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Kim Seijin is waiting for Seokjin at his office. He looks pissed, and the way he stands in front of the giant windows with his arms crossed is definitely intentional. Has he been standing here since he called in the morning? It’s been two hours.
Seokjin says, “Is there something in the water that makes every damn person in this building this dramatic?”
Seijin’s frown digs itself in deeper. “You’re late, Seokjin,” he rumbles. “That was not five minutes.”
“Yeah, well,” Seokjin says, trying to be respectfully dismissive. “The kids were acting up.”
More specifically, Jungkook was: starfish-shaped and lying unconscious on top of Seokjin and refusing to do one whit more than groan softly when prodded. Seokjin didn’t remember him coming to Seokjin’s bed last night, but he actually doesn’t remember himself coming to his own bed last night. Jungkook had been drinking a little too hard lately, bored and probably frustrated with being cooped up in the dorms waiting for their comeback.
And Seokjin, as always, had kept him company.
“You’re too easy on them,” Seijin says, a familiar complaint. Seokjin just lets it roll off his shoulders until Seijin adds, “Speaking of. Are you aware that the entire world is looking at you right now? How could you allow this to happen?”
Dramatic.
“Where’s PD-nim?” Seokjin asks, looking around. It was the threat of his presence that had finally given Seokjin the strength to haul Jungkook off him.
“Damage control,” Seijin says with relish. “He was here earlier.”
“Won’t you even consider the possibility that maybe you’re overreacting a little?” Seokjin says boldly. “They’re just pictures. Should we really be panicking like this?”
Seijin’s eyes narrow and he finally drops his pose to walk to his desk. He picks up his tab and shoves it at Seokjin.
“Are we talking about the same pictures? Because panicking is the ideal response for the ones I’m looking at. Here Jigaemae and I are, running around talking to every show on air to make sure the comeback goes smoothly, and you pull something like this.”
Seokjin stands at attention and weathers it. It’s a routine that’s becoming familiar: BTS’s PR managers are too nervy for their own good and Seokjin spends many a morning in this exact spot, listening to variations of the same theme.
The photographs this time aren’t even that suggestive. They’re just pictures of him and Jungkook picking out presents for Hobi’s birthday, not much different from all the pictures they’ve taken through elementary, middle and high school. Seokjin yanking Jungkook close for a quick backhug as they looked at shoes is hardly newsworthy.
He scrolls down and yup, they’re all bland and mundane. In some, Jungkook is hanging off Seokjin’s shoulder, grinning delightedly at something he’d said. They’re a mess of long arms and legs and Jungkook’s smiling in each one, looking up at Seokjin’s face.
He doesn’t know who took the pictures. A fan who was delighted by seeing BTS’s Jungkook in the flesh and posted the pictures online, most probably. It always starts off with that kind of innocence before it snowballs into endless clickbait articles about secret lovers.
“Pretend I’m a fan,” he says. “Pretend Jungkook’s finally learned the art of fanservice.”
“Looking at you like he wants to put his hand down your pants is not standard fanservice,” Seijin says drily.”Plus it’s not him that’s the problem. It’s you. People are already asking who you are, digging up old photos. If they find out you and Jungkook have been making heart-eyes since you were six they’re never going to shut up about it.”
Seokjin nods, swallowing back something hard and bitter. “Sure.”
“BTS is nowhere close to being done yet. And if they want to keep doing this, making music with the kind of freedom they have, then they need to appeal to all the fans. Not some. All of them. Even the ones who might not like the idea of their lead vocalist being a hot second away from jumping his manager in public.”
Seokjin gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Understood. I’ll talk to JK.”
“As soon as possible,” Seijin says. “Seokjin,” he says, in a different voice. Gentler, more like the hyung he is when the anxiety isn’t eating at him. “Seokjin, you're smart. Don't you think it's time you and Jungkook started living separate lives?”
Seokjin crosses his arms and says, “It’d be weird without Jungkook.”
Seijin rolls his eyes like he’d been expecting as much. “Why do I even bother.”
“I don’t know,” says Seokjin, honestly.
It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before.
*
Seokjin’s braces came off the sixth year of school, and he switched his glasses for contacts in the seventh. They were supposed to be simple, perfunctory changes, except for how they suddenly made people do a double take when they saw him.
He hadn’t been used to being more than average at anything. His mother told him that hard work paid off but Seokjin got bored too easily, his mind wandering mid-lesson no matter how sternly he told himself to listen beforehand. His grades were okay and he was okay at sports. Nothing brilliant, nowhere near as dazzling as, say, Jeon Jungkook, who was still in Primary but everyone in their town knew was going to become someone extraordinary.
But that changed almost overnight, and their neighbors began singing Seokjin’s praises where they’d barely known he existed before. School became easier, with more kids -girls, mostly- coming up to him and offering to help. And Seokjin, who’d never even dreamt that good looks could take the place of hard work or talent, tried and failed not to feel like he was lying to everyone and getting away with it.
When Seokjin felt the worst, he had ended up watching a football match in the school field, a hoodie pulled forward as far as it would go. He wasn’t thinking, was actively trying not to think, so it took him a while to figure out his eyes were following a single figure on the field.
Jeon Jungkook, Seokjin thought. He watched the effortlessness of his movements and hated him. Then he was swinging himself over the chain-link fence before he knew what he was doing, landing in front of Jungkook and kicking the ball away.
The match was swift, savage and short. Seokjin and his team lost by two goals, and Seokjin crouched down on his knees and cursed softly. It was frustrating, losing, and he didn’t even know why he’d barged into the game in the first place.
Someone said his name. Jeon Jungkook was standing in front of him, eyes downcast to shield his thoughts.
It wasn’t until later that Seokjin realized that Jungkook wasn’t private like he’d thought-- he was just ferociously, cripplingly shy. By then they’d been uneasy acquaintances and tentative friends for almost a year, thawing and thawing and thawing until Seokjin couldn’t hate him anymore. And then four more years of Jungkook growing into being the best friend he’d ever had, growing up, and at the end of them Jungkook was as tall as he was and coming up to him with determined eyes and a nervous twist to his mouth and saying he was trying out to be an idol.
Seokjin was nineteen then, Jungkook fourteen. Seokjin had always thought he’d end up working in an office cubicle, nine to five, drifting along as a passive participant of his own life.
But after Jungkook said it, it wasn’t even a question. Jungkook left for Seoul to become an idol; Seokjin followed.
Being trainees at the same agency was supposed to be the first glimpse of the dream, their first few stumbling steps on the golden brick road, but it didn't quite turn out that way. The year that followed was one they both still struggle to forget, when Jungkook thrived and thrived and Seokjin fell into insecurity that got worse by the day, when he lost his love for dancing and singing and everything became less fun and more like weights around his feet and shoulders.
Jungkook kept saying, move your body like this, hyung. Jungkook kept hitting the high notes, kept getting the vocal lead, Jungkook once did the full choreo to Rainism while the PD was watching and he personally talked to him after, saying something that made Jungkook smile so wide Seokjin’s teeth ached to see him.
But it had been so long since he'd last hated Jungkook. He'd forgotten how.
“Please don’t leave me, hyung,” Jungkook said on the first week they came to Seoul. “If you go, I don’t know what I’d do.”
So Seokjin stayed in Seoul, with Jungkook.
*
The dorm is weirdly silent when Seokjin returns, empty of Taehyung’s stomping and his and Jimin’s loud voices. Hobeom took them to a variety show and they’re all due back before noon. It gives him maybe a couple of hours to himself to get his stress-migraine back under control.
It’s not much later when Jungkook pads out of his room, tired but smiling. He nudges Seokjin’s side and hangs on his shoulder, like a kid, like Jungkook’s always done. They’re physically affectionate people, nothing wrong with that. Seokjin refuses to let Seijin’s dire warnings get to him.
“You weren’t here when I woke up,” Jungkook says.
“Do you want eggs or rice or both,” says Seokjin, opening the fridge. Emerging from it, he replies, “Seijin-hyung called me in for a meeting.”
“Both,” Jungkook says. “Hm,” he adds, flicking the head of a cat ornament someone had put on the counter. “What did he want?”
It’s probably the ideal time to bring it up, but there’s no easy way to say the internet thinks we’re fucking. It just doesn’t have any place in a normal conversation.
“Nothing,” he says. “Went over some comeback stuff.”
Jungkook’s spine straightens, like it always does when someone mentions the comeback. “Good,” he says matter-of-factly. “Hobeomie-hyung is doing all the work. I hope he gave you lots of work.”
“Yah, this brat,” Seokjin says. “He should be giving me a raise, for the shit I put up with.”
Jungkook wanders back over and rubs Seokjin’s chin patronizingly, and they wrestle, Jungkook’s fingers poking into Seokjin’s cheeks. The eggs hiss and crackle on the frying pan.
“What are you doing today?” Seokjin asks. “Practice?”
“Nah,” Jungkook says. He looks at Seokjin through his bangs in a way that’s both shy and achingly familiar. “I thought we could stay in and play Mario Kart. The two of us.”
Seokjin smiles, caught off-guard. “Sure. Sounds great.”
The living room is a casualty of impromptu dance battles. Jungkook lifts the furniture around while Seokjin sets the Xbox up, doubling back to get some snacks from the kitchen cupboard. It’s a lot like how they were in high school, when Seokjin would spend more time at Jungkook’s house than his own and their parents were baffled but proud.
They play Mario Kart and eat till they’re too full to get up for more. The whole morning, Jungkook doesn’t even touch the soju bottles. Something in Seokjin’s chest eases at the realization.
“I missed this,” Seokjin says. He’s caught in the bubble of Jungkook’s glittery-eyed focus and his frequent beaming smiles, mellowed into a complacent, warm feeling. “You little shit. Can’t believe you blue shelled me there.”
Jungkook cackles.
Later, after winning, he turns and pins Seokjin with a bright grin. “I missed you too, hyung. We haven’t hung out like this in ages.”
Something about the way he phrases it makes Seokjin uneasy. “I’m your manager, Jungkook-ah. I don’t get paid to hang out with you, I get paid to make you successful.”
Jungkook’s fists curl before he takes a deep breath.
“BTS will be successful whether we help it or not,” he says bluntly. “And it’s important to me that I have a good friend than a good manager.”
“You asked me to stay, Jungkook,” Seokjin says. His voice is steady. “So I did. You promised not to complain about the details.”
“Then you shouldn’t have,” Jungkook says. “If you can’t be my friend then you shouldn’t have stayed.”
It’s the worst thing he could have said.
“If that’s how you feel,” Seokjin says.
*
They resign themselves to tense, angry silence. Jungkook puts on the TV and flips through channels till he finds one rerunning old Naruto episodes. A few minutes into Naruto’s first impassioned speech of the day, Seokjin gets a call from Bang Sihyuk PD.
“Jin-ah,” he says, like always. “How are the boys?”
“They’re doing good, sir,” Seokjin says. “Eating well, training. They’re looking forward to the comeback.”
“Good, good. Exactly what I want to hear. You’ve always been good at that, putting me at ease, ever since you were a trainee.”
Seokjin tries not to tense. Jungkook’s eyes snap to his anyway, still scowling.
“Thank you.”
“I understand that Kim Seijin has been making a fuss?” the Director says, and Seokjin puffs out a deep breath that was trapped in his lungs. “Something about the public finding out how close you and our Jungkook are. He calls me every ten minutes. Ah, would I get away with it if I toss my phone out of the window of my car?”
Seokjin chuckles out of a dry throat. “Probably not, sir.”
Hitman Bang gives an almighty sigh.
“In that case,” he says, “you had better get ready, eh, Jinnie?”
Seokjin’s grip on the couch goes tighter. Jungkook comes over to him, all pretense of anger wiped from his face as he looks up at Seokjin with pure worry.
“Sir?”
“You were always BigHit’s black sheep, Jin-ah. When the media finds out that you were once a trainee with enough potential to be scouted by SM, they won’t keep quiet no matter how much you say it’s in your past. They’re bloodthirsty and it’s been a while since the last scandal died down. It’s a train waiting to crash. But I’ll let you in on a secret, Jin-ah.”
Seokjin looks straight into Jungkook’s eyes. “What’s that, sir?”
“Contrary to what a lot of people think, I didn’t hire you to keep our golden maknae from quitting and following you on your way out,” the Director says gravely. “You're smart, Jin. Keep watching out for the kids and neither of us will have anything to worry about.”
Seokjin takes Jungkook’s hand and lets himself squeeze, lets Jungkook squeeze back. “Understood.”
*
The 95 line are back for lunch. Even Yoongi crawls out of his room, looking like he dug himself out of his own grave, and slumps into a high chair at the counter with his eyes narrowed into unhappy slits.
“What are we eating?”
“Whatever Tae and Jiminie have brought,” Seokjin says. He can hear the thunderous clatter of their approach through the door and hopes for chicken.
“If it’s sushi again I will go on strike, hyung, mark my words.”
Seokjin nods. Yoongi gets it.
“Balanced meals aren’t supposed to be that healthy,” Seokjin says.
“The one we should be blaming is Park Jimin, not the sushi. He’s the one who only buys stuff from those shitty rabbit food places.”
“But I sent Joon-ah to get food yesterday.”
Yoongi snorts. “You dug your own grave, Jin-hyung. He probably forgot and texted Jimin to cover for him. These brats.”
“These brats.”
They share a commiserative silence.
Yoongi is looking at him, biting his lip like he does when he’s thinking. Seokjin is insanely fond of Yoongi. All their jobs are tough but Yoongi has it the toughest, being the eldest in a group whose accumulated energy levels go through the roof. What that means is that Seokjin and Yoongi have formed a peaceful unit in the general chaos of the group dynamics, almost a support group where they meet up to bitch about the dongsaengs and insist on rooming together.
“Hey hyung,” he says finally. “Do you regret it?”
Yoongi is also his only friend left over from his trainee days.
Seokjin lets his lips twist up into a smile. “I get jealous sometimes, sure,” he says. “I see you guys performing and I think what if. But that’s as far as it goes, Yoongi-yah. I think I would have gone crazy with insecurity if I’d stayed and joined Bangtan.”
Yoongi nods and just accepts this. If Seokjin were to rank them, he’d say Yoongi was the easiest to be honest with, since Yoongi never made a fuss about anything. Jungkook was probably the hardest.
Yoongi picks his mug back up, hiding the sad tilt of his mouth when the door swings open revealing Taehyung and Jimin.
“What did you bring for--” Jungkook says, coming out of his room only to be interrupted by Taehyung’s finger in his face. “Dude, what the--”
“You should have told us!” Taehyung shouts. “We would have accepted it!”
“How could I have missed it,” Jimin laments.
“You’re literally the only ones who did,” Yoongi says drily.
Jimin turns to him, eyes big and round like dinner plates. “They said that thing about brotherly love and it threw me off! Don’t blame me for being trusting!”
“They sleep on the same bed.”
“Jungkook has attachment issues! He never throws away those pens they give us at fan signs!”
“…What,” says Jungkook.
Jimin and Yoongi are still glaring, so Taehyung steps up to the plate with his phone. “Didn’t you check Twitter today, Jungkook?” At Jungkook’s mumbled affirmative, he sighs so hard his bangs blow off his forehead. “So you didn’t know that today’s trending topic is your affair…with an EXO member?”
Jungkook blinks. So does Seokjin, looking at the finger that’s pointed towards him.
“I’m not an EXO member,” Seokjin says through grinded teeth.
“That’s exactly what an EXO member sent here to spy on us would want us to think!” Taehyung says triumphantly.
“Prove it!" Jimin cries. "Prove you’re not in EXO, say EXO is the worst three times really fast.”
Jungkook’s voice cuts through the escalating accusations.
“Is this what Seijin-hyung wanted to talk about this morning?”
“Yeah,” Seokjin admits. “He wants you do tone it down a little till after the comeback. I mean, I’m not sure if they explained who I was yet or anything--”
“They did,” Jimin says. “The hashtag BTS’s flowerboy manager is trending on Twitter.”
“If I can’t be the visual of this group, then I quit!” Taehyung says, pretending to slam the phone in his hand on the ground and turning around to stalk off. Jimin, giggling, pulls him back with an arm around his waist.
“It’s only been a few hours and Jin-hyung already has more fans than we do,” Jimin says, smiling sweetly at Seokjin.
What a kind thing to say, Seokjin marvels. He leans across the table to pinch Jimin's cheeks and he fidgets, ducking away from Seokjin's fingers with a giggled hyung, don't! that makes Seokjin's insides squeeze with fondness.
A beaming Taehyung adds, “Hobeomie-hyung said Weekly Idol requested you to be there as well on our slot," and looks so damn happy about it. About the prospect of Seokjin being on television and oh god, he really doesn't need that kind of pressure. Looking at Taehyung, he can't bring himself to complain. The kid's just so delighted.
“I still can’t believe you got scouted by SM and didn’t tell us,” Jimin pouts.
Seokjin says, weakly, “So was Jungkook.”
Even Yoongi makes a dismissive noise. Traitor.
Jimin rolls his eyes. “And I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you and Jungkook were dating.”
“We’re not,” Seokjin says very fast. Something like panic boils through him. “We’re not, we’d never. We’re not that stupid.”
“Hey Taehyung,” Jungkook, still thumbing down the screen, looks up with a small smile on his face. “Can I talk to Jin-hyung for a second?”
For a moment Taehyung just stands there, squinting. Then he gets it, his face so expressive that Seokjin imagines a cartoon lightbulb popping into life above his head.
“Oh, I can’t believe we’re late for Min-Park-Kim time!” he yells, herding Yoongi and Jimin like cattle. “For Mins and Parks and Kims only! Ah wait. Only Kim Taehyung can represent the Kims!”
The room is emptied.
Seokjin watches the door close on the squabbling mess that is Taehyung, Yoongi and Jimin with horror and not a little disgust. When he looks back, Jungkook is frowning at him.
Seokjin tries to keep the mood from plunging. “Something on my face?”
“Hyung, I’m sorry I was a brat to you this morning,” Jungkook says earnestly. “I was feeling really shitty. I’ve missed you but that’s my problem. You stayed for me and I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much that means to me.”
“It’s alright,” Seokjin says, surprised and touched.
Jungkook yanks his head left-right, mouth set in a distressed frown. “No! Because I should tell you what it meant. Because I’ve been thinking, and you’ve done so much for me, hyung, and you never say no when you’ve said no to everyone else, and it just makes me wonder--” he swallows.
Panic holds Seokjin still. “What, Jungkook-ah?”
“I know you like boys, hyung,” Jungkook says in a low voice full of intent, and Seokjin starts. It’s not what Seokjin was expecting him to say. “I remember Jinsoo-hyung.”
So does Seokjin: Jinsoo, his first maybe-boyfriend in high school that he’d snuck around with for an entire summer break, who had Jungkook’s dark brown hair and Jungkook’s way of talking but ultimately wasn’t Jungkook. He remembers and regrets, but he didn’t expect Jungkook to remember as well.
“Back then,” Seokjin murmurs, trying not to look too stunned. “You knew.”
“I knew,” Jungkook affirms. He takes a step closer and lowers his voice, intimate, like they’re in a room full of people Jungkook doesn’t want overhearing. “So I thought, if you like me enough to stay in Seoul, and you like boys, hyung, would it be such a stretch to think--”
“What,” Seokjin rasps. He’s had dreams like this.
“That you liked me,” Jungkook says, his hands coming up to frame Seokjin’s face. His eyes are terribly determined, his jaw set like he’s psyching himself for a big performance. Seokjin finds out the cause a beat later:
“Tell me if you hate this,” Jungkook says, and brings his mouth close and kisses him.
Jungkook’s lips are soft, giving. They explore Seokjin’s with a gentle focus that makes tremors run down Seokjin’s back until Seokjin recovers enough to respond.
Then the kiss turns fast and sloppy. Jungkook jerks him closer, bites at his lips and groans when Seokjin pulls his hair. His fingers crawl up the smooth skin under Jungkook’s hoodie, tracing the curve of his ribs to make Jungkook shake and gasp.
Just as Seokjin tips his head back with a bitten back sob because Jungkook had brought his mouth down to his neck, hot and wet like a brand against the skin there, he hears a voice say, “Holy shit.”
His heard jerks forward.
Namjoon is standing in his pyjamas, his specs perched owlishly on the bridge of his nose. “Holy shit,” he repeats. “The internet was right.”
Jungkook exhales against Seokjin’s bitten skin, making him squirm.
“Not here,” Namjoon squeaks, alarmed. “I mean, congratulations and stuff, but this is where we eat. No gross sex stuff in the kitchen. Technically we’re not even supposed to have girlfriends so I think this is reasonable.”
Seokjin closes his eyes. “Joon-ah, we get it.”
Namjoon says, “Uh. Okay. I’ll go and call the others.”
He stomps away. Jungkook is staring at Seokjin’s lips again, looking dazed and punchdrunk.
“Quit it,” Seokjin says, flicking him on the forehead. “Namjoon will kick us out of Bangtan.”
Jungkook gets a dopey grin on his face that Seokjin struggles not to find adorable as fuck.
“Worth it,” he says, holding up a fist. “Boyfriends?”
Seokjin rolls his eyes and taps his knuckles to Jungkook’s. “Boyfriends,” he agrees, just before the door opens and the rest of the band enters with a cheer.
*
Kim Seijin is waiting for him at his office. He’s sitting down this time, his massive shoulders spanning beyond the office chair and Seokjin thinks, goals.
He also looks resigned.
“We’re going to need you to dial up the skinship,” Seijin says in a dead voice. “It’s boosting popularity rankings. But please, restrain yourselves. If I catch so much as a kiss on the nose on camera I will put you on media duty for the rest of your life.”
Seokjin nods, unsure of what to say. It’s awkward and he wants to go home.
Seijin stops making eye contact. “Also, congratulations, Seokjin. If I had known you and Jungkook had feelings for each other I wouldn’t have been so harsh on you.”
Seokjin stares hard at the carpet and wishes to die.
“Good talk,” Seijin says. “Now get out. You have that Weekly Idol thing to get to.”
Paling further, Seokjin excuses himself. Jungkook is waiting for him outside, sitting on the couch with his earbuds in.
He takes them off and joins Seokjin when he steps into the room. “How was it.”
“I remembered all the reasons I didn’t want to be an idol,” Seokjin says. “Well. Other than my complete lack of talent, I mean.”
“Hey,” Jungkook says sharply. “None of that. Hyung, you--”
“And he knows that we’re, you know.” Seokjin’s neck burns. It’s still hard to bring himself to say it, but Jungkook’s big happy smile tells him he got it anyway.
“Good! That makes everything easier. No one will be surprised if I do something romantic.”
“Nearly giving me a handjob in the kitchen was supposed to be romantic?”
Jungkook’s cheeks light up in red. “That was mostly me losing my mind, hyung, would you please let it go. No, I meant we can snuggle up and play video games and make out and go to dinner and no one will think it’s weird.”
“We do most of those things already,” Seokjin points out.
“I know,” Jungkook breathes reverently. “It’ll be you and me like always, but upgraded, hyung. Nothing would change.”
“What are you talking about, brat?” Seokjin huffs a laugh and knocks their foreheads together, so happy he struggles to find the words. “You’re always changing my life.”
“You let me, hyung,” Jungkook says softly. There’s something fragile in his expression that Seokjin hasn’t seen in a long, long time, and it threatens to break through the surface of his grin.
Seokjin says, “I’m a smart guy, so yeah, I do,” and kisses him again, quick and hard, like a promise.