Work Text:
Hoseok is a morning person.
When they were first starting out, too-long-limbs and too-high-hopes, Hoseok’s natural proclivity to sunlight was a blessing. All the nocturnal ducklings would trail him out to early schedules with eyes closed and coffees in hand.
Namjoon starts to wake up just as Hoseok starts to lose that burst of energy, and Yoongi is only alive at night. It works. Day to day, it works.
When it comes to writing, though, 2AM is when Namjoon and Yoongi flourish.
Hoseok shuts down after a couple dozen hours awake, staring into the middle distance, half asleep in his chair. Namjoon gets frantic, buzzing between ideas faster than his brain can catch up with them. Hoseok pretends to listen, but Namjoon will be headed in a different direction before he can even finish the thought.
Yoongi thrives. Something happens after about 48 hours awake where he’s suddenly too tired to doubt himself, where the filters of insecurity come down and he lets the gold trickle from his fingertips.
That is why they do this. Hoseok is useless in songwriting binges. He works best in the morning after that rare solid 8 hours of rest, but Yoongi needs the stress, needs the deadline, needs to pump out song after song before he lets himself find the right one. Namjoon will make some beats they end up using later, or a melody that might end up in a mixtape, but Hoseok doesn’t bother.
Today, he is so incredibly grateful for them. Submissions for their next album are due for review in a few days and he still has nothing. It’s crunch time, but he can’t just force art to flow from his brain like they can. His body doesn’t work like that, but then again, their bodies don’t work like his. He’ll pick up the slack later, when everyone is sweating onto the scuffed practice floors and Namjoon forgets how long his limbs are again.
Now, though, Hoseok can’t work, but he's not worried. Together, they can get it done in time.
He spins his legs out from under the desk and blinks up at the ceiling, breathing out with a lip trill.
“Coffee?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
Hoseok isn’t truly useless in these songwriting binges. He’s useless at actually writing in the middle of the night, maybe, but he still has a purpose.
Coffee runs, late night snacks, a water bottle or five placed on the desk in front of them.
When he passes out on the couch for a few hours, he always wakes back up to Namjoon and Yoongi, curled like little shrimps over their keyboards, surrounded by wrappers, empty paper cups, and music. He always wakes up to music. It’s probably why he’s such a morning person.
There are a lot of things Namjoon is really, really bad at.
He can’t cut an onion, always gets his fingers tied up in his shoelaces, and still hasn’t figured out how to control the temperature on their stove. Yoongi says that’s why he keeps burning things, but he just doesn’t get what’s going wrong. Everything is either black on the bottom and raw on the inside or it never, ever cooks! Maybe stoves just have it out for him.
Anyways.
There are a lot of things Namjoon just can not do.
There are a lot of things that Namjoon can do really, really well.
He read an article once about how language evolves as an art form from literacy, to literary, to poetry, and poetry drips from his fingers.
It’s one thing to write lyrics, to write songs, and melodies; to make art. Namjoon is good at that kind of writing, sure, but it’s an entirely different art to answer the phone at 8 in the morning when he hasn’t slept in 48 hours and still sound like a human.
Yoongi has been looping the same measure for at least 45 minutes when Namjoon’s phone buzzes, the vibration sliding it across the smooth desk until it hits the empty coffee cup next to his hand.
Hoseok grumbles on the couch behind him and flips over, covering his head with a pillow.
Namjoon sighs. The middle-of-the-night peace had to end at some point.
He glances at their manager’s name and answers the phone just before the last ring.
“Good morning, hyung,” he says, business voice on.
The manager is reminding them about their schedule for the day, their deadlines, a magazine requesting an interview next week. Namjoon listens, hums his understanding and acquiescence when appropriate. He rubs the all-nighter grit out of his eyes.
He only perks when the manager starts going off about the deadline tonight. They’ve been working for two days straight, and this man is suddenly complaining that they’re not prepared to submit, that other, better, songwriters are submitting too.
Yoongi still has his headphones on, bags deep purple and green under his eyes; Hoseok is trying to become human again on the couch, and Namjoon is being told that they’re not doing enough.
His eyes are finally clear when he responds. This is what he does, for them.
“Thanks for all your incredible work,” he interrupts, “but we won’t be making that interview next week. And let Sejin know that we won’t be at the meeting this afternoon. No, I won’t send Yoongi or Seokjin…”
This part is easy. They need rest, and if all Namjoon can provide for his team is a few hours of peace where the sun is still up, then that’s what he’ll do. His family needs someone to stand up for them, and damn, Namjoon is good at standing up for the people he loves.
Namjoon is talking to some manager on the phone next to him, but Yoongi doesn’t bother tuning in. When Namjoon is handling it, he never has to worry.
The beat just isn’t right. The chorus is perfect, with the samples from Seokjin and Jungkook flowing into each other seamlessly, building up into something for the bridge. The bridge has to be powerful, has to hit, has to make you cry.
He’s plunking out what has to be the thousandth version of the stupid clunky bridge when Hoseok’s bony chin hooks onto his shoulder.
Yoongi grumbles but tries to ignore it. Hoseok is always like this in the mornings. He’s not ready to be all loud and bubbly, but still craves that human attention and affection. Yoongi lets him. He’s a jewel, a paragon of altruism, and so he lets Hoseok bring his chair too close, nose at his headphones, and share his affection.
Yoongi pretends to get nothing out of it.
No one believes him.
He feels Hoseok speak rather than hears him, a little buzzing along his jawline.
He moves the headphone out of the way, lamenting when Hoseok pulls back to let him readjust. Yoongi hums a little hmm? and Hoseok knows that means what was that, sorry, I was really absorbed in work, but now I’m listening.
“I just asked how it’s going, how you’re feeling?” he mumbles, soft enough that Namjoon’s phone call isn’t interrupted.
Yoongi’s brain goes static when he tries to respond. The caffeine thuds in his ears, low and a little achey but just enough to keep him moving. Hoseok’s breathing hangs in the air, Namjoon’s soft but insistent voice behind him, and Yoongi tries to respond.
How is it going? How do you feel? Empty space, headphones slung around his neck but still playing that pounding, clunky melody against his skin.
“I—“ Yoongi starts, but he doesn’t have the words for it. Namjoon is good at the words, Hoseok is good at the melody and complexity and making crazy things work when they shouldn’t but—
Yoongi has to respond in music. “God, Hobi, you’re a genius.”
He puts the headphones on. Hoseok is probably confused, but he just woke up. He cuddles back into Yoongi’s side and lets him work. Yoongi focuses on that.
The low hum of warmth, comfort, familiarity. Of knowing exactly what to expect, but only here, inside this little bubble of comfort. The rest of the song is chaos and drums and soaring melodies, but that’s not what he needs here, right in the middle, the point of the song that has to make people cry not because it’s big and explosive and hits, but because it feels right all of a sudden.
He deletes all of the drums for those 8 bars. Just the hum, just the heartbeat. He stretches out the tempo, goes from 120 bpm to 60, allegro, fast, to adagio, slow. He doesn’t want ritardando, that gradual slow down. That’s wrong.
He wants it to feel like his brain when that door closes. Just subito, suddenly, piano, soft. The murmur of familiar voices, familiar heartbeats, of Hoseok’s sticky breath on his neck and the creaking of their too-expensive chairs.
Soft, like Hoseok’s favorite pillow on the worn couch behind them. The pillow has a dent in it, now, from Hoseok’s impromptu nap, and the couch has a person shaped impression. Soft, like Namjoon’s voice. Even when he’s not talking to someone, he’s talking to himself. Yoongi can always hear him think.
How does he feel? Yoongi tries to put it all in that bridge, those 8 bars at 60 beats per minute, 48 seconds, much longer than it was supposed to be. It’s fitting, to steal time in a song on a morning of stolen time.
He makes those 48 seconds feel like comfort, a deep breath in the middle of a storm, like Hoseok’s morning breath and Namjoon’s piles of snack wrappers.
He makes it feel like home.