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Their breathing is normalising, falling into a pattern where their hearts beat together. Hoseok’s hand is splayed out opposite his head on Yoongi’s chest, his hot breath falling against Yoongi’s skin. They’re both tired, and Hoseok closes his eyes whilst Yoongi’s stay contemplatively open. It’s quiet, no-one talks. Yoongi’s fingers are carding caringly through Hoseok’s hair.
“Jungkook tried to kiss me last night.” Yoongi says after a while. He says it casual, as if he’s talking about the weather, and maybe he is, in a roundabout kind of way.
“Oh,” Hoseok replies, evidence of surprise in his voice, but he doesn’t sound offended or upset, because he’s not. Why should he be?
Of course. Why should he be.
“Did you let him?” Hoseok asks, raising his eyebrows in question. He’s just asking because he’s curious, of course. Yoongi started a conversation and Hoseok is continuing it. It’s casual. Everything’s casual.
Except Hoseok is asking “Did you let him?” as if he might not have, instead of “Did you not let him?” as if he didn’t, which based on Yoongi’s phrasing would be the obvious conclusion. Hoseok is asking “Did you let him?” the optimistic approach, and that means he’s holding out a little bit of hope, does it not?
Well, maybe, maybe not. Because Yoongi started with “Jungkook tried to kiss me last night.” instead of “Jungkook kissed me last night.” which is what he should have said. So maybe Yoongi’s holding something back as well.
“Yeah.” He says, in the same tone as before, and it sounds like it could be the end.
He continues.
“I didn’t carry it on, though.”
“Oh?” Hoseok asks, though it’s not much of a question, and Yoongi almost laughs at that. “Did you not want to?” He sounds interested, like he’s genuinely asking. He sounds like he genuinely wants an answer. Only the way he says it reminds Yoongi of the way he asks Jimin about where he learned to dance: inquisitive. He sounds like whatever answer Yoongi gives will have the same inconsequential effect and that’s nothing if not confusing. But that’s nothing new - he’s always confused when it comes to Hoseok.
Nothing is ever simple, or clear, or steady between them, and Yoongi’s too afraid to straight up ask. So they settle for not knowing and pretending not to care, and Yoongi asks questions about Hoseok’s feelings in roundabout ways, with a voice like there are clouds in the sky.
Yoongi wants to reply, but he doesn’t really know what to say to that.
“Did you not want to?” replays in his mind until he has an answer on the tip of his tongue. Because he did want to, honestly. He’s wanted to kiss Jungkook for a long time, and he’s known it too. Maybe, he realises now, Hoseok has as well.
But saying “I did.” wouldn’t be the whole answer. It would only be half the story; two chapters out of five. Because Yoongi did want to kiss Jungkook, but Jungkook kissed him first, and that means something.
Yoongi doesn’t like ‘meaning something’. Yoongi doesn’t like having feelings on the line. He’s thrown his own out on the kerb enough times for them not to matter to him, but the second he has someone else's pressing cautiously into his palms, he quickly moves his hands away.
He doesn’t want to hurt Jungkook. He doesn’t even know what the ‘something’ in ‘meaning something’ is. What is this to him? Is Yoongi just a crush or does Jungkook really feel something?
Yoongi knows the answer of course, it’s just easier to pretend he doesn’t.
But then there’s the case of the fifth and final chapter. Or maybe it would fit better being first. Because Yoongi did want to kiss Jungkook, but the thing is, he kisses Hoseok instead.
Or as well. It doesn’t matter, he kisses Hoseok. It’s a fact, and it’s something he can’t ignore anymore. Not if Jungkook wants to kiss him as well.
And it hurts, is what it does. Because Yoongi wants to be able to hold Jungkook’s feelings delicately in his hands, protecting them and nursing them and letting them grow into the lines on his palms. He wants to let himself smile at Jungkook with the light of his eyes, and he wants to hold him when Jungkook says he isn’t allowed to cry. But the only person he can do that with is Hoseok, and he doesn’t know why.
Maybe it’s because they’ve done this for so long, or maybe it’s because they’re connected somewhere behind the stage. Maybe it’s because someone knows how Yoongi feels about Hoseok and Yoongi thinks that maybe– maybe– it might be himself.
The answer could be “No, I did.”, but Yoongi wouldn’t feel right lying like that. He’s good at only saying and only seeing the things he needs to at the time, leaving out the dusty details and only showing half the story to the sunlight. He’s more or less an expert, he’s been doing it with Hoseok for years.
But in this situation, in this context, it wouldn’t feel right. Yoongi feels like he’s blind to a part of himself.
So instead of saying no, and then following it up with yes, which would maybe be the best description of his answer anyway, he continues to thread his fingers through Hoseok’s hair and stays quiet for a beat too long. (Hoseok knows, he hears it where his ear is pressed to Yoongi’s heart.)
“Yoongi?” He says, and he shouldn’t, because Yoongi is older than him, and he should tack on a hyung at the end of that. But in all honesty, Yoongi doesn’t care about stupid technicalities when it comes to Hoseok. Hoseok is the exception.
Yoongi’s fingers never stop, and at some point Hoseok started to draw mindless, featherweight patterns on Yoongi’s chest, and they both move and breathe the same as they always do: together.
“I don’t know.” Yoongi goes for in the end. Because even though he does, the reasons and the counter reasons and the feelings and the fears are all bubbling in his insides and babbling over each other in his brain and he can’t think clearly right now, and any answer he gives will be the wrong one.
Yoongi can’t see Hoseok’s face because he’s looking up at the ceiling, and even if he looked down he would only be met with the top of Hoseok’s head. He can’t see Hoseok’s reaction. He can’t see the lack of one either, and he thinks it’s kind of fitting. He never could see Hoseok clearly when he tried to get a reading. He never could see Hoseok clearly full stop.
But he saw enough, and what he didn’t see he felt in the plums of his cheeks and the raised bumps on his skin, and that almost filled the quota. He was almost content with that. But it just wasn’t enough anymore.
He couldn’t trust it unless he heard it out of Hoseok’s mouth. He would always, always be questioning himself. Questioning everything. Allowing his head to breed doubt within itself, to rip away the trust he should have in the one person he can never escape from. He needs to know, to get concrete confirmation of what they are, of what Hoseok really thinks for once in their goddamn existence.
So why doesn’t he just ask?
“What would you have said if I did?” Yoongi finds himself saying, and he’s taken aback, and because Hoseok doesn’t answer the second he finishes speaking his heart rate speeds up and his throat becomes dry and oh god what if he’s just ruined it all, it all, with an ambiguous question that makes Hoseok ask “If you did what?”
“If–” Yoongi stops because there are a lot of ‘what's’. He isn’t sure which he wants to know more. “If I did carry it on.”
This is it. He’s realising all too late that he asked an impossible question. He just wanted a simple answer, he didn’t want to unveil the weapon set straight for Yoongi's heart yet. But they’re never simple, never soft. Yoongi and Hoseok are always unsteady, always teetering on the edge of something enigmatic, and here he is, halfway off the diving board, suspended in mid-air.
Hoseok isn’t replying, and both of their hands have stopped moving. Yoongi is sure that the speed of his heart can be heard from a mile away, let alone felt by someone lying on his chest, but it seems like Hoseok’s has stopped entirely.
“I would ask what that means.”
And there, he said it. That can be the end. Neither of them are going to mention the change in their heartbeats and Hoseok isn’t going to add on “For us.” at the end. They’re not going to talk about it any more, and they’re not even going to try - they're going to easily forget this conversation ever happened.
Because you never remember a conversation about the weather, you just go to sleep and dream of it instead.