Chapter Text
It’s a Friday afternoon that finds him in the living room, comfortably lounging in his seat with a book open in his lap—though for the past couple minutes he’s been more attentive to the sounds around him rather than the subject of a quite dull classic he has to read for school. The loud blaring of a variety show on TV and his brother’s occasional guffaws in reaction, the clinking of his mother’s heels as she paces restlessly around the house.
Seokjin flips the page of his book, idly, despite being far from done with the previous one, and then just closes it altogether and sets it down. He chooses instead to stare at his mother—dressed impeccably, but looking rather frazzled as she keeps glancing at the nearest clock—and suppresses a sigh. From his left, Taehyung lets out another loud bark of laughter (“Oh man, he actually did it!”) seeming blissfully oblivious to his surroundings.
What—or rather, who—they were waiting for, to Seokjin’s annoyance, was a tutor that one of the teachers at school had recommended to his mother, after revealing that his younger brother’s ‘passable but far from brilliant’ grades had taken the plunge right into ‘complete and utter shit’. He wasn’t there when the suggestion was made, but the sour-faced Math teacher had somehow convinced his mother it was a sensible decision to pay some smartass, one grade level above Taehyung, to come and try to enlighten him before the upcoming exams.
And Seokjin, a sensible person himself, wouldn’t care to object—if it concerned anyone but Kim Taehyung. God knows he loves his younger brother half to death, no matter how many times he’s had to bail him out of trouble after every ridiculous stunt that backfired on him, but he can’t deny the fact that he is (for all intents and purposes) a terrible student. And it’s not that Taehyung isn’t bright—he’s already come to terms with the fact that his brother might be one of the most brilliant people he’s ever met—but that he’s not ‘applying himself’, and doesn’t look like he has any intention of doing it in the near future.
(The only time Seokjin can remember him actually making use of his textbooks is when he’d used them to support part of an incredibly long, complex marble roller coaster that started in Taehyung’s room and somehow ended up expanding, taking up their entire living room and leading all the way to the kitchen. Their parents had let him run wild, deciding they wouldn’t be the ones to limit their son’s creativity, and Seokjin was left to watch in awe as his brother built an impressive and absolutely pointless contraption with a huge, box-shaped grin on his face.)
And it’s not like their parents (whenever available) or Seokjin himself (whenever he could get Taehyung to sit down and listen to him) haven’t tried to help the younger to improve his study habits—Seokjin had even gone the extra mile and made flash cards—but the fact remains that Kim Taehyung is not very receptive to anything that doesn’t interest him, a category which all of his school subjects, except Art, seem to fall under.
Which brings them to all (save for Seokjin’s father who is away at work for a couple days and sends his support to Taehyung) to this point: gathered in the living room, waiting for the tutor—who, to add further insult to injury, is late. Taehyung is unaffected by this and has decided to watch TV, but their mother is minutes away from being late herself to a meeting and Seokjin (who considers himself a patient, forgiving person) is finding it hard to not get annoyed with this elusive tutor (that they’re paying for, so at the very least he could bother to show up on time, or notify them if he was going to be late—it’s literally common courtesy) that they really didn’t need to hire in the first place.
Turning to his mother, he opens his mouth to speak, but she frowns and cuts him off before he can even utter a sound.
“Seokjin—don’t,” his mother warns with a stern, yet tired voice, and her eyes flick upwards to the clock. “I already know how you feel about this—but the teacher spoke very highly of him, and he might be able to help Taehyung—we can’t just write it off without trying.”
He spots the concern in her voice—and the hint of sadness, and he’s reminded of how prone his mother is to blame her own shortcomings every time one of her sons has majorly fucked up—and suddenly pointing out what a bad idea getting Taehyung a tutor is seems far less tempting, so what comes out in the end is a hesitant:
“I was just going to suggest calling him,” he offers, overcome with relief when his mother’s face seems to soften, “I mean, you said it yourself—the teacher spoke highly of him, so something might’ve come up, since he’s this late.”
It’s the right thing to say—some of the sadness on his mother’s face seems to ebb away and is replaced with a pensive look as she picks up her phone. “Yes... You might be right. I hope nothing bad happened,” she muses, fingers tapping away at the screen, likely searching for the number of the tutor.
It’s just like his mother to be concerned over the well-being of a complete stranger—and while Seokjin himself hopes nothing happened to the guy, it does nothing to lessen his annoyance at the entire situation. Really, if something had come up, he should have called and announced he was going to be late—it just seemed awfully irresponsible and unprofessional.
(Unless something had happened to him on his way to their house—but Seokjin tries to disregard that option, because it’s not like they live in a bad neighbourhood and it’s not dark outside, and for as long as he’s been living there, there’s only been a handful of incidents, so if something did happened, it’s unlikely they wouldn’t have found out by now from their loud, chatty neighbour, and—)
His mother has the phone pressed to her ear, gnawing at her lip the longer it rings without anyone picking up. He’s just about to try and (gently) persuade her into leaving for the meeting (before she has to give another call telling her client she’ll be late), and assure her he’ll take care of the tutor if he happens to arrive (which involves promising he won’t slam the door in the guy’s face after telling him he’s not getting paid—maybe Taehyung was right when he said Yoongi was rubbing off on him) when a sound startles him out of his thoughts.
The doorbell.
Almost immediately, his mother sets off in the direction of the door and Seokjin follows suit, not so much because greeting guests is the right thing to do but because he wants to see what the guy has to say for himself—if it’s even him at the door.
And it is—his mother opens the door and behind it is a crouching, heavily panting and (from what he can tell, and he tries really hard not to make a face) sweating mess of a person. When he lifts his head and stands straight, Seokjin takes the opportunity to take in more of his appearance—he seems slightly taller than him, his bleached blond hair is mussed up in a way that doesn’t look good enough to be intentional, he has full lips, piercings in his ears and looks like he walked straight out of Yoongi’s collection of hip hop magazines.
The guy lets out a relieved sigh at the sight of Seokjin’s mother, bows clumsily in greeting and finally manages to cough out through his heavy breathing “I’m Kim Namjoon, the tutor?” in a surprisingly deep voice, laced with uncertainty and fatigue. “You must be Mrs. Kim—I’m really sorry for being late. I hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble.”
He sounds genuinely apologetic as he stands in their doorway with a grimace on his face, still panting like he’s ran a marathon (for all he knew, he might have) and Seokjin starts to feel almost bad for him. His mother nods, looking rather taken aback at the tutor’s disheveled appearance.
“No—it’s okay, dear,” she says, voice warm and full of concern as she beckons the guy—Namjoon—into the house, closing the door behind him. “Are you alright? Would you like a glass of water?” she makes a hesitant offer, looking at him like he’s about to collapse (and Seokjin can’t blame her, because he probably has the same look on his face).
Namjoon, seeming to have snapped out of a trance, laughs good-naturedly and shakes his head. “No, no—that’s fine. I’m good.”
Minutes later, the blond is sitting on a chair at their kitchen table with a (now empty) glass of water placed in front of him, because it’s hard to say ‘no’ to Kim Seoyun when she doesn’t want to hear it. Seokjin is hovering awkwardly next to the kitchen counter, trying to figure out when it would be the right time to remind his mother about her meeting without getting the disapproving ‘Seokjin, we have guests’ look in return.
“Sorry again,” a much calmer Namjoon says, sheepishly, having made the discovery that he’s over twenty minutes late which is apparently ‘later than I thought I was, so sorry’. “I sort of—fell asleep on the bus and missed my stop. I tried to get here as fast as I could but, well...”
He rubs at the back of his head as Seokjin’s mother kindly refills his glass with water and directs a smile his way, “That’s alright, don’t worry about it. We were just starting to get worried something happened, since you didn’t pick up the phone.”
Namjoon furrows his eyebrows. “The phone?”
He starts to pat himself down, reaching into the pocket of his jeans—that, to Seokjin at least, seems completely empty—before letting out a sigh. “Man, I probably left it behind in the bus again,” he states, so casually and as-matter-of-factly, like he’s talking about the weather.
Seokjin is pretty sure that by this point, he is openly gaping at the younger, and he’s also fairly sure he’s beyond caring, because his own mother is looking at Namjoon as if she’s contemplating whether running all the way to their house has somehow affected him more than they’d initially thought. He finds himself speaking before he can stop himself.
“Again?”
The blond turns his head towards him, seeming a bit startled—whether it was by his question or by the fact it was the first time he’s actually said a word to him since he arrived, he’s not sure—but the look on his face is gone as quickly as it had appeared. Eventually, he shrugs and smiles wryly.
“Yeah... It happens pretty often, actually,” he informs him, with a dismissive wave of his hand and an awkward chuckle at his own expense. “ I’ll just contact the bus company later, it’s fine.”
(Seokjin is still gaping at him and only closes his mouth when his mother—finally—seems to remark that she needs to get going for a meeting, and Seokjin would you be a dear and get me my purse and the files on the desk? Thank you, honey.)
Soon enough, his mother leaves to meet with a fortunately-just-called-to-announce-they’ll be-late client and Seokjin is left alone with his brother and the one person who might be even more scatterbrained than Taehyung himself—and he’s supposed to be his tutor.
(He thinks—is pretty sure—that his disbelief might have shown on his face a little more than intended, because right as she was about to leave, his mother gave him the ‘Behave, or else’ look that was usually reserved for whenever they went out to dinner in ‘respectable’ restaurants and Taehyung had that glint in his eye whenever he saw a champagne bottle or anything that, in his possession, could be potentially turned into what his older brother considers a weapon of mass destruction. Seokjin resents being on the receiving end of this look because he honestly tried to give the guy the benefit of doubt when he showed up on their doorstep looking like road kill—then he nonchalantly admits to losing his phone so often he talks to the bus company on a regular basis, and he’s supposed to trust him—or at least trust him to survive a study session—with his brother. He thinks he’s justified in being a tiny bit skeptical.
“I have to go now, but I should be back by the time you’re done—oh, if you need anything in the meantime,” his mother looks at Namjoon after she’s done adjusting the scarf wrapped around her neck, “Just ask Seokjin—he’ll be happy to help.”
And because Seokjin loves and respects his mother—and also because he is more than aware that he won’t have much of a choice in the matter and that Yoongi hasn’t rubbed off on him enough to deny Namjoon help if he asks for it—all he can offer is a hesitant, rather awkward “Yeah”, that makes him internally cringe. But Namjoon seems to be pleased enough with it because what he gets in reply is a smile.)
They return to the kitchen so Namjoon can grab his bag—that the elder just noticed was there and hopes is full of books and study material—Seokjin trailing behind him, because he figures it’s only polite to do so until he can leave him with Taehyung and then be off to his room to finish the book he was reading.
He feels the younger’s gaze on him and directs his own (which was fixated on a stain on the counter that he’s still not managed to identify the origin of) at him, questioningly.
“So...” Namjoon drawls out, a hint of awkward hesitation still present in his deep voice as he gesticulates to the kitchen table in a non-descript way. “Should we just... get started here, or?”
Seokjin raises his eyebrows in a silent question, blinking at Namjoon, who has an expectant look on his face—and then it dawns on him.
“Oh—oh. I don’t need tutoring,” he scrambles to explain, internally cringing as the words come out slightly jumbled. “I mean, it’s my younger brother you’re here for,” comes out much more calmly, and now it’s Namjoon that’s blinking at him in confusion.
“Oh...” the blond trails off, an unreadable look on his face. His hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck—a nervous habit, probably. “I just assumed—Okay, uh—so, where ‘s your brother, then?”
The entire situation still feels slightly awkward (and a reminder that he should have just called Taehyung over the moment he was left alone with the guy) as Seokjin replies “Living room” and gestures for Namjoon to follow him. When they get to the living room, well—it’s seen better days, but Seokjin is at least grateful that Taehyung decided against eating individually wrapped snacks that day, so there is only a small amount of litter lying about, that the younger had also had the sense to keep in one place. Small mercies.
Taehyung turns to them as he hears them approach. “Ah, hyung—I was just about to—“ he comes to a sudden stop as he notices the presence of a third person—who currently looks rather uncomfortable as he’s being surveyed by the younger Kim (with a vacant look on his face and ‘eyes that can stare straight into another person’s soul’, as he’d overheard someone remark once at school) .
“Tae, this is Kim Namjoon—the tutor,” Seokjin offers as means of explanation. His brother takes another second to size him up, before he seems to have found whatever he’d been searching for and the blank look on his face morphs into his signature grin.
“Hey, I’m Taehyung.”
And soon enough, Seokjin becomes the third wheel to a very animated discussion between the two (“Oh, hey, I love this show—is this the new episode?” Taehyung’s grin seems to get even bigger as he replies: “Yeah! It’s even better than last week’s. Remember when they made them run that obstacle course in—“) so he finds himself picking up his book from where he’d abandoned it making his way to the stairs, ready to retreat to the peace and quiet of his bedroom.
He’s stopped in his tracks by “Oh—You’re leaving?” spoken in Namjoon’s deep timbre, and turns to see both him and Taehyung looking at him with expressions he can’t identify.
(Part of him wonders if Namjoon is already having reservations about this—he knows Taehyung can be a little too much to handle sometimes, but he’s a great kid, and he resents it when people try to disconsider him—and is trying to keep Seokjin around to act as a filter between them. Then again, barely a minute ago, they were talking to each other as if they were old friends, so maybe Seokjin’s just trying to find more reasons to dislike the guy. He dismisses both thoughts.)
“Yeah... I figured I’d leave you guys alone—I also have some things to take care of, so,” he gestures with his book to the general direction where the stairs led to. “I’ll just be upstairs—though, Taehyung can probably help you if you need anything.”
“Yeah, that’s—Yeah,” something seems to click in Namjoon’s mind, and Seokjin sees him reach for his bag, blond hair slightly falling onto his face as he bends down to retrieve it. “We should also get started.”
Taehyung—who seems to have finally caught up on the conversation, or at least realised what, exactly, Namjoon wants to get started on—seems to perk up at this. “We don’t have to get started right away,” he starts in his ‘I’m just going to suggest something stupid and somehow get you to agree to it’ voice that Seokjin is painfully familiar with.
“Taehyung’,” he warns, trying to channel his mother’s disapproving tone (which Yoongi says he’s getting crazy good at) into the single word, and the younger frowns at him in reply.
He seems to deflate even more when, in the next second, Namjoon starts clearing the table and setting an assortment of books and papers on its surface. After he’s done, he gives Taehyung an encouraging pat on the back, assuring him ‘it’s not going to be that bad, trust me’.
Seokjin lingers on the staircase for half a second, wondering if he should hang around in case Taehyung tries to persuade Namjoon into letting him off the hook, because their mother is paying him by the hour and she—unlike her eldest son—has really high hopes for this, so it would be a shame if it all went to waste. But there’s a change in Namjoon’s tone as he opens a textbook and starts talking that reminds Seokjin this is his job, and he wouldn’t be worth a recommendation from one of the sternest teachers at their school if he was that lenient with the students he tutored.
(That, and his mother would probably not be very happy with Seokjin if he gives into his skepticism and decides to stay and breathe over Namjoon’s neck the entire time.)
Deciding he’ll—reasonably—just come back later to check up on how things are going, he climbs up the stairs and heads for his bedroom.
(The last thing he hears before he shuts the door is:
“Hey, hyung—wanna see an elephant?”
“Sure—if you can somehow work it into this equation.” )
He manages to get through three more chapters of the book (semi-successfully, because at one point he realises he has no idea what he’s just read and that he’ll probably have to reread those passages—or just set his pride aside and find a thorough summary of it online) before he finds himself lying on his bed, phone in hand and dialing Yoongi’s number.
He picks up after the third ring, voice gruff and heavy with sleep. “You’re an asshole, Jin.”
“Rude,” he replies, mock-offended, but there’s a smile on his face. “Is that how you speak to your hyung?”
“Right, sorry,” comes the drawled out response from the other end. “You’re an asshole, Jin-hyung. Better?”
The elder chuckles—he can almost picture his friend scowling at the phone, dyed pink hair (that he really should dye back because it’s getting him in trouble for breaking dress code every other day, but he insists it’s a ‘matter of principle’) a mess atop of his head, eyes slightly unfocused and struggling to stay open. The ease he can do this with serves as a reminder for how long he’s been friends with Yoongi (long enough to be able to tell between him being disrespectful on purpose or just grumpy, which a lot of people assume are the exact same thing).
“I wouldn’t have to call if you didn’t always sleep through your alarm and then complained to me about it the next day because you had things to do,” he cuts him off before he has time to retort, “and don’t say you don’t have anything to do because I clearly remember you mentioning a project you’re ‘just going to half-ass two days before it’s due or something.’”
”...Whatever. So, did the guy show up already? The tutor guy, I mean.”
Seokjin can’t help but sigh at the change of topic. “Yeah, actually. Twenty-five minutes late and forgot his phone on the bus—which is apparently normal for him, believe it or not.”
“I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and assume you’re not a huge fan of his.”
He flips, disinterestedly, through his book—still more than half of it to go, and a week left to finish it—for lack of a better thing to do.
“It’s not that,” comes out a little more defensively than he intended. “It’s just... you know how I feel about Taehyung getting a tutor. I mean, you’ve met him—do you really think this is going to work any better than that time I tried it?”
“I think anything would work better than that—no offense, but those flash cards were terrible,” says Yoongi, rather bluntly, in spite of the affronted squeak that Seokjin lets out. “Honestly, though? I don’t know, maybe it’ll work. Or maybe your brother’s going to scar the guy for life—more likely, if you ask me.“
(Yoongi likes Taehyung well enough, but he is still not over the one time he was over at their house and walked in on the youngest member of the Kim household wearing a very questionable outfit, and replying to Yoongi’s ‘What the fresh hell is this?’ with ‘A ladybug costume’ as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Seokjin is convinced that his friend is going to remind him of this incident for as long as he lives—he might even resent its memory enough to make it the last thing he says on his death bed.)
“So who’s this guy, anyway?”
“Kim Namjoon. He’s a year below us, I think,” he hears Yoongi make a humming sound on the other end and furrows his eyebrows. “Do you know him?”
“Kind of? Yeah. He’s friends with Hobi—“ this doesn’t come as a surprise to Seokjin, since half the student body, including him, is friends with Hoseok, “—so we’ve met before. Made kind of a lame first impression, but he can spit some sick rhymes.”
Seokjin thinks back at how the tutor’s outfit immediately had him thinking of Yoongi’s equivalent of a fashion magazine and mutters, “Of course he can.”
“Anyway, I heard Hobi mention something about him being smart before? And if he can deal hanging out with him on a daily basis, he might be able to handle Taehyung so—keep an open mind about this, I guess.”
Like every piece of advice he’s ever heard Yoongi give, it comes out uncertain and a little clumsily worded, but it’s honest and it’s not coming from his mother—who is hanging onto the slim chance of Namjoon being a miracle-worker and somehow transforming his brother into a diligent student overnight—but his best friend who, on his best days, only gives half a fuck about school and his own grades, let alone anyone else’s (only Yoongi is part of the minority that can half-ass his schoolwork and still get really good results, so he can afford it).
He sighs into the phone, resigned. “I guess you’re right. I probably should do that.”
There’s a pause on the other end and then Yoongi says: “Hold on, can you say that again? I want to record this for posterity.”
They chat for a little while longer until Yoongi decides he is awake enough to get started on his project (though it still requires some prompting from Seokjin) and after he hangs up, he stares at his unfinished book, thinking of the three chapters he has to reread.
As he gets a drama episode started on his laptop, he tries not to think of the fact that this might make him a teeny, tiny bit hypocritical, considering it was barely minutes ago that he was berating his friend for procrastinating, and convinces himself that he’s just taking a break.
His break ends up being longer than intended, because a while after the drama episode (which he swore he’ll only watch half of and ended up watching integrally) ends, he is browsing music videos online until a tell-tale feeling in his stomach informs him that he could really go for a snack. It’s also, he decides, the perfect excuse to go downstairs and check on how the tutoring session is going without looking like a paranoid, helicopter parent (well, sibling) so with that thought, he pushes himself off the bed and makes his way downstairs.
What he finds in the living room is this—Taehyung is slightly bent over the table, scribbling away at his notebook with a look of utmost concentration on his face that makes Seokjin’s heart swell with pride and happiness. Namjoon is nowhere in sight—probably went to use the bathroom—but he doesn’t really care because he’s busy watching his brother so immersed in what he’s writing down, only pausing to occasionally glance at the book next to him before going back to his task, and paying Seokjin no mind.
(He has to admit that part of him feels slightly resentful of the fact that his brother has been more receptive to whatever a stranger has told him in a little over an hour than he has to Seokjin’s nagging the entire school year, but it would be a stupid thing to complain about if it means the end of Taehyung’s academic struggle.)
With a smile on his face, and quietly as to not distract Taehyung (even though he looks like he’s extremely caught up in his work, his attention span is notoriously bad, so he doesn’t want to risk it), he walks towards the kitchen—freezing in place when he hears thudding noises coming from that direction. And he’s not hearing things, because a second later, he can hear the exact same sound that clearly originates from the kitchen. Taehyung seems blissfully ignorant to this, at least.
(Common sense prevents Seokjin from panicking because there are only two people in the house aside from him and it’s unlikely that someone broke into the house, so Namjoon is probably in the kitchen and not the bathroom, like he’d assumed. Now as for what exactly he’s doing in the kitchen, Seokjin can’t tell—he conjures up a variety of scenarios that he pushes immediately out of his mind because a. he’s probably wrong and there’s a reasonable explanation to the noises, b. he’s just about to enter the kitchen and find out so there’s no need to psyche himself out.)
When he does enter the kitchen, he guesses it’s just as well that he didn’t waste any brainpower on thinking up more scenarios, because no amount of thinking he could’ve done in a minute would have prepared him for the scene in front of his eyes.
Namjoon has a look of concentration rivaling Taehyung’s, eyes slightly narrowed and biting at his lip. His knees are bent the slightest bit and his hands are holding tightly onto the door of the fridge, the muscles of his arms contracting as he holds it up in place and pushes. Said fridge door seems completely detached from the actual fridge and what Namjoon seems to be trying to accomplish is, somehow, putting it back in its original place (and occasionally muttering cuss words at it because, why not?).
Seokjin has no idea how long he just stands there, rigid with shock, until a hissed out “What the hell?” manages to escape his lips, making his presence known.
Almost immediately, the younger whirls around to face him, mouth agape and eyes widened into an expression that’s the perfect mixture of surprise and inexplicable guilt, and in the entire process almost drops the fridge door (a strangled noise catches at the back of Seokjin’s throat) but immediately comes to his senses and catches it, gripping harder onto its surface.
“I—uh...” is the only thing Namjoon says before letting silence lapse between them as they stare at each other.
“How?” an incredulous Seokjin manages to ask, after a while. Staring at Namjoon and the fridge door, he clearly has a vague idea of what happened, but the logistics of it still make it pretty hard to put two and two together.
Namjoon (in a fortunate display of common sense) carefully sets down the fridge door, still slightly resembling a deer in the headlights, before running a hand through his messed up hair and sighing.
“I actually have no idea—Taehyung said he was hungry, but I thought he was trying to find an excuse to get a break from tutoring, so I said I’ll get something for him,” he winces. “And I mean, I’m a disaster in the kitchen but I didn’t think I could mess up taking something out of a fridge.”
He wouldn’t have thought so either, yet here they are—both him and Namjoon, staring at a fridge door that’s completely off its hinges, waiting for it to reattach itself to the fridge by some sort of miracle. Finally, and for what seems to be one too many times that day, Seokjin sighs in resignation (this is his life, these are not his choices, but that is his fridge) before he approaches the disaster and tries to decide on the best course of action.
“I’m really sor—“
“Just help me try to get this back up,” he interrupts Namjoon snippily, but with more composure than he thought he has in him.
In the next second, the other is at his side, holding onto half of the door, and they both proceed in their attempt to put it back in place, exchanging little to no words except the occasional ‘hold it up a little higher and more to your left’ from Seokjin, to which Namjoon silently complies without missing a beat. Seokjin doesn’t know what he’s hoping for, honestly—maybe he’s relying too much on the chance that there’s strength in numbers and somehow the two of them together might succeed in what Namjoon alone hadn’t—but after a lot of struggling, frustrated sighs and maneuvering, they step away from the fridge.
The door’s not fixed by any means but they somehow found a way to make it stick in place (as long as nobody attempts to open it) and this is enough for now, at least until Seokjin’s mother comes home and he’ll have to explain this to her, and suddenly he really wishes he hadn’t given Namjoon the benefit of doubt and stayed back in the living room to supervise.
(He doesn’t expect his mother to be extremely mad, and he shouldn’t be too mad at Namjoon himself because he’s not irrational enough to think he goes into people’s houses and breaks off their fridge doors for fun, but the entire situation only seems to solidify—in a weird way that he hadn’t even thought of—what a bad idea getting Taehyung a tutor is.)
Namjoon seems to read this on his face because after another moment of tense silence, he clears his throat and says, "Uh... not like I’m expecting to get paid after this, but... do you think you can accept tutoring free of charge in exchange for, I don't know—not filing a complaint against me for destroying your property?"
His awkward, tentative chuckle ceases when the frown on Seokjin’s face doesn’t show any signs of disappearing.
"That's for my mother to decide," he replies, and he knows it comes out a little too harsh when sees the other wince, but he can’t bring himself to say anything particularly nice or comforting like he’s known for doing.
(Maybe because Seokjin has been feeling fairly irritable and opposed to the tutor’s presence the entire day, or maybe because Namjoon doesn’t look quite as pitiful looking as a crying Jeon Jungkook had, a couple years back when he and Taehyung had somehow managed to completely wreck the elder’s game console. To this day, Jungkook absolutely denies crying and pleading Seokjin not to take him and Tae on the rooftop—and to this day, Seokjin has no idea what that was supposed to mean or what kind of stories about him his brother had been feeding to his friends back then.)
Namjoon looks like he wants to say something else—maybe apologise again, maybe ask Seokjin to make sure he convinces his mother not to file that complaint (not that he has anything to worry about, because his mother is too nice for her own good and would probably be willing to let everything slide and pay Namjoon in full for the tutoring session), or maybe he wants to suggest they continue trying to fix the fridge—but he doesn’t give him the chance, suggesting they go to the living room to see how Taehyung’s faring before the younger can even open his mouth.
(Seeming eager to put as much space as possible between the broken fridge and himself, Namjoon agrees in a heartbeat.)
But five minutes later, Seokjin wishes he’d just stayed in the kitchen. He’s staring down at a myriad of shapes and numbers scribbled on top of graph paper in stunned silence and thinks he should have seen this coming. Surprisingly, he’s not the first one to speak.
“Taehyung what... is this?” Namjoon’s voice is hesitant, as if he’s scared of hurting the younger’s feelings by having a wrong reaction (is there even a right reaction?) to the—for lack of a better word—caricature that is now proudly taking up a page out of Taehyung’s math notebook.
Taehyung clicks his tongue, “It’s an elephant.”
“I can see that,” the tutor replies slowly, looking from the paper to Taehyung (who is barely paying attention, busy typing something on his phone), then back to the paper. “But... why?”
“You told me to find a way to work it into the equation,” is the cheeky reply he receives and Seokjin sees him open and close his mouth several times before snapping it shut for good and choosing to look down at the drawing like it had personally offended him.
(It’s this exact moment when Kim Namjoon realises that a. he’s not only been outsmarted by a brat, but has quite literally walked right into it, and b. he’s really underestimated the extent of Kim Taehyung’s aversion to anything school-related.)
Before Seokjin can realise what’s happening or at least what his emotions are doing, he’s laughing—he’s not sure why, actually, because overall this day has proven to be something between disastrous and downright tragic. His mother has put so much faith into this tutoring thing and here’s a tally of what has happened so far: the tutor was late and made the worst possible impression ever, because of said tutor their fridge now has a clumsily reattached broken door, and the only thing that has resulted from all of this was a drawing of an elephant made out of a variety of mathematical symbols. It’s as if, overnight, his life had decided to become an episode of a low-budget sitcom, complete with a laughing track in the background each and every time he felt like ripping his hair off in frustration.
As his laughter subsides, he reaches out to fondly ruffle Taehyung’s hair, in spite of the younger’s confused protests.
(Really, he should be glad since his alternatives were bursting into tears—which he refuses to do in front of other people, let alone a complete stranger—or strangling his brother because God, he knows Taehyung doesn’t like Math and that he finds school boring and really—he gets it, and even when he doesn’t, he tries to be understanding and supportive. But sometimes it just gets hard to understand why his brother, who is probably at least ten times smarter than himself, refuses to put in the minimal amount of effort to keep his grades afloat. It’s something that he can’t ignore anymore because Taehyung has finally reached the point where he’s failing something—not just Maths, Seokjin heard he’s not faring very well in History or English either—and he knows grades don’t account for someone’s intelligence, but a lot of people act like they do, and the idea of his brother struggling to make a future for himself because of that makes Seokjin feel sick to his stomach.
It also makes him feel guilty for ignoring this for so long, for assuring himself that Taehyung is just having a harder time adjusting to high school, for doing nothing to address the problem than make half-assed flash cards that he gave up on after he found out the only use Taehyung had got out of them was drawing a multitude of farm animals and intricate depictions of male genitalia, on each and every colourful paper, whenever he was bored.
And it also makes him realise that—as much as his pride protests to this—maybe his mother is not the only one who had wished for this tutoring session to go over smoothly).
Namjoon is still staring at the elephant when Seokjin gets up and announces he’s going to make tea (and if Namjoon’s cup happens to turn out particularly bitter, the younger doesn’t say anything about it as he thanks him and takes another sip, nor does he remark on the fact that Seokjin doesn’t as much as acknowledge him afterwards, though he does notice, if the uncomfortable look on his face is anything to go by).
Somehow, Taehyung is convinced to give Math another chance—even if he does it with the most disinterested face a human can possibly make and really sluggish movements—and this time Namjoon is leaning over his shoulder, observing his every move with furrowed eyebrows. Seokjin feels his skepticism returning full force because his brother is clearly doing everything half-heartedly and will probably forget everything he’s writing down before Namjoon even steps a foot out of their house. But for some reason, there’s a smile on the tutor’s face as he observes him, like he’s just made the world’s biggest discovery.
(Seokjin thinks it’s completely rational to be annoyed at this because Namjoon hasn’t actually done anything besides breaking their fridge and making Taehyung solve some Math problems he’s not even paying attention to—something he would have done himself if he thought it would help Taehyung in the slightest—and he hopes he can convince his mother that paying for a second session would not be worth it.)
He’s almost grateful for the distraction when he hears his her enter the house (“I’m home—Seokjin, can you come help me with the groceries?”). He gladly carries the (purchased on impulse, since his mother happened to pass by the store) groceries and places them onto the kitchen table before it occurs to him that the next logical step would be to put them into the fridge, the one he’s currently eyeing apprehensively, wondering how he could even begin to explain the situation to his mother. He gets a couple minutes to think about it while she changes out of her clothes into something more comfortable, and is still drawing a blank by the time she returns.
Namjoon seems to have come to the same realisation he did, because in the next moment he’s in the kitchen, Taehyung trailing behind him with a curious look on his face. His mother, who has already started preparations for dinner (as did Seokjin—it was an unspoken arrangement for him to help out in the kitchen by now), turns to them with a cheerful smile.
“Hello boys—how’s studying?”
Taehyung lets out an ever-suffering sigh and takes a seat at the kitchen table, “Namjoon-hyung’s making me do equations.”
His mother’s smile seems to brighten even more, lighting up her entire face (all Seokjin can think of, with regret, is the elephant in Taehyung’s math notebook) as she secures her apron behind her neck before bending down to give her son an affectionate peck on his temple (that Taehyung makes a face at, playfully).
“And I’m sure you’re great at them, honey,” then she turns to Namjoon, still smiling fondly and now threading her fingers through Taehyung’s hair, “I hope he hasn’t been giving you a lot of trouble.”
Namjoon shakes his head fervently, “Oh—no, no. He’s been great,” and less nervously, in the same controlled tone of voice that makes him sound older than he is, the one Seokjin heard him use whenever he explained something to Taehyung, adds: “I wouldn’t worry about him too much, Mrs. Kim. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think it’s going to be hard for him to catch up.”
(He can’t help but let out a subtle snort at that, but nobody seems to have heard it aside from Namjoon, whose eyes flicker to him for half a second.)
Taehyung seems to pay no mind to the statement, while Seoyun looks absolutely delighted as she instructs Seokjin to start chopping the onions and gently smacks her youngest son’s hand away from where it was trying to grab onto a bag of chips.
“Don’t spoil your appetite before dinner,” she scolds, and promptly starts placing the snacks in their respective cupboards as Taehyung watches, mournfully. With a sudden thought, she cranes her head in the tutor’s direction. “You should join us, Namjoon—it’s not going to be long until it’s ready, and I’m sure you must be hungry by now.”
(Seokjin pauses in his miserable task of onion chopping, attentive to the scene in front of him.)
Namjoon seems to have been caught a little off-guard by the request. “I really wouldn’t want to impose,” tumbles out of his mouth in a rush. “Actually, Mrs. Kim—“
Seoyun scoffs, tossing her hastily tied ponytail over her shoulder. “Impose. Don’t be ridiculous, you’re more than welcome to stay,” she says in that tone, the one that leaves little room for objections, and Namjoon looks more than a little bit nervous.
He starts to feel kind of guilty and like he’s being a little unfair, because even if he doesn’t really know or like Namjoon and he was the one who had somehow wrecked the fridge door, this is still Seokjin’s house and to a point, his responsibility—because he can’t (or does he want to) pretend not to know about the door being broken. He sighs, “Mom—“
His mother gives him the look, making him pause out of instinct and confusion—and then he realises it probably looks like he’s trying to find an excuse for Namjoon not to stay over for dinner (and part of him is offended, because he can’t believe his own mother actually thinks he’s that petty).
“Really,” she continues, pointedly, starting to walk about the kitchen opening and closing cupboards, taking out ingredients. “We’d love to have you over—you and Taehyung can go back to studying until we’re done here, and we’ll just call you when the food’s ready.“
And before any of them can react, she opens the fridge, pulling the door off in its entirety. Seokjin knows he should probably rush over to help her lift it up but he is frozen in spot—and in fact, his mother is handling it quite well by herself. She seems to get accustomed the situation almost instantly, placing her hand on the bottom half of the door to support it and then carefully setting it down on the ground next to the fridge. Before Seokjin can even begin to explain what happened, Namjoon beats him to it.
“I can’t even begin to apologise for this,” Seokjin’s mother whirls around to look at Namjoon. The younger has his eyes closed, cringing and a hand running through his bleached locks like it’s his only comfort. “It’s all my fault—I tried to get something for Taehyung and I to eat, but the door was kind of stuck so I pulled harder even though I should have probably just left it alone—“
The woman blinks at him in confusion, mouth shaping an ‘o’ as she looks from the door to Namjoon in quick succession before interrupting his speech. “Wait—wait. Oh, goodness,” she sighs, bringing a palm to her forehead and chuckling, to the utter confusion of two teenagers (and the indifference of another, who is busily typing on his phone).
“Oh—I just—honey, this is not your fault,” Seokjin’s mother says as she sets down the cheese she was holding, the corners of her eyes still crinkling up in silent laughter.
“It’s not?” he and Namjoon ask, almost in unison, turn to look at each other, then back at Seoyun who is shaking her head at the both of them.
“Teenage boys these days, I swear. Did you really think you pulled a door off its hinges just like that?”
At that, Namjoon’s cheeks colour with a reddish hue and a sheepish smile makes its way on his face. “Well—I kind of have a tendency to break things. My friends even call me the God of Destruction, so yeah, I thought...”
His explanation only draws another (fond, motherly) chuckle out of her and a slight mutter of ‘God of Destruction, teenagers these days...’
(In hindsight, it would have probably amused Seokjin as well if he were in the right state of mind and not staring at his mother with wide eyes, onion-half cut and kitchen knife still gripped in his hand, hung up on a single thought and namely: Then what the hell happened to the fridge?)
“This thing over here,” she taps the sleek surface of the fridge with her knuckles, “has been acting up lately. Well, the door at least. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she’s talking to Seokjin now, “but it’s been creaking a lot and getting jammed and it’s been driving me up the wall. I kept saying I’ll call someone to get it fixed but never got around to it.”
(And looking back on it, he does remember the door getting stuck once in a while and on more than one occasion, walking in on his mother muttering what sounded like death wishes in the direction of the fridge, but it hadn’t really occurred to him until now.)
“But when I complained about it this morning before your father left, he decided he’ll take the matters in his own hands and well,” she sighs, gestures towards the door lying on the floor, and the tone of her voice becomes dry. “The door’s not creaking anymore, so I guess he did somewhat fix the problem.”
That being said, she plucks out a couple more items from the fridge, lifts up the door (“It’s okay, I’ve got it” she says to Namjoon when he starts walking over to help), gives it a mighty shove so it sticks to its place, and picks up the cheese she left on the counter.
“So don’t worry, you didn’t break anything more than it was already broken,” are the last words of assurance she gives Namjoon, alongside a pat on the shoulder (which looks a little awkward since Namjoon is even taller than Seokjin and his mother is a rather tiny person, but the intention matters).
“Why didn’t I know about this?” Seokjin finds himself asking, eyebrows furrowing.
Seoyun mirrors his expression and bites her lip in thought, “I don’t know—I think you were still sleeping,” then something seems to dawn on her and she looks at her youngest son, still sitting at the kitchen table with a phone in his hands.”I did tell Taehyung, though.”
Hearing his name being spoken, Taehyung lifts his head to look at all three of them, and a moment later he turns towards Seokjin with a large, almost sheepish, but not really apologetic grin. “Oh, yeah. Hyung, the fridge door’s broken.”
Seokjin convinces himself to put the kitchen knife down.
(Afterwards, he focuses on chopping the onions and just about anything he can get his hands on, half-heartedly listening to his mother scolding Taehyung “I told you to tell your brother—and that should have gone for Namjoon, too. What if someone got hurt?” and his brother’s whining “I know, I’m sorry—mom, I was trying to beat Jimin’s high score when you told me, did you really expect me to remember?” while avoiding looking at Namjoon—who he’d been low-key accusing of murdering his fridge—at any cost.
He only allows himself to relax, shoulders sagging in relief, when he hears the distinct sounds of footsteps and Taehyung protesting being made to do more Math “You don’t have to” Namjoon assures him “I also have English and History with me, so you can take your pick” and their voices fade away as they return to the living room.)
Namjoon does end up staying for dinner, after getting the okay from his own parents, and it’s awkward—for Seokjin, at least. After the entire debacle with the fridge was cleared up, with Namjoon declared innocent, he seems to relax considerably and compliments his mother for the dinner (and by extension, Seokjin as well) as he takes his seat at the table.
It doesn’t hurt that Seoyun eagerly asks him questions one after another (over dinner he finds out that Namjoon is an only child, he would like to do music production in the future, he set his kitchen on fire not once—but twice—before his parents officially banned him from going anywhere near it, and he used to have a pet dog before it passed away) and also pushing overwhelming amounts of food onto Namjoon’s plate despite his protests, because ‘he’s a growing boy, he needs to eat well’.
Taehyung asks questions of his own between mouthfuls of food (and occasionally during, which leads to their mother chastising him) and it turns out that Namjoon has, in fact, not only played that video game he is absolutely obsessed with, but knows one or two things that might help Taehyung finally beat Park Jimin’s insufferably high score. From the blinding smile Taehyung shoots him after he finds out, Seokjin knows Namjoon is officially forgiven for all the equations he’s been forcing on him, and more.
And Seokjin, well—Seokjin is grateful that his immeasurable love for food gives him the perfect excuse to stay silent during dinner, and he’s left alone to mull over his thoughts while chewing on large pieces of chicken. He thinks of his own voice declaring to Yoongi over the phone that he should give Taehyung’s tutor a chance and how that flew right out the window when he found him in the kitchen, fridge door in hand—and it turns out it wasn’t even his doing, but Seokjin’s dad’s, who is probably never going to be allowed to play handyman anymore if his mother can help it.
And maybe Namjoon’s tutoring didn’t have any effect on Taehyung, but Seokjin hadn’t expected it to work, regardless of the identity of the tutor—and he gave the guy bitter tea on purpose, for God’s sake. His mother wasn’t entirely wrong when she gave him the look because now that he looks back on it, Seokjin admits he might have been a little petty.
(This also makes him think back to one time when he was over at Yoongi’s, sitting on his bed next to Hoseok while Yoongi had chosen to sit in the computer chair at his desk. He’s not sure what they had been originally talking about, but somehow the conversation spiraled down to:
“You can be, y’know, kind of snobby sometimes.”
At the completely, one hundred percent offended look that Seokjin sends his way, Yoongi shrugs, swiveling around in his chair.
“Well, not always—but sometimes you are, and it usually has to do with Taehyung,” he comes to a full stop as he says this and Seokjin’s still waiting for the punch line.
When it doesn’t come, he turns to Hoseok, who suddenly seems very interested in the A$AP Rocky poster on Yoongi’s bedroom wall. “Do you also think I’m snobby?”
Hoseok cringes slightly, turns to him and lets out a long ‘erm’ in thought, before deciding: “I wouldn’t exactly say snobby just... sometimes you can be very... nitpicky when something doesn’t meet your expectations.”
And like that, he wasn’t only offended, because that’s more or less defining snobby, but also completely lost. “Like?”
“Remember Taehyung’s first girlfriend?” he doesn’t even give Seokjin the chance to interrupt him. “You were very vocal about how much you disapproved of her, hyung.”
“And a lot of it was stupid shit like ‘Her smile gives me bad vibes’,” Yoongi pipes up with a smirk.
He sighs because—alright, that was not his finest moment, but: “Unless you guys conveniently forgot, she ended up brutally dumping Taehyung and calling him a freak, so I was making the right call.”
“Oh, we remember,” Hoseok winces empathically. “Middle schoolers these days are harsh, man. But—still doesn’t change the fact you were nitpicking.”
Seokjin makes a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, patiently waiting for his friends to move on to another topic—hopefully one that shows him in a better light—but Hoseok is apparently not done making him regret his life choices.
“Also, don’t act like you know nothing about her Hello Kitty bike bell just vanishing the very next day,” his friend says this, as matter-of-factly, and Seokjin suddenly feels his embarrassment intensifying tenfold because he’s never told Hoseok—or anyone—he’s done something like that, so he must have been really bitter if it was obvious enough to guess.
“Wait,” Yoongi exclaims, smiling like a maniac and looking like he’s just about to fall out of his chair, “You stole a little girl’s bike bell as revenge for hurting your kid’s brother’s feelings?”
When Seokjin doesn’t say anything in sheer mortification, Yoongi starts laughing—and laughing, and laughing, until he’s crouching down on the floor and occasionally coughing out incoherent sentenced comprised mostly of ‘shit’ and ‘oh my god’.
After Yoongi’s completely recovered and can look Seokjin in the eye without bursting into laughter all over again, he says: “I stand corrected about what I said before—you’re not snobby. You’re snobby and incredibly petty.”
Seokjin doesn’t pout for long after that because Yoongi assures him it’s fine since ‘If you were actually nice, I don’t think I could’ve been friends with you’ and then Hoseok is the one who needs to be assured that yes, he’s enough of an asshole to make it onto Yoongi’s friend list, and the conversation finally moves on.)
So, after dinner is over and Namjoon has to leave (after Seokjin’s mother pays him for the tutoring session, and he insists on only taking half the money at most because they had him over for dinner and he is sure the food is worth more than half of what he’s getting paid, so “Mrs. Kim, please, it’s alright” and Seokjin’s still not sure which one of them had won that bargain, though Namjoon had managed to convince his mother he doesn’t need a ride home) Seokjin is the one who offers to see him out, and he tries not to let onto the fact that he saw the brief flicker of dread that crossed Namjoon’s face right before he replaced it with a kind smile as he bid his mother and Taehyung goodbye and good night.
Which brings them both on the front porch of the house, standing next to each other in complete silence. Namjoon has his jacket on while Seokjin only has his threadbare sweater, but it’s either not particularly cold outside or he’s just too preoccupied to notice it. He really should be saying something, anything, because right now he’s just keeping Namjoon from going home and probably setting himself up for a cold, but his mind has gone blank.
Thankfully, Namjoon doesn’t seem to have that problem.
“So...” Seokjin turns to him when he hears him speak—hesitantly, awkwardly, and completely unlike the way he had talked to his mother just five minutes ago. “I’m guessing this is the moment when you tell me to make up some excuse for the next time your mom calls me to tutor Taehyung, right?”
Standing outside in a jacket with too many pockets, with his blond hair flopping onto his forehead (all the hair gel he’d put in it seems to have given up on doing its job) and making a perfect picture of uncertainty, Namjoon actually looks his age—that is, younger than Seokjin, and probably still thinking he’s done something to personally offend him.
He sighs, “No, actually. I just wanted to say sorry.”
Namjoon looks rather taken aback at that, eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. He shifts his gaze away from his face and onto a loose thread of his sweater that he’s been playing with for the past minute as he continues.
“I’ve been kind of—“ he pauses. ‘Petty’ is not something he wants to call himself, ‘unfair’ doesn’t really seem to cut it and ‘nasty’ sounds like something his seven year old cousin Hwanhee would use so he just ends up with: “—a dick to you today. Not just about the fridge, but kind of about everything—so, I’m sorry about that.”
The younger is confused for a second longer (time during which Seokjin abandoned his work on the loose thread and lifted his head) before he smiles hesitantly at him. “Nah, it’s cool. You weren’t even that bad, especially considering you walked in on me looking like I totaled your fridge,” he lifts his hand and (as expected) brings it behind his head to rub at the back of his neck, “To be honest, I’ve kind of been waiting for you to yell at me the entire time.”
“I kind of wanted to,” Seokjin finds himself admitting with a cringe. “But I’m glad I didn’t—I mean, it turns out it wasn’t your fault at all, and I’ve kind of been unfairly judging you on everything ever since you got here, so...”
Namjoon waves a hand, dismissively. “It’s fine, I get that a lot,” and it does nothing to make Seokjin feel even remotely better.
And this is the perfect moment for Seokjin to end the conversation, bid Namjoon good night and send him on his way—so, he’s not really sure why, instead, he decides to start talking again.
“It’s not something personal, you know,” he leans against the door as he speaks, looking past Namjoon’s shoulder (the neighbours have started repainting their house and it’s kind of distracting). “I was against the idea of Taehyung getting a tutor because I don’t like the idea of some smartass getting paid to come here and talk down to my brother.”
In the following moment he realises that might not only sound snobby, but also kind of insulting considering Namjoon is one of those smartasses. “Sorry—“
“No, it’s fine,” Namjoon actually seems amused and makes himself comfortable leaning against one of the porch pillars. “Go on.”
He takes a deep breath before continuing. “Yeah... I mean, I know that’s not what tutors are supposed to be like, but a friend of mine had a tutor once and—yeah, that didn’t end well,” he thinks he can actually still recite the many ways Yoongi had cussed out his former tutor off the top of his head. “And even if they ended up being a reasonable person, they wouldn’t be much help with Taehyung. It’s not like Taehyung doesn’t understand things, he’s actually incredibly smart—“
“I know.”
He looks at Namjoon in astonishment, not having expected to be interrupted, and while the other still has the hint of a smile on his face, he looks completely serious.
“I know,” he repeats, and then he reaches under his coat to pull something out of his pants pocket—a folded paper, and when he unfolds and straightens it out, Seokjin sees it’s the elephant Taehyung had doodled earlier.
He squints at it in confusion. “Wha—“
“Believe it or not, this thing here,” he gives the paper a shake and the elder tries to keep his eyes focused on the outline of the elephant, “is the entire solution to the equation I made Taehyung solve earlier.”
A moment passes before Seokjin finds his voice to ask, yet again, though even more incredulously: “What?”
Namjoon nods and starts re-folding the paper, carefully, “I didn’t think of it at first—I mean, I didn’t even think he was paying attention when I told him how to solve it—but then I looked at it more closely. So I gave him more work to do.”
(He remembers Namjoon leaning over Taehyung with that look on his face like he’d found something out and if it annoyed him back then, now it makes perfect sense.)
“But,” the younger sighs, “he got most of them wrong, even though he clearly knows how to do them. To put it simply, just makes mistakes or skips steps because well—he’s not invested enough in what he’s doing. While with the elephant—he was trying to be a little shit, but the point is that he was trying.”
It’s something Seokjin could have easily told him, but he finds himself feeling somewhat pleased that Namjoon had figured it out by himself. Namjoon seems pleased as well—there’s a spark in his eyes as he explains his findings, and it’s becoming clear that he actually enjoys tutoring, and puts a lot of effort and emotional investment in it—which makes Seokjin feel guilty all over again for continuously having underestimated the younger. But it still begs the question...
“So... to make him pay attention to what he’s doing, you have to keep daring him to do it in ways that would make you look stupid?” the question comes out heavily sarcastic for someone who’s having this conversation to apologise for being a low-key snobbish asshole, but it makes Namjoon laugh heartily.
“Nah, and it doesn’t mean he should start drawing elephants on his tests either,” he places the folded up drawing of said elephant back in his pocket and keeps his hand there, to warm it up. “He just has to learn a way to make studying or working on assignments entertaining enough for him to stay focused, but I don’t know—not too entertaining, so it still looks normal. I think he probably has a similar problem with History and English.”
Seokjin nods because it makes enough sense—even when not studying or working, Taehyung has the attention span of a goldfish, or just focuses on the entirely wrong thing altogether—and explains why those flashcards hadn’t worked because not even Hoseok, who can get excited over anything, had found those not even a little bit entertaining.
“So, yeah,” Namjoon breathes out, and it’s visible in condensation—Seokjin finally realises it is cold, and that’s probably why sometime during listening to Namjoon talk he’d subconsciously folded his arms and started rubbing at them. “I’d be uh—more than happy to keep tutoring Taehyung and try to help him figure out what works for him if you don’t mind the fact that I probably will end up actually breaking something in your house at one point and I’m sorry in anticipation.”
Seokjin snorts at the younger’s mock solemn tone and Namjoon joins in with his own deep chuckle and for the first time that day, the air between them feels comfortable, almost friendly. Which is why, he thinks, it would be pretty anti-climactic to say ‘Don’t worry, even if I didn’t want you around, my mother does and what she says goes’ so instead he replies with:
“I don’t mind,” and offers Namjoon a wider smile—a genuine one—that he reciprocates.
(And that’s when Seokjin finally takes a moment to observe his smile and sees the small indentations in his cheeks and—Namjoon has dimples. He tries not to look and pretends not to feel affected by this recent epiphany.)
“Cool,” Namjoon pushes himself off the pillar he was leaning against and starts to set off for the stairs. “I’ll see you around, then.”
“Yeah,” Seokjin says as he opens the door to go back inside before he has another sudden thought. “Hey, Namjoon.”
Said guy, now standing on one of the few stairs leading up to the porch, cranes his head to look at him in question.
“Sorry for the tea,” he says, sincerely, because Kim Seokjin takes any kind of consumables seriously (and because he never apologised to that girl for taking her bike bell, so at least he can apologise to Namjoon for killing off some of his taste buds).
The other only grins at him, “Don’t worry—it really wasn’t bad at all,” and then turns around to leave.
Seokjin ends up lingering in the open doorway because Namjoon stumbles on the last step and almost falls over on the concrete in front of their house (“I’m fine!”) so he stays to make sure he at least manages to leave the vicinity without dying or fatally injuring himself. Just so he wouldn’t feel responsible in case it happened, really.
Taehyung’s yelling brings him back to reality. “Hyung, if you’re done flirting with Namjoon-hyung, can you help me look for my phone? I can’t find it.”
Flushing with indignation and cold, Seokjin finally gets inside, closing the door behind him and wondering if it would be too harsh to whack Taehyung on the head with his phone once he finds it.