Chapter Text
“Are you having an existential crisis in the snack aisle again?” He glances to his left. A prawn in oversized sunglasses and a beach shirt that Hoseok frankly doesn’t hate glares back at him. “You menacing the prawn chips again?”
Actually, though, Yoongi doesn’t look menacing at all. Just kind of greasy and smudged around the edges. Folded in on himself, like the fluorescent lights are costing him something right in the spine tonight.
He’s wearing the same shirt he’d been puddled in when they dragged him off his couch an hour ago, the blue light from his laptop making him glow ethereal and ghosty. He said it gave him mental fortification to re-read the rejection letters until they meant nothing to him anymore, just little inky blots on a nothing page. Meditative, almost, was what he said.
“That sounds like some grade-A dogfood,” Hoseok had told him the first time he’d said it, but that was a couple dozen rejections ago and looking at the particular tilt of Yoongi’s mouth with the smell of rainwater and slick streets on their skin, he wasn’t so sure anymore. Mostly he’d been trying not to count the number of dirty dishes and take-out containers littered around the tiny apartment.
In the corner, Jungkook was giving a speculative sniff to a bowl that even from here Hoseok could see was growing faintly electric green. “Get up, fucker, we’re gonna be late. We’re already late. Jungkookah, do you think you should be touching that and all? I’m gonna stick you in a vat of rubbing alcohol.”
“Hyung, it’s like – growing all fuzzy and shit.” Jungkook had wrinkled his nose. “It’s kinda cute.”
Now, in the 7-Eleven with the-too bright lights and the scuffed linoleum, Hoseok slings his arm around Yoongi’s neck. “Hyung?”
Yoongi sniffs, rolling his shoulders. “That one was looking at me all funny, you know?” He shrugs Hoseok’s arm off. “C’mon.”
Hoseok hears his phone buzzing in his pocket, letting him know his messages are stacking up. He switches the pack of Hite onto his other hip. Their slides make thwacking sounds as they pace the aisle.
“You know you can’t be late to things like this,” Yoongi says, flicking his gaze over. He needs a haircut, Hoseok thinks. “What’s gonna happen?”
“Suran’s gonna lovingly flay the skin from my balls, that’s what’s gonna happen.”
“Nah, she won’t.” Yoongi looks away, mumbling and adding, “Anyway, that’s not who’s got you sweatin’.”
“What?” Hoseok can hardly ever follow what Yoongi even says half the time. His phone buzzes again. He flicks his bangs out of his eyes. “Did you lose Jungkook?”
Yoongi snags a bag of puffed corn off the rack before they turn the corner. “You know he’s like,” he pauses, sucking in a breath between his lips, “a grown-ass man? Going to university and everything soon. A little later than some, but still.”
“Oh, oppa,” Hoseok says, putting on his best voice and ignoring the way the cashier throws him a look. “You know Kookie gets excitable when we take him to the shops, you have to keep your eyes on him and your hands, too.”
Yoongi ignores him, looking disinterestedly at a stack of cup ramyeon.
“Hyung!” Hoseok turns. Jungkook is in front of the candy aisle with a bottle of soju in one hand, waving so hard his hair moves with the motion of it. Pretty, Hoseok thinks, watching it catch the light, the silk of it turning glossy. He breathes out. There you are. “I was looking for you!”
The first time he’d seen Jungkook cry, they were standing in the middle of the street. Someone was selling tteokbokki and cans of sweaty soda on the corner and the air smelled spicy and hot. Thickening. Everything behind Hoseok’s eyes hurt like one big punch.
“Hyung!”
“Go back, kid.”
He hitched his bag over his shoulder, trying to ignore the way it slipped out of his sweaty fingers. He hadn’t eaten anything more than lukewarm watermelon in a couple of days.
The pavement tripped under his Nikes, or maybe that was the sole peeling away from the shoe.
He’d promised himself this would be the last one, no more auditions after this one, and he was good at keeping promises to himself.
It was what had got him here in the first place, wasn’t it?
“Hyung – please.” He could hear the kid’s sneakers scraping over asphalt, the way he was trying to sound measured and reasonable underneath all his leftover shuddering from that gaspy snotting he’d been doing back in the dim hallway against Hoseok’s shoulder. Both of them slick with sweat from the audition, Hoseok could feel the nudge of the kid’s chin against his throat with the way he’d held onto him.
“Don’t go,” he’d muttered, before Hoseok could feel his shoulders start to tremble. Little earthquakes in his skin, and he wasn’t laughing, though by that point more than once Hoseok had seen the way his shoulders would fidget with giggles when he was happy. Hoseok would make him laugh. Stuffed in hallways and waiting rooms with fifty other sweaty hopeful kids, he thought it was the least he could do for this wide-eyed kid, who’d introduced himself with a bow so deep Hoseok had seen the back of his neck.
Sizzling on the sidewalk outside the audition building, Hoseok spun on the spot, fingers still clutching the strap of his backpack. He could feel the loose threads against his nails. The sun sliced against the back of his neck. “You don’t even know me, how am I your hyung, again?”
Jungkook just looked back at him, wetly. His mouth was bitten red.
“We been…” he tried.
Hoseok was already shaking his head.
“We ain’t been nothing, and you know it.” He stepped closer. “Just ‘cause we’ve auditioned and shit together a couple of times doesn’t mean shit.” He gestured between the two of them. “Doesn’t make us anything. Why you followin’ me around?”
“M’not.”
Hoseok sniffed. The paper square on Jungkook’s chest with his audition number was still pinned to his t-shirt, though it was all crumpled up and drooping from the wet. Sweat. Tears, maybe, too.
Jungkook wasn’t a dainty crier, apparently.
Once when Hoseok was a kid, a wasp had flown into his mouth and stung him right on the lip. That was what he felt like now. Numb in a mouthy way, tongue working over shards of poison.
Jungkook’s jaw was set. Hoseok wanted to tell him it didn’t make him look any older.
“You could be something, you know?” Hoseok wiped at the sweat still beading on his jawline with the back of his knuckles. “I can tell. You’re real cute, kid.”
He was. Too-long hair in his eyes, sweet mouth all puckered up like that. Gaze always looking and following and tracking. Bambi eyes, they’d all started to call him.
“You could too,” he said, now, awkward and gaze landing somewhere around Hoseok’s forehead. “We could be like. Good. Together.”
Hoseok laughed, but it sounded scooped out and thin. “Not me. I’m done. Like real deal done. I promised–” He shut his mouth on the rest of the sappy words.
In bed, eyes on the ceiling where a water mark was blooming brown and foul, he’d promised himself: one more time. One last time, and if not, then it wasn’t meant to be.
“I’m out,” he said, turning away from the sharp cut of Jungkook’s half-boy jaw.
There was a hand on his arm then and he had half a mind to strike this punk, fifteen shades of too familiar, in his sweet little face. Something must’ve shown of it when he glanced back because Jungkook averted his eyes. He didn’t step back though. Hoseok could feel his body heat radiating off him, blood still hot from where they’d been dancing their little hearts out for a panel of blank faces.
“I don’t – I don’t got anywhere else to go. Hyung. I don’t know where else to go.”
A few streets over, a car alarm was going off.
“I don’t take in strays.”
Jungkook was quiet. Maybe there wasn’t anything good to say to that.
“Shit,” Hoseok said. He thumbed at his nose. Jungkook’s fingers were clenched in the hem of his t-shirt, bunched up like vines. “Shit,” he said again.
Then he’d waited for Jungkook to duck back inside the building to grab his bag, leaning against the dirty grey wall and glaring at nobody in particular. On the way back to Hoseok’s tiny apartment they’d stopped at a food cart selling hotteok and each eaten half and what Hoseok remembered most is that when Jungkook crossed the streets that night he still looked both ways twice.
Suran’s place is a few stops away on the KTX, perched familiarly across the street from a second-hand furniture store and a stack of rented office buildings. She answers the door with an unlit cigarette in her mouth, widens her eyes in greeting, and nods them inside wordlessly. Hoseok thinks on anyone else it would look affected, but it fits right on her. She moves easily in it, uncrowded in herself.
Hoseok tries to imagine what that would be like and finds he cannot, especially not right now, with his phone going off in his pocket and Jungkook’s hand on the small of his back and Yoongi giving off this restlessness that rustles down so deep in Hoseok’s belly he’s gonna be tasting it for days, acid climbing back up his throat.
The industry had a way of spitting out what it didn’t want, and all those left behinds had a way of clinging together. Barnacles on a rock, something like that. Pretty. Spiky, too.
Suran had gone further than any of them, though in the end she hadn’t debuted. Couldn’t get a group to fit properly, her company had said, though Hoseok had only been told this by her years after the sting of it had gone away, Suran’s tongue loose with soju. Her head was resting on his shoulder.
“I feel so comfortable with you,” she’d muttered.
Hoseok had looked at her.
“Yeah,” she said, “I think it’s ‘cause you don’t wanna fuck me, you know?”
“Hey,” Hoseok said. “That’s – uh. You know.”
“Oh, I know, baby.”
Hoseok thought she was beautiful, in the way where he wanted to pick out her outfit. Maybe brush her hair.
He picked with his thumbnail at the soju label, the bottle tucked neatly between his thighs. “If things were different, you know, for me. I would.”
Her eyes drifted off, the hinge of her wrist settling behind her. “I don’t want things to be different.” They were on the floor of her bedroom, the clock crossing over into early morning. “You don’t wanna fuck me. Man, that’s nice.”
Now, leaning back against her kitchenette counter, Suran eyes him. “What’s this?”
“Noona.”
“You come into my home.”
“Aw, noona.”
“– my home,” she continues loudly, and the thing is she really has a kinda stupid good American accent when she’s not twisting it into some kind of old Hollywood thing. She’d had lessons as a trainee.
“It would be funnier for me –”
“– my home, where I give you the fruits of my labor –”
“– if I knew what you were saying, but I never –”
“– the blood of my loins,” she says, which makes Wheein and Hyejin crack up behind her. Hoseok notices that they’ve dyed their hair a kinda matchy matchy purple pink combo that looks good together and brings out the softness in their faces. Next to him, Jungkook is very politely averting his eyes from where their hair is curling delicately over their soft cleavage, the arches of their stark collar bones.
Right. That’s what he was noticing, too.
“– the clothes off my back, Hoseokah –” He flicks his eyes back to Suran, whose smirk is curling like a cat.
“Like not even once, noona, have I ever even like remotely –”
“– and this is what you bring me? This Hite shit?” She curls her top lip, showing off one eye tooth.
“– got this bit,” he finishes lamely.
She hooks one manicured finger around the cardboard handle and lifts it out of his hands. “Well, Naver that shit,” she finishes, and it’s all Busan in her voice again. He can’t help smiling.
“Hey,” he says, and lifts the plastic bag of vodka and soju from behind his back, just to watch her eyes get that drifty happy look.
“Oh, Hoseokah, you take care of noona, huh?” She pats his head, skritching a little behind the ear, while she lifts the bag with her other hand.
“Noona, you know I always do,” he says, letting his Jeolla accent pop. “You like your little joke, like to do the whole schtick with me, bang bang, baby, but have I ever let you down?” He holds his hands up, innocent, and she checks him with her hip, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
He can feel Jungkook shifting next to him. Yoongi’s wandered off already, down the tiny hall to the tinier living room space where something thumpy and full of bass is filtering carefully out of a couple of tinny speakers. The lights are off, but the whole space is lit up with strings of fairy lights.
Vaguely Hoseok registers that Suran is asking them if they want to do a shot, shopping bags puddled around the bases of the bottles as she unpacks their gifts, but Hoseok is peering back down the hallway, eyes catching on a familiar head.
Jimin’s inky hair is falling across his forehead as he bends to tilt his ear closer to the girl’s mouth. Hoseok doesn’t recognize her from this distance, though Hyejin sometimes brings around new girls from the studio. That’s probably what they’re talking about – dancing, the two of them.
Hoseok looks away, back at the cramped kitchen. There’s a stack of ramyeon packets leaning haphazardly next to the beige fridge and a teacup full of ash and cigarette butts on the windowsill.
“Hyung,” Jungkook says, clicking his cheek like he’s feeling all cool and relaxed, though Hoseok knows it really means he’s got the whirrs. “Let’s do a shot.” Hoseok can smell his perfume – it’s nice. A little fruity but Jungkook likes that kind of shit and can get away with it, too.
Hoseok peers down the hallway again, into the dark, soft-lit room. Some kind of beat with too much synth is playing now, electric and cool, fitting for the way the blue lights are catching on Jimin’s soft skin, painting it milky and luxurious.
When Jimin’s eyes slit up towards him though, Hoseok is already turning back to the kitchen, its banged-up linoleum countertop and waxy light coming from the bulb overhead.
“You got it, baby,” Hoseok says, snapping his fingers and pulling Jungkook under his arm. “Let’s take a shot.”
“Ice. This – ice?” Fuck, he needs some ice. He needs some ice in this drink to help it go down cooler, sweeter, not all scratchy on his throat, kicking its heels all the way down. His phone buzzes in his pocket. “Want some fucking ice,” he mumbles, dopey, pleading, which is fine because he’s alone in the kitchen now, fingertips numb from some kinda poisonous cocktail of soju and vodka that he’d been convinced of by Jungkook’s increasingly babyish giggles and Suran’s skritching fingernails. Suran’s gone now, though, along with her fingernails.
In a second, he’s gonna check his buzzing phone.
“Here.”
He looks up too quickly, which doesn’t help the room come into focus much at all. He can see Jimin’s face – that thick hair falling across his forehead, eyes crinkling in his soft way that makes Hoseok wanna drink him up.
Maybe Hoseok knows something about putting the dog on, lapping up what’s been spilled on the floor. Maybe he does. Maybe he’s shivered happily as he’s done it, too.
“There you are,” he says.
Not what he meant to say. Jimin’s shoulders are taking up all the space in Hoseok’s line of sight.
“Here I am,” Jimin says, and smiles, crooked tooth and all. He’s drunk, too, Hoseok realizes, by the way his lean isn’t quite so stable. He pushes his drink, clinking with ice cubes, against Hoseok’s chest.
“Thanks,” Hoseok mutters. He really does feel this gratefulness drop through him, Jimin here with him now. He doesn’t know what to make of it. Never has.
Jimin snags the other chair out with his ankle and drops into it. It wobbles on its crooked leg. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his jean pocket. He’s wearing them black and tight these days.
Hoseok takes a sip of Jimin’s drink, pushing his own lukewarm cup out of the way with his fingertips. “You good?” Whatever Jimin’s drinking is strong and leaves his lips feeling tingly.
“You know it, hyung.” Jimin’s shoulders flex underneath his t-shirt, a little damp around the collar, and Hoseok wonders if it’s sweat from dancing, or just chilling in that cramped little living room, or something else altogether.
Jimin pushes the cigarette between his mouth but doesn’t light it, a trick he picked up from Suran when she was trying to quit. It worked for her, too.
“Throw all your lighters in the Han again?”
Jimin pulls an annoyed face like Hoseok is already up his ass, but in that sweet way, where he’s smiling about it, too. “Maybe.” He rolls the cigarette to the other side of his mouth with a flash of pink tongue. Hoseok looks away, skin prickling with the damp and the heat.
Jimin is quiet. Hoseok thinks about how they are good that way – being quiet with each other – but right now the air feels stuffy. Tense with Hoseok’s misdeeds, and the worst thing Hoseok could do to Jimin is ignore him.
It’s been a few weeks since he returned Jimin’s calls, that’s true.
He rubs at the back of his neck, looking away. “So…”
“So.” Jimin says.
Hoseok looks back. Jimin is watching him, head tilted. The stud in the middle of his ear looks a little red, probably infected again even though Jimin insists on wearing the damn thing.
Eyes still doing that soft thing, Jimin says, “You wanna talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
Jimin shrugs. “Anything.” He nods towards his pocket, adds, “You know your phone’s blowing up? You got like an important call to take?”
Hoseok laughs. “It’s nothing. You know the weather sends you like little push notifications, it’s probably that. Monsoon season. I dunno. I haven’t been looking.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jimin says, annoyed, “’cause I called you like an hour ago asking you to pick up a lighter on your way over.”
“Shit, Jiminah,” he says. He looks away, tongue on the bottom of his lip, which feels too hot with all that sweet ice cooling him from the inside out. “Sorry.” He really is. Sorry to the bone.
“Hyung.” Jimin plucks the cigarette out of his mouth. “Talk to me. You can talk to me.”
“I talk to you,” he says, frowning. “What’re we doing, ain’t we talking now?”
Jimin looks unimpressed.
“Ah, shit, you know? It ain’t that deep,” Hoseok says. He tips his head back, resting it against the counter behind him. There’s a water mark above the fridge, this brown little stain that Hoseok thinks looks vaguely like a piece of dalgona candy if you found it on the bottom of your shoe. “It’s a hobby. And now, like. It isn’t one anymore.”
They’d been real polite about it at the time, when they’d kicked him off the crew. Lots of apologetic bowing and talk about how if they ever needed a fifth dancer, again, they’d give Hoseok a call. First person they’d call. Seojoon had stood there with his mouth in this thin, shitty line and he hadn’t looked at Hoseok once, not even when Hoseok had stooped to pick his bag off the gym floor and they could all see the way his hands were shaking.
Seojoon used to call them pretty, his hands.
He sniffs, looking over at Jimin, who is still watching him with that serious, soft-eyed look he’s always shooting Hoseok’s way lately. “Shit,” he says. “See how much you get me talking?”
Jimin licks his lips. “Jungkook said,” he starts, and maybe he realizes how that sounds because he stops. Knocks his fingertips on the rough tabletop. He’s wearing silver bands on his index and ring fingers. “You gonna try for a different group?”
Hoseok shrugs. “Maybe.” He sniffs again. “Like I said, it’s – a hobby.” It sounds stupid to his own ears, but he can’t take it back now. “I needed a break. Things are really cooking up at the store, you know how it goes.”
Jimin makes a soft noise with his tongue against his teeth. “You should,” he says, and Hoseok wants to close his eyes, sink down into that soft, sweet voice. No sharp corners, no rough edges, just that Jiminie smoothness. “No one fucking dances like our Hoseok hyung.”
“That’s fucking right.” Suran rounds into the kitchen with a bottle of soju in one hand and Jungkook nestled into the other. He looks pretty pleased with himself and his proximity to her tits. “Best dancer outta Jeolla-do, isn’t he?” She smiles, eyes curving. “And the prettiest, don’t you think so, too, Jiminah?”
Jimin juts his chin. “Hey, noona, you know I’ve only got eyes for you…”
She points a long finger at him. “You know your sweet-talking will get you killed one day, don’t you? Don’t try me.”
She leans her hip against the back of Hoseok’s chair, dropping a kiss on the top of his head. “Have you got a vibrator in your pocket, baby, or are you just happy to see me?”
“It’s his phone,” Jimin supplies, helpfully.
Hoseok rolls his eyes. “It’s a vibrator,” he says, looking up at her, “and I thought I’d let you teach me all sorts of sweet new things with it later.” She blows a kiss at him.
“Those guys are assholes,” Jungkook offers, having managed to detach himself from Suran’s side. He’s rifling through one of the cabinets. “Should we make ramyeon?”
Jimin tilts his head. His eyes are still big and soft and directed at Hoseok. “To you?” His bottom lip is jutting out, just a little bit.
Hoseok needs some air.
Suran flicks Jungkook on the ear. “You should be offerin’ to like buy me dakgangjeong not pilfering through my cabinets.”
Jungkook rubs his ear. “Noona,” he says, wheedling.
Jimin nudges his chin at Hoseok. “Is that why you left them?”
Jungkook pulls a confused face, zeroing in on their conversation. “Left?” he asks, while Suran starts peering hopefully into her own cupboards, too.
“I could go for chicken,” Hoseok says. He pushes back from the table, swiping his drink up.
Suran says, “Who’s treating?” and Hoseok gives them all a salute before dipping around the corner.
Outside on the fire escape, he takes a long, slow breath. The air’s wet with humidity and it’s not really refreshing at all, but it’s cool at least on his face. His eyelids feel – peeled. Heavy.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket. There actually is a weather notification. There’s also hundreds of alerts from Twitter, two missed calls from Jimin, and a couple of messages. He opens the most recent one and reads, u up for another shoot soon? ppl seem to really dig u – we should move on that. lmk
Across the way, someone’s laundry is making ghosty shapes in the night. A car huffs creakily through the narrow street. Inside, he can hear Jungkook laughing, bright and overly loud, and a muddle of voices. Another Twitter notification comes through. He thumbs it away, opens up his messages again. Types out: Let’s do it.
When Hoseok wakes up the next morning, he’s got a fucking ice pick lodged behind one of his eyeballs. “Motherfucker,” he moans, rolling over. Jungkook’s elbow is in his face. He pushes it off, and Jungkook makes an unhappy noise, slinking further down into the covers, which is gross given that he’s got a sheen of sweat on his face and the fan in the corner is making an unenthusiastic clicking sound, blades whirring drowsily.
In the kitchen, he shoves his mouth under the tap, scratching idly at his scalp. He needs a shower, or ten, or for someone to have taken the bottle of vodka out of his hands once he’d come back in from the fire escape and loudly demanded they put on some better fucking music.
He showers to scrape off yesterday’s gunk, shaves, brushes his teeth, blow dries his hair. He’s patting serum into his cheekbones when Jungkook squeezes behind him in the bathroom. Hoseok watches him attempt to get his dick out with one eye cracked open, then give up and shove his boxers down to his ankles, dropping down on the toilet seat instead.
“Is this like – necessary?”
“Last time I peed out the window, you said that was like, a problem.” Jungkook eyes the assortment of face products laid out on the sink. “You looked very like – set up in here. My dick was going to explode.”
“I said,” Hoseok corrects, turning away, “it was a misdemeanor, actually,” and flicks his bangs with his fingertips so they’re piecey and spread out over his forehead. “Your piss smells like straight up ethanol, you know?” he tells Jungkook conversationally.
Jungkook breathes out through his nose. “I think my mouth tastes worse, if it makes you feel better.”
In the kitchen, Hoseok shoves tea bags into two chipped mugs. Jungkook looks over from where he’s curled up on the couch. “Thought you had work today,” he says, gently rolling the back of his neck along the spot in the couch where a spring is threatening to push straight though.
“I do.” He pours hot water over the tea. “I’m leaving in like a minute.”
Jungkook curves to make a space for him on the couch, nuzzling a little at his thigh when he sits on the edge. Jungkook’s always really tactile when he’s hungover. “Hey, hyung,” he says, quietly, when Hoseok’s fingers drop against his scalp, gently running through his hair. It needs washing. “How come Jimin thinks you like – left Synapse?” He pauses. “Instead of –”
“Getting kicked off the crew?”
“Mm.”
“You know how Jimin gets.” Hoseok shrugs. “Mopey about that shit. Woulda just made him sad if I told him. Besides,” he says, smiling, tipping forward off the couch. He’s gotta get to his shift. “It really is just a hobby, Jungkook.” He points at the chipped mug. “Drink your tea.”
The first time he met Eunsang, he’d been bleeding from a split lip as he pushed his crumpled application across the table. They were in the break room, rickety folding table between them. He could hear a toilet flushing somewhere.
He blotted his lip with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he’d said, for the fourth time.
“Perhaps you would like to reschedule your interview…” Eunsang had offered, trailing off. His hands had delicate age spots across the back of his knuckles.
“I actually – uh –” Hoseok muttered, eyes averted, “really need this job, seonsaengnim.”
That had been the deal, right? Well, deal part two. Step one: stop going to auditions. Step two: get death sobbing drunk in the backseat of his parents’ car that he’d stolen right out of their driveway and driven up to Seoul, empty except for a bag in the backseat and an envelope with a thumb drive of audition clips. Step three: let it all fucking go.
Step four: find a fucking job that would let him and the Bambi-eyed kid he’d somehow acquired eat more than once a day.
He hadn’t factored in tripping up the stairs and bashing his face on the back of his own fucking knuckles trying to catch his fall, but he’d appreciated, on some level, the metaphor. He’d at least had the decency and presence of mind not to wake Jungkook, sleeping curled up in one of his old hoodies on the couch, as he’d scrambled into clean clothes and shoved his head under the kitchen faucet in lieu of a shower.
“I see,” Eunsang had said, as Hoseok blotted his lip again.
He’d hired him on the spot, and when Hoseok had gone to pull on his bright new work shirt right there in the dingy break room, Eunsang had told him to go home first, come back tomorrow for first shift. Clean up his lip. He’d pushed a bundle of yesterday’s bruised-brown bananas into his hands as Hoseok was leaving.
So maybe Hoseok feels a little indebted to him and all.
“You spend more time in front of the mirror than my wife,” Jaewon says, from the urinal. His manager tag glints in the dull lighting. Hoseok has the impulse to flick his own manager pin back at him, and then maybe stab it into the back of his hand, too. Or his dickhole.
“Okay,” he says, instead.
“Someone threw up in the stall.”
Hoseok turns. He pushes the tube of lipgloss, hidden in his fingers, back into his pocket. “And you’re telling me…” he says, blankly. There’s a stain on the front of Jaewon’s shirt, right under the pocket.
Jaewon checks his watch. “You’re the night shift manager,” he says, like he’s explaining something real complex, “and it’s nighttime.”
“You’ve still got two hours on your shift,” Hoseok points out. He digs his thumb into the lipgloss cap. “Jaewon-ssi.”
Jaewon sucks in a breath. “I’m on the registers,” he says, like that means anything at all when they all rotate anyways to avoid their eyeballs falling out of their sockets from boredom. He pushes out the door without washing his hands.
“Fucker,” Hoseok mutters, and goes to grab the cleaning cart.
He was home from school the first time he saw a dance group on TV. He must have been really sick for his dad to let him stay home, but he doesn’t remember that part much, just that he couldn’t look away from the screen, even though some part of him knew he should.
There were four of them, all lined up in a row. Their clothes were electric green, limey, and his mouth filled with this tangy, puckered taste right on the back of his tongue as he watched them dance.
The boys’ elbows and knees popped and swayed on screen. They looked like something very beautiful that you shouldn’t touch – only, tilted sideways. Like a teacup filled with rusty screws. Like the kimchi stains under his mother’s polished fingernails.
They were making these faces too, kinda snarling. Dogs in an alley, hungry for something.
At the end, the camera had zoomed in close on one of the boys. His black hair had little tips of yellow-gold at the ends, and he was wearing something to make his eyes darker, wider. He was panting. The camera caught that – the way his chest was moving up and down, how his lips were parted a little, shiny and wet.
Hoseok doesn’t remember much after that, except that he’d run to the bathroom and been sick, and when his mom found him, she wiped his tears with the backs of her knuckles and put him back to bed.
The streets are slick with night when he pushes out of the store. He rolls his shoulders, trying to shake off the feeling of spider webs clinging to his neck. It’s humid, that end of summer heavy warmth in the air, and he slings his backpack over his shoulder. He’s gonna be sweating by the time he gets there but maybe the guy will let him wash up.
He remembers the route from before, but when he gets there all the buildings are the same brown-washed grey and he has to pull up the guy’s contact info on his phone, squinting in the dark until he finds the right intercom.
It’s not much better in the stairwell, muggy and damp-smelling, but inside the apartment there’s air conditioner, and he sucks in a quick, clean breath while he toes his shoes off. He squares up the edges until they’re aligned with the wall.
When he looks up, the guy has his hands stuck in his pockets. He’s cute – round-faced, soft biceps pushing at his sleeves, professional-looking undercut. He’s not really Hoseok’s type, but he’s unfailingly polite. Averts his eyes a lot and calls Hoseok hyung.
Hoseok smiles at him. “Any chance I could freshen up a little, first?”
In the bathroom, he strips off his work clothes, cups water from the faucet and scrubs between his legs, puts on clean underwear and the black fitted tee-shirt that he had stashed in his backpack, flicks his fingers through his hair. He runs the lip gloss just once around his mouth.
There’s a mirror on the back of the door. The person he sees in it is – oddly small. Thin legs, hipbones showing through his underwear, sternum visible in the deep vee of the shirt. He doesn’t look at his face, except to make sure that he’s applied the lip gloss evenly. He doesn’t need to see the purple half-moons under his eyes.
“Right.”
He thinks about putting his jeans back on, says, “Don’t be stupid,” out loud, and crosses out of the bathroom without looking in the mirror again.
The guy is behind the camera. He’s wearing glasses now and fiddling with some setting on the microphone. He looks up when he sees Hoseok. His mouth twitches.
Hoseok looks at the set-up. It’s simple – just a kitchen chair positioned in front of a knee-high table. There’s a black bath towel on the seat. The bottle of lube and an eye mask are on the floor next to the chair.
“Here?”
Glasses nods. “Is that comfortable for you?”
“Sure,” he says. He drops into the seat. He rubs his hand across his thigh. “Should I get hard first or –”
“No,” Glasses says quickly, “no, they like – watching you from start to finish.”
Hoseok licks his lips. “Right.” He puts his hand on the front of his underwear, between his legs. The lights are – really bright. There’s a big ring light just in front of him, off to the side. He keeps catching it out of the corner of his eye.
Glasses clears his throat. “Do you want anything to drink before you start? I have uh –” he looks over his shoulder like he can see into the contents of his fridge. The back of his neck is very red.
Hoseok clicks his cheek, smiling. “Nah,” he says. “I’m golden.”
Out on the sidewalk, he checks his phone. Jimin messaged him earlier, before he’d even left the shop. can u take me to get stuff for the semester tmrw?
Then, a couple of hours later: or i can drive myself if u r busy and don’t mind me borrowing car…possibly we won’t come back tho
ha a ha get it
we’ll run away together
Hoseok shakes his head, laughing. A cat meows at him from the balcony nearby. He texts back: she’d never betray me like that
not after all we’ve been through
Then he sends: sure. lmk what time. off all day tmrw.
When he gets home, Jungkook is sleeping in his bed again, which is like – fuck, he’s tired.
He reverses out of the bedroom and pivots towards the bathroom. He turns the shower on and lets the steam fill up the room even though there’s a patch of black mildew in the corner that’s big enough to name at this point, which of course they had.
Last time Seokjin came over with some of his very good weed, they ended up piling in there and cooing at it like it was a family pet while Jungkook did some very convincing barking that had Seokjin laughing so hard he banged his shoulder into the light fixture on the wall and made Jungkook kiss it better.
Hoseok uses his nice shit to wash up, running his soapy fingers over his tired body, all his crevices and soft bits, but when he gets out of the shower he realizes he must have been scrubbing harder than he thought, cause his skin’s all red with friction and heat. His torso’s got angry marks along the ladder of his ribs.
In the bedroom, he doesn’t bother turning on the light to change into a pair of shorts, but when he slides into the covers, Jungkook’s shiny eyes are blinking at him, lit up from the slivers of milky neon shivering through the cheap shades.
“Hi,” he says, and something about the tone of his voice, or maybe the way he says it, makes Hoseok think he wasn’t as asleep as he’d thought. He doesn’t know what to make of that. It’s really late.
“Go to sleep,” he says, shoving his fist against the flat pillow.
“Hyung,” Jungkook says, mouth sleepy, slurry. He shuffles around and then his arm is sliding across Hoseok’s ribs, curling close. He props his face into the space between Hoseok’s bicep and his chest, practically in his armpit. “Smell good,” he says, rubbing his face a little against Hoseok.
Hoseok looks at the ceiling. When he’d come, chest still rabbiting up and down, Glasses had gestured at him with his hand in this pretty furtive way. Hoseok had looked at him blankly until something flickered into connection and then he’d dipped two of his fingers in the come on his belly and brought them up to his mouth, sucking on them until they were clean and shiny with his spit. Glasses had given him a thumbs up.
“I made dakgalbi,” Jungkook offers. “There’s leftovers in the fridge.” His knee is, inexorably, sliding between Hoseok’s legs, like he thinks he’s being subtle, maybe, if he goes about it slowly enough.
“Not hungry,” Hoseok says. “Go to sleep.”
“Mm,” Jungkook hums. His fingers clench and press against Hoseok’s ribs.
“Seriously, go to sleep – fuck, baby,” Hoseok says, after some more tentative creeping. He’s practically whispering, too tired to talk. “You’re grinding your kneecap into mine, just – come cuddle if you wanna cuddle.”
“Okay,” Jungkook says, and slings his thigh over Hoseok’s hip. His other hand slides up to Hoseok’s hair, carding through. In an hour, they’re going to be sticky with sweat but Jungkook doesn’t mind when Hoseok pushes him off in the middle of the night.
“You’re heavy,” he complains, resting his palm on the catch of Jungkook’s hip.
“Hyung,” Jungkook says, admonishing. “Go to sleep.”
Jimin ends up not getting back to him until early afternoon, which gives Jungkook time to get up, go to the gym, come back, shower, tip his face questioningly over Hoseok’s phone on the kitchen counter, and ask, “Why do you have three billion Twitter messages?”
“I’m extremely popular on the internet,” Hoseok says easily, while something hot rattles around in his brain. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. He swipes his phone into his lap, curling over his cereal bowl. “Did you eat?”
“For what?” Jungkook is toweling his hair dry with what looks like an old t-shirt. What is wrong with him.
Hoseok touches his tongue to the corner of his mouth. “I – post pictures of nature. It’s uh,” he gets up and dumps his empty bowl into the sink. “Mostly trees.”
“Trees.”
“Yeah, you know. Sometimes. A nice bush.” Well fuck. He turns the faucet on.
Jungkook makes an intrigued noise. “Seriously? What’s it called? I’ll follow it.”
“You don’t have a Twitter.” Some of the soggy cereal splashed up on the sides of the bowl and congealed there, which is his own fault because he was distracted by the messages on his phone. Not billions. But – dozens. Maybe hundreds.
Wish I had a bottom boy like that to fuck whenever I wanted. Pretty.
“I’m gonna get one,” Jungkook says, full of promise.
Hoseok scrubs at the tacky dregs of the cereal with the sponge. Why did they think he was automatically a bottom? Like what the fuck.
“That’s a good idea,” Hoseok agrees. He nudges the water a little hotter. His knuckles are pinking up. “You could put some of your art on there, you know.”
“Mm. What’s it called?”
“What’s what called?”
“Your nature-themed Twitter account, hyungnim,” Jungkook says, like he’s delighted to find out that Hoseok is full of precious secrets, even from him. His eyes are crinkled up at the corners. Hoseok shuts the water off. “What’s it called?”
“Oh, uh.” Hoseok looks at the ceiling. “Mostly Trees Here.” He dries his hands. He’s not a good liar. Makes him hivey. Jimin says it makes him look like a constipated puppy, which is rich coming from him. “I gotta change,” he calls over his shoulder.
“Ah, really?” Jungkook grabs the cereal and pours some into his now-emptied protein shaker bottle, following him into the bedroom. He tips the dry cereal into his mouth, apparently not bothering with milk.
Hoseok pulls his t-shirt off. “I’m changing.”
Jungkook smacks his lips, crunching on the cereal. “Ah, seriously, though,” he says again, impressed, “you really have that many followers?”
Hoseok turns around bare-chested. Immediately, Jungkook flicks his eyes over to the threshold opposite him, which is just so like him. Last summer they went to the coast for a couple of days courtesy of Seokjin’s family money, and Jungkook had spent the entire time with his eyes carefully averted. Hoseok had wanted to ask him if he was forgetting that Hoseok had been the one to care for him, to clean him up when he was sick from both ends after that dodgy satay that one time, but Jungkook was going through a whole thing at the time, anyways, a second wave of puberty or something. He kept getting into fights. He was a little delicate about – well, everything, until Seokjin pinned him with his knees and threatened to pee on him if he came back with another split lip.
Now, Jungkook is looking very determinedly at the wall as Hoseok slips his thumbs under the waistband of his underwear. “People really like trees, Jungkookah, have you ever gone outside like even once in your life,” he says, and throws his boxers at Jungkook’s face.
Jungkook makes a hot noise. “I go outside all the time, hyung!”
The thing about Jimin is that he has this kind of unending ability to be like really, carefully intense about things. Hoseok supposes you maybe don’t get biceps like that unless that’s the case, but he’s not sure he expected it to apply also to stationery.
Hoseok crouches down next to him. Jimin is investigating the thickness of the paper on this bottle green leather journal. “You’re like – really invested in this choice, huh?”
Jimin looks over, and he’s got this kind of dazed look on his face like he’s been pulled out of some deep place of concentration. Hoseok literally could not imagine what that’s like.
Jimin pushes his thick framed glasses up his nose. With his middle finger. “I’m sorry,” he says, sweetly, thumbing the pages of the notebook so they fan out, clearly only paying half attention to the conversation when there are notebooks to fondle, “were you in a hurry to get somewhere, Hoseokie hyung?” He leans down to hear the warping crackle of the page as he carefully bends it.
Hoseok swallows. Jimin’s fingers are – thick. Soft. Jimin hates them, but Hoseok thinks they look nice, especially when they’re holding things, being all careful and attentive. “Maybe,” he says, “I’m a busy man.”
A frown crosses Jimin’s forehead. “You said you had the day off.”
“And we’ve spent 89% of it in the Emart paper aisle, you know?”
Jimin rolls his eyes. “Hyung, did I complain when you spent three hours picking out a new lip gloss just now?”
“Three hours,” he says appreciatively. “Maybe a small exaggeration, there. Also, it was a lip balm, not – lip gloss. Just. For the record.”
Jimin sucks his lip. “Picking out pretty things takes time,” he says, in his softest, prettiest voice. Sometimes Hoseok wants to ask him how he doesn’t use it all the time. If it takes work, to not use it. He thinks it might.
Instead he says, “You think my lipgloss is pretty?”
He watches Jimin’s eyes flick down to his lips. “The prettiest,” he says. Hoseok can hear his thumb rubbing against the leather of the journal. Thwiiiip. Thwiiiip.
Hoseok’s palms are hot where they sit on his knees.
Jimin opens his mouth. Licks his lips. Says, “Hyung –”
“What’re you guys whispering about?”
Hoseok looks up. Jungkook’s got a bottle of banana milk sticking out of one of the pockets of his oversized cargo joggers and has scraped his hair back into a ponytail in the time it took for him to get bored of the paper aisle and then wander back.
“Stationery,” Hoseok says. Jimin makes a soft noise, like a laugh but just between the two of them.
“Oh, really?” Jungkook drops into a crouch between them. He shoves his arms around their shoulders. “That’s neat.”
After they emerge from the aircon and plastic rows and fluorescent lights, they pick up fast-food burgers and eat by the Han. It’s one of those singularly clear days, warm bordering on too-hot with the sun high overhead, melting down on them, but the sky’s so fucking blue it’s hard to care. Hoseok pulls a rumpled bucket hat from the trunk of his car and they take turns wearing it and licking fry salt from their lips.
At one point, Jimin smears his thumb across his greasy lips, and Jungkook suddenly and spiritedly decides to run laps. Hoseok squints at him in the sunshine, following his wobbling path and occasionally calling out bits of encouragement.
Jimin drops his head in Hoseok’s lap. There’s a crumb of salt in the corner of his mouth. Hoseok reaches down and thumbs it away without thinking, but Jimin laughs and pushes at his hand. “I’m not a baby.”
Which, of course, means Hoseok has to pinch his cheeks and coo at him until Jimin is laughing so hard he pushes up onto his hands and knees and threatens to throw up on him.
After that, Hoseok lays back on the grass. Threads his fingers through the blades, springy and a little biting. Next to him, Jimin and Jungkook are betting each other to jump into the river.
His phone buzzes in his pocket.
He can feel the sunshine dropping over him, climbing across his skin, but at one point a shadow moves across his face, and when he opens his eyes, squinting, Jimin is watching him. “You look dipped in gold,” he says, and then flops back onto the grass next to him.
What a fucking thing to say. Hoseok laughs. “Okay,” he says and shrugs, closing his eyes again.
They pack up to leave when the sun starts to consider setting, glowy and fizzling on the horizon. At the edge of the park, Jungkook points up at an enormous, sprawling tree and goes, “Hey, that’s a good one for you, hyung!”
Later, Hoseok will remember it as one of those good things that seemed separate from anything else – a kind of glossy moment taken out of time. Untouchable.