Chapter Text
Jungkook has been in the building for approximately eleven minutes when he decides, with great conviction, that he hates it.
Not in a dramatic, this-place-is-cursed kind of way. Well, probably. But more in the deeply practical sense that the elevator smells faintly like wet cardboard, the hallway carpeting is the ugliest shade of beige that he’s ever seen in his life, and this apartment building apparently operates under the assumption that if one hallway is confusing, then two identical hallways facing one another will definitely improve things.
It does not improve things.
It makes him feel like he’s trapped in some sort of low-budget maze designed by a landlord with some deeply personal issues.
“This is cute,” Taehyung says, which is an insane thing to say out loud while standing in the middle of a small living room surrounded by half-open boxes labeled KITCHEN, BATHROOM, and PLEASE DON’T DROP THIS IT’S MY LIFE. “Very compact. Very… urban.”
Jungkook looks at him.
“Say the word cute again and I’ll throw you down the stairs.”
Jimin, balancing a lamp under one arm and a tote bag over the other shoulder, snorts. “He means it. He’s been one minor inconvenience away from a violent outburst since we left the old place.”
“I have not.”
“You swore at a traffic light,” Jimin argues.
“It changed too fast!”
Taehyung grins, like this is the funniest thing that he’s ever heard. Which, to be fair, he probably does think that. He treats everything that Jimin says like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. “I still think it’s nice. Cozy. Character-building.”
Jimin snorts. “That’s the kind of thing you say when a place doesn’t have central air.”
“It has central air,” Jungkook says automatically.
Taehyung raises an eyebrow. “Does it?”
Jungkook pauses. He actually has no idea whether or not there’s central air here.
It feels like something he should know.
It feels like one of the many things that Jungkook should probably know and does not, because moving apparently turns his brain into soup. Expensive soup, because apparently every basic necessity in life now either requires a deposit or an activation fee or, at the very least, a very smug email from customer service.
He exhales and drags one of the smaller boxes into his apartment. His apartment.
Well, allegedly. He’s still adjusting to that.
The concept of living alone. The concept of being here at all. New building, new neighborhood, new routine, new job starting Monday, which he is definitely not thinking about because if he starts thinking about Monday, he will definitely have to sit on the floor and stare into space for a while.
He is a grown man. He can move into a new apartment without having some kind of quarter-life crisis breakdown in the hallway.
…Probably.
“Where does this go?” Jimin asks, lifting the lamp.
Jungkook blinks himself back into the present. “Um. Living room? I guess? Unless it looks bad in there.”
“It’s a lamp,” Jimin says.
“It could still look bad.”
Taehyung slings an arm around Jungkook’s shoulder and peers into the apartment with exaggerated seriousness. “He says, as if any object in this apartment won’t be harshly judged against his crippling need for things to be aesthetic.”
“I don’t have a crippling need-”
“You organized your last spice rack alphabetically.”
“That was for efficiency!”
“You color-coded your book shelf.”
“And that was artistic.”
“You packed your mugs in order of emotional importance.”
Jungkook opens his mouth and then closes it again, because that’s not- well, okay. Maybe that one is a little harder to defend.
“They were breakable,” he says finally, which is both true and not even close to the point that Jimin was trying to make.
Taehyung squeezes his shoulder once before letting go. “Anyway. We’re almost done dragging stuff in here! Be grateful that you have such devoted, handsome friends.”
“You volunteered because you wanted to snoop through my stuff.”
“That, too.”
Jimin disappears with the lamp and Jungkook reaches back into the hall for another box. This one is heavier, full of books and some miscellaneous desk supplies he absolutely should have sorted prior to moving and did not because he kept getting distracted by old receipts and one particularly humiliating sketchbook from his freshman year of college.
He gets it inside, sets it down near the wall, straightens up, and immediately feels sweat pooling at the back of his neck.
He needs water. Or a shower. Or to lie face-down on the floor for twenty minutes while no one speaks to him.
Instead, he makes another trip out into the hallway because apparently moving never ends. It just somehow keeps producing more and more boxes out of nowhere. He could swear he didn’t own this much stuff last week. Maybe apartments reproduce belongings when left unattended. Maybe that’s how clutter happens. Some deeply cursed kind of mitosis.
He grabs two reusable grocery bags from beside the door, nudges it closed with his hip, and heads back down the hall toward the elevator where there’s still one final pile waiting for him.
When he turns around again, both hallways look the same.
Not similar. Not close. The same.
The exact same ugly beige carpet. The same bland overhead lighting. The same identical dark apartment doors with no numbers because the landlord had explained to him that they’re in the middle of repainting the hallways and that includes the doors.
Jungkook narrows his eyes at the corridor.
Okay. Fine.
This is no problem.
He lives…. here.
Probably here.
One of these has to be his door.
He approaches the apartment he’s pretty sure is his, shifts both bags to one hand, and pulls his keys from his pocket. Easy. He only has to get through approximately six more hours of moving boxes around and then he can collapse and maybe never stand up again.
He slots his key into the lock.
It doesn’t fit.
Jungkook frowns.
That’s annoying.
He tries again, wiggling it a little this time because sometimes keys are weird, and older buildings are weird, and maybe the lock is just stiff.
Still nothing.
“Come on,” he mutters under his breath, jiggling the knob. “Don’t do this to me right now.”
The knob turns under his hand at the exact moment the door swings inward.
Jungkook, who has most definitely been applying more force than necessary because he is tired and feeling betrayed and on the brink of starting a one-sided fight with a doorknob, lurches forward half a step into an apartment that is very much Not His.
Also staring at him from inside it is a man who Jungkook has never seen before in his life.
There is a beat of total silence.
Jungkook’s brain empties entirely.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. It genuinely just powers down like an unplugged appliance.
The man in the doorway is wearing a loose black t-shirt and gray sweatpants, one hand still on the doorknob from where he must have opened it from inside. He has dark hair, pale skin, and an expression so flat that Jungkook senses his confusion nearly immediately. He’s not tall- not taller than Jungkook, at least- but something about the way he’s standing makes him seem bigger. Steadier. Entirely too composed for someone who has just opened his front door to find a stranger essentially trying to break in with two reusable grocery bags and the eyes of a startled deer.
Jungkook stares.
The stranger stares back.
“Oh my god.”
Incredible start.
He clears his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
Better. Marginally.
The man says nothing.
Jungkook can feel his entire soul leaving his body in real time.
“I thought this was my apartment,” he blurts. “Which I know is a ridiculous thing to say while I am literally at your apartment trying to open your door like some kind of-” He cuts himself off because there is no way to end that sentence that makes him sound even kind of normal. “I just moved in. Across the hall? Or- nearby. Somewhere here. Well, obviously not here.”
The man blinks once.
His face does not change, but Jungkook gets the distinct impression that he’s being judged. It’s fair, Jungkook knows, but still.
“I’m not trying to rob you,” Jungkook adds, because apparently there’s something lower than rock bottom which he can hit.
The man lifts an eyebrow.
Great. Amazing. Perfect. Now he sounds exactly like someone who is trying to rob him.
Jungkook tightens his grip on his grocery bags, hoping that the feeling of them might bring him back to his senses. They don’t, because now all he can think about is the fact that these bags have a miniature toolkit, batteries, ramen, and some fabric softener, which Jungkook thinks sounds like the random inventory that a highly incompetent burglar might carry.
“I mean, I wasn’t- I’m not-” He exhales hard. “Sorry. Again. I’m tired. And apparently stupid.”
There’s another pause.
Then, finally, the man speaks.
“Your door should be that one,” he says, pointing across the hall.
His voice is low and rough-edged in a way that makes the short sentence feel entirely deliberate. His entire aura says that this man does not waste words unless he has to. And Jungkook is fairly certain that he’s already exhausted this man’s daily quota when they’ve known each other for less than two minutes.
Jungkook turns.
And there, directly opposite, is his actual apartment. The door is open now, Jimin peeking his head out to likely look for Jungkook.
Jungkook closes his eyes for one horrifying second.
Of course.
Of course it’s the other one.
Of course he’s just attempted to unlock the apartment directly across from his own in front of the person who lives there.
Which, honestly, Jungkook thinks feels entirely personal. It feels like something that the universe arranged just to have some early-morning entertainment.
“Oh,” Jungkook says weakly. “Right.”
He should leave. Like, immediately. He should evaporate into thin air. He should fake his own death and start over in a different city under a different name.
Instead, because apparently he is committed to making this memory unbearable forever, he gives a small, awkward half-bow while clutching his bags. “Sorry. Again. I’m Jeon Jungkook.”
Why did he say that?
Why is he introducing himself to the man whose home he just tried to enter illegally?
The stranger looks at him for another, excruciatingly long second.
Then: “Min Yoongi.”
Jungkook’s heart does something weird and stupid that he chooses to blame entirely on the adrenaline.
Right. Okay. Good. Now he has a name to attach to this humiliation forever.
“Nice to meet you,” Jungkook says, which is not true under the circumstances- because what kind of first impression is attempted accidental burglary?- but politeness is muscle memory for him and therefore unavoidable.
Yoongi glances at the grocery bags, then back at Jungkook’s face. His expression shifts subtly. It’s not exactly warmer, not exactly softer. Just a little less like he’s considering Jungkook to be an active threat to his belongings.
“Mm,” he says.
That is definitely not a full response. It is, however, somehow still more dignified than anything that Jungkook has said so far.
“Okay,” Jungkook says, because he can’t stand here forever. “I’ll- Yeah. Sorry.”
Jungkook backs away, turns toward his actual apartment, and sprints across the hall at a pace that he hopes reads as casual and not like he’s fleeing the scene of his worst social interaction to date.
Behind him, he hears Yoongi’s door click shut.
“What happened?” Taehyung asks, peeking out from behind Jimin. “Did you meet your neighbor? Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
Jungkook drops the bags onto the floor with much more force than necessary. “Shut up.”
Jimin holds out a roll of paper towels. “Did you finally snap? Has your morning gotten so bad that you finally killed someone? All we have for cleaning it up right now is this, so I hope you were at least neat about it.”
“I tried to break into the wrong apartment.”
There is a beat of silence.
Then Taehyung doubles over laughing.
It’s not a cute laugh, either. It’s not an endearing one. It’s a full-bodied betrayal. A hands-on-knees, can’t-breathe, wheezing-through-his-tears kind of laugh. No loyalty whatsoever.
Jungkook points at him. “You’re a horrible person.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he wheezes. “No, I’m not, actually. That’s one of the funniest things that’s happened to you in a while.”
“It is not.”
“Absolutely top five.”
Jimin, to his credit, tries to hold it together for almost a full three seconds before failing. “You did what?”
“I got confused!”
“With only two doors?”
“In my defense,” Jungkook says. “They don’t have numbers on them! And it can be hard to remember left from right when everything looks the same!”
Taehyung wipes tears from his eyes. “Was he at least cute? I couldn’t see from here.”
“That is not the point.”
“Oh, that’s a yes, then,” Jimin says gleefully.
Jungkook hates that he can feel the heat creeping up his neck, because it is absolutely not helping. “I didn’t say yes!”
“I mean, you didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t notice,” Jungkook lies. “I was far too preoccupied with humiliating myself in front of him.”
“No, this is great,” Taehyung says, still kind of laughing. “You have a cute new neighbor, in your new apartment building, and you already have a meet-cute! This is fate.”
“It’s not fate,” Jungkook argues. “It’s having poor spatial awareness.”
Taheyung waves a hand dismissively. “It can be both.”
Jungkook picks up one of the nearby throw pillows and tosses it at Taehyung’s head. Annoyingly, he catches it very easily and grins at Jungkook.
“Did he look mad?” Jimin asks.
Jungkook thinks about it.
Because Yoongi hadn’t looked mad, exactly. Startled, maybe. Definitely unimpressed. But underneath all of that, there was something else. A dry kind of patience, like this might not even crack the top ten most weird interruptions he’s had in this building. Or maybe Jungkook is just projecting that because the alternative is admitting that he noticed entirely too much about a stranger in less than three minutes.
“He looked…” Jungkook starts, then stops.
Taehyung pounces on this like the traitor that he is. “Go on.”
“Like he wanted me to leave.”
Jimin nods. “That’s reasonable.”
“Thank you for your support.”
“Always.”
The rest of the afternoon is a blur of unpacking. Jungkook assembles a shelf incorrectly the first time and has to rebuild it. Jimin reorganizes half of his kitchen, likely just to mess with Jungkook after the whole spice debate earlier in the morning. Taehyung unpacks his decorative items as though he’s curating a museum, placing each item in front of Jungkook and asking if it “sparks joy”.
Most of them do not spark joy where Taehyung places them, but Jungkook keeps that to himself because Taehyung carried two boxes of books up three flights of stairs without complaint and therefore has earned Jungkook’s tolerance.
By early evening, the apartment looks less like a disaster zone and more like a place that someone might plausibly live in.
The couch is assembled. The bed frame doesn’t exist yet, but there’s a mattress on the floor. The dishes are in the cabinets, even though Jungkook knows that Jimin didn’t put them where he would have. There are still some unopened boxes stacked near the wall, but he can deal with those tomorrow. Or next week. Or maybe never. He’s beginning to understand how people end up with one mystery box in the corner of their room for six months.
When Taehyung and Jimin finally leave, they do so with an incredibly dramatic goodbye that Jungkook’s sure his new neighbor Yoongi can hear even through his closed door.
“You’ll call if you need anything?” Jimin says, slipping his shoes on by the door.
“Yes.”
“And you’ll eat dinner?”
“Yes.”
“And you won’t spiral just because you’re alone for the first night in a new place?”
Jungkook huffs. “I’m not twelve, hyung.”
“No,” Taehyung agrees. “But you are a little dramatic and living alone in a new place for the first time. It’s scary.”
“You don’t get to call me dramatic,” Jungkook groans.
Taehyung ignores that completely, saying, “And if your hot new neighbor proposes to you, you have to text us before accepting.”
Jungkook shoves him toward the hall. “Get out.”
Jimin laughs, wraps Jungkook in a hug, and follows Taehyung out the door. “Call me if you can’t sleep. I’ll head out to the balcony and talk to you.”
“I can sleep,” Jungkook says.
Jimin gives him a look that says something like, You and I both know that’s a complete lie, but he doesn’t push and Jungkook is grateful for it.
Then… they’re gone.
The apartment is quiet.
Jungkook stands in the center of his living room and slowly turns in a circle, recognizing that this is his. His couch. His kitchen. His silly lamp and his book and and his mugs in the cabinet arranged perfectly in order of emotional importance, which still feels like a valid packing strategy in his humble opinion.
He should feel accomplished.
He mostly feels tired.
And beneath that, if Jungkook is being honest, a little raw.
Moving makes him feel weird. Not because he hates change, exactly. He doesn’t. He likes new things. He likes new cafes and new playlists. New routes through the neighborhood and new notebooks waiting to be filled with drawings. But there’s something about uprooting his entire life at once that has him feeling a little bit exposed. Like all of the parts of himself he usually keeps organized in tidy, internal drawers have suddenly been dumped into boxes without any labels.
Maybe it’s because this move isn’t just a move.
It’s a line in the sand. A clear before and after.
A new job. A new neighborhood. A new apartment that he chose by himself, for himself, because the old place had too many ghosts in it and he made too many compromises and he stood in too many rooms thinking, unhappily, I don’t actually want this life.
This is better. He knows it is.
It still feels a little like standing on an unfamiliar dock and telling yourself you’re meant to jump.
He blows out a breath and rubs the back of his neck.
Okay. Enough. He’s not doing this tonight. He is not going to have a full mental breakdown in the middle of his half-unpacked living room while wearing a t-shirt covered in ketchup from an unpacking mishap and one sock halfway off his foot.
Dinner. Shower. Bed.
Very simple stuff.
He grabs his phone from the counter and orders takeout from the nearest fried chicken place. Then he changes into softer, cleaner clothes after taking the quickest shower of his life, and emerges feeling marginally more human.
His food arrives twenty-five minutes later.
He goes to pick it up from the hall, opens his apartment door-
-and sees neighbor Min Yoongi locking his own.
Jungkook freezes.
Yoongi looks up.
There is that same brief pause as before, though this time at least Jungkook is not actively trying to break into Yoongi’s apartment.
“That one’s yours,” Yoongi says, pointing at Jungkook’s now closed door.
Jungkook makes a noise that is equal parts laugh and groan. “You know, I was hoping that we could both agree to never bring that up again.”
Yoongi tilts his head, like he’s considering this for a moment. “No.”
Something warm and startled flares low in Jungkook’s chest.
Oh.
Oh, so he does have jokes.
Good. Great. Terrible for Jungkook’s immediate emotional stability, actually.
Jungkook tucks his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “In my defense,” he starts. “I’d already been moving boxes for like six hours. And there’s no numbers on these doors.”
“In your defense,” Yoongi responds. “You did look very sorry. And it’s not really your fault. They’re redoing the hall right now.”
“I was very sorry.”
“You also said you weren’t trying to rob me.”
There’s a teasing tone to his voice that Jungkook adores. “I need you to let that go.”
“No.”
There it is again- that almost invisible shift at the corner of Yoongi’s mouth. Not a smile, not really, but definitely something adjacent to one.
Jungkook doesn’t know what to do with that. Or with the fact that Yoongi somehow looks even better in the hallway’s terrible lighting, damp hair pushed back from his forehead as if he, too, recently showered. His sleeves are short enough to expose his slim, pale arms, and Jungkook has to look away because he’s far too gay to handle looking at a pretty man’s arms.
He drags his focus back to Yoongi’s face before it can get weird. Internally weird, anyway. Externally, he thinks he still looks normal. Hopefully, at least. Unless staring at a near-stranger in the hallway like you’ve forgotten how eyes work reads as abnormal. Which… it probably does.
“Did you just move in today?” Yoongi asks.
The question catches Jungkook a little off guard, mostly because he hadn’t expected another full sentence.
“Yeah,” he says. “This morning, technically. Though, it feels like I’ve lived through several lifetimes since then.”
Yoongi hums once. “That bad?”
“Ask me again when I rediscover where I packed my phone charger and at least one of my bowls.”
“You packed your charger yourself, I assume.”
“And yet it remains lost. Curious.”
That earns him a clearer reaction this time- a small exhale through the nose that might actually be a laugh.
Jungkook has a deeply humiliating moment of triumph about it.
Great. Fantastic. He’s known this man for less than a day and already his brain is saying Make him do that again.
His food is sitting in a paper bag outside his door, which suddenly feels both very convenient and slightly awkward because now he has to choose between ending the conversation like a normal person or continuing to stand in the hallway with his takeout cooling at his feet.
Yoongi also glances down at the bag. “Dinner?”
“Yeah.”
Yoongi nods once. “You should eat before you pass out.”
That makes Jungkook laugh. “Do I look bad?”
Yoongi considers this. “You looked worse earlier.”
“Super fair.”
Silence settles for a second. It’s not tense, exactly. More careful. Like they’re both standing at the edge of… something. Not anything dramatic. Just a fragile beginning. Something like the awareness of a person who was a stranger this morning and is now, somehow, part of the texture of the building.
Jungkook shifts his weight. “Well. Thanks for not calling building security on me.”
Yoongi’s expression is blank again, though his eyes stay alert on Jungkook’s face. “I thought about it.”
Jungkook groans softly. “You did not.”
“Even if I thought about it, I probably wouldn’t have.”
“Yoongi-nim, that’s worse.”
Yoongi shrugs one shoulder.
Jungkook should go inside. He knows that. This is the natural ending of their conversation. Goodnight, nice meeting you, please forget that I am technically a criminal now for attempted breaking and entering.
Instead, he hears himself say, “So how long have you lived here?”
Internally, he winces.
Is that too forward? Maybe it’s too forward. Maybe it’s perfectly normal. Jungkook has no idea. His calibration for societal norms seems to be far off course today.
Yoongi, thankfully, does not seem alarmed by the question. “About a year now.”
“A whole year,” Jungkook echoes. “Practically a local, then.”
“I’m not sure that applies to one apartment building.”
“It does if I need to know important things,” Jungkook insists, because apparently his brain truly does not know when to stop. “Like whether the walls are too thin or if the laundry machines are secretly out to get me.”
Yoongi leans against the doorframe, looking like he might be a little amused with Jungkook. “The walls are decent enough. The dryer on the second floor eats socks. And I do mean all of your socks.”
Jungkook blinks. “Really?”
“No.”
Jungkook stares at him.
Yoongi’s face stays completely straight for all of two seconds before that not-smile happens again.
Jungkook pouts. “That was mean.”
“You believed me, though.”
“I’m tired.”
“That does seem to happen a lot around me.”
Jungkook laughs again, helpless this time.
It echoes a little in the empty hallway, bright in a way that feels like it doesn’t belong in the dimly lit hallway. Something in Yoongi’s posture loosens. It’s incredibly subtle, but Jungkook notices it anyway. He looks more relaxed. Less on guard.
Jungkook likes it.
And because Jungkook is, against all reason, still himself even after an exhausting twelve-hour moving day, the reckless part of his brain latches onto that immediately.
Okay, it thinks. Interesting.
The rest of Jungkook’s brain needs it to shut up.
“Well,” Jungkook says, nudging the takeout bag lightly with his foot. “I’ll let you go. Before I say anything else that could be legally incriminating.”
“Probably a good idea.”
Jungkook licks his lips. “Goodnight, then.”
“Night,” Yoongi says, tilting his head, but making no move to enter his own apartment first.
Jungkook bends to grab his food, steps backwards into his apartment, and closes the door with what he hopes is reasonable composure.
Then he stands there, bag in hand, and stares at the door for a full five seconds.
His brain, which had apparently been waiting for privacy to become obnoxious and unbearable, starts up.
Okay.
So.
His neighbor is funny.
Annoyingly funny, in a quiet, deadpan way that Jungkook likes so, so much.
And he’s attractive. Which is… inconvenient, but survivable.
He’s also apparently capable of eye contact that makes Jungkook feel like his thoughts have become visible on the outside of his body- like there’s a giant neon sign flashing I THINK YOU’RE HOT AND THAT MAKES ME NERVOUS right above his head- which is decidedly less survivable.
He drops his food onto the counter and presses both palms to his face.
This is fine.
This is just a neighbor.
A neighbor whose apartment he tried to break into and who now, quite reasonably, may think of Jungkook as the guy across the hall with no sense of direction and suspiciously poor criminal instincts.
Excellent. A great foundation. Truly a solid start into his new life.
His phone buzzes.
Tae > Jimin, Me
7:41PM
soooooo
how’s married life with your hot neighbor
Jimin > Me, Tae
7:42PM
did he file a restraining order yet
Tae > Me, Jimin
7:42PM
be honest, min
jungkook is hot enough that the attempted breaking and entering might be worth it to this guy
Me > Jimin, Tae
7:43PM
i hate both of you
just btw
also
he made fun of me again
Jimin > Me, Tae
7:43PM
AGAIN????
Tae > Me, Jimin
7:43PM
oh my god
you know what this means???
he LIKES you
Me > Jimin, Tae
7:44PM
that
no
that’s not what it means
it didn’t even happen like that
he just told me that the dryer will eat all of my socks
Jimin > Me, Tae
7:44PM
well, does it?
Me > Jimin, Tae
7:44PM
NO
Tae > Me, Jimin
7:44PM
i’m obsessed with him
Jungkook throws his phone onto the couch before he has to read anything worse that either of them might say.
He eats at the counter because he hasn’t decided where the dining table should go yet. The food is good, but Jungkook also thinks that he might be way too hungry to care about the quality of anything he has right now. By the time he’s finished, the exhaustion from the day is starting to catch up with him. Jungkook washes his hands, unpacks exactly one more box out of pure stubbornness, and then gives up.
Jimin made his bed, at least.
That feels like enough right now.
He goes through the small motions of settling in for the night- brushing his teeth in the bathroom that still smells like whatever cleaner his landlord had used, plugging his phone into the charger that he eventually found in a box labeled DESK STUFF????, and checking the front lock twice just because new places always make him nervous.
On the second check, he pauses with his hand on the knob.
Then, because apparently humiliation has not yet taught him any sense of self preservation, he opens the door a crack and glances across the hall.
There’s a thin line of light at the bottom of the door, enough to suggest that Yoongi’s still awake.
Jungkook has no idea why that matters to him.
He closes his own door, locks it once again, and leans back against it.
This place is unfamiliar. The walls are strange, the sounds are strange, the air even feels strange against his skin. Tomorrow, he’ll have to find out where the closest convenience store to him is, whether or not his desk should go in his bedroom or his living room, and which floor’s laundry machines actually work the best, since Yoongi was no help at all on that point.
It’s a lot.
Too much, maybe, for one day in a new place.
But as he stands there in the silence, tired down to the bone, Jungkook thinks of the hallway. Of Yoongi’s dry voice. Of the way his expression barely changed, even while teasing Jungkook. Of how, for a few minutes, the building didn’t feel incredibly overwhelming.
Jungkook thinks that must be something.
Embarrassing, yes.
But something.
He crawls into bed and drags the blanket up to his chin. He stares at the unfamiliar ceiling and waits for sleep to find him.
Just before it does, his last coherent thought is deeply, profoundly irritating.
He hopes that he sees Yoongi again tomorrow.
And then, because his subconscious clearly wants him dead, a second thought arrives right after:
Preferably while not committing a crime.