Work Text:
"Rapunzel, let down your hair!" calls Jungkook dramatically, and when Jimin flips his hair, Jungkook cackles. "I love it, hyung!"
"I love it too." Jimin goes back to looking in the mirror while Lila and Jecks adjust his eye makeup. He's never had hair this long. He knew... he had always known. If he'd ever been able to grow it out and feel so much like himself, he would never have been able to put it away again. He wouldn't have been able to cut himself off and buckle himself up and that would have ruined his life. The others' lives. His parents' lives.
But now there's nothing to stop him from this. From looking at himself and seeing himself. He's right there -- he's right here.
Lila and Jecks finish and murmur to each other. Lila squeezes Jimin's shoulder before she walks away, and when their eyes meet in the mirror, she winks. Her hair is long too, but when he met her it was short because she had just been discharged.
He had looked at her and seen his future: get fucking through it, get out, and become yourself. She had been proof it would be possible.
Lila moves away and is replaced with Jin hyung, who kisses him on the side of the head, and then walks away yelling for more people to kiss him for luck.
"You kiss me for luck, hyung!" Tae demands. Jimin is going to turn to watch to see if this will be the day when Tae convinces hyung to kiss him (it will not be but it's always great to watch Tae try) -- but then next to him, looking at him in the mirror, is Namjoon.
"Hyungnim," says Jimin, "what do you think?"
Namjoon carefully reaches out and strokes one finger down Jimin's hair.
"Beautiful," he says, his voice all deep and husky. "Really beautiful."
Jimin shivers. Namjoon doesn't drop his eyes away from Jimin's. They look at each other in the mirror, and time stretches out.
There's something about the way Namjoon has been looking at him lately, since they started this last year, since they all came back together. Jimin sometimes thinks he's imagining it, that their time is never going to come around again. Then Namjoon looks at him like this, with hot eyes and his body quivering like a dog about to race and his mouth open. And Jimin wonders how he could ever doubt it, that something else is there between them.
Jimin thinks wildly: right now, do it now, find out now --
And then they're being called together for their final moments of meditation before they take the stage, and the moment breaks.
Namjoon's hand finds Jimin's and he squeezes tightly before they separate to go stand with their brothers.