Chapter Text
Yoongi comes out of the steamy bathroom, ruffling his still wet hair, his sleeping clothes in hand. “Are you ready to go? We have to leave in five.”
Jungkook, seated by the dinner table, startles in surprise. “Huh? Why? I thought we said two p.m. at Hoseok hyung and Jimin hyung’s?”
“We did, but we’re going to pick up Namjoon and Taehyung first.”
Jungkook tilts his head at him. “We are? Why?”
“Family bonding,” Yoongi tells him tersely, throwing his clothes on their bed. “Don’t question it.”
With ill-disguised glee, Jungkook spins around on his stool to face the other. “Right, well, I’m ready.” He watches Yoongi straighten his shirt out and fix his damp fringe, fascinated as always with how in love he feels, just like when they first got to know each other, just as when they moved in together. Time has changed them all a lot, but this is the one thing it seems it can never touch. He pulls Yoongi in closer by his belt loops. “Five minutes, you say? That’s more than enough time to—”
“It really isn’t,” Yoongi interrupts him with a laugh.
Jungkook stares up at him with a long since perfected pout, probably specifically designed by some higher being to make Yoongi weak in the knees. He used to always think so to himself without much conviction, but recently he’s wondering if maybe it’s true after all, now that he has reason to believe in things like that. Higher beings, the pull of destiny, Jungkook thumbing at the hem of Yoongi’s jeans, his actions a world of contrast to the expression on his face. “You don’t think I could make you come in five minutes, hyung?”
“I really don’t.”
Yoongi watches in amusement as that familiar, competitive glint burns to life in the younger’s eyes. “Why would you say that? You know it makes me want to prove myself.”
Yoongi laughs, leaning closer to press a kiss to Jungkook’s cheek. “You’re right. I do know that.”
When he pulls back, the look on Jungkook’s face is outraged as he gives out an overdramatic gasp. “Evil.” He checks the time on the microwave. “Well, that’s a quest for another day.” He closes his eyes and tilts his head up when Yoongi cups his face in his hands and kisses him.
It was a long time coming, but somewhere along the line they both relaxed into the knowledge that this is their everyday life from now on. Despite habitual bickering and arguments this is the place they can always return to and feel safe in, even though Jungkook gets scared sometimes and Yoongi doesn’t dare talk about his improvements for fear of accidentally pressuring himself into more than he is capable of, life is good. Things are working out.
Jungkook gives a contented little giggle when they part, taking Yoongi’s hands in his and intertwining their fingers. Yoongi lifts his hand to look at the ring on Jungkook’s ring finger, quietly checking its condition. “When are you going to get me one of these?” he asks then, nudging the younger with his knee.
“I told you. When you least expect it.”
“You’re going to do it on my birthday, aren’t you? Just ‘cause I proposed to you on yours.”
Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Hyung, you have to stop guessing. Every time you get it right, you force me to come up with a new plan.”
Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him. “Why?”
“I’m not entering this fake marriage just to hear you say ‘I knew it’ for the rest of our lives. No, sir.”
“That’s fair.” Yoongi pulls him up off his stool, throwing a look at Holly and Milo, both curled up and fast asleep on opposite ends of the couch. “Let’s get going.”
They leave their apartment as every day, knowing that even if the world knocks them down a hundred times in one day, this one-room paradise filled with cat hair, cheap furniture and sweet kisses will always welcome them back by the end of it.
*
“Can we leave already? We’re going to be late.”
Hoseok paces in the hallway. “In a minute,” he says. “I just want to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
Jimin is lying on his back on the living room couch, scrolling through his phone while he waits for his boyfriend. “When you say ‘we’, you mean me, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Babe, we cleaned it up all spotless. It’s fine. You know we have to pick up Seokjin from the bus stop. God only knows what nonsense he might get up to if we’re not there to meet him in time.”
He hears Hoseok move into the kitchen. “We’ll go in two minutes, I promise.”
Jimin sighs. “Fine. But I’m letting everyone know that our lateness is your fault, not mine.”
“That’s fine.”
Jimin scrolls through his Facebook feed without taking anything in, impatient to go pick up their friends. “What are you getting so stressed out for, anyway? It’s just the guys.”
With rushed steps, Hoseok enters their bedroom, voice now even more distant. “I know, but Namjoon hyung has never seen our place before. I don’t want him to think we live like savages.” The sounds of him come closer again, this time heading for the bathroom. “You know, just because you enjoy decorating with dust bunnies and wet towels all over the floor doesn’t mean other people like seeing it.”
Jimin huffs. “Wow. You wound me.”
He makes a point of not looking at Hoseok when he appears in the doorway again, though he sees out of the corner of his eye how the other begins to say something before he closes his mouth and lingers there, just staring. Arguments between the two of them are strange. Jimin knows Hoseok is completely serious about his complaints — they’ve had this conversation at least thirty times already — but there’s never tension between them afterwards, all of it forgotten the moment they stop talking about it. Hoseok is just like that, Jimin thinks. Fluid like water. He doesn’t know it, but Hoseok thinks it’s because of Jimin and his ability to solve disagreements without blowing things out of proportion. Perhaps it’s both. Perhaps it’s just in the way they match.
Suddenly Jimin finds himself with an armful of Hoseok and he has to put his phone away when the latter starts peppering kisses to his cheek and jaw, slowly making his way down to his neck. “What are you doing?” he asks, voice breaking with giggles when the touch tickles his skin.
“Just checking,” Hoseok mumbles into his neck.
“For what? More dust?”
The only response he gets is Hoseok kissing his neck with more ferocity, open mouthed kisses just short of littering his skin with hickeys, and Jimin feels his concentration and any sense of annoyance from earlier start to slip away.
“You make no sense,” he says in a half moan, hands gripping at Hoseok’s thighs planted on either sides of Jimin’s hips. “A tiny speck of dust in the apartment is unforgivable, but the two of us showing up looking like a hot mess is fine?”
“They’ll deal,” Hoseok grunts before getting back to work, hands now sliding down Jimin’s chest.
In a moment of clarity, Jimin sits up, pushing the other back. “Get off me,” he says, laughing when he sees the wounded look on the other’s face. “You can’t pounce me right before we go to see our friends. It’s not fair.”
“Then you should consider not looking so damn hot in a normal fucking t-shirt, God,” Hoseok tells him, poking at his stomach.
Jimin shields himself with his hands. “That’s a bit much to ask for, don’t you think? I can only do so much.”
Hoseok grins at him. The confidence Jimin has built up never ceases to make him feel high. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He presses a final peck to Jimin’s lips before getting off the couch again. “Okay, one last look and then we’ll go, I promise.”
Jimin flops back down on his back. “Yep. We’re definitely going to be late.”
*
When Namjoon secured the job at the convenience store, he pulled the money he would no longer need for future rent together and bought a second hand laptop as he concluded early on that writing by hand gave him more cramps than he could stand. Now that computer is placed on the dresser in the second bedroom of Taehyung’s apartment, ready to be used in all its slow loading glory.
Although, it isn’t Taehyung’s apartment anymore, he reminds himself; it’s theirs. His clothes have found a place among Taehyung’s in the closet (nowhere the near the quality or quantity of the wardrobe he used to have) and his books have been put back into the bookshelf in the living room. That’s it. That’s all he has to his name.
It seems larger than life when Taehyung enters the room behind him, an anticipating smile on his face. “We should get you a desk as soon as we can,” he says, wrapping Namjoon in a back hug, his chin resting on Namjoon’s shoulder. “Turn this into your little writer’s den.”
Namjoon’s heart skips a beat. The only dream he’s ever had is materializing around him with such dizzying speed that he finds it difficult to keep up, difficult to believe any of this is truly happening. Maybe, he thinks, as time goes by they’ll be able to buy more furniture and actually fill out this space once and for all. He doesn’t know what that would be, exactly, because he’s never been a person of high standards, but it’s okay. As he’s come to understand, learning to dream is a slow process.
He places his hands on top of Taehyung’s where they’re clasped on his stomach. “You know, I could use this as my bedroom too, if you’d prefer that. If rooming together is moving too fast.”
Taehyung doesn’t move. “Do you think it is?”
Namjoon breaks out of the hug and turns around to face him and the uncertain, insecure tilt of his lips. “I do if you think—” he begins, but stops himself. So many lessons he’s learned that he needs to apply to himself now. “I don’t,” he says instead. “I want to fall asleep next to you at night.”
The uncertainty is replaced by a beaming smile. “Good,” Taehyung says. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
It’s plain to see now more than ever that the two of them are just two different sets of anxieties, issues and traumas in various stages of healing, but so are Jungkook and Yoongi, so are Hoseok and Jimin. They understand each other, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. That’s all they need. It doesn’t scare Namjoon anymore.
“Anyway,” Taehyung continues, “Space is becoming a problem in the closet, but I’ll say that’s more my fault than yours. Either way, I finished unpacking your clothes, which is good ‘cause the others were supposed to be here to pick us up twenty minutes ago. But what else is new.”
Namjoon doesn’t know why everything feel so big, why even this trivial conversation about clothes and their friends makes him feel so much, but he can’t help but pull Taehyung in and hold him tight, squeeze him in his arms, hands rubbing at his back. “Thank you.”
“You’re thanking me?” Taehyung says, enamored and somehow a little worried by this sudden display of affection. Nothing about this has been easy, but they’re ever so slowly finding their place with each other again. “They’re just clothes, hyung.”
“Not for that,” Namjoon laughs. “Well, for that too, but… for giving me a home.” He pulls back, takes Taehyung’s hands in his. “For being my family despite all my less pretty sides.”
“Hyung,” Taehyung chastises, but Namjoon cuts him off.
“No, I’m not saying it a self-deprecating way. No one is perfect, you know? Everyone has flaws, and no one is under any obligation to put up with mine. So thank you for giving me a home that accepts me as I am and everything that entails.” He wonders for a moment if Taehyung will ever understand just what this feels like, if he’ll ever know these endless beams of light within. “I’ve never had that before.”
“But that goes for me, too, you know, hyung,” Taehyung says then, and Namjoon remembers: Of course he understands. “You guys are my family, too. Please, don’t thank me. There’s nowhere else in the world that I would rather be.”
Namjoon is just about to respond, just about to desperately try and put words on his gratitude when the doorbell rings, low-pitched and much too noisy.
Taehyung throws his head back with a groan. “That fucking doorbell,” he grumbles. “I swear, if you still had your powers I’d ask you to rip it off the wall.”
“You could still do that with your hands, you know,” Namjoon tells him.
Taehyung presses a peck to his lips before leading him out to the hallway. “Sure,” he says, “but not without getting caught on the CCTV and murdered by the landlord.”
Namjoon follows with a laugh, right hand linked with Taehyung’s. Finally he too is right where he wants to be.
*
Seokjin rings the doorbell in a good mood. Part of it can be attested to the anticipation of seeing Taehyung and Namjoon together — really together now, the way he always thought they should be — but on a broader level it has much to do with being back here in Seoul.
He supposes he should be conflicted; when he left for Daegu it hadn’t been very long since he stepped into an unknown alley to meet a boy who didn’t exist only to find himself between a brick wall and six pairs of fists, and back then he thought that even if he managed to recover from that experience, his relationship with Seoul might never. But as the years he spent in Daegu proved to him, no matter how long he spends attempting to build a new life somewhere else, it will never feel as much like home to him as Seoul does.
Being back with his parents is a drag, of course, but soon his boyfriend will leave Daegu and join him here and they will find a place together, and Seokjin will show him a life without worries, a life with family that doesn’t leave. The mere thought makes him giddy, almost hyperactive with excitement. Maybe someday, if Junghwan ever gets close enough to Namjoon and the others, he can tell him the truth about them, too.
Because what a truth it is. Though Seokjin considers himself a hopeless romantic with a taste for the dramatic, he is also a cool-headed realist, so when Jimin first told him the story about Namjoon and the way he’d saved them all he wanted to laugh, ask just what kinds of hard drugs he had been taking recently, but since then he’s come to realize that that approach is not an option. These things happened. And while he has a hard time picturing Namjoon with angel wings, what it ultimately boils down to is that there is such a thing as fate, some version of destiny. He can get behind that.
The door opens to reveal Taehyung and Namjoon hand in hand, and Seokjin shows them his most charming smile. “Hi, Taehyung-ah. Hi, hyung. We texted you but there was no response, so the others sent me up to make sure you guys aren’t celebrating by getting freaky while we wait downstairs. But really I just came up here hoping to get a peek.”
Taehyung laughs while pulling a beanie over his head and stepping into his shoes while Namjoon blinks at him. “Creepy,” he says.
Seokjin drapes an arm across Namjoon’s shoulders when they step out into the stairwell to close and lock the door behind them. “Now, hyung, I know you were gone for a long time, but you do remember who I am, don’t you?”
Namjoon snorts. “As if I could forget.”
Seokjin grins at him, sharing a look with Taehyung. “Good.”
They take the elevator down to the ground floor and Seokjin amuses himself with watching the two of them try to figure out how to be a couple around other people. Seokjin himself has practically no experience with being closeted or trying to hide his relationships, blessed as he is with understanding parents, but he isn’t stupid. He understands what the two of them must have gone through to keep this secret from their friends. It’s in how they look at each other, how they fidget in place like they’re stuck in the habit of wondering if they’re standing too close, if they’re being too obvious, not yet used to the idea that they can snuggle up to each other without anybody raising an eyebrow at them. It’s cute. And a little funny. When they’re better, less sensitive to this subject, Seokjin will make sure to tease them both to the end of the world and back.
The other four wait for them by the parking lot outside the apartment building. “Finally,” Jungkook groans when they walk out the door. “So what’s the word?” he asks Seokjin. “Were they fucking?”
“A gentleman never gives away his secrets,” Seokjin tells him with a serious look. “Not even if that secret happens to be that he saw two hot guys going at it in the kitchen.”
“We weren’t doing anything,” Taehyung says, aiming a kick at Seokjin’s ass cheek that has the latter darting away with a high-pitched laugh, even when Taehyung is held back by Namjoon. “And for the record, you guys are the ones who are late, not us.”
“It’s Hoseok’s fault,” Jimin says, pointing at his boyfriend, who accepts it with a nod.
“Guilty.”
Rolling his eyes at his friends, Yoongi gestures for them all to begin walking back to the bus stop they came from. “So are you all settled in now, Namjoon-ah?”
Namjoon nods, and Jungkook gives him a smile that’s both mischievous and full to the brim of genuine joy. “And how is it, living together?”
“The first thirty minutes have gone well,” Namjoon says, sharing a shy look with Taehyung while the others coo at them.
“That’s better than when we moved in together,” Hoseok tells him. “We fought over a cookie within the first fifteen minutes of Jimin moving into our apartment. He was about to leave me for a chocolate chip cookie.”
“Understandable,” Jungkook says with a serious nod.
“Anyway,” Jimin says, glaring affectionately at his boyfriend as they begin walking away. “This is great. Finally everyone is back where they’re supposed to be.” He gives Seokjin a look over his shoulder, who says nothing, but cherishes it in silence. He feels it, too. He’s where he’s supposed to be.
They’re off to Jimin and Hoseok’s now, Namjoon’s first visit. Seokjin has been there a couple of times before, but somehow he’s more excited for it this time. Being around the lot of them feels magical, proof that the world isn’t all bad, which Seokjin does his best to remind people every day, does what he can to bring a smile to people’s faces in any way possible — mostly through being as ridiculous as possible.
He hangs back, and as the others begin walking finds himself next to Namjoon, Taehyung busy speaking to Jimin and Jungkook just ahead of them, Hoseok and Yoongi leading the way. There’s no sunshine today, a gentle layer of white clouding the sky, but it isn’t cold. Although, Seokjin suspects, there’s no amount of zero degrees that could but a damper on his mood today.
“So,” he says, purposefully bumping his hip against Namjoon as they walk to catch his attention. Namjoon looks at him, so many thoughts present behind his eyes. “Are you ready to get going?”
It takes a moment for it to form, joy not his first reaction just yet, but the smile that dawns on his face speaks for itself.