Archive of Our Own ^beta

if you were to ask hoseok, he’d say that it started with him.

and he’d be right, in a sense. but wrong, in another.

seokjin thinks it starts with him, because we’re all the protagonist in our own life stories.

from his point of view, he sees himself in the center of the frame, in the beginning.

and to his viewpoint, that’s accurate and true.

but from a wider lens, when you take a step back and consider the context, neither of them are correct.

not really.

there are moments when it begins for both of them, and they are each at the forefront of those.

but there before them, and intrinsic to it all, there’s something else to consider.

someone else, who is elemental in this.

it started, before either of them had realized that something was set to start at all -

and it still starts, now,

(for them)

with -

it’s harder for seokjin to admit, when he needs help.

it’s harder for him to admit that he needs anything at all, because he’s the hyung and he’s there to provide. he’s there to look at what the other six are able to give of themselves, measure that against what’s expected of them today, and fill in whatever remains himself. he doesn’t think of it as something he should begrudge them, or feel hard done by. they don’t ask it of him and they don’t expect it either. but they let it happen, because seokjin sees to it that it becomes routine; does it often enough that it very quickly becomes habitual for them all, not just for him.

because he’s not only a hyung, he’s the hyung. he’s the oldest, and this is his job.

it’s not a bad thing. it’s not necessarily a good thing, either. it’s simply the way it is.

but it exhausts seokjin sometimes. and in ways that go far beyond the general exhaustion of their job.

because there’s the ‘dance practice went on for so long that i need to sit down before i fall down,’ kind of tired, and there’s the ‘it’s comeback season so i haven’t slept for more than three hours at a time in well over a week,’ kind of tired. there’s even the ‘i share a wall with namjoon and since we have a couple of days off right now he and taehyung have been fucking non stop,’ kind of tired, more recently.

but none of those compare to this.

they’re in something as close to a professional lull as they ever get to come, these days. they have schedules and practices and recording sessions at the studio, but they just finished promoting ‘fire’ and preparations for ‘save me’ are mostly locked down already, so they can afford to take things somewhat slowly, for now.

it doesn’t come as a surprise to seokjin that this is when he finally starts to crack, because he knows himself and how this goes for him well enough by now to realize that when he’s very busy, he can push it down, and when he’s not busy at all, it becomes a kind of exhaustion that he can chip away at with a few days spent in bed, catching up on physical rest that his body must convert to another kind of relief; the one he truly needs.

but when their tempo is slowed, when they’re still moving but not under pressure, it’s the perfect storm for this one kind of struggle seokjin goes through.

he gets tired in a way that isn’t physical, and he gets lonely in a way that still stings even when he’s in a room full of people, most of them his best friends in the world.

what surprises seokjin when it happens now isn’t that it’s happening, or that now is when it does. he’d been expecting it. he knows how he works.

what surprises seokjin this time, is that for the first time, he has an inkling of what he needs.

and what astounds him, honestly, is that when he lets himself seek it out, it actually works.

he’s not thinking of it as the solution to his problem the first time he goes looking for it, and he’ll wonder later if that was the only reason he ever found it; because he wasn’t looking for it.

he finds it like something he’s seeking in a dark room. when he looks at it directly, he’s blind to it, but when he catches a glimpse of it from his peripheral vision, it’s clear to him in a way it can’t be when he looks at it head on.

“just let hyung rest here for a minute. my legs are longer than yours, it takes more energy to walk around on them all day.”

it’s classic seokjin logic and it can’t be faulted, so seokjin isn’t surprised when jimin’s only response is to lift his arm to let seokjin lie down next to him, the couch too small for two people when one of them is seokjin-sized, but it doesn’t matter, because jimin is both tiny and very bendy. seokjin isn’t small, but he is flexible, so with some creative maneuvering on both their parts, it’s easy to find a way for them to rest comfortably, side by side.

jimin already had his hood up, and when seokjin rests his head in on his shoulder, jimin tugs the front of the hood down more to create a nice little pocket of shadow for seokjin’s face, if he tucks it in against the side of jimin’s throat. jimin’s skin is soft and he smells great and when he swallows, the ripple of his adam’s apple seems oddly hypnotizing, from this close up.

“nice boy,” seokjin murmurs nonsensically, already finding it hard to enunciate around the cotton mouth that genuine comfort always gives him. “smell good. nice to hyung.”

like this, seokjin is reduced to his simplest, most transparent state. he has simple and immediate needs and jimin is meeting all of them.

“lovely jimin. lovely,” he says, eyes already closed.

and they’re already tangled up together, seokjin’s arm wedged underneath jimin’s waist with his hand pushed up against the thin material of his tshirt where it’s stretched and rucked up between his shoulderblades, but it’s not close enough, seokjin finds.

when he’s like this, he’s not so good at talking himself out of what he wants.

so he puts his free hand on the cage of jimin’s ribs, and he lets his hand slide around jimin’s side, grips a little - but gently, always gentle when he feels like this - to pull jimin closer.

jimin comes easy; rolls further into seokjin’s side and lifts seokjin’s top leg up over both of his, hitches it with a hand under seokjin’s knee to wrap it high around his thighs, his foot pushed down between the backs of jimin’s knees and the back cushions of the couch.

“comfy hyung,” is all jimin says, not even having opened his eyes since seokjin disturbed him, since seokjin came upon him sleeping soundly and decided he wanted in.

seokjin closes his own eyes again now, feeling warm and secure, comfortable in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with being crammed onto a couch, pretzeled together with another body, but has everything to do with the fact that that body is park jimin’s.

“good,” seokjin decides, ducking his head even further, putting his forehead to the warm line of jimin’s collarbone and sighing in a way that’s soundless when jimin’s arms come up around his shoulders.

‘thank you,’ seokjin thinks, but doesn’t say, because he’s already used up the quota of words he’s capable of like this, by now.

words are too far away from where he’s gone, here, like this, with jimin.

‘good,’ his body decides, something more restful than sleep and more soothing than kind words flowing slowly, warmly through his veins, the tension seeping out of him like it’s being sponged away by the touch of jimin’s hands, the heat of his body, the easy way he holds seokjin close.

and it is good.

what seokjin won’t realize until later, is that it’s not only good right then, not only good in the moment or for a moment.

they wake up together, awareness coming back to them slowly, as if in drips.

seokjin feels jimin first; knows by the firmness of him and the way he’s holding seokjin that it’s him. he smells him then, some kind of broad and familiarly comforting scent that seokjin always associates with the sense that everything is fine. he sees him from right up close; one blink of seokjin’s eyes capturing the cut of jimin’s jaw, the next developing into the slack fall of his mouth, cheeks and lips still smudged with sleep.

without thinking - because he’s not able to think yet, still too comfortable for words or thoughts or anything that isn’t only touch, only smell, a muted offering of his senses - seokjin pushes his face back down into jimin’s chest, and sighs so deeply it feels endless, when jimin lifts his chin to let seokjin burrow further, to allow him closer.

it’s still good.

but it also makes seokjin feel better.

he looks across a room at jimin, or catches a hint of his cologne when they pass each other in a corridor. their hands touch when they’re packing their bags into the car, and in that split second, and even after;

days later;

seokjin still feels better.

jimin is quiet, is the thing.

he can rise to an occasion just as loudly and demonstratively, just as performatively as seokjin can, as hoseok often does. as the rest of them need someone to be.

he horses around with the other maknaes; letting jungkook pick him up and foist him around all day long until he tuckers himself out, energy completely spent, and jimin has to lift him into the car when it’s time to go home, has to carry him to his bed when they get back.

jimin and taehyung come together like magnets when they’re in certain moods, when they’ve got certain needs, and seokjin isn’t jealous, except for how he is.

jimin is different still with namjoon; is a little bit more cocky and a little bit less indulgent. he treats the hyung of the maknae line like he’s a challenge somehow and namjoon always, always, always lets jimin win, but that never makes the fight bleed out of jimin, not at all. maybe that’s because he’s never fighting against namjoon, but fighting for him, somehow. fighting to push him to the center, fighting off some dumb question that tries to belittle his contribution to the group, fighting namjoon only when it’s his own self consciousness or self doubt that jimin needs to overcome. he’s rough with namjoon, because namjoon seems to bring about some kind of fierce instinct in him; a need to protect that sometimes pits jimin against namjoon himself, because namjoon is a lot of things, but self preserving is not one of them.

jimin takes care of namjoon. he takes care of jungkook and taehyung too, and he does the very same thing for yoongi and hoseok, albeit in different ways in each case.

but seokjin finds himself stuck most often on how jimin is with namjoon.

seokjin watches jimin put a hand around namjoon’s wrist and tug him further into the cluster for a group photo, and seokjin shuffles closer, too, puts his arm around jimin’s shoulders and grins when jimin smiles at him.

but then he looks at jimin’s hand still tight around namjoon’s wrist, his fingers almost all wearing rings that probably make really pretty impressions against the thin skin above the heel of namjoon’s hand, and well …

seokjin doesn’t often wear jewelry, doesn’t like the added complication, the added worry of things he must not lose.

but his wrists feel oddly bare, then, like he usually wears a watch that today, he forgot to put on.

the photographer calls out a warning and they smile for the camera, dutiful even in their post-show exhaustion.

when they’re done, jimin drops his hold on namjoon and shoos him towards the catering table with both hands, with a stern look. he stays by seokjin’s side for a beat longer, shifts into the weight of seokjin’s arm around his shoulders before he steps away.

seokjin pulls on the first hoodie he can find - jungkook’s he thinks, because it’s stupidly huge - and pulls the sleeves as far down over his hands as they will go.

he rides back home with hoseok, like he usually does, and hoseok is oddly silent, quiet in a way that he generally isn’t. he must be tired too. maybe he’s tired like seokjin gets, sometimes.

once they’re all settled in for the evening, the lack of noise in the apartment seems louder to seokjin than it’s ever been before, because for a while after shows, for most of their days when they’re on tour, the roar of a crowd becomes their new normal.

it’s quiet enough that seokjin’s skin prickles with it, pinches at him like the threat of pins and needles.

and seokjin must be tired in more ways than just one, because when he walks by jimin’s room that night, his steps falter. and he wants.

he wants the way that jimin is quiet, now, because it’s so different to this.

jimin is quiet because when he’s alone, when the two of them are alone, he doesn’t talk a lot and he doesn’t say very much. not with words. not out loud. not with sound.

but he lets seokjin lie against him, or lets seokjin take his hands in his, or shifts to make it easier when seokjin wants to pillow his head on jimin’s shoulder.

he welcomes seokjin, when seokjin goes to him, and though seokjin doesn’t know whether jimin realizes it or not, he gives seokjin exactly what he needs. he gave seokjin that before seokjin knew he needed anything at all; before he knew that what he was feeling was something that could be solved.

and though they don’t speak, seokjin isn’t lonely with jimin.

because he doesn’t have to speak, doesn’t have to do anything at all. seokjin never experiences any kind of rest that does as much for him as sitting with jimin or lying against him or walking hand in hand in silence with him does.

so tonight, when he finds himself wanting, seokjin knows that that jimin could give him what would make him feel better. he thinks jimin would probably be pleased to do so, because that’s just the kind of person that he is.

paused outside of the room that jimin shares with hoseok, seokjin listens for sounds, and hears none.

peeking into the sliver of space where one of them pushed the door closed behind them but didn’t shut it fully, seokjin sees both of their slippers lined up neatly at the bottom of their beds.

when his eyes rise from the floor of their room, drawn up along the crack of light that his eyes follow like a trail, he sees hoseok’s bed - closer to the door - still made, his covers flat, the sheets empty.

and when his eyes rise a fraction further, to jimin’s bed, a few feet further inside the room, a couple centimeters higher to seokjin’s eyes, he looks at the soft heap of two bodies for only a second, before his eyes drop away completely.

he doesn’t close the door, because he doesn’t want to disturb them. he doesn’t want them to know that he’d been there, and he doesn’t know why that is.

he goes back to his own room, the one he shares with yoongi, and he climbs into his own bed and he chats quietly with yoongi while he wanders around getting ready to sleep, going to bed early for once, because he’s just as tired after performing as all of them are, couldn’t pull his usual all nighters at this point even if he wanted to.

yoongi falls asleep quickly, easily - for once - and seokjin is pleased about that, for him.

seokjin stays awake a while longer, knowing better than to try and think when he’s this tired, when he needs his rest this badly, and training his mind to listen to the silence around him, instead.

when he wakes up, he feels worse than he had before he’d gone to sleep.

he feels almost as exhausted as he had right before he’d gone to bed.

for the first time in a while, they’re mobbed at gimpo airport.

their popularity has been rising lately and they’re aware of that because it’s impossible not to be, but nobody was expecting it to get this serious, this quickly. sadly, not even their security team is prepared for it.

it’s the first time in a couple years that seokjin feels genuinely frightened, and he has no idea what to do, which only makes the fear more terrifying.

they’re being pushed in on from all sides, the bodies of their guards hard to differentiate between the bodies of people shoving at them, shoving at each other to get close, because they’ve all got their hoods up or their caps pulled low and seokjin forgot to put his contacts back in after he’d taken them out as soon as they’d gotten on the plane in the states.

everything is blurry and dark inside the crush of bodies, the yells and shouts of people trying to make the crowd move back, the crowd screaming at each other and at them.

seokjin’s breath gets locked in his chest and every time he manages a small breath he’s surprised that he does; he’s waiting for every breath he tries to take to be the last, because the pressure is mounting on all sides and it feels like it’s building beneath his breastbone, his ribs and his arms and his throat hurting from it, now.

“hyung!” someone says, distinguishable from all the other noise not because it’s loud - it isn’t - but because it’s close. someone pushes between seokjin and the guard who is shielding him from the crowd on his left side and for a second seokjin bristles, bracing himself for the worst, but then he smells jimin’s cologne and he sees the line of silver hoops swinging from the brim of his cap and even though he’s wearing sunglasses half the size of his face, there’s just enough of it still visible to put seokjin at ease.

“hold onto me, hyung,” jimin says, setting himself in front of seokjin, one hand on the shoulder of the security guard in front of him and the other dropped back to tuck half around seokjin’s waist.

seokjin’s chest is still tight and he’s horrified to find himself shaking, wonders if he can make it out of the airport or even out of this part of the terminal before his panic makes him start to cry. but he fists both of his hands in the back of jimin’s hoodie, and he holds on tight like this is what’s going to save him, because for some reason he really believes it might.

it’s still a nightmare. they’re still getting jostled by the crowd, barely able to move forward sometimes because of the crush from both sides and tripping over their own feet when something or someone makes the fragile, haphazard line of them stumble like already wobbling dominoes.

but it’s better, with jimin in front of him, with jimin to hold onto.

and then someone almost face plants into seokjin’s back. he doesn’t trip, because it’s not that hard an impact, but he does freeze up, not knowing who it is or what’s happening, not able to turn his head far enough to see.

“‘s just me, hyung,” a voice says in his ear, and it’s hoseok at his back, hoseok with both his hands on either side of seokjin’s waist, now.

seokjin loses a breath, but only because he forgets to take it. when he next tries to breathe in and out, the process goes a little smoother, this whole thing seeming somehow easier.

the guards are better able to clear the crowd once they’re out in the main thoroughfare, and there’s still a lot of shouting, the loud sounds of scuffle, but it’s just distant enough to not overwhelm seokjin anymore. they have the space they need to move, to breathe, to see where they’re going as they walk.

and still, jimin stays where he is, patting at seokjin’s hip with the hand he has shielding him, as if to say ‘we made it, we’re gonna be okay,’ and hoseok grips at jimin’s hand for a second, some kind of quick communication that goes over seokjin’s head, and then both of hoseok’s hands are back on seokjin’s waist, his chin hooked forward over seokjin’s shoulder when they step onto the escalator and get to stand still for a second.

“you’re okay, hyung. we’re all okay,” hoseok says, low and soothing and right in seokjin’s ear and maybe that’s the only reason that it makes seokjin shiver, but jimin glances back up at them from the step below, one side of his mouth quirking at what he sees, and maybe that’s not what made seokjin shiver at all, because he does it again now, when hoseok has said nothing more.

he’s still shaken when they get to the cars, all of them are, although taehyung and yoongi are bristling with anger as well, and they take a second to regroup in the private parking lot, just the seven of them, together in a safe huddle.

“everybody good?” namjoon asks, checking their faces in turn, and he knows they’re not, he knows he’s not either, but there’s nothing that can be done about that right now. so for as far as this moment goes, for right now, they all nod.

the head of their security team is already on the radio, making sure the roads outside the airport are clear for them to leave.

they’re supposed to travel the way they always do; jimin with jungkook, namjoon with yoongi and taehyung, seokjin with hoseok, but without a word, they split off in totally different sets, and nobody says a word, because everybody understands what’s happening.

taehyung turns away to head to his car and pulls namjoon with him, and when yoongi does the same to jungkook, jungkook goes, but looks back over his shoulder at jimin with a question on his face.

jimin jerks his chin at him in some kind of answer and then makes to follow namjoon and taehyung. or starts to, at least.

seokjin doesn’t think about it before he does it, his hand shooting out to grab jimin before he can go too far.

when he looks down at his hand gripping at jimin’s sleeve, he sees hoseok’s hand below it, clasping at jimin’s fingers.

neither of them say anything, so seokjin doesn’t feel especially compelled to, either.

they climb into the back of the car, the three of them together, and this time it’s hoseok who ends up in the middle.

thinking about how they’d bracketed him in the airport, how they’d both fought their way out of line and through the crush to get to him, seokjin wants to say ‘thank you’ but doesn’t know how. he’s tired, and not just sleepy. he doesn’t have the right words. he doesn’t have any words at all.

so when hoseok’s hand brushes against his, on the seat between their thighs, seokjin reaches for it and lifts it up, holds it in his own and rests it on his leg so he can scoot closer. so he can be closer. and then he puts his other arm around hoseok’s shoulder, and lets that hand fall to sit on the the round of jimin’s bicep, the slope of muscle under his hoodie.

jimin bends his arm up at the elbow in a way that can’t be comfortable, but gets his hand laid over seokjin’s, their fingers overlapping like some kind of woven material.

the car starts, and then they’re moving.

seokjin puts his head on hoseok’s shoulder, swallows back the sob that still sits high in his throat, and he closes his eyes, and does not think.

seokjin knows that jimin is hot. he’s always known that; he hasn’t been sleep walking through the last six or so years of his life. jimin has always been right there, and he’s always been hot. it’s not new. it’s whatever. it’s fine.

the fact that he only ever seems to get hotter seems kind of personally targeting, though.

when he’s on stage all trussed up in something tight, something else that’s leather, some kind of choker, some excuse for a jacket that won’t stay on his shoulder for more than five seconds, he’s hot in a way that leaves seokjin feeling breathless, almost scares seokjin somehow. sometimes he looks at jimin under bright lights, in the flash of cameras, and feels like wherever he looks after that, he’ll see imprints of jimin laid over everything for the rest of the day. he wouldn’t mind that too much, he thinks.

but then jimin walks offstage and strips away his styled outfits, wipes his face clean and bare and bundles himself up in too big tshirts, in soft hoodies, in worn flannel shirts that seokjin can almost feel against his face just from looking at jimin in them. outside of schedules, jimin lets his hair fall free without product and sometimes he pushes it back under a cap, or - worse still - a beanie, and then it’s just seokjin versus seokjin’s impulses, locked in a battle to the death to not let himself push jimin up against something or down onto something else, to put him anywhere at all that makes it easier for seokjin to have him.

jimin has been hot since the beginning, and these urges are not new. but they change, over time, as jimin does, as seokjin does too.

in the early days seokjin had been impressed by jimin’s enthusiasm; the exuberance he approached literally everything with, like the flow of his energy was limitless. he made seokjin feel energized just by looking at him.

lately, it’s his professionalism that astounds seokjin. dumb stuff happens on stage and jimin handles it perfectly, takes it totally in his stride, where seokjin would fumble his way through it, laughing helplessly because he wouldn’t know what else to do. someone on a set says something that they really shouldn’t, and jimin is stepping in to defuse a situation that never gets a chance to happen, then. he’s quick and he’s clear; near brutal in the way he shuts down the things people (wrongly) think they can do and say to them just because they’re idols, and seokjin watches this happen and feels - absurdly - safe.

that’s the problem, he thinks.

jimin’s hot, and he’s capable and he makes seokjin feel safe.

jimin is younger than him, but he’s so strong, towering in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with height, and seokjin finds himself wanting to duck down behind him, wanting to let jimin shield him.

seokjin has learned over the years how to do a lot of things in very big ways. he’s had to, to distract other people from things going on within the group. to distract the group from things going on outside of it and right there in it, too. a lot of the time they know exactly what he’s doing, but they let him do it anyway. they need him to, just as much as he needs to do it, sometimes. and while seokjin is out there on a stage he has built himself for them in every room that they find themselves gathered in, jimin is the one running around in the background with a spotlight on him that only seokjin seems to be able to see. he goes from member to member like a doctor doing his rounds and they all greet him like that too; look at him sometimes like he’s their only hope, like their lives are in his hands.

when they look to jimin like that, seokjin gets it. he sees it for what it is because he knows what it’s like to look up at jimin’s approach and feel that way.

with jimin close, seokjin feels like he’s allowed to be small.

it doesn’t happen often around the others, and certainly not for extended stretches if it does. it’s a second of letting his guard slip, a quick break in his long since established routine where he’ll let himself reach for jimin’s hand instead of illustrating whatever he’s regaling them with with big, looping hand gestures.

it’s different behind closed doors. it’s different when it’s just seokjin and jimin. but with the group, seokjin lets jimin tend to him the way he does everyone else, only not as much. because he’s the hyung, and that means something. because it means a lot to seokjin that jimin will take care of him in this way too, but there’s something else he needs from jimin. there’s other things he wants.

and maybe most of the rest of them don’t seem to get it the same way, don’t seem to see it how seokjin does, but hoseok might.

hoseok could, because if seokjin is out there trying to distract them with loud noises and big frenetic motions, tall tales and witty remarks, his hands cupped around his mouth to draw their attention to something that will make them laugh instead of cry -

and if jimin is there in the shadows, doing the same thing in smaller, more vital ways -

then hoseok is the bridge between them both.

seokjin motivates them to keep going, jimin sees to it that each one of them is fit and able to, and hoseok is the one that makes it happen. seokjin keeps them on their feet, jimin keeps them alive and breathing, and hoseok keeps them in line in every sense of the term. he’s there with gentle hands, with carefully considered words that give all of them the guidance they need to get to where they collectively need to be.

and maybe that’s why when the three of them wilt, it’s in a similar kind of way. maybe that’s why when they’re alone together; different sets of two of them, or the three of them sometimes too, they’re silent with one another. they don’t perform, when it’s just them.

maybe that’s why when seokjin is tired in that way that isn’t physical, feels something more like spiritual instead - a total sapping of his energy that leaves him weak in more ways than he can name or count - jimin lets him flop down onto him and holds him there. lets seokjin hide there, in him. because he understands.

when seokjin doesn’t have it in him to perform, when he needs to not only not be the center of everybody’s attention, but to not even be the focus of any one person’s attention for a moment, for an hour, it’s hoseok that he goes to; hoseok that something in him reaches out for with ease and in recognition.

and lately … ever increasingly lately … when seokjin finds himself there, when he blinks up into a moment of a stunning kind of realization - where he is, who he’s with, what this could be - he doesn’t want to come back.

jimin drags him in, always finds a way to hold him down,

hoseok gives him a place - a way - to hide,

and seokjin wants to stay.

he learned to understand this, first; to see it for what it was.

and then he learned to love this, once he knew.

now seokjin wants to be able to find his way here even when he doesn’t have to crawl to get there.

hoseok is part of a special dance performance for the MAMAs this year, and he’s already practicing as hard as he can.

technically, it’s seokjin’s day off, but it’s hoseok’s day off too and seokjin knows he’ll find him at the studio when he stops off there on his way back from shopping for clothes. he hadn’t had to buy a lot, their fansites have been particular generous this year, but he’d picked up a couple things. a hoodie he knows jungkook has been wanting. some garish shoelaces that he knows hoseok will go crazy over. a set of bracelets that will look great on jimin.

“what are you doing here, we’re not working today,” hoseok says when seokjin slips in the door. he doesn’t look surprised to see him, though.

“m’not working. just stopped by on my way home,” seokjin says, knowing he won’t be able to talk hoseok into finishing up early to come back with him, but secretly holding out hope, anyway.

“to - just to see me?” hoseok asks, tilting his head and scratching at one ear where it’s folded down under the brim of his snapback like he’s confused by this.

“just to see you,” seokjin confirms, folding his arms and dropping his bags to the floor, sliding down the wall to join them there, and getting comfortable with hoseok’s hoodie cushioning his butt.

“oh,” hoseok says, sounding like he gets something that his face says he absolutely doesn’t. “okay.”

after a minute, he starts dancing again.

he doesn’t look at seokjin as he dances, moving like he’s all alone still.

but between the beats, when he pauses to wipe his face off or drink some water, he glances at where seokjin is sitting like he’s checking that he didn’t somehow disappear without him having noticed.

he looks at him through the mirrors, like if he looks at seokjin’s reflection seokjin won’t know that he’s looking at him.

and every time, seokjin smiles at him. not a cue to stop, or a sign to communicate that he has something to say, because he doesn’t.

he just wants to reassure hoseok that he’s still here.

and slowly, like he’s hesitant at first but pushing himself past it step by step, hoseok starts smiling back.

after an hour, they’re grinning at each other after every successful run through.

when hoseok ends his water break by tucking his water bottle into his bag and swinging it up onto his back, seokjin blinks at him.

“let’s go, hyung,” hoseok says, holding a hand out to help seokjin up off the floor.

at first, seokjin wonders what he did to get this right; how he got so lucky.

it’s only when they get home that he looks at the clock in the entranceway and understands.

hoseok hadn’t left early for him.

hoseok had let him sit and watch him dance,

and seokjin just hadn’t noticed that four hours had passed.

it’s different with hoseok.

seokjin has never put as much pressure on himself to look after hoseok, so it’s a little easier to let hoseok see him hurting, see him needing.

it’s something more like symbiosis with hoseok, and sometimes seokjin still blinks at him when he calls seokjin ‘hyung.’

of course, hoseok has always been hot, too. all of them are hot. that’s kind of their job; or a big part of it, at least. but it’s different with hoseok, the same way it’s different with jimin, for seokjin. with the rest of the group, seokjin is capable of distinguishing between the levels of relative hotness they fluctuate through depending on their outfit, depending on their make up that day, depending on this comeback’s victim of a tragic hair styling decision. they always look good to him, but they look better sometimes, for different reasons.

hoseok, though. hoseok always looks the same kind of good to seokjin.

whereas with jimin, the comfort he gave seokjin was what made seokjin really sit up straight and take notice of his hotness, it’s the other way around with hoseok.

there’s always been an ease between them, a low running level of comfort with flitting in and out of one another’s space, touching each other like it’s nothing.

but now, seokjin finds himself looking at hoseok - admiring the slope of his nose, or struck dumb by the face he makes when he’s concentrating - and wanting to push his way closer. wanting to find out how hoseok might let seokjin touch him in ways that they’ve never touched before.

sometimes hoseok pulls seokjin up out of his seat into his arms, into a hug, or worse still, pulls him down to sit in his lap, instead.

and the feeling seokjin gets then … well, it’s nothing like comfort.

it’s different, with hoseok.

some of it is the same; a lot of it really, but on the outside, from the outset, it’s not like it is with jimin.

sometimes it feels like the very opposite and in this way at least, it really is.

the rest of, however, is startlingly similar.

painfully, confusingly familiar.

seokjin wanted jimin, has wanted him in an ever growing list of ways for a very long time now.

and seokjin feels like he’s had hoseok all this time, in ways that he hasn’t had jimin, but gets to have him recently, these days, almost.

it’s a seesaw of ‘have’ and ‘had’ and ‘want’ and ‘wanted, always wanted, still want, will want forever.’

and it tips back and forth between the two of them, seokjin sitting lost in the middle.

it’s different, with hoseok.

it’s exactly the same, with hoseok.

“i’m not the only one that thinks that’s just unfair, right?” seokjin wonders out loud, as he watches jimin sink easily into a full horizontal split on the living room floor. he and namjoon are trying out pilates together, and seokjin is thinking about becoming a monk.

“you could probably do that, hyung, you’re almost as flexible as he is,” hoseok says, clapping seokjin companionably on the shoulder like that helps in any way.

“that … that really isn’t what i meant,” seokjin says mildly, eyes still on the stretch of muscle along the outsides of jimin’s spread thighs.

hoseok looks at him and then follows his gaze, tracks the same path that seokjin’s eyes are trying to memorize.

“oh,” he says, in understanding, and then he snorts softly. “yeah, i get it. unfair is definitely one word for it. although,” he glances sidelong at seokjin, his eyes falling briefly to his bare chest, “you’re one to talk, hyung.”

he sighs, before he gets up and wanders off, probably to find something to eat, because it’s ass o’clock in the morning and that’s all the excuse seokjin needs to be shirtless in his own home, thank you very much.

namjoon doesn’t have a shirt on either, but nobody is giving him grief about it.

taehyung is hovering in the doorway, looking at namjoon like he wants to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole, but they’re dating, so that’s allowed.

nobody is dating seokjin. nobody wants to date seokjin, so why can’t he be shirtless without getting attacked for it?

when jimin and namjoon are finished torturing whoever’s around to see them do whatever it is that they’re trying to do, jimin jumps back up onto his feet and holds a hand out to help namjoon up too. he pulls him easily, all lean strength on top of that insane flexibility, and seokjin stupidly has to wipe at his own mouth when jimin cuts across the living room, heading towards him.

he pushes his hand through seokjin’s hair as he passes him by on the way to the kitchen, his fingers firm and familiar, making seokjin’s scalp tingle, and bringing excited, shivery goosebumps to the back of his neck.

“pretty hyung,” jimin says, it sounds like, but when seokjin whips his head around to check if jimin is standing there laughing at this embarrassing display of supreme whippedness, to check whether he’s hearing things or if jimin is just fucking with him, he has already disappeared around the corner into the kitchen.

“what the actual fuck?” seokjin wonders out loud, feeling and probably looking dazed where he sits, his phone held lax in his hand now that he doesn’t have to pretend to be scrolling on it to excuse his presence here.

“mood,” taehyung says, offering seokjin his fist in - what? solidarity? - as he and namjoon pass by him too, heading in the opposite direction; back to their bedrooms. well, one of their bedrooms, knowing the two of them the way seokjin does; far too intimately, against his will.

seokjin is still sitting there, lost in thought, but vaguely cataloging their household lube levels right now, when jimin finishes eating and reappears, hand in hand with hoseok in tow, because maybe the two of them get off on hurting seokjin. he wouldn’t be surprised by that. he wouldn’t be opposed to it, either.

“yah, put a shirt on already,” hoseok says, sounding genuinely put out about it now, and this makes absolutely nothing any clearer to seokjin.

“or take your pants off too,” jimin says, dipping in close to hoseok to muffle his laugh against the round of his shoulder.

they’re both looking at seokjin like they’re waiting for something, but seokjin has no clue how to respond to any of this. he doesn’t get the joke. or else he’s not in on it.

he shrugs at them, head tilted and feeling helpless, and hoseok rolls his eyes.

they disappear down the the corridor together, and once again seokjin is left alone with his thoughts.

still, he finds no sense in them.

not entirely lost, but not yet found, seokjin wanders off to make his monthly sex paraphenalia order. it's a neverending job, being the biggest hyung, but there's always something that makes it worth it. in this case specifically, it's the look of pure, genuine joy that yoongi gets on his face when his phone pings with an email, and he gets to open it to find the details of a new package for him to sign for, rather than some task or another that'll cost him his blood, sweat, tears or all three.

seokjin does a lot for them, but they'd do anything he asked of them. when he doesn't ask, this only prompts them to do whatever they can think of themselves to make him happy, putting together the pieces of what they know about him and his joy to try and solve the equation. they always get it right, to some degree, and seokjin loves being known so well by them; he loves being loved so much that even when he doesn't know how to ask for something that he wants, they still try their very best to give him something he might need.

they work beautifully together; a team in so many ways, to so many degrees, so many layers deep now that the strength of their bond still staggers seokjin sometimes.

and that's why it makes sense to him, that namjoon and taehyung and yoongi and jungkook have all fallen for one of them. taehyung and namjoon have gotten a head start on yoongi and jungkook, which is a strange thing to be able to think, but maybe this is the only way it could ever have been like this. it's been a long time since seokjin could imagine being with someone who wasn't in the group, who didn't understand this from the inside, who wasn't a part of it. it's his world. it's their world, and that's why where other groups draw lines between work and friendships, cleave chasms between public and personal, the seven of them have always worked to cover every inch of what they do with who they are. it leads to aches and bruises, sometimes, to bare themselves this way, but over the years they've gotten as good as they need to be about sharing things honestly without giving up all the details. they've each found the balance between offering up enough of themselves so that none of this feels false or forced to them, but holding back enough between just the seven of them that no one but them could truly hurt them. and though they fight and argue and hurt one another for stupid reasons still, with thoughtless words and selfish actions that they'll probably never entirely grow out of, it's never a kind of pain that they let settle or go unaddressed, and that's why they can always come back from it, usually better for having gone there.

it makes nothing but sense to seokjin, that taehyung and namjoon had figured it out the quickest and had taken this new kind of joy, this new layer to their bond, and run and run and run with it. namjoon and taehyung have always been the bravest. jungkook and yoongi are just as thoughtful as namjoon and taehyung are, but where they differ is that jungkook and yoongi remain cautious even after they have made a decision. and that's the limbo they're in now. it's inevitable, that they'll come out the other side of it together, and seokjin is excited for them.

it's probably always been inevitable, that they'd all fall for one another, in one way or another.

seokjin has fallen for all of them, in different ways, at different times, for different reasons, and it never stops happening.

this thing - whatever it is, whatever it could be - with jimin and hoseok feels different.

it feels like a brand new kind of beginning.

it feels, to seokjin, like the conclusion of something that started a very long time ago.

it happens more and more, that seokjin goes looking for jimin and finds him already with hoseok.

he’s not surprised, not really, because he and hoseok are alike in a lot of ways; needing time and space to decompress every now and then, but neither of them actually wanting to be alone, so it makes sense to seokjin that both of them crawl into jimin’s bed, into his arms, into his lap.

when they’re tired and spent and need comfort, jimin is where they go.

it makes sense to seokjin.

when he goes to jimin and finds hoseok has beaten him to it; finds that the two of them are together already, without him, it’s not difficult to retreat.

it’s hard to be alone, but it’s easy to not begrudge them what they find in each other.

he turns to leave, wondering why the sight of jimin and hoseok curled up together - both of them barefaced and so peaceful looking, so content seeming in one another’s company - makes something twist in him. it’s something like jealousy, but some soft and faintly aching version of it. an echo of it that sounds like something else entirely.

they look so good together. they make each other so happy, seokjin thinks, with a grim kind of smile on his face as he makes to leave, and it’s not hard to leave them alone together, but it’s hard to walk away from them, on his own.

“c’mere, hyung,” jimin says, the next time seokjin comes to him and finds him alone.

“missed this. missed you, hyung,” jimin murmurs into his hair, his bare ankles brushing against seokjin’s calves, and seokjin lets him hold him tight, doesn’t think about how big the bed feels with only the two of them in it.

“looking good, hobah,” seokjin calls out when he watches hoseok try out different poses for the mirror selfies he’s taking. “get it, jway hope!”

hoseok grins at him in the mirror, doesn’t turn around to face seokjin, doesn’t pause in his focus, and that makes it easier for seokjin to walk out the door and leave him alone, for some reason.

he wonders, then, what he might do if hoseok did turn to him.

he wonders, in that moment, what he might be able to do if hoseok stopped what he was doing and crossed the floor to get to him.

but he doesn’t, so seokjin can’t know.

he curls up into jimin when hoseok isn’t already occupying that space, and he doesn’t wonder why this feels kinda like they’re time-sharing jimin without ever having discussed it.

things are just as easy, just as comfortable as they’ve always been between him and hoseok, and seokjin wonders if he’s the only one that’s struggling with this; if he’s the only that feels like he’s trying to cross some kind of line that he can’t even find, yet.

because that’s what this has become, for him.

there’s a line here, somewhere. it’s one he shouldn’t cross, probably.

but he wants to.

he lets jimin tuck him in against his chest and he watches the line of hoseok’s back like if pays close enough attention it’ll be almost as good as getting to touch,

and everywhere he looks, all day long, he sees things and thinks thoughts that he knows are on the other side of the line; knows well aren’t his to covet.

and still, he keeps a constant eye out for the line, his toes bunching up in his shoes sometimes with the itch to step forward, the urge to just go.

seokjin is as far from surprised as it’s possible to be, when he walks in on jungkook having pushed yoongi up against the kitchen counter to kiss him.

he’d maybe thought yoongi would at least pretend to be a little bit less easy for him; he can’t say he doesn’t do a quick double take when he sees the way yoongi’s hands are fisted in the front of jungkook’s shirt, the way his eyelashes flutter against his cheek when jungkook breathes in hard and loud through his nose. he’d been entirely right about yoongi being loud though, so he golf claps when jungkook does something with the hand down the back of yoongi’s sweats that makes yoongi moan, loud and shameless.

“congrats,” he says, when they break apart to look at him with twin expressions of embarrassed horror. he has no idea why. he wishes this was all he saw when he walks in on namjoon and taehyung. why is everybody in this group except seokjin fucking someone else in this group, and why does seokjin have to be the one to keep getting his face rubbed in it?

“on what?” yoongi hisses, scrambling down off the counter and then pulling jungkook to crowd in against him like seokjin hasn’t already seen that he’s hard. or like this is the first time seokjin has seen him that way. which is just plain dumb. they’re roommates, which -

“this,” seokjin says, waving a hand between the two of them. “finally figuring out that jungkookie’s hero worship of you isn’t only professional. hey, are we going to have to start using the sock system?”

jungkook hides his face in his hands, and yoongi sighs so deeply that he sounds like an ancient and wizened warlock or something of that ilk.

“i’m gonna piss in every pair of socks you own,” yoongi says lowly, vehemently, and seokjin mostly just thinks it’s romantic that these two have only just got their shit together and yoongi is already prepared to make threats just because seokjin made jungkook blush.

“cute,” seokjin says, more at jungkook’s flushed cheeks than at yoongi’s threat, although honestly that’s pretty cute too.

“well, i guess we’re not gonna need any socks if you’re just gonna keep fucking in communal spaces instead. you should really check with everybody else first though, your kinks are not our kinks, kids.”

“we weren’t fucking,” yoongi yells at seokjin’s back as he leaves them to it, respectful enough of their honeymoon phase to let them christen the kitchen undisturbed. he knows he can trust yoongi to disinfect the countertops once they’re done. he’s made his peace with this.

on his way back to his room, seokjin pops his head into jimin and hoseok’s room, almost forgetting what he came to say when they both look at him from their respective beds. it’s strange to see them together but not touching. it’s less strange to see them both and wish he was touching them.

“steer clear of the kitchen for a while,” he says, wagging his eyebrows suggestively. “‘guk and yoongi are fucking.”

jimin blinks at him, eyes narrowed, but hoseok punches at the air.

“finally!” he says, like seokjin just announced that hoseok and jimin are fucking.

jimin turns to blink at hoseok, then.

“what?” hoseok asks, defensive, “i can’t be happy for them? i’m just glad someone in this group is getting it in, honestly.”

and seokjin joins jimin in his open judgement of hoseok, then.

“uh, hello?” seokjin reminds him, leaning against the door jamb and crossing his arms over his chest, making himself comfortable, “the occupants of this room are the only people in this apartment not fucking each other on the regular.”

he hadn’t really meant to say it quite like that, had meant more that the others are fucking each other, not that -

“not that … we - like, not -” he doesn’t know how to explain what he’d meant without making it sound worse, because all of the explanations in his head involve saying more words, and seokjin recognizes a steel trap when he sees one.

jimin’s eyebrows lift a little, and he looks back at hoseok like he’s expecting him to say something.

which -

“oh,” seokjin says, feeling even dumber now, “unless - i mean. if you guys are -”

“we’re not,” jimin says, very firm indeed.

“definitely not,” hoseok adds, his bright joy something much more subdued now, the look on his face much more like the one he gets when he’s got indigestion.

there’s a tension then. some kind of heaviness in the air that seokjin doesn’t understand the source of or need for. both jimin and hoseok are looking at him, and refusing to look at each other, it seems like.

“o - kay,” he says, shifting awkwardly on his socked feet.

“good to - um. get that cleared up?” he says, scratching at the back of his neck.

“yup,” jimin says, popping the p and then rolling over to reach for his book again.

hoseok looks over at jimin, his eyes widening some when they catch on the way jimin’s shirt has ridden up at his waist, and then he turns a look on seokjin that’s pleading somehow. that’s asking for something; help, maybe.

“you’ll find someone,” seokjin tries, hazarding a guess. “you’re lovely, hobah. i bet there’s people who would give their wrist to get to be with you.”

whether this is the right response or not, seokjin can’t tell, because hoseok only lifts his eyebrows a little, still staring at him like he’s expecting something.

“like who, hyung?” hoseok asks, and seokjin is still lost when jimin snorts quietly.

‘like me,’ seokjin wants to say.

“anyone,” he says instead. “everyone. whoever you wanted, hoseok-ah.”

and for the second time today, seokjin gets sighed at like he’s a child, and not a particularly smart one, either.

“thanks for the update, hyung,” jimin says evenly, looking at the pages of his book instead of at either of them, and there’s almost enough bare skin visible between his shirt and pants to show his tattoo, so it takes seokjin a second to remember what he’s talking about, why he’d come here in the first place.

“you’re welcome,” he says, swallowing a question that starts to rise in his throat, quelling a suggestion that tries to climb out of him.

“bye, then,” he says, backing out of the room but wishing he could think of a reason to stay, instead.

he leaves, but his footsteps are slow and light, so as not to make enough noise to cover it, if someone calls out after him.

he listens for it, but no one does.

today has been full of technical issues.

this network is notorious for cheap sets that make for the most dangerous stages and when jimin’s voice starts to give out on him after their fifth - interrupted, always interrupted - run through, they’re all silent as they wait offstage, all but stewing in the shadows.

taehyung has his arm around jimin’s shoulders and jungkook is at his other side, namjoon on his knees in front of jimin’s chair, talking to him so softly it’s like he’s the one who is losing his voice.

yoongi hadn’t even paused to tell them where he was going before he got offstage and stormed instantly away, but he doesn’t have to. he’s gone to find a manager to do something. he’s gone to find someone who is better equipped than he is right now to talk to the pd without ripping him a new asshole. yoongi doesn’t wallow in problems; he solves them.

“i can’t wait until we become a big enough deal that we can just stop performing on this show forever,” seokjin sighs, slumping into his cheap, rickety seat and lifting his phone to check how much of his makeup he has sweated off this time.

hoseok stills in the chair next to his, and seokjin turns to look at him, wonders what’s wrong.

“do you really think that’ll happen, hyung?” he asks, his hands pressed palm to palm and tucked down tight between his knees. “do you really think we’ll get that far?”

against the back drop of a full day of stupid and infuriating things, this is the first thing that surprises seokjin.

“you’re kidding, right?” he asks hoseok, leaning in over the arm of his chair so he can push his obnoxiously cocky smile right up into hoseok’s face, almost. almost.

“jung hoseok, we’re going to become the best kpop group in the country, and then we’re going to make the whole rest of the world hate us for how we’ve made it impossible for them to not know what kpop is anymore.”

hoseok rolls his eyes, but his cheeks are bunching up under the threat of a smile, his mouth pinched small like it’s taking genuine concentrated effort to hide his joy.

“you really think so, hyung?” he asks again, but it’s not really a question, this time. it’s something he says in a way that makes seokjin proud somehow, because it sounds like he has surprised hoseok in a way that delights him; given him something he wanted but didn’t think he’d get to have.

“i know so,” seokjin says, searching in his pockets for an oil sheet and then pressing it lightly along the bridge of hoseok’s nose, holding it just for a second, just with the tip of one finger, to the shine underneath the curve of his bottom lip.

“and when this all happens because my fancam of you practicing the ‘no more dream’ dance break choreography goes viral, we’ll have you and you alone to thank for our success.”

hoseok blushes, and seokjin wants to put his mouth to the flushed apples of his cheeks.

“well,” he reconsiders, still looking at hoseok from up close, “you and your hips. and your tongue. and your hands, when you grip your belt and -”

“stop, hyung,” hoseok whines, squirming in his seat like he always does when they try to praise him, because he’s so focused on doing a good job that he forgets he sometimes gets to be told he has done a good job. “i get it, i get it. it’s not nice to tease.”

“who’s teasing?” seokjin asks, plain and serious, because that’s exactly what he is. it’s good choreography. great, even. but with hoseok leading it? in that jacket? with that expression on his face, and his hair dripping wet with sweat? yeah, he’s as serious as the heart attack he almost has every time he has to see it.

“it’s not a fancam if you filmed it, hyung. you’re my -” he stop, stutters like someone just pressed pause on him. “my - bandmate. you’re not my fan, hyung.”

“yah,” seokjin swats at hoseok’s thigh, smiles when hoseok stays still for it even though they both know his reflexes are more than quick enough to avoid it, “don’t label me, you brat. i can be your bandmate and your fan. i think it’s entirely possible i was your first ever fan, actually. and it’s pretty obvious i’m still your biggest fan.”

that could easily be true. seokjin could very easily sit here and make both of those cases for himself, and he would - with relish - because this part is always simple, always only ever fun. hoseok performs just as much for them offstage as he does onstage, so seokjin kind of loves it when he gets to be the one to ham it up for him, instead. it’s easy to compliment hoseok until his ears go red, until he can only look at seokjin from beneath his eyelashes, framed by his blushing cheeks. it’s all too easy to tell hoseok the truth but let him play it off like it’s a joke, if that’s the only way he can accept it. seokjin has all the time in the world to keep on trying, and his victories ( though they are small, and far and few between ) are more precious to him than any trophy or award he’s ever been given. he earns all of them, of course, but hoseok’s small smiles - the bare and totally, helplessly genuine ones - are rewarding in a way that nothing else can compete with.

“don’t worry, hope-ah, when we finally make it, hyung will treat you right. i’ll have you living in the lap of luxury. do you want hyung to hire someone to feed you grapes? we can buy this network, if you like. we could fix it up or just burn the whole thing to the ground, whatever you decide is fine with hyung.”

hoseok is huffing at him, cheeks still flushed and his eyes bright like he’s delighted by seokjin somehow. and this is why seokjin does what he does, truth be told. because he’s good at it. because it comes naturally to him.

and because it makes hoseok smile.

later on, when they’re mostly finished up here - at long last - but still lingering to pick at the catering table, not really hungry but wanting to feel like they were able to take something from this horrible establishment, jimin sidles up behind seokjin.

he moves into his space and with just a glance back over his shoulder, seokjin can tell it’s him. even bundled up in a hoodie, a cap on and his hood pulled up over it, seokjin instantly recognizes the way jimin’s body moves. and even if he didn’t, he’d recognize the smell of him, the heat of him when he tucks himself along seokjin’s back, his face hidden in against seokjin’s shoulder.

“you okay?” seokjin asks, dipping his chin so his voice doesn’t carry. jimin has probably had more than enough of everyone fussing over him. seokjin wouldn’t want to start a second wave. he’s been worried, so much so that his resolve almost broke a time or twenty five, but he’d made himself give jimin space, if only because he was already upset and overwhelmed and it hadn’t seemed like most of the others were in any fit state to not fuss over him immediately and maybe too enthusiastically. seokjin might have needed to make sure jimin was okay, but jimin needed to not get mobbed and that was more important.

“were you worried about me, hyung?” jimin asks, his voice a rough whisper. the doctor they’d called in didn’t think the strain was anything that warranted vocal rest, more stress related than physical, he’d said, when seokjin had lurked outside the door to listen in. jimin had been given some pain meds and was sent on his way soon after.

“about you? never,” seokjin says, thinking about how jimin usually straightens out his shoulders and puffs his chest a little when seokjin compliments him, when seokjin tells him how capable he knows jimin is and sees him to be.

now, jimin only curls his fingers up under the hem of seokjin’s sweater and holds on tight, tugs like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

and it feels like the most natural thing in the world for seokjin to reach back for jimin’s hands and guide his arms around his waist.

they shuffle along like that, a two headed, four footed single entity, picking spitefully at the catering spread; shamelessly plucking all the meat out of dishes when no one can see.

as they wait for their cars to arrive, jimin stays right by seokjin’s side and this, for some reason, seems to finally convince the others to give jimin a bit of breathing room.

seokjin slumps down a little against the wall he’s leaning on, dropping his shoulder invitingly just in case jimin would like something to rest his head on, but he doesn’t. instead, he puts his hand on seokjin’s shoulder and leans in, his hood shielding it when he puts his face to the side of seokjin’s - his nose squishing gently under seokjin’s cheekbone, his mouth warm and soft at seokjin’s jaw - and breathes and stays that way, just like that, for a beat that becomes a full bar.

by the time seokjin is sliding into the car he shares with hoseok, his heart is still racing.

hoseok turns to him, a grin already brightening his eyes, and that really doesn’t help at all.

hoseok when he’s smiling and happy is a special kind of torture, but not even that can hold a candle to this.

“i totally get what you’re trying to do here, but what i’m trying to tell you is that it’s not working. if you’d just listen to me, you’d get why that is.”

hoseok is standing behind yoongi’s chair, a little further away from the desk so he can hear the studio monitors better, and he’s got his arms folded across his chest and his face says he has never experienced a moment of mirth in his life.

yoongi sighs and this is a very familiar sight, even though seokjin doesn’t very often get to witness it firsthand.

and thank god, he thinks, when yoongi says something biting back and the muscle in hoseok’s jaw starts to tic.

there are no cushions on yoongi’s couch for him to pull into his lap, so seokjin has no choice but to leave. for the sake of his own dignity and also just for the sake of basic decorum.

he doesn’t worry about leaving them alone together, not even when they’re like this. if it gets bad, they’ll call namjoon in like they always do and either way, seokjin knows well that no one else will be able to draw either of them out of it. they say the kinds of things that would really hurt seokjin’s feelings as easy as you please to one another when it’s about music, and seokjin - for his part - doesn’t know whether to be impressed at how easily they seem to compartmentalize that part of their jobs, or thankful for how seriously they take the work they all do together.

maybe an empty coffee cup or a shoe will get thrown, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first or fifth time, but they’ll come out of it with a song that they’re both pleased with and proud of, so seokjin is happy to leave them to it, in the meantime.

“hey,” he says, finding jimin sitting cross-legged on the floor outside the vocal practice rooms, scrolling through his phone, probably waiting for taehyung. “do you ever think about disappointing hobi on purpose just to watch him do that thing where he pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek?”

jimin doesn’t even look up at him.

“no, hyung, i’m usually too busy thinking about ways to get you to push your tongue against the inside of my cheek, instead.”

seokjin tilts his head at this.

“right,” he says, faintly. “funny. that’s - funny.”

jimin does look up at him, then. he locks his phone and pockets it and folds his hands in his lap, staring up at seokjin impassively.

“is it, hyung? is that the kind of thing that makes you laugh?”

honestly, seokjin feels more like crying, but he can’t exactly say that to jimin, so he employs every ounce of his wit to come up with a better, more reasonable thing to say, instead.

“uh - i - gotta go,” is what he comes up, and then he’s speed walking off down the corridor because running seems a touch hysterical, even if seokjin himself is currently locked in a state of hysteria unlike anything he’s experienced since jimin stopped wearing muscle tees like, exclusively.

seokjin almost runs right into jungkook as jungkook is coming out of the bathroom.

“woah,” he says, catching seokjin with both hands high and tight around seokjin’s biceps. he’s been working out more recently, and looking at him now feels vaguely like looking at the ghost of jimin past, only worse somehow. seokjin really doesn’t need this right now. why is everyone he has to live with so relentlessly attractive? why is he the only one who must suffer like this?

“what’s the rush? did you eat something bad for lunch?” jungkook asks, looking down at seokjin’s stomach speculatively and wincing in what’s probably supposed to be sympathy.

“thank you, ‘guk,” seokjin says, absolutely sincere, as he kisses jungkook on both of his cheeks because even when he’s the very worst, he’s still such a good boy; seokjin’s pride and joy, truly.

jungkook lets him go, only looking at him in mild confusion for once, and then he steps to one side to let seokjin pass.

it only takes sticking his face in a sink full of cold water for a full minute for seokjin to get himself back together, which isn’t a bad record in the grand scheme of things.

later on, when the seven of them are drawn back together for a team meeting, jungkook asks if he’s feeling any better and they all look at him curiously.

hoseok, specifically, dips his eyebrows together in a look of mild disapproval. next to him, jimin rests his chin on his hand and lifts his brows like he’s asking a question.

seokjin, sitting directly across from the two of them, swallows thickly.

“um, no. i’m still not feeling entirely myself,” he says, because that’s true, even if not in the way they think he means.

physically, he feels absolutely fine.

otherwise, he’s entirely preoccupied with the thought of feeling someone finer than fine.

well, someones, actually.

but that’s fine.

everything’s fine.

it’s gonna be fine.

probably.

seokjin’s handled much worse than this.

it’ll be fine.

right?

seokjin should have known better.

seokjin really should have known that nothing is ever fine. not for him, not when it involves jimin or hoseok or worse still - the two of them.

because a couple of days later, they finally have a day off and seokjin thinks he is oh so smart for staying home and doing absolutely nothing, all by himself, when he would otherwise be out in the world doing things with people who could and would get him into all kinds of trouble.

he’s all over this situation. he’s totally on top of it.

he’s got the room to himself for the night because yoongi and jungkook are taking advantage of their late start tomorrow, so he even goes to bed early for once, and of course it’s then that tragedy strikes; when he is caught most unawares.

“hyuuuuuuung.”

it sounds for all the world like someone is crooning for him, from outside his bedroom door.

seokjin blinks at his ceiling and wonders if this is a new kind of sleep paralysis demon - some gen z version of it that’s probably going to haunt him via instant message or fuck with him by fucking up his social metrics or something. and then there is silence, and seokjin wonders if he’s hearing things.

but -

“hyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuuuung!” comes the voice again, this time accompanied by a faint kind of pawing at his door.

is seokjin being haunted by a cat? that can talk? why would a cat address him with honorifics, even if it could talk? don’t cats age differently? how old would a cat have to be to be his age in human years?

before seokjin can do anything - like, say, grab a calculator, or maybe climb out his window and run off out into the night - his bedroom door is pushed open.

or, more accurately, fumbled open.

and there in the hallway, backlit because seokjin has his lights off already, is jimin. on his knees.

“hyuuuuuung,” he says again, whining and wheedling like he never gets unless - oh god. he’s drunk. he’s crawling across seokjin’s bedroom floor on all fours now, and jesus christ, seokjin hopes he’s drunk.

when he gets to the side of seokjin’s bed, he kneels there and frowns at seokjin and then he lifts both arms into the air like a baby does when it wants to be airborne.

seokjin kind of wishes he was drunk.

“jimin. jimin-ah, what’s going on?” he asks, gentle moreso out of his own fear than any concern for jimin’s current state and/or wellbeing. seokjin gets selfish when he’s startled.

when he doesn’t make a move to help jimin up onto the bed, jimin pulls himself up instead. drunk or not, he’s got more upper body strength than any two other members combined, so he manages it neatly and in seconds.

“missed you, hyung,” he says, and seokjin braces himself when jimin leans in to press his face against the side of seokjin’s, but he only smells like himself and very faintly like toothpaste. seokjin wonders what it says about him that even thinking that jimin was going to reek of alcohol and probably stale fried food too (because he knows jimin’s drinking habits. he knows all of their drinking habits) he’d only braced himself instead of turning his face away. probably, what it says isn’t at all flattering to seokjin. and that’s fair, he thinks.

“sorry, hyung,” another voice says, and then hoseok is in the one framed in the bright light of the hallway, because jimin hadn’t closed the door after himself. “i tried to keep him away in case you were already sleeping, but he got away from me when i was folding his clothes. he’s fast as fuck, even when he’s wasted.”

“that’s okay,” seokjin says, sitting up and turning on his bedside lamp, lifting the covers so jimin can climb in next to him. they’re all clingy drunks once you get enough alcohol into them, although the threshold for cuddles differs wildly from member to member. for jimin in particular to be like this, he must have put away a hell of a lot of drinks tonight.

“are you feeling okay?” seokjin asks when jimin is cuddled up into his side, his eyes already closed and his arms around seokjin’s waist.

the thought of a shitfaced jimin that had just gotten home was kind of a horrifying one, but a shitfaced jimin that hoseok has already taken care of and is now dressed and ready to be put to bed? well, that kind of feels like a gift that seokjin didn’t know he was set to receive. this whole thing has turned out - well, almost perfectly.

“m’fine. m’greaaat,” jimin murmurs, and seokjin smiles down at him as he brushes his hair back out of his face.

“i made him drink a lot of water and some tonic for his stomach, so he might have to get up to pee in the middle of the night, but otherwise he should be good. just wanted his favorite hyung,” hoseok says, leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his pockets, a faintly fond smile on his face.

at this, jimin’s face scrunches up in displeasure.

“didn’t,” he says, petulant even with his face mostly smushed into seokjin’s armpit. “did not. wanted both my favorite hyungs. why are you all the way over there,” he frowns now, even though he’s not actually facing in hoseok’s direction.

and when seokjin lifts his head to look at hoseok, hoseok is looking back at him, instead of at jimin.

the pause then is not inconsiderable. it’s a moment that feels and seems and even sounds significant, to seokjin.

“well?” he says, when he trusts his voice not to shake or break or squeak or do something else embarrassing. he nods at the other side of the bed, plenty of space on jimin’s other side, and hoseok’s hesitation is legible only in him taking both hands out of his pockets and twisting them together for a second, before he steps inside and reaches to close the door behind him.

he crosses the bedroom floor quickly, quietly, in total contrast to how jimin had come, and when he slips in under the sheets, something settles not only in the room, but in seokjin, too.

in the silence, and the ease the three of them find there, together like this, something falls together.

and then they all shift for a moment, seokjin pushing more covers across to make sure hoseok has enough, and hoseok fixing the pillows that jimin had knocked askew in his haste to climb into seokjin’s bed, but finally they find an arrangement that works for them; jimin in the middle and hemmed in by his favorite hyungs - allegedly, apparently - on both sides. his pleased wriggles seem to confirm this.

“thank you, hyungs. love you, hyungs,” he murmurs, not as slurred anymore, but quiet still. they don’t tend to talk a lot when they’re like this, this particular kind of comfort more about just the reassurance of one another’s presence; the lack of any pressing need to speak or say anything at all. even drunk, jimin seems to remember this. or maybe he doesn’t remember at all. maybe it’s his body that knows that when they curl up into one another like this, it’s not having to talk that makes it so special, most of the time.

and so when jimin says that he loves them, seokjin and hoseok don’t say anything.

they look at one another, eyes drawn to each other’s above jimin’s head like there’s something they’re meant to see, there on the other’s face.

and there’s nothing out of the ordinary. nothing new. nothing seokjin hasn’t seen a hundred times before.

but it feels different, anyway.

hoseok has his arm around jimin’s waist, one leg thrown up over both of jimin’s and his ankle knocking against seokjin’s shin.

seokjin watches hoseok look down between them, look at seokjin and jimin’s hands clasped together on jimin’s chest, and when he lift his head to look back up at seokjin, something has changed.

half holding his breath, seokjin lies down properly, puts his head to the pillow next to jimin’s so the hand he’d been propping himself up with is free. he slides it, palm up, across the pillow, just above jimin’s head.

without looking away, without saying or doing anything at all, hoseok reaches out to touch the tips of his fingers to the heel of seokjin’s hand. he lets his fingers trail slowly up, brushing up the length of seokjin’s fingers until their hands are lined up, and then he fans his fingers out into the spaces between seokjin’s, and curls them down, when seokjin curls his up.

hand in hand, they stare at one another.

and then together, they look down between them.

at jimin.

all in all, it actually helps seokjin out that the next morning, all hell breaks loose before he can even get any breakfast into himself.

the three of them wake up in a slow wave of bemused smiles and cutely flushed cheeks and then jimin tries to burrow back down into the sheets between seokjin and hoseok and they team up to wrestle him up and out of bed.

it’s easy. it’s fun. it’s not awkward or strange or in any way bad and seokjin’s face already hurts a little from smiling by the time he decides it’s time to go forage for food to start the day.

it’s pure good luck that when seokjin walks out of his room - jimin hot on his heels and already very seriously informing him what he wants to eat for breakfast - jungkook and namjoon are passing by on their way home from the gym.

“hell yes hyung,” jungkook says, holding his hand up for a high five, and seokjin, stupidly, almost gives him one, until jimin rolls his eyes at jungkook and grabs his hand out of the air to viciously twist his arm in its socket.

and of course, it’s when jungkook is still yelping in pain and namjoon is looking between them like he’s not sure whether he needs to intervene - and, if he does, who he needs to scold - that hoseok walks out too, almost bumping right into the traffic jam they’ve amassed in the hallway.

“ohhhhhh,” namjoon says, his mouth pinching comically small around the word, and so much so that seokjin actually for a second or two genuinely contemplates letting him keep right on thinking that the three of them did something untoward together last night. not that anything the three of them could do together would actually be untoward. plus, seokjin’s pretty confident that the two already existing couples in this group have that territory more than covered as is, but -

“no. nope,” seokjin says, shaking his head as he takes jimin in hand and carefully extracts him from the slap fight that he can preemptively see brewing behind jungkook’s eyes. they speak the same third language, seokjin and jungkook, so he can all but read jungkook’s thoughts at this point. “your ‘oh’ is not even a little bit warranted.”

“oh,” jungkook says, somehow making the sad face emoji an audible and visual expression. “sorry, hyungs.”

when seokjin looks to hoseok and jimin, neither of them will look at him, so he’s forced to ask -

“sorry for what? and to which hyungs?”

sometimes seokjin really wishes that jungkook had taken him up on his offer to drop the honorifics - that all of them had, actually - because that would certainly make situations like this much simpler. then again, sometimes seokjin really likes it when they call him ‘hyung.’ some of them, at least. like … two of them, specifically. it’s a personal issue, and seokjin has been trying to work on it. it’s a workload that has ramped up significantly, lately.

jungkook and namjoon both look between the three of them like they’re trying to figure out which of them is the mafia in a game that they’re not playing.

eventually, jungkook shrugs.

“sorry for whatever this wasn’t. to whichever of you wish it had been, i guess.”

namjoon lifts his eyebrows at this and then nods at jungkook in what looks like both surprise and pride.

“very succinct,” he observes, and jungkook clasps his hands together behind his back like that’s what it takes to keep him from putting them out in front of him and begging namjoon for a gold star.

“anybody else got any early morning observations on our inter-band relationship activities that they need to share, or am i free to leave to go grab some food before these two start a student-teacher role play right here?”

namjoon’s look is scandalized, but - predictably, honestly - jungkook’s is nothing but enthusiastic interest. every single day, seokjin thanks god that yoongi decided to take this particular bullet for them, and not only because seokjin is pretty sure that otherwise, it would have taken several of them to handle jungkook’s insatiable hunger for everything and everyone he loves. yoongi, as pocket sized as he may seem, actually has much more going on behind the curtain than anyone else seokjin has ever met, and he goes to sleep these days perfectly content that yoongi has this particular situation firmly in hand and under control.

that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also pray for him sometimes, still, though, and he does that now as he makes his way to the kitchen, already thinking about what he can make that will incorporate jimin and hoseok’s tastes.

and if later on that same day, jungkook comes to seokjin to ask if he can borrow one of seokjin’s skinny ties because everybody else only has thick ones here at home and those ‘are too much fabric to comfortably fit in someone’s hypothetical mouth, hypothetically,’ then that’s a secret that seokjin will take to his grave.

mostly because he’s just not sure how he’d even go about telling anyone else what kind of things happen to him on a daily basis, in this group.

a lot of the time, seokjin has a hard time believing these things himself.

jimin and hoseok both slept in his bed that night, and that doesn’t even break the top ten strangest or most unexpected things that had happened to him this week.

in terms of personal favorites, though, it’s seokjin’s clear number one.

seokjin doesn’t do a whole lot of thinking, in the weeks after that.

they’re pretty busy, and what little spare time he has, he mostly spends cuddling hoseok or throwing himself down half over jimin, wherever and however he finds him.

the difference now, is that when he goes to jimin’s room to sack out next to him while he reads, he’s hoping that hoseok will come home soon. and when hoseok does, he stretches himself out next to seokjin like if there even is another bed in this room, it certainly doesn’t belong to him.

the difference these days is that when seokjin worries that he’s gone a little far, that he’s asked them both for more than he has the right to have, it only takes a day or two of keeping his hands and his legs and his warm hugs to himself before jimin is pushing his bedroom door open, hoseok right behind him, and a hopeful, questioning look split between their faces.

“hey,” seokjin says late one afternoon, when they’re dispersed across the floor to stretch before dance practice. he’s still not thinking, not really, so when he looks at hoseok and sees him watching jimin across the room, he opens his mouth before he can talk himself out of it. “you’d be a great couple. the two of you would work so well together.”

hoseok looks at him, passive, and doesn’t ask who seokjin is referring to. and maybe that’s because most of their group is already in relationships, but the seven of them aren’t even almost the only people in the room, so seokjin still allows himself to really feel it, when his heart sinks at that.

“we’d be great together,” hoseok agrees, and when seokjin twists his hips, that’s not the only place he feels a twinge of pain. “but we could be even better than that, i think.”

seokjin sits up out of his stretch, his legs splayed out in front of him like a broken doll.

he doesn’t know what to say. he knows what he wants to think, but he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to. or if he’s allowed to.

“i’m not gonna date jimin, hyung,” hoseok says, and seokjin doesn’t understand how that makes him feel both better and worse.

“hey,” he says, bristling but with something that’s simultaneously warming in his chest, “jimin is wonderful. jimin is the best person i could - i mean, you could -” he pauses, panicked. “he’s the best person anyone could ever hope to be with.” jimin is an endlessly lovable person and seokjin knows that first hand. seokjin loves him in all kinds of ways, but still he’s constantly finding new ones; new things to love about him, new types of love he wants to show him, and some of them, he’s even lucky enough to be able to.

“i didn’t say i don’t hope to be with him, hyung,” hoseok says, sounding patient and tired in a way that makes him seem like the hyung, here. “but i’m not gonna date him. not just him and me.”

seokjin doesn’t get it. or rather - what he doesn’t get is why it sounds to him like hoseok is saying out loud what seokjin only dared to dream about.

“not without you, hyung,” hoseok says, and across the room, jimin rises to his feet like he’s been pulled up to his full height by an invisible hand, on an invisible thread, by some unseen force that now makes him stretch his hands up over his head and push up into it on his toes until his shirt rises up over the waistband of his sweats and then it’s just hoseok and seokjin, both looking at the bare strip of skin visible at jimin’s stomach, and jimin looking back at them like he knows what they’re thinking; like he knows - somehow - exactly what they’re talking about.

“this is … a lot,” seokjin says after a moment, after a sustained moment of eye contact with jimin that feels far too much like an answer and - terribly, wonderfully - the one he wants to hear.

“it sure is, hyung,” hoseok says, smiling wryly with one side of his mouth, and then rising gracefully to his feet in one smooth and seamless motion; dropping a hand back behind him so seokjin can earnestly clamber up off the ground to join him.

“but you can break it down into pieces, if that makes it easier for you. you can take your time with it, do it step by step if that’s what makes it make sense to you.”

seokjin looks at him, not really surprised by the maturity in this take, not from hoseok, but maybe slightly taken aback by the confidence it belays.

“you say that like you already know that this whole thing works for me. like it’s a set thing that i just need to make my peace with.”

and maybe it is, but seokjin still wonders at hoseok knowing that already.

hoseok laughs at him, but it’s lilting; a sweet and kind thing, because almost everything hoseok does is.

“it works for you, hyung. it already has, already does. but whether you let it happen or not is entirely up to you.”

seokjin looks across the studio at jimin, who has his back to them now as he chats with a small group of their dancers, and then he looks back at hoseok, who is mirroring jimin’s body language perfectly, even though he’s facing away from jimin to look at seokjin.

“is it, though?” seokjin asks, and he thinks he already knows the answer to that.

“yes, hyung. it is,” hoseok tells him, and seokjin - much to his surprise, yet again - finds that he’d been wrong.

when taehyung comes to find seokjin to ask if he can borrow a pair of his horn-rimmed glasses, seokjin hands them over without comment.

he has learned through trial and terrible, perilous and repeatedly traumatic error not to ask questions in situations like this. especially not when taehyung and namjoon are involved. it’s no secret to anyone that they’re both the most creative members of the group, and it’s to seokjin’s horror that he has learned just how well this lends itself to their sex life, too.

he’s more than accustomed to their strange requests and he’s gotten quite good at loaning his possessions out for the small price of them never being returned to him.

taehyung, however, still seems to struggle with how these exchanges need to go, for seokjin. for seokjin’s sanity.

“it’s for a role play thing we want to try out,” he says cheerfully, tossing the glasses lightly back and forth between his big yaoi hands. seokjin is jealous and he doesn’t even know who of. everyone who never has to be part of this conversation, probably.

“say no more,” seokjin says, and then he feels himself physically pale when taehyung grins at him. it’s sweet that taehyung seems to have read this as seokjin’s support, because seokjin really is determined to support them all however he can; even in these … extracurricular pursuits of theirs. but if taehyung takes his statement as encouragement, seokjin is going to spend another week struggling to look namjoon in the eye and any further instances of this are bound to put a strain on their relationship. they still haven’t totally recovered from that time taehyung went away for the weekend with his hwarang hyungs and seokjin accidentally walked in on namjoon spending some quality time with taehyung’s pillow, in his absence. the fact that taehyung had come back and breezily assured seokjin that namjoon had been filming it for him hadn’t really helped matters. not like taehyung seemed to think it would, anyway.

“seriously,” seokjin tries not to plead, but then remembers who exactly it is that he’s talking to. “please, taehyung. hyung is begging. i’ve already lost a tie to jungkook and yoongi’s sexcapades this month and i really don’t mind giving my glasses up for the cause too, but please don’t tell me any more about it. i already know too much.”

taehyung nods, agreeable for once. probably because making hyungs beg is kind of a huge kink of his. has seokjin mentioned that he knows his entire group either way more intimately than he ever wanted to - or in jimin and hoseok’s cases, not nearly as intimately as he would like?

“this isn’t exactly in the same school of exploration as jungkook and hyung’s thing,” taehyung offers, like this is helpful information. “well,” he pauses, visibly putting something together in his head, “it’s part of the same school system, maybe. but a different department. hey, do you have any sweater vests you don’t need anymore?”

“no,” seokjin sighs, both because he wants to be done with this conversation already and because he’s offended that taehyung thinks he would wear sweater vests without someone making him, “but i know for a fact that hoseok does, and it would actually help me if he offloaded them on you, so let’s go.”

“because you hate having to look at him in them?” taehyung asks, as seokjin leads him out of his room and down the hall to jimin and hoseok’s bedroom.

“well yeah, but also because i’ve slowly been displacing his wardrobe in bits and pieces for a while now,” seokjin tells him, not even caring if hoseok hears him.

when they get to the threshold of their bedroom door, taehyung pauses before they knock.

“because his taste in clothes in terrible?” the wonderful thing about taehyung is that he’s not just an oversharer when it comes to his own sex life, personal secrets, private thoughts, general observations etc. he’s also a big fan of knowing everything there is to know about the rest of them, and he’s not shy about asking questions.

“nope,” seokjin says easily, although he could agree here and that would be an accurate response too. it’s just not his primary motivation, and he doesn’t mind telling taehyung as much. “i’ve been committed to a longstanding campaign to get him to wear less clothes in general.”

for the first time during this entire exchange, taehyung looks both confused and taken aback. seokjin is mostly just surprised that taehyung is still capable of any kind of doubt. after he figured out just how hot he is and immediately went about targeting namjoon personally with just that, seokjin had been sure that self doubt would only be the first kind that went, soon to be followed by all the other kinds. it’s reassuring to know that taehyung has managed to hold onto some parts of the spectrum of common human emotions.

“hyung,” taehyung says, and the fact that he does so tentatively sends a shiver down seokjin’s spine; genuine fear sliding down his back like an already melting ice cube.

when taehyung looks into his face imploringly, and then with something that looks almost like pity, seokjin braces himself. emotionally, but also with a hand against the doorframe. it’s not unusual for the things taehyung comes out with to make him weak at the knees.

“have you ever tried … just asking hobi hyung to take his clothes off for you?”

and of course, it’s then that their voices must alert the occupants of the room they’re standing in front of to their presence, and the door swings open before them.

“of course he hasn’t,” jimin says, reaching out and dragging taehyung into the room by the front of his shirt. once taehyung is successfully yanked over the threshold, jimin comes back for seokjin, but chooses to tow him inside by grabbing him by the hand, which seokjin is both touched and appalled by. “you know hyung would never do anything the easy way.”

“perish the thought,” seokjin murmurs, going with it when jimin tugs on his hand and uses the motion to spin seokjin into his arms. it’s not impossible for jimin to hook his chin up over seokjin’s shoulder like this, but his success is aided by the fact that he’s wearing pretty padded slippers while seokjin is in his socked feet.

“so,” jimin says, once he’s got both of their attention and his arms folded comfortably around seokjin’s waist, taehyung looking at them with a fondness so pronounced and prideful that seokjin’s cheeks heat.

“what are you two up to, and how can i help?”

the lead up to the tour is often the most stressful part of the process. actually being on tour and performing every night is exhausting in a lot of ways, especially physically, and that’s really not helped by their homesickness and having to stay in constantly unfamiliar places, but preparing for tour is a stressful in a different way.

it’s a lot of work, but a lot of waiting, too.

it’s the constant striving to perfect something that in the moment, in a single second, for a thousand reasons that are completely outside of their control, could still go wrong.

at that point in the process, it’s especially hard for seokjin to get outside of his own head.

it’s always been like that. ever since their first tour, this is one of the hardest parts of their work, for him.

and maybe this time, seokjin knows what will make it better.

but what happens for the first time, now, is that he doesn’t have to ask for it.

his batteries run out before he can even make it to the car after practice today, and any other time, in another reality, it might embarrass or startle seokjin to feel two sets of hands helping him into the back seat, but here in this one, he doesn’t even look to check who it is. he doesn’t have to.

they ride home with seokjin’s head pillowed on jimin’s hoodie bundled up in hoseok’s lap, and seokjin’s knees lifted up over jimin’s thighs and held there by jimin’s strong little hands.

and the whole time - for every second of the journey - seokjin feels like he’s floating.

they don’t talk, because they rarely do when they’re together like this, but jimin’s hands come to at some point cover every inch of seokjin’s legs, from his hips all the way down to his toes, when jimin unlaces his sneakers to leave him in his socks. by the time they pull into the basement parking lot of their building, seokjin’s skin is warm from the top of his spine right to the very beginning of his hairline, the tracks of hoseok’s fingers still tingling even when hoseok finally takes his hands out of seokjin’s hair to help him out of the car.

in reality, seokjin walks upstairs by himself, between them. but it feels to him like they carry him, anyway.

his body is strangely weightless when they usher him into the bathroom and get him standing between them so they can strip him together. hoseok disappears for a second and returns when the room echoes with the sound of the tub filling. seokjin is too tired to know what he needs, doesn’t even have the energy to remember that this is something that helps, something he probably would have asked for if he’d thought to. but he hasn’t had to, because they already know. without discussing it even amongst themselves, they know what to do with him. because that’s exactly what they do for him.

it stings a little, sliding into the hot water, but the temperature is perfect for his sore and aching muscles. and then what feels like a second - barely that - after he closes his eyes in something like bliss, something closer still to overwhelmed gratitude, something that if he called it what it is, couldn’t be described as anything less than love, hoseok is slipping into the tub with him, framing seokjin between his arms, seokjin’s hips snug up inside the cradle of hoseok’s thighs, even though it’s a big enough bath that that’s not at all necessary.

seokjin pouts for a second, when he realizes that jimin isn’t joining them, but then jimin sits on the side of the bath; perched there in just his tight, short briefs, and cups seokjin’s face in both of his hands, tips seokjin’s chin up until he can press his mouth to seokjin’s forehead and hum something low and so, so soothing.

they get seokjin’s head tipped back over hoseok’s shoulder so jimin can wash and rinse his hair, and seokjin could almost, almost fall asleep, if he didn’t want to make sure not to miss a single second of this.

he’s exhausted. he’s completely and totally spent; closer to the end of himself than he’s come in a long time, much closer to the empty abyss of absolutely nothing than he ever likes to get. and it’s that, that lets him give himself to them, like this. his body is an easy thing, in their hands. where they guide him, he goes, because he doesn’t only trust them, he trusts and loves them. both.

it’s them keeping him on his feet when they help him up and out and onto his feet again, just for moment, just while they gently towel him off and then sit him down on the side of his bed so hoseok can dry his hair off and jimin can carefully, methodically work several different serums and toners and essences and ampoules into seokjin’s skin in an achingly gentle routine that seems to come much quicker to jimin than it ever has to seokjin.

by the time they’re tucking him in under his own covers, yoongi is already asleep across the room in his own bed, but even if he wasn’t, even if someone was throwing a party over there and had invited every member of the south korean media, seokjin thinks he’d still reach for them both the way he does now.

they come easily. jimin smiles fondly, almost soft for once, as he climbs up onto the bed on his knees, and hoseok lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his own neck as he rounds the bed like maybe he’s embarrassed, maybe he’s deflecting a little, overwhelmed somehow, but he still comes and that’s what counts. tonight it’s seokjin’s turn to sleep in the middle, jimin curling up behind him and hoseok sliding in next to him to lie on his back right beside seokjin, close enough that it only takes a small handful of shuffled inches for seokjin to get to him, to poke at his shoulder until hoseok turns to him. and once he’s looking at seokjin, from up so close, next to him in his bed when jimin is warm at his back, his hand at seokjin’s waist, it’s easier than easy to lean in and rub his nose against hoseok’s.

it’s soft.

it’s sweet.

and then hoseok’s eyes lift from seokjin’s to look at something up over seokjin’s shoulder, and before he even thinks about it, seokjin is turning around in jimin’s arms to face him now, too. he’s going to touch their noses together too, maybe put his cheek against jimin’s and just breathe him in, let himself properly feel him like this, for a second. but after the room spins and comes back into focus with jimin looking at him, jimin right up close with his hand still on seokjin’s waist, up under his shirt to touch his bare skin now, what happens instead is that seokjin leans in and it’s not their noses that touch. it’s not their cheeks, either.

it’s jimin’s lips, so soft against seokjin’s that seokjin thinks he could cry. and then it’s jimin breathing in, clearly trying to quell it but not able to silence it entirely, and seokjin answers the sound by pressing closer, by opening his mouth against the plump round of jimin’s bottom lip.

the sound jimin makes then is probably the loudest any of them have made in hours, in what feels like days, and when seokjin brings his hands up to cradle jimin’s jaw between them, he brushes his tongue into the seam between jimin’s lips to encourage him. to make it known that whatever jimin needs to offer up - in sound, through touch, with this kiss - seokjin will welcome it. seokjin wants it.

and when jimin gives it up; when he kisses seokjin with a sound loosed from him that comes from low in the back of his throat, seokjin feels the hum of it against his lips - jimin’s tongue pressed sweetly, shyly, to barely brush against seokjin’s, his mouth hot against seokjin’s in a way that makes him shiver - but he feels the very same thing at the back of his neck, when hoseok presses his lips there.

seokjin’s eyes open slowly when jimin pulls away, and he licks at his own lips just to see the way jimin’s eyes follow the motion when he does. but then hoseok’s hand is replacing seokjin’s at jimin’s jaw, and seokjin has to close his eyes again when hoseok leans in over him to kiss jimin with his cheek resting against seokjin’s. it’s not the sound of it that makes seokjin curl all ten of his fingers into two fists in the front of jimin’s sleep shirt, but it’s the closeness of them; the way even like this, even when it’s the two of them, they’re bracketing seokjin, they’re not leaving him out or leaving him behind.

it’s jimin’s hands that are urging seokjin to turn over, to go, when hoseok settles on his back next to seokjin again, but as soon as seokjin’s roll of motion ends, hoseok is right there, his hand brushing seokjin’s still damp hair back from where it’s falling down into his face so he can lean up and press his mouth to seokjin’s like a promise. it’s soft in a different way to how kissing jimin had been. it’s slower but it’s just as sweet and when they part again, seokjin feels like he’s had just enough of something that he’s starved for that he’ll probably - maybe - be able to sleep.

when he settles on his back, more comfortable in the middle of his own bed than he can ever remember being before, it’s with jimin’s head pillowed on his shoulder, and hoseok’s hand in his.

the last thing he remembers thinking before he falls asleep isn’t actually a thought at all. not at the heart of it.

it’s the heat of them, on either side of them. it’s the way they both fit in ways that are different and unique to each of them, but exactly right for two sides of seokjin’s body that are exactly the same. it’s the smell of jimin and the way that alone settles seokjin in a way that surprises even him. it’s the weight of hoseok’s leg thrown up over seokjin’s, his calf muscle soft and solid against seokjin’s shin. it’s not words. it’s not something seokjin knows how to express out loud.

it’s a feeling.

it’s this moment; the impression it makes on him; the claim it stakes on him.

it solidifies itself as a thought, a small and singular stone that’s been honed by the weight and motion of a million waves, one thing that means a thousand.

lying between them, getting to end and then begin his day again with them, knowing that however it goes, he has them and they have him;

it’s

right.

the next time seokjin visits hoseok when he’s alone in the practice room, he comes bearing gifts.

sort of.

“don’t think i didn’t see these,” he says, once he’s sweet talked hoseok into pausing his music and gently tugged him down onto the floor to sit in the vee of his spread legs. when he reaches down to pull hoseok’s loose sweats up to over his knees, hoseok doesn’t try to stop him.

“you don’t know that these aren’t fun bruises though,” hoseok teases him, settling back against seokjin’s chest a little heavier and dragging his heels up towards himself to lift his knees so seokjin doesn’t have to stretch so far to reach them. “maybe me and jimin were playing together without you, hyung. didn’t you say we’d make a great couple?”

seokjin muffles the huffed protest he can’t completely stifle by pressing his mouth to the smooth stretch of skin at the back of hoseok’s neck. he smells the most like himself like this; warm from dancing, a little bite of salt in his sweat but the rest of his scent a broad and familiar thing. seokjin wants to push the neckline of hoseok’s shirt aside so he can press his face to his skin and never resurface.

“even though you’re being very mean to your hyung, and i would like it noted that i don’t appreciate it, i’m still going to tend to your ouchies, because i love you very much and don’t like to think of you hurting even a little bit.”

and hoseok had already been reaching back over his head, presumably to touch some part of seokjin - his head and shoulders the only part of him he can reach like this - but his hand stills in mid air when seokjin says this. seokjin can’t see his face, not with the way they’re sitting, but he lets his hands grip a little tighter up under hoseok’s thighs where he’s helping him hold his knees in the air and hopes that hoseok reads it as the cue to speak that it is.

“really, hyung?” he asks, his voice soft and small; seeming dwarfed by something.

“of course, hobah,” seokjin assures him, “i stopped by the pharmacy especially to pick up bruise cream and bandages too, just in case.”

“not that, hyung,” hoseok replies, slumping further down in the cradle of seokjin’s body so he can tilt his face back and up to look at him, close enough that his nose brushes against the side of seokjin’s neck. “the other thing,” he drops the hand he’d been lifting and curls it down around the outside of seokjin’s thigh, instead. “the part where you said you love me. very much.”

“oh,” seokjin feels kind of dumb, kind of wants to laugh at himself. this whole situation is absurd enough that it makes him want to laugh, actually, and for a second he very nearly finds himself panicking. and then he looks down at hoseok, and remembers where he is and who they are. who hoseok is. what exactly, hoseok and jimin are to him.

“then - yes, really,” he says, tucking the tips of his fingers up under the bunched hems of hoseok’s sweats, the slide of hoseok’s smooth skin against the backs of his fingers making him feel a little bit less in control than he’d like to think himself, in this moment. “i love all of you, obviously. but it’s different, with you and jimin. i love you the way i love everyone else, but i love you in another way, too.” he thinks about it for a second, and then turns his face to press a kiss to hoseok’s temple. “is that okay? can i love you like that?”

he feels it, when hoseok’s brows lift together, the smooth stretch of skin between and above them wrinkling like he’s in pain. he sees it, when hoseok’s eyes slip shut.

“of course you can, hyung. we want you to love us however you want to. however it feels right to you. it’s always felt right to us.”

( later, jimin will echo this exact sentiment, only by choosing to do so differently and not being able to know that hoseok and seokjin have had this conversation.

“finally,” he’ll say, reaching for them when they come home together and both head to the room hoseok shares with him.

“i’ve been waiting for forever, hyungs,” he’ll say, sighing once he’s pulled them both into his orbit in something that sounds and looks like relief. something that feels exactly like this; their kind of love. )

“okay,” seokjin says, dropping a kiss to the tip of hoseok’s nose and then getting back to the task at hand. “then let me love you like this.”

he’s a touch too generous with the bruise cream, and he definitely spends longer gently massaging it onto hoseok’s bruised knee caps, into the blotches of broken vessels on his calves and thighs than he technically probably needs to.

when he’s done with that part of the process, he carefully wraps hoseok’s sore heels the way he’s seen both hoseok and jimin do a hundred times before.

and then, he pushes hoseok away from him, out of the bracket his body has become for hoseok’s, so he can get hoseok sitting facing him and crawl on his hands and knees to lower himself to his belly between hoseok’s legs.

he doesn’t get back up until he’s satisfied that his lips have touched every single point of hurting that lines hoseok’s legs. and if his mouth strays outside those boundaries, that stays between the two of them.

at least until hoseok throws himself down into jimin’s lap to tell tales that lead to jimin griping for his turn; reaching for a handful of seokjin’s hair and guiding him down the bed with a gleam in his eye and his tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek.

“take care of me too, hyung,” he says, and it’s not exactly an order, but it really doesn’t need to be. his fist in seokjin’s hair and the look in his eyes is more than enough.

seokjin loves them both.

seokjin loves both of them a little more, that day.

yoongi isn’t one for small talk, and he’s definitely not one for early morning conversation, which is one of the many blessings he brings to seokjin’s life as his roommate.

so when he shuffles into the bathroom while seokjin is still brushing his teeth and turns to look at seokjin after he hangs his towel on the hook on the wall, seokjin knows that whatever he’s about to say next is bound to be very important.

“so,” yoongi starts, and then has to clear his throat. seokjin really can’t wait to hear this.

“hoseok and jimin, huh?”

seokjin snorts and tries not to choke on his mouthful of toothpaste foam, because boy does yoongi save all his eloquence and slide of word metaphors for his lyrics and his lyrics alone.

“yup,” seokjin answers thickly and then leans over to spit neatly into the sink.

when he straightens up again, yoongi has folded his arms over his chest, but his face hasn’t become any more expressive.

eventually, he only nods, lifting his shoulders in a lacklustre shrug.

“if it was anyone else i’d probably be impressed, but hyung has always done things a little … bigger, huh?”

“very true, yoongichi.”

after drying his mouth off with the back of his hand, he turns around to look at yoongi face to face.

“i just hope it won’t affect our friendship? that i’m fucking both your best friends?”

yoongi’s bark of laughter is eight different kinds of delightful, especially at this hour of the morning; a truly unbridled thing at this stage in his cognitive function.

“well, if we survived me fucking your prodigy, then this should be fine. right, hyung?”

seokjin only rolls his eyes at this, though he does go out of his way to stop at yoongi’s side and ruffle his hair on his way out of the bathroom, purely because yoongi is very small and terribly wonderful; dear to seokjin in a way that grips him in the strangest ways, in the most unpredictable moments. like this one.

when he gets to the kitchen, jungkook is sitting at the table scrolling through something on his phone as he spoons food mostly into his mouth.

“jungkook-ah, did you know that yoongi kept that maid uniform he had to wear as punishment that one time when we were rookies, still?” seokjin puts his arm around jungkook’s shoulders and leans in close to his ear. “what reason did he have for holding onto it, do you think?”

jungkook’s spine goes ramrod straight in an instant, and seokjin would feel bad for what he’s just unleashed, but honestly yoongi asked for this.

seokjin, as ever, can only do what he does best.

he’s their hyung. he’s the hyung. and he’s always looking out for them.

in far more ways than even they realize.

yoongi made his bed, and it was his choice to invite jungkook into it.

jungkook is seokjin’s prodigy, and they’re both committed to making sure he upholds that title and the responsibility that comes with it.

hoseok and jimin both love to tease seokjin, which works in his favor given how much he likes to be teased.

there’s an intimacy to it that seokjin has always loved, and that’s never moreso the case than when he finds himself on the receiving end of it from the two people he is in love with.

but he is also just one man. and together, they’re entirely too much for him.

it’s been a long week of walking in on the two of them tangled up in one another in places they know he’ll find them, and in ways that they know will haunt him. when they’re not joined at the hip, or the mouth, one or both of them are tugging him away into their room, into his, into single occupancy restrooms, into unused stairwells.

they’re menaces and they love him. but they know that he loves them now, and they’re clearly not prepared to play fair anymore.

seokjin is always tense now, when he can’t see them both. the tiny hairs on the back of his neck have become a near constant alert system, with danger lurking potentially around every corner; in his own home and outside of it too. anywhere. everywhere, it feels like.

so seokjin’s spine is already rigid when he gets home, and the silence that washes in when he pauses to listen for it only makes his apprehension grow. he knows they’re both home. he knows, thanks to the group chat, that they’re the only ones home. he walks into the living room on light and hesitant feet, and immediately sees that he was right to be afraid.

they haven’t really gone beyond some heated making out, hands roving under shirts in the pockets of free time they find themselves putting to much better use these days, and of course that one day when seokjin had gotten between both their legs and stayed there until they’d gripped him to them by the hair and given up what he’d gone there looking for. they’re twin terrors, but seokjin isn’t exactly a paradigm of patience around them, either.

which is why when now, he walks in to find jimin sitting in the middle of the living room couch with hoseok in his lap, both of them wearing only their underwear and a pair of too big, too lovely, soft pastel hoodies, something in seokjin snaps.

it’s entirely instinctual, when he crosses the room to get to them and without a word, hauls hoseok back up off of jimin’s lap so he can get him lifted up into his arms with his legs locked around seokjin’s waist, instead. he reaches back for jimin, snags him with a hand caught in the front of his hoodie and it really is his hoodie, seokjin realizes, now that he’s close enough to tell the difference. they’ve been sitting here, kissing each other, wearing his hoodies that they’ve clearly stolen from his room, and nothing else besides a couple of pairs of tiny, matching briefs, that make seokjin light-headed to look at.

he pushes jimin down the corridor ahead of him, his hand at his collar keeping jimin facing him and forcing him to walk backward, because seokjin knows himself well enough to know that if he gets a look at jimin’s ass like this, he’ll do something that could very well result in a serious head injury for one of them. for all three of them, probably, because that’s just how fantastic jimin’s ass is.

when seokjin gets to jimin and hoseok’s room - hoseok wrapped around him, clinging like he’s made himself entirely at home in seokjin’s arms - jimin is already crawling up onto his bed and seokjin can’t help himself. he feels like a man possessed when he drops hoseok carefully onto the sheets on his back so he can reach out and spank jimin lightly, just enough to see his ass bounce.

“oh, fuck,” hoseok says, because jimin only breathes in sharply, and seokjin doesn’t have the vocabulary for this moment. for that sight.

“are you mad at us for being bad, hyung?” jimin asks, still on his hands and knees and peering back at seokjin over his shoulder. “are you going to punish us?”

and this gets hoseok shoving the heel of his hand down against the base of his own cock and moaning brokenly when he presses up into it, but the shine in jimin’s eyes makes seokjin want to whimper. having jimin look at him like this makes seokjin want to get down on his belly and beg. and this whole situation is made all the more awful by the fact that seokjin knows that jimin knows that.

he laughs at seokjin, when seokjin stalls at the bottom of the bed, frozen in place.

and then he turns neatly to sit properly, splayed out at the head of the bed and with one hand he lets his fingers curl a loose collar around hoseok’s neck. with the other hand, he beckons to seokjin.

“c’mere, hyung,” he says, not really asking.

“come,” he says, when seokjin hesitates, and it’s the opposite of asking, then.

seokjin looks at him.

seokjin looks at both of them; hoseok laying curled into jimin’s side with his hand inside his own briefs now and his eyes already heavy lidded, his tongue caught between his canine teeth. jimin, laying back against the headboard with his legs drawn up, his knees just about seokjin’s-shoulder-width apart and a look in his eyes that says he knows that that’s what seokjin is thinking.

jimin tilts his head and arches an eyebrow.

seokjin goes.

jimin tips his head back, his chin raised to the ceiling like he can’t watch, when seokjin drags his briefs down his legs and carefully extricates his feet from them. but maybe it’s more like he just doesn’t have to, he isn’t particularly moved by the sight, because when hoseok shoulders his way right next to seokjin and the two of them dip their heads down together, jimin only smiles as he wraps a hand around the base of his cock and lets them both lap at the head at the same time.

“good hyungs,” he says, low and amused, when they figure out a way to make it work; hoseok nosing in under his shaft to mouth at his balls and seokjin opening up wide, taking jimin’s cock as far into his throat as he can get it before he starts to gag.

“ugh, fuck,” jimin grunts at the spasm of seokjin’s throat around him, but it sounds encouraging. he seems pleased, and that pleases seokjin.

when they switch places so that it’s hoseok with his mouth full of jimin’s cock and seokjin that jimin is just holding to him, his hand in seokjin’s hair keeping his face pressed into the crease of his thigh, jimin starts to talk.

“you still wanna do what we talked about, hyung?” he asks, his jaw clenching when hoseok gets his nose pressed into the soft skin of his pelvis and swallows visibly, with a loud, nasty noise and his eyes watering with tears that seokjin wants to lick away. he pulls off to gasp in a breath, his adorable little rosebud mouth sucking wetly, messy around the flushed head of jimin’s cock before he goes right back down and repeats the motion.

seokjin knows jimin isn’t talking to him, because they’ve never talked about this. he’s thought about it a lot. too much, probably, and that’s why he’s perfectly content to let them figure this part out. whatever they want, he’s down. whatever they need, he’ll give them.

“please,” hoseok rasps, somehow voicing seokjin’s thoughts. “want it. please.”

jimin pets gently through both their hairs, and smiles.

“hoseokie hyung just can’t wait for hyung to fuck him,” jimin says conversationally, seeming entirely unaffected even though his cock is shining with both of their spit now, seokjin leaning in to lick up some of the mess when hoseok forgets himself for a minute, when seokjin gets two of his fingers pressed up inside him and thumbs at his perineum.

“he talks about it all the time. so much that even i’m kind of obsessed with the idea, now,” jimin adds, jerking himself off and only letting hoseok have the head of his cock, even though hoseok lets his tongue loll out of his mouth to beg for more.

“hyung’s gonna look so pretty, taking his hyung’s cock,” jimin murmurs softly, cruelly, because he couples it with a look at seokjin that tells him to hurry up. that instructs him to push a third finger into hoseok until the tip of his middle finger nudges against hoseok’s prostate and makes his whole body jerk, his hips kicking so hard that seokjin has to hold him still with his free hand.

“please,” hoseok sobs again, his forehead pressed to jimin’s belly and his hands white-knuckled in the sheets.

‘please’ seems to be the only word he can say right now, and seokjin wonders if that’s going to change once he’s got his cock in him; once he’s getting fucked, like he’s begging to be.

“now?” seokjin asks, and hoseok nods, frantic, but they both know it’s not hoseok he’s asking.

“now, hyung,” jimin says, and seokjin and hoseok both do as they’re told.

“condom?” seokjin asks, and jimin doesn’t answer him, but looks to hoseok, instead.

hoseok lifts himself up onto his elbows, then, his head dipping low between his shoulderblades so he can still mouth at jimin’s cock, his knees sliding apart and his back arching like he thinks he has to make himself look as inviting as he possibly can, for seokjin. he doesn’t. he really, really doesn’t.

“want you bare,” hoseok manages between heavy pants, between the wet sucking of his mouth around jimin’s shaft. seokjin has to grip himself tight tight tight to calm himself down, and he can’t believe his eyes when jimin gets a hand around the back of hoseok’s neck and pulls him right down until anything else he’d been about to say becomes a choked gurgle.

jimin closes his eyes and breathes in sharply, lifts one knee to get hoseok closer, his hips coming up off the bed to fuck hoseok’s throat a little deeper, thrusting carefully a few times before he relaxes again and decides to let hoseok speak.

“want your come in me, hyung, please,” hoseok gasps, his tongue still tracing the crown of jimin’s cockhead but his ass cheeks clenching with impatience, the tendons above his knees straining and lovely.

“please hyung, fuck me, hyung,” he says, and then jimin is tugging him down again, stuffing his face full of cock and holding him there.

“fuck him, hyung,” jimin says, and so - seokjin does.

he pushes into hoseok slowly, his cock big enough that he knows he has to take his time. hoseok knows this too, but either he doesn’t care or he’s used to getting fucked by big cocks because once seokjin has the tip pressed wetly inside him, hoseok starts grinding back on him, taking more and more and more until seokjin is buried in him to the hilt.

“fuck" hoseok says with feeling, then, and jimin laughs lowly at him, even though his chest has started to shine with sweat now, and the hand he has around himself isn’t gentle or teasing anymore. watching hoseok get fucked must really do it for him, or maybe this is just the delayed affect of having had both his hyungs choke themselves on his cock, because he’s not holding back anymore. his fist moves fast, the pace almost brutal, and his cock is nearly purple at the head, pre-come beading there in a way that makes seokjin’s mouth water.

“you like it, hyung?” jimin asks, his breathing labored now, sitting up more so he can put his hand to hoseok’s shoulder and shove him down, push him back onto seokjin’s cock. “does hyung’s big cock feel as good as it looks?”

seokjin is fucking him steadily, the slap of his hips against the meat of hoseok’s ass loud and rhythmic, punctuated by hoseok’s moans. looking down at the line of his spine; following it up, up, up until he sees the back of his head, his tousled hair, seokjin feels like he's seeing in a way he's never been able to before. he listens to the sounds hoseok's mouth make around jimin's cock and he looks at the contrast of their colors; hoseok's dark hair against jimin's pale thighs. he looks up into jimin's face, already smiling up at him when their eyes meet and jimin's mouth might be a sharp little thing, but his eyes are warm with something much softer. caught in the jaws of that; held in that space between sharp and soft - caged in by jimin and hoseok even though physically he's not - seokjin feels like he's looking at something he's looked at a hundred thousand times before, but only truly sees now.

“so - ah. fuck. so good. don’t stop, hyung,” hoseok’s voice shakes but he doesn’t falter in his movements, fucks himself back on seokjin’s cock and then shifts forward when seokjin pulls out so he can lean down and lick at the wet tip of jimin’s dick.

seokjin leans down and presses his mouth between the flex of hoseok's shoulderblades. he has one hand on hoseok's waist, but he lets the other fall to the smooth stretch of muscle along jimin's calf, his fingers digging in. he feels so much and he wants them to feel it too. he wants to feel them every single way he can.

“you look good like this, hyung,” jimin tells him, taking his hand away so hoseok can get his ass and his mouth fucked at the same time, pushing hoseok’s hair back out of his face so he can see hoseok’s flushed and greedy mouth stretched around him. “so pretty when you’re full of cock, huh?”

seokjin pulls hoseok back onto him by the hips and holds him there, keeps him still when he’s pressed deep because he needs a pause, he needs a second to get his shit together again. this is already the best sex he’s ever had, and nobody has even come yet. seokjin kind of wants to drag this out for hours, wants to spend days like this.

he grinds into hoseok a little deeper and then pulls back, presses on his stomach so that when he pushes back in, the pressure on hoseok’s prostate makes him shout, a garbled sound that gets muffled into a low groan that jimin echoes when he holds hoseok’s head down and fills his mouth with come.

“so pretty,” he says again, when his leg has stopped jerking and his breath comes back to him. “so good for us,” when he pets at hoseok’s hair and lets him up to get his hands under him properly, at last.

like this, he’s able to push back onto seokjin’s cock even harder, the sound louder every time seokjin bottoms out with his hips making hoseok’s ass bounce, the slide when he pulls out slick with more than just lube now; seokjin’s cock wet with smears of pre-come when he pulls back to watch it disappear in and out of hoseok’s rosy, clenching hole.

he could come like this. he’s about to, but then jimin starts to shuffle around and both of them look to him instantly, ready to move where he directs them, desperate to do whatever he wants.

“switch with me, hoseok hyung,” he says, getting up and shifting away to one side so hoseok can crawl forward off of seokjin’s cock.

“oh,” he says quietly, once he’s empty, and seokjin wants to fix it. seokjin wants back inside him already, but he waits. he can be patient. maybe.

“like this, hyung,” jimin guides hoseok until he’s sitting up against the headboard, two pillows piled up under him so seokjin can sit on his knees between his legs.

“just like this, hyungs,” jimin says, settling at seokjin’s back and reaching around him to lift hoseok’s legs up out of the way; to get them pressed where hoseok can hold them back against his own chest. he reaches for seokjin’s cock then, and seokjin holds his breath when he presses the head to hoseok’s hole; spread out for him like this, and starts to push seokjin’s cock back inside him.

“do you like this?” jimin asks at seokjin’s ear, his hands touching up along seokjin’s stomach as he slowly finds his rhythm again, still can’t breathe easily yet because the view like this is insane; hoseok’s fucked out hole on display for him, the slide of every inch of his cock visible as it sinks into him.

“i -” seokjin speaks and it’s like he’s trying to do it for the first time. “i love this,” he manages, and he doesn’t even know how.

“is there anything else you need, hyung?” jimin asks, and seokjin is confused when he feels jimin’s hands retreat from his belly, doesn’t get it until they come to rest on his ass, his thumbs spreading seokjin’s cheeks apart. “anything else you might want, hm?”

“oh god,” seokjin says in a rush, and even hoseok looks shocked. for a split second, until he drops one of his knees so he can get his hand around himself, and then he just looks blissed out again, his mouth open and little moans getting jostled from his throat every time seokjin goes in deep.

“you want my fingers, hyung?” jimin asks sweetly, and seokjin could swear that the whole world goes white when he feels the pad of one of jimin’s thumbs press lightly over his hole.

they haven’t talked about this, not really. not in detail. but if they had, they’d both know that seokjin spends a lot of his solo alone time thinking about jimin’s hands. thinking about his rings and the lovely splay of veins across the back of his hands. thinking about how nice jimin’s hands are when they touch him, how gentle he is with his hyung even though he’s so strong. but more than that - much, much more than that - seokjin thinks about jimin’s plump little fingers pushed up into his ass. thinks about how jimin could probably cram all four of his fingers into him and then tuck his cute little thumb in there, too.

“ohhh,” seokjin squeaks, hoseok letting out a startled gasp when he fucks him harder, when he can’t help it. “please. please, jimin.”

and because jimin always takes care of his hyungs, but takes care of seokjin and hoseok especially in exactly the ways that he knows they need, he doesn’t even tease seokjin about his eagerness as he gets his fingers lubed up and presses them into seokjin one by one.

“i want your whole fist, one day,” seokjin says, because he can’t help it, when jimin has three of his fingers in him but then pulls them back out to leave only one.

“you can have it,” jimin says, and seokjin closes his eyes and whimpers.

it helps, that jimin playing with his ass takes some of the focus off of his dick. hoseok is close to coming now and he’s clenching up with it, his abs gone tight and his jaw locking, reaching out for seokjin’s shoulder with a hand that’s more like a claw.

“please, hyung,” he says, and seokjin leans down to kiss him; pushes his ass out so jimin still has clear access and holds hoseok down on his cock so he can put his mouth to his and kiss the sound of his pleas off his tongue.

“you’re fucking beautiful, jung hoseok,” seokjin tells him, sweat dripping from his bangs when he shakes them back out of his face. “hyung loves getting to fuck you, but you’ll return the favour, right?”

he wraps his own hand around hoseok’s then, feels it through him when hoseok’s cock jerks.

hoseok’s other hand is around the back of seokjin’s neck, his fingers digging in at the side of his throat and seokjin finds himself hoping he leaves a mark. even if it’s not visible, he knows this is going to leave a mark.

“such lovely hyungs,” jimin observes from behind them, and when he pushes three of his fingers into seokjin, his thumb presses up against seokjin’s perineum. at the very same time, seokjin feels something else between his legs - jimin’s cock, only half hard again, soft and hot when he ruts up against seokjin’s ass.

“holy fuck,” seokjin says, stunned, but it’s hoseok that comes.

jimin going to town on him makes seokjin jolt forward, hard into hoseok, and his stimulation of seokjin’s prostate makes his cock jerk inside hoseok, his grip tightening reflexively around the hand hoseok’s got on his cock.

hoseok’s back arches like a bowstring and his mouth goes wide, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes as he comes all the way up along his own stomach, with a shuddering gasp that ends on something that sounds like a sigh and a whimper combined.

“oh,” jimin says, hooking his chin up over seokjin’s shoulder to look. “hot, hyung. super fucking hot.”

hoseok starts to smile at him, his body gradually getting loose again as he settles back down from his high, but seokjin is rigid between them. he’s still hard inside hoseok and jimin is still three fingers deep in his ass, his cock thickening up where he’s tucked it between seokjin’s cheeks and he wants so badly to move but he doesn’t know which way to go.

“ah-ah, hyung,” jimin says, when seokjin starts to shuffle back to give hoseok more space, to give him room to pull out, if hoseok’s too sensitive now. seokjin looks down into hoseok’s face when he shuffles forward again, and a briefly blank look flashes across it, before he shivers a little and blushes.

“hoseokie hyung said he wanted you to come in his ass, hyung. don’t you want to give him what he asked you so nicely for?”

seokjin mouth goes dry.

jimin taps at his hip with his free hand, the fingers he still has in seokjin’s ass spreading inside him, the stretch making seokjin want to swallow his own tongue.

“tighten up for me, hyung,” jimin says, opening his mouth around the curve where seokjin’s shoulder meets his neck, digging his teeth in a little and humping him just gently enough that seokjin can almost feel the hard line of his cock as much as he wants to. “if you wanna keep my fingers here, you’ve gotta work for it.”

hoseok winces up at seokjin like maybe he feels sympathetic to the trials that seokjin is suffering through right now. but also it could just be that seokjin’s cock is still in him, and hard enough now that it’s almost starting to throb.

“clench down on my fingers and come in hoseok like he wants, hyung. be good for us,” jimin suggests, and seokjin stops thinking and starts doing. exactly as he’s told.

“ooh,” jimin says, sounding delighted. “such a nice tight hole when you put your back into it, huh hyung? i can’t wait to feel this around my cock.”

“are you gonna fuck me now?” seokjin asks, half gasping, because he wants it. he wants it so bad.

“nope,” jimin says, cheerful as ever. whatever seokjin’s face does then makes hoseok reach up and brush his thumb across his bottom lip in something like consolation.

“you’re gonna come in hoseokie hyung just from sitting on my fingers today. maybe tomorrow though, if you beg nicely enough, hyung.”

“okay,” seokjin says, getting his knees under himself a bit better and trying to pull himself together, because he can do this. now that he knows what’s expected of him, he can provide. it also helps that he’s entirely confident in his ability to beg nicely enough that jimin and hoseok will both give him what he wants. which is exactly what he’s already got right now, but also a different version of it. a hundred different versions of it, besides.

jimin lets him lean down to kiss hoseok again, and follows this time; his chest pressed to seokjin’s back so he can lick at the back of his neck while hoseok thumbs at his nipples and holds himself still, lies there sated beneath seokjin and waits patiently.

“now, hyung,” jimin says, and before seokjin’s brain can connect the dots, he starts to come just like that; on jimin’s fingers, in hoseok’s ass.

he puts his forehead to the headboard next to hoseok’s face and lets the two of them hold him, as he shakes through it; the wet clutch of hoseok’s ass and the hard press of jimin’s chubby little fingers overwhelming him to the point that he feels overstimulated even before he’s finished coming.

“good hyung, best hyungs,” jimin says, his cheek hot against the back of seokjin’s shoulder and one arm all the way around seokjin’s waist.

he feels huge, behind seokjin.

seokjin looks down at hoseok, and held between them; both of them soft in some ways, in some places, but not at all soft or gentle in others, seokjin feels like he has finally found a place where it's safe for him to be small. where even when he can't do much, when he's got nothing at all to offer, he is wanted.

bracketed by them, seokjin finds his favorite shape of himself.

everything gets a little bit blurry for seokjin, when jimin switches their places and lets seokjin curl up at his back while he sits in the cradle of hoseok’s spread thighs and jerks himself off between them.

“in,” hoseok says, his hand tight enough around jimin’s wrist that seokjin can see the skin around it go white. “put it in me, jimin-ah. come in me, with hyung.”

seokjin thinks this throws even jimin, because he glances back at seokjin with a wide eyed look on his face, but then he seems to come back online. he leans down over hoseok, holding himself up on one hand while the other pushes his cock into hoseok’s hole, seokjin’s come already starting to spill out of him but jimin doing his very best to fuck it back in.

“want me to lick this mess up out of you when i’m done, hyung?” jimin asks, like he’s asking hoseok if he needs a napkin. “or do you want me to make hyung do it?”

before hoseok’s eyes slip shut, seokjin is pretty sure he sees them go cross-eyed. he doesn’t fare much better himself, because he knows it would take barely any encouragement from either of them to get him on his belly between hoseok’s legs, or better yet - on his back with hoseok sitting on his face.

“fuck,” hoseok says, the muscles along the insides of his thighs clenching and unclenching, the line of his body under them a tense and wanton thing, and when jimin adds to the mess of lube and come already inside of him, they both feel the way he goes still between them. he locks up, his teeth clacking together loud enough to be heard and he bites off his groan to sit up and press the conclusion of it hard into seokjin's mouth.

jimin's shoulderblades are sharp against seokjin's chest and hoseok's mouth is hot and soft for him, beyond all co-ordination like he has lost control of himself and seokjin scrambles to get closer to him, crushes jimin between them so he can lick along the line of hoseok's teeth and listen to him whine for them.

and then comes a pause, when they wait for jimin to recover, but it seems like jimin might have overdone it a bit because after he carefully, gingerly pulls himself out of hoseok, he tips sideways onto the bed and just lays like that, completely still, with his eyes closed.

seokjin crawls up over him on his hands and knees.

“hey, are you okay?” he asks, genuinely concerned until jimin’s eyes flicker back open lazily, his smile spreading even before that.

“why, hyung? what are you going to do for me if i’m not?” he asks, and seokjin shares a look with hoseok, whose smile is knowing.

he doesn’t need to say it.

neither of them need to hear it.

it’s clear as day to all three of them.

‘whatever i can,’ is the answer.

‘whatever you want,’ is another.

‘whatever you need,’ is the truth of the matter.

and every single one of them knows it, because all of them live it.

they take care of one another, the three of them.

just like this, and in a hundred other ways besides.

they wash up together in silence that’s only broken by hoseok’s giggles, by seokjin’s huffed laughter, by jimin’s sharp grins and pleased, grateful touches that linger when he gets his hands on them.

they strip the ruined sheets from jimin’s bed and climb into hoseok’s, him in the middle this time and seokjin with his head pillowed on his chest, so he can look across him at jimin. they lie still, in silence, and like always - when the three of them are together like this - seokjin feels quiet on the inside, too.

“pretty hyungs,” jimin says dreamily, his hair still damp and his face shiny with cleansing oil. he reaches out to touch seokjin, his thumb skimming softly up over seokjin's cheekbone and when he pulls his hand back, he leaves it to lay flat against hoseok's bare chest, his fingers spread wide. seokjin shuffles closer, close enough to touch, and presses a kiss to each of his fingertips. with hoseok's hand in his hair and jimin's eyes on him, seokjin doesn't have to say or do or be a single thing. nothing at all, besides what he simply is, right then.

“pretty boyfriends,” hoseok corrects jimin, and dumbly, after everything they’ve said and done tonight, it’s this that makes seokjin blush.

the next morning, jungkook raises both eyebrows and then narrows his eyes between the three of them, before he nods once, solemn, and then lifts his hand into the air.

jimin rolls his eyes but gives him the high five he’s asking for, and hoseok lines up behind him to do the same once he’s done.

when jungkook turns to seokjin, expectant, seokjin reaches his hand out towards jungkook’s, and then grabs it to twist his arm behind his back so he can bend jungkook over the kitchen table and spank him on the ass.

“hey,” hoseok, jimin and yoongi protest in chorus.

jungkook stays suspiciously silent.