the understood boundaries of self

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/18422829.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Relationship: Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin
Characters: Kim Namjoon | RM, Kim Seokjin | Jin, Min Yoongi | Suga, Park Jimin
(BTS)
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Hotel Sex, storytelling out of order, everything is a
metaphor, Unrequited Love, Semi-Public Sex, boys smoking and
generally being emotionally unavailable
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2019-04-10 Completed: 2019-04-17 Words: 21,287 Chapters:
3/3
 the understood boundaries of self
by tentigers

Summary

The love comes first. Like a sudden flight of birds over the Han River, like sparking laughter
lighting up a room.

The love comes first and the rest follows.

Notes

so this is a story about translation. about being understanding and being understood.
a love poem to namjoon inspired by edna st vincent millay when she said “we sit in each
other’s souls.”
 Chapter 1

When Namjoon was seven, his mother took him to a palm reader on the Incheon coast. He
remembers his hands were sticky with pear juice and the sea-salt air, but he thrust them out to
the old lady proudly. She told him, quiet and low like they were speaking in confidence, you
were born with mind over matter, tracing over the line etched into his palm. But somewhere
along the way, love got in the way, pressing into the point where his heart line boldly crashed
into his head line.

“His talent line is strong and stable,” she told his mother over his head. “He’ll make you very
proud.”

But as he was pulling his hands back, she circled the intersection on his palm once more, like
she was trying to warn him of something. Love will get in the way.

In every universe, in every version of him that exists, Namjoon would rather write songs than
get drunk with people he doesn’t know.

They’re in Los Angeles. Namjoon’s nursing a glass of champagne at the BBMAs afterparty;
a place and moment in time that he never thought he’d find himself in. He would laugh, but
he feels breathless tonight. He’s too caught up in their own whirlwind, trying to make sense
of the feeling of success.

All he can do is stare into his glass, face flushed, and lean heavily into Jin in the dimly-lit
rooftop bar, sweat and the warm Californian breeze undoing the pomade in his hair.

It does not feel strange or painful or traumatic to watch Jin flirt and be flirted with. They are
two exclusive circles, worldwide handsome Jin and Seokjin-hyung who loves his boys. They
all have identities that they’ve learned to separate within themselves. Namjoon’s still working
on figuring out his own. Jin floats away from the bar, a confident slink to him, and sets that
glint onto his stare that Namjoon’s seen so many times before used on others. He dances with
girls, picking one out of the crowd, and doubling back to her every few minutes.

It’s only when Jin glances back at Namjoon still at the bar, Jimin and Jungkook at his elbows,
that he looks tamed, if only for a second. Namjoon’s eyes are already on him, the champagne
raised to his lips. Jin looks at him, and the air shudders. Jin is tamed, and he turns back to the
girl with dislike.

He navigates back to the bar when the song ends, Taehyung draped over his shoulders saying
something about Wong Kar-wai, about desire.

“I’m bored,” Jin says.

“You look you’re having a tremendous time,” Namjoon says, meaning it. He wants to watch
Jin show off again. He wants to send him back out sailing into the crowd, a hand placed low
on his back.

“Yeah, don’t do that, Joonie,” Jin says, gesturing at the grin curling the edges of Namjoon’s
eyes. “I’m too old for this. I’m getting a taxi.”

Namjoon takes both of Jin’s hands in his. “You know much it pains me to see you so
unentertained, Seokjin-nim,” his face fashioned in mock seriousness hoping to hide the slip
of truth. “You want a drink?” he shouts over the music.

“Yeah,” Jin sighs.

“You two are so odd,” interrupts Jimin with a laugh.

Jungkook leaves to hunt them down another bottle, and Namjoon glances back at the space
where Jin had been dancing a moment ago. The girl is still there, swaying slightly to an
imagined beat. She whispers to someone next to her. She looks just like Jin, gorgeous with
straight black hair and long thin legs. He rests his hand on Jin’s hip.

Jin looks at him. “Come with me back to the hotel.”

Namjoon feels everything within him stilling to a halt, the challenge hanging in the air
between them.

“You’ve never had a problem finding your way back before,” he says lightly.

“Namjoon.”

“Go tell Sejin you’ll be leaving then, hyung.” With me, Namjoon thinks.

Jimin pats him on the bum as they walk away, and yells “Bye sweethearts!” as he’s dragged
away by Hobi, always on the search for more light and laughter and music.

Drunk not for the first time on champagne worth more than the watch on his wrist and
probably not for the last time either, Namjoon lets himself be led by Jin. He looks up across
L.A., past the undulating black of the Pacific, and thinks he can see Korea waving back at
him.

Namjoon soon gets the impression as they climb out of the taxi that they're walking along the
edge of a blade. The doorman holds open the door, and he watches with caution as the lobby
lights dance over the back of Jin’s head, swaying, the room tilting on its axis.

As they enter the elevator and Namjoon presses the number of their floor, Jin does nothing
beside him, limp with some conclusion he’s just come to. Namjoon stares at Jin in silence,
aware that something has dissipated since they left the pulsing energy of the party. Jin doesn’t
say anything as he follows him out into the hallway, doesn’t even crack a nervous joke.
Namjoon's starting to feel slighted. He pauses at Jin’s door, waiting for him to open it. He
does and Jin throws himself on his bed, clean and tidy unlike Joon’s which he left covered in
a dozen different suits and ties.
I could follow. Namjoon thinks, his hand still resting on the doorframe. I could follow. The
familiar words echo in his head, and he is unmoving in the room, standing like a sentinel at
the bow of a ship, looking for a sign of… anything in Jin’s face.

“Namjoonie, I’m exhausted. You staying or going?” Jin asks, muffled.

“Jin-hyung,” Namjoon exhales, helpless.

His stride forward is aborted by Jin’s words: “Do you love me?”

He takes a step back, leaning now against the wall. They’ve done this a thousand times, will
do it a thousand more. He’s suddenly so tired, the alcohol and the words hanging in the room
leaving him heavy.

“Yeah, I do.” he says, in English, like uttering it in his second language removes him from
the truth.

There’s a distance between Namjoon and the boys that is mutual and acceptable. He doesn’t
need to them to decipher, unravel, or sacrifice for him in any profound way, he’s just thankful
for their brotherhood. But with Jin, it’s always felt like all or nothing. He wants to be known
by him. He wants the messiness of intimacy. He feels rising panic at not being able to express
himself fully in this moment, of having every single one of his languages leave him behind.
Like always, he chooses to stay silent instead and only empty words are left to keep him
company at the end of the night.

Jin is unmoving on the bed, his face pressed into his pillow.

Namjoon remembers the last time they shared a bed, years ago. It was right after Namjoon’s
first mixtape was released. He burrowed his way under Jin’s duvet, overcome with fear.

It doesn’t get easier, he moaned into Jin’s shoulder, so afraid that the lyrics he’d spent the
past three years writing made sense to no one but himself. This could be the end of his career.
He’d have to move back with his mom, and pretend to never have grand aspirations ever
again. Jin had stayed quiet, stroking his hair. Allowing him comfort, recognising his need for
closeness.

“You’ll bear it. You’ll last it out. You will,” was the only thing Jin said that night. “Because
you’re braver than any of us, Namjoon.” And he believed him then. Jin isn’t one for
sentiments.

They fell asleep like that in his bunk, tangled in the heat of each other and Namjoon woke up
with Jin’s arms wrapped tight around him, like he wanted to protect him from the next day,
and the day after that, and all of the days that marched relentlessly in front of them.

The back of Jin’s head stirs now, and he turns to look at Namjoon slumped behind him. “I
want to help you,” he says, face plain with sincerity.

“Why are you telling me this now, hyung.” Namjoon pleads, not a question anymore after so
many years of playing this game.
Jin’s gaze grows cold and empty at that, and Namjoon knows he's lost. “I’m sorry I made you
come back with me,” Jin throws into the air between them.

“I want to be here.”

“I don’t know. Could you be any farther away, Namjoon?”

And he understands, because Namjoon feels emptiness fill the space between them as well, as
clear and silent as a winter sky above Seoul that never touched them when they were
younger. It was all summers back then. Namjoon can’t imagine sharing a bed with Jin now.
The idea fills him with grief, like he can’t even remember how they ever did it with so little
thought. Their bodies were no longer brought together carelessly, tightly hugging in too-small
dorms with the weight of their future pressing down on them.

They were living in their dream now, a future where they didn’t need each other. A future
which can afford separate hotel rooms.

“It’s late, Namjoon, go” – a wrong, hitching sigh– “go to your own bed. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

The air in the hallway moves slowly, and it’s hard for Namjoon to take a shuddering breath as
deep as he needs as he opens his own door, and slips inside, alone.

Contrary to public belief, Namjoon is a profoundly quiet person. There are so many different
ways to be quiet. There’s how he breathes just before walking on stage, that’s one way. It’s in
the way he holds his hands when he's in public and knows people are watching. It’s in the
times when he refuses to answer his phone and how he sometimes likes to sit down on the
huge, empty floor of their huge, empty kitchen and pretend he’s not home when people
knock. There’s daytime silent when he flutters around his studio, and a nighttime silent when
he slips between the streets of Seoul. There’s please leave me alone i’m trying to make an
album quiet and walking by the Han quiet and i’ve been five goddamn months on tour quiet
and then there’s the type of quiet that comes back, a million times bigger than him, sneaks
into his blood and wails and wails and wails until he can’t be silent anymore. And that’s
usually where the music comes from. From deep within.

There are silences and silences. Each with its own place and memory. It’s the quiet between
him and Jin that hurts the most lately.

On the ride to the airport the next morning, none of them having gotten nearly enough sleep,
Namjoon can sense an uneasy look on Jin’s face. It’s an expression he only wears when he
thinks too much has been said. Like when Namjoon spoiled that London tour stop on V Live.
When Namjoon almost confesses things he shouldn’t.
“You awake, Namjoon-hyung?” Jungkook gives him a shake with his hand as he settles into
his seat.

Namjoon had sunk into bed the night before with a desire to never climb out again, angry at
himself for always getting so much wrong. Looking at Jin embarrasses him further.

Out of habit, he opens the door for Jin on the way out the car out of habit. Jin, his Seokjin,
rosy cheeked in the hot air, stops to look at him as he does.

“Thank you, Namjoon,” he says, in a strange, determined way. He looks at Namjoon

carefully.

“For what?” Namjoon spits out.

“Nothing. I’m just looking.” Jin raises his arm then, and smooths a hand quickly over
Namjoon’s hair before any of the boys can catch him in the act. Jin then touches his neck, just
a small, quiet point of contact, but it’s all Namjoon can feel as the heat of his palm spreads
through his body. They stand together in that special half-place between the safety of the car,
and paparazzi awaiting them on the other side. Jin smiles then, quirking his head, and strides
off into the deafening crowd.

“Jin-hyung,” Namjoon had said, exactly four years after meeting Jin for the first time. They
were in Seoul, on a rare day off. He wanted to take Jin to a tea house he heard about that was
next to a quiet lake. He’s been into lily-pads lately. “We can’t keep this up forever.”

“Keep what up forever?” asked Jin. He was sipping at his lotus tea and scrolling through the
news on his phone.

“All of it,” said Namjoon. “Someday, someone, somewhere is gonna find out we’re just
making this up as we go along. And then it'll be over, just like that.”

“We’ll do it some other way then,” said Jin.

“And we can’t live like this forever. Things will change someday and we’ll run out of
excuses as to why we should continue. Hyung, you want to be an actor. We can’t hold off the
future from arriving.”

“But today is all we’ve got,” Jin says, eyes meeting him across the table.

“Don’t you want more?” asks Namjoon, eyes flicking down.

Jin stirs his tea, spoon clinking against the glass. They sit in silence for a while, watching the
sun reflect off the pond outside.

“Can I ask you something, Joon-ah?”

He nodded.
“Do you still feel lonely, even sitting here with me?”

Namjoon froze in his chair. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. That was a hopelessly
dangerous question. He’s a member of the school of thought that no matter how close you are
to someone, you can’t really let them get into your head to know what you mean. You need to
speak it aloud, turn it into a song, throw words into the space between you and hope
something sticks. But it rarely does.

Jin was silent, unmoving, eyes piercing.

It’s not like he only feels lonely with Jin, it’s with everyone. His family, with Yoongi, with
his producers and bandmates, the people he’s most comfortable with in the world. But it’s not
like he’s unhappy, either. He’s spent years fighting for this dream of his, he’s fought tooth and
nail against turning into someone he isn’t. He feels more like himself, now than ever before;
he’s made peace with himself, finally. But sometimes he looks at Jin, usually late at night or
first thing in the morning, and feels such a profound emptiness, and Namjoon can’t explain it
away, no matter how many songs he writes in his studio at 4am.

“I… I think that loneliness lives in the space between what we mean and what is said. So
maybe we all feel alone, lost in translation,” he says, looking straight at Jin, feeling his heart
flip in a horrible way.

“But if everyone feels the same way,” Jin says slowly, rotating the words in his mouth like
he’s finding the right way to say it, “Why does it still feel lonely?”

Sometimes Namjoon forgets he didn’t grow up with Jin was when he was a kid. He knows
him back then as sure as he has the shifting, vivid mis-remembrance of Jin as a boy in his
head. Prim, quiet, rude, back as straight as it is now. His tongue as sharp as it is now too, but
without the control. An arrogant chin, lips quick to pout, quick to grin. Namjoon wishes they
had met far earlier in life than they did.

Jin has always been the antidote.

But had Namjoon met him as a kid, it could have been disastrous too; how he could have
found himself back then in the eyes of another. How much he almost is thankful they didn’t
meet until much later, until Namjoon was already used being alone.

Jin walks slowly from his perch on the kitchen counter. “Namjoonie,” he purrs.

“Don’t do that,” says Namjoon, smiling, absolutely living for it.

Jin stops over Namjoon’s body on the couch, leans over him. His eyes are bright and chestnut
brown. He still has his warm tan from California. “You want jajangmyeon, Namjoon?” he
asks. “I can get you jajangmyeon. You need anything else? Because I can get you that, too.”
“Jin, you’re crazy,” Namjoon observes, and Jin finally collapses beside him on the couch.
Namjoon feels something new in the air now that he’s sharing his body heat.

Namjoon watches Jin watch Jungkook shoot down a swarm of aliens on the television, who
throws his controller on the couch when he’s quickly overrun. Namjoon observes the colour
pouring into Jin’s cheeks as he realises he’s still under Namjoon's gaze. Jin clears his throat,
looking back at him: “Joon-ah, I’m going to be 25 next year,” he says. Like he thinks
Namjoon can do something about it.

Namjoon doesn’t know what to say to that. He pats Jin’s shoulder, and says “And I’ll be 23.
So what?”

“I’m going to go get you your jajangmyeon.”

“You know I can get my own dinner.”

Jin tilts his head in the way he only does when he’s nervous. “No, I want the walk. I’m
feeling restless.”

Jin jumps up, and runs his hand over Namjoon’s head before he heads off. It’s quick and
featherlight, and even so, Namjoon finds himself just sitting there long after Jin has left.
Sitting still, careful not to disturb the air as it is, his fingers reaching ever so slightly after Jin.

“Namjoon, get out here!” Jin yells outside his studio door. Namjoon turns up the volume on
his speakers. He does not get up.

“Nam-jooonie!” Jin calls again, pounding this time. He could easily just walk in as Namjoon
never locks the door, so his suspicion he’s doing this just for the thrill of dramatics is correct.

He sighs, getting up. When he opens the door, Jin is leaning on the wall next to his studio, a
cap pulled low over his face, fringe in his eyes, and a grin on his face.

“Do you even know how annoying you are?”

“Wow,” He breathes out, shaking his head. “Do you talk to all your elders like that?”

“Just one.”

“You know I love a bad boy,” he shoots back. “Come for a drive with me.”

They’ve all just come back from their mid-winter break, and Namjoon hasn’t seen him for
weeks. Jin went skiing in Japan with his family and has a bright red sunburn on his nose as a
memento. Namjoon feels a wave of fondness threaten to break through his mask of
annoyance. He crosses his arm and takes a good long look at the man in front of him, taking a
survey of Jin’s body, his arms, his legs, his face like he always does to make sure he’s still the
same after they’ve been away. Jin’s ears redden under Namjoon’s gaze and looks at him, just
waiting.
Namjoon takes comfort in the look of carefully guarded expectation that always lives on his
face, a kind of private hopefulness that things’ll go his way. A look that says, maybe we could
do amazing things together, but an edge to his eyes; a sharp glint that says, but I would never
let you get close enough.

He’s so handsome, Namjoon thinks helplessly, so boyish and precise. The immaculate line of
his eyebrows above his piercing gaze has always knocked Namjoon off balance and and the
plush pink of his cheeks pleases him more than it should. The contrast of his face is so clear
that Jin looked just like Jin in any blurred photograph or the most grainy fancams. Namjoon
would always be able to recognise the shape of him, in any crowd, anywhere in the world.

And the curve of his lips, the kind that can leave him looking like a pouting child if pursed
just the right way. Jin’s grown into his face the older he gets, the sharp angle of his jaw and
chin adding a bit of authoritative weight to his gaze. And how it felt to have it tilted in his
direction, especially now as he leaned with such flirting presumption against the wall, how he
made no effort to hide how eager he was to see Namjoon again. He just waited.

“I’m working on Jungkookie’s track now. Let’s go out later.” He flicked his eyes up and
down Jin’s body, a slow grin taking hold on his face.

“You let me down, Joon-ah.”

“Oh, you’ll be alright.”

“You wanna go to Hong Kong or something?” Jin says from his perch on Namjoon’s bed, his
bare ankles resting on his pillows. He’s fidgeting, making it hard for Namjoon to focus on
playing the backing piano track he’s adding to a song. He turns, and takes in the sight of Jin
on his bed. The room is dark, the only light dimmed above Jin. He’s just come from a
shower; he’s in pyjamas, and his hair is wet. The low bass line pounding from Namjoon’s
speakers saturate the room with a thrumming energy. You, you, you know–

“Hong Kong?” Namjoon asks, finally. That's not the way to get over me–

“We could go, you know. Get a plane out tonight.” All of a sudden you say you don't want
me no more–

“Jin-hyung,” Namjoon manages, “It’s so late.” All of a sudden you say that I closed the door–

“–It don't matter to me,” Jin suddenly sings in English, low and lilting. He watches
Namjoon’s face. “I played this song everyday last summer. Makes me think of you.”

Suddenly, Namjoon wants. He can hardly think in the dim warmth of his room, when he can
see goosebumps crawling up Jin’s thighs. He wants.

“I'm leaving you today, you broke my heart,” murmurs Jin again, just to himself. Namjoon’s
already lost his attention, Jin’s eyes already directed at his phone, the bright screen lighting
up his face.
But Namjoon is all burned up, fingers itching to touch him but instead he rests them on his
thighs, imagining he can feel a phantom heat.

While Jin drives him home from the studio late the next evening, he chain-smokes cigarette
after cigarette with the windows rolled down, Seoul nightlife rolling smoothly by. Namjoon
doesn’t ask why waited for him, not even caring to know the answer. He pretends to look out
instead, finding answers in the reflection of the city on the Han, in the tendrils of smudged
smoky February air.

Jin lights another one, his left hand perfectly still on the wheel. Namjoon looks at the slow
part of his lips, his way of letting his mouth get used to the shape of the cigarette. Letting it
enter. Acquiescence, Namjoon thinks, and he suddenly laughs to himself at the sharp stab of
desire. He loves Jin when he drives. He looks his age, here, dressed in a simple hoodie and
black jeans, and a thoughtful look settling his features as the street lights wash over his face
again and again. Jin takes a drag, and sighs, holding the cigarette between his index and
middle fingers just out of the window.

“What are you thinking about?” Namjoon asks him, startling the both of them.

“About the egg tarts I wanted in Hong Kong, Joonie.”

They ride in silence for a moment longer.

“You know I can’t give you everything you want, hyung.”

“Let’s make a picnic. Let’s have it on top of Namsan. Just like old times.”

“Jin. Shut up.”

It was the year that Namjoon tried to kill Jin with a kitchen knife that they most fully
understood one another.

They stood facing each other in the kitchen, that shitty too-small kitchen, in their first dorm,
and Jin had thrown first. Namjoon cursed and ducked behind that shitty island, and saw the
porcelain shatter around him. He cursed again, seeing that it was his favourite coffee mug,
the one his mother bought him in Kyoto when he was six. That brought rage.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Jin screamed at him, his voice cracking just like the porcelain on
the tile. “You don’t fucking know anything about me.” Another crash. A plate, this time.

He hadn’t even realised what he was doing until he had the knife in his hand against Jin’s
throat, not pressing down, not even with the sharp end —just a dominating force, a fight-
ender. They looked at each other, eyes wild, until Yoongi burst into the room, grabbed the
knife out of his hand, and threw it to the floor with a heartfelt, “Jesus fucking Christ.”
See, the thing is that Namjoon’s always known that anger makes him lie. It makes him pick
up knives. It blinds him and denies him self-preservation. He gets angry too easily these days,
a danger when there’s so much at stake now.

But he realises in that moment that anger makes Jin too honest.

Namjoon was still pressed against him, had him backed into the counter, a hand still curled
around his throat, when Jin whimpers. Namjoon’s entire life is rearranged in the moment he
takes in the fact that his eyes are blown big, his breaths falling a bit too far a certain way.
Jin’s proud chin is cocked up but he looks terrified, eyes nowhere near the knife on the floor.
He looks up into Namjoon, and Namjoon just knows.

He lets Yoongi rip them apart, and watches as Jin empties his face, shoves himself off the
counter and walk out of the kitchen. Namjoon slumps onto the island, arms crossed.

“You’re bleeding,” Yoongi says matter-of-factly, light fingers touching his temple where a
piece of glass got him.

He and Jin were the last ones in the studio that night because Jin hadn’t paid attention during
their choreography lesson and Namjoon was the one left trying to teach him the dance. They
had a performance in two days and shared collectively six and a half hours of sleep between
them. They started fighting at the studio when Jin kept purposefully messing up just to get a
rise out of him and all throughout the car ride and by the time they came home all Namjoon
wanted to do was kick him out of the group right then and there, fuck the consequences,
because out of all of them Jin was the one who didn’t care, and he told Jin as much and Jin
had thrown Namjoon’s favourite mug, tears streaming down his face, voice cracking, and ––

“I hope it scars,” he says, eyes cast to the floor, only half-sarcastic. “It’ll remind me that Jin-
hyung really does care.”

“Namjoon.” Yoongi’s eyes are earnest and searching, and Namjoon knows better than to let
him see his own. It only took a year for Yoongi to read him better than he can read himself.

They all have fought, all seven of them. They love each other helplessly, but no one is
surprised that biting jealously, anxiety, and hatred can come between them, not after all that’s
happened; the claustrophobia, more days on two hours of sleep than not. It’s just never been
between Namjoon and Jin, and until now Namjoon hadn’t understood why.

The next morning, Jin brings Namjoon a coffee in a new mug. It’s light blue and has dancing
Ryan bears on the edge, just like the cushions he has on his bed. For a while they sit across
from each other in silence, and Namjoon stares at the un-cracked porcelain in his hands,
letting the steam curl under him. But then he hears Jin softly giggle, and he looks up, eyes
wide, and watches as a laugh escapes Jin’s mouth. But he can feel a grin curl the edges of his
cheeks too and then they’re soon both laughing, eyes shut and sides aching. When they quiet
down, Jin slumps in his chair, the early morning sun streaming through the window behind
him. It sets his black hair alight.

“Fuck, Joonie-ah,” Jin exhales.

“Yeah, I know” Namjoon concludes.

A memory. They were much younger then, maybe five, six years ago. When they could
afford the spontaneity of invisibility. He and Jin took an afternoon trip to the sea, after
Namjoon begged Jin to drive them there, yearning room to breathe and the wide, flat horizon
that only can be seen at the ocean. He was sick of Seoul, dirty and massive, holding him
hostage in its heaving streets. They bought beach towels at 7-Eleven along the way and
tossed them haphazardly on the wooden deck jutting into the waves. They kicked off their
clothes and shoes without thought and dived. Once his body hit the sea, Namjoon felt
overwhelmed, the waves tossing him off balance. Soon though he was filled with a spirit that
made him want to swim to China and back again, and still have enough boundless energy to
shout and shout.

They remained in the sea until the sun sank low in the sky, weightless in the swell of the
waves and giddy from the chance to be alone together. When the humid air on Namjoon’s
neck began to cool, they climbed onto the dock and flopped down, bodies warmed by the
sun-soaked wood. Jin’s eyelashes glittered against his cheeks, the tip of his cigarette glowing
when he raised it to his lips, sighing.

Namjoon turns to Jin. “Maybe we need the sea so much because it’s like being born again.”
Jin was stretched out on his stomach, and just looking at the gentle curve of his back made
Namjoon ache. He looks away, shielding his eyes from the low sun. “You must remember,
don’t you? Coming so quickly from warmth into cold air?”

“I don’t know,” Jin says, rolling until he’s on his side facing Namjoon. “I remember being
wanted though.” He lightly traces his finger down Namjoon’s thigh, leaving a line of sea
water that lasts only a moment before being disappearing into the warm air.

They’re having dinner after their concert in Paris. His thighs are pressed tight to Jimin and
Jungkook on either side of him, but his knees knock occasionally with Jin. He’s sat across
from him and Jin’s gaze looks soft and hazy in the amber light of the restaurant. Namjoon
drinks four glasses of wine over his meal, expensive Bordeaux red, and wanting, with every
sip, to get drunk enough so he doesn’t have to think too hard about just what’s going on here
with Jin, the fact he hasn’t seen Korea in seven weeks, how he can see how exhausted the
others are.

But soon they’re shepherded out of the building just as Yoongi –always the slowest eater–
puts his knife down. Everything always moving so quickly, their managers never letting them
be in the same space for long. The only moments they have in life now are stolen.

Feeling a bit unhinged, he suddenly grabs Jin’s hand before he can get to the car and tugs at
him. “Let’s go see the Seine, yeah? You’ve always wanted to see it up close.”

Jin looks startled, the street lights swaying in his eyes. “You mean, right now?”
“Yeah, why not.” Namjoon breaks out into a laugh, feeling like he’s just come up with his
greatest plan yet. He tells the managers they’ll be back later, they’re just going for a walk,
and can’t you at least just allow us this one thing the unspoken words between his urging.

It reminds him of that time in L.A., but tonight Namjoon leads Jin instead, stumbling over
cobblestones and observing the city shifting dizzyingly around him. He tries to relax, hands
shoved in his pockets against the damp. It’s cold tonight, and wet too, their breaths tendrils of
smoke in the frigid European air.

They walk past dark streets with bistros draped in deep bright reds at the corners, and
Namjoon observes couples leaning their heads on each other as they watch the rain in the late
night from their tables. He feels warm here, in this moment with Jin. They bump shoulders,
and then suddenly he feels Jin’s arm slide around his waist, and Namjoon forgets about the
rain entirely.

“You look so confident but you don’t even know where we’re going, Joonie,” Jin giggles into
his shoulder. They sway down the street.

“I have intimate knowledge on how to navigate to every major body of water in every city in
the world, Jin-hyung,” Namjoon replies seriously. “It’s in my blood.”

“Like a true north?”

“Exactly so.”

Walk closer to me, he thinks.

He lets Jin buy a nutella and banana crepe for them to share at the river, watching him
drunkenly chat with the man at the cart, hearing his laughter float like music notes in the
wind. They eat it sitting down on the limestone lining the bank of the Seine, kicking their feet
over the glittering dark water below. Namjoon’s mind wanders to Seoul, the early days when
they’d sit out by the Han, just like this, laying out the terms of their friendship so earnestly
and completely. In those days they looked at each other, not like the way they did not, but
with honesty writ large across their faces. They couldn’t hide back then, not like now. He has
so many memories of them sharing iced coffees in late summer evenings by the river that
bring him quiet comfort now. Jin would hold his hand. Jin would point and whisper and laugh
at passerbys as Namjoon scolded him for never taking anything seriously. Jin’s shoulder
would always be there to press against him.

Jin’s sat far from him now, curled tight in a black ball, his arms wrapped around his knees
and his thin jacket pulled tight across his shoulders. He’s looking at the moving water below
him, fringe falling into his eyes.

Namjoon thinks, I need you here with me, always.

“I don’t know what to do with you like this,” Jin says.

“Like what? We’re just sitting here.”

“I can feel you thinking about me, Joonie.” He kicks his legs out from under him, dress shoes
hitting the stone wall.

“Surely it can’t be that obvious. Maybe you’re just a narcissist, I could be thinking about the
crepe we had.”

“I think I’m drunk,” Jin sighs.

“See? Your perception is off, that’s all.”

“Come on. I always know what you’re thinking, Joon. I’ve always been able to. That’ll never
change.”

Paris at midnight suddenly and dramatically bores Namjoon to his core. He yanks them both
up and gets a taxi back to the hotel, Namjoon feeling like a confession happened back there,
realigning the terrain into something unfamiliar. He catches the reflection of himself in the
plastic divider in the cab, watching strange patterns of light move over his nose, cheeks, the
tips of his hair. The shadows keep Jin nestled in the dark. A peculiar urgency fills his head,
and Namjoon doesn’t want to be on these foreign streets anymore. They are so far away from
home.

This time Jin follows him into his hotel room without pretence, without any declaration.
Namjoon turns the light on as a defence against the thing he can feel undulating beneath his
skin. But Jin snaps it off, plunging the room into darkness. Namjoon curls up on top of the
duvet, shoes still on. The room is spinning. Suddenly Jin’s right there, tucked against Joon’s
back, a long line of heat curving down his thighs. They lie together for a long time, silent,
Namjoon thinking about Jin on stage, Jin at home, Jin in his bed.

He closes his eyes and lets himself be reminded of thrill he had first felt when Jin was brand
new to him when they were trainees. At the time he just liked having a new body to be aware
and keep track of, letting Jin’s presence take hold of all his attention. In those early days they
were so careful of each other, always with an awareness in any room just where the other
stood. That kind of knowing pulls two bodies together right away, and so they were always
associated with one another, the sort of friendship that is immediate and with sudden
intensity. Leader and hyung. He and Jin inevitably would isolate themselves within a space,
even if that space was full of people, even if the two of them had entered the space separately.
This pattern of closeness was born out of nothing else but the bare unwillingness to leave the
other. They sucked all the air out of the room and set up camp inside. Namjoon loves the
others for letting them be, for trusting Namjoon in his promise that he wouldn’t rest until all
seven of them made it to the end despite his obvious crush.

But they’ve never felt like two halves to Namjoon. He’s met others who balance him out,
who get louder when he’s quiet, who lean closer when he moves away. Who let him breathe.
Like Yoongi, Jimin, Taehyung. Seokjin has never been that for Namjoon. They push and
shove each other relentlessly; there’s really never been enough space for the both of them. Jin
steals Namjoon’s breath on an inhale and it’s claustrophobic, how close they are.

Namjoon had been astounded by the need that came from a bond like that, creeping up on
him, catching him wildly off guard. He had never experienced it before, not with any other
person growing up. He had never meant for it to get to that point. Namjoon became so used
to having this awareness of Jin’s thoughts and body that he became lost without it. When Jin
returned to the dorm after having left for too long, the back half of Namjoon’s brain returned
to him with a genuine relief. Oh, he’d think, barely having the thought at all before grinning
at Jin across the room: I missed you.

It was incredible to think Jin hadn’t known what he was doing back then, always hanging off
Namjoon, staying late with him at the studio, lingering after everyone else went home for the
night. Jin really hadn’t known. He had just let his body and instincts fly in the one direction
they would. And that was incredible. Namjoon had always known he had wanted to sleep
with Jin. Right from the beginning, to push himself right up against him and take.

Namjoon misses having that clarity of feeling. It guided him with the knowledge that
whatever Joon felt towards Jin was always going to be unrequited. There was safety in that
understanding. There was nothing familiar about this now, about Jin’s hands trailing his
waistline, their hips tucked in tight. His heart begins to pound madly out of nowhere,
knowing before his brain exactly what might happen in this room tonight.

Jin hears it, that’s how close he is. “What’s wrong, Joon-ah?” he whispers. He must have
been on the edge of sleep. All the lights are off. The room is black like the colour of the Han
and Namjoon feels inside his body the same terrific adrenaline the first time Jin held his hand
there. At the point of falling.

He rolls over. “Jin-hyung,” Namjoon begins.

Jin’s cheeks are blooming in plum dark. He is flushed, and free with endearments as he
always is when he’s had wine to drink. “Oh, Joonie-ah, darling.”

"You’re a magnificent tease,” Namjoon tells him, hand ghosting over the dip of his hips.

“I like seeing you nervous.” Jin shifts towards him, a small, almost unnoticeable movement.
“Have I finally gotten under your skin?”

Namjoon breathes out of his nose at this, thinking I will never be more brave than I am right
now. “You always are, you live there.”

Jin doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Might as well get under the covers then.”

“Are you cold?”

“Never. Just don’t want them to go to waste. This is a five-star hotel, you know.” Their
replies volley, rapid-fire.

“Trying to wine and dine me, aren’t you?”

For a moment all Namjoon can hear is the hum of the heating turning on and Jin’s breathing.
“You’re talking a certain kind of way right now, Namjoon.”

Namjoon feels like he’s floating above the bed right now, watching someone else answer.
“I’ve never––“
“I know.”

“What?” Namjoon fires back. “What have I never done?”

“We’re still above the covers,” Jin whispers.

“Then move,” Namjoon orders, frustrated now.

“Ah, now there’s a tone I recognise, dongsaeng.”

“Jesus.” Namjoon kicks his shoes off and strips his belt from his trousers with an angry whip.
He flips the duvet from out beneath them and curls at the edge of the bed, feeling his blood
run hot.

“You are the most infuriating person I have ever met in my life,” he spits out, unthinking,
wanting to hurt him.

“I could say the same for you,” he hears Jin shoot over his shoulder from his side of the bed.

Later, Namjoon will spend far too many nights thinking about why Jin didn’t just leave. Why
he chose to stay, regardless. But in the moment, the thought doesn’t even cross his mind and
they fall asleep just like that, Jin’s back to him, Namjoon in utter and bone-deep exhaustion.

He wakes facing the window. He can see it’s still night; 4 a.m. he guesses. The Paris skyline
through the gaussian curtains is draped in blue mist. He can see the outline of the Eiffel
Tower sending its spiralling pulses of light across the city, every so often cutting through the
curtains and painting the wall in a line of soft, fleeting silver. He watches for a long time,
head rested on his hand, as this blue, a dark blue, very far from dawn, inches up in the sky,
sending the moon out of place. It’s a familiar feeling, that displacement.

Just when Namjoon finally feels like he has an understanding of the rhythms of life, here
comes Jin to shake him from the sky. How Jin still, for years now, has the ability to wander
over and abruptly strip him so easily in the smallest of words. Once you find there is a person
who can shove you so completely from your fixed understanding of the world — once they
enter your space, they’ve entered you forever. Despite all your constant recalculating and
readjusting, they have you caught. Namjoon feels their legs brush beneath the sheets. It feels
like there are only two real things in this scene: the steady blue he can see, and the feeling of
Jin inhale and exhale behind him. He feels his heart shake again, I won’t miss the moment this
time. He turns.

Thin eyelids blink open. Eyelashes, Namjoon comprehends. Lips. Namjoon kisses him.

Jin’s mouth opens immediately, and Namjoon’s throat closes up, as though he’s about to cry.
He feels all the light of the sun on his back, as though the whole dawn erupted at once when
their lips met. Warmth, at last, he thinks. There is no breath left in his body as he heaves
himself over Jin, whose legs settle on either side of his torso, whose hands ghost over and
clutch at Namjoon in turns. Namjoon presses his mouth in the curve of Jin's neck and shuts
his eyes against the wave of emotion threatening to take him under. Oh, oh, oh, Jin breathes
in little puffs, and their mouths meet again. It’s wet now, but still soft and gentle. The rhythm
of their kisses is slow, and he settles in, hands cradling Jin’s head.

Jin, then, lays shaking hands on either side of Namjoon’s face, and ducks his head. “What
time is it,” he breathlessly asks Namjoon, who is half-crouched above him, eyes seeking out
something that can offer him anything in Jin’s face. Who gives a fuck what time it is? he
wants to say, but his head is spinning too much to allow speech.

“Ae-in, ae-in.” Jin breaths jaggedly, expelling air from his nose.

“Yeah?” Namjoon gets a good look at him. His eyes are clouded. His lips are dark and parted.
He is, and it’s so obvious now, still very drunk.

He’s waiting for Jin to push him off, to kiss him, to do anything at all, but Jin just looks up at
him. So Namjoon falls forward to press into his heated space because he hopes to god that for
once in their life what Namjoon wants and what Jin wants are entirely the same. He kisses Jin
again because he can. Jin’s mouth is slick as he opens up under him, and Namjoon bites his
lip just to hear Jin’s painful moan in his mouth.

Jin mutters something that’s likely very rude, but it disappears without sound, and shapes
itself into a groan as Namjoon wrestles with Jin’s belt, his button, shoves a hand inside Jin’s
trousers and wraps it around his cock.

Jin pulls himself away from Namjoon’s mouth and bites down hard at his throat, making
Namjoon gasp at the white hot burst of pleasure-pain. He twists his wrist at that, the grip
probably too tight, probably too much, but just what Jin deserves.

Jin scrabbles at Joon’s trousers, hands clumsy for once in his life and Namjoon huffs a laugh
in his shoulder, but then Jin’s hand is around him, hot and dry, just dry enough for Namjoon
to wince, to know he’ll feel it in the morning.

Namjoon is wide-eyed, holding his breath, and it’s so quick and fast and rough. It’s like they
both know they only have moments before the door will be kicked down and the two of them
ripped apart. Jin makes noises that Namjoon entirely expected out of him, soft and long and
needy, and he feels perfect in Namjoon’s hand, still pressed tight under his waistband and this
really should happen again Namjoon thinks, head spinning. But this is also something that
Jin will most likely want to forget outside of this vulnerable space, this half-delirious
morning, so Namjoon twists his free hand in Jin’s hair, rough, and kisses him quiet, and then
kisses him loud all over again.

Jin’s breaths are hitching now, and Namjoon twists his hand at the end of every stroke
because that’s just what Jin likes and he knows he likes it because of some subconscious
muscle memory he must've gained watching Jin in their first dorm, when they had to do what
they needed with company. And then Jin is coming, head thrown back on the pillow and back
arching, and Namjoon comes too on sight alone, bent over at the waist, shuddering, like his
orgasm's been punched out of him, like a hit to the solar plexus.
He exhales, heavy and slow, and lifts himself gingerly off of Jin. He collects himself in a
heap at the bottom of the bed, and glances back toward the window, the sky still hours from
morning. He’d imagined the dawn, then.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Jin asks him, voice quiet. Namjoon leans back on his hands
and looks at him. Jin's big eyes are peering up at him.

“Did you?”

Jin says nothing. They sit cross-legged, like schoolboys. And Jin is drunk. Namjoon has
never felt such absolute sobriety in his lifetime.

“I understand, you know,” Jin finally replies.

“What do you understand?” asks Namjoon, feeling cold.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about it. One of the first times I was drunk, you know, boy’s school.
It’s not… uncommon.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying there isn’t anything you need to — I mean. We should forget it happened. I
understand... it was a mistake.”

Namjoon stares at him, struck dumb, and says as clearly as he can: “I am not sixteen years
old and I am not who I used to be. I make my own decisions all the time. Don’t treat me like
a little brother. Don’t— don’t treat me like the way you do with everyone else. I am worth
more than that. You’re arrogant, and you’re drunk. I did that because… you should fucking
know why I did that.” His words over run his breath, and he trips to a stop.

Jin picks at the duvet, face drawn closed. “I guess I don’t understand then.” He slowly gets
up, puts on his shoes, and walks over to the window where he’s silhouetted against the dawn.
They both watch the sky, coming into its own.

“I did it because I wanted to.” Namjoon says, much quieter now.

“No, I did this to you, Namjoon.” The sun was making its slow appearance over the city now,
plunging the room into a pale light. “You weren’t this way before. We’ve always been too
close, so I guess...I guess it was bound to happen. I confused you. I’m sorry.”

“That’s insulting, Jin.”

“I don’t care, it’s the truth.” Jin stares at the wall, and his lips are still slick from kissing, and
his eyes are lowered below the sharp line of his brow.

Namjoon looks at him with growing incredulity. He stands up “You coward,” Namjoon bites
out suddenly. He’s never even thought that word in Jin’s direction let alone said it, and Jin
collapses underneath it. “I know you want this, we’ve been dancing around this for years.”
“Please shut up, Namjoon,” he whispers tiredly, hands now clutching the edge of the hotel
desk. “Fucking stop it.”

Namjoon falters, feeling absolutely outside his body.

“We won’t ever do this,” Jin says finally. “Do you understand? It won’t ever happen.”

“I don’t understand,” Joon says, helplessly.

“And you wouldn’t. You– jesus, Namjoon. This isn’t another one of your songs, this is our
life, and you can’t see the damage that we’d do to it. We’d tear everything down we built
together. This is real life and there are real consequences. Can you understand that?”

“So you’re saying I’m not even worth a—“ Namjoon spits out, launching from the bed.

“Namjoon, it will never happen,” Jin interrupts.

Jin as the serious one. Jin as the one who teases desire when it suits him, and abandons it
when it gets too much, the one who says no, the one who turns toward the door to walk away.
And Namjoon, resorting to tossing out words like grenades, each one missing its target by
miles, please come back. please stay. It feels like the final blow that is delivered, and not
from Jin, but from somewhere inside himself. He stands, says, “Seokjin,” because the
utterance of his full name has always worked before. The sunrise sends beams of pink
light glinting off the desk, making him sick with vertigo.

“Seokjin.”

The door shuts behind him. The room is empty, leaving just Namjoon. His lungs burn with
every heaving breath.

He’s not in love with —

 Chapter 2

In Jin’s absence, Namjoon sits on the long time on his bed. For once in his life he doesn’t
have any thoughts. He’s still and quiet as the sun climbs around him.

He showers. Combs through his wet hair carefully, styling it in the severe part he's come to
like the past year. His phone, tossed carelessly on the bedside table last night, is vibrating
with texts from his managers, a barrage of work emails, and a lot about the photo he tweeted
last night (a candid silhouette of Jin with the Eiffel tower behind him). He turns it off.

Someone softly knocks once, twice at his door and he knows without even opening it it’s
Jimin.

“You two were gone for a long time after dinner. We waited, but... I hope Jin-hyung isn’t
angry, you know how he doesn't get his way,” he laughs.

“Jiminie,” Namjoon says, utterly overcome with exhaustion.

Jimin takes a moment to look at him, and grabs his hand. “Hey, let’s go do something fun.”

They end up in Versailles. It was Jimin’s idea, and once Taehyung got word of their trip at
breakfast he refused to be let behind too. Jin was nowhere to be seen.

He sits in the car, unblinking, unthinking. He watches Jimin dance through the Great Hall,
bathed in shadow and light. A silhouette paired with Taehyung against the pale spring sky
just outside the long line of windows. A daydream, Namjoon thinks to himself, softly. He can
hear Jimin’s laughter echo on the marble floor.

They walk through the palace forest and Namjoon finds himself filled with a wrenching sort
of homesickness at the sight of noble, dark trees lining the paths. Their abruptness, the
contrast of the clean line of black branches against the bone-white clouds reminds him of the
Korean red pine that towered into the sky outside their first studio. Jin had carved their names
in that one, a foolish grin on his face, like they were school lovers.

They end up continuing into the town after Taehyung casually remarks he’s never had a Big
Mac and Jimin and Namjoon raise the suitable amount of hell. His laughs don’t reach his
eyes, but it's a good fake.

Which is how Namjoon finds himself having a panic attack in the middle of the Versailles
McDonald’s bathroom after washing his hands and then feeling like he maybe didn’t ever
want to return to Korea or the hotel or to Jin, feeling like he couldn’t handle the jagged
blows of pain that threatened to overcome him with every inhale.

Which is also how Jimin found him, shaking apart under the ugly florescent lights and his
hands gripping the sides of the sink, head bowed.
“Oh, Namjoonie-hyung,” he sighs, “Of all the places here, you choose the public bathroom? I
wish you’d cried in the palace instead, imagine how philosophical you’d look. Very on
brand.” He huffs a sad laugh out and kindly, sweetly brushes Namjoon’s fringe off of his
forehead, his cool hands calming down Namjoon every place they rested.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Jimin softly asks after a while, just the two of them
and the sound of Namjoon’s harsh exhales.

He wouldn’t even know where to begin. All the boys knew about their start, teased about it
ceaselessly, fondly. Maybe the end, then. He slowly breathes out through his nose.

“There aren’t enough words. In any language. To make Jin understand what I’ve been trying
to tell him.”

Jimin meets Namjoon’s gaze in the bathroom mirror. “I know.” His eyes are even, steady,
understanding. “I know. But we keep on trying against all odds, and that’s what makes us
human, right?”

Namjoon finally turns around, tears pricking his eyes, and lets Jimin pull him close.

To throw words out into the empty space, and hope someone, anybody, out there in the black
unknown catches them. Holds onto them, tightly, with care. To not let your cries go unheard,
to make them known.

Four months have passed, and Namjoon dreams.

In his dreams they round corners and climb them and they’re in a nameless city in ankle-deep
snow, the crisp white streets and Jin in a scarf and a long black coat, the ice crystals that
formed on his lashes and hair making him foreign and alien and beautiful. And he’s never
even been there, but Namjoon dreams of it nonetheless because he would rather be
somewhere cold and desolate than Seoul in the summertime, but Jin is always there too and
they round corners and Namjoon follows Jin, always in front, leaping, running, the soft sound
of snow underneath his boots and that quick way of his, that darting quality, flickering in and
out of narrow roads and bicycles, occasionally risking a short glance back and then Namjoon
would catch that clean-cut profile, chestnut brown eyes taking his breath like a handful of
snow down your back and when Namjoon finally (finally) catches him and pushes Jin mid-
stride against a stone wall those brown eyes lock on him, guarded at first but they soon betray
him, and Jin says not yet, Namjoon, not yet, and Namjoon kisses him for the very first time
(always the first time) and said yes, says yes, will always, always, always say yes.

So they round corners in his dreams and Namjoon thinks of snow when he wakes up just as
Jin disappears in both worlds, slipping out of his grip and blinking out of sight just as their
lips meet. Namjoon carries this pain within him into reality, but it’s a dreamlike affliction,
like he’s playing a person with a broken heart. Just another one of his roles.

Four months have passed, and nothing’s changed.

When he was eleven he looked up the five stages of grief after his first dog died to better
know how to prepare himself. Namjoon thinks he’s moved past anger with astounding
ferocity, completely bypassed bargaining, and now he’s hovering somewhere
between hollowness and nothing at all at the sight of Jin’s spine stiff like it always is with
strangers when they’re in the same room.

Knowing Jin hates him feels like a death. One made worse because Jin is relentless in his
occupation of every space, every line of sight in his life, and even if Namjoon closes his eyes
his head is still filled with images of him. It’s nothing like it was before, but he has no other
choice. He made his decision to not let anything affect the band a long time ago, not even
personal misery. They all did. His career, his life was bigger than him, it towered over him, it
engulfed him. He and Jin didn’t have to be friends, but they still had to be.

So, somewhere along the way he finds a semblance of balance again. Jin sent him reeling,
and it's all wrong, but it’ll be okay, Namjoon lies to himself through his teeth.

Southeast Asia in August is a special hell on earth. The end of Namjoon’s summer is
claustrophobic and overheated and during the long days they have concert rehearsals but
when the night calls, Namjoon comes easily. He can feel himself developing some bad habits,
maybe a drinking problem where there wasn’t one before. He feels unhinged so he stays up
until fuck knows when with Yoongi every night for roughly a hundred years to watch the
World Cup games live, dreaming he escaped to Russia instead. Somewhere with snow.

The bar they return to every night on the Hong Kong leg is just a few minutes from their
hotel. It's hot and humid and has red plastic stools that tumble into the street and no one gives
a shit who they are ––it's too crowded for any sort of attention. Yoongi loves it. Often the
others come along. Sometimes Jin does too. This was one of those nights. Namjoon nurses a
pint of Tsingtao sitting next to Yoongi, feeling restless watching the sweat drip down the back
of Jin’s neck as he cheered on Korea, cheeks red and collar loose.

It feels voyeuristic, watching Jin. Like he's watching a stranger instead. It makes
him miserable. Only last year did Jin want to come here with him, just the two of them.

On their last night before leaving for Bangkok and after Jin and Yoongi leave to get another
round at the bar, Hobi leans heavily across the table and asks, eyes squinted, “So, are you and
Jin gonna get over this weird sexual tension you have going on?”

Perhaps because they’re both drunk, perhaps because he’s feeling self-destructive lately, he
takes a wild gamble and says, “Been there, done that,” with an empty laugh.

“Please,” Hobi replies, stretching. “If you two had, both of you would be much happier. You
walk around with this look on your face like a… sour fish.” He gestures with his hands,
seemingly trying to translate the mental image to Namjoon.

Namjoon watches a penalty kick miss the goal, face red with embarrassment.
Hobi continues, “Shit, I’m glad the concerts are done though. I’m going to go get one of
those four-hand massages at the hotel before we leave. But I’m going to order a double. Eight
hands, all massaging. The view is amazing at the spa, too. What about you?”

“This and that.” Namjoon says.

“Oh, for god’s sake. I hope you do sleep with him. You’re no fun when you’re like this.”

Taehyung and Jungkook wobble in at that moment, interrupting Namjoon's glare, already a
few beers in them. They sit down heavily at the table and look between the two of them, Hobi
grinning and Namjoon’s world at a nauseating tilt. His sweating bottle leaves a series of
small, wet circles on the ugly plastic table. As far as marks go, it's the furthest thing from
indelible. Namjoon looks up and fixes his gaze on Jungkook sitting down instead.

“Namjoon is unlucky in love,” Hobi says to the two. “Give him a drink.”

They first drink to love, then to luck. Then to a No. 1 Billboard hit and Yung Kee's roast
goose. Things start to get blurred when Jin and Yoongi return, Jin’s thigh resting hot and
steady against his own. He doesn't have the mental capacity to analyse that fact further. “To
American top forties!” Yoongi cheers, raising his glass. By the time they’re drinking to Neo
Soul and automatic rice cookers, Namjoon feels like he can breathe again.

The next morning, Namjoon is sitting on the hotel lobby couch, sunglasses pulled low on the
bridge of his nose, and waiting for their car to the airport, when Hobi slides in next to him.
Namjoon turns his head to look at him; he’s drowning in a neon bucket hat and a tired smile.
They’re both impressively hungover.

“I wanted to apologise about what I said last night” he says, eyes careful. “I really didn’t
know. Jiminie told me last night after you went home. Shit, Joon-ah I’m so sorry.”

Namjoon doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He instead observes the
commotion of Victoria Harbour spread out before him past the lobby windows, ferries criss-
crossing and waves glinting in the early-morning sun. And then they’re quiet, long enough
that Namjoon is almost asleep again, when Hobi stirs and says, “It’s just… you two are
always so… good. Together, I mean. We all think that.”

And Namjoon’s not really awake and Hong Kong’s summer heat is sapping all his energy, so
he’s not really liable when he replies, “Yeah, I thought so too.”

The thought hurts, the past-tense hurts, it’s a fucking calamity if he’s being honest, but it’s
therapeutic in its own way to say it out loud.

He thought so, but it didn’t happen the way he wanted it to. So he and Jin never sit together,
and he doesn’t observe the line of Jin’s thigh, the sing-song pitch of his voice, the way he still
wears the jumper Namjoon got him for his last birthday.

+
Yoongi misses Namjoon, he misses hearing the bass of his laughter under his feet in the
studio. He misses a lot of things, but Namjoon has always been a certainty for him. Without
him here, present in their shared life, Yoongi feels smaller and emptier.

So he drives Namjoon to a quiet dinner one night, just the two of them. He finds Namjoon
asleep in his studio, lights dimmed and face smooth and open in a way he hasn’t seen all
summer. He lingers in the doorway, hesitating, and then makes a decision. “I’m taking you
for dim sum,” he whispers as he gently shakes Namjoon’s shoulder on the couch. “Let’s go,
Joon-ah.”

Namjoon stirs, throws a hand over his head, and Yoongi watches as his face slowly shutter
close as he wakes. It’s a horrible feeling, being helpless. Watching his best friend in pain.
But whatever's going on is between Namjoon and Jin, both so frustratingly private about
what goes behind their closed doors, and Yoongi knows that there’s nothing he can do except
take care of him.

They drive through Seoul, listening in silence to the latest song Namjoon’s mixed for the new
album. It’s pitched low and Tae’s voice is in baritone, and Yoongi has to softly smile at that.
Namjoon’s whole heart is always projected point blank into his music, that's just a fact of life.
He parks the car, and rests his hands in his lap. This is always hard. He looks at Namjoon
who is watching the rain pound on the windshield and says, “You seem overwhelmed,
Namjoon.”

He thinks Namjoon might be thinking out loud, when he says in a voice barely louder than
the rain outside, “I do feel overwhelmed. I think I'm floating. I keep waiting for the click. I
wait, but it doesn't kick in.”

Yoongi turns his gaze back to his hands. Then he cautiously asks, “What do you mean?”

“I’m not quite sure if I dream or remember, whether I’m living my life or remembering it. It’s
just…. difficult, right now. To keep the two worlds separate.”

Yoongi understands. He feels double himself in dreams, and double of his self in song. He
doesn’t have enough time to do everything he wants to, do the things he wants to, be the
person he’s supposed to be. The reality remains that there is only one world, this one. Suga
and Min Yoongi. RM and Kim Namjoon. Namjoon’s had the hardest out of all of them, he
could never slip between the two personas as easily as the others.

They are very different men. Yoongi sleeps in his studio because his productivity is measured
by hours and sweat and a steady baseline of hard work. Because fortitude got him through
family and high school and having nothing to eat and his shattered shoulder and rapping and
life. He knows he's one of the few in their industry who can point with absolute resolution to
a steady heartline that has mapped out his sacrifices and traumas as proof to where he is now.

Yoongi is a living contrast to Namjoon --someone who’s notoriously hard to pin down, a
flurry of activity and nearly manic energy. Namjoon can write a song in two hours, get the
instrumentals down in another three, and walk out of the studio just before dinner with a
Billboard single and several thousand more ideas. That’s why their agency sends him off on
diplomatic missions and collaborations, armed only with a decade and a half of songwriting
experience, a mind running at full tilt, and the deep bass of his laugh.

Over the years he’s come to realise that both of their energies would be misdirected
without the other's tempering. He’s liquid mercury where Namjoon’s oxygen set on fire.
Namjoon could be a straight shot of pure emotion to the bloodstream, often messy, often
misunderstood.

Yoongi leans over and rests his hand on Namjoon’s upper arm. He squeezes once and says, “I
know,” and that’s all that needs to be said.

Six months have passed since Paris. It’s October now, and Namjoon was caught in a mid-
afternoon rainstorm, the showers that heralded the start of autumn in Seoul. He walks into the
flat dripping wet, his already heavy coat weighed down. It hits the floor in a sad, soaked heap
and he’s kicking his boots off when Jin rounds the corner.

They stare at each other hesitantly for a few beats until Jin speaks first. “Take your socks off,
too,” he says, quiet, staying a careful distance from Namjoon. “You’ll catch a cold if they’re
wet.”

“Hyung,” Namjoon said. “I’m fine.”

“Off, Namjoon.”

Namjoon’s lips flatten for a moment before he ducked his head down. As he pulled them off,
he thought he could see a flash of satisfaction in Jin’s eyes. Hyung.

Jin quickly moves so he’s crouched down on the marble floor, warm hands sliding beneath
the collar of Namjoon’s turtleneck before he could jump away. Namjoon sharply
inhales, thrown by the sudden intimacy and stiffens on instinct. It’s been so long since they
touched, let alone even talked. His shoulders sting where they lie under the warmth of Jin's
hands. But Jin doesn’t move as Namjoon thought he might, instead tucking his head into
the soft space between Namjoon’s neck and shoulder. His brings his arms up
around Jin before he can think.

They stay like that for a long moment. Namjoon, hunched over Seokjin, his arms wrapped
around his back, and Seokjin, huddled in tight in his embrace. They would make a strange
picture, Namjoon thought absently.

Half a year has passed, and nothing’s changed.

Namjoon’s days start and end in brightly-lit spaces filled with voices and signs of life. Even
on days when he stays late in the studio for extra dance practice or vocal lessons, the air is
filled with the constant hum of people and thrumming with the remnants of the day’s
activities and inhabitants. It leaves no time to think about much else. Namjoon hasn’t paused
for a breath in six months, hasn’t even thought.
But here, his face tucked in Seokjin’s back, all he knows is a quiet darkness.

That night, Namjoon takes a forty-five minute shower, letting his lungs fill with hot heavy
warmth. He doesn't think about snow that night. While going through the motions of brushing
his teeth, he wipes a circle clean of condensation in the mirror and finds a red mark on his
flushed skin just under his collarbone. He leans closer, runs his fingers over it. Where Jin’s
head had laid. Namjoon stares at it for almost five minutes, begging some place deep inside
him to find some self-preservation, to remember what it felt like to not love Jin, and when he
doesn’t he turns the tap off and smooths a hand down the mirror, wiping away his reflection.

In his dreams, when something is about to come to its conclusion, a small golden light that
follows him shines brightly so he knows it’s about to end and there’s no heartbreak. And if
he’s never going to see someone again, it’ll shine brightly and both of them can say, “It was
nice to have you in my life while I did, good luck with everything that happens after now.”
And maybe if he’s never going to eat at the same restaurant again, it’ll shine and he can order
everything off the menu he’s never tried. Maybe, if someone’s about to buy his childhood
home, the light will shine and he can sit in his old room for one last time and not feel regret.
And maybe one day he’ll be sitting close with Jin, Yoongi, Hoseok, Taehyung, Jimin,
Jungkook and all their lights will shine at the same time and he’ll know that it’s over, and
then they can hold each other and whisper, this was so good while it lasted. Oh my god, this
was so good.

His light with Jin burnt out a long time ago.

He wakes with a terrific migraine to pitch black. His eyes open slowly, aware of an unusual
presence in his room. It feels warmer than usual, like extra body heat in the chill of the early
morning. He sighs and rolls around, getting tangled in his duvet, and sees Jin sitting on the
floor next to his door, head resting in his hands.

“Jin-ah-hyung,” he whispers out, believing he’s still dreaming. He watches Jin bring his gaze
into focus.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Jin replies, voice soft in the early morning air. “I didn’t know what else to
do. So I went out.”

“You went drinking?”

“Yeah. But it was so awful without you, Namjoonie, so I came home.”

Neither of them say anything. Something is deeply and profoundly wrong in the way Jin
refuses to look at him. After a moment, Jin drags his body up and kneels close by Namjoon’s
head on his pillow, peering at him.
“What are you doing?” Namjoon whispers.

Jin looks like he’s been crying for a very long time. The thought of him crying in Namjoon’s
room makes his heart pound into the quiet stillness. “I don’t really know,” Jin says. His eyes
are level with Namjoon’s from where he kneels. His eyes are dark.

“I miss you,” Jin says, unprompted. The words twist and spiral into the space between them.

Namjoon, for an unfathomable reason, finds two freckles on Jin’s face that he’s never seen
before. “I don’t know what you’re doing.” But he did: maybe this was Jin giving up, giving
in.

Namjoon knows that no one in this lifetime of theirs has ever seen Jin like this, defeated and
confused, yet still holding his jaw at that angle he does like he’s not out of the fight just yet,
like he still has one or two punches left in him. He places his hands gently at the back of Jin’s
head, fingers finding their correct space tangled in the thickness of Jin’s hair, and he lets Jin
follow him down, because there is absolutely nothing else he could have done instead.

Their lips meet, brushing softly in the blue dawn light, so soft that Namjoon thinks he’s
dreamt all of this up like, hazy and blurred like a Monet painting.

“I want to help us,” Namjoon whispers into the space between them. “Whatever this is, we
can fix it.” He wonders what they look like right now, Jin with his head bowed over
Namjoon’s bed, Namjoon curled around him like an eclipse, their hands held together. It
seemed balanced, their bodies were meant to be in this position.

“Come here,” he finally murmurs, holding open the duvet and Jin hurriedly climbs his way
into the heated space of his bed, pressing tight against his chest. Namjoon holds him as Jin
shakes, feeling wet tears soak through his shirt.

Jin lets out a deep exhale and Namjoon can feel it ghost along the side of his jaw. The taut
line of his shoulder sinks, goes loose, turns broken and exposed in a way that he doesn’t
recognise, Jin like this, Jin who’s never opened himself to anyone and he’s never seen him so
frightened, so uncomposed.

“Okay,” Jin says, after his breathing evens out. He gets up, says, “Okay. I’m sorry for waking
you.” like he needs rationality to recover himself. Namjoon could make him stay, but he lets
him have his excuses tonight.

He leaves, like always, but this time Namjoon can still feel the bed warmed in the shape of
Jin’s body. He rolls over into the heat and keeps going. He keeps going.

“Be careful,” Jin tells him at the departure lounge, back stiff. Namjoon’s leaving for Manila
for a collab, Jin’s going on holiday with his family.

“You too.”
They don’t go beyond that, Jin keeping his eyes angled down, as if he’s ashamed of
something.

Namjoon nods and boards his flight and on the plane he tries his hardest to find meaning in
the shade of blue outside the window. The atmosphere this high turns the horizon into an
alien thing, and Namjoon shuts it with a snap when he can only see outlines and nothing
distinct in the sunlight glinting off the wide flanks of the sea.

"I want to know your secrets,“ Namjoon finally confesses to Jin on the phone on the eighth
anniversary of their first meeting. He keeps track of days like this because he’s never lied to
himself about being sentimental. Maybe he breaks because they’re about a thousand miles
away. Maybe it's because he’s stuck in Manila and has about two hundred things to do and at
least twelve people out looking for him, but right now he’s standing on his hotel balcony
watching the sun slowly sink below the heavy, humid horizon, feeling like he’s falling all
forty-seven floors because he misses Jin that much.

The air around him is buzzing with early evening anticipation, the sky soaked in orange, and
the skyline beginning to glow and blur all around him. Namjoon’s in love with this part of the
day, anywhere in the world. Later, he tells himself that that justifies his sentimental
behaviour, as he strains to hear Jin’s soft voice on the other end of the phone over the city
traffic below him. Night should be properly underway in Seoul by now, and he wonders what
Jin had for dinner. That’s just something he should know.

“I want to know your secrets, Jin-ah,” he says, and Jin goes silent.

And the worst thing is that he genuinely does. It's why he's all wrong for this industry: too
damn earnest, his sister always said about him. He’s too heartfelt. He wants to grasp the
visceral truth behind things, blow the world wide open and find meaning from how it makes
him feel. But Jin wants something else entirely and Namjoon’s just beginning to understand
that. Jin’s just opened up a restaurant with his brother on a quiet street corner back home and
he’s just bought a flat in a building on the other side of Seoul to be alone in and he terrifies
Namjoon when he never speaks of tomorrow. That throws off Namjoon the most, who lately
feels like he only has two emotions: careful fear and dead devotion. He can’t keep his balance
with all his chips thrown in the pot, when Jin keeps his cards held so closely to his chest even
after eight years.

Bang PD always told the seven of them that Jin was their greatest asset, and Namjoon is
starting to realise that despite everything, Jin protects his future every day. Namjoon sees that
now. Jin is quiet on the other side of the sea, the line faintly crackling. Namjoon can imagine
him in his room, legs crossed over the other, head tilted in that way that means he’s unsure as
what’s being asked from him.

“That just makes the fact I want to give them all to you all the more fucked up, Joonie,” Jin
murmurs, and Namjoon exhales in shock, leaning heavily on the balcony.

Here are the facts: Namjoon fell in love with Jin a long time ago, and he never really fell out
of it, and he doesn't know what to say to something like this coming from a man who’s
broken his heart more than once. He doesn't know what to do with the painful flush of
pleasure that curls up his spine at that, about the heaving fear, the way that he wants Jin here,
with him, more than any of the others, still.

He closes his eyes, because hearing Jin confess is killing him, ripping something out of his
chest by slow degrees, and says, “I have to go, hyung,” as he ends the call. He breaths in the
early evening air and feels like this is an answer to a question both of them have been too
afraid to ask for a long time.

“Why are you only a spoiled brat when you’re with me?” Jin laughs.

“I think you know the answer to that, hyung,” Namjoon said.

Jin grinned, his cheeks plumped up in that way that only did when he was holding back a
laugh.

He can feel his thoughts grow untethered in these changing silences between them.

He lets his gaze travel down Jin’s form, the line of his back, straight and clean, head tilted
downwards, eyelashes dusting his cheeks.

Namjoon's at some minister's summer home on behalf of President Moon, with BTS having
been invited to a reception in their honour. There’s just days before their comeback and
Namjoon feels that usual jumping anticipation, but this time its tinged with something
sharper, something more urgent. He's home after eight weeks abroad on tour, and he thinks
he's supposed to feel good about that, but he just wants to get back out there again. The boys
are restless, too, and they uneasily perch in their seats in suits, playing dress up amidst the
politicians. Namjoon can talk, it's what he's good at, but only if the conversation is
interesting.

After dinner they’re ushered into a sleek, low-lit room where diplomats and industry
individuals are milling around with glasses of soju and smooth smiles. Namjoon can’t relax,
doesn’t want to small talk with anyone tonight. This strange charge simmers under his skin,
in the air around him, in the darkening sky in front of him. The wide glass doors are thrown
open to a verdant bamboo forest outside, letting in an unseasonably warm breeze and dancing
moonlight stream through the razor-sharp leaves. He flexes his fingers, itching for something.

He sees Jin sat at a table pouring a ceramic carafe of plum wine and looking at a book of
poetry brought to him by an eager politician. He hears their laughter leaping silver-like into
the air, and Namjoon feels something twist low in his belly. He would be lying if he said if
wanting to be happy didn't feel like leaning into an old embrace.

Later, he sees Jin out of the corner of his eye slip out of the room.
He excuses himself from his conversation with the Korean Minister of Culture and follows.

A moment of grace. The point of decision that one encounters two or three times in their life
to either transcend or succumb.

There is a lyric Namjoon wrote that has been circling in his head these days, incessant and
growing in volume. There are silences in us, and the spaces of darkness where language
cannot live.

He makes his way through the bamboo garden, carefully stepping on the stones laid out in a
path in front of him. It leads him to Jin, just as he thought it would. He sees him leaning
against a wall of wisteria, smoking. The world here is blue at its edges and in its depths.
Namjoon feels like he’s drowning in this deep, dreaming, melancholy blue, the blue at the
farthest reaches of the place where you see for miles, the blue of distance. The light doesn’t
seem to touch them, but rather gives Jin an alien beauty, casting his features in strange,
shifting shadows. He aches to reach out and touch him. There’s the familiar sensation of
falling without stopping. He’s been falling for a third of his life so far. Beyond the bloom of
the wisteria, he can see the lights of the house wink in the breeze. Across the garden,
shadows slink across, enveloping the two boys in waves. The night sky melts to black above
them.

Namjoon closes the last few feet between them, hand sliding out of his pocket and coming
up, fingers trailing up the line of Jin’s forefinger to snatch the cigarette out of his hand and
hold it away. “These are very bad for your voice, you know.”

Jin looks pissed off, looking like he wished he had a mouthful of smoke so he could blow it
into Namjoon’s face, since that’s the only answer it deserves. Namjoon says, “Here, hyung,
let me be your filter, then,” and keeping Jin’s gaze, brings the cigarette to his mouth and
slowly inhales. Suddenly Jin looks like his heart is rattling in his chest. The thought of so this
is what seducing him feels like settles through him.

This has been a long time coming, and Namjoon has failed to arrive at a compelling reason to
deny himself it now, so it’s very easy compared to everything else between them to stand, to
lean in, tilt, and press his body against Jin’s and seal their mouths together. He licks into Jin’s
mouth and exhales smoke into his lungs.

We’re going to burn this poor man's garden down Namjoon thinks as Jin lets the cigarette
drop from his fingers.
 Chapter 3

They kiss.

The breeze kicks up at that moment, sending wisteria twirling around them and obscuring the
sight of Namjoon’s hand resting on Jin’s chest. Namjoon presses Jin deeper into the garden
wall, his other hand coming to rest on his hip. Jin’s eyes are closed and his lashes glisten dark
in the deepening light. The breeze stops. Violet blossoms falling — the only sound in the
moonlit garden, then.

They both open their eyes, this time. There is only Jin’s breath, Jin’s heartbeat, like tidal
waves, each one crashing with full force into Namjoon. Their lips fall together again. Teeth
clack, Namjoon’s glasses smack against Jin’s nose. Namjoon pulls back and lets them drop
onto the damp earth, immediately forgetting about them. Jin’s hand curls around the collar of
Namjoon’s dress shirt, dragging him in and in and in. He can feel Jin’s body, a long line of
solid heat, pressing against his own. Black stars catch at the edge of his vision.

Jin tastes like the cigarette they shared, the plum wine he had just minutes ago. He tastes
sweet and clean like pears, and Namjoon chases after that, the smoothness of Jin underneath
the smoke and alcohol and everything else. He’s find himself fisting his hand in the lapel of
Jin’s jacket, scraping his teeth over Jin’s lush bottom lip. He catches himself moaning, touch-
starved, and slides his hands under Jin’s jacket, up the hot smooth planes of Jin’s back.
Namjoon has kissed many times, has had exceptionally wonderful kisses, kisses by people
who meant a lot to him at the time, but none of them have come close to this. Just...
none. Windfalls of desire threaten to buckle his knees, giddiness allowing breathless laughs
between kisses, each touch translating a lifetime of history between him and Jin, whose hands
slides down Namjoon’s curved back and splays, shockingly hot and aggressive at the small of
his back, over the close cut of his suit, pressing Namjoon’s belly against Jin’s. Namjoon
thinks that if he told Jin that he’s been waiting for this since even before they met, it would be
even better, maybe it would get Jin to make that wounded noise again, something desperate
and surrendered, press them even more closely together. That every kiss had before, had been
laughable in its emptiness of intent, compared to this.

Jin loops his arms around Namjoon’s neck and lets Namjoon tip him backwards, so their
mouths separate, and Jin gasps for oxygen while Namjoon slides his lips down the line of
Jin’s neck — teeth grazing his throat and Jin goes silent.

But that just makes Namjoon miss him again, with sudden grief, and Namjoon says “Jin,”
like he’s already far gone, and Jin’s head tilts his way, trailing curious, exploratory little
kisses: at Namjoon’s chin, the rise of each cheek, both of his dimples, the divot above the
bow of his mouth, the corner of his eyes, mouth wet against Namjoon’s lashes. All before
Namjoon begs, Seokjinnie and Jin murmurs, “I’m right here,” and closes his lips over
Namjoon’s again, Jin’s tongue licking at his teeth, rolling their hips together.

“I’ve been cruel, haven’t I?” Jin says, bites it into Namjoon’s mouth, gripping the back of
Namjoon’s neck now, the other hand in his hair.
“Yes, you have,” Namjoon says, serious, kissing him back, hot and open, because he has to,
there’s nothing else that he can ever do else again. “I have read terrible love poetry because
of you," he confesses, the words tumbling out of him. "I've run out of poems in English —
I'm going to have to read the Korean romantics next.”

Jin tips his head back and laughs. “Fuck, that would be a tragedy,” he agrees. And then, much
quieter, “I didn’t... I didn’t even––”

"Yeah, well.” Namjoon says, not wanting to hear the rest. He grabs Jin close instead, not
letting him run away this time, and presses kisses into both ears and into his neck and his
mouth and into his thick glossy hair.

“You’ve always wanted me the most, haven’t you? You’d choose me over anyone else,
wouldn’t you?” Jin asks, breathlessly, his hands holding Namjoon’s hips tight against his, no
room left between them.

This makes Namjoon frantic all over again, and he just murmurs Jin’s name over and over
again into the warm heat of his mouth in reply.

“I want to steal you away, from everybody else, because I want you the most too,” Jin
breathes out in between kisses.

This is the most dangerous game he’s ever played in his life, how much he wants to be
anchored by the man in front of him.

“Fuck,” he says, with feeling. Namjoon’s mind dizzily catalogues all the facts of his
surrounding. He can hear the faint sounds of the party float through the garden, carried by the
night breeze. He thinks he can hear Hobi’s laugh, then Jimin’s. The wisteria drapes around
them, providing a poor shelter. If anyone stumbled on them, Namjoon thinks dazedly,
if anyone saw them like this, they wouldn't have a single excuse. It’s all laid out bare on their
faces.

He doesn’t realise he’s made a decision until his fingers clumsily work open the opening of
his pants, pushing them down his hips before reaching for Jin's, grinding into him with a
broken gasp that Jin swallows before it finds air.

He reaches between them, fingers closing tight around their cocks. "I guess this is where
we've been going since the day we met," Jin shoves into the space between them, sharp and
all Jin. "Foolish of me to try and stop it," his voice carrying edges that slice through Namjoon
like a razor.

What do you want? You can have anything you want from me, Namjoon wants to say but
kisses him instead.

"I think," Jin says, heat flaring up Namjoon’s spine at the slick slide of fingers down his back,
digging into the small of his back as he grinds up, a smile breaking through the heat of lust,
"that I want you to fuck me.”

“Would you even care if I said no?”

“Oh, I’d be able to convince you.”

Namjoon groans another laugh, then inhales sharply as Jin turns serious and puts a heavy
hand on his chest, “Go on then.”

The heat between them is almost enough to obliterate thought; Namjoon pulls back as Jin
yanks his waistband down, cock hard and flushed against his belly, staring at Namjoon in
barely leashed challenge. Not waiting for Namjoon to learn how to breathe again, Jin takes
his fingers in his mouth, slicking them with his spit before reaching between them, hand wet
as it slides twice over Namjoon's cock and his other hand working behind him.

"I want to feel it tomorrow," Jin murmurs, turning around to press himself into the wall of
jasmine lining the garden, and the muscles in his forearms that lean on the wall jump just
once as Namjoon pushes in, Jin opening up around him slowly, with intent. Namjoon lets his
hands run up and down the skin just under Jin’s jacket, soothing and possessive, chest
pressed to his back.

“Yeah,” Jin murmurs, finally relaxing beneath him. “God, Joon-ah.”

And Namjoon doesn't give him time to adjust, there is no time at all before he is thrusting up,
seated fully inside the tight heat of Jin's body and feels Jin gasp and shudder in bright, sharp
pleasure. The breeze sends another wave of jasmine around them, and seeing the delicate
flowers get caught in Jin’s black hair sends Namjoon teetering on the fine line between lust
and desperation.

Then they're both beyond thought--there's just Jin, pinned to the cool wall under him, the
sound of quiet groans caught between teeth, white heat trailing every touch, and Jin's
careless more, and please yes inside me closer, I need you, I want you, and I don’t —never
wanted anyone anything like this, like you and here, Namjoon answers wordlessly, twisting
forward to collect his gasps in a claiming kiss.

Namjoon hears a sudden laugh, much closer than is safe, and his eyes fly open at the risk of
getting caught as the white-hot, screaming edge of orgasm approaches too quickly to fight;
Jin’s back arches in the moonlight, body taut as a holding falsetto before clenching
impossibly tight around him as he comes, panting into the jasmine. Shaking with Jin's
pleasure, Namjoon follows with Jin’s name punched out of him, hips jerking up before Jin
collapses bonelessly on his knees into the black ground, gasping helplessly.

He follows too, kneels in the damp dirt, blind to everything else beyond the sight of Jin’s
black blue eyes on him.

It's only a moment before it starts again at the base of his spine, crawling through his blood
until he can’t stand it anymore and brings their lips together again, helpless against the
electric shocks of need, only more immediate after what they just did. Licking the sweat from
Jin's cheek, Namjoon kisses his panting, wet mouth and answers Jin’s fuck, you’re gonna kill
me by pressing him into the damp earth, fully feeling him under him properly, laughing into
his mouth with a rock of his hips, and soon Jin’s slick and open around him again.

He strokes back sweat-dark hair from Jin's eyes and answers, "You already killed me first."
+

Namjoon has spent a third of his life watching Jin, older brother, best friend, confidante,
more than all of those titles, less than he realises, something, someone, and sometimes alien
like rings around the moon. He’s asleep in the backseat with his head on Namjoon’s shoulder
and perhaps Namjoon considers learning how to drive just so he could show him the world.
Jin’s in his room and Namjoon could reach out, slide a hand over the bones of his ankle, and
wonder how that connects to the rest of him and maybe that would be how to solve it,
penning the words into a song and feel the chorus of this song fall into place from within.

Namjoon could love him, stubborn, noble, shy Jin, but Namjoon’s eight years too late, or
perhaps eight years too far ahead, and perhaps Namjoon will drown him, perhaps Jin’s
already light years away, untouchable. He could stop it now, Namjoon could throw the doors
wide open, brace against heartbreak like its a lesson. But Namjoon could also walk for eight
miles, one mile for every year, and then stand with his back against the sky like he’s holding
it up just for him, just for Jin, just to hear the sound of the song take root in Jin’s heart, hear
the starting beats begin to fill the air.

Namjoon could have him. Namjoon could lose him. The two are interchangeable.

“What were you like,” Namjoon asks while panting in Jin’s mouth, “the day before you met
me?”

Jin makes a sharp keening noise and digs his heels into Namjoon’s back, drawing him in
deeper. Namjoon takes the hint, rolling his hips into Jin’s, gripping the edge of the couch
where Jin’s hands are. Then Jin’s hands shift, and their fingers slot into place — lacing
together.

With anyone else, it would be an accident. But Jin is so methodological; his gestures so
thought out. He’s made of stone and silk.

“Careless” says Jin, flushed and ragged. His legs wrap around Namjoon’s. Every time they
rock together, they’re one less moment away from being discovered by the others, fucking in
the living room like some desperate kids. Jin moans and Namjoon presses his hand against
him, gently biting his cheek. Namjoon fucks him as gently as he will allow. It’s not gentle at
all.

Jin is pliant but not passive. His hands are strong, gripping and holding with a steadiness
Namjoon had never really expected. The sex isn’t boyish. It’s like everything Jin is as a
person gets traced out on Namjoon’s skin; all the surety, all the fear, all the belief in him. It’s
terrifying.

Do you think we could have made this any harder on ourselves Namjoon always wants to say
in moments like this, eyes shut tight as Jin bites down on marks on his skin already bruised
from nights prior.
Namjoon looks into his eyes as he comes, Jin shuddering and tightening around him.
Namjoon falls back onto Jin, and they’re covered in sweat and come and the thrill hasn’t left
them, not yet.

“Joon-ah,” says Jin, and Namjoon thinks he’s going to ask for something, but Jin doesn’t say
anything else. Just closes his eyes and brings his hands up to tangle in Namjoon’s hair,
trailing down lower like falling asleep, coming to rest on the small of his back, just for a
moment. Just a moment, before they catch their breath and return to their rooms, alone.

“Are these real?” Jin asks, flicking his wrist which hold the papers scribbled with lyrics. “The
emotions, are they real? Namjoon, I need you to tell me.”

“True inspiration is impossible to fake,” he quotes in a dramatic voice. But as the words are
falling out, he realises the problem; his bleeding heart, his language that holds no code, no
mystery, it’s all laid out bare, a pattern made from the inside of Jin’s head. Of course he
would know. Of course.

He suddenly wants Jin to decipher him. He wants to speak in his first tongue.

Jin can read the air better than anyone else Namjoon has ever met. All of them relied on him
to size up strangers; if they meant harm, Jin just seemed to know. He rarely wavers and it
puts Namjoon on edge sometimes, how he’s sure that Jin knows just how he feels, how he
felt. He could probably hear the spaces between Namjoon’s heartbeats. It was just how he
worked, how the saw the world, through sight and action and intuition.

“You used to be so loud,” Seokjin said just before Paris.

“Oh, I think I still am,” Namjoon replied.

“No, you always looked ready to run away from all of this. Just in the way you held your
hands, the line of your shoulders. The air around your skin, it seemed ready to escape. A
wildfire, but it’s different now.’”

“What do you see now?” Namjoon had asked him.

Jin hadn’t answered then.

He thinks of his life in terms of translation. Between Korean and English, performed rapid-
fire for impatient interviewers and fans, so fast often he gets disoriented and loses both
languages, neither enough to say what he wants. Between his thoughts and lyrics, an
unfathomable task of putting sparking strikes of memory and emotion onto paper. Between
himself and the other boys. Between himself and his self.

His words don’t work with Jin; they never had. His only barrier against the world, his
weapon, and it means nothing when he’s with him. They disappear on his tongue and send
him reeling into empty space, untethered, without motive. That’s why Namjoon started off
writing lyrics while Yoongi began with rhythm. Language gives him direction, guides him,
shapes his mind and heart in the cacophony of his world.

So he writes, speaks the words into existence and watches Jin put life into them. Jin is a
conduit, and he’s holding Namjoon’s heart in his hand right now. It’s all written on those
pages.

“What do you see now?” Namjoon repeats, an echo of a past him.

Jin gives him an answer now. “Lightning.”

Seoul. Soul. Sol.

Another red carpet, another press conference in this city of theirs. They're demigods here, but
they can get away with less in this country than anywhere else on earth.

His hand rests low on the small of Jin's back during an interview, a small resistance.
His fingers slide just under the flare of Jin's dress jacket, staying there, guiding him, claiming
the heat that radiates out of him in waves as his ears turn red. A little coup d'etat.

Before, Jin had tugged him over with a hand in the crook of his elbow as they were getting
dressed. He adjusted Namjoon's collar, straightened his tie, dragged his fingers back through
his hair, smoothed his hands over his shoulders and down the sides of his arms. Just as he
always does, has done before every stage, every speech. One last touch before sending him
out into the world. This is their ritual, and they had faced each other that night, eyes locked,
as Jin's hands came to rest at his suited waist as dozens of staff and makeup artists rushed
around them.

A moment of stillness.

Namjoon sits in his room for an hour or two, thinking about symbolism, about snow, and four
letter words. He was about to leave for America for a month. Jin was avoiding him.

He abruptly stands from his bed, feeling like he was about to leave something
irrevocably unstable behind. His feet take him to Jin’s room, and he opens the door without
knocking, finding Jin at his desk playing Maplestory.

“I find it endlessly endearing,” says Namjoon, after a moment of standing in his doorway like
a fool, “that you’re such a terrible liar when it comes to these things.”

“What things?” Jin asks, looking blasé, eyes focused on the game.

Namjoon puts one hand on the arm of Jin’s chair, and turns it so that Jin has to look at him.

“Jin.”
He straightens up and in one small devastating moment, lets his thighs fall apart just a
hairbreadth wider. Namjoon tracks the movement with careful eyes. “What?” Jin repeats.

Namjoon bites back a laugh that bubbles too quickly and Jin’s eyes dart to his mouth.
Namjoon is learning things about Jin he’d never thought he’d be allowed to so leans down to
kiss him, one hand braced on the desk, and other on Jin’s thigh. They meet so carelessly, so
easily. Namjoon kisses him and Jin brings a hand up to cup the back of his neck, game
forgotten, and his mouth is so soft and the rush of air between them so soft. I miss you so
much and I haven’t even left, Namjoon hopes Jin realises.

Namjoon pulls away. It’s not far so he can see the shot of silver in Jin’s eyes, can still feel his
breath on his lips.

“Do you not want me to?” Namjoon says, tilting his head.

Jin licks into his mouth this time, tongue sliding against Namjoon’s lower lip, his teeth, slick
against each other, opening up for each other. Namjoon kisses him helplessly, crouched in
front of his chair now, leaning up into Jin’s touch.

Jin is tense under his palms, but he doesn’t stop kissing him, biting into his mouth, damp and
hot, and Jin moans and Namjoon slips his hands under Jin’s jumper seeking out skin.
Namjoon’s half-hard already, pressing against the seam of his pants, and the taste of Jin’s
mouth is too much, too distracting. Namjoon should have left by now, he’s got a flight to
catch, they don’t have time.

Namjoon’s breathing is ragged when they break apart. His mouth feels swollen, and can’t
imagine how he looks when —

“I want you,” Jin says, and —

“I need to go,” says Namjoon, and “Huh?”

Because Jin looks fucked. His eyes are wide and glossy, his lips parted, and hair sticking up
from Namjoon’s hands. He can’t look away.

“What do you want to do?” Namjoon asks, careful and quiet and breathless.

Jin stands and walks over to the door and turns the lock. He stalks forward, pressing into
Namjoon until the back of his knees hit the edge of the bed. He puts one hand square on his
chest and pushes, sending pillows toppling to the ground.

He stands over the bed, dragging a slow, heavy hand over Namjoon’s shin and thigh, resting
at the hot space at the inside of his upper thigh. Jin swings a leg over Namjoon and settles
down, thighs bracketing his hips, hands spreading under his shirt. Jin’s palms bring a shock
of heat, and Namjoon runs his hands flat up Jin’s side, fingers skimming at his ribs. He leans
up to push up Jin's sweater to seek out the sight of his lithe body, missing the vision of him,
and groans at their hips press together in a slow, sweet ache.
Never to be outdone, Jin arches in just the right way, and the mood shifts in one devastating
moment into something frantic as they both strip off clothes. Namjoon takes them both in his
hand, huffing a laugh when he feels Jin’s head fall to his shoulder. He can feel the sweat
slipping on Jin’s skin, dampening the short hair at the back of his neck, and Namjoon leans
up and licks into him again, mouthing at his jaw, his neck, the curve of his shoulders. Jin’s
mouth is soft and slick, and Namjoon curls his fingers around the both of them, pressing them
together, thumbing at the head of his cock.

This feels different than the other times. There’s so much more in the pauses between them.
Letting the weight of it sink in. Of what they’re doing to each other, how they make one
another feel. There’s no mistake in the way Jin’s cock slips against him now, his tongue
sliding across Namjoon’s, hands gripping his hair, running over his face. They kiss until
Namjoon’s gasping, until he can’t breathe, and he’s so turned on by the way Jin’s rutting into
him, like he needs him quick and hard and unforgiving.

Suddenly Jin's head dips down and he takes Namjoon in his mouth, swallowing him as far as
he can with no pretense. He cards his hands through Jin’s hair, sighing yeah, yeah with every
bob of his head. He traces Jin's cheek, finds the shape of his cock through Jin's smooth skin,
the way Jin swallows him eagerly. It's the most debauched thing Namjoon's ever
seen. Suddenly he can feel the edge of his orgasm come way too fast, and oh jesus Jin —

“Stop,” he gasps out. Jin's lips are damp against the curve of Namjoon’s ear as he pulls him
up by his shoulders. “Not like this,” he pants.

“You’re so spoiled by me,” Jin murmurs into his neck, the first real words he’s said since
Namjoon walked in.

And because Jin likes it rough, Namjoon knows he’s already ready when Jin arches up, eyes
half-lidded, when Namjoon takes the lube from Jin’s bedside table. He might’ve been ready
all week by the way Namjoon’s fingers slip inside him and finds his way by Jin’s groans and
shudders. He pushes three fingers into him and there’s nothing controlled about it now, about
the way Jin’s movements stutter, the way he gasps, the way Namjoon leans forward, finding
Jin’s mouth again, his cock grinding against his belly. Jin grips the pillow under his head and
Namjoon feels overwrought, desperate to find release in the soft heat of Jin, touching him
like he might fly away any second now.

He should have known being with Jin would be like this; the most tender thing he’s ever
done, like all his walls have crashed right down, letting Jin see straight inside.

Jin’s mouth looks slick and obscene when he pulls away. He looks up at Namjoon, eyes
lidded and flushed, and Namjoon’s skin is hot everywhere they touch; under Jin’s hands,
against his thighs, pushing against his ass.

“Come on, Namjoonie, are you gonna make me ask? I need to feel you, let me have — let me
— ”Jin breaks off with a gasp and Namjoon buries himself inside him.

Namjoon can feel his body stretch to welcome him. Jin’s back arches under his touch into
him, and Namjoon bites down on his chest, hard. They both cry out.
“Namjoon,” he says, “Please,” as a a tiny river of sweat catches at his collarbone. Namjoon
shuts his eyes, unable to bear the sight. He reaches up to the spot blindly.

Namjoon doesn’t know what Jin’s asking for, but he’s going to give it to him, whatever it is,
because at first sight of Jin, Namjoon knew he would always give him what he asks for. And
he is now. “Oh god,” Namjoon says. He can’t bear this, this desperation, whatever it is
they’re both straining for. “Anything you want,” he finds himself babbling. “Anything you
want me to do, I’ll — just tell me, hyung, anything, anything you want, I swear, just say it,
Jin—“

They can’t last, not like this. Impossible. Jin comes first, shuddering under Namjoon, his
cock jerking in Namjoon’s hand. And he's only a few seconds away, still caught on the
remnants of his predefined shape of the world. Which makes the moment when Namjoon lets
go all the more of an absolution.

Breathless, they stay pressed together. Namjoon's leg tossed over his waist, the weight of him
pressing Jin down into the mattress. Neither move because they both know they need the
heat. The intensity of it. This close, their heartbeats are in sync.

Finally Jin says, low, “I think you have a plane to catch.”

Jin’s bedroom window is open and Joon can see stars suspended beyond in the night sky. A
soft, warm breeze floats over his skin and he feels like shutting his eyes and falling asleep
just like this, on Jin’s bed, loose-limbed and satisfied. For once, his mind is quiet. It feels like
just the two of them in this city. He can feel Jin’s soft exhales on his neck. He wants to stay
on this bed, with Jin, while the world tilts toward sleep.

They stay like that, until Namjoon’s phone starts vibrating, until responsibility drags him
back to reality. He leaves.

The valley between them is carved out by words that drowned trying to reach him.

Namjoon knows that in love, in translation, you carry over something of yourself but also
something of the original dialect, your own, because that is the way that language works. He
loves his family, his bandmates and brothers. He loves their fans, he loves their vision of him,
brilliant and bold in their eyes. He loves Seokjin, in a way different from all the other things
he loves in his life. He loves himself. The translation of his heart is an effort to bridge
distances between souls, but the journey is something entirely personal, entirely his own.

He writes songs because writing, speaking, singing in code—wielding language to find

meaning— is the easiest and hardest thing he will ever do. To cross over from that which is
felt, experienced, to that which is voiced—of witnessing and being witnessed—is each and
every time the declaration of a singular understanding of what it means to be alive in the
world. Between the self and other, between where he comes from and where he is now,
between his unfathomable life as RM and the rest of the unfathomable world, between
histories and cultures and languages and too many fans and the deafening demands for
recognition and need that ring out all around and inside of him all the time.
The only way to make his confusion and loneliness meaningless is to keep insisting on
speaking it out loud: like plum blossoms that bloom in the dead of winter, seeking out the sun
despite all adversity. Like the ones carefully chosen for him, painted on his hanbok when they
perform.

Jin always tells him he likes it when Namjoon wears his hanbok. He likes him in the bright
blue, he likes him in silk. He enjoys seeing Namjoon in expensive clothes.

“You’re nobility wherever you go, Namjoonie.”

Every single moment and every frame captured on camera is calculated. Every inch of
clothing, every smile. This is also a translation. They only let on what they wanted to show to
the world, even when the world tries to steal from them.

“What are you thinking about now?”

“Flowers, Jin-hyung,” he says.

Jin hums as a response.

Hwarang. Flowering Knights. First used for a group of warriors. Then used for them. Jin,
whose chosen stage name meant treasure. Namjoon, who buried his own patriotic hanja of
talent of the south in favour of a foreign language. Both too Korean for the world and not
Korean enough for home.

Their fans all had their own versions of him behind their eyes. Seokjin, the prince. Hwarang.
Boy of flowers. Hwa yang yeon hwa. Years magnificent and beautiful like flowers.
Seemingly untranslatable, just like them. Namjoon had spent months trying to figure out how
to translate the hanja characters into English for their album, deeply frustrated at the gulf of
meaning between the two.

Jin had come to his studio the night before the global release, took one look at his
translations, and deleted the whole file. “You’re trying to translate a concept away from
everything it’s rooted in,” he said, waving his hand, seemingly gesturing to this studio, the
capitol city thundering outside, their country. “Keep the hanja, Namjoon. We know what we
want to say, and it’s not up to us to convince anybody else.”

Namjoon has done enough self-introspection in the past decade to last a lifetime. He’s twisted
himself in exhausting ways in search of a semblance of peace after years of questioning if
there was any authenticity in what he does.

When he was unceremoniously thrust out of the underground scene that one November night
just before they debuted after being ripped to shreds by friends he thought he could trust,
Namjoon punched and kicked the wall in their shitty dorm, unsure if he was more angry at
himself for throwing away a good amount of his own values to become an idol, or the rest of
the lot who couldn’t look past their own fucking ego to see the bigger picture here. Yoongi
told him to fuck the whole world, that’s the only way to cope, just stop giving a shit about
what everyone thinks, Joon-ah. But Namjoon can’t do it like Yoongi can, he never could.

Jin had walked into the hall that night, looking on as Namjoon was shaking with a mess of
fear and confusion and conviction, and looked on at him quietly, before bringing him to
the bathroom to wrap his hand where the skin was torn.

Namjoon used to fight to remove himself from the place where he found himself the best;
that uncertainty. That loneliness. It lived inside of him. His mind, desperate, saw loneliness
and filled it with violent self-doubt, allowing it to drown him, twisting in his deepest and
darkest corners. Those dark days of their debut. Those nights killed him and re-made him, but
have never left him.

He’s built his current mental and emotional stability upon a complicated system of self-
acceptance, measuring his reality against an axiom of hard-won truths. There will always be
those that disagree with him, the way he chooses to live, and the path he took to get there.
Conflict will always live in him. The way he’s built will always invite loneliness. Sometimes
he never goes to sleep at all but stands shaking in his doorway like a sentinel, all alone,
bracing against the dark. The loneliness is something that’s never given him any comfort, but
he’s beginning to understand it now. He’s starting to realise a lot of things.

“Where do you go, Namjoon?” Jin asked him one night, Namjoon loose-limbed and
exhausted in his bed. “You always disappear,” he says running a hand through his hair.

“Perhaps, but I always come back,” he softly replies, eyes falling close.

“But why don’t you just stay with me?”

“I don’t even know I lose myself until I return,” Namjoon says plainly, halfway towards
sleep.

And this is the other axiom in his life, one that he’s much less keen on investigating further,
but it keeps him up at night nonetheless.

Jin feels like longitude and latitude, a set of speeds and slowness between two points of
Namjoon’s life, when he woke up, age 8, knowing he wanted to give love to the world, and
today, age 24, drowning in the realisation of just how much he meant it.

Jin tells him, “You said happiness has become too sacred.”

Namjoon remembers that, he uttered it quickly during that dinner party they filmed last June,
drunk and forgetting that he was on camera.

There are words, but they’re already bursting with too much meaning, so full that he can’t
ever fit his in. The space between speaking and listening seems insurmountable, and yet he
keeps trying, trying to make sense of his world.

There are so many words, and they mean so much, and they are so heavy. Namjoon knows
himself too well to ever understand giving him and Jin up. He screams words into the pitch
blackness, knowing he won’t ever get them back, even when he knew he couldn’t be heard,
he can’t stop. Even when he knew that he wouldn’t be understood they way he wanted to be,
he still kept going. He couldn’t live as anyone else. He could never have done anything else.

Within the hangul character for love, the heart radical is surrounded, suffocated. It’s a word
of crushing weight. However, to love, in hanja, meant to leave home towards the unknown
that awaited at the door. He never had the luxury of self-preservation, like Jin did. He opened
the door on first sight.

Namjoon knows he belongs to the idea of love. When it beckons him, he follows. When it
summons him, he waits night and day. When love calls, he leaves everything behind, and
when he returns home having been left broken, he shuts his eyes and knows it’ll find him
soon again.

That same night in June, Jin had replied with his own answer. “Happiness is when I’m
laughing, so I make the atmosphere bright.”

Namjoon told half a million people on his livestream last spring that love was too sacred,
because not all love is great and beautiful. Love and hatred can be the same thing, because
there is so much pain related to love.

Five minutes later Jin walked into his studio, and Namjoon right then and there wanted to
take everything back and them some. His hands shook as Jin leaned over his shoulder,
peering at his screen, amused, and Namjoon wanted to look straight into the camera and say
Look, loving someone is the most painful thing in the world, but it’s also what makes life
worth living.

Look. Here he is. And this is what he does to me.

Seoul is well on its way to sleep when Namjoon lands, a few shades darker thanks to the Los
Angeles sun. The airport is unearthly silent in the midnight heat, the taxi ranks empty and
quiet. He steps through the airport doors and feels sweat immediately pricking his skin at the
wave of humid air that invites him home.

He looks up and feels something slot into place once he sees Jin is waiting for him at the
curb, leaning against his BMW, legs crossed. Seeing him in person after weeks of only
hearing his voice and a grainy image of his face on his phone feels a lot like surfacing into
the light again after sitting at the bottom of a very deep swimming pool.

They look at each other, standing eight feet apart, one for every year spent together, every
year they hid from each other.

Jin steps forward, speaks first. “I missed you.”

“You keep saying that,” Namjoon says as looks at the ground, fidgets with his shoulder bag.
“Should I start believing you?” The air feels like its breath is held, waiting for the same thing
Namjoon is. He’s almost overwhelmed with gratitude that there’s no one else to see them
right now. He would shatter apart if this moment was broken, all the pieces of him scattering
over the tarmac, over Jin’s feet.

Jin is unfaltering. “You still want me, don’t you? After all that’s happened between us?”

“Maybe I don’t,” Namjoon says. “Maybe it’s easier if I say no.”

It’s a lie, but his life is built on those.

Jin is about to answer when the sky splits open above them with a thundering crack, and the
seasonal jangma rains pour down, suffocating in the night air. Almost immediately a heavy,
hot mist fills the air, so thick Namjoon can’t see. There wasn’t the slightest warning.
Namjoon is rooted to the ground in surprise, soaked through in a matter of seconds.

Jin’s bangs are plastered to his head and his eyes are pleading. “Look, I’m trying to tell you
something. I’m only just working it out myself,” he shouts into the deafening air.

Maybe this is all love is Namjoon thinks, a bit wildly. Of two people screaming into the air
this is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to
you? A translation between language.

“And for the first time in my life I feel obliged to admit that I feel myself in the middle of a
psychological collapse,” Namjoon states to Jin, much closer now, eyes as clear as they’d ever
been.

He hates him for the way he is, the way that he holds himself so distant from all who love
him. He hates the manner in which he stands backstage and evenly does up a fresh white
shirt, never missing a button admits the sea of commotion. He hates him for his smile, his
chestnut eyes, the first time he saw Jin outside Big Hit studios and the way he looked at
Namjoon from under his lashes, under the Korean red pine tree that has their initials on it,
head titled and his breath like blows into the cold February air, and said So this is the start of
the rest of our lives, huh, and Namjoon couldn’t think anything else but “yes.”

He hates the way that he sings, the way he crosses his legs, the way he invades Namjoon’s
head and heart, breaking him in two with just a laugh. The way he smells like ozone and
cologne right now, sending a jagged wave of lust crashing into him, making him twitch in his
pants.

Namjoon’s lungs burn. He wants to say it.

He wants to reach out and grab his collar and say it right against his mouth, I hate you, Jin,
I’ve always hated you, and he wants to wake up with his lips in Jin’s hair. Rain is streaming
down Jin’s cheeks in tiny rivers and he hates him.

“It seems to me that somewhere along the way,” says Namjoon, dropping his bag, “you
decided I would break your heart. And that’s all that you’re waiting for now. You’re waiting
for the day I wake up and realise I don’t need you anymore, because why on earth would I
choose you when I could have anything I want now. I think I know who I am, and then I lose
it again, and it’s a long mess more than anything else, hyung, but despite everything and all
the logic in the world, or perhaps because of it, I keep returning to the fact that I want you
with me, always.’’

“Why won’t you ever just shut up and just let me speak for once,” Jin shoves him, eyes wild.
The rain pours down. “I’m in love with you.”

Namjoon laughs, once, into the air, hands floating without anything to hold on to.

“It’s not fucking fair, you know,” Jin continues, words tumbling over each other. “Because
I’ve been trying to tell you since I met you, but I couldn’t ever get the words right. I’m not a
poet or a lyricist or a romantic like you. I don’t know how to say what I mean, like you. All I
can do is show you how I feel, and it’s not enough.”

He steps closer, hands shaking. “I thought you’d realise, but maybe we’re both can’t
understand each other. I thought I would be brave enough, but I’m not. I thought eventually
this life would finally end and then we’d be normal again. And I thought then it would be
safe to tell you what I feel. But I’m selfish because I want you today and tomorrow and.. and
I can’t live with myself anymore going to bed hoping that we’d all end up failing just so I can
have you without…” He trails off.

Without having to hide. Without having to overthink every moment. Without fear.

They had signed their contracts just before Namjoon left for America. Another decade of
waiting. Namjoon had thought that a lifetime of yearning and the memory of a few nights
was enough. For a long time, he told himself that an echo of what they could be was enough.

Jin’s world was constituted by the pulses of instinct and action and atmosphere; of all that
had to go unspoken because it was unspeakable and intangible. Jin constantly reads the room
and gives the others what they need. Car rides and home-cooked dinners and advice late at
night and a steady stream of laughs. But with Namjoon, he gave him what he wanted. A thin
line, treading on intent and instinct. One impossible to put into words.

The valley between them is carved out by love that drowned trying to reach each other. The
shape of Jin’s border, the curve of his river, seeking out the shape of the shore is the
translation of his love for Namjoon. And translation is just an echo of another person’s
rhythms and cadences, a tremor of another soul’s gestures and movements. Jin has never once
said he loved him, but he’s shown him everyday.

Somewhere along the way, they started speaking a language of their own that made perfect
sense. Namjoon feels overwhelmed with this realisation.

Oh. Namjoon’s hand has, without consulting him, tangled itself in Jin’s wet mop of hair.

Oh.
Here are the facts, Namjoon wants to tell him. You are the wrong sort of line for my sort of
swerve; where we meet, the air crackles and burns and sings. You have chestnut brown eyes.
I want to be with you. I want to find all the places that tear you apart. The hate was a lie. I’ve
loved you since day one.

Instead, Namjoon breathes, “I’m going to fuck this up.”

“But at least we’ll try,” Jin says.

Namjoon laughs and drags a hand through his hair. It's shaky and he's sure it betrays a million
things. “Tell me where to begin, then” he says, thinking I would give you the sky and all its
stars if I could. But maybe he should start trying to say things like that out loud. Namjoon
takes a step forward. Jin tilts his chin to keep his eyes on Namjoon’s, eyes as clear as can be.

“I’m in love with you too,” Namjoon says.

Jin’s hand is warm when he puts it on Namjoon’s chest, even as his shirt is soaked through.
Jin laughs or sighs, something quiet and unreadable, until finally: “That’s all I ever wanted to
hear. Just that, Namjoon.”

Namjoon closes his eyes and brings Jin close. He thinks of acquiescence and waves crashing
into shores after a long time at sea and the green that plum rain brings. He runs his fingers
through Jin’s hair, over his ear, across his cheek, and stands there until the rain breaks, until
something inside of him breaks loose and paints them both in gold.

“Love is consolation,” Seokjin says to him. “It is light.”

All right then, Namjoon thinks. Let me try to rephrase. When I am with you, I am flooded
with light.

End.
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