Archive of Our Own ^beta

it’s immediately more awkward this time, given that they’re not only sitting side by side for this interview, but they’re also the only members present.

they don’t look at each other, because simply being alone together in front of a camera definitely doesn’t warrant eye contact between them. very little actually does, if you ask them.

maybe if they were alone together in a room that was currently ablaze. but save finding themselves in that situation, it’s safe to say they’re both looking straight ahead and/or down at the floor for the duration of this thing.

“we do work on tracks together directly,” yoongi says.

from the corner of his eye, namjoon watches him kicking his heels lightly against the rung of the tall stools they’re both sitting on and looking down at his own knees, and then up at the camera like he just remembered that it’s there.

“but even when we’re passing work back and forth for us each to focus on separately, it feels like the same process. we know each other well. i always know how he’s going to respond, or what he’s gonna suggest adding or cutting or whatever. it’s the same for him, i’m sure.”

yoongi doesn’t gesture to namjoon, definitely doesn’t look at him, so namjoon doesn’t look at him, either. next to yoongi, but looking at the blank stretch of wall above and behind the camera, instead, namjoon picks up the thread that yoongi has left trailing for him.

“we’re aware of one another’s methods and processes even when we’re working on something solo,” namjoon echoes his hyung, meaning every word of it.

“it’s the same with the other members too. different, kinda. there’s parts of tracks that i know the vocalists will have thoughts on, or might like to work on melodies for and it’s always easy to see where hoseok will want his verse or could do something really cool. but it’s a little different, with hyung,” namjoon adds, feeling like he should, feeling like it’s very important that he does, though he doesn’t know why that is, exactly.

“we work well together,” yoongi concludes honestly.

“we respect one another,” he adds, and that’s true too.

namjoon nods in agreement, bodily acknowledging the truth of it that way, instead of looking at yoongi, because that’s just not something they really do. not like this.

they do respect one another, and it’s good to get that across. it feels good to think that people will hear them say this and know that it’s true, moving on from here, or might even have had this sense of them before they made it clear like this and will feel appropriately justified in that thinking now that they’re hearing it directly from their own mouths.

it’s important for the fans to know, and namjoon likes knowing that they might start looking more for the proof of it, now, too. might be quicker to acknowledge it, where it’s always been obvious.

it’s a big part of namjoon and yoongi’s relationship and it deserves recognition. namjoon very, very firmly thinks and believes so.

they’ve both got a similar but also different connection with hoseok, in this, and the three of them have something else besides, something like a space for thinking and talking and listening that only the three of them can access, and only when they’re all together.

namjoon and yoongi’s thing is kinda different again. it still has some of the same features as their respective vibes with hoseok, but it has some extra stuff besides, too.

it’s definitely a mutual respect thing, and it’s got a lot to do with them being there from the beginning together - yoongi being the first other person that namjoon ever had, in this.

but respect is not the sum or even a mostly accurate summation of everything namjoon feels for yoongi.

and it’s better that whatever else there is besides that gets left unsaid.

probably remains unknown, too.

and not just to their fans, if namjoon has been at all successful in his determined efforts to hide it.

because there’s not a lot of things that he’s really, really good at, but hiding this specifically is one of them, he’d like to think.

they make it through the rest of the interview with only one horribly awkward instance of accidental eye contact, and then they’re free to get up and walk away and wipe their faces free of make-up and climb into separate cars to go to the very same place.

they talk about their next comeback, and a little bit about the last. they talk some more about how well they work together, and how and why that’s a system that they’ve honed across the seven of them and absolutely to all of their credit.

namjoon fumbles for something to say a couple of times, an opening or two appearing and tempting namjoon to say something far too close to the actual truth for his comfort, but he sidesteps them both because he’s practiced at doing so.

he answers the questions put to them honestly, and he’s satisfied with their work.

he walks away from yoongi confident that he hasn’t said anything that he shouldn’t, and some days that’s the hardest thing namjoon ever finds himself tasked with.

it wasn’t easy, today, but he did it.

he made it through another day without blurting out something he shouldn’t, or making something that’s meant to stay hidden too visible, too audible, too present somehow in a way that it can’t be, if namjoon is to go on as he has started and means to always, always do everything he can and has to, to conceal. to cope with, but ultimately to hide.

he made it through one more interview, got all the way through yet another work event without letting anything slip or fall out of place, and for today, as usual, that’s enough.

for today, like most days, that’s all namjoon can really and truly ask of himself.

it feels like more than anyone could or should ask of namjoon, when yoongi’s hair is dark again, these days, and he’s growing it out at the back. it’s still long and messy in the front, falling into his face the way it only gets when they haven’t filmed any important performances in a little while, and the whole affect is quite … arresting.

it’s self defense, when namjoon sits on his hands for most of the interview, and shoves them into the pocket of his hoodie and knots his fingers together to keep them there for the duration of their wait for their cars to arrive.

it’s all namjoon can do not to reach out, not to let himself touch yoongi the way he always, always wants to.

but today has been another day when he didn’t.

and that has to be enough.

-

much later, when they’re at home and there are no cameras and there are no staff and it’s even more dangerous, yoongi steps up beside namjoon when he’s standing at the sink.

namjoon is drinking a glass of water, staring out the window and thinking about nothing at all, and he’s alone.

and then yoongi is at his side, and for some reason that namjoon doesn’t get a chance to even begin to fathom, yoongi’s hand is on the place where namjoon’s neck slopes down into his shoulder, now.

when namjoon risks a glance at yoongi - slanting his eyes to the side, not turning to look at him directly, because he does not now nor has he ever, he thinks, felt quite that reckless - yoongi is staring out the window too, not looking at namjoon. he’s probably feeling a little spacey, namjoon reasons. he probably just took a break from working to stretch his legs or make himself more coffee. he’s probably plugged into the mix that he’s no doubt still listening to on a loop in his head, in some central workings of his brain, his body finding his way to the kitchen by sheer muscle memory. familiarity all that’s at work in bringing him here, to namjoon’s side.

and that’s so well worn a path through life for namjoon too that he’s gearing himself to carefully duck out from under yoongi’s touch and then guide him to the coffee maker, guide him to the fridge after that, if he doesn’t get it right on the first try. it’ll be easy. it will be simple, and yoongi has done it for namjoon before, more times than either of them could count. this is a problem they both know what it’s like to be caught up in, and it’s one that they both know how to solve, too. they know exactly how this goes.

but then yoongi’s fingers grip a little harder at namjoon, the tips of them digging in, and the pad of his thumb brushes slow like a shivery whisper across the topmost notch of namjoon’s spine. it moves back again, soft and dragging against the rise of bone low at the base of namjoon’s neck, and his tshirt doesn’t sit high enough to cover him, there, so yoongi’s thumb is touching bare skin.

namjoon is overcome with a rush of so many very gentle feelings, all lapping up on him at once like they’re a set sequence of neatly interwoven waves and he’s the shore they have come to kiss. the sweep of sentiment - so slow and sweet and nothing he can deny, in that moment - comes over him so painfully tenderly that namjoon wants, for a second, to take the glass that’s in his hand and hurl it against a wall.

he stands still under the quiet, easy touch of yoongi’s hand and he wants - absurdly - to grab yoongi by the shoulders and put his mouth to yoongi’s mouth, but only to scream right into him, because the way namjoon feels about him is always there, always winding up around him and all through him like the tendrils of a creeping ivy, and before namjoon could realize it, the vines have become links of chain, the leaves now a million tiny locks that hold them closed, and he’s caught up in it, held down by it, immobile and stuck within it in a way that makes him want to explode, makes him need to fight.

but not yoongi. never yoongi.

because yoongi touches namjoon carefully, touches him with soft hands and speaks to him with words that are scant but packed full of meaning and every single moment they’re together feels brittle to namjoon, but only to namjoon, and this is namjoon’s problem alone. this is namjoon’s to muffle yells into pillows about, to daydream of and play out in elaborate but so very routine and boringly domestic ways, and it’s only namjoon who loves his life with yoongi in it, but wants to smash it all to pieces sometimes and build something else from the scraps; fashion the wreckage into something that would be messy and ugly and monstrous, but different than this and as such, all that namjoon finds himself wanting, sometimes.

it’s a violent wanting.

it has its claws pinched in on either side of namjoon’s spine and it is the relentless clench of jaws around namjoon’s throat and it’s no wonder, he thinks, that sometimes he can’t speak at all around yoongi. sometimes he can’t look at him for hours and hours and hours. and that’s for yoongi’s sake. that’s for all of their sakes. especially namjoon’s. because namjoon looks at yoongi and thinks he could find himself capable of true savagery, sometimes. he looks at yoongi’s hands and watches the shape of yoongi’s mouth as he speaks, he listens to the things that yoongi says and he sees the things that yoongi is and has become and namjoon knows, in those moments, that he could ruin a whole lot of things besides just this - besides their careers and their friendship and this life they’ve built together - if getting to have yoongi a different way, if getting to have yoongi more was the prize for it.

namjoon has built himself a fortress, inside the threat of all the things he could do, all the things he knows he would do, if he let this out.

yoongi is safe outside it, and namjoon is as safe as he can be, inside, and the distance between them kills namjoon, but it saves them both, most days.

so when yoongi touches namjoon, namjoon does nothing.

when yoongi touches namjoon, namjoon feels everything. and so, namjoon must do nothing.

as quickly and silently as he’d appeared, yoongi retreats again, apparently having needed nothing from the kitchen other than to come into it to touch namjoon.

only when he can be sure that he’s alone again, does namjoon take a breath so deep that although he’d meant it to steady him, it makes him feel dizzy and unsteady on his feet instead. he feels like he just survived something, as he pours what had been left in his glass down the sink, and rinses the glass and stands it upside down on the draining board to dry.

namjoon goes to his room, and he closes the door behind himself, and he sits at his desk and looks at the blank screen of his still powered off monitor for a few minutes. for a while, maybe.

it’s long after namjoon has switched his monitor on and gotten to work that he notices the soreness of his left hand, the faint sting echoing high across his palm, ringing out when he puts his hand to the keyboard and stretches his fingers out to type.

when he turns his hand over to look at it, he puts it together even as he’s looking at what he finds there.

this is the hand that had been by his side, resting between him and yoongi and hanging free as he stood in the kitchen.

the four crescent moons he has cut into his own palm, livid red half rings neatly dug into his skin, his nails having sunk into himself like some part of him had thought that maybe if he could call upon the iron in his blood, he could hold the words on the back of his tongue at bay. that maybe if he curled his fingers tight enough into a fist, he wouldn’t break anything. he wouldn’t ruin everything.

and he could. he had. he did. he did it.

but as usual,

as is always the way, when it comes to yoongi and what namjoon does and not say,

what namjoon decides to do does not come without its cost.

he’s bruised by this, hurt by it in a new way, a new place today, but the feeling of it is nothing namjoon hasn’t known for a long time.

every time he doesn’t say what he wants to, every time he finds a way to hold himself back from telling yoongi what he thinks and feels, it cuts into namjoon. it bleeds him of something that he’s not sure he’d wanted to give up, though he does because he is certain that what his heart and mouth and hands want to offer over are not wanted and would not be cherished, could not come to be beloved.

namjoon isn’t to yoongi what yoongi is to him, and so namjoon says nothing.

yoongi loves namjoon, and namjoon knows so, and so - namjoon says nothing.

in the beginning, namjoon and yoongi had been in something sort of like competition, with one another.

as far as yoongi was concerned, at least.

but maybe only as far as yoongi was concerned, it had seemed like.

they’d both been aware of one another long before they ever have cause or opportunity to meet in person.

but yoongi had still been debating whether or not he’d admit to that - and if he did, to what extent he’d be honest about it - when namjoon had looked him carefully up and down, opened his mouth to speak, very quickly closed it again, and then twisted his hands like he was trying to fold his own knuckles together into a living rubik’s cube before he found himself able to say something, at last.

“wow, i. hi - yoongi-ssi. wow, i’m such a big fan. i listen to your music literally every single day. i know you don’t have a youtube channel, but at least half the views on every clip of you that’s on there are from me personally.”

and like, for a too tall and very clearly still-awkward-after-the-new-stretch-of-a-recent -growth-spurt unnecessarily gangly kid, namjoon had presented all of this information with far too much ease. he just opened up his mouth and let it fall out, smiling faintly but in a way that was still blinding somehow, and yoongi had already known that this kid was insanely good with words, but he felt more than mildly prickled to find that that extended beyond rapping and performing.

later, he’d thought it was a good thing. he’d become nothing but thankful for the fact that they weren’t both stilted in conversation and silent whenever they could be, like yoongi was. because maybe that would have put him more at ease in the very, very beginning, but the whole rest of this thing wouldn’t have been nearly as easy, if namjoon had been more like yoongi, instead of … how he was.

“sorry,” he’d been quick to say, when his first ever sentence to yoongi had gone unanswered. “i’m so sorry. i didn’t mean that like - you have so many fans, yoongi-ssi. lots of people love your music just as much as i do. probably. maybe. definitely possibly. all i meant to say is that i totally love yo - your work. i really love your music, yoongi-ssi.”

and like, what could yoongi say to that?

except -

“yoongi hyung.”

it had seemed vaguely cruel to yoongi, that upon meeting namjoon for the first time he’d had to withstand the one-two-three realization that namjoon was big, hot, and also at ease with words always - three turns of a wheel that rolled right over him and knocked him flat each time - and now he also had to try to cope with the new and incredibly overwhelming firsthand knowledge that when namjoon got confused or flustered, he blushed. he was fucking cute, the little fucker. that moment had been the first - up to that point - when yoongi could ever remember having fervently wished that he was someone else. or even just a very different version of himself; one that knew how to speak to people he found attractive, one that knew how to speak to people comfortably period, because the person he found himself standing before right then had made yoongi want to get as comfortable with him - as close to him - as it was possible to get. as he could possibly come to be.

“you can call me hyung,” he’d clarified, just to dig his own grave that extra foot deeper, because of course he already knew how old namjoon was.

he hadn’t been able to find any non-blurry, non-background shots of him online - and oh, how he’d tried - so he hadn’t known before now what namjoon really looked like, but everything he could find out about him - his age, for example - yoongi had hoarded like a particularly proud and brooding dragon with a nest full of new and beloved eggs.

he could have directly said ‘i’m your hyung, because i’m a year older than you,’ and that wouldn’t have been too much, it wouldn’t have been at all out of line or out of place. but it would have felt like a level of exposition that made him bristle just to contemplate, so he’d taken the cowardly way out and spoken around his knowledge of namjoon, instead of diving headfirst into it and tugging namjoon in after him, like namjoon had done for his part of this trainwreck exchange.

“let’s work hard. i think we’ll work well together,” yoongi had said, because it seemed like too soon to say ‘i’ve been love with your brain for a year now, and i’m both incredibly distressed and not actually all that surprised to find that i could far too easily fall in love with the whole rest of you, too.’

for a first meeting, it went well enough and everyone present had seemed satisfied.

as their first meeting, it had changed everything for yoongi, and the changes that meeting namjoon had brought about for yoongi hadn’t even slightly changed back or gone away, since.

years later, and every single day since, yoongi has been -

well.

you know.

“namjoon drives me fucking crazy,” is how yoongi answers jimin’s question, before namjoon has really had a chance to properly consider how he himself might answer.

he’s still kind of caught up on the shirt that yoongi is standing in front of him in, because it’s one they both have and it’s not like yoongi is wearing namjoon’s - because it actually fits him - but it’s close enough to get namjoon thinking ‘what if’, and that’s a dark and dangerous neighborhood of namjoon’s thoughts that he tries not to walk through alone.

yoongi crosses his arms over his chest, and namjoon’s eyes are helplessly drawn to where yoongi’s watch hangs on his wrist, just big enough to be big without crossing into unnecessarily obnoxious territory, but still dwarfed some by yoongi’s hands. god, his hands are fucking lovely, and looking at the tracks of veins risen across the backs of them where they’re tucked into his elbows makes namjoon want so strongly, so viscerally, that the quick grip of it makes him furious.

and it’s that anger that brings him full circle on this conversation.

because it’s not that namjoon doesn’t know exactly why he and yoongi so often end up yelling in one another’s faces and shoving at each other far too carefully, throwing only things that they know for sure won’t actually hurt to get hit with.

rather, it’s that he’s completely thrown by jimin idly asking them why they fight so much in the first place.

they all fight?

they’ve lived together for years now, crammed into variously sized but still to date always far too small spaces and living basically tied to one another for days and weeks at a time. of course they’re going to go fight. it would be weird if they didn’t.

“it’s normal,” namjoon tries to say without sounding defensive, even though that’s exactly how he feels. “like - imagine if we never fought ever? this whole time? that would be much stranger.”

yoongi speaks again, like he hasn’t heard namjoon at all.

“it’s because he,” yoongi jabs a finger in namjoon’s general direction, with far more force than he ever puts behind it when he pokes namjoon directly, “is utterly fucking impossible, sometimes, so what the fuck am i supposed to do? just walk away? and let him get away with it?”

and even though namjoon finds himself fundamentally disagreeing with most of what yoongi has just said, he finds that that’s maybe not as proportionately reflected in his verbal response to it, when that comes.

“that would suck. that would be so dumb, jimin-ah,” namjoon has no idea why he’s trying to convince jimin of this specifically, but maybe it’s because he himself is already a card carrying member of the club dedicated to this logic and couldn’t possibly be any more convinced of the validity of it. “if hyung walked away, or if i did, and we just … went away from each other, every time we disagreed about something? that would be so stupid. we’d never get anything done.”

which is not even to begin to explain how terrible it would be for namjoon personally to for literally any reason walk away from yoongi when he’s not like, contractually obligated to. choosing to spend less time with yoongi, just because the time they pass together is sometimes spent getting yelled at and ducking cushions? gross. unthinkable. very nearly outright offensive to namjoon, as a concept.

because the thing is, when yoongi really works himself up into the right kind of yelling octave, sometimes his almost-lisp becomes a little more pronounced.

and when he’s hurling things at namjoon, whether that’s throw pillows or a stack of laundry or his own socks pulled off his feet expressly for the purpose of balling them up and whipping them at namjoon’s head, his aim is deadly, beautifully accurate.

so the idea of opting out of these experiences really bears absolutely no merit to namjoon. and he’s thought about it … a lot. he thinks about it … very much. and not even in a purely reflective sense, either.

“we’re good,” he decides, not quite sure who exactly he’s addressing anymore, but not really caring either. “this is better. this is just fine. we’re still - friends? afterwards. we still work together just fine. i don’t mind fighting, when it’s with hyung. i lo - uh. i like the final products, when we fight over things, and hyung is satisfied with them too, so it’s fine. it’s good for all of us.”

jimin doesn’t seem so convinced, and yoongi is looking at namjoon in a way that feels uncomfortably close to contemplative, too. but whatever. namjoon brought it back. he recovered right in time not to embarrass himself spectacularly and potentially ruin all of their lives, so what does he care about sounding dumb to a mere two of them? that’s merely the dream most days, in this group, when you’re kim namjoon.

“i mean -” yoongi begins, like he intends to disagree, but then jimin turns his attention to him fully and raises his eyebrows the way he does when he’s really, really invested in the drama he’s watching or the personal problem you’ve just made the mistake of revealing to him, and this seems to make yoongi pale, almost. “what namjoon said. it’s working for us, so why would we change it. don’t fix what isn’t broken, jimin-ah. you’re always finding ways to work harder than you need to, and it’s not necessary.”

“exactly,” namjoon says, turning fully to jimin now and unleashing the full force of his most leaderly gaze. “you need to be kinder to yourself. rest more and let us take care of you, jimin-ah.”

the ‘and for the love of god don’t look too closely at anything that goes on between yoongi and i, because you’re far too perceptive and intelligent and you won’t just figure me out, but you’ll actually make me feel like this is something i should pursue and completely support me in that, too,’ goes unspoken. probably. hopefully.

“relax, please,” namjoon basically pleads. “for me, jimin-ah.”

jimin’s eyebrows quirk in clear confusion, and he looks between them both like he knows there’s something he’s missing here, which sets all of namjoon’s alarm bells ringing.

“yeah,” yoongi says, his voice low and solemn in a way that namjoon wants to roll around under, “listen to your hyungs, and do what your leader tells you.”

and it’s not quite yoongi telling namjoon what to do, but it’s close enough. far, far too close.

so it’s with an entirely different set of bells ringing for namjoon that that particular conversation ends.

it’s not all that unusual a way for things like this to play out, between them.

most of namjoon’s interactions with yoongi end in sirens, for him.

it’s genuinely surprising to yoongi, when bang pd calls him up to his office and tells him that he’s making namjoon the leader, and he wants to make sure that yoongi is okay with that.

he wonders, for a split second, if there’s some reason why he shouldn’t be okay with namjoon being the leader. but he dismisses this line of thinking almost as quickly as it occurs to him, because maybe they’ve only barely known one another for a year at this point, but yoongi knows more than enough about namjoon to have absolutely zero qualms with this decision.

his surprise is all for the fact that bang pd - or anyone, actually - thought yoongi might not be on board with it.

“namjoon has got the best and clearest sense of the direction we all want this to thing to go in.”

as yoongi speaks, he runs his fingers along the stitching across the brim of his cap, where he’s got it in his lap. in front of their managers and the members of staff who have a greater say in what happens to them than they themselves do, yoongi always makes sure not to fidget, not to do or say anything that shows his nerves or any sense of doubt. and maybe bang pd is the head of this whole operation, and as such the one that their reins really and truly rest with, but bang pd doesn’t have a boss above him, doesn’t have a boss at all, and sometimes that makes it harder to talk to him freely, but when he calls them into his office by themselves, yoongi knows well by now that this is a time and a space when nothing is expected of him other than full and brutal honesty.

the fact that they get to have this - the knowledge that the head of their company values this for them and insists on facilitating it - is one of the things that make yoongi think that this could be so significant, if they’re able to see it through the way they want and mean to.

but something else makes him even more sure of that, and only ever more certainly so, the deeper they get into this.

“namjoon is the perfect choice for our leader,” he lifts his cap and sets it aside, puts it next to him on the couch but just beyond his reach, and watches bang pd track this movement with something that looks like satisfaction. that could go beyond that, even.

“not only am i okay with it, but if you called me in here to tell me that anyone else was going to be the leader, this would be a very different conversation.”

seokjin might be their oldest, and he’d be perfectly capable of leading them if he had to, but it’s the ‘had to’ that’s most important part of that sentence. seokjin would do it, and he’d do it to the very best of his ability, but he doesn’t want to and so why should he have to? namjoon will probably try to say that he doesn’t want to be the leader either, but only until they explain to him that he has already been their leader this entire time. once they explain to him that they’re not asking anything of him that he hasn’t already been giving them, he’ll see it differently, yoongi is confident. he might not see it immediately, but the way namjoon leads them has very little to do with a title, and so much to do with who he is and how he conducts himself and what he’s prepared to do for those he cares about and all that matters to them.

“namjoon is the only choice we could have made, on this.”

for a moment, bang pd just looks at yoongi without saying anything. but instead of it making yoongi feel scrutinized or anxious, he knows from the way one side of bang pd’s generally somber and concentrated expression has lifted slightly that he’s being regarded with pride.

“you get along well,” bang pd observes eventually, and yoongi only very barely resists the urge to snort. “you work very well together - you both have great chemistry.”

and yoongi finds himself thinking about that, but not for very long.

“he’s talented,” he says, wondering even as he does so why he sounds almost defensive. “i respect him.”

and that’s genuinely the case. it’s an incredibly vital part of what they do, and why it’s working so well so far, if you ask yoongi.

but that’s also the PG version, and probably the only PG version of something that just keeps on taking more and more and more forms, the thickest part of the stack shelved very firmly, very very high up on a clearly denoted ‘adults only’ shelf.

reflecting on this as he makes his way back downstairs, back to a windowless basement that bizarrely feels like the brightest room in the entire building - in the whole world - to yoongi sometimes, yoongi finds himself wondering if he can even think of himself as an adult yet.

probably not, he decides, when he has to push aside a small mountain of empty energy drink cans and a figurine he’d been playing with in order to clear enough space to be able to get back to work.

namjoon shows up a little while later, and he's windswept and still a little flushed from the autumn weather he walked here in, so yoongi very purposefully does not look up at him. until he hears the inevitable; the already familiar sounds of namjoon struggling with where the straps of his backpack have somehow gotten caught up and tangled with the wires of his earphones and several zips and pockets of his clothing.

"come here," he tells namjoon, swallowing back his sigh, and reaching to untangle namjoon in a slow and methodical way that only drives him closer and closer to some kind of brink the further he gets with it, because the more the knot namjoon has worked himself into unravels for yoongi's hands, the more yoongi wants to keep going until he's carefully stripping namjoon's clothes off, until he's laying him down gently and working his way slowly and surely towards knowing namjoon inside and out. knowing him bodily, like he doesn't yet. knowing him intimately, the way he wants to.

namjoon reaches up to get his hands into the mix, and probably he means to help, to lessen yoongi's task for him, but it is yoongi's task and he won't have anyone take it from him. not even namjoon.

"let hyung," he tells namjoon, whose hands drop away instantly, falling together in front of himself like he has been scolded.

"hyung will do it," yoongi says, and namjoon nods, and stands still until yoongi has freed him, and then he murmurs a soft thank you, and settles down to get to work.

they work side by side in silence, until yoongi has to take a break to go jerk off in the bathroom because an hour spent cooped up in a small space with just namjoon, the scent of his bodywash and the recent memory of how warm and solid his chest feels under yoongi's hands is too much for him to handle, without having to literally handle it.

so, yeah. there's not exactly a strong showing of adulthood from bangtan sonyeondan at this point. not that day. not yet.

but that’s okay.

none of them are really truly adults yet, except for seokjin, maybe. and even then, it hasn’t really settled in for good, on him, yet.

they’ll get there, though.

they’ve got time still, and a whole lot left to figure out.

probably at some point, yoongi will have to develop the life skills necessary to deal with the things kim namjoon makes him feel.

probably.

maybe yoongi will read one of namjoon’s many books on personal and spiritual development, in the meantime.

and visit a temple.

just in case.

-

yoongi’s next most memorable incident around the issue of namjoon as their leader doesn’t happen until years after that.

they’re at mubank, and they’re suited and booted, mic’d up and ready to go, but they’re on standby and jungkook has decided that this is the best time to horse around with his friends.

it just happens to be a cursed coincidence, yoongi thinks, that as their leader namjoon is called away to discuss something with the pd, leaving jungkook without a sun to orbit, and leaving yoongi without a clear if surreptitious home for his focus.

jungkook doesn’t have a lot of friends outside the group, but if one of the few he has happens to be within a hundred meters of him then someone is trying to climb someone else, someone has someone in a headlock, or someone has someone else’s fingers in their ears or up their nose. there was definitely something in the water in 1997, but as that has worked out pretty spectacularly for bangtan sonyeondan both personally and professionally, yoongi deigns to turn a blind eye to these kinds of shenanigans.

usually.

“ooh,” seokjin says, looming up on yoongi out of the shadows like the living nightmare that he is, and hooking his chin forward over yoongi’s shoulder. he pauses, for a second, probably contemplating the likelihood of him getting punched in front of all of these people, and then wraps his arms around yoongi’s waist in a hug. “that one’s kinda your type, huh?”

and maybe yoongi is - as usual - gratified to find himself being held without having to ask for that, or more accurately orchestrate the necessary conditions for it and then pretend to fend it off before he accepts it, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to let seokjin say whatever the hell he wants. not now and not ever. their eldest hyung is a terror, and most days it seems like yoongi is their last line of defense before him becoming the out and out disaster he was born to be. yoongi is generally sure to not leave seokjin and jungkook unattended together for long periods of time for this reason specifically. each of them is a person shaped typhoon waiting to happen, and they've always brought out the inclination towards destruction in one another. when eventually they combine to form a supercell, no one will be left standing.

“i don’t have a type,” yoongi chides, because he doesn’t.

so he doesn’t understand why him saying so makes seokjin laugh, even if it feels nice when it makes seokjin’s chest rumble against yoongi’s back.

“sure you don’t,” seokjin says, not actually agreeing with yoongi at all, “it’s just a coincidence that the one time you manage to voluntarily register someone else’s existence, it happens to be for someone very tall, very broad, with dark skin and dimples and a great smile.”

and, okay. the person jungkook is currently wrapped around and trying to tickle but still getting very enthusiastic headpats from does meet those specifications as seokjin has laid them out. but it’s not like yoongi is getting laid out by anyone who looks like that, so obviously seokjin doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“i’d have to be dating, to have a type,” yoongi reminds him, because there are times when it’s absolutely impossible for all of them to see people, and there are times when it’s only mostly impossible, but yoongi is one of the few members who has never taken advantage of the latter. or. well. one of the two, to be specific.

“sure,” seokjin agrees-without-agreeing, again, tilting his head in against yoongi’s so the sides of their faces are pressed together, and rocking yoongi gently from side to side in his arms. across the small expanse of this side stage area, jimin and taehyung are watching this wide eyed and open mouthed. when yoongi catches them watching and leans into his hyung’s hold even further, he can tell just from the bitter twists of their mouths that the two of them are loudly whining at hoseok, now. he almost chances giving seokjin a kiss on the cheek, but ultimately decides against it, knowing how seokjin would take that and run absolutely amok with it.

“you’d have a type if you were dating. but i think you might also have a type if you’re not dating, but giving very significant kinds of time and attention to people who are big all over and sweet in the face.”

and unfortunately, it’s not like seokjin is wrong about that. which obviously greatly offends and upsets yoongi, both because it’s unlike seokjin and also because yoongi knows for a fact that seokjin chooses on purpose to only show them how observant and all-knowing he truly is for the things that they desperately and in complete and total futility try to hide from one another.

“people?” yoongi asks, not because he thinks seokjin is at all off base in what he’s saying, but rather because sometimes when seokjin steps dangerously close to yoongi’s truths, he manages to fend him off in the end anyway by daring seokjin to step up onto the plate. it’s no fun for seokjin, if he thinks yoongi is expecting it or inviting it.

this time, too, seokjin sighs in disappointment. the only thing that’s really confusing about this exchange now is why seokjin spreads his hand palm open and fingers splayed wide low across yoongi’s belly like he does when yoongi is feeling deathly unwell; when he thinks yoongi is in need of comfort and out of it enough to accept it, should it be given.

fatally, it’s enough to trip yoongi up.

“he’s not even as hot as namjoon, anyway,” he finds himself muttering, before he can realize his mistake, and he finds himself wishing seokjin would mock him or laugh at him or do literally anything other than what he actually does, which is to stay completely silent behind yoongi, but hug him a little closer.

and then it gets even worse.

“well, he is,” seokjin says, and he doesn’t have to, because yoongi knows that’s true. “but it’s not just about hotness, is it? not with namjoon. not for you.”

“i hate you, hyung,” is what yoongi says, but they both hear loud and clear that that’s the opposite of what he means.

“hyung loves you too, yoongi-yah,” seokjin says, extracting himself from yoongi when they’re given the signal to get ready, and carefully fitting yoongi’s in-ear into place before he goes.

“lots of people love you, yoongi. in all kinds of ways.”

and then he’s gone, and jungkook is coming back to them, and hoseok is towing jimin and taehyung into position, and as usual, when namjoon appears, everything gets a little bit brighter for yoongi. everything seems just slightly different in a way that is better.

because namjoon is their leader, and he leads them like he was born to, because he was. but namjoon is also young. younger than yoongi, young in so many ways that it never makes anything but sense that namjoon is one of their maknaes even though he and hoseok are the same age, because namjoon takes on a lot more responsibility than hoseok does - than any of them do - but underneath that, at the heart of him, there is a tenderness and a vulnerability and a sweet, simple naivety to him that all of their maknaes have. with the other three, it’s easy for yoongi to take care of them, to fuss over them secretly and not so secretly at all, but that’s only because they let him. yoongi has those exact same instincts towards namjoon, but he’s never been able to take care of namjoon the way he wants to, the way he needs to, the way he feels like he’s supposed to, because something always comes between them, in that place of owing that’s not born of obligation for yoongi, but rather yearning. maybe it’s that responsibility has set in in namjoon in a way he can’t always strip off, anymore. maybe it’s that the distance between them is too far, for namjoon, who thoughtlessly lets the other maknaes fuss over him and coddle and wheedle at him, but seems to pause before he accepts the same from any of the hyungs.

maybe, yoongi thinks sometimes, it’s him. maybe it’s just because it’s him, and namjoon doesn’t want that from him. namjoon doesn’t it from yoongi the way yoongi needs to give it.

right before the playback starts, yoongi feels eyes on him that he knows are namjoon’s.

right before they can make eye contact, yoongi looks away.

by now, namjoon is used to getting ogled and lightly groped by the rest of the members.

ever since he started seriously committing to going to the gym and eating well, he has had no other choice.

sometimes it’s taehyung joining him for workouts but spending more time catcalling namjoon than he does really pushing himself in pursuing physical excellence.

sometimes it’s hoseok coming to steal namjoon’s clothes, or so he says, but in actual fact as far as namjoon is concerned, coming to talk very loudly and praisingly about how much bigger namjoon is than him, now. how his clothes swim on hoseok in a way he really, really likes. and that’s cool, it’s always nice when hoseok is happy, but namjoon is pretty sure that hoseok sometimes wears actual tents as clothes, so he has no clue what compels hoseok to take his shirts. or why he sometimes asks if he can wear them after namjoon has, before they’ve been washed.

most of the time, it’s jungkook appearing completely silently and seemingly out of thin air to firmly grip and size up namjoon’s muscles over his clothes. under his clothes, too, if namjoon is in a good enough mood to allow it.

much less frequently, it’s seokjin bemoaning that he can’t put on muscle as easily as namjoon does, and then immediately following this up with a bone dry assessment that the problem, as far as he sees it, is that he has never tried to or in fact wanted to.

most supportively, it’s jimin sending namjoon links to nutrition articles and correcting his form both accurately and non-lecherously, when namjoon asks, which is why jimin is always the one that namjoon asks.

it is not, or at least has to date never been … whatever this is.

“don’t you think, yoongi hyung?”

jimin and jungkook are bracketing namjoon on either side - firmly, too - and there are currently three hands up inside his shirt. and one grabbing his thigh only half over his shorts, half on his actual bare leg.

it just doesn’t seem right to namjoon, that he’s so often persecuted by maknaes when he is himself also a maknae. where is their sense of solidarity? didn’t the four of them sit down a long time ago and agree that the hyung versus maknae line divisions weren’t especially meaningful or consequential, but could - if they really committed to it - be a competition. and one that they would win, obviously. not because there’s more of them, but because they’ve got jungkook.

they’d signed a pact and everything. namjoon still has it and he’s definitely going to call a maknae meeting to add some addendums to it later, but first and far more pressingly - quite literally -

“doesn’t namjoon hyung look so good like this? don’t health and strength really really suit him?”

specifically, namjoon doesn’t know if he’s more offended by the tone of voice jungkook’s voice takes on for that second ‘really’, or the fact that as he says it, jungkook slides the palm of his hand up under the hem of namjoon’s shorts completely.

but then yoongi says “uhhhh,” and this reminds namjoon that worse than namjoon having to experience this is the fact that yoongi is standing there having to witness it.

when namjoon makes the incredibly risky executive decision to stop closely monitoring the wandering hands on his body to look at yoongi, instead, he’s not at all surprised to find that yoongi is scratching at his neck and blushing in clear discomfort.

“ah, i’m sure hyung isn’t into muscles,” namjoon says, to save yoongi from having to say the exact same thing. this isn’t in any way, shape or form something that yoongi should have to deal with. he doesn’t care. “look at hyung; he’s all lean muscle and wiry strength. he’s not buff at all, he’s beau- um,” it’s right around there that namjoon starts to sweat, he thinks. cursedly this is confirmed a second later when the hand jungkook has in his armpit now flexes, and he says ‘oooh,’ with a flattering but also frightening level of interest. “hyung’s probably not a fan of like .. big useless muscles.”

the silence that follows namjoon’s conclusion definitely strikes him as suspicious, but it’s hard for him to put his finger on exactly why when he’s otherwise preoccupied trying to peel jimin’s fingers out of the fierce hold he has them curled around at the waistband of namjoon’s shorts and underwear.

once this is accomplished, and jimin is sulking both loudly and spiritedly, joined in chorus by jungkook not because he’s been wronged, but because he loves to harmonize with jimin every which way he possibly can, namjoon looks up again to find yoongi looking blank faced, now. seeming lost, almost. but a very terribly soft version of it.

“just because i don’t want to put the hours in at the gym doesn’t mean i’m not impressed by those who do, joon-ah,” yoongi says, shockingly sincere. so much so that namjoon is actually incredibly grateful now, for how jungkook and jimin are both holding onto his chest in a way that’s obviously very personally gratifying for them both but also maybe serves as some form of emotional support for namjoon too, because all things considered it really does make him feel better somehow.

“and your muscles aren’t useless. you use them. you use them well, namjoon. i lo - uh, literally … um. admire your strength?”

why this is a question, namjoon has no clue.

but as for why his knees buckle, namjoon knows the answer to that one. namjoon could shoot for extra credit on that one, actually.

“oof,” jungkook says, catching namjoon with a strong arm around his waist before he can fall to the floor and then - who knows. crawl away? lie very still very quietly and hope that everyone simply forgets that he exists or in fact ever did?

“we should bump up leg day this week, i think, hyung,” jungkook decides, looking at namjoon’s thighs speculatively. and then smiling in something close to bliss, as he physically maps out his plans and visions for namjoon’s body. on namjoon’s actual body. in real time. and cursedly, in real life.

and, well.

“thanks, jungkook,” is what namjoon winds up saying, because really well else is there to say?

not knowing what he could have said instead doesn’t mean namjoon doesn’t know that what he has said is and sounds dumb, so he’s not surprised or offended when yoongi looks between namjoon and jungkook like they’ve both disappointed him greatly.

“sorry, hyung,” jungkook says, then, holding his hands up like he’s been caught doing something he’s not supposed to, and stepping back out of namjoon’s space so quickly that he nearly trips, until jimin catches him. he sounds panicked, and namjoon doesn’t know why, because if he has stood here and permitted all of everything that just happened, why would he be mad about jungkook groping his thighs a little? that’s nothing out of the ordinary for them. this happens all the time now, only usually without yoongi around to have to witness it, thank god.

“yes,” jimin says, suspiciously insistently, and towing jungkook away very firmly now, “we are sorry hyung. hyungs? sorry to … you, hyung. whichever one of you hyungs feels like they are owed an apology, from us. yes.”

and jungkook starts to say something, then, but jimin very effectively prevents whatever that was going to be from becoming audible by stuffing his entire fist into jungkook’s open mouth, and then dragging him out of sight.

“oh,” namjoon says, when he’s left alone with yoongi and absolute no clue what has just transpired here. “okay.”

“nothing about any of this is okay,” yoongi says lowly, almost like he’s talking to himself, and then he disappears too.

so, like. okay?

or maybe not?

it seems to be leaning pretty significantly towards ‘not’, and namjoon sees that to be the case, but that doesn’t mean he can tell you why it’s so.

something has definitely gone awry here, but don’t ask namjoon what, because he doesn’t know.

some days, in this group, in this body, in this build of thoughts and feelings namjoon has constructed for himself to live in, he doesn’t even know where to begin.

yoongi and hoseok are hanging out in the living room, working separately in companionable silence on some lyrics, when namjoon wanders in.

just by glancing up at him and the way he’s scratching at his stomach idly through his shirt with a confused little pout set in place on his face, yoongi can tell that namjoon is hungry and thinking about what he might want to eat.

without a word to either of them or at all, he plots a course towards their cookware cupboards and makes a beeline for it. there comes the tiny squeak of the door of one of the cabinet doors opening, and it’s followed almost instantly by the cacophonous medley of what sounds like every saucepan they have to their names tumbling out onto the floor at once, bouncing and clanging off the countertops along their journey there.

just as quickly comes the sound of namjoon carefully stacking them all back into place.

“how is he both the loudest and quietest person i know?” hoseok wonders out loud and it strikes yoongi as a question that’s neither aimed at him nor one that he feels particularly moved or able to answer, so he ignores it.

their work resumes in silence again, now with an OST of the quiet boil of water in the background.

and then hoseok speaks again.

“i wonder which way he goes in bed. quiet or loud. what do you think, hyung?”

yoongi is frowning before he even finishes fully registering the question.

why would yoongi think about that? why would anyone?

“my more immediate concern,” he starts telling hoseok off, strangely incensed in a way that makes him uncareful, in a way that makes him momentarily careless, “is why you’re spending your time thinking about what my -”

it’s like someone has slapped a hand across yoongi’s mouth, or maybe just slapped him dead in the face because no more words will come out of him and his cheeks are stinging under the force of his furious blush.

god fucking damn it.

he tries his absolute hardest not to look up at hoseok to check his reaction, he really does, but his stress builds with every passing second of silence and eventually he has to peek.

over the top of his laptop, hoseok’s grin is so big and bright that it looks like his neck is struggling to support the force of it on his face.

“yours, huh hyung???” hoseok’s eyebrow waggle is genuinely criminal, “your what, hyung? tell me all about exactly how namjoon is yours, please hyung, i’m just dying to know.”

and as if this isn’t already the worst moment of yoongi’s life to date - worse somehow even than having to wear that maid outfit that time, when yoongi really and truly didn’t think anything could top that, unless he’d actually asked namjoon to let yoongi fuck him while he was wearing it like he’d wanted to - namjoon pops his head back into the living room then.

“did i hear my name? someone call me?” he asks, and he’s got his glasses on now, and they’re steamed up from whatever he’s cooking, and even though he looks absolutely ridiculous yoongi still wants to drag him off down the corridor to the closest bed. wants to goldilocks the fuck out of every bed in this apartment until he finds out for himself exactly how loud namjoon is or isn’t in bed, and then never tell a single other soul anything at all about what namjoon would sound like, when yoongi gets it just right.

because yoongi doesn’t want other people to know what namjoon sounds like in bed. or anything else about what namjoon is like in bed. he can barely tolerate it when people know things about namjoon that he doesn’t know, because it always feels vaguely and uncomfortably close to him having been robbed of something that he considers only rightfully his. but the thought of having to possess the knowledge that someone else has gotten to touch namjoon - or worse, is getting to touch namjoon - that instantly makes yoongi’s stomach roil.

“nobody called you, go away,” he mutters at namjoon, whose face falls so quickly so fast that yoongi actually manages to find a quick sec to let guilt pierce through the maelstrom of emotion that’s whipping around in him right now.

“sorry,” he says just as quickly as namjoon’s face had fallen, desperate to see it lift again, “i didn’t mean to snap, i’m sorry. i’m just tired, i didn’t mean it, hyung lo -” FUCK! what the fuck is this fucking cursed day? “hyung is sorry! go back to your cooking, joon-ah. i’m sorry.”

yoongi has never apologized that much in a whole other month of his life, but the really fucked up part is that he doesn’t mind saying ‘sorry’ to namjoon a hundred million times if he has to, because stuff he wouldn’t think twice about with anyone else, he really is sorry for when it comes to namjoon. where sometimes apologizing feels like the hardest thing in the world for yoongi to do because there have been so many times in his life when he was expected to do it when he didn’t mean it, apologizing to namjoon feels like it brings the two of them together somehow. they’re already on a level to yoongi’s mind because of how him being older and namjoon being the leader balance each other out, and the vulnerability of honest apology feels like taking a step closer to one another, meeting in the middle ground they’re already standing on.

“oh. okay,” namjoon says, his face flushing too now, probably from the atmospheric shift of going from the heat of the kitchen into the air conditioned cool of the living room.

“um,” he hovers for a second, like there’s something else he’s going to say, but then he sucks in a breath that hisses between his teeth and seems to shake himself, backing away. “bye then.”

silence descends once more, and this time there is absolutely nothing peaceful or companionable about it.

“so,” hoseok says, and already yoongi wants to close his eyes. “there he goes. your - friend? no, he’s not your friend,” hoseok pretends to think, a comically exaggerated expression on his face and his eyes cast towards heaven, “your … coworker? nah, i don’t think that’s quite right. what is he hyung? or is the problem that you’re not quite sure what way you’d like him to be ‘yours’, hmm?”

“fuck you,” is yoongi’s reply, as hoseok had obviously known that it would be, because he only cackles in response.

“no thank you, hyung,” hoseok is absent-minded about it as he speaks, and obviously trailing his way back into his work, his eyes back on his screen now that he’s had his fill of tormenting yoongi. almost.

“but as a favor to you anyway, i’ll stop thinking about what namjoon sounds like in bed, okay?”

yoongi growls at him.

“you’re very welcome, hyung,” hoseok says, prim and still very clearly amused by himself, which is good because yoongi definitely doesn’t find anything about this funny.

in fact, he gathers up his stuff and makes to leave the room. not because he hears the stove top being switched off and is worried that he won’t be able to sit in the same room as namjoon without thinking about what he sounds like when he comes, but because he hates hoseok. that’s all. that’s his reasoning and he’s sticking to it. no call chance, no take backs.

“if you happen to find out the answer though, you’ll be sure to let me know, won’t you hyung?” hoseok calls after him, and yoongi is so focused on getting out of the room as quickly as he possibly can that it takes him a second to remember what hoseok is referring to.

it only takes a fraction of a second for him to reach down and scoop his slipper off his foot, and the sound of it hitting hoseok square in the forehead is incredibly and gratifyingly satisfying.

they’ve been arguing for over an hour already.

it’s not technically arguing, namjoon thinks, because nobody has started shouting yet and nothing has been thrown at anyone, but they’ve been steadily going back and forth on two versions of this track over and over and they’re no closer to agreeing now than they had been when yoongi had listened to namjoon’s track and said “yeah, no. you need to listen to this.”

so namjoon had listened.

and he’s still listening now.

this time, when the track ends, namjoon doesn’t say anything.

and this, for the first time, seems to make yoongi genuinely mad at him.

“what!?” he’s not shouting, but it’s looming. it’s breaking and crackling on the horizon. “you have nothing to say?”

and the thing is, namjoon has plenty to say. but he has already said it. he has fully explained why he made the choices he made on his version of this track, and he has also fully explained that there are elements of yoongi’s mixing that he’s not quite sure about, and given the reasons for that too.

“okay,” he says now, easily, because he can. because he’s sure. “lets go with your version, hyung.”

and that’s supposed to be the end of it.

they’ve reached an agreement, so this is where everything instantly gets smoothed over again and from here they can start working their way up into a whole brand new argument to have.

namjoon is already kind of excited about what they might find to fight over this time, is hoping it’s something that will make yoongi narrow his eyes and hiss at him the way he does when it seems like he’s worked up enough to be close to some kind of breaking point, but when he glances up into yoongi’s face expecting to see a small smirk of victory there, he finds himself withering under the full force of yoongi’s active bitch face instead.

and like, not to be hysterical about it, but uh-fucking-oh.

“what did you just say?” yoongi asks, and his seething is so audible in how he says it that it comes out like smoke from a dragon’s snout. his eyes are very small and very narrow and namjoon is all of a sudden very afraid for his life.

“i said - ” namjoon desperately casts back in his recent memory to figure out what about what he just said has set yoongi off. “i said - lets go with your version? didn’t i? that’s what i meant to say. let’s use your version, hyung. isn’t - ” the expression on yoongi’s face hasn’t gentled or changed in any way other than to maybe get a little darker, and it’s not like namjoon finds himself actually wanting to obey his instinct to move away from yoongi for the first time in history, but it’s a close thing. “is that okay?”

“no,” yoongi says, letting it fall like a hammer, and namjoon jolts in his seat like he’s been struck. “no, namjoon. it’s not fucking okay.” he physically rounds on namjoon, turning in his seat completely until he’s facing namjoon side on. “why the fuck would we use my version?”

namjoon is, to say the least, lost.

“because … don’t you want to, hyung?”

for all that they have spent a significant chunk of their relationship up in each other’s faces and at each other’s throats when in namjoon’s learned opinion they should have just been getting into each other’s pants instead, this is one of the first times namjoon can ever remember where he actually struggles to see yoongi’s perspective on something, and doesn’t just feel compelled to disagree with it.

“because you mixed this version this way for reasons that make sense and sound right to you and … i think we should go with that? i think we should use it?”

namjoon’s voice definitely goes about an octave higher than he has heard it since pre-puberty, but his thighs are clamped together so tightly that the slightly crushing pressure on his balls has to have at least something to do with that.

yoongi’s chair draws so close that his knees knock into the side of namjoon’s chair.

“why would you say that? why would you let me use my version?” he demands like he’s interrogating namjoon for information that lives depend on. “why the fuck did you just fucking agree with me, namjoon?”

and, yeah. namjoon honestly has no idea what’s going on. so much so that he does something he has never ever in the history of his relationship with yoongi done before.

“hyung,” he says, plaintive, “i have no idea what’s going on right now. i don’t know why you’re mad at me.”

because as often as namjoon has found himself on the dagger end of yoongi’s ire, he’s always put himself there and / or enjoyed every second of the experience. but this is not like that. this time, namjoon knows neither how they got here nor how to get himself the fuck out of it. he’s not even sure where they actually are right now, strictly speaking. yoongi is pissed as hell, and namjoon loves him that way, but it feels like it doesn’t count when he can’t cite the square root of it.

“you don’t know,” yoongi parrots him, cold and mocking and mean. “you have no idea why it could possibly not sit right with me that after arguing for your tracks on this song for several fucking hours, you just turn around and say ‘okay hyung, let’s go with yours instead’?”

the worst part, namjoon thinks, is how they can’t even really sit here and thrash this out like they usually do.

namjoon hadn’t been expecting them to come to any resolution on this at all in the time that they had, because his phone vibrates now with a reminder that they need to be downstairs to take a car home if they want to have time to shower and change and eat before they head out to a filming that’s scheduled in a couple of hours. by agreeing to use yoongi’s track, namjoon had thought he’d actually been giving them a shortcut in this, but even when yoongi scowls at namjoon’s phone and then immediately stands to start packing up his stuff, he doesn’t let this go.

the whole way home he continues to poke and prod and prick at namjoon about this. and even when they’re sniping at each other and scoffing at one another’s words in a genuinely mean spirited way for once, namjoon is still happy as fuck that they get to share a car today when these days they don’t often have to. even when yoongi is glaring across the back seat at him and looking for all the world like he wants to spring across the car and rip into namjoon like a pouty little mountain lion, namjoon just sits there with his body language very carefully open and inviting and baits his hyung some more.

it’s only in the elevator upstairs that things really take a turn.

because there, yoongi actually gets physical with namjoon about their argument when for all intents and purposes they’re still in public, so namjoon knows that this is seriously getting under yoongi’s skin, even though he still doesn’t understand why.

“you obviously don’t care about your track at all, if you’re prepared to trash it so easily,” yoongi spits at namjoon, shoving his shoulder as he steps into the elevator. it’s not hard, certainly not enough to make him trip or unsteady him, but it jolts him in a non-physical way that yoongi is touching him like this, in frustration, and he can’t understand why. “you must have really phoned it in on this one, namjoon. did hyung save your ass, by giving you a workable version you could agree to?”

and that stings, because namjoon knows that yoongi knows he cares very much about the work they do together, and that everything he brings to them he has worked on and worked on and worked on until he’s satisfied that it’s good enough for them to hear. so for yoongi to say this, namjoon knows he’s actually trying to get a rise out of him now.

“if your track is so great, why are you so angry at me for wanting to use it?” namjoon shoots back, tucking his hands behind himself, between his back and the walls of the elevator, so he doesn’t reach out for yoongi instead, because he doesn’t know how he would touch him, right now. he doesn’t know what his hands would do, if they found themselves on yoongi’s body, and he trusts himself less in this moment than he has for a very long time indeed.

“because you can’t just use my work as a way to not have to do your own, namjoon,” yoongi follows him out of the elevator when it gets to their floor, close enough on his heels that namjoon doesn’t know whether he’s imagining it or not, when he thinks he feels yoongi’s breath on the back of his neck, all the tiny hairs there standing up anyway, maybe just at the thought of it.

“but that’s not what i did, hyung,” namjoon is trying to be patient, as he keys in their code and steps inside and steps out of his shoes. “that’s not why i want to use your track, and you know that.”

and there’s no question of that, not for namjoon and not for yoongi either, not for any of them, and even though when yoongi snorts namjoon knows he’s just trying to push his buttons, namjoon finds himself all of a sudden completely unwilling to let yoongi even pretend that he thinks that’s what’s going on here.

“i have no idea why you just gave the fuck in and decided to use my track, namjoon,” yoongi says, kicking his shoes off so hard that they bang against the wall next to their shoe rack. he follows namjoon on socked feet, not even pausing to step into some slippers, “so don’t tell me what i know. i have no idea why you -”

and something in namjoon just snaps. it’s a rubber band that he’s been pinging against his own wrist for years, so hard and so often that it’s worn and thin and whatever yoongi is doing here, whatever fucking mood he’s in today, he tugs at the band on namjoon’s wrist so hard that it simply cleanly snaps in two.

namjoon turns back to yoongi only for long enough to grab yoongi by a handful of his collar, and then he pushes yoongi in front of himself, shoves him through his own open bedroom door, and tosses him down onto his own bed.

for a second, yoongi seems too stunned to react. he catches himself on his hands and then he sits there, breathing hard, his eyes so wide that namjoon can see the full shape of his irises. and then he tries to stand back up.

namjoon steps up between yoongi’s spread legs and holds him down where he is with a hand on his chest.

he leans down into yoongi’s face, because this more than anything else, is familiar.

“because i fucking love you,” namjoon says, his voice high and tight and so so young sounding, which feels fitting. it feels perfectly right for this moment, actually, because this is how namjoon would have sounded, he thinks, if he had said it the first time he’d meant it. the very first time he’d felt it. it's only right, namjoon thinks, that even though he hadn't really meant for what he's just said to be a confession of his feelings, it is anyway, because it turns out he can't say those words to yoongi and not have them sound like exactly what it really does mean, to namjoon. and what it has meant to him all along, since he was so much younger than he is now, but no more doubtful and panicked than he finds himself still.

they’re not kids anymore, and there’s so much more to who they are and what they’ve become to one another, now. and namjoon needs yoongi to know that. even if yoongi knows something namjoon hadn't ever meant to burden him with, it's absolutely vital that yoongi also knows that that's not the whole story. that namjoon loves him in ways that are okay to love him, ways that yoongi probably won't be horrified by, too.

“because if you think your version sounds better then i fucking trust you, because i respect your judgement and sometimes you know better than i do, hyung. i’m not always right.” namjoon says easily, because that’s a given, that’s something he has found a way to not only accept, but become comfortable in, because - “when i’m not right, i can count on you to be, though. whether i’m right or wrong or lost somewhere in between, i know i can always follow you to where we need to be, and that -” he pauses. gasps something like a small, soft sob. “that’s why i trust you more than i trust myself sometimes. and i love that, hyung. i love having that. i love having you.”

that’s all there is to say, and so namjoon says it. and for a terrifying, dizzying second after he has, namjoon still does not know what yoongi is going to say or do.

he stays where he is, pinned down by namjoon’s hand, and he blinks up into namjoon’s face with his mouth dropped open but nothing coming out of it, like he’s no longer in control of it at all.

and then he takes a breath, and he swallows, and he looks down at namjoon’s hand on his chest, and when he looks back up into namjoon’s eyes again, something has changed.

something is gone, that was there just a moment before.

“okay, namjoon-ah,” yoongi says, so small and very careful, his voice catching on the edges of the words like they scrape coming up his throat, like they’re so big as they come out of him that they cut into him on the way out.

“okay,” he says, dropping their eye contact and nodding the way he does when he’s told to do something that he wasn’t expecting and hasn’t been had time to decide whether he wants to actually do it or not. he puts his hand over namjoon’s hand, on his chest, and seems to hold namjoon’s hand where it is, for a second, before his fingers close around the sides of it and gently pry namjoon’s hand away from him.

he pulls namjoon’s hand off of him, and then instead of sitting back up or rising back to his feet, he crawls backwards, further up his bed. further away from namjoon.

and all of this disappoints namjoon horribly, for some reason. he watches yoongi back away from him, and he doesn’t know what it was, exactly, or which one of them did it - it was him, it has to have been him - but he knows that something has gone wrong. he knows that the way this came to happen and how it played it has meant that … he got it wrong.

he walks away, and it’s only when he gets back to his own room that he realizes he’s shaking.

it’s only when he next looks at yoongi an hour later when they meet up again in the front hall, that namjoon realizes that for some reason - even though he stands by his decision with the song - that because of everything that happened afterwards, everything that happened in yoongi’s room, he feels now like he has done something wrong.

“moody hyung,” taehyung observes, stepping up to namjoon to squish his cheeks the way only taehyung ever does, because the others baby namjoon when he lets them, but taehyung babies namjoon all the time.

“do you need a nap, hyung? do you want to share my snacks?” he asks, because he has always reacted to the privilege of namjoon actually letting him inside the personal space he so desperately needs in these moments completely appropriately, and uses it to take care of namjoon in ways that namjoon can’t let any of the others, right then.

he lets taehyung lead him into a car, when they get downstairs, and he’s frowning the whole time, but that doesn’t deter taehyung in the slightest as he tips namjoon carefully onto his side and gets namjoon’s head pillowed in his lap, with his knees tucked up on the seat.

for a long time, neither of them says anything. namjoon lies still and allows himself to be held; relishing that, because it doesn’t often happen in a way that he can permit himself to enjoy, and taehyung strokes his fingers through namjoon’s hair, and down the line of his neck, the softness of someone else touching him this way soothing namjoon in a way that he finds - once he has it - that he has desperately needed.

it’s only when they arrive at their destination that taehyung speaks at last, brushing namjoon’s hair back out of his face so he can lean forward a little and look down into namjoon’s eyes.

“you should tell him, hyung,” taehyung says, and namjoon slept really long and really well last night, but he’s still simply too exhausted to be surprised that taehyung knows, or to even let himself wonder if what taehyung thinks he knows is what there is to know.

namjoon shifts where he lies, turning over onto his back so he can look up at taehyung properly. taehyung smiles at him, crooked and beautiful, and namjoon’s heart thumps in his chest, painfully full for more reasons than he can name or number.

“i think i did,” he tells taehyung, finding the energy somehow to be scared, now. to tremble, in his dawning terror. “i did, and i think that’s the problem, taehyung-ah.”

taehyung’s smile doesn’t falter, and namjoon marvels at this for a moment, heartened by the sight of it on taehyung’s face and restored, somehow, by how it doesn’t shake or fall or change, once namjoon has said what he has said. once namjoon has said it out loud. not for the first time, but for the second. only for the second.

“it might feel like that, hyung,” taehyung says, and then he folds forward to press a kiss to namjoon’s forehead, a soft touch of his lips that warms namjoon all over, that makes him reach up for taehyung and clutch at his elbow, hold tight to his arm.

“but i don’t think it’ll feel that way for long.”

he gathers namjoon to him in a hug, then, and it’s an embrace that namjoon for once doesn’t even think to question, or pause to overthink. he lets himself be hugged, and he hugs taehyung right back, and for that moment, at least, it feels like everything is going to be okay.

and no matter what happens with yoongi, everything is going to be okay, namjoon knows. no matter how difficult he might have made things between them for right now, or for a little while, even, they’re all going to be right here together where namjoon needs them - where they all need each other - and so, he knows, everything is going to be just fine.

eventually.

but inevitably.

and in the meantime, there is always taehyung, and there can always be hugs, if namjoon wants them. when namjoon needs them.

“thank you, taehyung-ah,” namjoon whispers into taehyung’s hair, and when taehyung’s only response is to hold namjoon tighter, his arms strong and certain around him, namjoon closes his eyes, smiles, and lets himself have this.

it’s two days later, when yoongi finally has to confront namjoon.

it’s only after maybe four hours of sleep and forty four hours spent panicking and getting ahead of himself and then talking himself back down out of that and being disappointed as fuck, only to let himself wonder if maybe, if namjoon could possibly - that yoongi finds himself left with no other choice but to talk to namjoon about it directly.

because even though that is the one thing he has vowed never ever to do, that only worked - he finds - when he had absolutely no reason whatsoever to wonder. to hope. and now that he has something like that, something like potentially the beginnings of just that, yoongi knows it could drive him insane. he lives with this tiny seed of possibility inside himself for two days, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that if he can’t keep this forever, he has to let it go before he gets attached. because the loss of it will be unbearable, but after only two days of having it, it will also be survivable.

if it goes on any longer, yoongi knows, there’s no coming back from it.

so he sits on his hands through a team meeting, and he anchors his eyes on the folder in front of him, and he doesn’t let himself look directly at namjoon even when he’s speaking, because he can’t do anything that will give him something that he can use as an excuse to talk himself out of this; something - literally anything - that he knows he’ll use to make himself think that it’s okay to hold onto this hope. to keep it, even though he knows it will kill him in the end, one way or another.

“we need to talk,” he says, when he corners namjoon before he can leave the room, letting the others go on without them and texting seokjin to let him know not to wait for them.

they don’t need to talk. yoongi needs to talk. but namjoon doesn’t call yoongi out on this. namjoon doesn’t say anything at all, only looks down at where yoongi has stupidly, so stupidly, got his hand wrapped around namjoon’s wrist, because he’s so scared of what he’s about to do that he doesn’t have the capacity to keep himself in check, anymore.

wordlessly, namjoon follows yoongi to his studio. he waits patiently while yoongi keys in the code with shaking hands, and yoongi hates this, already. he hates it when namjoon is quiet almost as much as he had hated what happened yesterday; when namjoon had for the first time - as far as yoongi knows, as he desperately, desperately hopes - told yoongi what he’d wanted to hear in place of what namjoon had meant or wanted to say.

they quickly and quietly shuffle inside and yoongi closes the door behind them and when he turns back to face the room with namjoon in it, all he can see for a second is where namjoon is written all over it.

the extra headphones sitting just to the right of yoongi’s workspace, not in his way, but also not beyond his reach; sennheisers instead of the audio-technicas that yoongi prefers.

the many tiny things that namjoon has given him over the years dotted along his shelves; books and figurines and a prickly little cactus that namjoon had laughingly said reminded him of yoongi when he’s first woken up. yoongi waters it every six days religiously; has a special little spray bottle for just this task, and sometimes the moment he spends standing there, carefully hydrating the only other living thing he shares this space with, is the best of his whole day.

even within the pages of yoongi’s books, you’ll find bits and pieces of namjoon. bookmarks he always gifts to yoongi when he returns them, whether that’s intentional or not. post-it notes with snippets of thoughts scrawled across them, because he refuses to mark the actual pages.

all through this room - all across every space yoongi spends time in - namjoon is written clearly. there’s evidence of all of them, but namjoon is the constant. namjoon is almost as evidenced here as yoongi himself, and yoongi wonders, as he realizes this anew, if he’s ever been successful at all, at hiding how he feels.

“yesterday,” yoongi begins, because it’ll ground him, he hopes, to start there. it will be easier, he thinks, to start at the end. “when you said …”

he looks at namjoon, and he knows he should think of that as a mistake even as he’s making it, but he can’t. he doesn’t. he looks at namjoon, nervous and a little pale and twisting at a ring with the fingers of his other hand, and all he feels is love.

and it’s that, it’s looking right at namjoon and allowing himself to acknowledge that, that makes yoongi grit his teeth and get this done.

“when you said you ‘love’ me,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake, but even if it did, he wouldn’t hear it over the thundering of his heartbeat in his ears.

namjoon’s eyes go wide, and this thing that has been perched high and frantic at the top of yoongi’s chest becomes a dead weight that drops in him like a stone in the ocean.

“you obviously meant - did you mean in a professional way? or in a … a friendly way? like the way we love seokjin hyung even when he’s in the middle of a bit that got tired three days previously?” a begrudging kind of way, he means.

“was it - did you mean it in a romantic way? in the 'in' love kind of way?” this kills him to have to say, just the thought of it slipping into the tiny spaces between all the layers of love he’s piled up inside himself for namjoon, showing yoongi just how many of those there are, when he always tries to think of it and treat it like just this one thing he has to ignore, this one thing he can’t look directly at.

he hurries to finish what he has to say before his last breath gives out on him.

“or did you mean it in some other general sense of the word?”

not a lot about namjoon is general. he is specificity in human form, yoongi thinks, and sometimes he also likes to think that it’s in the combining of namjoon’s specificity with yoongi’s own potential and possibility that the magic of them is made. and that won’t change. that doesn’t have to change. no matter namjoon says next. no matter what yoongi has to do, then.

namjoon’s bottom lip lifts, presses up into his top lip and makes his chin crinkle for a second, as he seems to censor something that his mouth tries to say. but this small spasm of his face comes in double time, and then he speaks.

“yes,” is all he says.

and it is strangely, wholly anticlimactic.

it seems to strike even him as such, because after he has said it, he slumps back against yoongi’s mixing desk, catching his weight on the palms of his hands. his torso becomes concave, to yoongi’s view, in the sag of his posture, and yoongi might be standing up straight, but he feels like they’re mirroring one another, anyway.

he is crestfallen. his hope has been scored out of him, leaving behind only the stinging scrape of where it had clung to him, and he to it, and he knew that it very likely would happen like this, but there was no preparing himself for it, he finds.

there is, however, years of practice to fall back on, still. if there’s one thing yoongi knows how to do - it’s carrying on like nothing at all has happened, when he’s been gutted.

“okay,” he says, though it’s not. nothing is, for yoongi, right then. “well. i -” he swallows against the rise of a sob, “that’s good, because i lo- i - i love you, too. in a general sense of the word, so that’s great. it’s good to get that cleared up, so -”

“no, hyung,” namjoon interrupts him, standing up straight again for a second, but then sitting back down, hard and sudden like his strings have been cut. like his legs can’t hold his weight up.

“not ‘yes’ to the last thing you said.”

and it’s not like yoongi took notes on whatever the fuck he managed to say, whatever absolute garbage he tossed out while his heart was in his mouth but also somehow across the room from him, slumped in a long, beautiful lean against yoongi’s mixing desk, so when he looks at namjoon now, he’s pretty sure his expression lands somewhere between ‘confused’ and ‘aghast.’

“yes to all of what you said, hyung,” namjoon clarifies quietly, the sight of him - the shy and newly nervous expression on his face, the wrap of his knuckles around the edge of yoongi’s desk, the sprawl of his feet, his thighs in those fucking shorts, his knees; his stupidly beautiful knees and the rise of his chest under his breath, the strong line of his shoulders - hitting yoongi like a bolt of lightning, because yoongi has never looked at him like this before, yoongi has never looked at him knowing that namjoon -

“i love you in all the ways you just listed,” namjoon says, standing in front of yoongi, in love with yoongi, and yoongi’s heart stops dead in his chest. his hands go numb, a strange tingling creeping up his legs, and that’s a good thing, yoongi decides, because otherwise he’d be across the room by now and on namjoon.

"and i'm in love with you, too." namjoon tilts his head, looks from the floor up at yoongi and winces some, and then drops his eyes away again. "not 'too' like i'm in love with other people as well as you. 'too' like i love you in a lot of ways and also i am in love with you. just you. no one else. i've never -" he pauses, balking, but then lifts his eyes to yoongi's again.

"it's always just been you, hyung. i've never been in love with anyone else. and i'm sorry if that's too much, of if you don't want to hear it, but this whole time, it was you. it's only ever been you, for me."

and again, yoongi finds himself not understanding the space that remains between them. their eye contact is charged, feels electric, and yoongi already feels considered and seen and touched in some new and unseen way, but namjoon is only looking at him still. he seems stiff with nerves, stilled by the fright that's making his face look like it's carved from marble. he stays where he is and doesn’t try to come to yoongi, and yoongi can’t understand that at all, for a second, until he realizes. until he remembers that namjoon might have told him - twice, now - that he loves him, but yoongi hasn’t done the same. and then he wants to laugh, at the sheer absurdity of the thought that he actually has to say it out loud, when it’s so incredibly fucking obvious. but when he does laugh, a small and harsh and disbelieving thing, the slightly terrified, close-to-nauseated look on namjoon’s face settles in, and yoongi absolutely cannot have that.

“okay. so, listen. i have terrible news, and i have some maybe okay news,” he tells namjoon, crossing the floor to get to him now, and reaching out to cup namjoon’s face in his hands before namjoon can stand up out of his slump or do anything else at all.

as is, he only tries to look down at where yoongi is touching him, and yoongi doesn’t know why exactly, but the way namjoon looks when he’s flushed with emotion and his eyes are moving uncertainly from side to side under lowered lids, is somehow the best he’s ever looked to yoongi. maybe because his face is in yoongi’s hands. maybe because yoongi is seeing him from up close. maybe because yoongi looks at him now and all he wants to do ever again, he finds, is look at namjoon, and have namjoon look right back.

“um,” namjoon says, the word clearing his throat like a cough, “okay. start with the terrible news please, hyung, because you need to - um,” he stops, and then swallows, and yoongi feels that happen against the sides of his hands. yoongi knows he goes wide eyed about it because he feels that happen too, but he’s not anticipating the way namjoon looks at him, then. he has no idea what to do with namjoon looking at him like that - like he just tried to take a bite out of yoongi and got his nose rapped with a newspaper but is dead set on going for attempt number two anyway - from this close. “uh. yeah. bad news first. and maybe quickly, before i do something i really shouldn’t.”

yoongi laughs again, and at namjoon this time. he lets his thumbs stroke slowly up along the line of namjoon’s jaw and the frustrated little groan that namjoon has to bite back makes yoongi smile so hard that it’s almost hard to talk through it.

“okay,” he says, watching namjoon’s mouth as he speaks, because namjoon is sucking one side of his bottom lip into his own mouth, and it makes yoongi feel like he’s going to fly apart, split right down to his atoms.

“the terrible news,” he tells namjoon very seriously, tilting namjoon’s face down some more, so he can look him in the eyes, the sacrifice that that is dissipating in the second it takes for his brain to catch up and register the tentative, hopeful look he finds there. “is that i think our relationship is really going to have to change a whole lot, from here on out.”

when namjoon’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, in the beginnings of upset, yoongi wants to push the tips of his fingers up into the gentle furrows that form between them to smooth them away. and so he does.

“but the good news,” he says quickly, but quietly, “is that that’s because i love you too. and i always have. even before i met you, i was in love with parts of you, and then when the rest of you showed up, i loved all of that, too. obviously.”

namjoon breathes in a shocked breath, and then his face twists almost comically. his hands come up around yoongi’s wrists, his grip big and gentle.

“‘obviously’, hyung? how would it be obvious to me, that you love me? it wasn’t obvious, it was the furthest thing from obvi -”

yoongi lifts up on his toes and presses his mouth to namjoon’s, just to head off the descent into irate incredulity that he can hear namjoon working up into. it’s a quick, light thing, namjoon’s lips full and warm and lovely against yoongi’s, and when he pulls away again, namjoon tries to follow him, looks down at yoongi’s mouth like he’s stunned by it.

“not obvious that i love you,” yoongi clarifies, because even if it was for nothing, he really did work very hard to hide it, all these years, and he wants that credit. “obvious that i would love you. obvious that i couldn’t meet you, and know you, and not love you.”

“who is that obvious to, hyung?” namjoon whines, and he sounds young and petulant and almost, almost bratty, and yoongi loves him like this. yoongi loves him every way he’s ever seen him be, all the ways he’s been able to come to know him.

“to me, namjoon-ah. it’s always been obvious to me.”

it has been yoongi’s constant, there in essence, in beginnings, before he’d even looked at namjoon for the first time. there when namjoon isn’t present. there when he’d thought it shouldn’t be, though he’d never wished it wasn’t.

namjoon huffs out a sound, once again a frustrated and impatient thing, and then he’s coming closer, but dipping lower, leaning in to wrap both his arms around yoongi’s waist and bring him in, lifting him a little.

“you could have told me, hyung. you could have showed me.”

yoongi, a tiny bit breathless at how namjoon is holding him; how boldly he’d reached out to grab him and drag him close, lifts his chin to line their faces up again, to let the cusp above his top lip catch up under the round of namjoon’s bottom lip, his tongue drawn to touch namjoon there, too, just barely and so, so much.

“would you have believed it, if i’d shown you? could you have handled it, if you’d fanboyed at me the way you did the day we met, and i looked you over, nodded, and told you that i was in love with you?”

“fuck no,” namjoon says, the palm of his hand coming up to press between yoongi’s shoulderblades, to bring him closer, close enough that namjoon can lean in and brush their noses together, his eyes wide and serious like he’s looking for an off beat in their tracking; like there’s no part of yoongi’s face that he’ll permit himself to miss or skip over.

“how could i let myself believe it, when i was completely focused on not letting you see how i felt about you? i’d have died, if you were at all more sweet to me, when we first met, hyung. i barely made it out of that alive, as it was.”

“it killed me, how you were back then. so earnest and completely upfront and god, the way you looked back then. the way you look now, namjoon-ah,” yoongi might sound despairing, but he stands by it, having had to see namjoon wear sleeveless shirts for more than a decade of his life, by now. “the way you’ve looked at like a million different points through the years. i thought i was gonna snap and do something stupid so many times.”

“hey,” namjoon grumbles, his arms going tight around yoongi again, supporting him when he bends yoongi backwards and swoops in to kiss him again, quick and hard. “don’t call me stupid,” he murmurs against yoongi’s mouth, and yoongi kind of wants to bite at his own lip just to make sure that this is real, but he bites gently at namjoon’s instead, so as not to waste the opportunity he has so graciously been given. namjoon growls at him, low and in something like warning, and yoongi hears it loud and clear and ignores it completely.

“you’re brilliant,” yoongi tells namjoon, swooning some in his arms, but that’s fine, that’s what people in love do, “you’re brilliant, and you’re beautiful and if it’s okay with you, i don’t want there to be any more things we don’t tell each other, or anything that we try to hide. i’m tired of wanting, namjoon-ah,” the possibility of getting to have makes yoongi bold. makes him brave. “the waiting only ever makes it worse, how bad i want you. how much i need you. so let's stop now, hm?" it seems simple to yoongi, when he's in namjoon's arms. it seems so straightforward, like this. "hyung wants. hyung's been wanting and wanting, joon-ah. so give me. you can trust me with you, namjoon-ah. you can let me have you. i'll keep you safe. i'll love you so much, if you let me.”

“okay, hyung,” namjoon says, as easily as he might if yoongi had asked him to pass him something, or to wake him up from a nap. he tightens his hold of yoongi, keeping him close against his chest, the press of them together something so soothing already because it's new, it's their bodies together in a way that they've rarely ever been before, but it's the two of them together and that's how it's always been. that's how it's always from day one been meant to be.

“it was already yours, hyung. i’ve always been yours. so take me. have me.”

and then yoongi’s hands are tilting namjoon’s face again, are at namjoon’s neck and in his hair, then, and namjoon’s mouth is open against yoongi’s, and he’s drawing the knuckles of his left hand up over the bare line of yoongi’s spine underneath his shirt, and neither of them have any more to say, for quite some time.

everything that needed to be said has been said, now.

all that’s left to do is what needs to be done.

yoongi holds namjoon close and breathes in the scent of him, wrapped up in the warmth of the closeness of him. he kisses namjoon carefully, haltingly at first, and then he kisses namjoon the way he finds he wants to; deeply, and soundly. greedy about it, because that’s how he feels. his tongue meets namjoon’s, and the newness of it - the soft intimacy of it - shocks yoongi, makes his breaths become an overwhelmed and too fast, too loud meter that he doesn’t let pace him, because this is more of namjoon to know and learn, and yoongi won’t be stopped, or quieted, or slowed. he wants it all.

and namjoon trembles some, against him, but makes such sweet, pleased sounds in the back of his throat as he kisses yoongi back the way he does everything else; like he already knows all the answers, but he’s willing to share.

he whines, high and breathy until his voice breaks on it, when yoongi gets his head tipped back and licks long and slow down the line of his throat. but he stays still, until yoongi’s mouth is pressed into the divot of his collarbones, the neckline of his shirt pulled away in one of yoongi’s fists. and then namjoon closes his own hand in the long hair under yoongi’s crown, and tugs, and takes yoongi’s mouth again like he knows that he has earned it. like it’s his, and his alone, to have.

everything that needed to be said has been said, now.

and all that’s left to do is what needs to be done.

“i get it,” yoongi tells them both patiently and kindly, because a lot of the time he thinks of them like the feral pets he hadn’t wanted but now can’t bring himself to release back into the wild or unleash upon literally anyone else. “believe me, i get it. but just not in front of me, okay? because that makes me kind of crazy. that makes me want to bite something, and you’re in the firing line, when you touch him in front of me.”

taehyung nods in understanding, a deeply pensive but also respectful expression on his face, because he’s definitely the maknae that listens to his hyungs the best. well, except for namjoon, now, in brand new ways that yoongi has been delighted to both learn of and benefit from directly.

jimin is obviously fighting a grin, but at least has his arms folded up across his chest, where they can’t wreak any havoc. for the moment, at least. that’s very considerate of him, and yoongi is - appropriately - touched by it. he did a good job with this one, he knows.

jungkook is pouting. and trying not to look at yoongi’s mouth.

after a moment he sighs, truly put upon and woebegotten about it.

“i still think you should have had to come before the counsel when you decided you wanted to wife one of us up, but i guess i can be okay with these terms. once i have your assurance that i can still touch namjoon hyung when you’re not around.”

yoongi shrugs.

“that’s fine with me, once it’s fine with him,” and it has certainly always seemed that way, to yoongi. most cursedly, he decides, though he has no reason to begrudge any of them this much of namjoon, now that he has all of him to himself.

and speaking of -

“oh,” namjoon says, walking by on his way to the kitchen, but stopping in his tracks when he sees the scene as it is before him; taehyung and jungkook and jimin lined up on the couch and yoongi addressing them from his cross-legged perch on the coffee table in front of them.

“what’s this? did i forget about a maknae meeting? and ... why is hyung here?" he pauses, and looks to yoongi, his expression only growing more confused. it'sprobably not at all a stretch for him to imagine that a maknae line meeting had managed to fall out from between the pages of his thoughts, no matter how scheduled it probably was or how many times taehyung had no doubt text him to remind him about it. but yoongi's attendance throws him for a loop, once he notes it.

until he looks back at the three members sitting like they’re settled in and gearing up for story time, each looking nowhere except directly at yoongi, their gazes trained on him like he's got answers that they need. he looks betwen their faces and yoongi's, his eyes narrowing.

“oh,” he says again, but in some new kind of understanding now. “is this a kink thing? good, because you weren’t exactly quiet last night. and yoongi hyung really is the best person to go to for -”

“no!” jimin interjects, oddly desperate sounding about it.

“this is not that and you don’t want to tell us these kinds of things, hyung. trust me, you need us to not know any details, it's bad enough having to contend with taehyung's imagination and jungkook's very skilled drawing hand,” he adds, shuddering like he’s … afraid? for … himself? well. that’s probably not unwarranted, yoongi decides. especially not with jungkook in the mix. and taehyung there to be - well, taehyung. and how that works. not to mention looks. all of that with jimin's lithe strength? his sometimes physically fierce enthusiasm? yeah, no.

“hyung was just telling us about how you make him bitey, actually,” jungkook says, with his eyes gleaming now. yoongi wonders, briefly, if he'd like it if they were to set up some kind of home exhibition for him. maybe set aside a permanent space for him to showcase his art work. yoongi would like that, he decides. "i think right now he's telling us that if we keep feeling you up in front of him he might decide to bite us, too."

this seems to surprise namjoon, but it doesn’t give him pause for long.

“is that so, hyung?” he asks, stepping up next to yoongi to hold a hand out to him, not for one second taking his eyes off him, even as a smile grows shy and sweet on his face.

“would you like to come tell me more about that, maybe?”

and yes, yoongi would like to do both, thank you for asking.

"text us your decision, please," taehyung says, and yoongi can only really see the shape of him out of the corner of his eye, but it looks for all the world to him like he's wriggling in place, where he sits. bouncing even, on the couch between jungkook and jimin. "send us the notes from your meeting and jungkook will illustrate them for you!"

yoongi takes namjoon’s hand, and allows namjoon to lead him away.

and once they are alone together, away from prying eyes and justifiably greedy hands, yoongi tells namjoon everything namjoon wants to know.

he tells him some things namjoon hadn’t thought to ask, as well, but that’s the beauty of them, yoongi thinks.

sometimes yoongi asks the questions and when he does, namjoon knows the answers.

sometimes, it’s the other way around, but between them, they always manage to solve whatever it is they’re working through, or working toward, or tackling to pin down for the seven of them.

because ultimately, if namjoon is a question, yoongi is the answer.

and for yoongi, since day one, namjoon has been the singular solution to things so much bigger than simply problems or questions or puzzles. if yoongi is asking, namjoon is the response. if yoongi wants, it’s what namjoon has to give.

they’re a balance. two halves of something that was always meant to be bigger, that strained towards more from day one, from the get go. and now, they don’t try to hold themselves back, or quell that urge.

and so it is together, that they are complete.

"don't snack on maknaes that aren't me, hyung," namjoon wheedles at yoongi, whining for it even before yoongi gets the too-tight, far too high collar of namjoon's crew neck pulled out of his way so he can put his mouth to the soft, thin skin below namjoon's adam's apple, namjoon's legs parted wide high up around yoongi's waist, the clench of his strong, muscled thighs so prettily at odds with the way he's humping his hyung with desperately rocking hitches of his hips. "only put your teeth in me. please."

yoongi pulls back, his hand knotted in namjoon's hair tugging his head back to bare his throat better, and hums under his breath, pretends to think about it.

"so you want me to keep my teeth to myself while our hot little bandmates get off on putting their hands all over you? i don't know, joon-ah. that doesn't really scream 'fair and equal exchange' to me."

namjoon shoves his hands up the back of yoongi's shirt, his fingernails scratching shallow but stinging lines between yoongi's shoulders blades while yoongi holds still and lets namjoon work himself off against him, and namjoon works so hard for it - arches his back so nicely and has yoongi's body clamped tight between his legs now, mindlessly chasing down the pleasure he's getting from rubbing off against his hyung - that yoongi wants to scream himself.

"they don't get off on it, hyung. they're just fooling around. they don't get off on ... me," namjoon is almost panting now, the line of his jaw starting to shine with sweat, and yoongi wants to take a bite clean out of him.

"oh, baby," yoongi says pityingly, brushing namjoon's damp hair back out of his face and thumbing at his cheeks, not doing a thing to hide his condescension. "they absolutely get off on you letting them touch you. i've heard them, whispering about it when they're trying to sneak away to one of their rooms together, afterward." the worst thing about this - the very best thing about the days when yoongi has witnessed it - is that every word of what he's saying is true. "it's a game they play sometimes, joon-ah. last time, jungkook had to try and touch your bare tits without getting hard for it, and if he made it, taehyung was gonna let him fuck his face."

it's easy for yoongi to be conversational about this, because it's not new information for him. namjoon, on the other hand, has gone stock still on top of yoongi. he stares down at him, his eyes completely disbelieving and his mouth hanging open in a way that's stupidly, criminally hot. yoongi wants to see if he could cram his whole fist in there. wants to let namjoon suckle at his knuckles until he's drooling into the palm of yoongi's hand and then smear his handful of spit across namjoon's chest, get him wet enough that yoongi can titty fuck him. leave his come puddling sticky on namjoon's skin and make him stay still for it till he's tacky with yoongi's mess, taunt him maybe about texting jungkook to come crawling in here to get on his belly and clean yoongi's come off namjoon's tits with his tongue. maybe. only maybe.

namjoon doesn't seem to be able to ask, so yoongi answers his question for him.

"no. of course he couldn't do it, namjoon. probably the only time jungkook has ever failed at anything, huh?" yoongi tilts his head as he thinks about it; traces the pad of his thumb up over the bobbing lump in namjoon's throat when he swallows hard. he looks up at namjoon, holding himself up over yoongi on his hands, and thinks about what taehyung would look like, with his chest pressed into namjoon's back, with his mouth open in something only sort of like a kiss against the side of namjoon's throat, trembling now as he takes shaky breaths. "that probably means he wasn't really trying at all, right? probably got his hands on you and couldn't help himself, just held on tight and tried to remember exactly how you felt, so he could think about it later and get himself off, let taehyung and jimin do it for him maybe, thinking about how it had felt, to get to touch you. technically, joon-ah, i think a case could be made for you owing jungkook a blow job."

it occurs to yoongi - all of a sudden, for no apparent reason whatsoever - that taehyung and jungkook are both around the same size as namjoon, more or less. but that jimin, on the other hand, is distinctly yoongi-sized instead. yoongi finds himself thinking - for some reason, for no readily apparent intent or purpose - that namjoon would look so good, caught between the two of them. all big and strong and tan and pulled apart to pieces by the both of them, easy as fuck and desparate for it, begging probably, because neither yoongi nor jimin would be especially sweet or gentle about it, because they wouldn't have to be. because namjoon wouldn't want them to be.

namjoon comes with a yell caught high in his throat and with yoongi's mouth pressed up under his ear, lips and teeth and tongue smearing words wetly against namjoon's skin, whispering low and rough to him about how if yoongi got to snack on multiple maknaes, then he'd share his spoils with namjoon too, of course. about how now that would be fair, if you ask yoongi. how perfectly good and just it would be, in fact, for yoongi to frog march the three of them in here and get them kneeling with their hands clasped behind their backs next to the bed, eye level for it when yoongi gets namjoon spread out for him and shows them exactly what they were missing out; the stunning conclusion that none of them would ever be able to last long enough to so much as see, let alone be part of, because they might think they could handle it - handling namjoon - but really, they had no fucking idea. because namjoon without a shirt on was one thing, and it really was something. but namjoon face down and ass up on his bed, knees spread far apart to steady himself so he could take it harder, so he could tell his hyung to give it to him deeper, the headboard banging with a steady muffled thump against the wall as namjoon gets railed into his own sheets, wailing open mouthed and so loud, utterly shameless about it until he's whimpering into damp cotton as he comes hard and long and nasty on his hyung's cock, clenching up tight for it like he's trying to milk yoongi's cock dry, like he's just that desperate to get his ass fucked wide open and pumped full of his hyung's come ...

"taehyung would cry, i think," yoongi decides, slapping at the insides of namjoon's thighs lightly to get him to spread, getting him cleaned up carefully and methodically and then reaching for his gentlest, unscented moisturiser from his night stand because as invested as he is in keeping the soft skin between namjoon's legs supple and smooth for him, he's much more committed to getting to touch namjoon everywhere; to rubbing him down and rolling out his muscles and staying on top of the places where his skin tends to dry out at his elbows, high on either side of his ribs, low on the backs of his hips and at the heels of his feet. yoongi's primary concern these days - his top priority and his most important, most prized and cherished duty - is taking care of namjoon.

namjoon sighs, finally, and rolls over onto his tummy, flopping half on top of yoongi and pushing his face into the shadow where yoongi's shoulder rests against the pillow. he flops around some more, wriggling and fidgeting until finally he gets his nose pressed into the hair behind yoongi's ear and huffs happily, going boneless and quiet, truly still now.

"i'll cry, if you ever try to nibble on anyone who isn't me, hyung."

his voice is a single, smooth roll. thick against the bedding but high still, sweet and needy, settling on yoongi's tongue like honey.

"oh yeah?" yoongi hums, setting the fingers of his left hand on a slow, deliberate walk up along the line of namjoon's spine. "you promise?"

“tell us more about how your relationship is like being ‘unleashed,’ hyung,” hoseok asks, because he no matter what simply will not let this go.

it sucks, namjoon thinks, that yoongi is so good with words, but also absolutely unthinking and unapologetic about how he uses them. it’s great for their music, but it’s often very terrible for their friendships, and the mayhem yoongi’s particular brand of blunt descriptiveness unmoors, there.

it’s a word that namjoon doesn’t know for him personally, when it’s the two of them tangled up together in namjoon’s sheets, with yoongi holding him down, opening himself up quick and messy with way too much lube, making it as wet as namjoon likes it because yoongi can't wait to climb up onto him and ride his dick until namjoon is begging yoongi to let him come on his cock, to let namjoon jerk off on him before yoongi comes so they can use yoongi's come to slick his way. so namjoon can knock yoongi down onto his back and push back inside him and make him come again, because the sight of yoongi underneath him hard and already covered in come but waiting for namjoon to work him over and get him off again is the most arresting and motivating vision namjoon has ever had the privilege of beholding.

and just like that, namjoon is hard again at the breakfast table.

when he makes awkward eye contact with jungkook across their plates, jungkook glances meaningfully downwards and nods at him in somber commiseration.

how does he even know?

namjoon decidedly does not want to ever possess the answer to this particular question.

namjoon is also absolutely resolutely not thinking about any comparison to be drawn between himself and jungkook or any relation at all between them. he knows of no alleged or open ended transactions that could be said to exist between them. he's not thinking specifically about one transaction he really wants to think of as outstanding between the two of them; something yoongi likes to remind namjoon often that he maybe could be said to owe jungkook, still. something that namjoon so very badly wants to give to jungkook, who rightfully owns it. who deserves it. who is such a good, sweet boy and has earned it. who namjoon likes to think really wants it from namjoon. would be especially grateful, to accept it from him.

“actually,” he interrupts his own thoughts and the conversation abruptly, desperately, a last ditch attempt to save his own sanity, “it’s more like we just handed our leashes to each other.”

there is a pause, and then yoongi laughs very quietly. darkly, even. but no one else says anything.

seokjin is the first to excuse himself, blushing furiously and looking miserable about everything, which shocks namjoon but seems to delight yoongi.

taehyung and jungkook have to drag jimin away, and it’s impressive, namjoon thinks, how it takes both of them really trying their hardest to get the job done.

hoseok stays exactly where he is, smiling brightly at namjoon and yoongi from where he’s sitting directly across from them.

“so,” he says, when it’s just the three of them. “i’ve always felt like we kind of have our own vibe, us rappers. i love what we have, the three of us. just us, you know? what do you think?”

yoongi doesn’t say a word, only turns to look at namjoon. and namjoon can’t really decipher what he’s thinking from the look on his face because it’s oddly blank right then, but that’s okay. he knows all he has to do is ask, and yoongi will tell him.

“i’m really not sure he was kidding,” yoongi explains later, when they’re drying off after a shower and padding around his room together, getting ready to head out to work.

it’s strange to namjoon, too, that he can’t tell either if hoseok was being serious or not.

so there’s probably only one thing for it, he decides.

“well hyung,” he reaches around yoongi for his deodorant, and drops a kiss to the back of yoongi’s neck as he does.

“i guess we’re going to have to ask him.”