Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Seokjin walked down Hybe corridors in the week after the hotel night, exchanging polite bows with staff, and wondered if they could tell that he’d recently been having sex. It felt like a magic, secret thing he’d done, and of course other people also did, and yet no one said anything about it. Had that assistant had sex this week? What about that stylist? Had he joined their magical and exclusive club of ‘people who are getting some’?

Wha. So this was how people lived – fucking away, the dirty freaks, yet they all showed up at work in ironed shirts like they’d never even heard of the word ‘vulva’. What an odd world they lived in.

“You’re in a good mood,” his manager said.

“I always am!” he insisted, but he realised he had a glow – an I’ve Been Fucked Well glow. As no staff member had seen it on him before, they were none the wiser.

Yet he felt restless after Dreamland. He wanted to connect with this suppressed part of himself again, but after his night with Namjoon, he had no idea where to go next. He couldn’t ask Namjoon for another rendezvous – he had not forgotten Namjoon’s admission that he told his sexual partners, more or less, not to get too attached.

They had sent each other messages – got back to seoul okay. did you make it to the base on time? Namjoon hadn’t; he’d been made to run around the premises ten times in disciplinary action. They’d proceeded to slag off enlistment and the power trips some superiors were on. They didn’t mention the obvious, and Seokjin wondered if they would ever mention it again. Was that possible?

A few days later, Namjoon messaged him with, I’ve been reading Han Kang’s poems

of course you have, he quipped back, but he had paused his game, sitting stiff and alert in his gaming room – hour three of him trying to finish the game, but now distracted because a man he’d had a one-night-affair with was messaging him. well? what of them?

He pictured Namjoon in the barracks, lying in his assigned bunkbed, with dozens of boys making a racket around him – playing cards, calling their mothers, organising arm wrestling matches. In many ways those years at the dorms had prepared them well for what was to come.

Amidst this chaos was Namjoon, resting on his bed and typing on his phone with that thoughtful furrow of his brow – perhaps with an open book placed on his stomach.

Namjoon sent a picture of the beginning of a poem:
That day in Ui-dong
sleet fell
and my body, companion to my soul
shivered with each falling tear

Isn’t that beautifully phrased? ‘My body, companion to my soul’. The idea that our souls are the core of us, and our bodies are companions assigned to them. I love that idea, don’t you?

This way of assuming that one’s interlocutor would agree was very Namjoon, and Seokjin often liked shaking him out of it by contradicting him, by twisting his words, and by following up with a complete non-sequitur. Even now he could have sent ‘no, I don’t love it’, but he did love it.

He hesitated before typing out, yes. what’s the poem about?

heartbreak, I think.

He didn’t know how to respond to that and so he said nothing, but after a few minutes Namjoon added, you know I don’t think I’ve ever had my heart broken. chipped, sure, but broken? no.

there’s time yet – fighting, he sent, and Namjoon responded with an emoji sticking its tongue out. He thought how all this time he’d considered himself to be inexperienced, but the others were too, in their ways. His soul had experienced more love than its companion, his body, had, and not all the members could say the same.

have you gone on that date with chef paik’s nephew? Namjoon asked next, and he replied in the negative. Paik Jongwon kept pestering him about it, however. you should, Namjoon sent, and he stared at this message, feeling what Namjoon had never felt. if it’s what you want, Namjoon then added.

He waited until ten o’clock, when the recruits had to hand in their phones and go to bed, before replying with, goodnight joon-ah

Namjoon would not read the message until the following evening.

The answer where to go with his love life landed in his lap as was expected for a superstar like him – things just tended to work out in his favour.

“It’s not even a party, we’re all just hanging out,” Yoongi said with a shrug. “But you can come too if you like.”

Normally Yoongi inviting him to a little get-together with Lee Sungkyung and other celebrities that Yoongi was on drinking buddy terms with would have seen him stay at home. No thank you, he’d rather stab his foot with a butter knife.

However, he would be there – that tattooed drummer with the gorgeous body whose lockscreen Seokjin had been for years.

Seokjin of the recent past would have been intimidated to meet the sexy tattooed drummer, but after his night with Namjoon, what was flirting with Yoongi’s friend? Pfft, nothing at all (he told himself, nervously). He could go to that party, talk with the drummer and, if things escalated from there, blow his mind in bed – he wouldn’t need to apologetically mumble about his inexperience, awkwardly explaining that he was out of practice, that he’d spent his entire life working and not romancing…

More to the point, he could scratch this itch he now had, this longing for heat and warmth and pleasure, the utter bliss of coming undone by someone’s touch. It’d felt so good with Namjoon, and so in order to relive that pleasure, he needed to replace Namjoon with someone, well. Not Namjoon.

“Sure, I can come to the party,” he said to Yoongi over the phone. Besides, he couldn’t start avoiding Yoongi, who might get suspicious if he did. He just worried that Yoongi would take one look at him and yell, ‘You did what with Namjoon?!’ What, was that a crime? They’d all seen Namjoon at the Grammys that one year! Turned out he could be very sexy! Who could have predicted that in 2012?!

Yoongi told him the time and date.

“Great, I’ll swing by.”

Swing by! What a mature, confident thing to say! Was it too much?

“I mean that it sounds fun.”

He pushed it too far with ‘sounds fun’ – Yoongi asked him if he’d hit his head.

The tattooed drummer had a name, Sungoh, and he took his sweet time before approaching Seokjin at the party.

The gathering was taking place in the flashy apartment of an actor, in the living room large enough for the twenty-odd of them to sit and stand around comfortably while the floor-to-ceiling windows showed the glittering nighttime cityscape. Everyone was someone – hell, two sevenths of BTS were in the room.

Seokjin was in all black, two top buttons of the shirt undone. The bracelet had real diamonds, the watch was exclusive and Swiss. (“You’ve put in effort,” Yoongi noted, which was better than Yoongi seeing on his face that he’d frolicked in bed with Namjoon. A win was a win.)

He sipped on the lemon whisky sour that their host mixed for him, and he was putting on his very best effort to look Totally Comfortable. He liked to think that only Yoongi could tell he wanted to claw his eyes out, but most likely everyone could see that he wanted to duck behind the majestic bird of paradise in the corner.

He stood around nervously, hoping for someone to talk to him, but thankfully people did. And so he made clumsy, unrefined small talk with the other cool thirty-somethings of the Korean entertainment industry, sneaking glances at Yoongi for reassurance and at Sungoh who was at the far end of the living room. The man really was stunning – taller than him, too.

Sungoh wasn’t making a move. God, was he expected to make the move? Wasn’t Sungoh supposed to be obsessed with him?

He nervously drank more.

Namjoon would have been so good at a party like this, all confident smiles and those endearing dimples, shaking hands and saying smooth ‘I’ll have my people get in touch with yours’. People turned to melted butter within two-minutes of small talk with their leader. Seokjin didn’t hide behind Namjoon as such but rather stood at his side and strategically one step back. Namjoon always felt like a comforting shield that helped him relax, too.

And then Namjoon would turn to him with one of those easy smiles, their two seconds of eye contact a quick reassurance they both were feeling okay, with Namjoon’s hand pressing to the small of his back for comfort.

God, Namjoon would have been great at this party. He wished Namjoon was there.

When Sungoh finally came over to say hello, he met him with a tipsy, “What are you, a hundred and ninety?”

Sungoh blinked. “A hundred and ninety-one.”

“Nice. How’s the wind up there?”

“Not too bad,” Sungoh said, his smile a little nervous, but something determined was in it, like now that he had decided to actually speak to Kim Seokjin of BTS, he would not back down instantly.

Seokjin was anxious, barely able to meet Sungoh’s gaze. His heart hammered, his mouth felt dry, his palms felt sticky. Okay, calm down, calm down… Drink some more!

Sungoh didn’t expect Seokjin to flirt back, of course – the man had no idea that Seokjin swung his way. After a bit of liquid encouragement, however, Seokjin let himself drop enough suggestion into their chat for Sungoh to read the queer subtext, and once Sungoh realised he had a shot, he didn’t leave Seokjin’s side all evening.

Seokjin’s stomach churned. He blamed it on the whisky sours.

But he was doing this. Sungoh was attractive, and he too was attractive, and so together they would be doubly attractive. He’d tried the ‘let’s date and get to know each other’ approach with Jungsan, and it hadn’t really worked. Now he wanted to try the renowned ‘let’s fuck it out and see if we like each other’ method, and he was more prepared for such intimacy thanks to one Kim Namjoon.

Why else had he gone to Dreamland? Why else would he have put himself through the recklessness of sleeping with Namjoon if it wasn’t to woo men like Sungoh?

Namjoon would be discharged in June. Seokjin had to have a boyfriend by then.

Enter Sungoh.

But even as he felt more confident in his sexual capabilities, he also felt more lost than ever. Was Sungoh the one? Well, he had two eyes, a mouth, two ears… But, wait, that was irrelevant, wasn’t it? Even if a conquest wasn’t ‘the one’, it was fine to have your sexual needs met.

Sleeping with someone he had no particular fondness towards, however, still felt like an empty proposal.

Sungoh was talking about his bitcoin investments, and Seokjin hoped he looked interested.

Truthfully, he imagined Namjoon sitting on the couch, watching him and Sungoh with that steady, sharp gaze of his. This was all: just sitting there, commanding the entire room with his presence.

But wait, this gaze was different. Before it had been that familiar ‘you okay, hyung?’ check-in that the two of them did wordlessly. Now Namjoon was looking at him with a new edge, with something dark and intense.

His heart skipped a beat, and fire sparked in his chest like it’d been ignited. Yearning, much of it sexual, filled him.

Maybe Namjoon would get up and head to the bathroom. Maybe it was a sign, and Seokjin would follow. Maybe Namjoon would be waiting for him, say something like ‘what do you want, hyung?’, and then fuck him against the bathroom wall, hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, asking ‘is this how you wanted it?’, those eyes of his dark and needy and desperate.

“—don’t you think?” Sungoh asked.

He blinked. “What? I mean yes, yeah. I mean no. I mean— I’m so sorry, I wasn’t listening. I apologise.”

Sungoh forgave him. Who wouldn’t forgive a handsome guy like him?

He cleared his throat and tried to focus on the man in front of him, and not some fantasy version of Namjoon out of all goddamned men in this world. Had he lost his mind? Focus!

“You’re a gamer, too?” he soon asked Sungoh, finding a topic he was interested in, and within minutes he had a viable pretext for inviting Sungoh over. “Do you want to, like, do you maybe. I mean would you—”

He bit back frustration over his inability to be smooth. The world wasn’t meant for shy people like him. God, he felt like throwing up.

“Maybe we could go over to your place and play that game you like,” Sungoh said.

“That. Yes, that,” he said, grateful – face burning from embarrassment and convinced he hadn’t made eye contact with Sungoh in at least five minutes.

Yoongi’s face revealed nothing when they said goodnight, and the other guests didn’t seem any wiser. Their impression was that Seokjin and Sungoh were big nerds and wanted to go play video games at Seokjin’s apartment.

They chatted during the taxi ride over, and he was grateful that Sungoh prompted him with topics because otherwise he’d had no idea what to say. Jungkook was a pretty good drummer, he explained. Did Sungoh know that their Jungkookie was a good drummer? Well, Jungkook was.

Once they were in Seokjin’s game room (yes, he had an entire room for his gaming setup), Sungoh looked around, hands in his pockets, majestically tall like a red pine, and said, “To be honest, I’m not much of a gamer. I just wanted some alone time with you.”

Seokjin was impressed and disappointed – impressed that Sungoh had played this so well, and disappointed that Sungoh wouldn’t volunteer to watch him clear the next level (he was nearly done with it!).

“And why, uh, did you want time alone with me?” he asked, trying to summon the flirty drunk that he knew he could be, but he felt so nervous and shy.

Sungoh gave him a mellow, charming smile, but this only made him freeze up. It was happening! A seduction. His first, real, adult seduction. Shit, shit, shit. They’d just met. Was this too fast? Too slow? Heat was creeping up his neck. God, he’d be all red if he got naked now, it’d be so embarrassing. What if Namjoon had just been nice with his sex compliments? What did Namjoon know about good sex, anyway?

And where was that burning want that he’d felt in the room of the love hotel? That instinctual need to have Namjoon on him, in him, and all of it? Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Maybe they just needed to get naked, and once he saw Sungoh’s amazing body, he’d want him with the heat of a hundred suns.

“Can I kiss you?” Sungoh asked, taking a tentative step closer.

“Yeah, sure, I mean why not,” he said, relieved Sungoh had said it first. Dreamland had done its job – here he was, seducing the kind of men he was supposed to, by which he meant men who were not his bandmates.

What was Namjoon doing right then? Asleep in his bunk most likely. His skin would smell nice – have that warm, clean, sleepy, manly scent to it.

Sungoh stepped closer, hand landing on his hip.

Seokjin closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and focused on the mission: get fucked so good that he became some other more confident person altogether.

Here goes nothing.

“So when you say he couldn’t get it up, you mean…?”

“That he couldn’t get it up!” he repeated, curled up on an armchair in Yoongi’s living room. “First he said it was performance anxiety, which, hello, I already have that? We don’t need both of us having it! Then he said losing his erection had messed with his head, and then he was just, like, panicking, and we’re naked in my bed, and he’s trying to give himself a handjob to get his dick up, and he’s like ‘oh god this never happens to me, I’m just so nervous that it’s you’, and that’s really not a compliment when his dick is lolling around like soft serve ice cream!”

A smile formed at the corner of Yoongi’s mouth, but he cleared his throat when Seokjin glared. “Sorry. It’s, er, not funny at all.”

“No, it’s not! And now he’s messaging me, begging for another chance, but what if he can’t get it up again? How am I supposed to take that? God, I was so embarrassed.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “This was not an issue at all with Na– aaah, in general, in the past.”

God, it’d been so awkward! He’d had no idea what to say, what to do. Sungoh had been uncomfortable too, and Seokjin had practically squirmed out of his skin.

“You gotta admit, you are intimidating to most people,” Yoongi reasoned.

“Wow, look at me, I’m so hot and famous that I kill boners – what a compliment,” he complained angrily.

“Are you gonna see him again?”

“I don’t know, would I volunteer to hit my head with a hammer?”

His confidence had been severely dented, just like that, and whatever pieces of pure desire he’d felt had dispersed even faster. Maybe it was something he’d said or done? Maybe he’d come on too strong or not strong enough? Sungoh had proceeded to give him half a blowjob, but it’d felt like an apology rather than an act of desire, and so they’d ended things there, the whole mess unfinished.

From the best sexual encounter he’d ever had, he’d plummeted to the worst one.

Maybe Sungoh really had been nervous to sleep with such a famed celebrity, but mostly Seokjin blamed himself. Sungoh had been able to tell, subconsciously somehow, that Seokjin’s heart hadn’t been in it. It was his fault, all his fault. He’d kept thinking of—

“Can you, er, not tell the others about…”

“Mr. Soft Serve?” Yoongi said, smirking – enjoying his plight a little too much. But this was also Yoongi’s answer: that his lips were sealed. It was Yoongi, after all, to whom he had said ‘you know I think I might be gay’ almost a decade ago when they had been roommates. For years neither of them had said another word about it until Seokjin had finally brought it up again.

Later, as they were having dinner, Yoongi said, “Namjoon’s got a few days off for his promotion to sergeant. Are you seeing him?”

He steadied himself and focused on putting on a neutral tone. “Oh? No, I don’t think so. I haven’t been very good at keeping up with everyone’s schedules. Are you seeing him?”

“We talked on the phone this week – he wants to have dinner together.”

Namjoon had sent him some memes that week but had said nothing about him coming to Seoul or meeting up with him. Uncertainty burned through him.

“Is he doing well?”

“On Kim Namjoon terms, sure. Definitely in the grips of an artistic crisis or another, but that’s business as usual, right? He asked after you – I think he’d like to see you too.”

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” he said, wondering why on earth hadn’t Namjoon said that to him directly, before changing the subject.

There was a well inside him, newly emerged – so deep that if you dropped a penny into it, it would bounce off the walls for a long time before plopping into water. It was a well that wanted to overflow but was experiencing drought, but even so it had come into being on the night he’d shared with Namjoon.

He didn’t yet know what this well was or what it was doing inside him, but he was walking laps around it, a little mystified, before he’d walk away to attend to other matters.

At the mention of Namjoon coming to the city, of Namjoon asking after him, of Namjoon wanting to see him, he found himself at this well again. He peered inside, and the water levels had risen. How odd to have a well inside you, measuring something you didn’t even know about.

Seokjin entered the dance studio on the ninth floor of Hybe where people were standing around in clusters, chatting. In the middle by the mirrored wall Namjoon and Hoseok were talking, and he approached them with, “Wha, is there a Sergeant Kim here?”

Namjoon turned at the sound of his voice and a joyed expression flooded his face. “Hyung!”

“I heard a Sergeant Kim is here! Is it you?” he said, earning smiles from the staff and a full-body giggle from Hoseok. The three of them spent a half minute faux saluting each other, with Hoseok doubling over and clapping his hands. He gave Namjoon a quick side hug, eyes cast on their shoes, and said, “Namjoon-ah, what’s new?”

“Hyung, how could anything be new?”

Namjoon’s hand pressed to his lower back during the hug, lingered, then dropped. Or had it lingered? Had he imagined that extended second or two?

Seokjin’s schedules had been full on the days Namjoon was in Seoul. His DMs with Namjoon had stayed quiet during that time, but their group chat was active. It was mid-February, and the wintery air of Gangwon countryside one early January evening, with him making his way to a love hotel, felt like a movie scene from a film produced in another decade.

Namjoon’s presence made him nervous in a way it had never made him before.

If Namjoon looked at him warmly, knowingly, with burning longing, passion, or with utter indifference, he could not say. That kind of knowledge would have required looking at Namjoon, which he was fiercely avoiding.

Hoseok was in week three of his world tour practices, mastering the kind of intense choreo only he could pull off. As they chatted about Hobi’s tour plans, he was taken aback by the intensity of feeling that Namjoon’s presence stirred. Namjoon looked good in a simple, dark green t-shirt and brown slacks. Namjoon moved in a way that felt familiar, now reminding him of their bodies moving together, of Namjoon’s limbs pressed to his. Namjoon looked at him, and he remembered what Namjoon felt like inside him – he fought all of this down the best he could.

Even so he tracked, without meaning to, their proximity to each other. Perhaps this reaction had been inevitable, and he just needed to deal with this first meeting so that he could forget about it.

For the next thirty minutes he and Namjoon tried to learn some of the choreography just for fun – that was how much they missed their old life, that they volunteered to learn choreography they’d never even have to perform.

“Ba, ba – baba bam,” Hoseok directed them, green beanie bouncing to his movements, and the two of them standing behind their dance leader, learning the quick foot movements. “Hyung, you should come in with your left foot, not the right,” Hoseok said in a familiar, stern tone that betrayed just a hint of impatience.

“Yah, this isn’t even my song!” he protested.

Hoseok blinked owlishly, then burst into laughter, apologising and clinging onto him. “Hyung, I forgot. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Yah! Look at you telling me what to do!”

“You were freestyling, right?” Namjoon said.

“Exactly, I was freestyling!” he said, and Hoseok patted his back, still apologising and laughing.

Namjoon smiled at him, and for a second he felt that familiar camaraderie between them that even earthquakes couldn’t shift. Yet something else was there, too – he caught Namjoon’s gaze in the mirror, fixed on him more times than he could count. Something restless churned in him. Namjoon always seemed to be standing one step closer to him than he expected. He wanted a drink, and Namjoon was already handing him a bottle of water. He wanted to wipe his face, and Namjoon already had a fresh hand towel at the ready.

Namjoon had always been good at taking care of them all, but this time those little winged creatures started flying in his belly from everything that Namjoon did.

He was losing his mind. Well, perhaps that was another inevitable side effect of being who he was.

They wrapped up the impromptu dance lesson, bodies warm and cheeks rosy. Namjoon slung an arm around his shoulders like he had done millions of times in the past, the move casual and friendly, while talking to Hoseok about the tour. A hot, pulsating sensation travelled down his spine from the weight and warmth of Namjoon’s arm on his shoulders, from their bodies pressing together.

He didn’t move away – he never had before, so why would he now?

Namjoon looked at his watch and informed them he had to leave for dinner with his family. Seokjin offered to give him a ride – the restaurant was on his way, anyway – and Namjoon accepted.

“God, I’d give anything to go on tour,” Namjoon said, unable to hide the longing in his words as he hugged Hoseok goodbye.

“We will soon,” Hoseok vowed.

Seokjin had, without having planned it, plucked Namjoon away, stealing him away just for himself.

Namjoon held the studio door open for him, hand briefly landing on his waist in a gesture to guide them to the lifts. Two butterflies inside him flew headfirst into each other.

Wait. Had Namjoon stolen him away?

“Can I play you something?” Namjoon asked, connecting with the car’s Bluetooth to put on a nostalgic ballad by a singer whose heyday had been in the 1980s. Namjoon overtaking the music choices was business as usual, and Seokjin joined the evening traffic with his anxiety levels rising while the singer sang, in a sweet, pained voice, how love could break easily like glass – even as time passes, the scars remain. “What a voice, right?” Namjoon asked.

“Yeah,” he said, distracted. He wanted to clear the air, worried that otherwise he might suffocate. “I’m sorry I didn’t come see you until today. My schedules are just, you know,” he said, doing a vague swivel with his hand.

Namjoon nodded – didn’t accuse him of trying to avoid him. It wasn’t like they saw each other every time Namjoon had leave, but this time it had felt different. He had been so aware, every hour and minute, that Namjoon was temporarily a free man, was in the city, in the neighbourhood, in the same building even. Now Namjoon had only a few hours before he had to return to the base; Seokjin had not budged or reached out until the last minute.

“Mind you, you never messaged me if you wanted to catch up or not,” he then said, knowing Namjoon had had dinner with Yoongi but had made no such invitations his way.

When Namjoon said nothing, his fingers squeezed the steering wheel in frustration. Were they not going to mention it? Were they really going to say nothing? From now until the end of their lives, were they–

“Do you think the others can tell? Like Hobi back at the studio. Do you think he suspected something?” he asked.

Ah, he should have remembered this: his own impatient nature.

“I don’t think so,” Namjoon said, his presence looming large on the passenger seat.

“Guess that’s good, then,” he said, frustrated by the brevity of Namjoon’s reply, chest feeling tight from the enclosed space – Namjoon was so close, real flesh and blood. He felt the warmth of Namjoon’s touch on his shoulders, his waist, his back. Had Namjoon always been this touchy with him? His nephew had been taught a lot about body autonomy in the kindergarten (e.g. “you can’t hug others without permission. Yes, you mean well, but you need your friend’s permission first!”) and it seemed to him that the two of them needed some of that guidance too.

He granted permission, however, whenever Namjoon got close. Yearned to give that permission even.

At the next set of lights, Namjoon said, “Between you and me, and from all the shit I know as our leader… between the seven of us, we’ve done more questionable things than what you and I have done together.”

His head swivelled to stare Namjoon down. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who? No, don’t tell me: it was Taehyung, wasn’t it? He fools you with that sweet jazz age crooning, but he’s got a foolish streak. What’d he do? Was it illegal? Of course it was illegal. How illegal? On a scale of one to ten, was it a five? An eight?”

Namjoon let him ramble, a soft, amused look in his eyes. “Hyung.”

“Fine, you won’t tell me, but I’ll wrangle the truth out of him – I don’t care how big and beefy he’s gotten,” he threatened and took a shaky breath, anxious about the darkening day around them, about the slow traffic that followed the Han River, about the burning embers leaving him hot and restless, about all the things they hadn’t actually said.

Namjoon gazed to their right, at the wide breadth of the river glittering in the dark. “Have you gone on that date with Paik Jongwon’s nephew?”

Nerves burned through him. “Why do you keep asking me that? I already told you no.”

It’d been months since he’d come out to the members and declared he’d start dating. In that time he’d gone on two dates and failed to sleep with a friend of Yoongi’s. And, of course, he had slept with…

“Well, a date with someone else, maybe?”

“No,” he said, annoyed by this line of enquiry. “Yah, you’re really nosy, I should—”

“You told me you planned to, that’s all.”

Sungoh’s sad, shrunken erection crossed his mind.

“Yeah, well, there’s bumps on every road,” he reasoned, needing to change topics fast. “What about you? Have you been on any hot dates?”

Namjoon sounded disbelieving. “With whom could I possibly?”

“Well, I don’t know. People. Hot, talented people.”

Namjoon was Kim Namjoon after all, and he’d seen the way people threw themselves at him. He, however, could not be one of them – it was the only thing Namjoon had asked of him.

He exhaled nervously, changing lanes for the exit. “Just forget it. I don’t mean to endlessly complain about the horrors of modern dating.”

Namjoon had a hint of surprise in his warm, overly knowing eyes. “Was I complaining?”

He focused on entering the smaller roads of the neighbourhood, following the GPS to the restaurant. “Well, no, but I’ve clearly abused the fact that you’re stuck in the army and withering away from sexual frustration.”

There – he’d said it, embarrassment burning in him.

Namjoon sat up straighter. “Right. Okay. Did I say I feel taken advantage of?”

“No, but—”

“One could argue this case the exact other way too, that it was me using you.”

This made him glance over. “How so?”

Namjoon shrugged. “You’re hung up on this guy you enlisted with, and now dating hasn’t been going smoothly, so you’re emotionally vulnerable, and I used all that to gratify myself.”

Seokjin hadn’t thought about Youngjun much in the past few weeks. It was only as Namjoon brought him up that he recalled his wounded heart.

“I’m not hung up on— And I’ve been on some great dates, actually!” he said, annoyed by this painfully accurate read. In the moment, he did feel emotionally vulnerable, but it was not for any of the reasons Namjoon thought. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. Goddammit. “So we were both taking advantage of each other. Maybe. Perhaps.”

“Wasn’t that the point?” Namjoon asked, but it didn’t sound like he thought that was a huge moral wrong. Yet Namjoon looked like he was waiting for Seokjin to say or do something, but what? Could they go back in time, maybe, to those hours they’d spent holding each other, when that kind of intimacy had seemed so simple?

He missed it.

Namjoon was right, of course – he should call Paik Jongwon’s nephew. Was he trying to find a boyfriend or not? So what he felt no genuine interest towards these men, these nephews and drummers and actors? He’d teach himself to feel something, and maybe even if he never felt anything, he could pretend that he did. Surely that was still better than being single forever. Just pick someone – what was he waiting for?

Namjoon said, “But if you regret what we did—”

“I didn’t say that, at any point. Is that what you’re saying?” he asked, alarmed, leading the car towards the shabu shabu restaurant where Namjoon’s family was gathering.

“No. Not at all, I… It was good, what we did. I’ve thought of it often.”

He thought of them shivering in each other’s arms, bodies burning with pleasure. Arousal pulsed in his guts. “Don’t think of it too often – that’s uncomfortable.”

Namjoon’s mouth turned upwards in one corner. “Okay, alright. How often can I think about it, do you think?”

He reflected on this. “Twice a month.”

“Twice a—? You gotta give me twice a week, at least.”

“Twice a week? God, I always knew you were a pervert,” he shot back. Namjoon was smiling now – a mix of sheepish, boyish, and flirtatious. What were they doing? Seokjin’s insides felt like molten lava. They teased each other all the time but this conversation had a new, suggestive edge to it.

“Once a week – that’s more than generous,” he said, pulling up to the curb a few shops down from the restaurant.

“Before I accept that offer, what’s your quota?”

He’d thought of their night together twice every minute in the past month or so.

“I haven’t thought of it much at all.”

Namjoon raised a disbelieving, salacious eyebrow. “Really? But can I ask what do you think, then, when you think about it? On the very rare occasions you do.”

That he wanted them to sneak to a separate room in a house party and fuck against a wall; that he wanted endless hours of lying in bed with Namjoon – touching, talking, fucking, a mix of all of it; that he wanted, and wanted, and when he’d directed that want at a random acquaintance of Yoongi’s, it had felt soulless and forced. When Namjoon looked at him, however, he felt a kind of want that came to him with a distracting immediacy, making him want to straddle Namjoon in the car seat in the middle of Hannam-dong, and he didn’t know what that meant.

“That it was good for me too. Like above average. Mediocre plus,” he said.

“Perfection takes time,” Namjoon acknowledged, like they weren’t talking about sex they’d had with each other.

Seokjin sat very still, wanting yet not daring. Namjoon was looking at him like maybe he, too, wanted but did not dare. He’s gonna kiss me, he thought, dazed and enthralled, stomach doing somersaults – he’s going to kiss me because we never actually left that hotel room. All this time they’d still been there, in that bed together.

“Hyung, I—”

Namjoon’s phone started ringing. It was his sister, asking him where he was. “I’ll be right there. Two minu— I’m literally seconds away, I promise.” Namjoon slid the phone back into the pocket of his long winter coat. “You don’t feel like some shabu shabu, do you? I mean, my parents like you more than me anyway.”

“That’s sadly true for you,” he said, and Namjoon laughed, restlessly rubbing over his short hair.

“Alright,” Namjoon said, unfastened his seat belt, and reached for the door. Stilled. Said, “Forgot this.”

Namjoon leaned over, catching his chin between forefinger and thumb, and kissed him. The kiss was not as confident as Namjoon had just been, slowing down after first contact, perhaps to let Seokjin protest if he so wished.

His eyes fluttered shut.

One, two—

He caught the lapels of Namjoon’s coat and pulled him deeper into the kiss. He had a second to panic over this impulsive act before Namjoon was returning the kiss with an air of urgency and want. Floodgates opened.

Namjoon cupped the back of his head and pulled him closer, and Seokjin had been right: that they were still in that hotel room. All these weeks and they’d never left.

Warmth flashed through him, his heart racing – reminding him, quickly, that he could feel something for another person, with a wave of intense emotion flowing from the crown of his head down to the tips of his toes.

His arms wrapped around Namjoon’s neck, the kiss deepening. Desire filled him, with all the want in him spilling over. Namjoon, arms reaching to clutch his waist, pulled him closer, but the centre console kept them separated.

“Will you come see me?” Namjoon asked, breaths laboured – mouth dragging over his lower lip.

God, Seokjin should have put his pride aside and sought Namjoon out on his first day of leave. Now it was too late.

“You want me to?” he asked, Namjoon’s tongue pushing back into his willing mouth. They kissed deeply, savouring it. Namjoon’s phone was ringing again. “Go. I’ll message you,” he said, just like he had at the hotel.

“Promise?” Namjoon asked.

“I promise,” he said, giving Namjoon’s lips a final, wanting kiss. Namjoon looked at him with a boyish earnestness that lodged itself somewhere deep in his guts.

Namjoon gave his hand a final squeeze before exiting the car. Namjoon made it, this, all of this, look so easy.

Namjoon rushed up the street to the restaurant, looking back once – unable to see him through the tinted glass.

But he saw Namjoon plainly as he leaned into the driver’s seat with his cheeks burning. He placed a hand on his chest and felt his heart: fluttering. He pressed two fingers to the pulse on his wrist: skyrocketing. He brushed his lips, warm and moist from kisses: tingling.

The music started breaking up, crackling, before the Bluetooth connection disappeared.

Seokjin remained sitting in the now quiet car, head spinning.

Did Namjoon know?

205

The room looked identical to the one they’d been in, with the furniture flipped around. It felt similar, yet opposite. Topsy-turvy, inverted, flipped over.

Seokjin’s MBTI was INTP – the ‘I’ for introverted surprised no one, of course. The ‘N’, confusingly for ‘intuitive’ signalled that he had imagination, perhaps was a little aloof and not interested in what was but rather in all that could be. He was creative and enjoyed new interpretations, new analyses and new angles to age-old problems. ‘T’ for thinking meant he was led by objective thoughts rather than subjective feeling, and the ‘P’ stood for prospecting and meant that he was willing to go with the flow – spontaneous and adaptable. Jungkook was INTP, too – no wonder they got on so well.

On that day he reasoned that he was in Dreamland because of the P, which made him spontaneous, and because of the N, which made him push boundaries. And, of course, he was there for the D. Ha ha ha. Ahem.

Namjoon was an ENFP. Extrovert, which was obvious these days. Also intuitive – creative and analytical almost to a fault sometimes. ‘F’ stood for feeling, with Namjoon’s decisions being feeling based rather than fact based. ‘P’ they shared, with both of them flexible and ready to think on their feet.

Which of these elements had Namjoon coming to Dreamland again? Namjoon was willing to put himself out there – E. This was a creative solution to getting some – N. Namjoon, presumably, felt horny – F. Namjoon was willing to go with the flow – P.

Seokjin put these elements together, found that they added up logically, but was not quite satisfied with this deduction. He was an N, after all. Something was missing.

Yet he didn’t think about these factors too deeply, drying himself off after a shower in the hotel bathroom. He tried to keep busy because each minute of waiting made him feel a little more insane. He’d had fourteen years, nay, almost fifteen years of Namjoon, and yet now he felt like each second of waiting was torture. Ridiculous! Completely ridi—

A knock sounded on the door. He pulled on a bathrobe that Dreamland had generously provided faster than any human had ever robed themselves.

It was only ten to six, but the peephole showed familiar eyes and eyebrows, face shielded by an army-issue baseball cap and a black mouth mask. He let the man in and double locked the door.

He felt surreal, like he was floating, like he was someone else. Not that brother of a recruit anymore – no, that fantasy felt outdated already. He was someone else, someone new, but who?

They said hello to each other.

Namjoon was in uniform – the lighter spring version, and not the thicker winter uniform – and Seokjin was wrapped up in the white hotel bathrobe, and they looked at each other, and they held their breaths, and then he was pressed to the wall as they kissed.

Why obsess over why this was happening and what for? His intuition told him this was good, and his prospecting tendencies told him to go with the flow. Namjoon lifted him up and carried him to the bed, and together they dropped like a tree being felled. No decorum, no conversation, both of them trying to get the other naked in a rushed, maddening mess.

His bathrobe was on the floor quickly, and it felt good to be undressed with Namjoon on top of him. He hadn’t thought he’d ever feel quite comfortable with someone like this, but he wanted Namjoon against his bare skin.

Namjoon’s cap was on the floor, the jacket there too, boots dropping off with heavy thuds. He unbuckled Namjoon’s belt as they kissed, unzipped him, pushed a hand into the underwear, and found hard, hard cock. Namjoon moaned and shivered. Namjoon wasn’t intimidated by his celebrity or his fame, or whatever Sungoh had said the problem had been – maybe that to Sungoh he had been an idea or a concept, whereas to Namjoon he was a human being.

“You’re so hard,” he said breathlessly, with Namjoon pushing into his hand. The want he felt was spine-melting. “What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you want, hyung,” Namjoon said, kissing down the column of his throat. “I’ll do anything you want.”

He took a deep breath and spread his legs.

Namjoon was still reading Han Kang’s poems. “It’s my third time reading through the collection,” he said, which indicated how bored he was. Three months, two weeks to go.

“What does she write poems about?” he asked, enjoying the way Namjoon was using his chest as a pillow. The bed covers were on the floor, but the room and the companions to their souls were warm.

Namjoon’s fingers travelled up and down his stomach languidly. “Oh, all sorts of things. She’s written poems about Mark Rothko.”

“The painter? You like his work, right? I’ll buy something of his.”

Namjoon smiled. “His paintings are too expensive even for us. Like, tens of billions of won.”

“I’ll work hard, then, to become even richer and buy you one,” he reasoned, realising in that moment that he happily would do so if it made Namjoon happy.

Namjoon chuckled and stretched against him, letting out a sleepy, content hum. What speech did Namjoon have for his lovers who he slept with more than once? What speech did Namjoon have when that lover was one of his oldest friends?

Seokjin had no idea, and perhaps Namjoon didn’t either, but he looked relaxed and happy where he was. Strange how he’d never noticed that Namjoon was, perhaps, the most beautiful thing on this earth.

They had made great strides towards perfection. They had worked hard, dedicated long hours, studied the craft and each other… He’d come hard, in a way that had felt like his world falling apart.

“I think your bed talk’s improved,” he noted, aiming to make a casual remark but in truth hoping to prompt Namjoon to give his next speech. ‘I enjoy sex with my friends’, Namjoon would likely say, ‘to me it’s like a handshake – don’t you think so?’

Something like that, probably.

“You really think it’s improved?” Namjoon asked surprisingly quickly. Had Namjoon not gotten over him roasting his so-called bedside manner? Perhaps this question was evident on his face because Namjoon said, “You’re the first person to call me out on it, you know.”

“That I can believe.”

“Yeah.” Namjoon hesitated briefly. “It made me realise that I… I don’t know. That there’s more out there than I’ve let myself be exposed to. I’ve shut people out before we could feel… feel those things people write songs about. I thought it was the right thing to do. Do you think it was?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said, knowing each sacrifice Namjoon had made had led all of them, their group of seven, to the heights of success they now enjoyed. Who could say what had been a necessary sacrifice, and what superfluous?

Namjoon exhaled, softly. “In any case, you’re right that I’ve been selfish in the past, with people.”

“I said that?”

“No, but it’s what you meant,” Namjoon said, pressing a fleeting kiss to his sternum – making his heart skip a beat. Maybe Namjoon noticed, he wasn’t sure, but they looked at each other in palpable wonder. “I’m trying to be better,” Namjoon said, voice low and husky, hand coming to rest over his heart. “I want to go beyond things I’ve done before.”

This sounded like a promise or a vow, but of what?

Namjoon kissed him without having to be told to do so, and he welcomed him.

Namjoon left early enough this time to avoid disciplinary action, leaving Seokjin, once more, to sleep a few hours more.

Before checking out in the morning, he looked up how much a Rothko would cost. Seeing that going prices were around sixty million USD, he conceded that there were things in this world that even BTS could not afford.

Yet.

After Hobi’s sold out show at KSPO Dome in early April, he went out for dinner with Namjoon and Jimin, who had taken leave to attend the tour. Jimin scrolled through social media for all the clips already circulating of the three of them in the audience – ARMYs had loved it. Seokjin would perform one of his songs at the encore shows in May, but after seeing the crowd and the huge arena, he felt like passing out.

“You should’ve seen me backstage at Yoongi’s show,” Namjoon laughed. “I was shaking like a leaf.”

The sooner Seokjin could return on stage with his six members for protection and comfort, the better.

At the Chinese restaurant, they ordered far too much food, but most of it had vanished by the time Hoseok joined them in the private dining room. “How was the show? Was it okay?” Hoseok asked, with Jimin clinging onto him with exclaims of, “Hyung! You’re really something!”

They ordered more dishes, drank beers, and talked about the summer, with only two more months until all members would be free men again.

Namjoon sat next to him, arm resting on the back of his chair. Once or twice Namjoon’s fingers brushed his back, but Namjoon had done such things already in the before – before Dreamland 1, Dreamland 2… A week ago, there’d been Dreamland 3. Between the 2 and 3, there’d been Namjoon’s apartment 1, too. All of it felt surreal, yet they hadn’t stopped.

He glanced at the time. He had to leave for the airport soon for a two in the morning flight to Paris.

As they sat around with stomachs full of food and liquor, Jimin eyed him with a knowing look and said, “Hyung, how’s the dating going? I haven’t heard any updates in a while.”

Hoseok nudged Jimin. “Haven’t you heard? He’s marrying Paik Jongwon’s son.”

Jimin’s eyes widened. “Paik Jongwon is so rich!”

Seokjin wouldn’t stand for such slander. “One, same-sex marriage isn’t legal here. Two, it was his nephew, not his son, that he wanted me to date. Three, I haven’t even seen this nephew, so stop spreading false rumours, you two.”

Jimin smirked.

Namjoon kept drawing slow circles to his upper back, bringing a beer bottle to his lips with the other hand. It was funny how touchy Namjoon was with him – funny because the others didn’t even blink at it, perhaps because Namjoon had always been touchy with him.

He’d noticed a frustrating yet mystifying side effect in the past few weeks, related to his little visits to see Namjoon. It could be summarised, perhaps, as a profound unhappiness over every day spent apart, eased only by the rare times they saw each other.

Hoseok motioned at him with his hand. “Aish, Jimin-ah, when would this hyung date? He’s in the studio all the time, and when he’s not, he’s gaming at home. I’ve tried to invite him to parties, but…”

“What are you recording?” Jimin asked, dropping the dating quickly because work interested him more. All of them were dying to work – they hadn’t had this much energy since their debut.

He explained that he was practising a ballad to sing at a friend’s wedding. The song that Youngjun had asked for mainly focused on a chorus of ‘I love you so much’, concluding in a belting, ‘I confess, I love you’. The irony of singing this song at Youngjun’s wedding was not lost on him.

Still, he knew his performance would be widely circulated, and the song wasn’t easy to sing. He’d have no time to practice it in Paris and, once he flew back, he’d head straight to Pohang for the wedding.

“You’re busy,” Jimin said enviously.

“What can I say? I’m in demand,” he quipped, noting that Namjoon had pulled his arm back. He missed the touches but said nothing of it, of course.

“Seventy-three days to go,” Jimin sighed.

“Seventy-two,” Namjoon said, and Jimin glared and said ‘seventy-two’ in a mocking tone. Namjoon grinned, but there was an air of unhappiness to him.

Seokjin’s manager called him – pickup was in ten minutes.

“I’ll see you to the car,” Namjoon offered, which was unnecessary and both Jimin and Hoseok seemed to think so too.

Still, the two did not question Namjoon, who was their leader even then. Seokjin thought it best to say nothing, hugging the others goodbye before letting Namjoon follow him through the restaurant and back down the stairs to street level.

It was raining outside – a heavy spring rain – and they stayed inside at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the car to arrive. The rain fell down in sheets, and people huddled under umbrellas in the neon glow of shop signs, hurrying past the antique shop across the street that had large pearl and cotton toned moon jars in the window.

“So I won’t see you before the wedding, then,” Namjoon said, peering out into the rain with a clenched jaw. “And I suppose you don’t know yet when you’ll have time to… I mean, it’s a long drive. I don’t expect you to—”

“I’ll find time,” he said because it was true. He was unhappy not seeing Namjoon – he’d find time.

“I’ll be out in a few months,” Namjoon said, but whether that was simply a fact or a promise, he could not tell. He had spent approximately zero minutes thinking what would happen between them once Namjoon was a civilian. They’d be colleagues again, of course. But lovers?

He didn’t know.

Namjoon was looking at him intensely and Seokjin, not being very good with such focused attention, wasn’t able to return the gaze. His ears felt hot.

He felt a familiar warmth against his palm. Namjoon had reached out to take a hold of his hand.

They stood in the narrow entryway, Chinese folk music sounding from upstairs, mixing with the sound of the rain. Namjoon’s fingers curled around his hand.

“I wish I—” Namjoon began, then sucked air through his teeth and shook his head. He looked away and down the street.

If Seokjin had to guess, he’d say that Namjoon was busy teaching himself something. That was what each of their meetings felt like: that Namjoon was a learner, eager to unlock a few more answers. Seokjin just didn’t know what he was teaching him.

He gave Namjoon’s hand a squeeze. “What?”

Namjoon studied him in the evening glow, and he watched, surprised, as Namjoon lifted their hands up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand. Warm lips pressed to his skin: chaste, polite.

Namjoon let their hands drop, looking at him with a searching depth to his eyes.

His kissed hand was still in Namjoon’s hold, his heart beating fast and skin tingling from where he’d been kissed.

“What was that for?” he asked. Outside in the rain, a black SUV came to a stop outside the restaurant.

Namjoon glanced at the car, then back at him. He smiled wistfully. “That’s for all the things I don’t know how to say to you.”

Namjoon squeezed his hand once more before letting go, taking him in with that familiar, honest look of trust.

“You not know how to say something? Now I am worried,” he said, and Namjoon huffed, which told him that there was nothing to be worried about and that, perhaps, Seokjin should know some of those things Namjoon found difficult to articulate.

And he did know some of them. At least he thought so – an educated guess, at least – because those things were in the well inside him, this well that he found himself visiting more and more frequently. The water levels had risen on each visit. Well, how could they not with rain like this?

But to say it. To speak of it. To ask, ‘what is it that you’re trying to learn when you kiss me?’

There was so much about Namjoon that he did not know – could not even guess at. Wasn’t that strange after all this time?

Two of his security detail ran through the rain to the door, holding up umbrellas. He had to go to the airport and fly to another continent, and yet all he wanted was five more minutes in the staircase of this Chinese restaurant – just him and Namjoon in the symphony of the rain and the lambency of the bright red walls.

Youngjun and Hayoon had planned a typical wedding: a quick ceremony in a wedding hall followed by a banquet, and everyone back to their lives by the evening news. The number of guests, however, was still close to two hundred, so even as the wedding was short, it would be well attended.

Seokjin supposed, and not wrongly, that rumours of his appearance had spread amongst the wedding guests.

Youngjun and Hayoon had already registered their marriage, and they’d had their wedding photoshoot too. Still, Youngjun said, he felt so very nervous. “I’ve already seen her in the dress, so why do I feel like I can’t breathe?”

“You’ll be fine but that tie needs fixing,” he said in the small dressing room assigned to the groom. He’d travelled to Pohang just for this, in a company car with a driver, one assistant, and one security guard. He would make a swift exit after his performance and be in his bed by midnight.

He fixed Youngjun’s tie, noting the soft, warm scent of Youngjun’s cologne. The scent had driven him to near despair once – less than a year ago. Now it made him feel fond, nostalgic, and a little lost. It wasn’t all gone, what he’d felt. Some of it remained.

“Does it look okay?” Youngjun asked, looking in the mirror and slicking back his hair.

Seokjin wondered what those remnants of love in him meant. Was it something that always stayed behind from your first love, which Youngjun had been for him? Or was it a longing anyone felt when someone they’d been in love with married another person before your very eyes? He felt detached from the events around him, a few of the groomsmen flitting in and out of the room. They all wore black suits and looked handsome, but Seokjin looked the most handsome. He wasn’t being vain – he simply had his god-given face and over a decade of celebrity facials.

Everyone had wedding jitters, but he'd built some kind of a mental block in himself just for this day.

The chaos in the dressing room quieted as it got closer to go time. The groomsmen disappeared to act as ushers for the incoming guests, and Youngjun was told to sit tight and wait to be retrieved. Seokjin, who would make his appearance once everyone was sitting down, drank champagne with Youngjun, both of them waiting.

“I’ve been a bad friend to you,” Youngjun said with that honest, sincere voice of his. “I’ve hardly messaged you in at least a month, let alone called you – I’m sorry, this wedding has been taking all my time.”

Seokjin smiled at this because Youngjun meant it – usually people said ‘oh you’re an idol, you must be so busy all the time’, which of course was true. But this made people shrink away from him, approaching him only in apologetics or, even more often, not at all.

Youngjun didn’t default to ‘oh you’re so famous and I’m a lowly nobody, of course you would never have time for little old me!’ Youngjun truly thought he’d been a bad friend as of late.

“I forgive you, but you better name your firstborn after me.”

“What if it’s a girl?”

“Especially if it’s a girl. Don’t you know I’m a princess?” he asked, and Youngjun laughed. It was a beautiful, deep laugh, fitting the warm spring day outside, with some of the cherry blossoms still in bloom. Seokjin’s heart ached hearing it.

“Well, how have you been? Catch me up on things.”

“Nothing much has been happening, really. Photoshoots, recordings, appearances, all the usual stuff.”

Youngjun smirked. “Sure – usual stuff.”

They grinned at each other and sipped more champagne. Seokjin surprised them both when he said, “And I suppose there’s one more thing that’s been happening. I’ve met someone.”

“What, you have?” Youngjun grinned and punched his shoulder in a way that only a straight man could understand – the gesture was lost on him. “Nice! And about time! A cousin of mine has been begging me to make introductions today – I don’t know with what guts or looks she thinks she could date you. She’s pretty enough but not, well, at your level.”

“But then again, I’d hate to date someone handsomer than me,” he joked, hands squeezing around the champagne flute. He hadn’t said it aloud until then, but now he had, and now it was real, and that scared the shit out of him.

“Is it casual, like, are you guys hanging out, or is it more serious?”

He wanted to say ‘I don’t know’, but realised that would be a lie. Of course the euphemistic ‘hanging out’ had to be the right answer because this was Namjoon, who lived for his art first and foremost. That was the answer. Had to be.

Namjoon had messaged him several times that day. guard duty, managed to smuggle my phone with me. A picture of a field with patches of melting snow amongst matted, dead grass. today’s the wedding, right? As if Namjoon wasn’t sure. how is it? is it good? After this, call me when it’s done, I might be able to pick up, and if not I’ll call you back as soon as I can.

After this a picture of an upside-down soju crate with a game of cards on it. playing with the boys. not winning.

Every hour or so, Namjoon had messaged him, even as he hadn’t messaged back.

Was this casual, with Kim Namjoon fretting somewhere within a five-kilometre radius of the border? Over what? This. Him at this wedding. Him here, with Youngjun – something Namjoon clearly did not like. What a fool.

“It might be serious,” he said, and Youngjun smiled at him warmly.

And so he’d said it now. He’d said it and made it real.

Youngjun’s hyung arrived to collect them.

Seokjin’s throat was in good condition, and he performed the song well. “I love you – I confess, I love you,” he sang, accompanied by piano. When done, the bride, the groom, and half of the audience were drying their eyes.

He’d wondered all winter how to let Youngjun go. He still wasn’t sure how to do it when Youngjun looked so handsome standing on stage in a tailored suit. He looked like the kind of person you would marry in a heartbeat: bright smiles, deep laugh, strong hands. No wonder the Spartans had had armies made up of male lovers, convinced that this would make the men fight harder – that was the kind of devotion he’d felt.

“Congratulations,” he said to the newlyweds, bowing, but Youngjun rushed over to hug him tightly. He squeezed his eyes shut and let himself enjoy, for a few seconds, the solid warmth of Youngjun against him – god, how he’d loved him. Youngjun would never know.

“That was beautiful,” Youngjun said, hugging him.

It had been beautiful – those snowy mountain peaks they’d marvelled together, the plain mess food they’d eaten side by side, the surprise pizza nights they’d celebrated with each other, the endless, muddy trails they’d marched on, one following the other, the cold, crisp air they’d breathed in unison, and all the laughs they’d shared, almost in perfect harmony.

Instead of swallowing it all down like he had all this time, he let it overflow: “I love you.”

“Love you too, hyung,” Youngjun said, pulling back and squeezing his shoulder, beaming at him. “I love you too.”

The urge to kiss Youngjun rose, then fell, then was gone. The letting go – easily done, in the end. It just took a long time to get there.

Hayoon hugged him next. She looked beautiful, too, and he told her so.

Five minutes later he was in the back of the company car, ready for the near four-hour drive back home. He loosened his tie, wiped away the few stray tears on his cheeks, and had a sip of water.

He got out his phone and called Namjoon, who picked up on the second ring. He smiled.

“Hey.”

A week after the wedding Seokjin didn’t finish work until one in the morning, and when he climbed into the company SUV, exhausted after seven hours of filming, he was surprised to have three missed calls from Namjoon. night off. approved last minute. getting a lift into seoul. are you around?

That had been sent over two hours ago.

I’m heading home now – where are you?

If Namjoon only had the night off, coming into Seoul was foolish – he would have to leave within hours of reaching the city. Still, Seokjin told the driver to step on it, and once at his apartment complex he rushed home, half-expecting Namjoon to be waiting for him. No one, however, was.

He tried calling Namjoon from his living room. Had Namjoon gone to his own place? That was only a brisk fifteen-minute walk away. Should he go over there? Why wasn’t Namjoon taking his calls?

He was ready to head over to Namjoon’s building when the doorbell rang. He rushed over, finding Namjoon standing in the corridor with his army-issued camouflage holdall hanging over one shoulder.

Namjoon stepped inside, dropped the bag, and said, “I have three hours.”

“That’s plenty,” he said and pulled Namjoon into a kiss.

What speech was there for this and for the hundreds of messages they’d started exchanging nearly every day? Messages of want and flirtation and frustration and longing.

They had avoided addressing any of it with the aptitude of professional dancers, and Seokjin had been content with that because scrutinising it too closely would only have complicated something that felt easy.

They had been indulging in a heady affair. Weren’t they allowed that after all this time?

Of course they were.

But that wasn’t what this was anymore. Perhaps it had never been.

The three hours went by in a flash.

On the morning of a spring festival in the sleepy border village of Cheorwon, Seokjin woke up in central Seoul and chose chaos. He cancelled all of his appointments and got into his blue Lamborghini to drive the two hours north, to a village where the average age of locals was 58.4 years.

In the group chat Namjoon had said that after performing at a tomato festival, he’d really adopted an anything goes attitude. Cheorwon sounded like an exciting day out, even, marking a month before his discharge. This, to Seokjin, seemed like a good opportunity to get as much blackmail material as possible for the years ahead.

He parked the Lamborghini a few streets down from Cheorwon’s only public park and put on his sunglasses, the mid-May sun high up and blinding. The festival was easy to find – he followed the sound of the marching band.

Thirty-odd chairs had been set up in front of a stage, with the elderly sitting next to the school children, all clapping along. On stage was a military band in red uniforms, playing a mix of wind and percussion instruments. Seokjin stopped under a tree at the back, not wanting to attract undue attention. He recognised the music but couldn’t have named it – it was one of those pompous military songs full of trumpets, snare drums, and French horns intended to make war sound like a masculine virtue rather than a human flaw.

Namjoon was sitting in the second row, third from the left, playing the saxophone. He looked ridiculous and endearing in equal measure, cheeks rounding like those of a goldfish as he blew into the instrument, with thick-rimmed, round glasses on. Seokjin grinned and started taking pictures.

A schoolboy was walking around with a cooler selling drinks. He bought an iced tea, leaned against the tree, and enjoyed the show. At some point Namjoon clocked him – Seokjin supposed that he stood out in his spring edition Gucci fit in a small rural village where he was also a head taller than everyone else and significantly younger than 58.4 years. He lifted his iced tea in greeting. Namjoon looked disbelieving.

When the concert finished, the soldiers left the stage and congregated near a bus parked on the main street. Seokjin followed but kept a distance, with the soldiers leaving their instruments at the bus. A superior gathered up the men and handed out orders, after which the group of young men relaxed and started to disperse.

Namjoon made a beeline for him, touching his elbow in greeting but not seeming to know what else to do. “Hyung.”

He lifted his phone. “The material I got is so good.” The other soldiers were heading one way or another in small groups, chatting cheerfully. “You got time before going back to the base?”

Namjoon, although looking caught out, also looked pleased. They had an hour for lunch, he said.

The auntie running the nearby restaurant had no idea who they were. Namjoon placed his black military cap on the table, the two of them sitting at the front of the shop. Namjoon’s back was rigidly straight, unable to switch to civilian mode. The bright red of the band uniform did not suit him.

“Everything alright?” Namjoon asked after they’d ordered, and he nodded and started talking about Hobi’s tour – about how he’d finally performed and how nervous he’d been. Namjoon had, of course, already seen the footage.

“You sounded great – looked great, too.”

Although the praise was welcome, it wasn’t why Seokjin had come. Namjoon was tensed up, too, talking about band practice and how he’d started giving his things away.

As Namjoon spoke, Seokjin realised why he had come: thirty days to go. The real, final countdown.

The well inside him was almost full – perhaps a bucketful or two could still flow into it, but after that it would certainly be filled to the brim. He had to know now. He had to ask.

But he said nothing and made a comically big show of paying. “Hyung’s treat,” he said of the modest bill, hoping to get a smile out of Namjoon. Namjoon looked wary.

They had a half hour left before Namjoon needed to get back on the bus. They walked around the village, and Seokjin felt tongue-tied and worked up. He wanted to relish this time of ‘before’ – when things between them had still been a certain way.

Back in January, he’d wanted them to be insouciant about this arrangement, but that already seemed like a naïve vision. A gamut of vertiginous emotions had passed through him that spring, and with thirty days to go, the fulcrum on which his sanity was balanced was crumbling. An adage echoed in his mind: the chickens were coming home to roost.

They stopped outside a small second-hand shop – not one of those curated vintage shops you found in Seoul, but a small, rural village shop with battered dolls, cheaply made buckets, and old transistor radios in the window. ‘Vinyls inside!’ a sign promised, and Namjoon was intrigued – or, perhaps, he was trying to buy himself some time.

The old man running the shop looked surprised to see customers. He told them to look around – he was just popping out to buy some triangle kimbap from the convenience store.

“How does he know we won’t rob him?” he asked once the man had gone.

“You have a trust-inducing face,” Namjoon said, black army cap under his arm as he flipped through the stacked LPs.

The shop smelled of old things, with dust floating in the air. He examined the full shelves, walking to the back of the shop. A moon jar, so labelled because of its perfectly round, full moon shape, caught his eye on a high shelf. The moon jar had a faint but telltale ridge at its widest point, where the top and bottom halves had been joined together – that was how they were made, by merging two pieces into one.

“Oh, that looks nice,” Namjoon said, having appeared at his side. He had a record tucked under his arm, squished against the cap. “It looks like it could be real antique, even, like the one I have at home.”

The state of affairs was this: Seokjin could have recounted a lot of small events, incidents, and moments from the past few months that had led them here. He could have detailed the late-night calls they’d exchanged; could have repeated the contents of the few letters Namjoon had sent him, talking about the spring and the universe and the future; he could have listed, moment by moment, a night they’d spent at Namjoon’s apartment, watching movies on the living room couch before debasing it slowly and sweetly. He could have recounted it all, could have described Namjoon’s voice saying sweet, honest things to his ear, but it felt so private and so personal that the only person he wanted to know about those things was Namjoon. The thought of revealing those parts of himself, of them, to anyone else was intolerable.

Yet, throughout it all, there was one thing they hadn’t talked about.

“Namjoon-ah,” he said, the name coming out quietly but still filling up the space around them. He looked at Namjoon, standing beside him with tense shoulders and an expectant air. “Do you suppose we’re in love?”

Namjoon stilled.

Seokjin could hear the silence of dust particles floating in the air.

The before, and the after.

“Yes,” Namjoon said, firmly. “I do suppose it.”

Namjoon didn’t look surprised – he’d known, then.

“Ah. I thought so,” he said, mouth dry. The well, full of love, overflowed. It always might be overflowing now, he wasn’t sure yet, but he knew firmly what it measured. “Since when, do you think?”

There were so many moments, after all, that could be the beginning. Which night? Which phone call? Which hotel room? Which kiss?

Namjoon kept looking at him with an air of intent that made Seokjin nervous. “Since a long time ago, but also a short time ago. A long time because you’ve always… you’ve always been someone special to me. And a short time because it’s changed, recently, how I think and feel about you. I know that I realised pretty quickly after our first night together that no part of me wanted to avoid you, or avoid whatever may happen next.”

“I don’t know how on earth you could have avoided me even if you’d tried,” he said, honestly, referring both to the lives they were about to resume as well as him knowing the code to Namjoon’s apartment. Namjoon relaxed, minimally. He frowned, rubbing at his temple briefly. “The same for me, I think. That it’s recent, but also older than that. Because in the past I… I’ve always relied on you. And needed you more than was fair. I’ve loved you, but also not in this way. But after we… At some point, I… And then the butterflies.”

He didn’t have Namjoon’s eloquence with words.

“I give you the butterflies?” Namjoon asked, sounding all too pleased – taking a step closer and, predictably, giving him the butterflies.

The shop door opened, the old man announcing he was back. He came to the back of the shop, smiling at Namjoon holding a record. “Ah, so you two found something?”

They looked at each other.

“We suppose so,” he said.

Namjoon was smiling – beaming, even, and looking at him with a soft tenderness he’d seen in the way Youngjun and Hayoon looked at each other. To have it directed at him and by someone who knew him so well was changing him in ways he couldn’t put into words yet.

That was the thing: they received so much adoration and love from people who, at the end of the day, didn’t know them. But Namjoon knew him – all of him, from the unhinged to the mundane. And Namjoon looked at him with affection, and devotion, and love.

“We’ll take that, too,” he said, motioning at the moon jar on the shelf, moulded together from two halves so perfectly, so expertly, that it was almost impossible to tell where one half started and the other began – or when that had happened, or how, or in what way, to make a perfect whole.

“You can put it next to the one you already have at home,” he told Namjoon as the shopkeeper wrapped the moon jar in old newspapers.

Namjoon placed a hand on his lower back. “Whatever you say, hyung.”

He and Hobi were told to divide and conquer, and so he said he’d go collect Taehyung. He dressed up to the nines and, as with Hobi, ordered a bouquet the size of Taehyung – which, for the record, was a real challenge because that boy had gotten huge.

Taehyung was stationed in Chuncheon, which was only a forty-minute drive from Namjoon’s base. The company made plans accordingly to coordinate the drives back to Seoul, and after Taehyung’s release, the media fanfare, the reporters, and all of the chaos, Seokjin slipped back into the SUV and checked the news to see what had happened at Namjoon’s base that same morning.

Namjoon had, of course, given a speech to the press, with Hobi beaming at his side and motioning at Namjoon enthusiastically with ‘look at our leader!’ smiles. Tomorrow they’d go get Jungkook and Jimin. Ten days later, with less media fanfare, Yoongi would have his ending ceremony too.

Namjoon planned to sit the members down once Yoongi was a free man and drop the bomb on them. It would go down fine, Namjoon reasoned, yes there’d likely be some shock and dismay, but were they not grown men by now? Had they not learned to accept each other for who they were a long time ago already?

What Namjoon didn’t know was that Hoseok knew already about his sexuality. Hoseok had sussed it out somehow – who knew how. Hoseok, being a terrible secret keeper and an enthusiastic ally, had passed on the news to at least Yoongi and, perhaps, Jimin, who had ordered rainbow balloons to the party Jungkook would host in his basement for them. Jungkook had said in the secret group chat they had without Namjoon that rainbows didn’t suit the mysterious and cool basement party dungeon vibe he’d been going for, and Jimin said that was rich coming from a Hello Kitty plushie owner. Jungkook conceded.

And so while Namjoon was finetuning a speech about the two of them, the others were planning a coming out party for their leader. Seokjin was steering clear of it all, and wisely.

What absolute mad men he was in a group with, even now, at the new frontier.

Their small envoy of three cars stopped at a service station a little after Cheongpyeong. He and Taehyung got out of their respective cars and stretched their legs, waiting for Bangtan Rescue Team 2 to arrive so they could drive into Seoul together, passing the lines of fans waiting at the company.

Staff went to buy them some snacks, and one of their security detail hovered in their vicinity as they chatted, laughed and grinned. It was a beautiful, warm day in early summer, and Taehyung looked so grown up and yet like a tiger cub. Or a bear cub. Look, Seokjin had no stake in that fight.

He kept glancing towards the busy road, restless.

“Oh oh, hyung!” Taehyung said, showing him some of the media coverage from the base they had left forty minutes prior. Seokjin had, apparently, had one button too many of his shirt undone, and now the internet was having a meltdown over a sliver of suggestive bare chest. “He’s so sexy it should be illegal,” Taehyung read out teasingly.

“You and Namjoon get discharged and this is what they’re focusing on?” he asked.

Taehyung grinned. “Don’t underestimate your power, hyung. Your hair’s all overgrown and floppy, very romantic male lead coded – ah, I hope mine grows out fast.”

He accepted this compliment, pushing a hand through his hair that had gotten pleasantly long. He’d looked in the mirror that morning and been stunned by his beauty, and as such he understood what the fuss was about. Still, was this look that sexy? Well, if people said so… He was thirty-two, after all: a grown man at peace with his sexuality. Okay, perhaps not at ‘peace’ with, but at the very least somewhat comfortable. Getting there, very slowly.

He’d own the praise, then, and happily. He had a man to woo, after all.

A new chapter was starting.

Finally two cars identical to theirs pulled up to the service station, driving past the long row of cars to where they were parked to the side. Hobi jumped out of the middle car as soon as it stopped and made straight for Taehyung with a wide grin and open arms. Taehyung launched into the hug with a giddiness that showed no matter what special forces training he’d received, he was still their second youngest.

The door of the last car opened, too, and Namjoon stepped out into the sunshine with a happy, victorious smile.

Seokjin pushed the hair out his eyes, holding back a smirk.

He beckoned Namjoon over with a single finger.

Namjoon laughed and began to make his way over, looking like everything Seokjin had ever waited for.