Archive of Our Own

Jimin’s oldest friends are getting married. They’re getting married, they’ve asked Jimin to be their mutual best man, and Jimin’s chill about it. He’s fine – in the course of their friendship, Taehyung and Jeongguk have been together longer than they haven’t, and Jimin had honestly been expecting this for a while, long before each of them had separately come to him and nonchalantly asked his thoughts on how the other would want to be proposed to. He’s thrilled to be their best man.

However, he had sort of been expecting that he’d have a bit more to do in the run up to their wedding. They’d already had a good idea of what venue they wanted, so there’d been no need to go with them to look at hotels and halls and fields; they’d been chill about choosing their suits, with Jeongguk actually spending more time choosing his shoes than either of them had spent choosing the suits themselves; they knew what cake they wanted, what decorations, seemingly all of it. By the time they’d asked Jimin to be their best man (to his knowledge, mere hours after they’d accidentally simultaneously proposed to one another), there had been very little left to plan.

Which had just left the bachelor party. Or, at least, Jimin had thought that just left the bachelor party, but it turns out they’d already known what they wanted for that, too. In the same way that they’ve been chill and casual about every other decision they’ve made in the run-up to their wedding so far, they’ve decided to hold a sleepover for their joint bachelor party.

“It’s easy,” Jeongguk says as Jimin helps him lay out snacks on the coffee table. “Why bother organising something like a bar crawl when we can just stay at home?”

“Not much organising goes into a bar crawl,” Jimin points out. “You turn up, get drunk, go to the next place, repeat.”

“If we stay here, we don’t even have to move from place to place,” Taehyung says as he brings out all of their spare blankets and pillows, and dumps them in a pile in the middle of the living room. “Not to mention we can fall asleep once we’re tired. And it’ll only be the seven of us anyway, there’s plenty of room here.”

“You’re both getting boring in your old age,” Jimin says, a little pouty. Taehyung leans over and squidges Jimin’s cheeks between his palms. “Gah!” He pulls Taehyung’s hands off of his face, but he keeps hold of them, swings them side to side.

“All the best bits of going out will be replicated right here, in the comfort of our flat,” Jeongguk says. “Food, alcohol, friends, and our bathroom isn’t gross.”

“Okay, but, unless you’re inviting a bunch of hot, random strangers tonight, you’re missing the best part of going out for people that haven’t been dating since the dawn of mankind,” Jimin says petulantly, taking his frustration out on Taehyung’s hands by swinging them faster.

He’s being a brat, and he knows it – the night in they’ve planned does sound fun, it’s just that Jimin had been looking forward to planning a massive bachelor party for both of them, and while he respects their decision to keep it low key, the fact that they’re keeping more or less everything low key has left him, as their best man, feeling a little bit like a loose end.

“Ah, Jimin-ssi,” Jeongguk says, shoving pajeon into Jimin’s mouth before he can squawk indignantly. “You know if we went out you’d just end up hanging out with all of us all night anyway.”

“Not the point,” Jimin grumbles around his mouthful of food. Taehyung takes his hands back from Jimin, picks up one of the blankets and wraps it around Jimin’s shoulders, tucking him into it as though he’s swaddling a kitten. “It’s fine, I’ll just die alone, I guess.” The doorbell rings, followed by several thuds against the door.

“Before you die, can you let whoever’s at the door in before they kick it down?” Jeongguk asks.

“Ordering your hyung around, don’t know why I stand for it,” Jimin says, sighing exaggeratedly and taking great care to knock his shoulder into Jeongguk’s as he walks past. It doesn’t really have the intended effect, though – Jeongguk is both tall and strong, so Jimin just ricochets off him like a sad, blanketed Beyblade.

He opens the door to Yoongi, who is holding several boxes of beers and standing on one leg, his other foot angled to kick the door again. His hair is slightly damp from the light spring rain, and he’s clearly run his hand through it to get it out of his eyes, because Jimin can see the tracks his fingers have run through his wet hair.

“Oh, good, I didn’t know if you heard me,” he says, setting his foot down again. He eyes Jimin up and down. “Was this supposed to be a costume party? What are you supposed to be? A shitty wizard?”

“I’m sad, hyung,” Jimin says, stepping aside to let Yoongi in. The teasing grin on Yoongi’s face melts into worry.

“Jimin-ah, you’re sad? Tell hyung why,” he says, readjusting the crate in his arms. “Although, tell me as we go to the kitchen, this is pretty heavy.”

“I’m just feeling the crushing burden of our isolated lives under capitalism,” Jimin says, shuffling after Yoongi, his blanket cape trailing along the floor, indeed, like a shitty wizard. “How can we be expected to make meaningful connections with one another when-”

“Jimin-hyung’s sulking because he wanted to get laid tonight,” Jeongguk says flatly. He turns around from where he’d been rootling through the fridge and brightens when he sees Yoongi standing there. “Ah, hyung, you didn’t need to bring extra! That’s very kind of you, thank you, just stick them over there with the rest of the alcohol.”

“Where’s my respect?” Jimin says. “Hyung, how do you get this bratty dongsaeng to talk to you properly?”

“Well, I usually leave my blanket at home when I come to see him, that tends to help,” Yoongi says, setting the beers down before turning to look Jimin up and down, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Are you seriously sulking because you wanted to get your dick wet?”

“No!” Jimin insists.

“Yes,” Jeongguk replies.

“A little,” Jimin admits.

Yoongi pushes off of the countertop and pats Jimin’s shoulder as he walks past. “Fighting, Jimin-ah.”

Despite his earlier complaining, Jimin is having fun.

It’s hard not to, sitting in a room with six of his favourite people in the world, drinking and playing half-remembered sleepover games that are really an excuse to drink more alcohol. They’ve just finished a game Seokjin insists he used to play where you try to eat three crackers in a minute, except they clearly don’t have the right type of crackers because they’ve just sat and silently watched Jeongguk eat seven of them.

“They had some shit sleepover games before electricity,” Jeongguk says, gulping down his beer as Seokjin, yelling indignantly, flings his leg out across the circle they’re sitting in and drives his heel repeatedly into Jeongguk’s thigh. “My mouth’s dry, though, so this sucks.”

“Okay, how about a classic?” Taehyung asks, handing Jeongguk another beer as he makes grabby hands at it. “Jimin-ah, truth or dare?”

Jimin knows how this plays out; he has no interesting truths that this group of people don’t already know, which means ‘truth or dare’ is actually, when they play it, more accurately named ‘dare’.

He plays along though, pretending to agonise over the decision, before spluttering out “Fine, dare!” with a laugh.

“I dare you to play spin the bottle chicken,” Taehyung says, setting his empty beer bottle down in the middle of their circle.

“You dare me to play spin the bottle?” Jimin asks, bewildered. “Why’re you calling me chicken? I thought you wanted to play truth or dare?”

“No, spin the bottle chicken – I’m not calling you chicken, that’s part of the game’s name.”

“You’ve just made that up,” Seokjin accuses, pointing the neck of his own beer bottle at Taehyung.

“Somebody has made up every sleepover game at some point, hyung,” Taehyung says very sweetly. “Like your terrible game where you watch somebody eat several crackers.”

“What’s ‘spin the bottle chicken’?” Namjoon asks.

“You spin the bottle,” Taehyung demonstrates. “And whoever it lands on, you play chicken with.” It lands on Jeongguk. “Ah!”

“We don’t need to watch you play chicken with Jeongguk, we’re going to watch you take him up the aisle in two weeks,” Hoseok says.

Jeongguk waggles his eyebrows at him. “Hyung, I didn’t know you’d invited yourself along to our honeymoon?” Hoseok cackles with laughter, throwing himself into Yoongi’s lap with the force of it.

“You gonna play, Jimin?” Taehyung asks, nudging the empty bottle towards him.

Jimin shrugs, not thinking much of it as he takes the bottle and spins it forcefully.

It lands on Yoongi.

“Oh, this’ll be easy,” Jimin says, wriggling side to side with excitement.

Yoongi bristles, sitting up straighter from where he had been sprawling back against the couch. The movement dislodges Hoseok; he tips to the other side, resting his arm against Namjoon’s comfortably. “What makes you say that?”

“Hyung, you hate physical affection,” Jimin says, rolling his eyes. He looks around at his friends for backup.

Namjoon looks sceptical, sizing both of them up. “Yoongi-hyung’s really competitive,” he says eventually.

“Also, that’s not even true, he loves physical affection. He holds hands, like, all the time,” Hoseok says breezily.

“Yeah, but, Jimin always kisses our foreheads,” Jeongguk muses.

“Not to mention his hugs, they’re the best,” Taehyung puts in.

As one, they turn to stare at Seokjin.

“I am not tiebreaking this one, are you kidding?” He says, holding up his hands defensively. “Let them duke it out amongst themselves.”

“As I said – easy,” Jimin says, crawling over to Yoongi and plopping himself into his lap. He’d been hoping to immediately psych Yoongi out by taking the initiative, but he barely even raises an eyebrow in response.

“That the best you’ve got?” Yoongi asks. He puts his hands on Jimin’s waist, rubs his thumbs up and down, just below Jimin’s ribs.

Jimin scoffs, leans in teasingly and echoes, mockingly, “That the best you’ve got, hyung?” He brings one of his hands up to Yoongi’s face and traces his thumb along the corner of his bottom lip; Yoongi lets his lip go soft so that, when Jimin removes his thumb, his lip bounces. Jimin does it again, just so he can watch the movement a second time.

“You gonna kiss me or what, Park Jimin?” Yoongi asks, his hands tightening just a little around Jimin’s waist.

“And they say romance is dead,” Jimin sighs, shaking his head before leaning in and pressing his lips against Yoongi’s.

It’s nice – Jimin likes kissing, he likes kissing people he’s comfortable with, and he’s comfortable with Yoongi – and while he’d quite happily continue with what they’re doing, the name of the game here is escalation. Jimin is here to win.

Unfortunately, so is Yoongi.

Jimin runs his tongue along the line of Yoongi’s lips; Yoongi immediately responds by opening his mouth, followed swiftly by slipping his tongue into Jimin’s mouth. Jimin threads his fingers through Yoongi’s hair; Yoongi breaks away, only to immediately start kissing down the line of Jimin’s throat. Jimin moves his hands again, this time to Yoongi’s shoulders, presses down with just enough force that Yoongi falls back, his back resting against the couch; Yoongi immediately pulls Jimin with him, yanking his hips forward so that, when Jimin settles, he’s resting right against –

“Are you two actually going to fuck, right here, on a Tuesday?” Namjoon asks loudly. “Just to win a game of chicken?”

In all honesty, Jimin had forgotten their audience entirely. Judging by the blotchy flush blooming on his cheeks, so had Yoongi.

“Do you forfeit, hyung?” Jimin asks, a little breathier than he’d intended.

“What? No!” Yoongi says indignantly. “Do you?”

“No,” Jimin says, making himself comfortable in his position on Yoongi’s crotch; the movement makes Yoongi inhale sharply before he huffs out a laugh.

“Okay, call it a draw!” Seokjin says, laughing too. “You absolute gremlins, you can’t actually fuck each other to win a sleepover game.”

Jimin begs to differ; the way he sees it, it’s a win-win for him. Either Yoongi chickens out, meaning Jimin wins the game, or Yoongi doesn’t chicken out, and he gets to have some great sex (he’s not an idiot – a man who writes the lyrics Yoongi does can’t possibly be bad in bed). However, there’s a look in Yoongi’s eyes that he can’t identify, a look that could be anything on the sliding scale from horny to panicked. He doesn’t want Yoongi to feel pressured into anything in an attempt to beat Jimin at a game he can’t possibly win, so he shuffles back a little.

Yoongi’s hands tighten again on his waist. “Are you actually chickening out?”

“You heard what Seokjin said – we can’t fuck each other at Tae and Jeongguk’s bachelor party.”

“Since when have you listened to what Seokjin’s said?” Yoongi asks. The look in his eyes isn’t going away – for the first time in their long friendship, Yoongi is an enigma to him. What does he want? Does he want to have sex, right here, on Taehyung and Jeongguk’s apartment floor?

“We can’t have sex here on the floor,” Jimin repeats. “But I’m not chickening out.”

“There’s other stuff you can do,” Jeongguk pipes up. “If neither of you want to chicken out, then you could just pretend to date.”

“People don’t pretend to date in real life-” Namjoon starts; Hoseok holds up a hand, leans forward.

“Let the man finish, Namjoon,” he says curiously. “What would fake-date chicken look like?”

“I dunno, I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,” Jeongguk admits, staring down into his beer bottle. “But you know what they’re like, they’ll take it too far, have sex, and then not be able to look each other in the eye for weeks, and I don’t want them to be weird at my wedding. Plus I don’t want to have to deep-clean the floor. Thought I’d offer an alternative.”

“It’s a good idea,” Taehyung says, patting him on the knee. Jimin sits down next to Yoongi, wiggling into the space between him and Seokjin until they make room for him.

“It sounds like fun, right?” Jimin asks Yoongi as the group breaks off for a bit into smaller conversations.

“What, pretend dating?” Yoongi asks; Jimin nods. “Sounds like Jeongguk’s been watching too many romcoms in the run up to his wedding.”

“No, think about it,” Jimin presses. “We just had fun kissing, right?”

“I suppose?” Yoongi says slowly.

“And we could go on fun dates! And then, when I win-”

“Which you wouldn’t-”

“When I win,” Jimin repeats. “I’ll get bragging rights forever.” He holds out his hand for Yoongi to shake, certain of the logic of this argument. Yoongi misconstrues it, though, takes Jimin’s hand with his opposite hand and holds it between them. “I mean, I was going for a handshake to seal the deal, but this is nice, too.” Yoongi ignores him, although when Jimin turns to talk to Seokjin and Namjoon, Yoongi squeezes his hand periodically.

Jimin wakes, slowly, to a cottony mouth, the low sound of mumbled voices, and the light touch of something on his head. The voices are too low to make out, but they’re nice to listen to – however, after a while of dozing the dryness in his mouth becomes too annoying to ignore, so he blinks himself fully awake. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he hasn’t moved far from where he last remembers being, curled up close to the couch.

“Morning,” Yoongi croaks sleepily from above him. He’s got his head pillowed in Yoongi’s lap and, when he turns to look at Yoongi, he’s smiling crookedly down at him. “You sleep well? You were out like a light.”

“Should’ve shoved me off,” Jimin says, sitting up and stretching his arms above his head. “Wouldn’t have minded.”

“You looked comfy,” Yoongi says, shrugging. “Hyung and I were gonna go grab some breakfast, want to come?”

“Mmm.” Jimin blinks again, rearranges his shirt from where it had ridden up while he stretched, and stands up. “Yeah.” He holds out his hand to help pull Yoongi up; once he’s stood up, Yoongi doesn’t let go.

“He holds hands, like, all the time,” Hoseok had said the night before – Jimin had never really noticed, but the feeling of Yoongi’s hand in his truly isn’t an unfamiliar one. However, they don’t usually hold hands for as long as they are now, walking through the relatively quiet streets around Taehyung and Jeongguk’s apartment. Since Jimin last walked around this part of Seoul, they’ve started planting tree saplings along the sidewalks; their delicate, spindly branches being held in place with supports and tree guards in place to protect the young trunks.

They’re still hand in hand even as the three of them enter the coffee shop, although, by this point, Jimin’s hand is starting to get kind of sweaty. Yoongi still hasn’t made any attempt to pull away though, and Jimin will not be the first one to break here.

“What do you want?” Yoongi asks Jimin, peering into the glass display in front of the cashier. There’re more desserts on offer than savoury options, including a huge rainbow of macarons; eventually, Jimin points at a financier cake.

“And a coffee, please,” he adds. If he’s going to stay in this game and not get accused of being too chicken to initiate anything, he’s going to need to start pulling his weight – he leans over and kisses Yoongi on the cheek, revelling in the immediate blush it brings up. “Thanks, hyung.”

“Yeah, thanks, Yoongi-yah,” Seokjin says, smacking a kiss onto Yoongi’s head.

“I’m not buying your breakfast,” Yoongi says immediately. “I’m fake dating Jimin, not you.”

“All those years we were roommates, years of friendship, thrown away because you’re chasing after fake ass.” Seokjin pretends to wipe away a tear.

“My ass is very much real,” Jimin says.

Yoongi nods. “That’s true.” And then he reaches over with the hand not currently holding Jimin’s and slips it into Jimin’s back pocket.

He seems to immediately regret this move, because it puts them in a position more suitable for a club dance floor at midnight, not a coffee shop at ten in the morning. Sensing a potential weakness to exploit, Jimin brings his hand up to the side of Yoongi’s neck, cups it gently, and then pulls himself closer.

“Sirs,” the cashier says tiredly. “Your order’s ready.”

“Please don’t mind them,” Seokjin says cheerily as Jimin and Yoongi stare each other down, daring one another to be the first to break away. “They’re idiots.” He takes the bag of food from the counter, forcibly places it into Jimin’s hand, pulls Yoongi’s hand from Jimin’s pocket, and wraps it around the drinks holder. “There, now you stubborn assholes won’t escalate this so far that we have to bail you out of jail for public indecency.”

“Yoongi started it,” Jimin mutters, swinging their still clasped hands.

“Uh, no?” Yoongi replies. “You started this by sitting in my lap.”

They argue about it on their way back to Taehyung and Jeongguk’s apartment, and whenever Jimin feels as though he’s losing the argument he swings their hands more frantically so that, by the time they get to Taehyung and Jeongguk’s door, their arms are almost doing a full circle.

Before Jimin can do a complete circle, Yoongi huffs and throws Jimin’s arm around his shoulder, holding his hand in place with his own.

“Stop it,” Yoongi says, rolling his eyes. “You’re so annoying.”

As though he hadn’t been swinging their hands just as frantically. “You started it,” Jimin repeats petulantly.

“Is this your plan? Annoy me into giving up?”

“Why?” Jimin grins. “Is it working?”

Yoongi makes a ‘tch’ noise. “I’ve been your friend this long, haven’t I? Going to take much more than being annoying to get me to give up, considering you’re annoying every day.” He darts forward and kisses Jimin before he can reply, a quick peck on the mouth that’s more teasing and playful than any kiss Jimin’s had before; Yoongi pulls back with a huge grin.

“Ugh, you’re so annoying,” Jimin huffs, following behind Seokjin as he leads them into the apartment.

The noise of them coming in seems to be what makes everyone start waking up - Hoseok emerges from the guest bedroom, Taehyung and Jeongguk come out of their bedroom, Namjoon pops up suddenly from behind the couch. Jimin expects some sort of reaction to the fact that he and Yoongi are still holding hands, but everyone goes about their business like normal. When he gets up to sit in Yoongi’s lap, all that happens is that Namjoon murmurs his thanks and goes to sit in Jimin’s former seat. It’s only when Yoongi literally begins feeding him bits of his cake, something citrusy and sharp, that Jeongguk looks up, blinks, and says, “Oh, you’re still doing that?”

“Well, I’ve not won yet,” Jimin sniffs, turning his nose up in the air before quickly turning back to the mouthful of cake Yoongi is offering him. He opens his mouth around it, then pauses, before slowly closing his lips around Yoongi’s fingers, looking at him through his eyelashes.

However, he expects Yoongi to pull his fingers back, so when he doesn’t, he’s left sitting on Yoongi’s lap with Yoongi’s fingers in his mouth. He can’t chew on the bite of cake, either, so that’s just sitting in his mouth, too. So, he closes his lips tighter, hollows his cheeks, and pulls back off of Yoongi’s fingers.

Yoongi leaves his fingers lightly touching Jimin’s bottom lip; his gaze on Jimin’s mouth feels much heavier. Suddenly, he laughs, pulling his hand back from Jimin’s mouth and wrapping his arm around Jimin’s waist.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin’s sitting at his desk, spinning uselessly in his office chair while he waits for a Zoom call to start. He’s not looking forward to it, honestly – he’s been trying to get the ball rolling on planning permission for the youth centre he works at to expand into the vacant building they’re situated next door to, and the councillor from the city planning committee he’s been talking to has been unhelpful at best. Today’s Zoom call is just set to be yet another repeat of the last three, where Jimin outlines their plans, the councillor assures him he’s working on it, then nothing happens beyond that.

He's just considering how he’d go about faking an internet outage when his phone vibrates.

It’s a photo from Yoongi of what looks like two ticket stubs, although the photo is focused on the barcodes, rather than what the tickets are actually for. Jimin sends a ‘?’ back, which Yoongi immediately responds to by video calling him. The call opens on a shot of Yoongi from underneath his chin at a weird angle, suggesting that his phone is laying on his desk.

“You’re such an old man,” Jimin says cheerfully. He’s working on his own in the office at the moment, but he’d answer the phone even if the office was full – he’s the youngest in an office almost exclusively filled with older women, so he tends to get away with a lot. “I know you’re a pretty good photographer and videographer, why have you just sent me a blurry shot of two barcodes, and why am I talking to your jawline?” Slowly, Yoongi’s hand appears in view of his phone camera; once it’s fully in frame, he flips Jimin off. “Nice. Is this how you treat all your boyfriends?”

“Just the ones I like,” Yoongi says, picking up his phone and bringing it up to a more conventional video calling angle. “Joon and I got tickets to a performance we loaned one of our instrumentals to, but he can’t make it - want to come?”

“As a date?” Jimin asks. Yoongi hums in response, turning to look at something off screen. “Yeah, that sounds like fun,” Jimin says, already cursing himself for not taking the initiative to invite Yoongi on a date first. He waits until Yoongi looks back at his phone before he continues, voice low, “I’ll dress up nice for you, hyung.”

Yoongi, for a moment, looks so surprised that Jimin briefly wonders if Yoongi’s somehow misheard him. Eventually, his expression clears into a grin and he, mockingly sleazy, looks Jimin up and down through the camera. “Yeah, I bet you will.”

Jimin laughs so loud and so hard that he almost falls out of his chair with the force of it; when he finally rights himself, Yoongi is smiling at him, bright and toothy, and Jimin feels as though he’s being warmed by the first really sunny day of spring, his heart sweet and soft like a peach.

“Does this make me look fuckable, or like I’m about to get on stage and announce a new model of a smart phone?” Jimin says, holding up the thick black sweater he’d been considering.

“Hello to you too,” Jeongguk says wryly as, off screen, Taehyung calls out, “You always look fuckable!”

“Neither of those comments were helpful,” Jimin says, waggling the sweater a little. “Yes or no?”

Taehyung appears in frame, pressing his head up against Jeongguk’s. “What about that other one? You know, the mock turtleneck with the shorter sleeves?” It takes Jimin a moment to find it in his closet, but he eventually unearths it from where it had become buried underneath a mountain of leggings. When he shows it to them both, Taehyung nods. “Pair it with some black trousers.”

Jeongguk suddenly frowns. “Are you actually going to sleep with Yoongi-hyung?”

“I just want to look like I will as part of our game,” Jimin says, before he frowns, too. “Why, what’s wrong with sleeping with Yoongi-hyung?”

“Nothing!” Jeongguk insists. “That’s not what I meant. He’s on both of our lists, after all.”

“The people we’d happily let the other one sleep with, if the opportunity arose,” Taehyung explains, which makes something swoop in Jimin’s stomach. Whatever it is must play across Jimin’s face, because Taehyung quickly clarifies, “Don’t worry, you’re on both of our lists, too.”

It doesn’t help with whatever the feeling is, but it makes Jimin laugh anyway. “Well, I should hope so!”

He doesn’t know where Yoongi’s taking him, but he’s glad he’s dressed up when Yoongi turns up at his apartment in a very nice dress shirt. Because Jimin tends to see Yoongi dressed in comfortable, oversized clothes, he forgets that Yoongi has very nice arms, but the black shirt he’s wearing curves incredibly well around the swell of his biceps.

“You look good,” Yoongi says, eyeing the line of Jimin’s cuff where it cuts off at his elbow; he tries to subtly flex his forearm muscles, but they’re not exactly an easy muscle to flex without being incredibly obvious about it.

“So do you,” Jimin replies. When he leans in to kiss Yoongi, he uses the opportunity to put his hands on Yoongi’s shoulders, and hums at the muscle he feels there. “You’ve gotten strong,” Jimin says when he pulls back. He doesn’t mean it as part of their game, but Yoongi grins anyway.

“Yeah?”

Jimin nods, squeezes his shoulders, and then pulls his hands back in order to hold Yoongi’s hand. The size difference between their hands is borderline ridiculous, but he finds that he quite likes it. “What’re you taking me to see?”

“Can it be a surprise?” Yoongi says, watching as Jimin locks up his apartment - it’s surprisingly difficult to do one-handed, but Jimin struggles through it anyway. “I think you’ll like it.”

Jimin’s honestly not sure what to think when they arrive at the Seoul Arts Center. The event posters have left him none the wiser as to what they’ll be watching, just an esoteric black silhouette on a red background of a person who could be doing anything from dancing to gesticulating to singing. Yoongi’s picked up two programmes, but he’s refused to let Jimin look at them.

“It’s not going to be a surprise if you read the programme, Jimin-ah,” Yoongi repeats as Jimin pretends to make another attempt at stealing the programme from him.

“But what if you’ve provided a song for something I know nothing about?” Jimin says, poking Yoongi’s side. “What if you’ve done a song for a musical version of, I don’t know, what’s that English play where they just stand around talking?”

“That’s… Most plays,” Yoongi says. “Are you talking about Waiting for Godot? That was originally French, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jimin says. “But I would, if you give me enough time to check the programme so I can look up the things I don’t know online.”

“I can promise you, I haven’t provided any music for a musical adaptation of Waiting for Godot,” Yoongi says. “And I’d be very surprised if you need to look up anything. You probably know more about it than I do.” He quickly scans the programme, tilting it away from Jimin in order to look at it. Once he’s done, he peers over the top edge of it at Jimin. “My music’ll be in the first performance - once that’s done, you can look at the programme as much as you want.”

Jimin hums, satisfied, and kicks his feet back and forth a little as they wait for everyone to get settled. Their seats, due to Yoongi and Namjoon having provided music, are up in one of the boxes, giving Jimin a pretty nice view of the stage - if he leans forward, he can rest his arms on the balcony guardrail.

“Wait,” he says, running back over what Yoongi had just said. “I thought you said this was yours and Namjoon’s music?” Yoongi blinks. “Earlier - when you invited me, you said you and Namjoon had provided a track, which was why you had two tickets, but just now you only said ‘my music’.” It’s not like Yoongi at all - he’s usually meticulous about crediting collaborators, but especially Namjoon. According to Namjoon, he’s even credited him on tracks where Namjoon’s only provided a word, or a suggestion of a chord progression.

As the house lights start to dim, Jimin can see the start of a blush rising to Yoongi’s cheeks, but the orchestra starts tuning before Yoongi can provide an explanation.

Despite himself, Jimin can feel excitement rise in his stomach as the oboe’s A note rings through the theatre, and the curtain starts to slowly rise. It’s been a few years since he was in school, studying for a degree he uses very little at the moment, but the sound of an orchestra rising as the din of an audience falls to a hush still brings a smile to his face.

Twenty-four dancers come on stage, and if the number of dancers or the giant set piece of a clock onstage didn’t give it away, then the choreography would - he’s watching Coppelia’s Waltz of the Hours.

Or… He is, but he isn’t, at the same time. The dancers might be performing Waltz of the Hours, but the orchestra is playing a completely different piece of music - Yoongi’s music. Yoongi’s dreamy, woozy instrumentation, with its swooping xylophone and muted percussion, changes the choreography from rigid clockwork to something almost fluid, the ballerinas’ bourrée matching perfectly with Yoongi’s suspended strings before joy seemingly overcomes them, the xylophone sweeping back in and the ballerinas performing perfect sissonnes. It’s fascinating to watch and, by the time it’s over, Jimin finds himself practically leaning over the guardrail to get a better look at the choreography.

Once the audience have finished clapping and the dancers have exited the stage to make way for the next performance, he sinks back into his chair, turns to Yoongi, grips his thigh, and shakes it a little; when Yoongi grins at him, a little sheepishly, he shakes him again, partly to emphasise how excited he is, partly just because he can.

The rest of the performance is brilliant, various ballet choreographies performed to music that, according to the programme he’s finally allowed to look at, has been provided by local composers, but nothing grips him like Coppelia set to Yoongi’s music.

“The demo’s ancient,” Yoongi explains over dinner that Jimin had insisted on treating him to - a small part of him is tangentially aware that this is supposed to be a competition, and taking Jimin on a date to watch a musically interesting ballet performance has given Yoongi an edge, but mostly Jimin just wants to spend longer with Yoongi, to pick his brain about his music. “I’m talking second mixtape ancient.”

“That’s so cool,” Jimin says earnestly. “I think if I was to look at anything I’d done from that long ago I’d probably pass out from embarrassment - I wouldn’t be able to repurpose it into anything cool.”

“I’m sure you could,” Yoongi says softly, nudging his knee against Jimin’s. The barstools in the hole in the wall place Jimin had chosen have footrests that’re a little uncomfortably high for the two of them, so when Yoongi knocks their knees together, he ends up pressing most of his thigh up against Jimin’s. “But I used to think that way, too,” Yoongi continues, shifting his leg away again. “It’s only recently that I’ve been able to look at my older stuff as a resource to be mined, rather than as a stain on my creative output.” He starts bouncing his leg up and down a little, not meeting Jimin’s eye. “And, uh, sorry for lying to you about Namjoon and I writing the song.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jimin says with a shrug. “You’re probably just used to saying that you’ve co-written a song with Namjoon, right?” Yoongi nods, mouth pressed together in a line - he still looks a little uncomfortable, so Jimin knocks their shoulders together. “Seriously, hyung, don’t worry about it. What you should be worrying about is just how amazing our next date is going to be.”

That draws a smile out of Yoongi, and he finally meets Jimin’s eye again. “Oh? Have something in mind, Park Jimin?”

Jimin taps his own nose with his finger. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

“Why did I even say it?” Jimin moans, flopping over both the arms of Jeongguk’s armchair and Jeongguk himself, like he’s clothes on a drying rack. He can hear Taehyung in the kitchen and, from this new angle, he can see his shadow – it looks like he’s dancing while he’s doing dishes, which makes Jimin smile, before he remembers he’s supposed to be griping to Jeongguk. “I don’t have any ideas for dates, let alone dates that’re better than that one! Why set myself up like that?”

“Why do you say so many things, hyung?” Jeongguk says, patting the back of one of Jimin’s thighs comfortingly. Or, it starts out comforting – it quickly shifts into a little drum recital, but Jimin appreciates the attempt all the same. “This whole thing is a bit silly, don’t you think?”

Jimin looks up indignantly, propping himself up on his elbows. “Hang on, this was your idea!”

“Yeah, while I was drunk,” Jeongguk says with a slight eyeroll. “I also told Taehyung that night that I wanted to replace all of our lights with galaxy projectors. And now we don’t have any galaxy projectors, because I said that I wanted them while I was drunk.”

Jimin flops back down again. “Well, it’s too late to back out now.”

“It really isn’t-”

“If I back down now, then Yoongi-hyung wins spin the bottle chicken,” Jimin says, pressing his forehead against the arm of the chair.

“Do you… Hear the words coming out of your mouth right now?” Jeongguk asks wryly.

“Yes, and I know it’s silly, and no, I don’t know why I care so much.” Jimin sighs. “But it was such a good date, you know? He deserves a good date too - before I inevitably win our game, that is.”

“…Alright,” Jeongguk says with a slight sigh. He pushes at Jimin’s thighs until he rolls onto the floor in a heap. “We’ll circle back to why you feel the need to do this some other time - just think about why you liked the date Yoongi-hyung took you on, then just… Do that, but for him?”

“Praum?” Yoongi asks curiously, turning over the ticket Jimin has just presented to him.

“Have you already been?” Jimin asks, putting his own ticket in his pocket.

Yoongi shakes his head. “I’ve heard of it.” He taps his thumbnail to the museum’s full name on the ticket. “Obviously I’ve heard of it, it’s a musical instrument museum. I’ve just never had a chance to go.” He continues to stare down at the ticket.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Jimin says hastily, reaching out to take the ticket back.

Yoongi twitches it out of Jimin’s reach. “That’s not it, I was just thinking about how I’ll need to step up my game after this date. Can’t have you winning, my pride’s at stake.”

Jimin snorts and pulls his hand back.

The Praum Museum is a little out of the way for an after-work date, so they’re going on the weekend, even though that means they’re contending with the tourist crowd, even busier than normal as the spring weather starts to warm into more summery days. There’s a brief moment where, after skirting around their third school field trip, Jimin worries that he’s accidentally taken Yoongi on a date to a children’s activity centre.

“Relax,” Yoongi murmurs in his ear as they walk past the room where children whack away at xylophones, exuberantly ring bells, and throw Lego blocks at one another. “The actual exhibitions are upstairs.”

The difference in noise levels is like night and day once they get upstairs - the exhibition halls are hushed, almost reverential, as people peer down at the museum labels next to intricate instruments.

“I wish the museum included a way to hear the instruments,” Jimin says, hovering close to a lute hanging up on the wall. “I can sort of tell based on how it looks, but it’d be nice, you know?”

Yoongi hums, pulls out his phone and earbuds, then offers one to Jimin. “It won’t be perfect, but here.” He pulls up an app, and Jimin bends his head closer to get a look; it looks like a much more technical version of GarageBand. He starts tapping away, and music fills Jimin’s head - it sounds vaguely like a guitar, in that it’s clearly a stringed instrument, but the notes coming through Yoongi’s headphone are bright and melodic, crisp like an apple.

“Can’t believe you can play…” Jimin looks at the museum label. “An early eighteenth century lute, specifically a mandora from Germany, constructed with-” Yoongi laughs, a little too loudly for the museum; he covers his mouth to try to hide an embarrassed grin too wide for him to cover completely. Jimin reaches out for his hand to reveal the full force of his smile, holds Yoongi’s hand in his, and pulls him along to the next instrument.

Yoongi plays a little of each instrument they stop at through his music production app, even plays one of his own compositions when they come up to a taepyeongso. When they stop in front of a violin in its own, special glass case, Jimin looks at Yoongi expectantly - he knows what a violin sounds like, obviously, but he wants to hear one of the many songs he knows Yoongi’s written with violin accompaniments.

Surprisingly, Yoongi snorts. “I can’t mimic a Stradivarius on my phone.”

“You could if you weren’t a coward,” Jimin teases, looking down at the violin. It looks like any old violin to Jimin - at a push, he’d say that the wood was a nice colour. It’s obviously pretty important, though, judging by its glass case, the blown-up photograph of the maker’s label displayed prominently in front of it, and by Yoongi’s delighted expression when he looks at it.

He listens, impressed, as Yoongi tells him about the violin in much more detail than the little information plaque goes into - theories about how most Stradivarius violins sound little different to their counterparts made by other experienced luthiers, but that, for the absolute best examples, there’s evidence that the wood composition has something to do with why they sound so good.

“…a mini ice age in that area of Europe led to trees growing a little stunted, with these dense trunks that are perfect for… What?” Yoongi asks suddenly, looking over at Jimin.

“What?” Jimin replies, confused. “I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you…” He trails off, tilting his head as he examines Jimin’s face, before he turns away. “Never mind. Come on, we’re blocking everyone’s view.”

They pass by a room set up for miniature concerts - no one is performing, but a screen is set up to seemingly play concerts and performances indefinitely, and a few of the museum’s visitors are loitering around as, on screen, a violinist tunes her violin. Jimin expects them to keep walking, but Yoongi slows almost to a crawl, hovering by the door.

“Want to go in, hyung?” Jimin asks.

“I - just for a little?” Yoongi replies. He squints at the screen. “I think it’s Soyoung Yoon about to play Sibelius-” Jimin pulls him into the room to sit at the back just as the conductor raises his baton.

Jimin’s not overly familiar with European classical music - he knows the popular names and the pieces he danced to in ballet classes, can hum pieces that are used often in dramas and adverts - but he likes what he’s hearing. The piece is slow, almost haunting, like a mournful siren.

“Sorry,” Yoongi says as they leave the room after a few moments. “I know sitting and watching a recording of a violinist from over a decade ago isn’t exactly an exciting date activity.”

Jimin shakes his head so furiously that his hair flops with the motion of it. “Dates are about having fun, right? So, if you’re having fun, I’m having fun.” He checks his phone. “We’ve still got a bit of time before our dinner reservation, if you want to go back in and watch the whole performance?”

“No, I think I want to see the rest of the museum.” He looks sidelong at Jimin. “Dinner as well, hmm? You’ve really gone all out with this date.”

“Ah, what can I say?” Jimin says, faux-modest. “I’m just that good at dating. If you want to give up now, I’d understand-”

“I don’t think that’s what I said,” Yoongi interrupts, knocking his shoulder gently into Jimin’s. “If anything, this just puts us on an equal playing field - the only difference is that you made a reservation for dinner.”

“Well, then, I’ll just play the long game,” Jimin says. “A war of attrition.”

“That’s a super weird thing to say to someone you’re dating,” Jeongguk says, shoving his leg into his suit trousers.

“We’re not dating,” Jimin says immediately. He’s over at Jeongguk and Taehyung’s apartment again, helping them both as they try on their wedding suits for the final time. This, bizarrely, seems to be the only tradition they’re both strictly adhering to, despite having been shopping with each other to buy the suits - they’d both been very firm on the fact that they didn’t want to see each other in their suits until their wedding day.

However, rather than trying on their suits separately - at separate times, or even in separate rooms of their apartment - they’ve hung a sheet of fabric in their sitting room so that they can both show Jimin their suits whilst not showing one another. It’s giving their sitting room the distinct vibe of a home theatre performance.

“If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck,” Taehyung says, tying his tie with habitual ease.

“We’re not a duck,” Jimin says. “We’re just… Pretending to be a duck? Like that story with the swan.”

“Swans are just gay ducks,” Jeongguk says, shrugging on his suit jacket before spreading his hands, posing demonstratively. Jimin gives him a thumbs up. “Is that it?” Jeongguk lowers his hands. “I come to you, on the day before my wedding-”

“That’s not how that speech goes,” Jimin interrupts. He puts his other thumb up, too. “Ten out of ten, would bang if you weren’t marrying my soulmate.”

“That’s all I ask,” Jeongguk says. He holds his hand up to the sheet. “I wish I could show you too.”

“You literally could,” Jimin points out as Taehyung presses his own hand to Jeongguk’s. “Nobody asked or expected you to follow this tradition.” As they pull their hands away, the sheet, precariously hung, flutters to the ground; Taehyung squawks and screws his eyes shut, while Jeongguk slaps the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Hyung! Help!” Jeongguk says, spinning on the spot as though he’s forgotten where Jimin’s standing.

Jimin puts his hands on Jeongguk’s shoulders to stop him from spinning, then bustles him off towards the bathroom. “You’re lucky I love you both,” he grumbles, only mostly joking; once Jeongguk is safely sequestered inside, he turns to Taehyung. “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

Taehyung opens his eyes cautiously, then offers Jimin a grin when he sees the coast is clear. “Thank you for saving our wedding, Jimin-ah.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jimin says, waving his hand as he sits down on their couch. “Genuinely though, why bother with this tradition specifically?”

Taehyung hums. “I think… Most wedding traditions we read about seemed silly or not worth our time, and others we just can’t do, like the sweet old tradition of, you know, having our marriage be legally recognised in this country.” He rolls his eyes, and then sets to work taking his suit off. “But with this one… It felt like it’d be nice, getting to see one another in our suits for the first time while we were getting married. Sort of like an ‘oh, there you are, finally’ moment, you know?” He looks up at Jimin and smiles, a little sheepishly. “Ah, Jeongguk explains it a lot better.”

“I think you explained it just fine,” Jimin says softly. As Taehyung continues taking his suit off, Jimin thinks about their wedding – it’s a pretty small guestlist, small enough that Jimin thinks he knows almost everyone. He doesn’t even think anyone’s bringing a plus-one that he doesn’t already know.

He quickly pulls out his phone and holds it up for a video call.

“I thought you were helping with suit fittings today?” Yoongi asks immediately – no greeting, nothing. He’s outside somewhere, but Jimin can’t tell where because, once again, he’s looking at Yoongi from a terrible angle.

“They’re more or less done, want to see?” Jimin doesn’t give him chance to respond, turning his phone around so that the camera shows Taehyung with his suit jacket off, shirt mostly unbuttoned, and one leg out of his pants. Taehyung looks up at Jimin, blinks, then offers a straight-faced thumbs up.

“Looks great,” Yoongi replies flatly. “Is that the look you’re going for? Maybe I need to rethink my outfit.”

“I dare you to show up with only one leg in your trousers,” Jimin says, turning the phone back around.

Yoongi’s got his phone at a different terrible angle while he takes a sip of his drink; as he purses his lips around his straw, he glances down at his phone and raises an eyebrow. “Are you kidding?” He asks, his voice a little thick from whatever he’s drinking. “Jeongguk would never speak to me again.”

“Why wouldn’t I speak to you, hyung?” Jeongguk asks, poking his head out of the door with his eyes closed. “Jagiya, can I look at you?”

Taehyung hums in agreement, while Yoongi says, “Because Jimin-ah’s trying to convince me to go to your wedding with only one trouser leg on.”

“What Jimin-ssi asks you to do for his weird kinks should be kept to your own lives,” Jeongguk says sternly. “Not my wedding. I’d still talk to you though, Yoongi-hyung.”

“It’d be hyung’s bare-ass leg out at your wedding!” Jimin protests; he can hear Yoongi’s laugh coming through his phone speakers.

“Because you asked him to do that,” Jeongguk says. “You should know better.”

“Unbelievable,” Jimin mutters, turning his attention back to his screen. “Speaking of the wedding, I actually called to ask if you wanted to go together.”

“I’m already going?” Yoongi says, his confusion inflecting his statement into a question.

“No, I meant go together,” Jimin clarifies. Yoongi moves his phone again, although Jimin can’t see what he’s doing this time – all he can see is a path and a bicycle wheel. “Is Namjoon-hyung there?”

Yoongi brings his phone back, this time at a much more typical video calling angle. He tilts the phone so that Jimin can see Namjoon peering past his shoulder; Namjoon offers him a grin. “How did you know?”

“Bicycle wheel,” Jimin says. “And if hyung’s not bike riding with me, he’s usually with you.” He frowns. “Where’s your bike?”

“I was stood on the back,” Yoongi says, showing Jimin the little footstand Namjoon’s got attached to his bike.

“Having the extra weight is good training for my legs,” Namjoon explains. He skews his mouth to the side, and then sighs. “Although hyung doesn’t actually weigh that much.”

Yoongi snorts. “Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as big and muscly as you and Jeongguk-ah.” He focuses on Jimin again, turning the camera so that it’s just him in frame. “So, you want to escalate our game by going on a date to our best friends’ wedding? Pretty bold step, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin honestly hadn’t thought of it that way, but, he supposes, Yoongi’s right – taking a partner to an important wedding is a pretty big move, especially considering that it’s technically Yoongi’s turn to plan a date.

Rather than say any of this, though, Jimin just makes quiet clucking noises.

“Didn’t say I wouldn’t go,” Yoongi says quickly. Jimin can hear Namjoon make a noise that could be a sigh or a laugh. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at eight?”

“Half seven!” Taehyung says; Jimin blinks at him. Taehyung blinks back.

Jimin nods at Yoongi. “Half seven, please.”

The wedding venue is a huge gallery space owned by a photographer Taehyung had once modelled for back in university – a cavernous, almost industrial-looking space with white brick walls and a wooden floor that wouldn’t look out of place on the deck of an old ship. However, it’s been decorated beautifully, with rows of white chairs bookended with big blue urns of white flowers, all facing a backdrop of watercolour blue and pale orange panels that Jimin has watched Jeongguk painstakingly paint for the past four months in this very studio.

It all looks lovely, and Taehyung is hunched by one of the urns, quietly losing it.

“It’s stupid,” he’s saying very quickly. Jimin is squatting across the aisle from him, and has been squatting for long enough that his feet are starting to ache in his fancy dress shoes. “I know we love each other. And still I’m sitting here panicking over every little thing that could go wrong.”

“If something goes wrong,” Jimin explains patiently. “You have five groomsmen to take care of it for you.”

Taehyung’s laugh sounds strained. “Nothing’s even changing legally between us, it’s ridiculous for me to be sat here like ‘Oh, what if it turns out Jeongguk’s allergic to the flowers?’ even though Jeongguk would’ve definitely mentioned that before now-”

“He would’ve,” Jimin agrees. “Also, hey – it might not be legally binding or whatever, but you’re still making a life-changing choice. Change is scary, it’s perfectly natural to be apprehensive.” He has it on good authority – Seokjin – that Jeongguk is currently having an identical crisis in the room they’ve set aside for the reception, but both he and Seokjin have agreed only to mention this anecdote to them once they’ve been married for at least 24 hours.

“I just want it to be done,” Taehyung says. “But also not. I want this day to never end, and I want it to be tomorrow already. Does that make sense?”

“Totally,” Jimin says, reaching across the aisle. Seemingly subconsciously, Taehyung takes his hand. “Taehyungie, I can’t promise you that someone won’t trip on one of these wood panels on the floor, or that one of the drapes in the reception room won’t fall to the ground during the speeches, or that the Wi-Fi won’t cut out during your ‘Wedding Jazz and Pop call it Wedding Jop’ playlist, or that-”

“Thank you for these brand new anxieties!” Taehyung says, a little hysterically. “But is there a ‘but’ coming anytime soon?”

“But,” Jimin acquiesces. “I can promise you that the second you see Jeongguk walking down the aisle, this’ll all feel more than worth it.”

He still looks like he’s hanging on by a thread, but Taehyung nods, straightens up, and fixes his suit. He looks so handsome and grown up that Jimin already feels like crying, and the wedding hasn’t even properly started yet.

Jimin stands and looks up at the decorative drapes hanging from the ceiling – if he cries now, there’ll be absolutely no wedding photos at all where he won’t be red eyed, and he won’t do that to their wedding album.

Taehyung nods. “I need to piss.”

…Well, at least Jimin doesn’t feel like crying now. “Thank you for telling me, I suppose?” He says slowly.

“You need to come with me,” Taehyung says, as though this is obvious and Jimin’s the weird one for not realising. “What if Jeongguk’s in the bathroom?”

“The odds of you both needing to piss at the same time are pretty low,” Jimin points out. “But fine, all right.”

Jimin’s almost immediately proven wrong, however; he opens the bathroom door, because Taehyung had insisted he “scout the location”, and Seokjin’s lurking by the long line of sinks.

Seokjin sighs. “Jeongguk-ah, don’t come out.”

“No way!” Jeongguk says delightedly from the cubicle. “Hyung, I told you so – jagiya, how’re you? I’ve missed you.”

Taehyung shoulders past Jimin and lets himself into the cubicle next to Jeongguk’s. They don’t speak, which means…

“Are you two putting your hands on the stall walls?” Seokjin says, sounding a little repulsed. “You don’t know who’s had their hands on them!”

“Well, I’m not putting my forehead on the wall, and I wouldn’t expect Jeongguk to, either,” Taehyung says.

Jimin props himself up next to Seokjin, who shoots him a look, a commiserative nod, and a shoulder pat, in that order.

“Do you reckon they sense each other?” Seokjin asks. “Like migrating fish returning to the same place to mate every year?”

“Yoongi-hyung would absolutely call it something more sentimental, like the red string of fate,” Jimin muses. “Honestly though, I think their piss cycles have just lined up over the years.”

“That’s gross,” Seokjin says, at the same time as Jeongguk chimes in with, “That’s so romantic.” When he hears him, Seokjin wrinkles his nose.

“Well, this is a nice surprise!” Hoseok says as he walks into the bathroom; he’s followed closely by Namjoon, with Yoongi bringing up the rear, and maybe Jimin should lend more credence to Yoongi’s red string theory.

Yoongi himself comes to stand next to Jimin as Hoseok and Namjoon enter the cubicles, and Jimin takes the opportunity to look at him in his suit. He’s already seen Yoongi this morning, of course, but that had been when he’d been almost entirely focusing on getting Taehyung safely to the venue and into his suit without being spotted by Jeongguk. Now, though, he can look at him – all of the groomsmen are in matching grey suits, and Jimin, honestly, feels a little bit like a salaryman in his. Yoongi, though, looks like a salaryman in a drama, the aesthetic ideal of a salaryman, like his introduction in the show would involve him powerwalking down the street, phone pressed to his ear, only to swoop in and stop the protagonist from tripping over her own feet.

He’ll be glad when Jeongguk gets married, honestly, so he can spend less time watching romances – it’s clearly going to his head.

“Take a selca with me, hyung,” Jimin says, pulling his phone out of his pocket and waving it in front of his and Yoongi’s faces.

“So suddenly?” Yoongi says, dutifully posing for a photo with him.

“You looked handsome,” Jimin says, checking the photograph. When he looks up, he catches Seokjin turning away from Yoongi.

“Hyung?” Jeongguk calls. “I’m done.”

“Congratulations,” Seokjin says flatly.

“You need to escort me out,” Jeongguk says.

“I’m too young to be a father,” Seokjin sighs. “Taehyung, don’t come out – Jeongguk, you don’t need to have your eyes closed!” Despite his griping, he waits patiently for Jeongguk to blindly feel his way towards the sinks, wash his hands, and dry them (Jimin suspects he’s peering through his eyelashes, and is just pretending to have his eyes closed in order to wind Seokjin up) before taking him by the hand and leading him out of the bathroom.

Jimin is pleasantly surprised by just how long he manages to hold it together. He’s almost vibrating with anticipation as he stands at the end of the aisle between the seats; he smiles, so wide, as Taehyung makes his way up the aisle first, squeezing his elbow reassuringly as they wait for Jeongguk.

Taehyung stays facing forward as Jeongguk walks down the aisle, and Jimin almost feels as though his heart is bursting with pride at how well Jeongguk, who came into their lives a kid with Bambi-eyes and a trusting heart, has grown up.

But it’s the moment when Jeongguk draws up alongside Taehyung, and Taehyung finally, finally turns to look at him and says, “Oh,” when Jimin can see him relax as he looks Jeongguk up and down, smiling at Jeongguk as though he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing; that’s when Jimin’s eyes are swimming before he knows it. This time, he lets the tears fall, so proud of two of his closest friends for making it this far.

They don’t have an officiant, choosing instead to stand in front of their friends and family, and affirm their love for one another and their choice to commit the rest of their lives to each other. It is, quite literally, nothing that every single person in this room hasn’t heard them say to and about one another before, many times, but something about the act of it, of setting aside a whole day for everyone to dress up nicely and watch them both love each other earnestly and honestly, feels special.

“Okay, that’s it,” Taehyung says seriously at the end of both of their speeches; Jimin can hear a few watery chuckles from the audience. “Oh, wait, we had one last thing we wanted to do.” Jeongguk walks to one of the urns and plucks the bouquet of flowers out of it.

“No pressure,” Jeongguk says, testing the weight of the bouquet in his hand. “But if you’re one of our friends and you don’t indulge me in this, I will be so sad.” He’s clearly joking, but Jimin dutifully goes to stand with everyone else to go and catch Jeongguk’s bouquet.

He ends up stood next to Hoseok, who raises his eyebrows and then laughs. “You know, if you or Yoongi-hyung catch this, does that mean you have to go from fake dating to fake marriage?”

Jimin laughs too. “I mean, if he doesn’t call chicken at some point soon, yeah, I think we will have to get married.”

He’s not standing in the middle of the crowd, which would be the strategically optimal place to stand – assuming, of course, that Jeongguk didn’t do what he actually does, which is search Jimin out in the crowd and more or less toss the bouquet directly at his face. Thankfully, Jimin manages to catch it, but he does still end up with a face full of flower petals.

 “Fighting, Jimin-ssi,” Jeongguk says solemnly as Hoseok, giggling, helps him pick out flower petals from his hair.

Taehyung and Jeongguk’s nuptial song goes smoothly, which Jimin hadn’t had any doubts about. It’s their go-to noraebang song, and Jimin’s heard them sing it at every stage of drunkenness – lightly tipsy to “No, seriously, hyungs, this is the last song” – so he’s sure they could sing it in their sleep.

When they hand off the microphone to one of Taehyung’s friends, he starts crooning a tender song for couples to dance to. It is, Jimin realises suddenly, the perfect escalation of their game of chicken – a romantic dance at a wedding has connotations, after all – but he can’t find Yoongi. He can see Taehyung and Jeongguk dancing in the middle of the floor, a slow shuffling two-step completely beneath both of their dancing expertise, but a testament to just how caught up in the moment they both are. At the edge of the dance floor, he can see Seokjin, Hoseok, and Namjoon trying to navigate their way over to him, but one of Taehyung’s aunties not so subtly manoeuvres her daughter in Jimin’s way.

He remembers her from when he and Taehyung had been kids – solemn in her shyness, her mother had tried to encourage her to play with him and Taehyung, to varying degrees of success. She must be in her early twenties now and, with both the passing of time and Jimin’s own maturity, he can recognise a kindred spirit.

That, and she can barely take her eyes off of one of Jeongguk’s co-workers, who Jimin has gone out to enough gay bars with to know that her choice of suit is deliberate.

Taehyung’s auntie is nudging her daughter, though, so Jimin smiles at her politely. “Would you like to dance?” He offers, holding out a hand.

She nods, her blush, easily mistaken for shyness, more likely to be embarrassment, creeping up underneath her makeup.

Jimin steers her towards the dance floor, away from her mother. “Jeongyeon-noona,” he says lightly, nodding in Jeongguk’s co-worker’s vague direction. “She’s very nice. She works with Jeongguk-ah – he could probably introduce you, if you’re interested?”

“Oh,” his dance partner says. “Thank you, but…” She casts an anxious look back at her mother.

“Say no more,” Jimin says.

The song ends, and although most couples stay together, Jimin’s partner bows politely and flees the dance floor, trying to stay out of sight of her mother. Jimin wanders off too, although he doesn’t get far before he’s waylaid by another of Taehyung’s aunts. He vaguely remembers liking this one more, and this one has the added bonus of not having any daughters she’d want to set up with him.

They’re chatting politely when he hears, more than feels, somebody stand next to him. There aren’t many people in the world who would approach him with faux nonchalance like this, and his suspicions are confirmed when whoever it is very gently knocks their upper arms together.

Yoongi doesn’t say anything until Taehyung’s aunt is whisked off to dance by one of her sons. “You caught the bouquet,” he says. Jimin turns to look at him; Yoongi’s staring resolutely out at the dance floor.

“Didn’t really have much choice,” Jimin says lightly. “Jeongguk threw it at me like he was pitching a baseball.”

Yoongi nods, his mouth squashed into a line. “Do you want to dance?” He blurts out. He looks just as surprised to have said it as Jimin is to hear it.

“Yeah, I do,” he says honestly. “We missed the first song though,” he adds as they make their way to the dance floor.

“I’m sure we’ll live,” Yoongi replies wryly.

The song is one Jimin recognises from his own playlists, a little fast, a little bouncy, with English lyrics about free love. Jimin doesn’t know all of the words, but he sings along with the ones he does, spinning Yoongi around. It’s not the in-your-face romance of a slow dance to the first song at a wedding, but Jimin loves it regardless, finds himself having fun as Yoongi grins up at him from the obnoxious dip Jimin’s holding him in at the end of the song.

They all settle into Taehyung and Jeongguk’s married life with ease.

“That’s because nothing’s changed for the rest of you,” Jeongguk says flatly over video call.

“What do you mean?” Jimin says, frowning. “You’re on your honeymoon rather than here in Seoul.”

“Which is why I don’t think you can say you’ve settled in easily,” Jeongguk continues. “We’ve been married for five days.”

“And I think I’ve settled in very well,” Jimin sniffs; Jeongguk snorts.

In truth, Jimin’s not having the best few days, although he doesn’t think that’s because Taehyung and Jeongguk have gotten married. That is the best thing he has going for him at the moment, the knowledge that two of his best friends are so genuinely happy together.

No, it’s his day-to-day life that seems to be conspiring against him. Two days ago, he’d been late to work because his apartment elevator had broken down with him in it, and while his boss had been completely understanding, he’d been playing catch up for the rest of the day. Too anxious to sleep, he’d ended up exhausted yesterday, trying to catch up on tasks that just seemed to be piling up with no regard for the fact that he was having what was shaping up to be a shit week. This morning, something had gone wrong with his building’s hot water right in the middle of his shower, so he’d had to try to rinse the conditioner out of his hair with freezing water, which had taken him so long that he hadn’t had time to dry and style his hair properly – it’s left his shirt collar a little damp where his hair rests against his neck, and he can practically feel the top of it frizzing in the humidity of the city.

It doesn’t help that they’re right in the middle of a rainstorm, either, and his umbrella isn’t protecting him from the horizontal slashes of rain in the slightest. He's on his way into work, trying to simultaneously weave around commuters while facetiming Jeongguk at one of the only times their time zones are matched up, and the big, fat droplets of rain keep messing with his phone screen. As he crosses the road, he can see people giving a puddle a wide berth, but the general shape of the crowd, and Jimin’s position in it, means he’ll have no choice but to step in the puddle.

It’s as Jimin’s foot is sinking much deeper than he’d expected, water seeping through the seams in his boot that he thinks that, maybe, some days, some weeks, should just be considered write-offs. That maybe the miracle of life and the universe’s creation did not apply to days like today, and he really should’ve just stayed in bed.

He stares down at his foot, turns around, and heads back home, exiting out of the call for a moment to message his boss that he’s not feeling well, that he’ll be working from home today. His boss sends back a chain of emojis – “👍🏠💻📱😁🕴” – which Jimin resolves to send a screenshot of to Hoseok.

“Hyung, are you alright?” Jeongguk asks when Jimin opens their video call up again. “You look like you want to kill a man. It’s not me, right?”

Jimin shakes his head. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. Just a rough few days, I suppose. Little, annoying things, you know.”

“That sucks,” Jeongguk says, frowning. He squints closer at his screen. “Hyung, you’ve gone very blurry, what’s going on?”

Jimin swipes his thumb over his phone camera. “Better?” Jeongguk shakes his head, so Jimin tries to dry his phone on the inside of his coat. “How about now?”

“Uh, not really?” Jeongguk replies tentatively.

Jimin sighs. “All right. Well, I’m going back home anyway, so I’ll stick it in some rice and hope it dries out. I’ll talk to you later?”

“We’ll call you when we wake up,” Jeongguk promises, giving Jimin a wave before hanging up.

Thankfully, Jimin hadn’t gotten far from his apartment, so he’s able to get home in less than fifteen minutes. He’s in the middle of digging through his cupboards for some cheap rice that he won’t mind ruining with phone water when he hears his phone vibrate soggily on the kitchen counter.

It’s Yoongi – he’d changed his contact picture to the one he’d taken of them both at the wedding, and the photo makes him smile for a moment. Then he realises that every second his phone is not in rice could be critical for his phone’s health, so he picks up the call before immediately going back to checking his cupboards.

“Not to be rude, but this needs to be quick, my phone has a hot date with a bowl of rice,” Jimin yells in the direction of his phone.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to meet for lunch,” Yoongi says. “But you’re at home?”

“Long story,” Jimin says, finally finding a half-empty pack of rice that he can’t remember buying squashed into the corner behind his spices. As he pours some out into a bowl, he explains further. “But to cut it short, I’m working from home today.”

“Want me to bring you lunch, then? Joon and I are working a half day – we’re trying to use up some time off before-” He stops himself. “Sorry, you said this needs to be quick.”

Jimin wants to tell him to carry on talking, screw his phone, but it’ll be a pain in the ass if he doesn’t get it dry as soon as possible, so instead he says, “Lunch would be fantastic, thank you, hyung.”

“Don’t mention it,” Yoongi replies. “See you about one-ish?”

Jimin agrees, hangs up, and shoves his phone into the bowl of rice.

Whether it’s the promise of lunch with Yoongi, the comfort of being at home, or the fact that he’s finally able to catch up on his backlog of work, but he starts to feel better as the morning plods on. He checks his phone after a few hours, and it seems to be okay – his camera app seems to be working as it should, at any rate, so he uses the opportunity to send a selca to Yoongi.

Yoongi: phone working alright then?

Jimin: Yes! ☺ I was trying to facetime Jeongguk-ah this morning in the rain, which my phone didn’t like.

Yoongi doesn’t reply, which makes sense if he’s only working half a day, but Jimin finds himself checking his phone periodically for messages from him. He finally gets one, a little after one o’clock.

Yoongi: i’m outside :]

It’s almost immediately followed by Jimin’s doorbell buzzing, so he gets up from his desk to let Yoongi up. He waits by his door until Yoongi arrives, and opens it as soon as he hears Yoongi’s footsteps out in the hallway.

He’s standing there, one hand raised to knock and the other wrapped around the bottom of a basket, his eyes wide in surprise before he smiles warmly; he lifts the basket. “Delivery?”

“A picnic?” Jimin asks, stepping aside to let Yoongi into his home. In the basket, he can see a little stack of plastic boxes, two flasks, and a family-sized bag of cheese balls. “Do you just have picnics to hand? When did you have time to make this?”

“I made the kimchi jjigae last night, in the hopes that you’d be free for lunch today,” Yoongi explains. “If you weren’t, I was going to make Namjoon eat it with me. I picked up the drinks on my way over here, I borrowed the basket from Namjoon’s bike, and these,” he holds out the bag of cheese balls to Jimin. “Are for you, you sounded like you were having a rough day.” He doesn’t make eye contact as he says any of this, so there is a moment where Jimin is worried that if he says anything, he’ll burst into tears as the two of them stand in his sitting room, Yoongi holding out a bag of cheese balls between them.

“Thank you,” Jimin manages eventually around the lump in his throat. “I was.” To distract them both from just how close he sounds to crying, he leans in to kiss Yoongi. In the past few weeks of fake dating, he’s kissed Yoongi more times than he’s kissed anybody else in the last three years, and Yoongi has kissed him just as many, but something feels new about this kiss. “Thank you,” he repeats again as he pulls away.

“Don’t mention it,” Yoongi says, finally looking him in the eye again. “Want me to set this out on the table?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jimin says. “Wait here.” He returns from his bedroom with an almost brand new picnic blanket.

“I remember that, I think,” Yoongi says, watching as Jimin spreads it out on his sitting room floor. “You used it for that music festival we went to, the summer after Jeongguk finished his enlistment.”

“I did,” Jimin says, looking up from where he’d been smoothing out the corners of the blanket. Jeongguk had gone back to Busan to visit his parents as soon as he’d finished his enlistment, but they’d all met him at the train station when he’d arrived back to Seoul, early enough in the morning that the summer sun had only just risen. They’d asked him if he wanted to do something, and as soon as he’d agreed they’d dragged him to a jazz concert in a park, bags and all.

It's a fond memory for Jimin, the seven of them all back together again, but the picnic blanket doesn’t really feature strongly in it. The only reason he remembers it at all is because of the very thing it’s doing right now – the corners curling back on themselves like dying leaves.

He’s surprised Yoongi remembers it, though, although it makes sense. As a lyricist, he must notice and retain little details like that; when Jimin tries to make up a lyric in his head about his yellow and white gingham picnic blanket, he draws a complete blank.

The food Yoongi’s made is, unsurprisingly, delicious; once it’s all finished, Jimin leans back against his couch with a contented sigh, hands on his stomach.

“What time does your lunch break end?” Yoongi asks, popping one of the cheese balls in his mouth.

Jimin looks at his phone and grimaces. “Soon. Now, technically.”

“I’ll let you get back to it, then,” Yoongi says. “I’ll clean up before I go-”

“Do you have anywhere to be?” Jimin asks suddenly. “Because if not, you can just hang out here? I’ve only got a few hours left of my shift, and we can do something afterwards once I’m done for the day.”

“What did you have in mind?” Yoongi replies. “I mean, the answer is I’ve got nothing planned, and yes, I’d like to hang out, but what did you want to do?”

Jimin’s plan hadn’t gotten any further than wanting to spend more time with Yoongi, so he just shrugs and says, “Not much. We could watch a movie and order in dinner?” It’s not a grand, romantic step in their constant one-upmanship, but Yoongi nods anyway.

It becomes part of their weekly routine – Friday evenings spent at one of their places. Most weeks, they end up losing track of time, so Friday evenings bloom into Saturday mornings spent lazily pottering around.

(Most weeks, Jimin doesn’t lose track of time. He’s very aware of how late it’s getting, but he’s also aware of the sleepy smile on Yoongi’s face when he notices the time; he’s aware of how his hair pools over the side of Jimin’s thigh from where he’s fallen asleep with his head in Jimin’s lap; he’s aware of how comfy Yoongi’s bed is.)

This weekend, though, he’s not got any plans. Yoongi’s in Japan with Namjoon for two weeks to spend time writing for the Japanese division of their label, the reason why he’d been trying to use up some of his leave. They’ve barely had time to text one another, let alone video call, and Jimin’s surprised by just how quickly he’d grown used to spending every Friday, and most Saturdays, with Yoongi.

Or… Not quickly, as the case may be. He double checks on his phone – sure enough, they’ve been doing these little weekly hang outs for almost five months now, right through the summer and into the start of autumn, which means…

Jimin triple checks his math on the dates, but he draws the same conclusion again and again. He’s been fake dating Yoongi for almost six months, which officially makes this his longest relationship. It’s been a while since either of them have attempted to escalate anything, either – they’ve just sort of settled into a daily, weekly, monthly routine.

There’s a brief thought in his mind that maybe he should do something extravagant for their six month anniversary, and then he dismisses it. He doesn’t want to use something like that as a point in their game of chicken – an anniversary is something to be celebrated, even if the relationship behind it is fake.

He texts Yoongi.

Jimin: What do you want to do for our six month anniversary?

The text back isn’t immediate, nor was Jimin expecting it to be, but it does come back quicker than he’d expected it to.

Yoongi: isn't it a friday? don't we usually stay in

Jimin’s surprised by how touched he is that Yoongi not only knows the date of their fake anniversary, but the day, too – he supposes Yoongi could’ve looked it up on a calendar, but that still would have meant him considering it worthwhile enough to add to a calendar in the first place.

Jimin: Nothing stopping us staying in! Just thought I’d check, see if you wanted to do anything anniversaryish?

Yoongi does text back immediately this time, with a singular shrug emoji, which makes Jimin smile, even if it is neither use nor ornament as a response to his question. He likes thinking about Yoongi, miles and miles away, phone in his hand and waiting for Jimin to text him, just like Jimin’s waiting for Yoongi’s texts – even when they’re just shrug emojis.

Jimin: Unhelpful. I’ll take that as ‘Jimin-ah, please plan an extravagant public proposal at Lotte World’.

Yoongi replies almost instantly -

Yoongi: not unless you want an extravagant public break up at Lotte World immediately afterwards

- followed by a selca of Yoongi grimacing at his camera, nose scrunched, which Jimin immediately saves to his camera roll.

Jimin: Then give me some ideas, hyung!!!

Yoongi: i like what we normally do on fridays, though :[

Yoongi: joon says hi, by the way

Jimin: Hi, Namjoon-hyung! And we can do what we normally do on Fridays kekeke

It takes Yoongi longer to reply this time, long enough that Jimin has set his phone down, gone to heat up some left overs, and returned to the couch with his food in the time it takes Yoongi to respond.

Yoongi: did you want to do something? i didn’t mean to sound boring

Jimin: Not anything ridiculous, but I did want to celebrate it! It’s the longest I’ve ever been in a relationship, keke, feels like it’s worth celebrating? But if you want to celebrate it at home, that sounds cool, as long as we’re actually celebrating and not just vegetating in front of the television!!!

Yoongi: it's your longest relationship?

Jimin holds his phone in both hands, wishing they were having this conversation face-to-face so that he could discern Yoongi’s tone in asking. Was he teasing, that Jimin’s approaching his thirties and he’s not yet had a relationship last longer than six months? Was he confused, that Jimin was referring to their fake dating as a relationship? Was he mocking Jimin for wanting to celebrate this fake thing that both of them were too stubborn to end?

Before he can draft up a reply to send back, Yoongi sends a follow-up text.

Yoongi: we should do something

Jimin: We really don’t have to!!! Seriously, hyung, we can just hang out at your place or mine!

Yoongi responds with a screenshot of his own text saying, “we should do something”.

Jimin: Hyung, it would’ve been quicker to just send the message again kekekeke

Yoongi responds with a screenshot of his screenshot.

Infuriatingly, Yoongi refuses to talk about what their plans are for their sixth month anniversary. It doesn’t help that he’s been in Japan for the last two weeks – if he’d been at home, Jimin could just fix him with a look and Yoongi, heart soft like a peach, wouldn’t be able to resist telling him, but because of the distance between them, Jimin hasn’t been able to get it out of him.

He's home now, though, got home late last night. Jimin had stayed up to wait for the text Yoongi had promised to send him when he’d landed, and then stayed up even longer to wait for the text Yoongi had sent when he’d actually gotten home. He’s grateful he took the day off from work today, because the amount of sleep he’s gotten is pitiful.

He could’ve slept in, but instead he’s walking over to Yoongi’s place, having risked falling asleep on the subway so that he can get over there sooner rather than later. Yoongi could even still be sleeping, but he has a key – he’s hoping Yoongi is still asleep, so he can let himself in and make breakfast. Or lunch, depending on what time he actually gets up.

Jimin knocks, regardless, and is a little surprised that Yoongi actually answers the door. Not only that, but he’s dressed to go out, and he’s got his keys in hand.

“Oh,” Jimin says, feeling surprisingly knocked off course. “Did you have plans already?”

“Just grocery shopping,” Yoongi says, pointing to the large shopping bag filled with empty shopping bags he’s got propped up next to the front door. “I meant to go after I landed, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered.” He shoots Jimin a quick glance. “Why, did you want to do something?” He seems on edge about something. Jimin’s used to him avoiding eye contact, but that’s usually a natural, unconscious behaviour; here, it’s like he’s specifically trying to avoid looking at Jimin, but just can’t help himself from sneaking quick peaks.

Jimin shrugs. “Not really, I just came to hang out.”

“You can stay here until I get back, if you want,” Yoongi says, spinning the keys in his hand around his finger. “Or you can come along, it’s up to you.”

 “Yeah, I’ll come,” Jimin replies, quietly pleased when Yoongi’s face lights up in a smile that’s apparently too difficult to tamp down, although he clearly tries.

Jimin feels it like a rollercoaster plummeting down a drop, his stomach swooping as he realises just how much he’s missed making Yoongi smile like that, missed being able to hear his voice in person, missed him. He’s missed his friends before, obviously, when they go away on trips, or when they’re too swamped with work to see each other regularly, but the relief of reuniting has never felt this all-encompassing, never felt so much like sinking into a warm bath, or napping in the sun, or opening the oven and being hit with the fragrant heat of fresh baking.

He figures it’s because of all the time they’d been spending together before Yoongi had left, not just emotionally close, but physically, too. Reaching out to touch Yoongi’s wrist with his fingertips, he confirms that yes, a knot of tension in the pit of his stomach that he’s been more or less unaware of over the past two weeks unspools. “Missed you,” he says quietly. He hopes Yoongi can tell that he genuinely means it, that it’s not just part of their game of chicken.

He thinks Yoongi can tell, because he smiles back so beautifully, wide enough that his gums are on show and his eyes crinkle with the force of it, that Jimin can feel something in his brain click into place, an understanding that Yoongi should be smiling like that as much as possible.

“Is there anything you need?” Yoongi asks as he clips his handwritten shopping list onto his shopping trolley.

Jimin hums thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, if you think of anything, let me know.”

In stark contrast to the power walking Jimin has seen him do when they’re on the subway, or when they go out for walks, or the one time, years ago, they had all gone abroad together and he’d walked so fast through the airport that Jimin had had to jog to keep up, Yoongi is the kind of man to shop idly; arms leaning on the bar of the shopping cart as he drifts between the shelves, musing over jars, pondering over spices, staring, glumly, at thin bottles of sauces as he tries to remember which ones he needs.

“Why didn’t you write it on your list?” Jimin asks, tapping his finger a few times on the list. He has to lean in close to Yoongi to do it, who’s still draped across the cart like it’s the only thing keeping him propped upright. When he pulls back, his fingertips accidentally brush against Yoongi’s forearm.

“I forgot,” Yoongi says. “Jeongguk came over before I left and made us both dinner, and you know what he’s like – his sauce combination game is unbelievable, but he does have a tendency to eat you out of sauce and home.” He pushes away from the cart and picks up two bottles from the shelves, which he stares down at, his lips curved into a slight pout.

Jimin pokes his cheek, which makes his lips pout a little more. “Get both.” He keeps his finger on Yoongi’s cheek; when Yoongi turns his head to look at him, he ends up pouting even more.

He’s struck with the urge to kiss him, but they don’t really do a lot of public displays of affection like that anymore – they hold hands, and keep physically close, but they don’t really kiss in public all that much, not like they had at the beginning of their fake relationship. It’s not the kind of thing he wants to add back into their game of chicken, at least not without talking to Yoongi about it first, so he just keeps the want to kiss him tucked away for now.

“You keep zoning out,” Yoongi says, putting both bottles into his cart before he moves Jimin’s hand away from his face. He threads their fingers together before Jimin can pull away too far, and squeezes their palms together.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Jimin asks.

Yoongi snorts. “Don’t worry about it. I’m almost done here, we can head back to mine and have a nap.”

Jimin hums. “That sounds nice.”

When Yoongi lets them back into his flat, Jimin actually lets out a surprised gasp when he sees how untidy it is. Yoongi’s place is never showroom spotless, but it’s nearly always tidy whenever Jimin comes over – right now, there’re suitcases everywhere, their contents disembowelled and strewn over every surface. In the middle of his sitting room, Yoongi’s got a half-finished piece of furniture in a mid-assembled pile of wood, with a sticky note attached to the top of the pile. When Jimin goes to read it, he smiles when he sees that Yoongi’s left instructions for himself – step 7, hammer’s in the kitchen.

“Why not just leave the hammer by whatever this is?” Jimin asks, picking up the note and waving it like a flag.

Yoongi frowns at him, parsing this for a moment. “Yeah, that would’ve made sense,” he says eventually.

Jimin snorts. “Hyung, did you sleep at all when you got back, or did you just start building furniture?”

“No comment,” Yoongi says, setting his shopping bags down on his kitchen countertops. “Do you want lunch now?”

“Go and relax, I’ll make lunch,” Jimin insists, gently shooing Yoongi out of the kitchen. He doesn’t really expect Yoongi to relax – sure enough, Jimin watches him sit down next to his pile of unassembled furniture. Jimin follows after him with the hammer, hands it to him, then heads back into the kitchen to make lunch.

The thing about Yoongi, Jimin has noticed, is that he’s great with his hands. On the dates they stay in, he often cooks, sleeves rolled up to his elbows; he’s learning guitar in his free time, and his fingers look long and strong when he’s playing; he assembles furniture.

Like, a lot of furniture.

As Jimin puts the finishing touches to their jjajangmyeon, artfully laying little matchsticks of cucumber over the top of their bowls of noodles, he looks up occasionally to watch Yoongi build his new piece of furniture. It’s taken Jimin just over half an hour to make lunch, and in that time, Yoongi’s done enough work that Jimin can now tell he’s building a set of drawers. Thigh height, with a square top and deep drawers, he’s in the middle of hammering in the last of the nails to the back panel of the drawers when Jimin brings their bowls in.

“I thought you’d bought a new set of drawers recently,” Jimin says, climbing over the back of the couch and sitting, cross-legged, so that Yoongi is sitting on the floor right in front of him. He leans forward a little to hand Yoongi his bowl, then settles back into the couch cushions. He’s still close enough to Yoongi that, if he wanted to, Jimin could reach out and play with his hair – so he does, carding his fingers through it with one hand. He’s between dye jobs, back to his natural black to give his hair a break from the bleach, and it’s reaching that point where it’s soft and silky, where Jimin can fluff it up to his heart’s content and the strands will still more or less fall back into place.

“I have,” Yoongi confirms, tilting his head back just a little as Jimin begins to massage his scalp with his fingernails. It’s a little difficult to coordinate a head massage with one hand and eating noodles with the other, but Jimin’s making it work. “These are for Namjoon.”

“Hyung asked you to assemble furniture for him?” Jimin asks, raising his eyebrows. It doesn’t sound like Namjoon, is the thing – Namjoon is always the kind of person to try it himself first.

“Ah, no,” Yoongi says, after a long, suspicious pause. “When I dropped off my drawers at the studio, he mentioned that they looked useful, so I…” He waves his hand vaguely.

“You’re so cute,” Jimin says, bending down and kissing Yoongi’s head. He frowns, sniffs the crown of Yoongi’s head, then smiles when he smells the very familiar scent of his own shampoo in Yoongi’s hair. He pulls back and flicks the back of Yoongi’s head. “Are you going to do that thing you do when you get us surprise presents where you just throw it at us and then leave the room?”

“No, I’m not going to throw a chest of drawers at Namjoon,” Yoongi says. “I’m going to put them next to his desk and hope he never brings it up.” With the last nail in place, Yoongi sets down his hammer, scoops up his bowl, and sits down next to Jimin on the couch. It means Jimin can’t run his fingers through Yoongi’s hair anymore, but he can press up close to him, shoulder to knee, so it’s a reasonably fair trade off. “You got anywhere you need to be today?”

Jimin shakes his head. “I took the day off today.” He doesn’t say why, but as Yoongi hums, pleased, and settles in deeper next to him, he thinks the implication is probably pretty obvious.

When Jimin wakes up, it’s with the early afternoon sun in his eyes, a stiff neck, and a feeling like he’s being watched, but when he sits up and looks around, there’s only Yoongi sitting next to him, checking his phone.

“Are you working?” Jimin asks, his speech still a little slurred with sleep.

Yoongi hums. “My manager just text me to warn me about an incoming email, although she didn’t say what it was about.” He’s chewing on his bottom lip so vigorously that it’s a much rosier shade of pink than the top one. “It’s not like her, I don’t think she’s ever text me to say I’m about to get an email.”

“I’m sure if it’s something bad, she would’ve warned you?” Jimin says, but Yoongi doesn’t respond, staring down at his phone with wide, disbelieving eyes. “What, what did she say?”

“It’s not from her, it’s from the company’s internal talent manager. The company wants us – me and Joon, I mean - to debut,” Yoongi says.

“Debut?” Jimin asks, bewildered. “Like an idol?”

“I… Think so?” Yoongi reads through the email. “He doesn’t really say much, he’s basically just inviting us to a meeting where we’ll discuss the potentiality of your debut.”

Before Jimin can say anything, Yoongi’s phone starts ringing – he accepts the video call request, and Namjoon’s face appears on screen.

“Hyung, I-” Namjoon’s gaze flicks quickly to Jimin, and Jimin can see him attempt to rein his expression in. “Oh, hi, Jimin-”

“He was here when I read the email, Namjoon, he knows,” Yoongi interrupts.

“Okay, good.” He takes a deep breath. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think we should debut together as a duo.”

“Two solo artists?” Yoongi asks; Namjoon hums in answer. “The company might not want that.”

“Won’t know unless we ask, right? I just think if we write for other people together and write for ourselves together and perform together and still be friends outside of work… I don’t want anything we’ve already got to snap under the pressure, you know?”

“I agree,” Yoongi says. “And if the higher-ups are adamant we debut as a duo?”

“We ask them why they’re so keen for two 30-something year old men to debut as a duo when they’ve both said they’d probably be better as solo artists?” Namjoon suggests, making Jimin laugh. “I don’t know, we cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess?”

“Do you want to debut?” Jimin asks, once Yoongi’s hung up with Namjoon.

“I’d like to perform my own stuff,” Yoongi muses, tucking his feet up underneath himself. There’s not really room for him to do so – Jimin’s still sitting pretty close – so Jimin shuffles over to give him space. When Yoongi frowns at him, Jimin rolls his eyes and pats his lap, prompting Yoongi to stretch out his legs over Jimin’s thighs. “But I don’t know, debuting comes with all of this extra stuff, you know?”

“Like what?” Jimin asks, digging his thumbs into Yoongi’s calves. “Like working with other producers and songwriters? All the promotional TikToks you’d have to make? Interviews?”

He’s genuinely curious, and that curiosity obviously bleeds through, because Yoongi takes a moment to consider his answer carefully. “None of that sounds too bad,” he admits after a while. “I mean, I might feel different about it after my fifth interview in a row when they ask me what I like in a girl, but the promotion stuff doesn’t sound awful.” Jimin waits as Yoongi thinks over it some more. “I think it’s the idea of numbers that’s putting me off.”

“Numbers?” Jimin says. Perhaps this isn’t the time to be having this conversation – while they’ve napped, Yoongi isn’t exactly completely rested – but Yoongi continues to try to explain.

“I’ve never really cared too much about my demos reaching huge numbers of people, you know? I liked the fact that for every hundred or so people who listened to it, one would leave a comment, or a like, or follow me. It feels like people are hearing me, you know? I don’t want my music to turn into something that people leave on because it’s turned up on their Spotify Shuffle or whatever.” He sighs, flings himself back a little dramatically, and tips his head over the arm of the couch. “It’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t think so,” Jimin muses. “You’ve had complete artistic control of your own music for almost twenty years – I think I’d be wary too.”

Yoongi props himself up on his elbows to look at Jimin. “What would you do? If you were me, I mean.”

Jimin hums. “I’d make a list of all the stuff that’s absolutely non-negotiable for me, and the stuff that I could be more lenient over, then take that to your label.”

“You’d go for it?” Yoongi asks.

“I’d hear what they had to say, yeah,” Jimin says. He takes off Yoongi’s slides, drops them on the floor, and then digs his knuckle into the sock-covered sole of Yoongi’s foot, which makes him sigh. “And if I liked what I heard, I’d go for it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d have wanted the same thing for my dancing,” he tries to explain – Yoongi’s not the only one acting on too little sleep, after all. “There’s not really an equivalent of playlisting for dancing, I guess, but if a label had offered me a dancing contract, I’d have probably jumped at the chance.” He laughs. “Although you’ve got to remember that I was dancing to a hireable quality ten years ago, hyung, and I’ve not really danced properly for about three years – I’ve changed since then.” He tilts his head thoughtfully. “If I’d been dancing for as long as you’ve been making music, maybe I’d have a more mature attitude to it, like you do?”

“I don’t think my opinion’s more or less mature than yours,” Yoongi says, tilting his head back again. “You could argue that my unwillingness to compromise is childish.”

“No you couldn’t,” Jimin argues. “I think it’s your artistic integrity.”

“And I think your want to share your dancing with the world is because of your openheartedness,” Yoongi mumbles back.

“Openheartedness?” Jimin questions.

Yoongi hums. “’s big. Like an ocean that needs to be shared.”

Jimin snorts, even as he feels his cheeks warm at the compliment. “What? Maybe you should have another nap, hyung, your similes are a little weak when you’re tired.” He pats the top of Yoongi’s foot. “Thank you, though.”

Yoongi hums again; Jimin thinks he’s almost asleep until he mumbles, “Love you, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin gently squeezes the top of his foot. “Love you too, hyung.”

Whether it’s because of his conversation with Yoongi, or whether it’s because of the weather – the falling chill of autumn making him think of frantic rehearsals in freezing practice rooms in the run up to winter exams – Jimin feels the bone-deep urge to dance again. He doesn’t dance properly anywhere near as often as he’d like to; when he goes out with most of his friends, it’s usually to places where they’re going to be sitting down, and even when he does go out dancing, it’s not typically the sort of dancing he’d spent years studying in school.

Occasionally, he’ll go and meet Hoseok at the studio he works at for lunch and just the smell of the rehearsal rooms will make him want to dance, so he’ll get Hoseok to show him what he’s working on, but it’s been a while since he’s wanted to do anything at home. In his childhood, he’d been able to practice anywhere – his tiny bedroom, where he’d gotten more than his fair share of bruises from knocking his legs against his bedframe; in the upstairs hallway, where he’d used the stair handrail as a makeshift barre; on the beach, the salty air buffeting his face as he tried to practice jumps on the relatively softer sand. Now, though, he usually feels like if he’s not in a practice room, he can’t dance properly, and it’s not like he can get to a dance studio every single day.

But, for the first time in a while, he doesn’t care about the fact that he’s not in the perfect place to dance. Or, maybe Yoongi’s kitchen is the perfect place for him to dance right now – it’s a Friday evening in mid-fall, cold enough outside that the tiny kitchen window has steamed up, turning the cityscape into a smudge of indigo and yellow.

He can hear Yoongi in the sitting room, working away. His and Namjoon’s first meeting about a potential debut had gone well, but Yoongi had told Jimin that he wanted to have some demos to present to his company as an example of what he’d like his album to sound like before he agreed to anything, so he’s spent the last week trawling through his library of work. It means that most of Jimin’s evenings, whether in person or over the phone on video calls, have been soundtracked by Yoongi’s music, enough now that he could make several albums of his own favourite tracks.

One of those favourites is playing now – a pulsing synthesiser track augmented with a stuttering percussion and a bright, pizzicato string melody. So many of Yoongi’s tracks make Jimin want to dance, but this one in particular is like it’s been composed specifically to be danced to.

So, as he waits for the rice cooker to finish, that’s what Jimin does – he dances.

The slides he’s wearing aren’t conducive to spinning (for starters, they’re not his, they’re Yoongi’s, so they don’t even fit, let alone provide proper support), but that never stopped him in rehearsals – he and his cohort would turn up to dance rehearsals in all sorts of footwear, to the despair of their teacher, who would tell them again and again that they wouldn’t be young forever, that they should take care of their joints and their bones while they were healthy, that they would regret their complacency as they got older.

Jimin can now, with the benefit of hindsight, admit that there might’ve been some truth to his teacher’s warnings. He’s a little stiffer these days, a little more prone to twinging a muscle. But that doesn’t stop him from pirouetting – albeit slower than in his prime – on Yoongi’s kitchen floor.

The sudden appearance of a figure in the doorway throws off his spotting, so he stops abruptly.

It’s Yoongi – obviously, they’re in his apartment – and he’s staring at Jimin, his mouth a little agape.

“I know it’s been a while since I danced, but you don’t need to look that surprised,” Jimin jokes, a little more breathless than he remembers being the last time he danced this much – maybe he needs to start spending more time at Hoseok’s dance studio.

“Be in my music video,” Yoongi blurts out.

“What music video?” Jimin asks. “You have a music video? I didn’t know you were doing a music video. Is that part of what the company want you to do?”

“No, it’s – I want to do a music video, and I want you to be in it,” Yoongi says firmly.

“Hyung, I – I’m flattered, really, but I’m not exactly good enough to be in a music video!” Jimin laughs, glancing back at the rice cooker; he can’t quite read the expression on Yoongi’s face, but looking at it directly is making him want to yell, or stamp on the spot, or something to deal with the sudden rush of energy he gets from the look Yoongi is giving him. “I’m sure your company has dancers, if you want somebody to be in a music video-”

“I don’t want dancers, I want you.”

Jimin turns away from Yoongi’s rice cooker to look at Yoongi again. This time, he’s the one not looking at Jimin, staring down at Jimin’s feet as he grips the doorframe tightly enough that his normally pink knuckles have turned white.

(Jimin’s not sure he could name the specific shade of many peoples knuckles, but he’s spent a lot of time looking at Yoongi’s hands over the last few months – building furniture, holding Jimin’s hand, that one Friday evening they’d spent solving a puzzle together – that he doesn’t think it’s that weird to know that Yoongi’s joints are pinker than most peoples.)

“Because we’re doing this chicken dating thing?” Jimin asks.

Yoongi visibly recoils, then shakes his head emphatically. “No, no. I-” He stops to think, then sighs explosively, looking back up at Jimin so quickly that his hair flops with the movement. “I can’t explain what I can see in my head when I see you dance to my music, but I know that if we can get it right, the music video would be incredible – trust me?”

“I do,” Jimin says. “But I think your company might have something to say about you insisting that some random guy dances in your music video.”

“I’ll make it one of my conditions of debut,” Yoongi insists, which makes Jimin laugh.

“Hyung, you can’t be serious-”

“I have never been more serious.”

Jimin’s seen Yoongi like this before, but only ever in the context of his art – a single-minded, dogged determination. When he’d first met Yoongi and Namjoon, he’d seen the tail end of the times they’d butt heads over music, but he’s heard about their earlier fights from both of them, and Yoongi, to this day, can still get intense over his art.

Which is how Jimin knows that Yoongi means it, that he desperately wants to make Jimin a part of this art. Not out of any misplaced loyalty towards Jimin, not because he feels like he has to as Jimin’s friend or pretend boyfriend, but because he genuinely thinks that Jimin could contribute something to this song.

“I – all right,” Jimin says, because Yoongi looks like he’s going to burst out of his skin if he doesn’t say anything.

As soon as he does, Yoongi’s shoulders visibly sag with relief, and he lets go of the doorframe. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so intense and weird about it. You don’t have to-”

“Are you kidding?” Jimin teases. “You’d wave my music video debut in front of me, tantalise me, and then take it away from me all in the span of one conversation?”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, but even his exaggerated exasperation can’t hide how pleased he looks otherwise.

“So,” Yoongi says over the phone. “I got a date to film my music video.”

“Oh?” Because Yoongi’s working on a Saturday, Jimin’s hanging out at Hoseok’s dance studio – he doesn’t know what vibe Yoongi has in mind for his music video, but he’s asked Hoseok to run him through a crash course of some intermediate routines to get him back in the swing of things as fast as possible, so he’s sitting in the studio’s reception area, waiting for Hoseok’s class to end.

“Next Friday.”

“Oh, our anniversary! That’ll be fun.”

Because he’s looking at Yoongi, he can see the brief, disgruntled twitch of his nose that he makes. It’s incredibly cute, and Jimin opens his mouth to tell him so, but Yoongi starts speaking before he can. “I’d already started making plans for our anniversary, though.”

“Had you?” Jimin kicks his feet back and forth; when the dance studio receptionist looks over, startled by the sudden noise, he grimaces in apology and settles his feet again. “Could we do your plans after we finish filming? Or the day after?”

Yoongi hums thoughtfully, running a hand through his hair. It stays in place for longer than it normally does, held upright from the sheer force of fingers being run through it countless times. “I’ll check the opening times, but we should be able to.” He’s being lit by a soft, orange light, almost like the sunset is glowing on his face.

Jimin looks out of the dance studio window and frowns at the pale blue autumn sky he can see outside.

“You’re still in Seoul, yeah?” Jimin squinting back down at the screen.

“Uh, yeah?” Yoongi says slowly.

“Have you got a filter on our video call or something? Why do you look like…” He tilts his head, trying to think about what exactly it’s reminding him of. “Oh! At the beginning of American action movies, where the main character’s wife is rolling around in their beautiful bed in their beautiful home before she gets murdered by the bad guy? That.”

“You could’ve just said ‘your light looks orange’ and I would’ve known what you meant,” Yoongi says. “But thanks, I guess? And it’s because of this.” He leans off screen, and comes back into view holding a small lamp. “I bought this daylight lamp online, because my studio has no windows, but I accidentally got it stuck on evening.”

As Yoongi sets the lamp back on his desk, Jimin laughs and says, “You want your room to be perfectly lit for nap time, it’s okay, I understand.”

Yoongi snorts. “Like I’ve ever needed ideal lighting for napping, all I need is a surface to nap on.” This is true – during one of their summer weekend dates, Jimin had driven them both to Dream Forest, and in the time it had taken him to park and unpack their picnic from the trunk, he’d come back to the front of the car to find Yoongi stretched across the front seats, wrapped, sinew-like, around the gear stick, sound asleep, even though they’d just been talking moments before.

Jimin opens his mouth to reply, but somebody clears their throat; when he looks up from his phone, he sees that Hoseok is practically standing on Jimin’s toes, he’s standing so close. He raises an eyebrow down at Jimin, then, pointedly, tilts his head to emphasise the eyebrow raise. “Ah, Hoseok-hyung’s ready, I’ve got to go.”

“All right, I’ll talk to you later?” Yoongi offers. “Don’t work too hard.”

“Pot, meet kettle?” Jimin teases. “But all right.”

“I’d like to hear from you too, hyung!” Hoseok announces loudly. “It’s been so long since you last spoke to me!”

“I spoke to you yesterday,” Yoongi grumbles; judging by the sudden, rhythmic rocking of his phone, he’s typing something. Sure enough, Hoseok’s phone chimes from inside his legging pocket, and when he opens it, he laughs, loud and bright. Jimin turns back to look at his phone just in time to catch the tail end of Yoongi’s satisfied smile as he says, “Will that do?”

“Perfect,” Hoseok says, turning his own phone around to show Jimin the notification that ‘yoongi-hyung 🐈😼🍊’ has just sent a text saying, “👍”. “You ready, Jimin-ah?”

“Yes, hyung,” Jimin says, smiling down at Yoongi on his phone. “Talk to you later, yeah?”

“I already asked you that,” Yoongi points out. “Go dance.”

“All right, all right.” Jimin stands up. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Yoongi replies. Jimin’s never wanted to smile fondly at somebody just saying ‘bye’ to him on the phone, but he has to actively fight the corners of his mouth from turning upwards as Yoongi quirks a grin at him. “Seriously, go.”

“All right, I’m going!” Jimin laughs, finally hanging up.

Hoseok sucks air in between his teeth.

“What?” Jimin checks the time on his phone worriedly. “Did I lose track of time?”

“No, nothing like that, I’m early anyway,” Hoseok reassures him. He looks uneasy, like a spooked deer, as he continues. “It’s just… I’m worried about you both.”

“Who, me and Yoongi-hyung?” Jimin asks, bewildered. “We’ve literally never been closer.”

“That’s just it!” Hoseok says, a little wildly. When the receptionist looks over at them curiously, Hoseok shepherds Jimin into the practice room. “You’re both so close, if I didn’t know you both, I’d say you were literally dating.”

“But you do know us both,” Jimin points out, still confused. “You know we’re just pretending to date until Yoongi-hyung admits I’m better at fake dating than he is.”

“He’s just as stubborn as you – more so, actually – so I don’t think he’s going to admit that any time soon.” Hoseok tosses his gym bag into the corner and starts setting up his phone in the practice room’s speakers. “Jimin-ah, I’ve known Yoongi-hyung for years-”

“Me too!” Jimin says.

“-and I know what he’s like.”

He looks just as surprised to have said it as Jimin is to have heard it. “What he’s like? What does that mean?” Jimin asks.

“I just… I’m worried about you. Both of you,” Hoseok says. “Just promise me that you’ll think about what your relationship has turned into, yeah?”

“All right, hyung,” Jimin says.

Jimin does think about it. He thinks about it for their entire dance practice, over dinner with Yoongi, long into the night, and it’s the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up. It’s only when he opens his phone browser, catches sight of the window of property listings he’d been looking at a few weeks ago, where he’d specifically searched for places big enough for two adults, pets, and maybe additional space if it’s needed further down the line, that he realises, with cataclysmic suddenness, that he’s possibly lost sight of what this whole thing has been about.

He can’t pinpoint when he lost sight of it because, both in his mind and out loud, he’s been adamant that this has all been part of their game of fake dating chicken. But, as he looks at Yoongi, sitting up in bed on his own phone, legs outstretched over the top of Jimin’s covers after he’s spent the night, he knows, bone deep, that he doesn’t want this to end. Wants to take this further, in fact, beyond the boundaries they’ve subconsciously drawn as part of their fake dating rules – wants to take Yoongi back to Busan to meet his family, wants to buy a house with him, wants to spend the rest of his life waking up with him and watching him squint down at his phone as he slowly wakes up properly.

“You alright?” Yoongi asks worriedly, glancing up from his phone. The Sunday morning sun is peeking through the blinds, throwing golden stripes of light across Yoongi’s shins, and Jimin needs to stop staring at his legs. “What were you looking at?”

“Nothing!” Jimin says, so alarmed by the thought of Yoongi seeing how he’d been looking through homes fit for a family that he locks his phone and, for good measure, tosses it across the room to land in his laundry basket.

“Uh,” Yoongi says, glancing over at the laundry basket. “Nice shot?”

“Hyung, are we – should we call a truce?” Jimin blurts out.

“A truce? For what?” Yoongi asks, because he’s apparently a normal person who’s every thought isn’t consumed by this stupid game of chicken they’ve been playing. God, Yoongi’s probably just been happily chilling out with him on this fine Sunday morning, while Jimin’s sitting here thinking about things like whether Yoongi would prefer to buy a home here in Seoul or whether he’d want to move somewhere else. “Talk to me, Jimin-ah?”

“This – this fake – chicken thing!” Jimin splutters out. He scrambles up and starts to pace, except his bedroom’s not that big so the pacing is manic and makes him turn back and forth so many times he quickly starts to feel dizzy. “We’ve been doing this for months now, hyung, and we can’t – we’re both too stubborn to end it, even though it’s ridiculous that’s it’s gone on for so long, right?” He laughs nervously. “I mean, hyung, we’re literally going to celebrate our six month anniversary on Friday!”

Jimin spins on the spot to look at Yoongi, because he’s being suspiciously quiet – he’s pulled his knees up to his chest at some point during Jimin’s frantic pacing, and Jimin turns just in time to catch an expression on his face he’s never seen before. Jimin teases him, sometimes, says his smile can look like a square bracket, or an axolotl; this is the opposite of that, his chin puckering a little as he looks up at the ceiling. He glances at Jimin, and almost immediately springs up off of the bed.

“Okay, Jimin-ah, you win,” he says, the expression on his face gone, smoothed out into a smile that Jimin doesn’t want to tease him about, a smile you’d give to a stranger on the street, the kind of smile you pull onto your face out of necessity. “You’re right, it was ridiculous of me to drag this out for so long, especially when I knew…” He shakes his head, tilts it, and his smile slips into something a little more genuine, a little more like a goodbye. “Thanks, I guess – it’s been one of my longer and better relationships, even if none of it was real, it definitely felt… Nice.” He trails off awkwardly, looking as though he wants to leave, but then he looks around a little wildly. “Shit, so much of my stuff is here. It’s fine, I’ll go, I’ll just – bring some bags over in a few days or something. And I can find somebody else to dance in the music video, if it’ll be weird for you, but I’d still really like it if you did dance in it. Uh, I just need some time to, uh, get over you, I suppose, though this isn’t even a break-up, it’s just-”

“I was looking at places for us!” Jimin yells over Yoongi, clenching his fists because Yoongi’s nervous energy is making him want to start waving his arms in sympathy.

“-a stupid bet that got out of – what?”

“You asked me earlier what I was so freaked out about on my phone,” Jimin says, hoping he’s understood what Yoongi had been saying, otherwise he’s really about to fuck this up. “I’d been looking at places for us. I started looking weeks ago, but I didn’t even realise what I was doing until just this morning, and then I panicked because I was looking at places to spend forever in with a guy I was only fake-dating.” Yoongi drops back onto the bed, eyes wide. “This hasn’t felt fake for a while, hyung, but I should’ve just said that rather than bringing up that stupid sleepover game that had honestly stopped mattering to me beyond lip service a long time ago.”

“I would,” Yoongi says nonsensically. “The garden, I mean. I’d like that. Not right now, places with gardens are too far from where either of us work, but I’d like a garden with you. And a house, obviously.”

Jimin goes to retrieve his phone from the laundry basket, and then goes back to sit down next to Yoongi. It’s the furthest they’ve sat apart in months, and Jimin misses the steady warmth of Yoongi’s thigh pressed against his, but he wants to do this right. “Date me? For real, this time.”

Yoongi huffs out a breath, fluttering his hair. It could be misconstrued as bored, or exasperated, but Jimin knows it’s not, because Yoongi’s eyes are already crinkling into a smile and his fingers are inching over Jimin’s as though he’s unaware they’re moving at all. “Fine, I guess.”

“Never mind, I take it back,” Jimin says. “‘Fine, I guess’,” he mocks, deepening his voice to a ridiculous level as Yoongi snatches up his hand. “Honestly, I tell you I want to buy a house with you and this is how you treat me? With about as much romance as a tax return form?”

“Jimin-ah,” Yoongi says, his actually deep voice sending a shiver down Jimin’s spine as he presses a kiss to his palm. “I’d love to date you for real,” he says, murmuring the words into his palm. He kisses his wrist. “Wanted to for a while now.”

“How long?” Jimin asks, his voice a little too breathy for someone who’d just had a kiss on the palm and one on the wrist.

Yoongi pulls back, but he keeps Jimin’s hand in his. “Yah, don’t ask me, it’s embarrassing.”

“How long?” Jimin repeats, his voice steadier and delighted.

“Uh, so, when we first met-”

“When we first met?” Jimin squeaks.

“No, shut up – so, when we first met, I had the tiniest crush on you. Practically non-existent, and definitely not enough to justify asking you out, so I just… Ignored it?”

“Healthy.”

“It was fine. Uh, but then we started this fake dating thing, and I thought, well, it’s been years, you’re my friend, and it’ll be fun, what’s the harm?” Yoongi snorted. “Seokjin actually said, that first morning before anyone else got up, ‘Yoongi-yah, this is maybe the worst idea I’ve ever heard now that I’m hungover and thinking clearer’.”

“Good job you ignored him,” Jimin says, squeezing Yoongi’s palm.

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Good, he could stand to be humbled on occasion,” Jimin jokes with an imperious sniff. They’re both quiet for a moment, then Jimin asks, “Did Hoseok-hyung know, too? How you felt, I mean.”

Yoongi nods. “Why, did he say something?”

“Not exactly,” Jimin says, thinking back over their conversation in the dance studio. “Just something he did say makes more sense now. He was worried that you were getting too attached, I think.”

“Yeah, well, he’s more emotionally perceptive than we give him credit for, then,” Yoongi says. He clearly means it as a joke, but the thought of Yoongi feeling alone in his pining over the last few months kind of makes Jimin feel sad, so he shoves Yoongi, gently, back on the bed, and then lays down on top of him to deal with it. “So this is how it ends?” Yoongi says, making himself sound more winded than he has any right to sound. “Smothered by Park Jimin?”

“What would you have done?” Jimin mumbles into his shoulder. He lifts his head to sound clearer. “If we’d have kept this going forever?”

“I was trying not to think about it, honestly,” Yoongi admits. “I just figured, eventually, you’d get bored and call it off, and that’d be that.”

“Get bored?” Jimin says incredulously, propping himself up on his forearms on Yoongi’s chest. “You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.” He slumps back down, because Yoongi’s looking up at him with such a surprised, earnest look on his face that he feels like he might start crying if he looks at it for too long. “Get bored, honestly.”

Yoongi puts his hand on Jimin’s back and starts rubbing it back and forth slowly. “What I mean is that we’ve sort of… Settled down? I was happy with how things were, but I guessed you’d want a relationship where things would keep progressing – you know, moving into a house with enough space for pets, kids, sex-”

“Enough space for sex?” Jimin immediately jumps in to tease. “How much space do you need, hyung? So adventurous…”

Yoongi moves his hand down and pinches Jimin’s thigh. “A normal amount, shut up, you know what I meant.”

“And what is a normal amount?” Jimin doubles down, squirming when Yoongi keeps pinching him. “I just think we should discuss this before I settle down in a relationship with a man who needs three storey homes for the copious amounts of sex he’s planning to have – okay, hyung, I’m sorry!” He laughs as Yoongi starts poking him in the ribs. Once they’ve both settled, Jimin says, “I’m sure your sex is perfectly ordinary.”

“Well,” Yoongi says. “I wouldn’t say it’s ordinary, I’ve been told I’m pretty damn good at it.”

“Oh?” Jimin sits up on Yoongi’s thighs so that he can, very pointedly, look him up and down. “Then I’m looking forward to it.”

“Like… Now?” Yoongi asks.

“Wow, so suave,” Jimin says flatly. “I can see why you’ve been told you’re good at sex, I’m practically swooning.” He scoots off Yoongi’s legs and sits cross-legged next to him. “But no – if I need to spend the day dancing tomorrow, I don’t want to be wincing every time I move.”

“You prefer to bottom?” Yoongi asks, sitting up too.

Jimin frowns thoughtfully. “You know, no one’s ever actually asked?” He thinks about it for a moment. “I mean, I’ve always bottomed, so I don’t know. People just assume.”

“I like both,” Yoongi says. “So what do you want to do?”

“I think…” Jimin hums. “For our first time, I’d like to bottom? I don’t want to worry about whether I’m topping properly when I’m trying to enjoy our first time, you know?”

“I’m sure you’d do fine, and I could always tell you if I wanted to do something a little differently,” Yoongi says. “But all right.”

As the music video director calls cut on their shoot, Jimin, like a puppet with its strings cut, lets himself fall to the ground, exhausted. He’s been dancing for hours, take after take after take, and he’s been on set since the start of the day, watching Yoongi carefully piece together his vision for his music video. From what Yoongi’s told him about how he’s envisioning it, Jimin’s dance will feature in the beginning of the video, during an instrumental introduction.

He'd been kind of worried, coming in, that he’d feel out of place, like the industry bigwigs would be able to spot that he was a novice, that they wouldn’t make it a secret that they’d infinitely prefer to be filming a professional dancer, but they’ve been surprisingly nice to work with. Jimin’s sure it’s because of their fondness for Yoongi, who is, quite clearly, the baby of this little group of coworkers – when the makeup artist had cheerily asked Jimin if he was “the famous Jimin-ssi” at the start of the day, Yoongi had faux-pouted in a way Jimin’s only ever seen him do around Seokjin, or his older brother.

Jimin is staring up at the ceiling, trying to psych up the energy to stand and help everyone clear up, when Yoongi appears, upside down, in his line of vision. He’s still dressed in one of his music video outfits – jeans with so many rips in that the denim is, in some places quite literally, hanging on by a thread, and a black t-shirt cropped just enough that Jimin can see the line of his tummy. Jimin’s seen him dressed up for underground rap performances, but he hasn’t quite seen him dressed like this before – he looks like an actual celebrity, even though he’s really just wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

His first instinct is to cover his initial reaction up with a joke, but then he realises that he can just say what he’s thinking, so he says, “You look hot.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re flirtier when you’ve been pushed to exhaustion.” He holds out his hand to Jimin and helps him up. “You still up to go out? I’ll be about half an hour or so, I just want to help everyone clean-”

“Nope!” The director hurries over – her hair piled into a messy bun on top of her head, looking distinctly frazzled, but with a huge smile on her face – hands them their belongings and starts physically herding them both off the set as she continues talking. “You’ve been talking about this for weeks, Yoongi-yah, we can finish up without you, bye!” And, very pointedly, she shuts the door in both of their faces.

Jimin blinks at the door in surprise, then grins at Yoongi. “So, where’re you taking me? I’m not sure I’m up for anything more physical than a gentle walk.”

“Damn, I’d signed us up for the Seoul Marathon,” Yoongi says flatly. “Happy six month anniversary, get running.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but it’s the wrong time of year for the Seoul Marathon.” Jimin laughs. “Maybe for our one year anniversary?” He slips his hand into Yoongi’s and starts leading him towards the car park, but Yoongi gently pulls him to a halt. “Hyung?”

“We can actually walk from here,” Yoongi says. “Unless you want me to drive?”

Jimin shakes his head, so Yoongi leads him out of the company building. It’s late enough in the year that the sun is starting to set, even though it’s only late afternoon, so Jimin bundles himself deep into his coat as Yoongi takes them both through the streets.

Jimin doesn’t walk around this part of Seoul as much as he does the streets around his own apartment, so it takes him a second to catch his bearings, but, as they turn the corner onto a side street, where the buildings are smaller than the skyscrapers around Yoongi’s place of work and there are young trees lining the road, Jimin realises where he is. “We’re right by Taehyung and Jeongguk-ah’s place, right?”

“You remember it?” Yoongi asks, his voice betraying nothing.

“Yeah, this is on the way to…” He trails off as they come to a stop in front of the coffee house they had come to on their very first day of pretend dating. “Ah, hyung.”

“I know these first six months technically don’t count,” Yoongi says. “But I’ve enjoyed them, so… Happy anniversary, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin knocks his shoulder against Yoongi’s. “Happy anniversary, hyung.”

Jimin’s idly watching Yoongi as he’s driving them both back to his place. Their plan is to order in dinner later – they’d both gotten something to eat in the coffee shop, and neither of them are really up for cooking after their long day – but aside from that, their evening is free. He’s considering whether he wants to take a nap before dinner, maybe watch a film, when he watches Yoongi reach out to flick on the indicator, and he gets distracted by looking at his hands again.

Only this time, there isn’t the mental blockade of, “This is a fake relationship”, so he can follow his thoughts through to the logical conclusion of, “I’d really like to have sex with you.” He at least has the wherewithal to wait until they’re at a stoplight before blurting this out, but, too his credit, Yoongi just blinks a few times. Then he starts to speak, but Jimin cuts him off with, “No, not right this second, don’t be smart, hyung.”

Yoongi closes his mouth into a pout. “I wasn’t even going to say that.”

“You absolutely were, don’t lie,” Jimin says.

“Prove it.”

“Okay, what were you going to say?” Jimin says.

Yoongi sighs. “Well, what’s even the point of saying it now?” He’s clearly stalling for time, and Jimin can tell that Yoongi knows that he knows what he’s doing, because Yoongi shoots him a mischievous, sidelong smirk. As the stoplight turns green, he continues, “You’re right, I was going to say that.” He drives in silence for a few moments, then says, “If you want to have sex tonight, I’ll need to stop off and pick up some lube, I’m running low.”

On the one hand, Jimin is tired, and the thought of having to run an errand in order to have sex sounds distinctly unappealing right now.

On the other hand, he really wants to have sex.

“The things I do for dick,” Jimin grumbles, settling back in his seat as Yoongi barks out a laugh.

By the time they make it back to Yoongi’s place, Jimin’s so worked up that it’s all he can do to hold himself back as Yoongi unlocks his door, leads them inside, shuts the door behind them, takes off his coat, and unlaces his shoes. Jimin, for his part, just about manages to kick off his shoes before he’s crowding Yoongi up against his closed front door.

He’s kissed Yoongi countless times at this point, but this is the first time he’s done so with the intent of them taking it further. It makes him hyperaware of everything – how Yoongi is broader than him, but he melts into the kiss so easily that it makes Jimin feel like he’s so much bigger in comparison. He tastes like the coffee they’ve just drunk together, and also a little bit like the tangerines he’d been snacking on throughout the music video shoot; as Jimin tries to press closer, Yoongi shifts just enough to work his thigh in between Jimin’s legs, and the sudden shock of feeling Yoongi’s thigh directly against his crotch makes him groan into Yoongi’s mouth.

Yoongi pulls back, rests his head against his door, and inhales deeply. “We could absolutely just grind against each other right here, but I think you wanted me to fuck you? And it’d be a shame to let this lube go to waste.”

Jimin, for a brief moment, considers just saying fuck it and continuing the way they’re going, but then he thinks about the fact that he’ll get to see Yoongi in bed, eyes dark and cheeks pink, and says, “Let me just go shower real quick?”

Yoongi nods. “Use whatever you need. I think I’ve still got some of your bodywash in there, if you want to use that?”

Yoongi does have an almost brand new bottle of Jimin’s usual brand of bodywash, but he’s more tempted by the look of one of Yoongi’s, which lists enough herbs in its scent that Jimin feels more like he’s seasoning food than washing his body. It smells nice enough, though.

When Jimin walks into the bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist and hair fluffier than usual because of how frantically he had towel dried it, Yoongi’s laying out spare sheets on his bed. Their newly bought lube is sitting on the bedside table, neatly aligned with a box of condoms, tissues, and a bottle of water. Perhaps at another time, Jimin might’ve gently teased Yoongi for preparing for them to have sex like he’s packing a bag for them to go camping, but right now Jimin’s just touched by how much care and attention he’s putting into this.

“I got the condoms out – I know we’re both clean, but I didn’t know whether you preferred the tidiness of condoms?” Yoongi says, still neatly arranging the sheets on his bed.

“I don’t mind, but if you’ve got spare sheets on anyway, we can just throw them straight to wash?” Jimin suggests.

Yoongi nods in agreement, then continues, “I also wasn’t sure if you wanted to listen to music? I don’t have a sex playlist to go or anything, so if you did want music it’d have to be one of those auto-generated playlists, and who knows what’s on one of those.” Jimin can actually see him shudder suddenly. “It could be a song I worked on.”

“Would that be bad?” Jimin laughs. “I thought you liked your work.”

“I do, but I’m worried that getting jump-scared by a track I’ve heard a million times in all its composite parts would mean…” He trails off as he looks over his shoulder to talk to Jimin directly, almost like he’s forgotten he was mid-sentence.

“Would mean?” Jimin prompts.

“Huh?”

“You all right, hyung? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I just wasn’t expecting you to be naked.”

Jimin blinks at him slowly, then laughs again. “Hyung, you’ve definitely seen me naked before.”

“Not before we were about to have sex!” He laughs too, so at least Jimin’s assured he isn’t having second thoughts, or some sort of crisis. “I just hadn’t considered that it’d make sense for you to stay naked after your shower, I’d kind of been picturing undressing you myself.” He looks down at his outfit – he’s still wearing the ripped jeans and cropped top from his music video shoot. “I feel a little overdressed.”

“I can go put my clothes back on, if you want to undress me properly?” Jimin offers; Yoongi shakes his head, which he’s grateful for, not wanting to have to put clothes back on now that he’s clean and warm from a shower.

“Some other time,” Yoongi says, straightening up from the bed. He goes to lift his t-shirt up, and Jimin hurries over to stop him.

“Let me?”

Yoongi doesn’t respond verbally, just lets go of the hem of his t-shirt. It rests right at the waistband of his jeans, cropped at just the right length that, if he lifts his arms even slightly, it’ll show his stomach. Sure enough, when Jimin pulls him closer by his hips, it’s so easy to let his thumbs drift back and forth on the soft, warm skin of his hipbones that he just takes a moment to appreciate it. How, when he stretches his thumbs up, he can feel the expansion of his ribs with his slow, measured breaths; how he can make Yoongi’s breath catch each time he curls his thumbs down and dips them underneath his waistband. He lifts his hands up to the hem of Yoongi’s t-shirt and starts to lift it up, past his torso, and over his shoulders and head.

“Wait, why are you folding it?” Yoongi asks, his voice overly casual in the same way he does when he’s trying to mask how breathless he is on one of their mountain walks.

“Because you wore it in your music video?” Jimin says, laying the folded crop top neatly on Yoongi’s chest of drawers. “They’ll need it back for the museum exhibit they’ll make about your career.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Yoongi says, mouth quirking up in a pleased little grin as Jimin starts inching his jeans down his legs. The jeans had been threadbare enough that he’d been able to see most of his legs anyway, but there’s something about slowly revealing more and more of Yoongi’s thighs, his pink knees, his calves that feels different.

With Yoongi’s jeans in a crumpled puddle on his bedroom floor, Jimin unceremoniously drops his towel down next to it, sits on Yoongi’s bed, gently clasps Yoongi’s knee, and lifts his leg until his foot is resting on Jimin’s thigh. Yoongi, for his part, wobbles at the sudden shift in his position, but manages to stabilise himself pretty quickly. He looks confused for a moment, but Jimin can actually see the moment he understands what Jimin wants to do; Jimin bends his head to kiss Yoongi’s calf, then looks up at Yoongi through his eyelashes, leg still cupped in his palms.

Yoongi inhales sharply through his teeth as Jimin tracks kisses up his leg, and then exhales a shaky, surprised laugh when Jimin kisses the hem of his underwear before pulling back.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Jimin-ah.” He’s said it before, Jimin thinks, months ago, but the tone of it is completely different now – awed, surprised, and desperately, desperately fond. Then he pulls his foot away.

“Wait, come back,” Jimin says, his fingers involuntarily twitching towards Yoongi’s retreating leg.

“You can’t take my underwear off if I’ve got my leg up in the air,” Yoongi points out, snapping the waistband of his underwear against his own hip. It’s obvious, now that Yoongi’s said it out loud, but rather than admit this Jimin just pulls Yoongi back towards him, his mouth so close to, but not quite touching, Yoongi’s still clothed dick. When he breathes out, he can tell that Yoongi can feel the warmth of his breath because he visibly shivers at the sensation, but it’s nothing compared to his reaction when Jimin leans in and presses his mouth in a gentle, chaste kiss against his dick – Yoongi lets out a short, surprised whine and his hand flies up into Jimin’s hair, like he’s needs the extra support.

Finally, finally, Jimin pulls his underwear down. Yoongi’s not fully hard yet, but he’s not exactly soft, either, and his dick definitely springs free when Jimin pulls his underwear down over it.

“You’re so pink everywhere,” Jimin blurts out, trying not to stare at Yoongi’s dick and failing.

“Uh, thanks for noticing?” Yoongi replies, clearly bewildered. Jimin doesn’t have an explanation to give him, so he just sits silently, taking in the sight of him. “Spread your legs for me? I want to see you, don’t think I didn’t notice you dropping your towel like it wasn’t a big deal.”

Jimin opens his mouth to say it wasn’t a big deal, but then he thinks about how reverential he’d felt seeing Yoongi naked for him for the first time, so he dutifully spreads his legs.

He doesn’t know what, exactly, Yoongi is thinking as he looks down at his dick, but he thinks he can take a good guess when Yoongi helplessly drops down to kneel in front of him.

“Look at you,” Yoongi says, laying his hands on Jimin’s thighs to spread him just that little bit wider – Jimin can feel the blood rush to his face (and his dick) at both the compliment and the sight of Yoongi’s strong looking hands resting gently on the tops of his thighs. “Can I suck you off?”

“Uh, yes?” Jimin says incredulously. “Like that’s even a question?” Before Yoongi can touch him, though, he waves his hands. “Wait, wait, don’t make me come, though.” Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “I want to come while you’re inside me.”

Yoongi nods in agreement, then takes Jimin’s dick in his hands, one on his dick, one on his balls, like he can’t quite decide where to start first. Jimin’s glad he’s sitting down, because once Yoongi seemingly decides what he wants to do, it’s like an onslaught of sensation. With one hand stroking slowly up and down Jimin’s dick, Yoongi leans in and licks Jimin’s head, once, twice, three times, looking up at Jimin with each upward lick before closing his eyes and wrapping his lips around just the tip of Jimin’s dick. He pulls back with a kissing noise, then traces his mouth down to Jimin’s balls, using his hands to shift him closer to the edge of the bed.

Every other blowjob Jimin’s had in the past has been, at best, fine – his partners’ heads bobbing up and down his dick for a few moments, showing off how deep they could (or couldn’t, in some cases) take his cock before they’d get bored and ask to “Move onto the sex”. Yoongi, though, is treating this like it’s the main event, laving attention on Jimin’s balls like this blowjob is the only thing he wants to be doing for the foreseeable future. When Jimin brings a shaky hand to Yoongi’s head, Yoongi pulls back, tracing open mouthed kisses down Jimin’s cock as he does so.

“You feeling good?” Yoongi asks conversationally, as though he’s not still running his hands exploratorily along Jimin’s dick, as though his lips aren’t turning pink, pink, pink. “You said you didn’t want me to make you come, you still okay with that?”

It takes Jimin a moment longer than normal to formulate an answer, but eventually he nods. “Don’t want to be oversensitive when you’re fucking me. Next time?”

“I’d love that,” Yoongi says, running one hand up, then down Jimin’s dick experimentally. “Would you want me to swallow?” He follows that up by immediately sinking his mouth halfway down Jimin’s dick, so Jimin’s response just comes out as a high-pitched, surprised gasp at the sudden wet warmth of Yoongi’s mouth.

Yoongi’s still got one hand on Jimin’s dick, holding it where he wants it as he pulls his mouth back, kisses the tip, sinks back down, and repeats, his mouth covering more and more distance with each bob of his head. His other hand is tracing idle patterns on Jimin’s hip, something that Jimin only really becomes cognisant of when his other hand moves to Jimin’s other hip, and he only notices that because Yoongi takes Jimin’s entire shaft into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Jimin gasps at the onslaught of sensation, rocking back onto his elbows; just when Jimin thinks he’s at his limit, that he can’t possibly feel anymore, Yoongi pulls back with enough suction that his cheeks hollow with it. His eyes are closed, his eyelashes fanning delicately across the tops of his cheekbones; when he opens his eyes again, he literally bats them open, as though he’s somehow aware that Jimin’s staring at him.

“Or would you want to come on my face?” Yoongi continues, a little hoarser this time.

“I told you not to make me come, and you’re asking me to imagine coming on your face?” Jimin asks shortly, gripping the bedsheets to distract himself from the image Yoongi’s trying to put in his head.

“Sorry,” Yoongi replies, not looking sorry at all as he leans in and licks, quick little flicks of his tongue, at the tip of Jimin’s dick. He’s already almost fully hard, so when Yoongi moves his dick to suck at Jimin’s balls again, his dick is almost able to lie parallel against his stomach. Yoongi immediately takes advantage of this, tracing the vein underneath Jimin’s dick with his tongue and then crawling up Jimin’s body, pushing him to lie flat on the bed so that, when he comes in for a kiss, Jimin can feel Yoongi’s dick up against his. He's not as hard as Jimin, but he’s by no means soft, either, and the thought that Yoongi’s been getting hard just from giving Jimin a blowjob is so hot that Jimin moans, loudly, into Yoongi’s open mouth.

The sound seems to make something snap in both of them, because Jimin’s never known their kisses to be so frantic, so desperate – Yoongi’s changing up their kissing style almost every moment, as though he wants to do everything at once, while Jimin’s hands are gripping Yoongi’s ass so tightly as they start to grind against one another, he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s leaving marks.

Yoongi pulls back, panting for breath, eyes flickering all over Jimin’s face, and he says, “I love you. Wanted to wait until we’d finished, but I can’t, I can’t wait-”

“I love you too,” Jimin says, moving one of his hands to the back of Yoongi’s head so he can pull him down for another kiss, before murmuring, “Stick your dick in me.”

Yoongi pulls back, but there’s only a trace of the lovestruck look that had been on his face just a second ago – he honestly looks like he wants to push Jimin off the bed. “Ask me literally any other way.”

Jimin snorts at the disgruntled, kittenish scowl on his face, leans up onto his elbows to kiss his pout, then says, “Make love to me, hyung.” He honestly intends it to come out as a flippant joke, but it definitely doesn’t sound like one, far too soft, far too earnest, revealing a dark, quiet part of his heart that he’s not altogether sure he was ready to bring into the light just yet. But he realises, almost immediately, that he trusts Yoongi with it completely.

With one last, lingering kiss pressed to Jimin’s mouth, Yoongi sits up, grabs the lube from his bedside table, and starts liberally applying it to his fingers, rubbing them together to warm it up. Jimin, meanwhile, shifts around until he’s on his hands and knees, before deciding he’ll probably be more comfortable on his forearms.

He can’t see Yoongi from his current position, though, so he tries to rely on his hearing to work out what he’s doing. He can hear the slick sounds of him still warming up the lube, the shuffle of his sheets as he crawls closer, a little sniff, then another-

“Did you just sniff my asshole?” Jimin crows gleefully, looking over his shoulder so fast that he feels a little dizzy with it.

Yoongi looks at him, flushes a deep red, and then looks away. “No, it’s just – I thought I smelled my bodywash, I – it was your ass, not your asshole.”

“Hey, whatever helps you get in the mood, hyung, I’m not-” The rest of his sentence is lost to the low moan that feels almost punched out of his chest as Yoongi works in his first finger. He’s never felt this sensitive and worked up over somebody putting one finger in him before, but his nerves feel so alight with anticipation that, when Yoongi angles his finger to be able to brush his fingertip close to his prostrate, Jimin whines and buries his face in Yoongi’s pillow.

“I know we’ve literally only just started, but would you mind changing position?” Yoongi asks, very politely, rubbing comforting circles on Jimin’s ass as he works his finger out of his asshole slowly. “I want to be able to see your face.”

“You could literally ask me for the moon right now and I’d give it to you,” Jimin huffs; as soon as Yoongi’s taken his finger out of his ass, Jimin wriggles around until he’s laying on his back, looking up at Yoongi.

The new angle means that, not only can Yoongi now reach Jimin’s prostate more reliably, not only is he using the angle of his other fingers to brush them gently against the underneath of Jimin’s dick, but Jimin can see the attentive look on his face as he tries different movements to see what Jimin responds to best. It’s a lot to take in, so Jimin throws his head back onto the pillow, arms over his face, and exhales slowly, shakily.

“Hey,” Yoongi says, stilling. “Remember what I just said?” Jimin huffs, but moves his arms away from his face, one hand gripping the pillow above his head, the other gripping the sheets next to his hip. “Thank you,” Yoongi says, gently uncurling Jimin’s hand to hold it as he works in his second finger.

He doesn’t move for a moment, just holds them there – for a second, Jimin thinks it’s because he’s giving him time to get used to the sensation, but when he actually looks at his face, Yoongi looks overwhelmed, eyes wide as he stares down at his own fingers. Jimin rubs his thumb against Yoongi’s hand, then clenches down on the fingers inside of him.

The move seems to jolt Yoongi out of whatever reverie he had been in, because he starts moving again. Jimin knows, objectively, that he’s trying to stretch Jimin enough to take his dick, but his fingering doesn’t feel like means to an end on Jimin’s part – he crooks his fingers to press tantalisingly close to his prostate often enough to make Jimin’s toes curl. At the same moment that Jimin moves his legs to press his heels onto Yoongi’s back, Yoongi comes in for a kiss, and Jimin’s never felt more entwined with another person.

Eventually, Yoongi pulls back, and Jimin lets his legs fall back on either side of Yoongi, a little shaky from holding them up for so long after such an exhausting day.

“How do you feel?” Yoongi asks. “Do you need a third finger?”

Jimin thinks about it, then nods. “It’s been a while, yeah, just in case.”

Yoongi adds a little more lube to his third finger, then slides it in. Because he hasn’t been able to warm it up, his third finger is cooler than the first two, and the difference in temperatures is distracting enough that Jimin, who’s been feeling close to orgasm for a while, manages to hold off from coming immediately. He’d been stretched enough with two of Yoongi’s fingers that the third just makes him feel full, rather than any discomfort, but he’s glad he asked, not least because he gets to watch the moment when Yoongi takes his own dick in hand and start pumping himself to full hardness. Jimin watches, with the intent of seeing how Yoongi likes it so he knows for the future, but he’s too distracted to notice much beyond how nice Yoongi’s dick and hand both look.

“Okay, I’m good, I’m good,” Jimin says, because he can feel his orgasm approaching, and he wants to get as much time with Yoongi inside of him before that happens.

Dutifully, Yoongi carefully pulls his fingers out, then starts lubing up his own dick. He lines up his dick with Jimin’s ass and, at Jimin’s nod, starts to push in. He goes slow, which makes Jimin feel like he’s going impossibly deep, hyperaware of each movement because of how sensitive he is. Eventually, their hips line up; because of how diligently Yoongi had stretched him, Jimin doesn’t need long to get comfortable with the size of him.

“Go,” Jimin says, using what limited space he has to shift his body until, showing off his flexibility a little, he can get his ankles up onto Yoongi’s shoulders. It’s more of a hamstring stretch than he’d necessarily like after a full day of dancing, but it’s worth it when the new angle means that not only can Yoongi fuck him with ease, but he can kiss him while he does so. Jimin, meanwhile, uses the new angle to map out Yoongi’s back with his hands, squeeze his thighs, clutch at his biceps. He just can’t keep them in one place, a feeling which only heightens when Yoongi takes hold of Jimin’s dick in the space between their bodies; Jimin’s hands fly up to clutch at either side of the pillow under his head and, as Yoongi runs his thumb along the underside of his cock, Jimin comes over his stomach with a surprised gasp. Yoongi fucks him through it, picking up speed as Jimin, writhing, laughs helplessly at the onslaught of sensations until, with one final, deep push, Yoongi comes.

Yoongi sits up, but he doesn’t pull out, so Jimin follows, shifting and adjusting until he’s sitting in Yoongi’s lap, legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his shoulders as, panting, he feels the last twitches of Yoongi’s orgasm rock through him.

“Good news!” Jimin says as soon as Jeongguk opens his and Taehyung’s front door. “Yoongi-hyung and I are dating.” He lifts Yoongi’s hand in his.

“Yeah, we know,” Jeongguk says, stepping aside to let Jimin and Yoongi inside. Everyone else is already here, which is just how Jimin had planned it – he wanted to announce this once, to everyone, to deal with their surprise all at once.

So far, it’s not going as he planned.

“What do you mean, you know?” Jimin says, squinting suspiciously. He’s still holding Yoongi’s hand, which he’s sure is making it a little difficult for him to take his shoes off, but he’s, very generously, only complaining about it a bit.

“Jimin, please give me my hand back, I need these shoes to look decent for a sponsorship deal, I can’t fuck up the backs by taking them off without undoing my laces-”

“You’ve been dating for the last six months,” Jeongguk says.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Namjoon says from the couch, one arm stretched over the back of it as he doesn’t so much as turn away from watching Hoseok and Seokjin play a video game.

“No, no, that was fake dating,” Jimin says. “Which, need I remind you, was your idea. Now we’re actually dating.”

“You’ve been actually dating for six months, you both just refused to admit it,” Jeongguk says exasperatedly, although his expression melts into a pleased smile when Taehyung comes up behind him and hooks his chin on his shoulder.

“That’s great, Jimin-ah, Yoongi-hyung,” Taehyung says, wrapping his arms around Jeongguk’s waist.

“Thank you,” Jimin says with a pointed look at Jeongguk, who just offers him an eyeroll in reply. “We’re very happy.” He turns to look down at Yoongi, who’s still attempting to undo the tight knot in his shoelaces with one hand rather than relinquish the grip he has on Jimin’s hand (he may talk a good game about needing Jimin to give him his hand back, but Jimin can feel just how tightly Yoongi’s holding his hand in turn). “We’re very happy,” Jimin repeats, a little softer, and he can’t help, when Yoongi turns his head to look up at him with a beautiful grin, but return his smile.