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Seokjin looks both younger and older with his head buzzed. Hoseok keeps petting at it, at the shell of his scalp curved and warm to the touch, and keeps ruffling the barely there length of it. He keeps forcing a laugh into the sweep of each motion. Keeps saying “like Dragonball,” keeps pursing his lips to tuck his frown tight into a makeshift smile, and keeps focusing on the prickle of each of Seokjin’s soft strands against his fingertips instead of the prickle behind his eyelids every time he blinks.
Hoseok is doing a good job at not crying, so far. At least in public, around the others, where Jeongguk stays deadly silent and wide-eyed, watchful, and Namjoon tries out being too talkative, too easy-going like he always does whenever things get weird. Tense. Unsure, uncertain, uneasy and all of the other un- words, other un-feelings in the world. Hoseok is sure he himself must be consumed by all of these things at once, jumbling around in his own brain inside his own head, covered by however many inches of hair he gets to choose to wear, rather than how many are required of him by martial mandate.
Un-everything, Hoseok feels, and if he were more like Namjoon or Yoongi, he’d put that feeling into a song title, make the gut punch ruminating in his bones turn into something palpable and coherent, chunked up into rhythm and beats and syllables and snare. Make it into something nice, something that feels good. Instead, he tells Jeongguk to eat up, tells Yoongi he’ll try the beer he brought after dinner is done, and he tells Taehyung to have his kimchi, they must have mixed up their orders, his isn’t spicy at all and no, hyung doesn’t mind, hyung will take yours. And Seokjin is telling jokes, telling stories, speaking in wonted histrionic excess, but none of the quips settle in the air quite right, and he looks almost sorry for it, like he shouldn’t have said anything at all, and Hoseok is thinking again of un-things.
By nighttime, Hoseok feels undone. He wants to talk about it, about all of it: the way things feel wrong and dreamlike and twisted up, like the seven of them are caught in the wrong reality, in a fever trip gone on for too long, one that they’re well aware of but can’t quite shake from. It had been hardest before bedtime, Hoseok supposes, like he can pinpoint the blame onto one precise hour of the day, onto one exact moment that tipped him over the edge. But Namjoon had sat close to Taehyung and Jimin, who had sat even closer than usual with their hands tied up in intertwined fists: Jimin’s smaller one around Taehyung’s bigger one, and Taehyung’s bigger shoulder molding into Jimin’s side, pushing the sleeve of Jimin’s sweater up with the weight of his leaned, toned bicep. And Hoseok had thought something about change, something about today versus tomorrow and the day after that, and Yeoncheon was supposed to have snow soon so Hoseok was thinking about that, too, about all those kilometers ticking up on the company van’s dashboard, those same old leather seats holding all of them crammed inside of it– but not the same old versions of them from before. Not the same from even a few days before, not really, and Hoseok had been thinking of Seokjin’s buzzcut again.
“Wanted to feel it some more,” is what Hoseok says by way of explanation when he knocks on Seokjin’s bedroom door at some point past two AM and stumbles inside before he even gets a response.
“Yah,” Seokjin grumbles, but rolls over to let him touch.
“Was Jeonggukkie in here earlier?” Hoseok asks. He can smell his cologne, some French tang that reminds Hoseok of life from just a few months ago, of dance shoes and thousand watt blacklights, backstage oxygen cans and after hours cup noodles. He can see his bucket hat on the floor, flipped upside down next to one of Seokjin’s socks and what looks like a cap to a portable shampoo tube, travel size.
Seokjin just nods. Closes his eyes when Hoseok runs his knuckles over his hairline. Hoseok stares. Wonders why he’d spoken in the first place, why he’d asked a question with an answer he already knew.
“Sorry.” Didn’t want to make you sad, is what Hoseok means. Know you already are.
“For what, Hobah?” Seokjin says, and what he means is don’t be. What he means is I know you are, too.
Hoseok is thinking about fear now. About anger and loss and resentment and love and how he feels all of these things so much at once, all the time actually, so much he isn’t sure at the end of the day whether he actually feels much of it at all– not truly, not in a way that’s real, not in a way that counts.
Under the blankets, Seokjin runs hot. Hoseok hadn’t meant to get so close to him, but he seems to move that way lately; earlier he’d wrapped his arms around Seokjin for so long that he’d had imprints of embroidery on both his palms, a trace of the pattern of Seokjin’s sweater indented onto his skin. Seokjin had held him back, though, with both fists in Hoseok’s windbreaker when Jimin took their picture later on. They’d stood flush to one another, right in front of the living room windows with Seoul clouded over in the background, and then they’d stood even more flush when five others had huddled into them. Jimin had texted the photos over to them afterwards, and Hoseok had fought the urge to make it his lockscreen right then and there. Had tried not to think about how long it would be until Seokjin would take another photograph in this city, how long until Seokjin would take another photograph with him alongside, or at least behind the camera.
“You’re like a masseuse,” Seokjin exhales when Hoseok keeps touching him. The lines next to his mouth pinch up and straighten out– there for Hoseok to look at and think about touching as well, and then gone. “I should have been capitalizing on this all these years.”
“I’m at your service now,” Hoseok says, instead of “don’t say that,” which is what he’s thinking.
“Do your eyebrows ever get itchy?”
“No.”
“Mine do.”
Hoseok has to twist his wrist to scratch at them, but Seokjin sighs again when he does it. This low, content, comfortable sound that Hoseok can’t help but giggle at.
“You think I’m funny? Me and my itchy eyebrow problems?”
“I do,” Hoseok answers. With his other palm, he strokes at Hoseok’s head again. Swoops down to scritch at the space above his ear, and something swoops inside Hoseok’s stomach also, just the slightest bit, when Seokjin tilts the side of his face into the bend of his fingers.
“It’s a tough life. A tough thing to deal with, you’ll learn when you’re my age.”
Hoseok’s stomach dips again, in a new way, a worse way, until Seokjin finishes his rambling and says “don’t take your sweet, sorrowless eyebrows for granted” and Hoseok realizes they’re not actually going to talk about it now. Not going to talk about it ever, maybe, at least not until they’re there at the gates and the snow has started and it’s too late to start bringing it up then.
Hoseok stays there for a long time, on his side with his fingers on Seokjin’s face. His arm goes numb a little bit underneath him, a fuzzy irritation that should bother him more than it does, probably, but he’s distracted; his socked toes brush against Seokjin’s ankle, his unpainted fingernails trace lines along the bridge of Seokjin’s nose. On another night, Hoseok imagines Seokjin would push him away, tell him “aish,” scold him for sabotaging his hard-earned efforts of his lengthy skincare routine with his oily poking and prodding. Or maybe not. Maybe this is just like how they always are, though usually someone else is in the bed, too, or maybe multiple someones because there’s never really enough space and certainly never any privacy, and after all these years, no one really minds, anyway.
Seokjin looks so peaceful. It makes Hoseok think of years ago, of Nonhyeon-dong and tiny beds and stepladders and seven sticks of deodorant, sometimes eight when Taehyung’s grandmother would send extra for him, overeager and munificent in packages filled with sweet potato noodles and ginseng tea. Seokjin would always joke the loudest: “because you smell so bad, Taehyung-ah, you know?” They’d all riffle his hair and pretend to hold their noses, but Seokjin would laugh the most. Would hug him the most, afterwards, too, when Taehyung pretended to pout and roll his eyes so hard Jimin would tell him that someday they’d fall out of his head. Seokjin had always slept so soundly back then, even if never for long enough.
“Surprised Jeonggukkie left,” Seokjin says, when he must suppose it has been too quiet for too long. He surprises Hoseok by moving, by flailing his arms and legs fast and all at once, pushing Hoseok’s touch away from his cheek in the process until he ends up even closer. His head drops down atop Hoseok’s chest, his right leg settling at an angle over both of Hoseok’s in a move that makes his knees ache. Dancer knees, bruised and busy, and Seokjin is reaching under and over, across the canopy of the blankets with his matching arm, and Hoseok thinks for just a second that Seokjin is going to try to soothe the pain for him, that Seokjin knows that it hurts, that Seokjin is going to put his big palm right over the space of Hoseok’s kneecap– and Hoseok knows that if he does that, he’ll cry. Immediately, right here and now, in the cocoon of his last bed for one long, last time.
But Seokjin doesn’t touch his knee. He touches Hoseok’s hip, where his waist meets his thigh, and says, “this is how he laid on me, gave me no chance of escape. Death by crushing, asphyxiation–” and oh, Hoseok remembers now. Jeongguk. The conversation. A world that exists beyond these linens, beyond these four walls.
Seokjin stays put like that even after he’s finished saying what he wanted to say and his point has been made, comedy running its course and leaving Hoseok’s chest heaving with laughter, not tears, not tears. It’s like Seokjin knows Hoseok is teetering on the very edge.
Hoseok keeps looking at him. Tangles his hand out from under Seokjin’s weight, pokes his arm far enough out at an angle so that he can bend his elbow and put his fingers on Seokjin’s face again. At the slope of his chin, there’s the slightest nudge of stubble, and Hoseok feels it once, twice, again. He lets himself laugh more while he does it, and Seokjin does too, while Hoseok wonders if he’s still thinking about Jeongguk. If he is, and so Hoseok is the only one in on a new joke, one that isn’t funny, one that’s making his stomach feel all sorts of twisty in all sorts of new ways.
Seokjin’s eyelashes are long. Even in the dark, Hoseok can see them clearly enough to marvel at. He can remember doing the same two weeks ago, when they got naengmyeon with Yoongi and walked by the Han, though maybe that was just because Seokjin was wearing the coat Yoongi got him as an early birthday present. Hoseok had watched him unwrap it from the box and put it on. It had fit him so well, tall and broad shouldered and beautiful.
– And weeks before that, Hoseok had looked at him– in between dance rehearsals with all of Hoseok’s focus on watching Seokjin’s footwork, all of his focus supposed to be there, but Seokjin had asked Hoseok something about the pre-chorus transition and it had taken Hoseok half a second longer than usual to answer, at least. Long eyelashes, pretty, like wisps of dandelions.
– And even further back, many more years ago, in maybe twenty eighteen in the back of a dressing room at some American talk show with English words like “countdown” and “monitor” and “live stage crew” ringing around in his ears, begging to be made sense of, Hoseok had stared. Had stared at Seokjin and made some comment about it, he’s sure of it, something that made Seokjin laugh and feel good and made Hoseok feel good, too, just by association. Seokjin always made him feel good. Always does. Is making him feel good now, even while he also feels so bad.
He’s going to say something now. About eyelashes. About it, maybe, about how he’s not sure he’s going to survive going eighteen months without feeling this very specific kind of good. Feeling it so often, too, because of Seokjin, because Seokjin has always been around and Hoseok has been so used to it he hasn’t quite realized that the feeling was exclusive to him– him and those white flower eyelashes and windshield wiper laughter and– and even the weight of him on Hoseok’s chest, more than half his big, tall body laid out across Hoseok’s smaller one, feels alright. Just feels good. Good.
Hoseok opens his mouth.
“Hyung,” Hoseok says, and he is surprised by how his voice is very desperate and very cautious, somehow both at once, “can I kiss you?”
Seokjin doesn’t say no. Doesn’t say yes either, and Hoseok is glad for it. Needs time to process what he’s even asked. Hadn’t realized he was asking for it until– until he’d gone ahead and asked for it. Said the words. Inched himself closer, just minutely so, and felt himself wait for something to happen. To be laughed at, to be shoved away. To be yelled at, even, maybe. Just something.
Instead, Seokjin says, “really?”
“I don’t know,” Hoseok says, because it’s true. Then, also because it’s true, and he’s moving himself now, rearranging his limbs in Seokjin’s bed that’s not his bed but is more his bed than the one he’ll be in for the next year and a half– so that he can look at him head on: “I just really feel like I want to kiss you right now. I just feel- feel like I need to kiss you.”
Seokjin blinks. Stares back at him. Says, “you can.”
When Hoseok gets closer, Seokjin says, “I want you to.”
“You need it, too?” Hoseok asks, because he feels like he’s crazy suddenly, and he needs to know that Seokjin feels it too, at least a little bit, at least even one millionth of a percentage of the way he does.
“Need it, Hobah,” is what Seokjin says after he kisses him. After he meets Hoseok in the middle and kisses Hoseok first, and then lets himself be kissed back. After their lips slip against each other, so quick and fleeting and barely even there, and it feels so wrong it feels right, so right it feels wrong, so out of nowhere it feels perfect, so anticipated it almost feels like nothing at all.
Almost.
Hoseok makes this quiet whine. Wounded. Lets this low, needy, sound wrack out of his chest and up his lungs, scrambling to get out, and Seokjin takes it from him, swallows it back, drinks it down. Keeps it there, and puts new things into the cradle of Hoseok’s mouth in return, into the gentle hold of his jaw and atop the flat of his tongue. Hoseok’s hands move to Seokjin’s throat, to the long, sweeping hollow of it that he’s never really caught himself thinking about too much until now, and he thinks, what a shame. All this time.
Seokjin is kissing him back. Easy, like it’s just connecting lips and nothing else, and for a split second, when Hoseok is holding Seokjin’s face in his hands and thumbing at his cheeks and still making these little noises into the space of their conjoined mouths, he thinks maybe that’s all it is for him. But when he pulls away Seokjin is kissing him some more, harder this time, too, like he’s trying to keep Hoseok’s pace and match it, trying to keep them both breathing in the same air, and Hoseok thinks Seokjin must get it. Must think it too, must feel it too, maybe just a little. Just enough to keep his lips working, his lips wet, his eyes wet, suddenly, too.
“Sorry,” Hoseok says. He thinks Seokjin might have started crying first, but he’s not sure. Not sure it matters.
Seokjin shushes him.
“I don’t know why I-” Hoseok says anyway, but then forgets the rest of what he’d been saying. Seeokjin is a flurry of movement under the sheets again, repositioning and maneuvering himself, and Hoseok stills him with one palm on his jaw, the other under the hem of his t-shirt, right under the neckline. His skin burns hot.
Seokjin is tall and broad-shouldered and beautiful, just like twenty eighteen, just like always, and now he is beautiful under Hoseok’s hands when he puts his lips on him again. Hoseok reels himself in closer, fits a leg between both of Seokjin’s, thinks he feels Seokjin’s heart hammering against his own chest. It could just be his own blood, pounding in his ears, steady and thrumming, overwhelming when Seokjin slips his tongue against Hoseok’s teeth at the same time Hoseok’s hands brush over Seokjin’s chest. Touching skin, reaching lower, and then he stops.
“We can’t,” Hoseok says, but Seokjin is already pulling back. Nodding, knows better. Of course, his hyung. “Not when- not just-”
“I know.”
There’s no anger in Seokjin’s expression. No sadness, not even any disappointment from the sudden lack of lips on his mouth, lack of hands up his sleep shirt. Hoseok doesn’t know what to say. He can’t think of a single other person in the entire world that is anything at all like Seokjin.
“It doesn’t feel like-” Hoseok says, because he feels like he has to bring it up.
Seokjin responds immediately: “I know.”
They’d kissed before, years ago. Tipsy and bored, shuttered inside a city they couldn’t sightsee without security, they’d done it just to do it, sort of because they thought it’d be funny and sort of just because they remembered they had lips and hormones and something they could do about it. And they’d kissed Jimin and Taehyung, too, just because they were there, and then Jimin and Taehyung had kissed each other and it had felt like something paramount was happening and Hoseok and Seokjin had looked at each other like two lone witnesses of something extraterrestrial. Jimin had spilled Seokjin’s soju over his lap afterwards when he rushed up to leave, and while Hoseok helped him clean up they’d whispered about the way Taehyung had followed Jimin out, reaching for his hand the whole way like he was going to fall over and forget how to walk if he couldn’t touch him for the whole fifteen feet it took to get to their shared bedroom.
And that had been it. No sparks, not back then, not when Seokjin had pressed his mouth against Hoseok’s, not when he’d parted his lips and snuck the tiniest bit of tongue in, mainly just to make Jimin holler at them. It had been decent. Fine. A good kiss, even, but not like this.
There’s the most subtle bit of saliva shining on Seokjin’s lower lip now. Heart-shaped his lips are, Hoseok thinks, and he wants to lick the spit away himself, wants to put more there, wants to kiss Seokjin on all of his birth marks, wants to sort of just climb inside the web of Seokjin’s open limbs and warm body and stay there for the next two years, maybe longer.
“Do you think it’s just because-”
“Shh.” Seokjin is the one who is staring now. Looking deep into Hoseok’s eyes, more serious than Hoseok has seen him in a long time, maybe since right before the Grammy’s when he’d gone in for hand surgery and Jeongguk had been sick and everything had felt like it was fragmenting into nothingness then, too, but in a different way. A very different way.
“Don’t say it,” Seokjin says, nearly scolds on the edge of pleading. And then, because he’s Seokjin, and he can never, truly, really go too, too long without a flair for the dramatic, he says, “give me my eighteen months to ponder about it.”
Hoseok doesn’t laugh. “Eighteen months,” he says, or tries to say, or just makes the shape of the words with his mouth.
“Give me something to look forward to when I come back. Give me something to figure out.”
“Okay,” Hoseok says, because it is really the only thing he can say.
He doesn’t cry again. He will reflect later, on what Seokjin has said, what he has not exactly promised– because promise feels too romantic, and promise is what people like Jimin say to people like Taehyung, promise is the name of the song people like Jimin croon to people like Taehyung, masqueraded as a ballad to the masses rather than belted out as the truth for one, only one. No, Seokjin has ensured something, an answer of sorts that Hoseok will have in due time, and only after he has raised his hand in salute and walked past the gates, past the flags and out of sight, will Hoseok let himself weep for it.
“I don’t know,” Hoseok, not weeping, says in the shell of Seokjin’s not-bed. If I love you that way, he means. If I love you that way all the time, and not just right now because I’m going to miss you so much.
“Shh,” Seokjin says again. Means, I know. Means, me too, means, we’ll figure it out. “Whatever it is. Whatever it isn’t.”
And that feels like something Hoseok can ensure, too. Maybe even promise. But he doesn’t have to– not now, not yet.
“Eighteen months,” Hoseok says, and this time, he does manage to get the words out.