sees exactly what he wanted: the anger, the frustration, the same desperation that’s been beating in his blood for the last few months. and that sick curdle of pleasure, that Jimin feels just as bad as he does. finally.
The silence simmers and stews. It’s horrible to sit in, to feel the tension spike inside of himself and between the two of them, and know that anything he says will just make it worse. In another universe he hears himself saying sweeter things to Jimin; in another universe he sees Jimin reaching out and bundling him close in his chest, where he can rest his head and pretend the rest of the world is gone. He wishes he was a softer version of himself. He wishes things were easier.
“We could take a day,” Jimin says finally. His voice is weird. strained. He’ll overwork his throat tonight, and it’ll be sore for ages. “Or a week. After the concert is over, we could take a week.”
“My schedule is locked until next year,” Jungkook tells his shoes. “So is yours.”
“We could unlock it,” Jimin says fiercely, helplessly.
Jungkook doesn’t bother responding, and eventually Jimin sighs.
“Things should be easier. This should be easier.”
He sounds so desperately, brokenly convinced of this simple truth, and when Jungkook looks into his face he sees his own hopelessness reflected back at him. Something sharp and miserable crumples within his chest. He doesn’t want Jimin to look like that.
He takes Jimin’s hand in his. Pressing their palms together, he can feel his pulse through his fingertips, too fast to be believed. Jimin is just as terrified, he’s realizing: of him, of them, of absence. There might not be a way out, but there's a way to ease that pain.
“We’ll figure it out,” he lies. Jimin’s heartbeat jumps against his wrist, and he squeezes once, twice, for luck. “Me and you. We’ll figure it out.”
He knows he doesn’t sound convincing, but Jimin is eager to be convinced. He doesn’t resist when Jungkook grabs his other hand, and doesn’t say anything more when leans for a kiss. They’ll pretend for now that things are alright. and for now, things will be.
They’re too busy to do anything but smile at each other in the last 30 minutes before the concert. Less tightly than before; reality always goes unstuck when they go on stage. Like they live two lives, one where things like paychecks and groceries and boyfriends saying ‘I love you’ back still matter, and another, where they’re a thousand feet tall and the president calls them heroes. During times like these it’s easier to forget the first person exists.
He manages to come back down, for a second, when their mics are being clipped on: “I’m sorry-”
Jimin raises his eyebrows, a signal. The sound techs are new, don’t seem to speak Korean, but who knows. Jungkook gives him a smile at the corner of his mouth, too innocent for any tabloids to turn into anything more than a Convivial Moment Between Friends, not that that’s ever stopped them before.
Jimin touches his hand during their pre-stage huddle. He’s holding Taehyung’s in his other, but he squeezes Jungkook's. That’s another signal, and also just nice. Jungkook squeezes back.
The concert is great. What else could it be?
Jungkook flies out right after the third encore, no time to even take his makeup off; he’s doing a series of tourism ads for Busan and this was the only time before the next tour spot they could get him in. He’ll get to see his family, so it isn’t all bad; but on the other hand, it is.
“Come back soon,” Hoseok says.
“We have a concert in two days.” Jungkook scrunches his nose. “I literally have to.”
“I’ll miss you every minute of every day,” Taehyung says earnestly. Jungkook can’t punch him in the arm - too many cameras back here - so he settles for ruffling his head until it’s sticking up in about fourteen different directions. Hoseok, who is gracious and also his best hyung, tugs Taehyung away before he can start throwing punches, leaving Jungkook, and Jimin, and an uncomfortable-looking manager half a hallway away.
“Hey,” Jimin says softly, leaning in. It might be another code, but it might just be that Jimin wanted to be half an inch closer. “I talked to Joochan-hyung.”
Jungkook frowns. “Same, like, he’s twenty feet away-”
“No, hey. Listen. I talked to Joochan-hyung and,” he lowers his voice, “we have an afternoon.”
“- What?”
“In two weeks. We’ll be in Jakarta, there’s supposed to be two days of rehearsal but I talked to him and I explained, we’ve done that venue before, we know the staging, it’s okay if we only do a day of full rehearsals. So the afternoon of the second day. We have that. You and me.”
He looks so - he looks so happy, in a full and unfettered way that Jungkook hasn’t seen for a while. There is something very fragile in that happiness, and Jungkook is very aware how easily he could break it. Half a day is nothing. Half a day is less than nothing, and will probably be taken away, too, with another injury, another setlist change, another tiny complication that will throw the whole concert into whack. Half a day is a joke.
But Jimin fought for it. And he looks so happy, now.
He reaches down, brushes the hair off of Jimin’s forehead. Laughs at his scowl, which immediately turns back into a smile. “Half a day sounds good, hyung.”
“Will you miss me?” Seeing Jungkook’s laugh, he’s batting his eyelids, trying to butter him up some more. “Every minute, of every day?”
Jungkook rolls his eyes, but Jimin just keeps smiling at him, and Jungkook was always, will always be a sucker. “Yeah, hyung. Every minute of every day.”
Jimin turns triumphant. “I’m going to make you say that into a voice recorder. I’ll play it every time you ignore my texts.”
“A voice recorder? Are you 70?”
“You wouldn’t love me if I was 70-”
Jimin breaks off suddenly, eyes wide, and Jungkook freezes too. That strange, horrible silence which stewed between them before, which has been brewing between them for the last few months - Jungkook feels it bubbling in his throat, filling his mouth, paralyzing him from the inside out. And so before it can he grabs Jimin’s hand and squeezes it again, another signal for when there are cameras too close by but he can’t wait to tell him what needs to be said.
Jimin’s hand sits limp in his own for such a long moment that Jungkook thinks, ice in his veins, that it won’t happen-
But then, like an ember flaring back to life, one squeeze, and then two. And again, and again, and again, until they finally have to let go.
Namjoon calls him while his manager is checking him in. He sounds out of breath, and the thumping bass behind him makes it hard to hear - their European crew throws the best afterparties.
“Hey! I’m sorry I- Oh, no, you go ahead- I’m sorry I missed you when you were leaving! You get off okay?”
Jungkook takes his passport back from his manager and nods to the desk agent, who looks a little awestruck. “Yeah, hyung, thanks. The flight’s in an hour, everything should be fine.”
“Cool, cool. Listen, I wanted to, wait, one sec-” The click of a door opening, a sudden rush of wind, and then the sounds of the party become muted as the sound of Namjoon’s breathing becomes amplified. “Sorry, this should be quieter. I wanted to check. You seemed a little off earlier, and Yoongi-hyung mentioned, uh, well, I just wanted to check that you’re okay.”
The security guards are hurrying him along too fast to break stride, and so Jungkook has to watch himself to make sure he doesn’t trip over his own feet. “Um. Yeah, hyung, yeah. I’m fine.”
“Okay, because, you know,” and Namjoon laughs awkwardly, “if you ever want to talk. You know that hyung is here. All of us.”
Jungkook’s throat tightens with an emotion he doesn’t really want to name. There are too many people around to do anything other than smile, which Namjoon can’t see, but he hopes with his whole heart that it bleeds into his voice. “I know, hyung. Thank you. I really… Thanks.” His manager glances back, and he frowns, hurrying to catch up. “I’m sorry, I don’t wanna be rude, but security-”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. Good luck, Jungkook-ah. We’ll see you soon. Miss you.”
The line goes dead, but Jungkook says “Miss you” anyway, because he does.
But it’s a different kind of missing, is what he’s realizing.
There’s a couple across the seat from him on the plane. Probably newlyweds, or newly something, given the way they can’t look away from each other. She leans into his shoulder, and he presses his head against her hair, closes his eyes, murmurs something into her ear. Their hands were entwined when they boarded and they’re clasped still.
Jungkook flexes his own hand open and imagines the weight of Jimin’s against it. He doesn’t have to imagine it, though, because it was there today, and it’ll be there again tomorrow, or the next day, or soon enough.
Jimin picks up on the first ring.
“Is everything okay with the flight?” There’s no noise behind him; from Taehyung’s increasingly unintelligible texts the party is still going on, but Jimin has an early flight tomorrow and likes to be well-rested, even if he’ll just sleep for 12 hours. Jungkook’s heart is never not warm when he thinks about Jimin, but it glows just a little brighter. He’s got it bad.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m seated, have a drink, complimentary eye-mask. Everything.”
There’s a short silence, which Jungkook assumes is confused. He never calls first. The temptation to excuse it as a reminder to do his skincare before the flight or tell Taehyung to drink water before bed is right there, but he’s being brave. He’s trying to be brave.
Because the feeling in his gut, this type of missing someone - it’s different from the way he misses the other members, or his family, or his friends. It’s an absence that lives in his skin, and underneath it; an absence he’s pretty sure would be there even if he saw Jimin every morning and every evening, an absence that will persist every second Jimin’s hand isn’t in his. He knows what this is called. He knows the words he needs to say.
“Hyung,” he says. Swallows. Tries, one more time, to be like Park Jimin. “Hyung, I need to tell you something.”
A short intake of breath. A swallow, and another pause. “Jungkook,” Jimin says it cautiously, like he’s trying not to spook a wild horse, “you don’t have to-”
“No, listen.” He turns towards the window and lowers his voice, because he doesn’t want to use his fake, plastic voice for this. “I. This is gonna sound stupid-”
Jimin laughs, short, nervous. Jungkook can’t stop to let him talk, because the words are in his throat, in his mouth, and they won’t let him go until he speaks them out loud.
“I’m not sure if I can. If I can say the words yet. I don’t really want to until we’re together. But I was thinking, finally, and I realized that the way I feel when I miss you is the way that I feel when I’m with you, which is different than with anybody else. And I don’t know if it’s… if it’s that, yet. But I think it’s pretty close.”
Jungkook has known Jimin long enough to know what he looks like when he smiles, even through the phone. “I think so too,” he says, and then he laughs, and Jungkook can’t help but laugh, too.
“This doesn’t make things easier,” he adds a moment later. The fear is still there, and the anger, too, which isn’t anger at Jimin so much as at his absence, something which can’t be reasoned with, or raged against, or cowed into submission. So it’s better, he thinks, to work with what he can. “We still have to find a way to make things- not better, but, you know. Livable. More than half a day, hyung. We need to find a way to live through this.”
“We will,” Jimin promises. “It will be hard, but- but we will.” He sounds like he believes himself. Jungkook decides that he will, too.
A minute later the flight attendant comes around to politely but firmly tells him to hang up his phone. Jungkook doesn’t say it back to Jimin when they say goodbye, but it’s in the pause he takes, and it’s in the smile still in his voice, too. He’ll have time to say it soon, the next time they’re alone, or the time after that. Whatever time they can carve out for themselves now, and then all the days in the future which stretch out unbroken, undisturbed, waiting to be discovered by the two of them together.