Archive of Our Own ^beta

“And, five. Four. Three…”

“Can I talk now?”

“Do you still not know how a film countdown works, Taehyung?” Jeongguk frowns.

“The audio is gonna be all fucked up now!” Seokjin’s voice calls from the kitchen.

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “It’s literally not, though. We’re not miked, he’s just using the audio input from the actual camera. The whole reason for the countdown is to line up the audio with the video feed later.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works!” Seokjin yells back.

“Jeongguk-ah, tell Jin-hyung I’m right.”

Jeongguk smiles from behind the camera, looking at the rendering of Taehyung’s pouty face on the display screen instead of raising his head to meet his actual eyes. “I mean. Technically you are, but I do still like doing the countdown thing. It makes it feel more legit.”

“You graduated a whole year ago, you work every day as a wedding videographer, and yet somehow you’re still acting like filming stuff is some novel experience you’ve never gotten to have before,” Seokjin says, rolling his eyes as he emerges into the living room with a glass of wine.

Taehyung snickers and crosses his arms. “As if you don’t get that way about eating your own cooking all the time.”

“Yoongi-yah! The dongsaengs are disrespecting me again!” Seokjin calls, flopping dramatically onto the couch so he almost spills his merlot.

Yoongi appears in the bedroom doorway looking rumpled and sleepy as always. His hair is a puffy mess around his forehead, and his eyes are a little bit swollen. “Why exactly are you calling me about this problem?”

Seokjin straightens up and again, red wine sloshes dangerously close to the rim of the glass. “Were you sleeping? Sorry, I’m sorry—”

Yoongi waves him off, yawning as he pads over and flops rather gracelessly onto Seokjin’s lap. This time, the wine actually does spill. It’s just a drop or two onto a glass table, hardly the end of the world, but Seokjin still lets out a very high-pitched, distressed cry, and Taehyung doubles over in laughter.

Jeongguk grins and zooms in on the droplets as they rest harmlessly on the coffee table, and then he turns the camera on himself and grins knowingly into the lens.

“ Jeon Jeongguk. Stop filming this situation immediately and assist your hyung in cleaning up the mess YOU wrought! ” Seokjin screeches.

“Me!” Jeongguk shouts, joining Taehyung in raucous laughter.

“Babe, it was definitely my fault you spilled,” Yoongi says.

“It was not! Not my darling boyfriend, who could never do anything wrong—”

“A thing you famously say every time I forget to take out the trash on the right day—”

“Okay that’s different; in this situation I was provoked and then you came to assist me and now we’re here— ”

“Started from the bottom,” Taehyung says.

“See if I ever feed either of you again!” Seokjin says.

Taehyung and Jeongguk immediately stop laughing.

Seokjin grins, wide and wicked. “See. Nice to have a reminder that I in fact hold all the power in this friend group.”

Taehyung throws Jeongguk a look, and Jeongguk meets his eyes, looks off to the side a little bit. They’ve been making this sort of pointed eye contact for years, but it still lowkey throws Jeongguk back to Kwon-songsaengnim’s English class every time. Taehyung turns his gaze minutely to shrug at the camera, and Jeongguk captures it and then turns the device around on himself to nod his agreement with Taehyung.

“Out loud. For the camera,” Seokjin insists. “Say that I hold the power and you’re sorry you provoked me into spilling wine on the table.”

“Yoongi-hyung was the one who—”

“ Say it. If you’re going to insist on filming everything, Jeon Jeongguk, then we’re going to get some practical use out of it. A record of my power.”

“ Ew, hyung, no, we’re not gonna turn into one of those friend groups who says like ‘yeah me and my friends should honestly be a TV show’. We’re not that cool. Our shit is only funny to us, ” Jeongguk protests.

“Says the kid who’s been filming all the stuff we do for literal years,” Yoongi drawls.

“I’d like it on the record that I highly disagree with Jeonggukkie’s prior statement. I think we should be a TV show,” Taehyung says, raising his hand. Jeongguk turns the camera to him and he nods at it insistently. “Our charm and charisma would carry us for six seasons cable, 12 seasons network.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that easy,” Yoongi scoffs.

Seokjin raises his hand. “I think my beauty alone would carry us for 20 seasons regardless of platform but your collective lack of beauty is what would get us cancelled.”

“Rude!” Taehyung says, jerking back like he’s aghast. He crosses his arms and pouts at Jeongguk’s camera. “And to think I’ve been trying to go get another drink for like seven minutes but this has been going on.”

“Jesus Christ, go get your honey-lemon Strong Zero or whatever the fuck that thing is,” Jeongguk groans.

“You like sweet drinks too,” Taehyung says, flipping him off as he finally gets up and heads into the kitchen. “You like mai tais just like the rest of us, Jeon Jeongguk.”

Jeongguk flips him off in return and then moves the camera back to Yoongi and Seokjin. “So. Time for the Yoonjin Confessional. Any summer plans?”

Seokjin sighs and takes a sip of wine and then offers the glass to Yoongi, who smiles happily as he takes a long pull. “Babe?” Seokjin asks. “Plans?”

Yoongi swallows and hands the wine back to Seokjin, shaking his head. “None so far. Namjoon and I have a project going at work—one of the songs has been giving us trouble but the hook is so good that the studio execs are like really pushing for us to finish it. So probably the next couple weeks at least will be overrun by that.”

“Jin-hyung? How will you be supporting your overworked boyfriend during this time of creative crisis?” Jeongguk asks.

Seokjin blinks at the camera with every ounce of his beauty and grace on display. “I will of course be making sure he actually consumes food, because last time he and Namjoon were working on something like this, he came in the door one day after work and literally passed out from low blood sugar. Which will not be happening again. ”

Jeongguk snorts. “But otherwise no plans?”

“No plans,” Seokjin echoes.

“Good,” Taehyung says, reappearing in the doorway with his monstrous honey-lemon alcohol situation. He pops the tab and takes a long drink before grinning at everyone. “You can help me watch the farm while my parents take their retirement trip then.”

Jeongguk looks up from the camera, not even paying attention to what he’s filming anymore. “The farm?”

“Did you not hear me say I have a project at work?” Yoongi asks, tilting his head.

Taehyung comes forward into the room and throws himself into an armchair, waving the hand not occupied by his drink. “Work on it on the farm. It’ll be like a retreat.”

“I need Namjoon with me,” Yoongi says.

“Bring Namjoon to the farm.”

Seokjin raises his hand. “Um, hi, yes, I own a Michelin Three-Star restaurant in downtown Seoul—”

“You have a staff and they know what they’re doing and you and Yoongi have taken three-week holidays before without any sort of hitch, so I don’t see why a one-week stay at a farm in Daegu would cause a problem.”

“I have multiple weddings to film this summer?” Jeongguk says, holding up his camera and then fixing it on Taehyung’s face. He zooms in really close on Taehyung’s nose, just for fun. “I can’t exactly up and leave.”

“So come for the days you can and take the bullet train back to Seoul early or on the weekend or whatever,” Taehyung says, pouting forcefully at Jeongguk. Jeongguk zooms back out to capture the look. “Come on, Kookie, please. I thought you at least would want to go back. We can try skinny dipping again if you want—”

“Hard pass,” Jeongguk says, wrinkling his nose and hoping his cheeks aren’t going red. He can feel heat in them, but it’s hot and it’s summer and it’s Seoul—maybe he can pass the blush off as heat stroke.

Yoongi sighs. “Look, as much as that actually does sound, like, refreshing or whatever…I don’t know. I don’t know if Namjoon would be down for it. Plus he’s got Hoseok to look out for.”

Taehyung tilts his head. “I mean.”

“ Do not say he can bring Hoseok too!” Seokjin chirps.

“Why not?” Taehyung says. “You like Hoseok.”

“Hoseok tore his ACL literally two days ago. He just had surgery. You cannot expect him to take a train all the way to Daegu and then be in a rural area away from medical care—”

“It’s an outpatient surgery and he’s fine. He’s just on crutches, that’s all. I bet he would in fact love a vacation,” Taehyung says, pulling out his phone. “I’m gonna call him.”

“Tae—”

But the phone is already ringing on speakerphone. A slightly slurred but happy voice picks up after one ring. “Taehyung-ah? Hi! What’s up!”

“Hi, Hobi-hyung,” Taehyung says, glancing up at the camera to make sure Jeongguk is getting this. “I know you totally just had ACL surgery or whatever, but I’m trying to get Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung to come to my family’s strawberry farm in Daegu with me but Yoongi has some project with Namjoon and Namjoon is of course taking care of you while you can’t walk and stuff so like, I want them both to work on the song on the farm and basically do you want to come on vacation to a strawberry farm in Daegu, yes no please circle one answer.”

There’s a pause that has everyone on the edge of their seats. Jeongguk leans forward and zooms in a little on the phone. And then—

“Oh my god , that would be amazing, Joon is being so overbearing and I just—I mean, I’m like fine? They’ve got me on great painkillers—”

“So that’s why he sounds drunk,” Seokjin grumbles.

“—but I mean, I think it’d be great for Joonie and Yoongi to work somewhere away from here, and I would love to get away while I can’t dance and like—yeah! I’ll have to ask Joon, but I mean, if Yoongi and Seokjin are in, then I am. And Joon will be.”

Taehyung grins up at the camera, victorious and bright. “Sweet. Yeah, that’s great!”

“How long would we go for?”

“I have to stay for all of next week, but like—okay, to be honest, the farm is like a lot of work, more than one person can really do, which is why I originally wanted Jeongguk and Seokjin to go, you know, just to help me out—”

“Can I invite my friend Jimin? He’s one of the newer dance instructors at the studio, I think maybe he’s been at a couple parties you guys were at? The dance studio is closed for summer holidays next week and I was supposed to hang out with him so I don’t really wanna ditch him.”

Jimin. Jeongguk of course knows him. That’s Park Jimin, the boy from that one party, the really fucking pretty one who can dance and wears leather pants and has the most unreasonable hip control and—

Taehyung’s eyes have lit up and he looks at Jeongguk like he’s just had a great idea. The same look from earlier, Kwon-songsaengnim’s English class, I know exactly what you’re thinking, I got you.

Jeongguk, for the first time possibly ever, has no fucking idea what he’s supposed to get.

“Sure! Jimin-ssi can come,” Taehyung chirps.

“I know you guys don’t really know him—”

“No, it’s great! There’s plenty of room for all of us at the house, so it won’t be a problem!” Taehyung says, and—and oh. Oh. Taehyung knows, Taehyung is thinking of Jimin’s leather and his earrings and his hip control and—

Oh.

Taehyung is—

“Awesome,” Hoseok says. “I’ll check with him that he’s okay with it and let you know for sure, but for now, consider us in! I’ll tell Joonie.”

Taehyung looks expectantly at Seokjin and Yoongi. “Well? Guys?”

“Fine, assuming the execs go for it,” Yoongi grumbles, rolling his eyes. “Jin?”

Seokjin sighs, very put upon but also smiling, like he’s maybe possibly a bit excited. “Yeah, fine.”

“Jeongguk?”

Jeongguk nods and shrugs, trying to ignore whatever weird ache is going on in his chest. He has this vision, suddenly, of just the two of them at the house—him and Taehyung, the way it was for that year in high school except without the constant parental presence. Just the two of them, the way they used to be, but simultaneously new.

“Yeah, I’m in,” Jeongguk says, swallowing down this weird possessiveness. Jeongguk is not the owner of Taehyung’s farm, nor is he the owner of Taehyung.

“Great! Okay, Hoseok-ssi. It’s settled. Tell Namjoon and Jimin we’re on,” Taehyung says.

“You got it!” Hoseok says.

Jeongguk turns the camera off.

This PC > Videos > 2013 > Fall

20130920.vid

Open with…

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PLAY

“Jeonggukkie! Are you filming right now? Do I look dope?”

“Yes, hyung, your hanbok looks dope, ” Jeongguk teases, zooming in on Taehyung’s cheeks, all puffed up by his smile.

“Come on, this is the first Chuseok we’ve ever known each other, and your first Chuseok in Daegu, we gotta have record of it!”

“I’m filming you, hyung, we do have record of it.”

“Your parents get you your very first iPhone for your birthday and you don’t even film yourself with it, though! Come on, it has a front facing camera for exactly that purpose,” Taehyung pouts. “Also, you look cute in your hanbok.”

“I do not look cute,” 16-year-old Jeongguk mumbles.

“You do. Now come on, at least take a selca with me.”

“Fine,” Jeongguk says, and turns the camera off.

Click to replay.

Exit program?

“So, it’s like…I mean, he’s never been single, you know? Or, like, he has, but just—not for very long, and it’s just. I thought…” Jeongguk says into the camera, running his fingers through his hair. “I thought maybe this time I’d finally work up the nerve to… I don’t know. It’s been eight years and I guess part of me will always think that maybe there’s still something? Like, we can’t possibly go our whole lives and never actually kiss?”

Jeongguk takes a drink of his water bottle and settles further into his pillows, angling the camera up in a vague attempt not to end up with a double chin. “Anyways. I don’t even know why I record this kind of shit.” He chuckles, self-deprecating and low. He turns the lights out, moves his thumb to stop recording—

“Okay, fine, I wanna say this too,” Jeongguk says, trying to aim the camera at his face even though the lighting is shit now. “I guess Jimin’s going to the farm now too? Remember, he came to some party Seokjin had a while ago, he tags along with Hoseok sometimes. He dances at Hoseok’s studio. And he’s, like, unfairly hot, and he’s coming to the farm, and I just—Taehyung got really excited about it. Like, he looked at me and it was—I guess that’s why I’m recording this. Because I know what’s gonna happen, Jimin is gonna end up dating Taehyung, and Yoongi and Jin are a thing and Namjoon and Hoseok are a thing and—and now I’m like. Whatever. This is stupid. I shouldn’t even be thinking like this, I just. Whatever. Never mind.”

Delete recording?

All memory erased.

“Are you seriously filming again?”

“Come on, don’t you want a record of all the farmwork you’re going to do because Taehyung is your friend?”

“An unfortunate condition that only happened because of that clear file we both wanted at that anime convention—”

“Sounds like a real meet-cute, hyung.”

“You want a meet-cute, you should hear the story of how Yoongi and I met—”

“Every person we know has heard that story seven times,” Jeongguk says.

“True,” Taehyung says from somewhere behind Jeongguk. Jeongguk doesn’t bother to turn the camera that direction. In large open spaces, Taehyung bounces around too much to remain on screen for long.

Yoongi crosses his arms. “Is the story not cute?”

“I’ll edit in an old clip I have of you telling it,” Jeongguk says.

“Wait, are you seriously making a movie about us at the farm?” Seokjin asks.

“I mean, it’s not so much about the farm, ” Jeongguk says, waving an arm artistically. “Kind of like how Moby Dick isn’t really so much about a whale —”

“Oh! Are you talking about Moby Dick! I love Moby Dick! ” A voice shouts.

“Namjoon!” Everyone choruses, because no one else could possibly have said that line but him.

Hoseok is hobbling next to him on crutches, but he still grins manically and says, “Excuse me, I think you mean you love Hobi Dick.”

“Noooooo—”

“Canceled.”

“Get away from me!”

“Please never say that again.”

Hoseok throws his head back and laughs. “God, I’ve missed you guys.”

“I for one thought it was extremely clever and context appropriate,” Taehyung says, raising his hand.

Hoseok lifts a crutch off the ground and extends it towards Taehyung. “I don’t want to walk towards you, so this is a remote high-five.”

Taehyung taps his palm against the bottom of the crutch. Jeongguk wrinkles his nose. “Oh my god, Tae, you do realize he literally has to take those into the bathroom with him.”

Taehyung looks down at his hand and then up at the camera, and then he shrugs. “If touching the bottom of a crutch is the worst thing that happens to me today, I will consider this a good day.”

“Jiminie!” Hoseok shouts then, startling Jeongguk in a way that makes the camera shake. He turns to follow Hoseok’s excited smile and sure enough, there’s the boy. The one from the party, who’d been wearing black leather pants and so many big silver rings and shimmery eyeshadow and heels —

“Hoseok-hyung! People I sort of know!” Jimin chirps, practically skipping up to them.

Except this is not a boy in leather pants and big silver rings and eyeshadow and heels—this must be a literal angel. His hair is no longer the icy gray it was back then but instead a honey blond a little cooler-toned than Taehyung’s. It’s fluffy, parted so his bangs fall like feathers around his perfect eyes. His lips are pink and perhaps glossy although he’s bare of any other makeup, and he’s wearing a thin white t-shirt and light-wash jeans, chunky FILAs on his feet. He’s carrying a sporty duffel bag in pastel purple.

Jeongguk wants to poke Jimin’s cheek, make sure it’s real flesh and not sugar puffed into marshmallow, make sure a little sugarplum fairy isn’t standing in front of him and not just a normal twentysomething human person.

“Hi! I’m Yoongi, in case you don’t remember,” Yoongi says, bowing respectfully.

“Yoongi-ssi,” Jimin says. “Yeah, that rings a bell. And you must be Seokjin-ssi, then?”

Seokjin smiles. “That’s me. You can just call me ‘Jin’.”

Jimin nods and bows, and Seokjin returns the gesture.

“I’m Namjoon, you’ve never been to our apartment to hang out with my boyfriend and I’ve definitely never met you ever.”

“Right, good to meet you,” Jimin grins, playing along as Hoseok rolls his eyes.

“You’ve met Taehyung, right?” Seokjin asks. “I mean, we’re going to his house…”

Jimin turns slowly, expression open and unguarded, bright. Jeongguk zooms out to catch both him and Taehyung in the shot at the same time.

“Hi. I’m Taehyung,” Taehyung says, offering a wave that’s much warmer and more contained than his usual freewheeling enthusiasm for everything. He looks suddenly soft, and calm, and intrigued. He takes a step forward towards Jimin, a move so intuitive it looks like he doesn’t even realize he’s done it. Jimin steps forward too, looking back contemplative, a little shy, but warm. They’re closer than they should be, maybe, but they don’t seem to notice.

“Hi, Taehyung-ssi. I remember you.”

“We’re the same age, I think?” Taehyung says. “You can just call me ‘Tae’.”

“Tae,” Jimin says. They’re both quiet for a second, looking at each other. Jeongguk’s chest aches. Maybe he should get that looked at.

Then Taehyung happens to move his arm and his phone case comes into view, and Jimin’s eyes go wide.

“Wait, is that Kageyama from Haikyuu!! dressed as Gudetama on your phone case?” Jimin asks.

Taehyung looks down as if to check what’s on the back of his own phone case and then looks at Jimin, eyes bright. “I—yeah? Yeah, it is, do you like Haikyuu!! ”

“Yes! Oh my gosh—”

And they’re off, talking over each other in an unintelligible rush. Jeongguk films a few more seconds, trying not to feel weird. Trying not to feel whatever he’s feeling. He turns the camera around and bites his lip. “I got him that phone case,” he says conspiratorially, and kind of annoyed.

He turns the camera back around and scans the group. Hoseok is looking at him curiously, but then he just goes back to helping Namjoon wrestle their bags, and Jeongguk clicks to end the recording. It was just him being petty, that’s all. He’ll edit that part out.

“You…you actually want me to record?”

“Of course! Tae said it’s your thing,” Jimin says to Jeongguk before he looks into the camera, offering a grin and a peace sign. “Hey! I’m Jimin—wait! Let’s record us meeting for the first time!”

Jeongguk swallows and tries not to feel things. He searches for the achy resentment from earlier and can’t find any, not when Park Jimin is looking at him all soft and pastry-sweet, smiling like he earnestly wants to be friends. Jimin is kind of hard not to immediately like.

Still, Jeongguk tips his head, a little confused. “We, like, already met though—”

“We can redo it!” Jimin chirps. “Come on, Tae kept talking about you and like, suddenly I was like wait, who’s Jeongguk and he was like wait you didn’t meet Jeongguk? and I was like, shit, where is he! I have to meet Jeongguk! So Tae pointed out where you were sitting all by yourself and I came over and was like—hi! I’m Jimin! And then I realized you weren’t recording and said that you should!”

Jeongguk huffs, biting his lip. “I was there for that end part.”

Jimin grins easily and flicks hair out of his eyes. “You were. Also unrelated, but our T-shirts match.”

Jeongguk glances down. “Well. To be fair, the odds of me wearing this were good. Approximately 80 percent of my closet is white T-shirts.”

Jimin’s smile goes a little vicious. “Yeah? They all thin enough to show off those nipple rings I see?”

Jeongguk’s cheeks go hot and he clears his throat, tilting his shoulders a little to try to get the drape of his shirt to obscure the metal balls decorating each side of his chest. “I—okay, in my defense, I always kinda forget they’re there. I got them done like five years ago.”

Jimin raises an eyebrow. “Ooh, a teenage rebel. I like it.”

Jeongguk huffs. “As if you couldn’t tell from the tattoos.”

Jimin glances around the train and lifts his shirt, and Jeongguk is suddenly glad that he chose an empty row at the back of the cabin when everyone else paired off without him. He was a little annoyed about that even though it was to be expected—of course Taehyung would want to sit with Jimin, not with his oldest friend in the group—but now, Jeongguk doesn’t really mind. Because here, in the privacy of this row, Park Jimin is lifting up his shirt to reveal abs and a belly button ring and a black tattoo reading NEVERMIND in scratchy English letters.

“Oh. That’s—wow.”

Jimin drops his shirt and Jeongguk suddenly regrets the fact that his sense of film ethics made him keep the camera on Jimin’s face the whole time, not daring to dip lower. Jimin grins. “I always forget about all that, too.”

Jeongguk gulps. “Um. Well. I would show you the rest of my tattoo, but I’d have to take off my shirt, so…”

“Does Tae have any tattoos?” Jimin muses, settling more comfortably into the seat next to Jeongguk.

Jeongguk leans back against the window behind him, keeping the camera on Jimin’s profile. “Nah. He doesn’t even talk about it. I think he likes keeping his skin, like, unadorned.”

“He has piercings, though,” Jimin says. “I really like the ones in his left ear. Like, the placement is really good.”

Jeongguk bites his lip. “Mm. Yeah.”

“I don’t know what it’s called, like, it’s not actually an anti-tragus I don’t think? Damn, I should’ve looked in his ear more thoroughly.”

“You were looking in his ear?” Jeongguk asks, tilting his head.

“Sure, I mean, we were talking about piercings.”

“You just met him.”

“I just met you, too, and I’ve seen your nipple rings.”

“Through my shirt, ” Jeongguk whines. “It was an accident.”

“It’s okay,” Jimin teases. “Anyway, this conversation will make a nice juicy bit for your documentary.”

“It’s a reality show, actually,” Jeongguk says.

“Like The Bachelor ?”

“I mean. We already have two established couples in the group, I don’t really see how you and me and Taehyung are going to make for a very interesting love story…”

Jimin shrugs magnanimously. “I mean, you never know.”

The fuck does that mean? Jeongguk offers whatever grin he can muster. “Honestly, with Jin-hyung around, this is more likely going to turn into a mukbang video.”

Jimin bats his eyelashes, suddenly leaning forward into Jeongguk’s space a little. All his attention is focused on Jeongguk’s face, no trace of regard for the camera as he angles his chin down, purses out his bottom lip. “Yeah? You know, I always saw myself as more of a beauty guru type, but I bet I could look really good while slurping down a lot of noodles. What do you think? Would you want to see a mukbang video of me?”

Jeongguk purses his lips and tries to play it cool instead of turning into a blushy mess. “I mean. If anyone can make swallowing a lot look good, it’s probably you…”

Jimin blinks and then bites his bottom lip, mouth quirking into a half-smile that reveals a slightly crooked tooth which Jeongguk immediately wants to trace with his tongue. Fuck. “Ignoring that obvious double entendre…hmm. I am pretty good at swallowing.”

Fuck. What the—is Jimin—flirting?

Jimin sinks back in his seat, still grinning. “You know, they tell models to say the word ‘prune’ to get them to jut their lower lips out, you know, like in photos where the model looks kind of pouty and sad. I like to do it while I’m dancing sometimes. Makes the pictures of the performance look better.”

Jeongguk swallows hard and wonders what this would look like if it weren’t being captured from his point of view but from that of an outside watcher. If some tricky editors could make this look like flirting.

But then Jimin turns all the force of his beauty on the camera, and Jeongguk’s heart sort of sinks. Right. Jimin is a performer, he dances for a living and he’s damn good at it if the videos Jeongguk has seen from Hoseok are anything to go by, and he’s beautiful and he knows how to be a showman—

“I should probably get back to my seat. I told Tae I was just coming over to introduce myself and say hi. You know, since we didn’t get introduced earlier when I met everyone else,” Jimin says, leaning back and smiling a normal, friendly grin instead of the lascivious thing that was stretching his lips wide just a moment ago. “Nice to meet you, Jeongguk-ssi. See you later.”

“Bye,” Jeongguk manages, swallowing hard as Jimin stands and saunters back up the train aisle to the row he’s sharing with Taehyung. Jeongguk follows him with the camera all the way until he disappears out of sight behind the tall backrest of his seat. He really is quite tiny, especially compared to Jeongguk. Especially compared to Taehyung.

Low battery, the camera beeps. It’s still recording the back of Jimin and Taehyung’s row, and there’s loud laughter coming from those very seats that all of a sudden gets cut off by someone else’s loud shhh!

Jeongguk sighs and grabs a shot of the countryside passing out the window. Then he shuts off the camera.

“Okay, so the one rule is no one can sleep in my parents’ bed. We have my room and two others, which means someone has to take the couch,” Taehyung announces, leading everyone in through the front doors and scrambling to find enough pairs of house slippers. “If you guys don’t mind, Jeongguk and Jimin can take my room. But one of you has to be on the floor unless you wanna share my bed.”

“Tae, come on, you should sleep in your bed,” Jimin says. “I’ll take the couch, it’s no problem.”

“Jeonggukkie won’t mind sleeping in Taehyung’s bed anyways,” Seokjin says, grinning wryly at the camera.

Jeongguk flips him off and zooms in on Seokjin’s shocked face.

“I want it known that he is flipping me off,” Seokjin says. “You can’t see it, Audience, but Jeon Jeongguk is flipping me off right now!”

“Am not,” Jeongguk whines, flipping him off still. “You have no proof!”

“I mean, I don’t mind sharing if you don’t,” Taehyung says.

“I mean.”

“It’s that or the floor, Gguk,” Taehyung says. “But I don’t want you complaining about how your back hurts even one time if you choose the floor.”

“It’s fine,” Jeongguk says, biting his lip. “I mean. Whatever works.”

Taehyung smiles dazzling and brilliant, leaning conspiratorially towards the camera. “He acts like we’ve never shared a bed before.”

Jeongguk rolls his eyes and moves the camera intentionally away from Taehyung to where Jimin is looking intently at some pictures on display next to the TV. “Fine, we can share the bed. But if I get too hot, I’m kicking you onto the floor.”

“Rude! I would fight you!”

“And you’d lose.”

“I would not! ”

“Yah, quit your flirting and give us a tour, Tae,” Yoongi says, leaning lazily against his much taller boyfriend. Seokjin nods in agreement.

Taehyung smirks, but Jeongguk doesn’t miss the way his eyes flick towards Jimin. Jeongguk is a cameraman. He’s supposed to catch these sorts of things.

“All right, well, I suppose I should give you guys a rundown on all the chores we have to do. Except Hobi-hyung, of course, considering he can’t walk properly at the moment.”

“The first time I’ve been glad to have torn my ACL,” Hoseok says, raising a crutch in cheer and almost knocking about seven things off a bookshelf.

“Yah, careful,” Namjoon chides.

Taehyung only laughs and shakes his head. “It’s fine. My parents raised three children in this house. It wouldn’t be the first time shit got knocked over.”

“Three kids,” Jimin says, finally looking up from the photos he’s been studying. “These are your siblings, then? I mean, I figured, but I wasn’t totally sure.”

Taehyung nods, grinning. “My sister is doing a homestay in America right now. And my brother is in college, so he couldn’t really get away to come stay here for a whole week. Too much schoolwork.”

“So that’s why we’re being saddled with all the chores,” Jeongguk grumbles, although he doesn’t mind. He’s always kind of liked physical labor—the way his muscles work in a context that’s not just lifting at the gym, the nice bone-deep exhaustion you get after a day working in the sun. It’s not something he could do every day, and he’ll be forever in awe of the people who do, but he’s never harbored any dislike for it, really. He even spent a couple summers during college working on this very farm with Taehyung and his family, but that was a different time. Ages ago, really. Back when Taehyung was still with Jihye or Jinyoung or Minsoo or whoever he was being a serial monogamist with that month.

Jeongguk, perpetually single, perpetually remembering that day in high school, maybe we should—do you want to…

And Jeongguk, the coward, suddenly faced with everything he wanted, had panicked and said I can’t.

“Okay, tour!” Taehyung chirps. “This is obviously the living room, and here’s the kitchen…Kook, are you really going to film this whole thing?”

“I don’t know, hyung, I mean, I know the house by now, but our viewers don’t.”

“Who exactly are our viewers except, I don’t know, us, after we get back to Seoul and you edit this and then inevitably make us watch it?” Yoongi grumbles.

Jeongguk flips him off.

“He’s flipping me off this time,” Yoongi tells the camera seriously. “This is really quite unfair. You’re the one making the movie. You get to hide behind that camera while you make the rest of us look bad.”

“Excuse me,” Seokjin says, bopping Yoongi on the nose. “ I never look bad.”

“He’s right, hyung,” Jeongguk agrees. “Jin-hyung is incredibly photogenic. Videogenic? Is that a thing?”

“If it’s a thing, I want it on my resume,” Seokjin says haughtily.

“You control what goes on your resume,” Yoongi says. “Like, babe, that is literally all you. ”

Seokjin smiles and kisses Yoongi once, then twice. “Sorry. Want me to turn down the pretty jokes?”

“You just don’t have to pretend that’s your only quality,” Yoongi says. “Be three-dimensional for Kookie’s documentary.”

“It’s a reality show!” Jimin says, appearing sort of out of nowhere, grinning his million-watt smile up at Jeongguk, ignoring the camera. Something flips over in Jeongguk’s heart, but he pushes it away. Jimin shakes his head and skips over to Taehyung, who hooks their elbows together.

“Um, can someone help us? Hoseok got his crutch stuck in my pant leg and I really cannot figure out how this happened or how to fix it now!” Namjoon’s distressed voice comes. Right, Namjoon and Hoseok are here. Jeongguk had almost forgotten.

“How the— what? ” Yoongi asks as he bypasses Jeongguk and heads back into the hallway, where Namjoon and Hoseok are apparently trapped.

Hoseok’s laughter echoes clear as anything through the house even a room away, and Jeongguk is sure that it’ll come through on the recording even without a real mic—that sort of happiness, even with shitty sound quality, is just impossible to miss.

“So? How is it, being back in your childhood home with a group of people you mostly know but with a wildcard thrown in?”

Taehyung shoots the camera an amused look, adjusting his headband so his bangs are well and truly out of his face. He turns away from the mirror and purses his lips, contemplative. “Hmm…I mean, I’ve known you and Jin-hyung forever, and Yoongi just sorta follows wherever Jin-hyung is…I remember when they met, though, actually. Ah. Those were the days.” He sighs wistfully, looking off into the distance. Or, you know, at the ceiling.

Jeongguk turns the camera to follow Taehyung’s gaze, settles it on the nothing that is a dark wooden beam looking a bit warped with age. Then he turns the camera on himself and gives it a vaguely judgey look.

“Hey! I thought you were filming a Bachelor confessional, not a scene from The Office !”

“Why do you and Jimin both think this is The Bachelor ?”

Taehyung throws his hands up and then pretends to cry, doing that thing where he blinks upwards and waves his hands in his face to dry the tears before they can ruin imaginary mascara. “I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.”

“I…literally forgot that meme existed until right now,” Jeongguk says.

Taehyung drops the act in favor of a look of shock and horror. “ You? Keeper of memes and GIFs at Hogwarts?”

“Is that—are you twisting that line about keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts because that really doesn’t seem worthy of reference—”

“You know all the memes, Jeongguk. All of them. ”

“…I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.”

Taehyung puts his hands on his hips and frowns. “Go away.”

“I’m sleeping here. You’re the one who invited me to sleep here.”

“And I rescind my consent!”

“I’ll put your mask on for you,” Jeongguk pouts, zooming the camera in on the jar of clay face mask resting on the dresser, the whole reason Taehyung put the fluffy spa headband on in the first place.

“You’ll put it directly into my eyeballs!”

“I mean. I would make it look like an accident, at least,” Jeongguk laughs.

Taehyung closes his eyes and laughs for real, and just like that they revert to their usual selves. “Okay, okay. Seriously, though, are you filming my confessional now?”

“Wait, you actually wanted to?”

Taehyung shrugs. His sleep shirt, an offensively blue tee that says EAST DAEGU ACADEMY BAND on it in bubble letters that cannot be taken seriously in any context, slips off one shoulder. Jeongguk remembers him taking the scissors to that very shirt years ago, cutting the too-tight collar out of it after their final band competition together, nearly ten years ago now.

Jeongguk sighs and zooms his camera back to a standard reality show confessional aspect ratio. “Okay, go ahead.”

Taehyung blinks. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me questions.”

“How does it feel to have a bunch of dudes in your house, bitch,” Jeongguk spits, teasing.

Taehyung tilts his head. “Mm, good, I guess? I mean, it’s definitely a relief to have people here to help me with the farm. We obviously have a lot of automation nowadays, but there are enough small tasks like weeding Mom’s garden and harvesting and stuff, like, I don’t know. I have to milk a cow tomorrow. Haven’t done that in…”

“We came here six months ago for the weekend and I vividly remember you intentionally spraying milk all over my face and filming it for your Insta,” Jeongguk says.

Taehyung’s mouth cracks into that wide, wondrous box grin he’s always had, the very first expression Jeongguk ever saw on Taehyung’s unfairly pretty face. Even back in high school, it was this pretty. “I haven’t milked a cow in six months, Jeonggukkie. Utterly ludicrous, a farm boy who hasn’t milked a cow in that long!”

Jeongguk snorts. “You gonna spray me again?”

“You gonna help me milk the cow this time, or are you just gonna distract me?”

“I wasn’t— hyung, I was not distracting you—”

“You know what, you can milk the goats—”

“The goats are so much harder though, they never stop moving —”

“They just don’t like you, and rightfully so, you always pull when you’re supposed to squeeze—”

“Last time Betty tried to kick me in the nuts and when I told you about it, you sprayed milk all over my face and then I had to go into your house and explain to your mother why I needed a towel to get all the white fucking liquid off my face —”

“Oh come on, she knew it wasn’t cum, cum has a very different viscosity than milk—”

“The very fact that she might have entertained the possibility —”

“Whose cum would it even have been?” Taehyung laughs. “You and I were the only ones out in the barn that day!”

And. Oh. Okay. If that isn’t enough to dampen Jeongguk’s mood, well. Well. No. He’s being ridiculous. Of course Taehyung doesn’t think of Jeongguk that way. That whole offer of a kiss thing, that was just a fluke, a one-time dumb thing because they were in high school and neither of them had kissed anyone before and—

And they could have. Jeongguk could have had Kim Taehyung as his very first kiss ever, but instead he didn’t. It’s fine.

Taehyung collapses onto the bed at Jeongguk’s feet, laying himself all out across the end and smiling up at the ceiling, apparently not thinking even a bit about any of what’s just happened. “Anyways. I don’t know. It’s cool getting to have everyone here. I mean, I always get kind of jealous of those friend groups who can afford to travel, or like—yeah. I don’t know. It was just you and me for so long, you know, Jeonggukkie?”

“I’m not here,” Jeongguk says, instead of saying anything that’s really going through his head. “Remember, you’re just doing a confessional for the audience.”

Taehyung turns his head and fixes Jeongguk, not the camera, with his most intense look. “I’m being serious,” he says, softly. “You can edit this part out if you want.”

Jeongguk swallows. “Sure, Tae.”

Taehyung nods. Turns his head back so he’s looking at the ceiling, blows his bangs off his forehead. The headband has slipped a little. “You were so tiny when you first moved here. I thought I’d never seen such a frightened little bunny before.”

“You were a third year and I was two years younger. You were gonna graduate , hyung. There I was holding my drumsticks and they’re telling me I have to talk to you to join the brass band club.”

Taehyung smiles. He doesn’t look at Jeongguk. “Come on, we both know I was a total dork. Even if I was older.”

“I know that now, hyung. I didn’t back then.”

“Come on, I hadn’t even ever been kissed!”

Neither of them says anything for a minute. Outside the window, the only sound is the breeze. Jeongguk is sure the cicadas will be loud and buzzsaw-infuriating come morning.

“Anyway,” Taehyung says, glancing over at the camera. “I don’t know. Jin-hyung is also one of my oldest friends, and Yoongi-hyung has been around a long time now too. And Joon-hyung, and thus Hoseok-hyung.”

Jeongguk swallows. “And Jimin? Don’t forget the wildcard.”

Taehyung huffs. “Yeah, he’s the newest one to show up at the mansion, huh.” His face gets that little secret smile on it, the one Jeongguk has seen far too many times, but never directed at him. “I don’t know. What do you think of him?”

“Jimin? Hyung, it’s your confessional, not mine.”

“You gonna film yours later, after I’m asleep or something?”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I’m not on the show.”

“You are when you want to make judgey faces about whatever I’m doing!”

“I’ll edit those parts out. I’m the one making the show, not the one starring in it. Just talk to the camera. Pretend I’m not here.”

“Pretend you’re not here?” Taehyung asks, sitting up and turning to sit cross-legged at the end of the bed. He props his chin up in one hand, elbow resting on his knee. “Well. I mean. In that case…”

He leans forward. For a second, Jeongguk thinks he’s going to reach out and grab the camera or something, maybe touch Jeongguk’s arm—but then he diverts his focus towards the lens and smiles complacently at it, as if he were looking sort of mournfully at an audience whose sympathies he’s vying for. “I’m really lucky. To have…I mean. Yeah. There’s someone I, uh. Someone I like. And he’s here. Which is. Nice.”

He exhales, pushes his headband around and shakes his head, smiling almost like his nerves are faltering even though he’s got no reason to feel weird. Jeongguk asked about Jimin, after all. “Um. Jimin is nice. I don’t know, we got along right away, so that’s like—good. It’s been a long time since I just, you know, clicked with someone. Maybe tomorrow he’ll milk Betty with me. I bet he’d like that. Ooh! I wonder if he brought clothes he can get dirty in! If not, maybe he’ll let us dress him up in some of our old stuff. It’ll be too big, but he’d look really cute swamped in one of our—er. My.” Taehyung’s eyes widen a little, one monolid and one double, so obvious with this particular expression. “One of my old high school T-shirts.”

Taehyung finishes with a smirk and a wink. Jeongguk keeps the camera trained on him, the red light blinking to indicate that it’s recording, and the moment just hangs there, a too-full balloon about to burst.

Then Taehyung leans back and props himself on his palms, outstretched behind him. Stretched so far back Jeongguk is worried they’ll slip off the end of the mattress, and Jeongguk will have to catch him before he falls.

But Taehyung just smiles and tilts his head, no longer flirty, just familiar. He’s looking at Jeongguk, not the camera. “I’m really glad that I get to spend time with you. It’s been forever since we shared a bed, cutie.”

Another wink, this one even more salacious. Downright ridiculous.

Jeongguk sighs and bites his lip, thumb hovering over the record button, ready to turn the camera off. “Sure, hyung. Careful. Don’t fall—!”

Jeongguk pretends to leap forward, a good enough fakeout that Taehyung shrieks and leans back farther, and sure enough his palms slip and he goes crashing off the end of the bed. In Jeongguk’s defense, the whole thing is clearly kind of overdramatized. Taehyung could’ve just fallen onto his back. He didn’t have to do a backwards roll onto the floor.

“ Owwwww, ” Taehyung whines, head popping up over the edge of the mattress, hairband all askew. “Delete that. Delete it, do it right now, that was unfair—!”

Falling asleep in Taehyung’s full-size bed hadn’t been an issue, even if it seems so much smaller now than it had back in high school. Smaller even than when they were in university—Taehyung had gone off to college first, obviously, but Jeongguk ended up skipping a year in high school and then they were only a year off when Jeongguk moved to Seoul, not because he was following Taehyung but—well. It’s Seoul. And Taehyung’s school had a good arts program, so why wouldn’t Jeongguk go there for film? And why wouldn’t come back here during breaks, sleep in Taehyung’s bedroom together like always, like they would never really grow up, like time would never pass.

Even pressed close together, back to back on the tiny mattress, falling asleep hadn’t been an issue. Waking up kind of is. Jeongguk opens his eyes and tries to swipe into his phone and somehow ends up in the camera app on video mode recording footage of Taehyung’s sleeping face, mouth open and eyelashes fluttering, his body stretched out in usual starfish mode, one arm over Jeongguk’s waist. They’d fallen asleep close but not exactly cuddling . But now they are for all intents and purposes cuddling, and Jeongguk blinks a few times before he even realizes he’s filming, and then he maybe leaves the camera running for a second, just taking in the scene.

Fuck. He should turn it off, get up, go start the coffee maker. Taehyung won’t drink any, but probably everyone else will.

Instead, Jeongguk turns his phone to get footage from around the room. He goes first for the corkboard on the wall with the poster from the 2013 school musical, for which Taehyung had played saxophone in the pit orchestra. He turns his phone and a ribbon from a band competition comes into focus, and then there’s the program from Taehyung’s graduation ceremony listing him as the class speaker. There’s a program from the graduation ceremony the next year, too, which has Jeongguk’s name somewhere on it. Weird that Taehyung kept that—Jeongguk is pretty sure even his own parents don’t have a copy.

In the corner of the corkboard, there’s a sticky note. It’s pinned up because it lost its adhesiveness long ago, Jeongguk is sure—he remembers that sticky note all too well. Part of it has a list of vocab words from English class on it, which Taehyung had tried to turn in only to be told by their teacher that he needed to use actual paper, of course. But on the other half of the corner is a doodle Jeongguk did of a bunny rabbit, and next to it is Taehyung’s little heart-headed creature that he always used to draw when he was bored in class. They didn’t share a lot of classes, just English and P.E., but Jeongguk remembers Tata well. Especially Tata as rendered on that sticky note, because that particular sticky note contains a Tata which is holding Jeongguk’s Cooky tightly, a big grin on that heart-shaped face. Jeongguk always forgets Taehyung still has the doodle, but there it is, on display on the wall.

Jeongguk smiles and lingers on the shot, but—well. He should probably get ready for the day. Actually make that coffee he’d been thinking about.

He turns back to Taehyung for one last look at his sleeping face, and then he turns the recording off.

“Hi! Welcome back to my channel!” Jimin chirps, smiling wide enough his eyes nearly disappear. “Today we’re gonna run through how to make coffee using a coffee maker from—er, I guess this thing maybe came from, like, 1989, maybe? I don’t know, but we’re gonna do our best! Before I go on, though, don’t forget to like and subscribe using the buttons down below!” Jimin points jokingly at what should be the corner of the frame. Then he shakes his head, eyes widening as he grins wildly at Jeongguk. “Wait! No, lemme do that again! I should’ve said smash that subscribe button, that’s what real Youtubers say nowadays, isn’t it, Jeonggukkie?”

Jeongguk huffs and zooms the camera in on Jimin’s peach-pink cheeks. They’re still a bit puffy from sleep, scrunching up his eyes into little crescents. Jimin giggles, and Jeongguk thinks that even if they were to reshoot this for a non-imaginary Youtube video, this look—Jimin in his pajamas, soft shirt hanging off one shoulder, mussed up hair and swollen cheeks and puffy eyes, giggling as he tries to work a coffee maker that’s older than he is—that would be the best Youtube video ever.

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I don’t know, smash seems pretty 2019 in terms of Youtube lingo.”

Jimin huffs and lets his shoulders drop. His shirt slips a little farther down his arm, leaving his collarbone and the whole ball of his pale shoulder on display. “Hmm. Guess I need to get more up-to-date on Internet speak.”

“That’s true. You’re like one of those dads who don’t know how to send a link in a text message but when you try to explain, they’re like, I know how to use The Facebook! ”

Jimin tips his head back to laugh and accidentally stumbles back a little bit into the counter. When he looks back at Jeongguk, he ignores the camera and smiles softer, easy if a little surprised by his misstep. “Okay, fuck, I actually do need coffee.” He yawns. “I’m always so out of it in the morning.”

“Oh yeah?” Jeongguk asks, taking a couple steps forward, angling his phone so the light coming in the kitchen window hits Jimin’s cheekbones at a slightly better height. “Tell me about your morning routine. We can use it to build your character in the reality show.”

Jimin giggles. “You film on your phone and on your real camera? The aspect ratio is gonna change all the time, like from vertical to horizontal.”

“You’re the one who saw me shuffle in here half-asleep and demanded that I film a fake Youtube video of you. My real camera’s still in our—Taehyung’s—room,” Jeongguk mumbles, although there’s nothing remotely irritated about his voice. It was actually kind of annoyingly cute, the way Jimin had startled when Jeongguk walked in just ten minutes ago, the way his eyes lit up and he jokingly demanded to be filmed like some ridiculous lifestyle blogger.

Jeongguk had known, of course, that he wasn’t really serious, but he’d pulled up his phone camera anyway. And now, he’s got a whole bunch of footage of early morning Jimin in a clip next to the one of early morning (sleeping) Taehyung.

So. That’s a thing.

“Hmm, my morning routine,” Jimin says, pursing his lips at the coffee maker. “Do you know where they keep the coffee? I feel like I shouldn’t just go rifling through the cupboards. But Tae said you’ve known each other since high school, so maybe it’s okay if you…”

Jeongguk keeps the camera on Jimin as he goes to the right cabinet and pulls down the coffee. “All yours.”

Jimin smiles. “Thanks, Jeongguk-ssi.”

“Just ‘Jeongguk’ is fine,” Jeongguk mumbles. “And talk to the camera. I’m not here, remember?”

Jimin rolls his eyes playfully and gets to work on the coffee situation. “Okay, well, today I woke up on Kim Taehyung’s couch on his farm in Daegu, South Korea, and I rolled directly off of it onto the floor. Which was kind of on purpose, kind of not. I guess I meant to get up, but then halfway through standing I just decided not to and sorta crawled to where my phone was charging instead.”

“Is this an everyday occurrence for you?” Jeongguk asks, amused. “Rolling out of bed instead of standing?”

Jimin carefully scoops some coffee into the filter and slams it shut, letting out a little victory yelp when the machine closes correctly. He presses the button that says “Start” and then turns towards the camera, cocking a hip against the counter. “I wish I could say no, but…yes. I do legitimately roll out of bed onto my floor a lot. My bed is very low to the ground.”

Jeongguk tries to stifle his laughter.

Jimin crosses his arms and pouts. “ What. No judgment, Director-nim! You’re not here, remember? You’re just filming!”

Jeongguk laughs harder, and Jimin stomps his foot jokingly, like an angry cat. “ Stop it! ” Jimin pouts, crosses his arms, plays at irritation for a few more seconds and then looks at the coffee machine, glare suddenly intensified. “Why isn’t it doing anything?”

“Um,” Jeongguk says, fighting back more laughter, “you forgot to put the water in.”

Jimin blinks at the machine, and then at Jeongguk, and then at the machine, and then at the sink, and then at Jeongguk. “You could’ve told me. ”

“I’m not here, remember?”

“Yah! You are the worst dongsaeng —”

“Jimin-ssi! Oh my god, you’re gonna make me drop my phone, stop wrestling me I’m bigger than you I can just sit on you and you will lose instantly— ”

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of a beloved creature.” Hoseok looks solemnly around the group, making poignant eye contact with every member. “It was once a cherished thing, but its time has come, and fate has determined that now is the moment to make this being once again one with the planet from whence it came; long live the mother, and the child.”

“Hear, hear,” Yoongi says, raising a hand to his heart.

Taehyung breaks down sobbing. Jimin pats him on the arm, and Taehyung turns instantly towards him, knees giving out so he sort of collapses into Jimin’s chest. Jimin, spry as he is (he actually did manage to wrestle Jeongguk’s phone away earlier in the kitchen, but Jeongguk had stopped filming before their fight reached that point so there’s no evidence and it cannot be proved), manages to hold Taehyung up even though Taehyung has a good few inches on him.

“Alas, as the good lord giveth, the good lord taketh away,” Hoseok finishes. He looks at Namjoon. “Wait, that is a thing people say, right?”

Namjoon nods. “Sounds right to me.”

Hoseok nods back and takes one hand off his crutch to offer his hand for a fist bump. “Cool.”

Namjoon stares at Hoseok for a second and Hoseok just stares back, blinking patiently, fist extended. Namjoon looks, and Hoseok looks, and finally Namjoon sighs and bumps their fists together. Hoseok goes on. “And so instead of mourning the loss of life of this magnificent being, a lifelong companion to our dearest friend Taehyung, we shall instead celebrate its life and lay it to rest peacefully, amen.”

“Amen,” everyone says.

Hoseok smiles. “Awesome. I’m eating it now.”

And then he eats the strawberry.

“Good?” Seokjin asks, hanging all over Yoongi and looking entirely too much like a model even in his overalls and plaid shirt. He’s rocking a straw hat, too, and Jeongguk is a little jealous. It looks cooler than Jeongguk’s own bucket hat, which is just completely unfair. Bucket hats are the shit, okay?

“ Really fuckin’ good, oh my god, ” Hoseok moans, licking his fingers lewdly as the strawberry juice trails down his hand. “Nothing will ever compare to the flavor experience I have just had.”

“There is more than one strawberry on this farm, babe,” Namjoon says, patting Hoseok on the shoulder.

“Careful,” Hoseok yelps, nearly falling over his crutches. Namjoon tries to steady him and nearly makes it worse, and Yoongi steps in to make sure there are no casualties other than strawberries today.

Taehyung finally stops fake crying and lifts his head off Jimin’s chest, eyes wide and excited. “I wanna have funerals for all the strawberries I eat today!”

“ No, ” Seokjin says, turning away from the disaster that is Hoseok trying to walk back to the porch on his crutches, a difficult task considering they’re standing on a patch of squishy tilled soil at the edge of a strawberry field. “We all know you’re going to eat at least 50, and I don’t have time for 50 strawberry funerals.”

“We can just bless all the strawberries we eat,” Jimin says, cheery as he helps Taehyung stand up. Which—does he really still need to have his hands on Taehyung’s shoulders? Taehyung is basically just, you know, standing now, it’s not like he’s still fake-crying—

“Jeongguk! What’s the thing you say in Japanese before you eat something?”

Jeongguk tilts his head and zooms the camera in on Taehyung’s cheek, where he has somehow already smeared dirt beneath his eye. Probably happened in the midst of the fake crying or something. “Uh, itadakimasu ?”

“Yeah! Let’s say that before every single strawberry! ”

“Uh, why not just jal meokkessumnida , like, the normal thing you say before a meal,” Jeongguk says, fixing Taehyung with his most skeptical look.

Taehyung’s grin somehow widens. He’s still leaning into Jimin a little, and Jimin is still holding him up. They both look beautiful beneath the bright summer sun, lit up and radiant in old clothes stained with dirt and ripped in too many places. “ Itadakimasu is more fun!”

“Yeah, Jeongguk-ssi!” Jimin chirps, reaching up to adjust the brim of Taehyung’s hat, which has nearly fallen off in all the crying and cuddling. He taps the tip of Taehyung’s nose. “Hey, Tae, did you put on sunscreen yet?”

“Yes! No—no? Yes. I don’t know.”

“Your nose is getting red,” Jimin says.

Taehyung frowns at him, all his attention suddenly on the boy in front of him, camera forgotten. “Already? How? How? ”

“We were standing facing the sun, I guess. Also you have to wear the hat like this, if you tip it back that far it doesn’t even help—”

“It doesn’t look cute when you pull it down that way—”

“ You won’t look cute if you get all sunburned—”

“Not true! I am the cutest sunburned person in the solar system. The galaxy —”

“You’re gonna look like a crab—”

“Namjoon-hyung loves crabs—”

“Yes well Namjoon-ssi is in fact not your boyfriend—”

“He can find me platonically cute when I’m sunburned and a crab—”

Jimin throws his head back and laughs, and Taehyung cuts off abruptly too, giggling so hard he ends up tipping forward to bury his face in Jimin’s shoulder. Jeongguk almost feels like he should take the camera off them, wonders if he’s invading a moment too private for him to view—and then Taehyung turns his face and laughs directly into Jimin’s neck, his arms coming out to snake around his waist and lift him up, Taehyung twirls him around—

“Hyung, should we get some water and then start weeding?” Jeongguk shouts, turning his camera back towards the house, where the hyungs are all hanging around in the shade of the porch, Hoseok sitting carefully in a chair now.

“Aish, I hate weeding,” Yoongi says. “Joon-ah, we gotta work. On the song. For the literal idol group we are debuting in three months. ”

“After the weeding,” Namjoon says. “I’m gonna work better after I do physical labor, I can just feel it. Nature will get the creative juices flowing.”

Yoongi sighs. “If I get even slightly tan, I’m blaming you.”

“Wha— me? Jin-hyung is the whole reason we even came here,” Namjoon says.

“Yeah, but he’s my boyfriend and I love him. You’re just a pesky work partner whose ideas I am paid to listen to.”

“Yah, hurry up! Since I’m unable to help, I get to supervise,” Hoseok announces. “Get to work so I can stop having to listen to this argument. Also, Jeonggukkie, does Tae have speakers or something so we can get some music going? Bring them out when you bring the water, yeah?”

“You are not the supervisor,” Namjoon mumbles, but Hoseok pouts at him and he drops a kiss onto Hoseok’s lips before looking up at Jeongguk with a fond sigh. “Well, Jeonggukkie? Speakers?”

Jeongguk nods. “I’ll see what I can do. Aaaaand cut!”

“Okay,” Taehyung says, grinning devilishly at the camera, “viewers, prepare yourselves, because you’re about to witness the utter devastation of Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, and Kim Namjoon by Team Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung in a very aggressive game of Egyptian Rat.”

“Okay, it’s definitely Egyptian Rat Trap, ” Hoseok says.

“Also, don’t say our full names! Someone will doxx us,” Seokjin adds.

“Also, it’s not a YouTube video; it’s a reality show,” Jeongguk points out.

“ Also, ” Yoongi says, leaning in towards the camera instead of looking at Taehyung, “this card game which is in fact called ERS and not either of the other things these plebs called it—”

“What’s the S for?” Taehyung asks.

“Slap. It’s Egyptian Rat Slap. ”

“To be fair, I called it Egyptian Rat Killer growing up,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi pats his hand. “That’s great for you, Jinnie. Anyway , the point is, there are no teams in ERS. So this bullshit about Team Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung is, well. Bullshit.”

“Is not ,” Taehyung insists. “If either one of us wins, we both win. That’s how it works.”

“That’s not how anything works,” Yoongi says.

“I mean, it kind of is,” Namjoon muses. “Like, if one of us actually sits down and writes the song we’re supposed to be working on instead of all the other insanity we’ve participated in today, we will both win by not being fired from our jobs.”

“Mm. That’s a really good point, actually. Okay, so that situation works that way, but ERS does not,” Yoongi concludes.

“Come on, can we just play?” Jimin begs.

“What rules?” Hoseok asks. “Slaps are only doubles and sandwiches to start?”

“Sure. Aces are four tries, kings are three, queens two, jacks one,” Taehyung says. He raises his eyebrows, all wicked delight. “And remember, no cheating. Flip the card so you can’t see it first or I’m kicking you out.”

“Wait, what do you mean,” Namjoon asks, which of course results in a five minute explanation/demonstration of how to properly remove a card from your hand and put it in play. Jeongguk stops filming in the middle and picks back up when things actually start.

“You sure you don’t wanna play, Jeonggukkie?” Seokjin asks as he places a two on the pile.

“Nah, I’m good,” Jeongguk says, grinning as he gets a few different angles of his hyungs carefully putting down cards.

“Come on, faster, ” Taehyung demands, and slowly the pace picks up until they’re all slamming down cards every turn, faster and faster as shouts of delight and dismay echo around the table, hands slamming hard when someone sees a double or a sandwich. Taehyung wins a jack from Namjoon early on but loses it later to Jimin, which he doesn’t seem to mind very much. Namjoon is the first one to run out of cards, and then of course there’s a huge debate over whether someone can slap back in, which Namjoon wins, although he never does manage to slap back in, so the argument turns out to be moot.

Jimin, despite having never actually played the game before, turns out to be the one who wins. He looks so intense the whole time that Jeongguk has a hard time pulling the camera away from him to focus on anyone else. He just looks so focused, so beautiful as he eyes the cards with a sort of fixation that makes Jeongguk wonder what other sorts of stuff Park Jimin gets that intent about. His eyes are bright and his expression rapt, and he reacts so much faster than anyone else at the table, even Hoseok, who has the best reflexes and muscle control of anyone Jeongguk has ever met.

“Hell yeah!” Taehyung cheers when Jimin wins the game with a hard slap, stealing the whole pile. Yoongi stares at his last card—the six of spades—with a sad little pout.

“Fuck,” Jimin says, breathing hard, and absolutely lighting up as he lifts his eyes off the cards and looks instantly at the camera—

At Jeongguk. Not the camera; Jimin is looking at Jeongguk, it’s so obvious with the way his eyes seek out Jeongguk’s, like he’s checking to make sure Jeongguk saw—not the camera, not the camera .

“Yeah, yeah, gloat all about your win to your rapt audience,” Hoseok moans, and Jeongguk honestly doesn’t really know what that means, but he grins wildly back at Jimin and nods his congratulations as everyone else starts complaining and recounting the game.

“Okay, okay, can we move on from this and order dinner?” Seokjin asks.

“Um, not to be, like, city-elitist or whatever, but can you even order food to this farm…?” Jimin asks, giggling sweetly at Taehyung.

Taehyung sighs very somberly. “In fact you cannot.”

“But we ate all the stuff your mom left in the fridge last night,” Seokjin whines.

“Hyung, you know we can’t get delivery out here,” Taehyung says. “You’ve been to this house and asked this exact question before.”

“Okay, so what’s our alternate plan then?” Hoseok asks. “Keeping in mind that I can’t actually walk very far.”

“Let’s not forget the tag-team piggyback situation walking here from the train station yesterday,” Namjoon says.

“That was only a tag-team effort because you couldn’t carry him the whole way but were too proud to just let us get a taxi, like we all wanted ,” Yoongi points out. “We had to help carry him or we would’ve had to leave him.”

“We should’ve left him,” Taehyung gripes, shooting Hoseok a friendly grin.

“You know, if it had been Namjoon who couldn’t walk, I definitely would’ve left him,” Hoseok says.

Namjoon just looks at his boyfriend, sighs, and then turns back to the table at large. “Okay, Taehyung, by any chance can we drive somewhere?”

“I can drive the riding lawn mower,” Taehyung supplies.

“I call riding behind him while the rest of you walk,” Jimin says, raising his hand like a student in grade school.

Taehyung leans over and smacks his palm in an awkward high five, which sends Jimin into another fit of giggles.

“Do you want me to just actually high five you?” Jimin asks.

Taehyung grins at him like they’re the only ones in the room. “Nah, that was good.”

Jimin laughs. “Okay. Also, I vote that Jeonggukkie is also permitted on board the riding mower.”

Taehyung frowns. “I want to agree, but I’m hesitant just because, you know, we don’t want to end up in some lawnmower-related incident out of a horror movie where we lose control and the blades end up killing us all—”

“Jeongguk has a lot of muscles,” Jimin says appraisingly. “I bet he could fight the lawnmower and win.”

“How would I fight a lawnmower? It’s literally a huge piece of metal with a lot of sharp moving parts,” Jeongguk jokes, coloring at the way Jimin is eyeing his biceps.

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short, Jeonggukkie,” Taehyung says, putting an arm around Jimin’s shoulders and leaning into him. “Jiminie is right. You could take on a lawnmower and emerge unscathed!”

“I don’t really want to find out for sure either way, though,” Jeongguk laughs.

“ Guys, ” Hoseok whines. “Dinner!”

“Okay, look, we can just do rock-paper-scissors to figure out who has to go pick it up,” Taehyung suggests.

“What even are we getting?” Seokjin demands.

“Lamb,” Yoongi says, right as Hoseok says “Chicken!”

Everyone else looks at each other, and then a chorus of lamb s and chicken s resounds through the kitchen, followed up by arguments for one over the other which Jeongguk captures, amused. He’ll probably end up cutting a lot of this out of the final edit, but it’s still fun to watch it play out.

“Okay, okay, stop, ” Seokjin finally says, standing up and banging a hand onto the table loud enough that Taehyung legitimately jumps. Jimin giggles and puts a hand on his wrist, a silent sort of okay? that Jeongguk catches in the corner of the frame and then zooms in on.

“Let’s just vote,” Seokjin says. “Keeping in mind the prices of each item, how it’ll taste by the time we get it home—right, because we have to carry it, so if it gets cold then we might have to reheat—and how much we need to buy, plus side dishes we want and alcohol, if we’re drinking. I think chicken is cheaper, and we’ll get beer with it, right? Lamb is…wait, what are we gonna drink with the lamb? I guess also beer? Hmm…”

Everyone looks contemplative. Namjoon tilts his head. “Chicken is cheaper…”

Yoongi’s eyes narrow and suddenly he’s looking up at Seokjin, a little murderous. “Jinnie, stop talking.”

Seokjin looks at Yoongi, all confusion and concern. “Babe? What’s the matter?”

“Nope,” Yoongi says, moving his hand out of the way when Seokjin tries to take it. “Nope, I know what you’re doing. This is a scheme to get us to all agree that we should eat chicken instead of lamb.”

“No?”

“Nope, it is. That’s why you brought up price, and the whole thing about the alcohol was sort of just muddled up what you were doing, sort of subtly come down on the side of chicken but make it just confusing enough that no one would realize—”

“Yoongichi, come on, I would not ,” Seokjin says. “I can’t believe you think I’d do that!”

“Everyone here knows you do that kind of thing all the time!”

“I do not!”

“You do it when you want me to do laundry!”

“Well—sure, but that’s different, and I’m always right when I point out that you’ll have more variety of black clothes to wear if you just wash all of them—”

“Cool.”

“And I was just saying. The chicken would be a good option considering how many people we have—”

“It’s a scheme,” Yoongi deadpans, taking his boyfriend’s hand and holding it tight even as Seokjin shrieks and kind of vaguely tries to pull his hand away. “It’s a scheme to get you to pick chicken.”

Seokjin purses his lips and tilts his head to the side, suddenly quiet. “Okay so, Yoongichi, darling, you say that.”

“I do say that. I did.”

“But it seems to me that in fact everyone does want to eat fried chicken instead of your choice of lamb and you are, in fact, anti-chicken. You’re trying to manipulate everyone into wanting lamb by pretending I’m manipulating everyone into chicken.”

“I’m not anti-chicken. I stan chicken. But I am also pro-group, and the group wants lamb. It’s not even me who’s making this decision. I’m just representing the people.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re just anti-chicken.”

“I’m not anti-chicken!”

“I am anti-having to listen to the rest of this conversation,” Hoseok says, raising his hand.

Taehyung and Jimin burst into giggles.

“You know we could just get both,” Jeongguk says, finally weighing in as he contemplates ending the footage here. They’ve gotten to that point where the banter is a little you-had-to-be-there, not something with mass appeal.

“It’s true,” Taehyung says. “There’s a place that sells both and it’s not that far. Jeonggukkie and I always used to go there in high school.”

Jimin smiles at Taehyung and then turns to Jeongguk, his expression a little bit strange, indecipherable. Jeongguk wonders if he’d be able to figure out that look if it were on Taehyung’s face instead, but he’s not sure he would. “You’ve known each other forever, huh,” Jimin says to Jeongguk, not the camera.

Jeongguk shrugs. “Yeah. Way longer than I ever wanted to,” he says, looking at Taehyung, mostly to avoid Jimin’s eyes.

“Yo, come on. Look, Jeonggukkie and I will just go. The ajumma who runs the place loves us, she’ll probably be so excited to see us that she’ll give us a lot of stuff for free!” Taehyung leaps up from the table and nearly knocks the forgotten deck of cards onto the floor.

“Yeah, to be fair, you’re right,” Jeongguk says. “All right, everyone wave goodbye or whatever—what am I talking about, I’m just ending this—”

“I can’t believe you’re making me film you walking on a wall that’s literally one foot higher than the actual road.”

“Yeah but it’s summer and this is a very summer aesthetic!”

“Sure, I’ll put some sort of empty-sounding but upbeat indie song over it and filter the shot so you look like a music video.”

“ Please, Kook, if I were a music video I would definitely be, like, super angsty and dancing and channeling all my Chad energy—”

“You don’t have any Chad energy, plus if you tried to dance Hobi-hyung would totally show you up. Steal your wife, and then you’re just sad and divorced—”

“Yah! I’m your hyung, respect me!”

“The very fact that you have to explicitly tell me to respect you is the most cucked thing to happen in this conversation.”

“ Stop! Turn the camera off, this did not go how I expected, wow I hate you so much!”

Jeongguk is laughing so hard he misses the pause button on the first try. He doesn’t manage to cut the footage until Taehyung leaps on him and they sprawl out into the grass on the side of the road, both laughing and rolling around in the itchy, sticky summer greenery, the sun settling low on the horizon and giving the whole world a golden glow. The last thing Jeongguk gets on film is an image of himself as Taehyung steals his phone and flips the recording to the front-facing camera. His own face appears on the screen next to Taehyung’s, both of them with scrunched-up noses and dazzled grins, hair in halos around them, tangled with the grass.

Taehyung lets the shot stay on them for one, two, three, seconds, and then his thumb comes down on the red circle and the scene ends.

“Okay, bee stings versus mosquito bites. Go.”

“Okay hmm, like—how many mosquito bites would I rather get than get one bee sting? Because obviously if it’s just a one-to-one comparison, like, of course I’d rather have the mosquito bite than the bee sting.”

“Right. Yeah. How many mosquito bites is enough that you would rather get one bee sting?” Taehyung nods aggressively and takes another sip of his Lambrusco, long fingers curling around the champagne flute he’s drinking out of “because I like when the glass is taller and skinnier and it makes me feel fancy!” (Jeongguk unfortunately did not get that quote on video. Maybe he should ask for a confessional later and make Taehyung say the line again.)

“Okay, okay. Hmm, that’s like—a big number, actually,” Jimin muses, trailing his own short fingers through the condensation on the outside of his beer can. “Okay, I’m going 12. 15! Wait, more? Fuck, I really don’t like bee stings…”

“To be fair, I would say even, like, 100 mosquito bites is better than one bee sting, because if a bee stings you then it dies and that’s really sad,” Taehyung says, downing the rest of his champagne flute Lambrusco and then pouring himself more. A few drops land on the tabletop and Taehyung shrieks, leaning over to lick the spill up with his tongue.

“Use a napkin, ” Jeongguk complains.

“Hey, now that it’s just the three of us, you could probably just set the camera down and come be a part of the movie, right, Jeongguk-ssi?” Jimin asks.

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “Once JK is invested in a film concept, he gets obsessed and never gives it up.”

Jimin pouts at Taehyung and then turns the devastatingly convincing jutting-lip (models say “prune” to get their bottom lips like that) on Jeongguk. “Come on, you’ll still get good footage! And you don’t even have to use this in the film, like, it could be more like a video diary! Since it’s only the maknaes and not the boring, old-men hyungs!”

“Can’t believe even Seokjin wanted to go to bed early,” Taehyung says, leaning back in his chair and sighing up at the ceiling. Jeongguk doesn’t get it on camera, but he sees Taehyung’s knee bump Jimin’s under the table. Jimin doesn’t move his leg away.

“Yeah, well, you’ll be wishing you didn’t drink so much and went to bed at a reasonable time when we’re milking Millie and Maude in the morning,” Jeongguk says.

“Wait, we’re gonna milk cows?” Jimin asks, sitting up excitedly.

Taehyung grins. “Have you milked a cow before?”

“No, is it—weird? Difficult?”

“It’s not difficult as long as the animal you’re milking doesn’t hate you,” Jeongguk grumbles.

Taehyung laughs hard. “Jeongguk and the goats don’t get along.”

“They always try to head-butt me!”

“They’re goats! That’s what goats do!”

“They don’t do it to you!”

“They like me the most. And I’m sure they’ll like Jiminie. We’ll give him Betty, see how he does,” Taehyung grins. Then he leans over and pats the seat on Jimin’s other side, practically lying in his lap to do it. “Come on, Jeonggukkie. Come sit with us. We can do a panel interview of ourselves. Like a video diary, like Jimin said.” He turns to Jimin and grins brightly. “Did you know Jeonggukkie already does video diaries? I caught him doing it one time and he got all embarrassed, at first I thought I walked in on him jacking it or something. Which, to be fair, has also happened.”

“ Taehyung, ” Jeongguk grumbles, letting the weak, desperate-to-be-included part of himself win and setting the camera down. He arranges the shot carefully, making sure all three of them will be in the frame, and then he sits down on Jimin’s unoccupied side.

When he gets settled, Jimin is looking at him all sly and curious and cute. His hair is fluffy from the shower he took after all the weeding and raking and watering they did all day, and his shirt isn’t falling off his shoulders but it is a sort of deep V-neck, and Jeongguk wishes he’d pull it up and show off his tattoo again.

“What,” Jeongguk asks, mouth going a little bit dry as Jimin just keeps looking at him like that .

“So. If you like filming stuff so much, have you ever…”

Taehyung’s lips quirk up and—okay, Jeongguk kind of thinks he knows where this is going. He swallows. Jimin brushes his hair out of his eyes and curls his shoulders in a little, looking cute and tiny and innocent.

“Have you ever filmed yourself…you know,” Jimin says.

“What?” Jeongguk asks, even though he knows.

Jimin glances flirtatiously at the camera, and then he turns back to Jeongguk. His cheeks are pink but it’s probably just from the beer he’s been drinking all evening. “You know.” He makes a loose fist and pumps it a couple times over his crotch.

Jeongguk rolls his eyes. “No.”

Taehyung’s eyes are dancing with delight as he looks at Jeongguk and then turns to the camera across from them, leaning in conspiratorially. “He has. He definitely has.”

“I have not. ”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Taehyung says.

Jimin giggles. “Have you filmed someone else? Does the little baby Jeongguk have a sex tape?”

“ No, I—it’s way too easy to get doxxed or accidentally post stuff and then your employer finds it or—just, like, I’m pretty sure Apple knows everything that’s on our phones and Microsoft knows everything on our computers and the government is monitoring both —”

“You’re telling me tech surveillance anxiety is the thing that’s keeping you from making a sex tape?” Jimin teases, leaning into Jeongguk’s side as he talks to the camera, warm and intimate now that he’s tipsy. Oh. Oh, this is what a tipsy Jimin is like. Flirty and sweet and pink, like cotton candy. And Taehyung is on his other side, looking at Jeongguk with a way-too-conniving smirk.

“ No, ” Jeongguk says.

“So something else is keeping you from making a sex tape,” Jimin fills in.

Jeongguk slumps back in his chair and the back of his head knocks into the wall behind them. “ No. I mean. Yes. The fact that I don’t feel a compulsive need to record myself having sex with someone.”

Jimin hums. On his other side, Taehyung is snickering and downing the rest of his glass. Jeongguk rolls his head towards Jimin and raises his eyebrows, a little bit judgy. “Do you have a sex tape, Jimin-ssi?”

Jimin bites his lip, and—oh.

Taehyung reads the silence for what it is and sits up, laughter gone. “Park Jimin,” he says, voice kind of tense, “oh my god.”

Jimin shrugs. “It’s not really a sex tape. I mean, it was more like…I mean I’m the only one in it. I was considering camming for a while, back when I was still in college and really broke. But I chickened out.”

“You had the guts to make a jerk-off tape but then you never posted it?” Jeongguk asks, sitting up straighter. His head spins as he opens a new can of beer and takes a long draught.

Jimin shrugs. “To be fair, it wasn’t entirely useless. I mean, I look pretty hot.”

“Oh my god, are you saying you jerk off to your own porn? That you made?” Taehyung yelps. “Dude, that’s king shit.”

“God tier,” Jeongguk says, kind of teasing but kind of, well, agreeing. Park Jimin, getting off to a video of himself getting off—fuck. That’s. Really an image that’s getting Jeongguk hot.

And then Jimin turns to Taehyung and Jeongguk can read the line of his shoulders, can tell that Jimin is smirking seductively even if Jeongguk can no longer see his face. “Yeah?” He leans in towards Taehyung a little, conspiratorial.

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, incredibly nonchalant. If Jimin were focused on Jeongguk right now, using that breathy voice and batting those unfairly long eyelashes, he’d be a puddle on the floor.

Jimin leans lazily towards the wall, one hand coming up to fall as if by accident across the back of Taehyung’s chair, fingertips alighting against his collarbone. “Hmm. Seems to me like you wanna see the tape.”

Taehyung swallows. Jeongguk watches the bob of his throat and wonders what it looks like in profile, the way the camera lens is picking it up right now. He should go back to the other side of the table, get behind the lens, take himself out of this equation because he’s not a part of it and sitting here makes him feel empty, a little raw, too young—

“I’m just curious,” Taehyung eventually says, voice surprisingly steady. “You know. I’ve never made a sex tape. Maybe I could learn something.”

“Mhmm,” Jimin agrees. “That’s why you want to watch it. For educational purposes.”

“Educational purposes only,” Taehyung says, lips curling up as he smirks. He must be drunker than Jeongguk thought. That’s the only feasible explanation for the level of confidence he’s got.

Jimin leans forward, forward, and for a second Jeongguk thinks they’re going to kiss—

“I’m gonna go to bed,” Jeongguk says, standing abruptly and swaying, a little off-balance. Fuck, he’s drunker than he thought, too.

“Kook?” Taehyung asks, looking up with eyes still a little hooded, skin still a little flushed.

“Jeongguk-ssi,” Jimin whispers, turning his head—but he’s still angled towards Taehyung, and Taehyung towards him. They’ve created a little bubble, just the two of them, and Jeongguk isn’t in it.

“I’m okay. Just really tired. Got a little too drunk,” Jeongguk says. It’s probably a bad excuse, but to be fair, he really doesn’t want to get forced into farm chores with a massive headache tomorrow.

Taehyung frowns. “You okay? You want me to come with you? Are you gonna puke?”

“Nah,” Jeongguk says, “I’m not that drunk. Just, you know, we have to do farm shit tomorrow. So.”

Taehyung’s eyes widen. “Fuck.”

“Did you forget about your own farm, Taehyung-ssi,” Jimin giggles.

Taehyung is suddenly smiling. “I—okay, maybe just a little …”

And then they’re orbiting each other again, just Taehyung and Jimin, and Jeongguk standing off to the side.

“Goodnight, guys,” Jeongguk mumbles, and then he leaves.

“Shit, shit,” Jeongguk whispers to himself, creeping through the quiet house. It’s only been a half hour since he went to bed and Taehyung isn’t back yet, but the light over the table is off now, where did he—

“So anyways, I…yeah. It was rough in high school, sometimes,” Jimin’s voice comes, quiet. Where did he leave the camera, fuck , right, it was on the table—oh, shit, it’s still recording, and it’s right there and Jeongguk needs to grab it—

“And college,” Jimin confesses. That’s the only word for it— confesses. “I used to, um. Get drunk in my room, just. Alone. And not like, a glass of wine to relax after work, or something, but. I drank a lot.”

Fuck, Jeongguk shouldn’t be hearing this. But they’ll catch him if he goes for the camera, they’re just in the kitchen, only a few feet away—Jeongguk angles his head and he can see that the lens is still catching bits and pieces of them, the way they’re sitting on the counter with the lights off, just Jimin and Taehyung, telling secrets.

“It’s okay, Jiminie,” Taehyung says, lacing their fingers together. From Jeongguk’s spot outside the doorway, hidden from view, he can see how much bigger Taehyung’s hands are, how petite and lovely Jimin’s looks clasped there, safe.

“So. Anyways. That’s my sob story, I guess. Not that interesting.” Jimin says, laughing a little, kicking his heels lightly against the cupboard below. “Your turn?”

Taehyung huffs. “My turn to tell sad secrets?”

“You’re the one who suggested this game!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have listened to me. This isn’t even a game. It’s like Truth or Dare but without the Dare.”

Jimin snorts. “Yeah, and I agreed to it, and I told you a secret. Your turn.”

Jeongguk takes a step forward. The camera is right there, maybe he can snag it and they won’t see—their line of sight should be blocked by the door frame—

“Um…one time I went skinny dipping with Jeongguk in a river near here and we almost got caught.”

“By the police?!”

“No, no, just like, the guy who owned the property we were on. We didn’t realize he had dogs, but they started barking and suddenly we were like—scrambling out of the water as these huge dogs barked at us and it was so loud and the lights came on in the house and it was far enough away that we were able to get out and run away on the other side of the creek before the owner showed up, but we were so panicked we didn’t grab our clothes. We ran all the way back here naked, and then had to sneak inside without my parents finding out.”

“Was this high school?”

Taehyung huffs. “Um. No. My last year of college, actually. So…like two years ago.”

Jimin giggles sweetly, and something in Jeongguk’s stomach turns, jealous and sick and rotten.

Jeonggukkie! Jeonggukkie!

Shh! Hyung, you’re so loud!

Get in with me! Come on, no, not like that, take your underwear off or it’ll get all soggy—

Hyung just wants to see me naked.

Mm. Maybe.

Shut up, you have a girlfriend.

Nah, we broke up.

Oh.

Come on, get in!

I’m coming, calm down—

Bet you can’t catch me!

What the—FUCK YOU of course I can, come HERE—

Wah! No, let go! Hahahaha, no, unhand me you filthy vermin!

Never, spoiled prince! You venture outside the castle walls and you’re in MY territory.

Devil! Thief!

Stop laughing, I’m trying to get you in a headlock! You’re so squirmy, hyung!

Hey, what happened to me being a prince?

…You liked that?

…Kind of.

Oh.

Oh. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hyung, do you…

Kookie?

Hyung—

WOOF WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Fuck—!

Hahahahahahaha! Run, run, run!

“So anyways, yeah, lots of barking and running and freaking out. The next day we went back for our clothes and everything was still right where we left it except Jeongguk’s shoes. He was so upset. There were scraps of Timberland boots everywhere. I guess the dogs must have got them.”

“That’s a good story. Although not exactly a deep dark secret,” Jimin points out.

Taehyung hums, long and languid. “Hmm. I guess not.” There’s something dark in his tone, a ghost that stalks the syllables, haunted and hurt. “It was a good night,” he says, and something about the finality of it snaps something harsh in Jeongguk’s chest.

He snaps his arms out and grabs the camera, and then he turns and walks back to Taehyung’s room alone, not caring whether they see him, whether they realize everything they’ve been doing has been captured on film.

Jeongguk pushes open the door and smashes his finger on the button, and the recording ends.

Erase all memory?

YES

Are you sure? Your footage will be deleted and cannot be recovered.

CANCEL

RWD <<<

PLAY

“Did you forget about your own farm, Taehyung-ssi?”

“I—okay, maybe just a little… ”

On the screen, Jeongguk stands up. He’s tall enough that his shoulders and head are no longer in the frame, his expression a mystery that he’ll never know. Jimin and Taehyung are looking up at him, though, so they must know it. Perhaps the awkward tension of it is reflected in the way they both look a little confused, a little sad.

“Goodnight, guys,” Past Jeongguk mumbles, and then he walks away.

It takes Jimin a second to turn back towards Taehyung. “Do you think we should check on him? Or maybe just you; I know he doesn’t really know me well…”

Taehyung shakes his head and his blond hair rustles around, falls on either side of his alcohol-glazed eyes. “It’s okay. I’ve known him forever. He needs space when he gets like this, or he’ll just bottle things up more.”

Jimin bites his lip and then nods, leaning sideways over the table and propping his head on his hand, just gazing at Taehyung. “You guys are lucky. To have such a long-lasting friendship.”

“He’s my best friend,” Taehyung says.

Jimin ducks. “I guess Hobi is mine, kind of, but—you know. He’s dating Joon-hyung, and as much as they’re good about including me in stuff, like, at the end of the day, it’s them against the world. And I am, sadly, not part of ‘them’.”

Taehyung tilts his head. “Do you want to be?”

Jimin straightens up a little, shaking his head. “No! No, I mean—I mean, I…”

“Jiminie,” Taehyung says, a little bit singsong, the way he always says stuff when he wants people to feel at ease. “Hey, calm down. We’re here with two gay couples, I’ve dated people of, like, four different genders before—not at the same time, but I mean, I’m not opposed to that? So like, if you’re poly and you want to be with Namjoon and Hobi, I’m not gonna judge.”

“I don’t wanna be with Namjoon and Hobi!” Jimin says, leaning against the back of his chair now, shaking his head. “But I, uh. I might be poly. I don’t…I’ve never really had the opportunity to explore that.”

“But you want to.”

“I…kind of,” Jimin whispers.

“I…I mean, I guess I’ve thought about it before too—”

PAUSE

Jeongguk stares at his camera and then looks up at the bathroom door, as if someone is going to come in—but he’s in the far one behind the laundry room, not one that Taehyung or Jimin might use. “I shouldn’t be watching this,” he mutters to himself.

PLAY

“—and I guess. Hmm. I think it’d be nice. If I were in love with two people, and we were just—all together…”

“I…”

“You don’t have to come out to me or something. No pressure here for anything like labels,” Taehyung says, stretching his arms over his head. “Come on, we should drink some water. Jeonggukkie was right. We do have a lot of work to get done tomorrow.”

“I never thought I’d think Hobi was lucky for tearing his ACL,” Jimin teases, standing when Taehyung does. They’re both too tall for the camera frame, but Jimin is at least short enough that his throat is still visible, the bottom edge of his perfect jaw.

“Are you tired? Wanna just get some water and go to bed?” Taehyung asks as he heads through the doorway into the kitchen.

“Nah,” Jimin says, and his voice is fainter now but the camera is still picking them up. There’s no other noise for the camera to prioritize, not even the ambient hum that Jeongguk is used to hearing in the city. It’s just quiet, and if he listens, he can hear the soft sounds of cupboards being opened and closed, glasses being set on the counter, the sink turning on. In the frame, Jimin turns his back to the counter and hops up, feet dangling against the cupboard below. A second later, Taehyung joins him. The kitchen doorway blocks most of them from view, but their legs are visible, occasionally their hands or even faces if they lean forward.

“If you could change one thing about your childhood, what would it be?” Taehyung asks.

“Hmm. I think I’d be nicer to my brother.”

Taehyung huffs. “Oh?”

Jimin lets out a soft sound, kind of a giggle but a little bit sadder. “I was the older one; I should’ve—I don’t know. I mean, we don’t, like, hate each other or anything, but…I don’t know. Yeah. I wish we were closer. We mostly only talk when I go home, and that’s not very often now that I’m working at the studio full-time…”

“That’s okay,” Taehyung says. “I’m kind of like that with both my siblings. I mean, they’re just so much younger. Like, they’re close with each other, which is good, but…yeah, I don’t know. My brother is six years younger than me and my sister eight, so the gap was a lot. Made it hard for us to connect, I think.”

“Would you change it so you were all closer in age? Or would you just make more effort to be close with them?” Jimin asks.

Taehyung sighs. “I mean…I guess if I say the second one, it’s like…why don’t I just make more effort now, you know? It’s never too late to try to…to build intimacy with someone. I could try harder now, text my siblings more, or Facetime or whatever, but…”

“It’s easy to say it and harder to do it,” Jimin says. “I think so too. I could try with my brother, and sometimes I say I’m gonna—like after his birthday, or whatever, when I’m thinking about it. But when it comes right down to it, I don’t.”

“Yeah. Hey, don’t forget about your water.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks.”

They’re quiet for a while, and Jeongguk tries to think back to how long he was gone, how much time Jimin and Taehyung spent just talking in the kitchen, hanging out, sharing these kinds of secrets. Fuck, he shouldn’t be watching, he should delete this whole thing—only wait, there’s the whole chunk at the beginning, all the part where the three of them were having their panel interview, and Jeongguk doesn’t really want to lose that.

FFWD >>>

PLAY

“Tae!”

“Shh!”

“Sorry, sorry, I—you’re stepping on my feet on purpose —”

“I’m not, I’m just a terrible dancer—”

“We don’t even have any music!”

“We can’t wake the others!”

“I can’t see anything—fuck, ow, that was my hip—”

“Come on, closer, plehhthliblwwah ugh sorry I just ate your hair—”

FFWD >>>

PLAY

“I’m never dancing with you again,” Jimin says, kicking his ankle against Taehyung’s. They’re sitting on the counter again. Jeongguk couldn’t really see the dance, but he saw the way Taehyung helped Jimin up onto the counter afterwards, saw the way Jimin tugged Taehyung up to sit next to him again.

“But Jiminie, what if I want to go to a club?”

“Here? In Daegu?”

“No! I mean, we could, but I meant—like, when we get back to Seoul!”

“We’re gonna hang out after this?”

“I—yeah, I mean, if you want to.”

“Oh. Yeah. I want to.”

“We’ve met a few times before this and I can’t believe it’s taken this long for us to actually hang out.”

“It’s nice.” Jimin’s foot bumps into Taehyung’s again. “We should do it again.”

“Hey, you wanna play a game?”

“Uh—sure? What game?”

“I don’t know, like…something quiet? Can’t be beer pong or flipcup or anything…”

“Would You Rather?”

“Too hard to come up with good ones.”

“Marry Fuck Kill.”

“We only know like five people in common, though,” Taehyung says. “It seems a little mean for us to pick between them…”

“Celebrities then.”

“Boring…although to be fair, I am curious about your type.”

“My type?” Jimin asks. “I don’t have a type.”

“Everyone says that, and it’s no fun!” Taehyung gripes.

“What’s your type, then?”

“Cute people?”

A moment of silence. Then, Jimin’s voice: “Oh my god, that’s not even a good description of a type—”

“I mean! Okay, fine, I like…I mean, long-ish hair, I guess, or just—not, like, really really short hair? Like I wanna be able to grab it—”

“That sounds like a sex type.”

“Or just play with it!” Taehyung says. “Color doesn’t really matter. And I like guys with muscles.”

“Tall or short?”

“Mm, doesn’t matter. Shorter than me would be nice. But taller than me could be good too, I just. I always think I’d like someone taller than me but if you look back through my exes, they were all shorter actually.”

“Hmm,” Jimin says. “I guess I’m similar. Like, I think dark-haired guys are hot but then I always end up with blond ones.”

Taehyung giggles. “That why you’re blond? So you can make sex tapes and then get off to them? Muscular blond twink fucks himself on monster dildo—”

“Hey!” Jimin shrieks, loud enough that it rings out loud and clear on the camera.

Fuck. Jeongguk really should not be watching this.

FFWD >>>

PLAY

“—asking questions, that’s it, that’s the game?”

“It’s a good game, Jiminie!”

“It’s not a game,” Jimin giggles.

“It has rules! You can only say ‘pass’ twice.”

“In that case though, we need another rule, which is you can’t ask the same question more than once,” Jimin says. “Because otherwise you just keep asking the same thing over and over and make the person lose their passes.”

“Okay, fine. You first?”

“Uh…fuck. Fuck, Tae, this is hard, um, do you have a question ready?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

Jimin is quiet for a moment. “I…um…”

“So no.” Taehyung lets out a little fond noise of exasperation. It’s the one he always uses on Jeongguk, and hearing it directed at Jimin makes something in Jeongguk’s chest hurt.

“No,” Jimin confirms. “I, uh. I dated a guy for almost two years, which is why I hesitate to just say no. But that was in high school, it was—I didn’t even ever sleep with him, you know? We were that innocent with the whole thing.”

“Did you at least give him a blow job?”

“Taehyung!”

“Well?”

“You already used your question! It’s not even your turn!”

“Fine, then you go!”

“Okay. Have you ever been in love?”

And Jeongguk really should have expected it. Of course Jimin would turn that question back around on Taehyung. And Jeongguk knows the answer—Taehyung has dated so many people, he has to have been in love with at least one of them—he’s going to say yes, and that’s fine, and why is Jeongguk holding his breath as he waits out Taehyung’s pause—

“Yes,” Taehyung whispers.

“In the past? Wait, are you dating someone I don’t know about or…Taehyung, hey, look at me—” Jimin mutters something too low for the camera to pick up, and then Jeongguk sees the way he angles his hips, sees his leg come up like maybe he’s swung it up across Taehyung’s—and there’s murmuring but it’s low, too low.

“Okay, so you’re not dating someone,” Jimin affirms, loud enough for the camera to pick the words up again.

“No,” Taehyung says.

“But you think you’re in love.”

“I mean—I don’t—”

FFWD >>>

PLAY

Laughter again, a little louder. “Fine, your turn again,” Jimin giggles.

“Did you suck that guy’s dick—”

“Taehyung!”

STOP

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“I’m calling Jin-hyung—hey, Jeonggukkie, let’s serenade him, come on—oh my god, are you filming? ” Taehyung grins, holding his phone up towards the evening sky as it rings on speaker, the sound gritty and a bit lagged out.

“Yes,” Jeongguk’s voice says. “I’m gonna be a great director one day, hyung, just watch.”

Taehyung, boyish and smiling, all cheeks and blond, frizzy hair. A lollipop in the hand not holding his phone, grape and glistening in the sultry summer light. “Can’t wait! You can cast me in all your films!”

“Like how Christopher Nolan only uses the same seven actors,” Jeongguk says, tongue tripping a little bit over the English syllables of the name.

“Tom Hardy— hot, Cillian Murphy, kind of looks like an insect but a hot insect, um, the pretty French lady—”

“Marion Cotillard,” Jeongguk mumbles.

“Yes! God, remember Inception ? Remember how everyone collectively decided it was, like, the smartest movie back in 2010 and slowly I think everyone’s gonna turn against it like what happened with Avatar— ”

“Both of those movies are tied for the record for Movie I Saw the Most Times in Theaters,” Jeongguk says. You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Remember the part where—”

“Hello?” Seokjin’s voice suddenly says, tinny and hard to hear.

“Jin-hyung!” Taehyung chirps, grinning at Jeongguk and waggling his eyebrows for absolutely no reason. Jeongguk giggles. The whole screen is taken up by Taehyung and his boxy smile as he chats with his favorite hyung. “We were thinking you could come over later, you could bring some ice cream and we can eat on the deck like summer —”

“Yah! I’m not bringing you ice cream, Kim Taehyung. You only want to see me because I have a car and you won’t have to walk to get your sweets.”

“It’s not about the walking! I don’t mind walking! It just that if Jeonggukkie and I try to get ice cream on foot, it’ll melt by the time we walk home!” Taehyung protests.

“Just get cones and eat them as you walk!”

“Bring us a whole tub and we can all pig out and stay up late and—”

“I am not doing that.”

“ Please. ”

“No.”

“Jeonggukkie, tell Jin-hyung please. ”

“Please, hyung,” Jeongguk’s voice pouts.

“Aw, you should see him right now, hyung,” Taehyung giggles. “Cute little bunny dongsaeng.”

“Yah—” Jeongguk starts.

Taehyung’s hand comes out and reaches up over the camera lens. You can’t see it, but he’s ruffling up Jeongguk’s hair. “Cutest baby bunny, wanna squish your cheeks and kiss your nose—”

“Stop thaaaaaat ,” Jeongguk’s voice pleads. Maybe a little flirty. Maybe just a little.

Seokjin’s voice sighs. “Fine. I’ll be there in a half hour. What flavor do you want?”

“Chocolate Chocolate Chip!” Jeongguk shouts the same second Taehyung says “Strawberry!”

Seokjin sighs again. “I’ll get both. See you soon.”

“Oh, by the way, Jeongguk is filming this,” Taehyung says. “So now he has video proof that you actually love us.”

“Yah! Turn it off—!”

Click to replay.

Exit program?

“I know I shouldn’t care this much. Like…” Jeongguk looks away from the camera, runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck. I don’t know. I shouldn’t even…I fucked it up. You know? With Tae. I should’ve told him, I should’ve—I guess we really weren’t meant for…this. I don’t know.”

Taehyung still isn’t back in their room. It’s 3:00 a.m. He and Jimin must still be in the kitchen, or maybe they’ve migrated to the couch, maybe they’re skinny dipping in the neighbor’s creek like Jeongguk and Taehyung did, ages and ages ago—or was that only two years?

“They’re gonna fall in love,” Jeongguk whispers. “Taehyung and Jimin. It’s obvious, every time they look at each other. I have all the footage. That’s me, you know, the camera guy. The one who’s always hiding behind the lens. And I have all this footage of them and—looking at it, it’s—you can just see. That’s the reality show, that’s the—that’s the story of this trip.”

Jeongguk sighs and leans towards his computer, stares at the missing escape key, buries his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t even— fuck, never fucking mind—”

He takes a few deep breaths, and then he opens his eyes, and looks into his webcam, ignoring the pale of his cheeks in the window showing what’s being captured. Ignoring the haunted look in his eyes. Ignoring the bitten-red of his lips, chewed all to shit with anxiety. “It’s too late,” Jeongguk tells himself. “If you’re watching this, Future Jeongguk, just…I don’t know. I’m sorry I fucked it up. I’m sorry I missed my chance, and now you have to live with us never…” Jeongguk sighs. “I don’t know. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. So. It’s kind of romantic, I guess. That we’ll always be unfinished.”

Jeongguk sighs and moves the cursor to the Stop button, ready to end the recording.

“You know,” he says, right before he can click to just fucking end this, “I always… fuck. ” Fuck, he’s almost crying, knows if he watches this recording back he’ll see himself about to break down—fuck, he’s going to fucking cry. “I always really believed, you know? That it was gonna be us.”

“It’s too early for you to be filming,” Taehyung whines, stumbling into the wall as they head down the hall together. Jeongguk reaches out automatically to steady him, and his hand appears in the frame for just a second as he gets Taehyung upright. Taehyung shoots him a sleepy, grateful, out-of-it look. They’re both perhaps the slightest bit hungover. They’d woken up tangled together but it’s not the first time that’s happened, and Jeongguk had forced himself not to think anything of it as he dragged himself and his bedmate upright and out of the room in search of caffeine and breakfast.

“I wanna get footage of the chickens,” Jeongguk says.

Taehyung shoots him a sleepy glare that’s somehow surprisingly fond. “Okay, fair. They are pretty cute.”

They emerge into the living room and Jeongguk takes a second to adjust his camera, letting the dim golden light peeking in around the curtains illuminate the shot. The Kim family living room is cluttered, lived-in: there are bookshelves crammed with more than just books, a couple old magazines ringed with marks from where a sweating glass had at one point been left when someone was too lazy to find a coaster.

The best part of the room, though, is the old, squishy couch, which is currently adorned with one sleeping Park Jimin.

He’s sleeping in a sort of tiny summer sprawl. One leg is stretched out all the way down the couch so his foot pokes out from under his tangled, nearly cast-off blanket; the other is bent at the knee and resting by his chest. His honey blond hair is splayed over the armrest, and he’s clutching a small throw pillow. His eyes are shut and Jeongguk can see smudges of yesterday’s makeup on his lids.

“Come on,” Taehyung whispers, nudging Jeongguk’s arm. “We gotta be quiet so we don’t wake him up.”

Just as Taehyung says it, Jimin’s lips part in a sudden sigh. He’s all shades of pink and copper in the morning glow. He looks like the most beautiful little thing Jeongguk has ever laid eyes on.

It takes a lot of strength to turn the focus away from Jimin, but Jeongguk manages. He hasn’t consented to being filmed while he’s asleep, anyways, and Jeongguk should probably ask him about that, delete the footage if Jimin wants him to. With nothing else to film, Jeongguk turns automatically to Taehyung, and there it is: Taehyung’s expression is a little wrecked, a lot obvious. He’s tired still so he can’t hide the desire in his eyes, the intensity in the way his whole body has sort of poised itself like it wants to go to Jimin’s side, stroke his hair, coax him awake with gentle kisses.

Jeongguk swallows his own jumble of feelings and tries his best to capture them , the real love story of this trip. Pans from Taehyung to Jimin, and then back. Taehyung turns to Jeongguk, a smile flickering at his lips. He nods towards the kitchen, and Jeongguk follows him.

“Okay, coffee and tea first…” Taehyung whisper-mumbles.

“You making enough for the hyungs?”

“No. They’re not invited to early morning egg harvesting.”

“‘Harvesting’ makes it sound like a science experiment,” Jeongguk huffs.

“Shh! You’ll wake Jiminie!”

“Is he invited to come with us to collect eggs?”

“If he wakes up. I don’t wanna disturb him if he needs the rest, you know?”

But Jimin stumbles in just a couple minutes later, yawning and rubbing his eyes adorably. “Morning,” he rasps, eyes zeroing in on the coffee maker, which has just started to percolate.

Jeongguk’s heart absolutely does not clench. “Morning.”

“Jiminie!” Taehyung chirps, grinning his early morning smile, the soft, not-quite-full-strength one that Jeongguk has been seeing for years and years, ever since their first sleepover back in high school. Sleepy is a good look on him. “Did we wake you up? We saw you in there sleeping and tried to be quiet, but…”

“No, it’s fine,” Jimin says, cutting off to yawn. He rubs one eye with a tiny fist, mouth settling into a shape that makes his cheeks puff out a little, face still swollen from sleep. “I just got kinda hot. Plus the light from one of the windows shifted so it was directly in my eye.”

Taehyung offers him a sympathetic pout. “Aw, I’m sorry. You could sleep in my room with Jeonggukkie and me! But we wouldn’t all fit in the bed, so someone would have to be on the floor. Unless we really squish? Then maybe we could all fit in bed. But it would be lots of cuddling.”

Jimin huffs a flushes a little bit, and Jeongguk swallows the image that conjures in order to give him an out. “Too hot,” he grumbles.

“Ooh, good point,” Taehyung muses, tilting his head up like he’s trying to think of a solution. Then he shrugs. “Anyways, you want coffee or tea, Jimin-ssi?”

“Coffee’s good,” Jimin murmurs. “If there’s enough.”

“I made a full pot. Yoongi-hyung will drink whatever you and JK don’t.”

Jimin sighs and makes his sleepy way over to Taehyung, leaning into his side familiarly. “Mm. Thanks, Tae.”

Taehyung beams. “Wanna come with us to collect eggs? The chickens have probably laid a ton and also we forgot to get them yesterday.”

“What— yes, ” Jimin says, lighting up. “I love chickens! And Hobi always says that if I were an emoji animal, I’d be the little chick coming out of the shell.”

Taehyung’s eyes are fond as they roam Jimin’s cheeks. Then he lifts a hand and brushes his fingers through Jimin’s hair. “You have the yellow fluffy hair thing going. Like feathers.”

Jimin giggles. “Yah, I’m supposed to look edgy —”

“It looked edgy when it was super icy blond!” Taehyung says. “Like that party that we danced at.”

Jeongguk blinks. Taehyung and Jimin danced? At which party? The one where Jimin was in all the leather and the jewelry and—

“You remember that?” Jimin asks, drawing back and turning himself at an angle that allows Jeongguk to actually capture his expression. He’s got both of their profiles as they look at each other now, and it’s not the best vantage point—in a real film, he’d want a shot from either side, two cameras to capture both of their expressions head-on—but for the candid short film Jeongguk is thinking this is going to be, it’s a pretty good shot.

Taehyung smiles. Tucks hair behind his ear compulsively, shy, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. His earrings catch the light and glint invitingly, and his big ears look somehow domestic, normal, real. Across from him, Jimin looks so small and delicate, his pajamas hanging off him, his lips pink. The kitchen window behind them is glowing with morning sunshine, all green fields and blue sky, no sign that anyone in the world exists but Kim Taehyung and Park Jimin. Staring at each other too quietly, intimate.

And Jeongguk filming it. He’s not even sure that they remember he’s there.

“I remember,” Taehyung says after a moment.

Jimin bites his lip. “Me too.”

Quiet except for the hum of the cicadas. Summer, the way summer is supposed to be, staining everything vivid and gold. Taehyung and Jimin looking at each other the way lovers do, the way you look at a lovely treasure you’ve found without knowing you were looking for it—the way you look at someone you want to feed with your very own body, to consume and to be consumed—or youth the way you see it in the movies, oversaturated and wistful—

“ Fuck, there better be coffee,” Yoongi grumbles, shoving his way into the kitchen with Seokjin behind him, a guiding hand pressed to Yoongi’s lower back.

“Oh! Yeah, there is,” Taehyung says, scrambling out of the way as Yoongi heads straight for the machine and then stops, looking around the kitchen.

“Jeongguk and Jimin are waiting, aren’t they,” Yoongi slurs a little lispy.

Jimin shakes his head. “It’s fine, hyung. You can have the first mug.”

Yoongi crosses his arms and leans against Seokjin, closing his eyes even though they’re in the middle of the kitchen. “I’m the hyung. You guys should have first dibs, obviously. Jinnie, wake me up when it’s my turn.”

“Mmkay, Yoongichi,” Seokjin says, landing a kiss on Yoongi’s forehead.

Jimin huffs. “Thanks, hyung. Jeongguk-ssi? How do you take yours?”

“Oh,” Jeongguk says, “you should go first, Jimin-ssi.”

“Nonsense, you were awake first.”

“It’s fine—”

“Okay, look, I will pour two mugs and then set them on the counter, and you will both have your coffee at the same time,” Taehyung says, rolling his eyes as he does just that. “There. Drink up, both of you, and stop acting like one of you is more important than the other. You’re both my beautiful star babies, and that’s that. Aish. ”

“Okay, that was legit the best breakfast I have ever had,” Hoseok declares, rubbing his stomach and leaning back in his chair. He surveys the yard and then looks at the camera. “Viewers—audience—however I’m supposed to address the people watching this. Let it be known: eggs laid ten minutes before you eat them do in fact taste better than the ones you can get at the store.”

“Hear, hear,” Namjoon says, raising his coffee mug as he pats his boyfriend’s leg. “Eating outside is also a plus because it really gives you the countryside feeling, you know?”

“I’m so glad you liked it!” Taehyung nods enthusiastically and sort of jumps up and down, already dressed in a bandana and cutoff overalls, no shirt underneath. Every now and then the straps move and a dusky brown nipple emerges, warm against the inviting gold of Taehyung’s skin. He’s so broad, his shoulders stretching on for fucking miles, and the curves of his pecs are a little distracting. Jeongguk has to turn off the part of his brain that wants to taste all that flesh with his mouth. Lick the sweat away. Take every part of Kim Taehyung into his own body, imbibe of him, be one with him.

Stop. This isn’t about you , Jeongguk thinks.

“Okay, well, we should probably get to work,” Yoongi says, disappointedly dragging himself away from Seokjin. They had eaten breakfast curled up together on the outdoor couch, and Yoongi looks incredibly loathe to leave his spot as he stands and stretches, still clutching his coffee mug. He’s on his fourth refill.

Namjoon nods. “Okay. Tae, I know you said the internet connectivity isn’t great out here, which is fine—all our stuff is saved on the hard drive, so it’s not a problem—but is there any chance we can get on via ethernet cable? I wanna send what we have to Jackson, see what he thinks.”

Taehyung nods. “You can try. It’s really slow, but it might work. The cable is in the kitchen.”

“The blue one?”

“Yeah, the normal ethernet one. You can unplug it and take it into my parents’ room if you want, though? There’s another ethernet hookup there, if you want some privacy. There’s no ethernet port in your room, Joon-hyung. Sorry.”

“We could just move everything into the master bedroom and leave it there, if that’s okay,” Yoongi says. “If we set up in the kitchen, we’ll have to put all our equipment away again to make room for everyone to eat dinner and hang out.”

Taehyung nods. “Cool. Just grab the cable and take it upstairs then. The plug is by my mom’s desk; you can’t miss it.”

“Sweet, thanks,” Namjoon says. “Hobi, enjoy relaxing in the shade while everyone else works. Be a good supervisor.”

Hoseok grins and blows Namjoon a kiss, and then he focuses on Jeongguk. “Riveting television, I bet. Conversations about ethernet cables and working.”

Jeongguk shrugs. “I can edit this out.”

Then Jimin emerges from the house and Jeongguk’s mouth goes dry.

Unlike Taehyung, Jimin is wearing a shirt, but it’s a baggy one, some ripped old T-shirt turned into a tank top, the sides cut out basically all the way to the bottom hem. Jimin’s pale skin is all on display when he lifts his arms and adjusts his hat, the NEVERMIND tattoo partly visible on the right, his bulging biceps impossible to miss.

Taehyung turns and grins and his whole expression falters, this weird mix of shock and awe and desire and genuine affection. Like he’s really glad to see his new apparent best friend, but like he’s also a little bit turned on by the whole thing, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Seokjin whistles. “Damn, Jiminie. You must be as much of a gym rat as Jeongguk.”

Jimin’s eyes flicker to Jeongguk and linger, but Jeongguk—as a normal, modest, reasonable, okay-maybe-slightly-shy individual—is wearing an oversized white T-shirt that hides his body, whatever good qualities it may have. “Aw,” Jimin says, tilting his head. “Jeonggukkie, take off your shirt so I can see.”

Jeongguk blinks. “Um.”

“Come on, Kook,” Taehyung says. “We all wanna see your abs. And the piercings, oh my—Jimin, did you know Jeonggukkie has nipple rings. ”

“I know,” Jimin says, flashing Taehyung a sort of sultry grin.

Taehyung gapes. “ How? ”

Jimin smirks. “He told me.”

“But did he show you—” Seokjin starts, already lecherous as Hoseok starts laughing.

“I did not show him,” Jeongguk interrupts.

Jimin shrugs. “Anyways, I’ve got a belly button ring.” He pulls his shirt out of the way and there it is, a pretty average silver ring, nothing too fancy, but damn. God damn.

Taehyung blinks at Jimin’s abs, his tattoo, his whole body. “Oh.” Kind of strangled, like his mouth has gone dry.

“Well if we’re done with the strip tease,” Seokjin says, standing up with a yawn, “I would very much like to start weeding before it gets hot out.”

“It’s already hot as fuck, ” Hoseok gripes. “It’s August, hyung. And it sure doesn’t help that Jiminie has just revealed all his lovely secrets to us—well. Maybe not all of them.”

“Hobi-hyung,” Jimin groans. “Don’t tell them.”

Taehyung lets out a strangled sound, and Jeongguk’s blood runs cold. Or maybe very hot. Just—something is weird with his temperature. Probably the humidity is fucking with him.

“Oh my god,” Taehyung chokes. “Do you have a—” He leans forward, cupping a hand around his mouth as he looks back and forth as if someone else could be listening—“ Dick piercing? ”

“It’s a Prince Albert,” Hoseok says, all his attention on his phone, like he’s not at all interested in this conversation.

“I—” Taehyung starts, and then cuts off. Jimin is smirking at him and blushing, blushing, and it’s cute, the mixture of confidence and shy uncertainty. “Holy shit, that’s hot,” Taehyung finally finishes. Then all his demeanor crumbles to some sort of manic curiosity, and he yelps, “Didn’t that hurt?! ”

Jimin laughs, and just like that the tension breaks. “Like a bitch, yeah, for a fucking while. ”

“I’m sure, ” Taehyung yells.

“ Yah. There is weeding to do, ” Seokjin screeches. “This is your farm, Kim Taehyung. I should not have to be the one managing it while your parents are gone!”

Taehyung and Jimin are laughing, and Seokjin looks fond as he grins and can’t help but laugh. It’s a good shot, something perfect for whatever Jeongguk edits this into.

“Hyung’s right,” Taehyung nods after another few giggles. “If we finish this section of the garden, we can run through the sprinklers.”

“Wait, we’re not doing the whole farm, are we?” Jimin asks, looking horrified.

“Excuse me,” Hoseok says, raising his hand. “I’d like to go back to the sprinklers.”

“Not the whole farm,” Taehyung shakes his head. “That would be a nightmare.”

“But how do you prevent weeds then?”

“Um, wait, hey, what about the sprinklers—” Hoseok says.

“Actually, it’s really cool. We’re an organic farm, so we don’t use weed killers, but we use something called ‘flame weeding’? It’s basically mini flamethrowers—”

“It’s not flamethrowers,” Jeongguk says, deadpan.

“ I said MINI —”

“WHAT ABOUT THE SPRINKLERS?” Hoseok yelps. “ I wanna run through the sprinklers but I fucking can’t because of my fucking ACL! ”

Taehyung and Jimin look at Hoseok, kind of startled. Then they both start to laugh.

“Maybe Namjoon will piggyback you?” Seokjin suggests, shaking his head. “We’ll coax him and Yoongi outside later, get them to join us.”

“Good luck getting them out of Tae’s parents’ bedroom ever again for the rest of the trip,” Hoseok grumbles. “We all know that now that they’re working on that song, they’re gone forever. Maybe they were sick of the showrunners or something, so their characters got written out.”

“Please,” Jeongguk scoffs. “If they were getting written out, I’d at least give them dramatic and nonsensical death sequences or something. Plane crash, mad cow disease…”

“Aliens!” Taehyung suggests.

“They accidentally invent a time machine and create a paradox that deletes them both from ever having existed in the first place and we all forget about them,” Jimin adds.

Jeongguk smiles. “Exactly. See? Tae and Jimin get it.”

“Yah, whatever,” Seokjin grumbles. “Jesus Christ. Mrs. Kim’s personal garden in fact does not use mini flamethrowers like the rest of the farm, which means we have to do it ourselves. Now go get the trowels and let’s fucking weed. ”

“No.”

“ Please. ”

“No.”

“I’ll bake your favorite cookies when we get home.”

“They’re your favorite too, which means you’ll bake them anyway. No.”

“ Please. Yoongichi, come on, running through sprinklers is fun —”

“I’ll get sunburned.”

“Hence this thing called sunscreen— ”

“The water washes it off.”

“I mean you might get a little tan, but if you reapply—”

“I do not want to tan.”

“Come on, don’t you love my sexy tan lines?”

“Get your legs away from me, that’s— Jinnie oh my god you really do have a gnarly tan line—”

“ Sexy. ”

“You’ve been dating me for three years; you know I’m asexual—”

“ TELL ME MY LEGS ARE SEXY EVEN IF YOU DON’T THINK THEY’RE SEXY! ”

“Your tan lines are sexy, Jinnie.”

Seokjin looks extremely mollified. “Thank you, Yoongichi.”

Yoongi blinks magnanimously. “I don’t actually think they’re sexy.”

Seokjin pats his head. “I know.”

“Good.”

“You’re very lovely and pretty and wonderful and asexual, darling. I was not trying to undermine that.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, I know. ”

“Jeonggukkie’s filming all this.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve now been outed to the at-home audience as asexual.”

Yoongi shrugs. “Not like it was a secret.”

“Hmm. Fair enough,” Seokjin concedes. He turns to look at the camera. “Hi, I’m Seokjin, and this is my boyfriend, Yoongi. I’m 28 and he’s 27. We are both cisgender men who are interested in other men. Yoongi is asexual. Um…what else goes in a normal reality show introduction?”

Jeongguk closes his eyes and sighs as Yoongi cackles.

“None of that,” Namjoon says. “Reality shows generally do not include bios which have any of that information. Except I guess age.”

“Hmm. They should,” Seokjin says. “Unless people don’t want to share, then I guess they shouldn’t—never mind. Consider my previous statement retracted.”

Jeongguk can’t help but laugh, even though he always tries not to when he’s behind the camera.

“Hah!” A victorious shout comes from the side of the house and then Taehyung and Jimin are racing around the corner and out onto the patch of lawn in front of the small garden, freshly weeded and healthy if perhaps a little hot under the summer sun. There’s a noise sort of like a wet cough, the hiss of water turning on—and sure enough, the sprinkler system starts up, ticking and spitting water as the device at the end of the hose rotates slowly, drenching the grass.

“Come on!” Jimin shrieks. “Everybody, come on, come on! ”

“Joonie, carry me?” Hoseok requests.

“Okay, hop on—careful, don’t put weight on your leg—can the bandages get wet?”

“It’s fine, I put plastic around it, see—”

“Wait! Count of three?” Taehyung suggests, holding out his arms before anyone can leap off the porch and head for the water.

“Everyone line up!” Jimin shouts. “Jeongguk-ah, you too!”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I gotta film you!”

“Yoongi-hyung, can you help Hoseok get— don’t fall off my back —”

Yoongi and Seokjin help steady Namjoon and Hoseok, and Jimin and Taehyung look on with vaguely impatient laughter.

“Come on, Jeonggukkie! Set the camera on the chair, make sure we’re all in the frame and then come with us,” Jimin demands.

“I wanna get a perfect shot,” Jeongguk says. “Which means I can’t be in it!”

Jimin skips— skips —over to Jeongguk, all floppy hair and batting eyelashes, arms stretched down in front of his chest, that universal cute pose with shrugged shoulders and a tilted-down chin. “Deongguk- ddi, ” he sort of lisps, all tangled up consonants and a poking pink tongue.

Jeongguk’s cheeks heat up. “Well. I guess just for one shot. But then I’m coming back to the camera to film all the rest of you.”

“Jeonggukkie, you haven’t run through the sprinklers with me for years, ” Taehyung complains, suddenly sidling up next to Jimin to rest his elbow on Jimin’s shoulder. “ Please. ”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jeongguk mumbles, setting the camera on a chair at an angle that should capture all seven of them as they run off the porch and onto the grass.

“Okay, on three?” Taehyung says.

“Everyone count together!” Jimin shrieks as they all get in line, their backs to the house. The grass is stretching out before them, verdant in the near-evening light. The sprinkler hisses and ticks as it moves in an arc across the lawn. Someone laces their fingers through Jeongguk’s and for a second he thinks it must be Taehyung—the last time they did this it was the summer after Jeongguk finished high school, and Tae was dating that girl from Taiwan but she was still in Seoul, and they’d turned on the water and stood on the porch like this, ready to jump into the spray—

Hold my hand, Kookie! Like this!

Tae—

You have to hold hands when you run through the sprinklers! It’s the rules!

That’s only one rule, Tae.

IT’S THE RULES! Hahahahaha!

But when Jeongguk looks down, it’s not Taehyung holding his hand. It’s Jimin, and Jimin is smiling at him. They’re at the end of the group nearest the edge of the porch, and everyone else is distracted, even Taehyung, who’s on Jimin’s other side. It’s just Jeongguk and Jimin, looking at each other—

“Okay, ready? Hold hands!” Taehyung shouts. “You have to hold hands when you run through the sprinklers!”

“It’s the rules,” Jimin says, never looking away from Jeongguk.

“Ready? Is everyone holding hands? Okay! Count!”

“One! Two! Three!”

They leap off the porch (or in Namjoon’s case, run down the stairs carefully so as not to drop Hoseok) and into the spray of the water. The cool drops drench Jeongguk’s face and hair immediately.

At his side, Jimin holds on, and on, and on.

“ If you…if you— Oh! Fuck, sorry!”

Jeongguk turns his head and watches as Jimin hovers in the doorway onto the back deck, blond hair a mess around his ears. “Oh. Jimin-ssi,” he says, like he hadn’t heard Jimin singing. Like he hadn’t clocked his approach and let his voice invade the shot he’s trying to get of the moon, the stars. Things impossible to film with the camera in Jeongguk’s possession, yet he figured he’d try. Thought the power of a quiet, dark Daegu night might make the difference in the composition of an impossible shot.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Jimin says. He’s holding something, and when Jeongguk glances down, he hides his hands behind his back.

“It’s fine,” Jeongguk says, pretending like he didn’t notice the movement. “I was just trying to get a good shot of the night sky. But it’s not great on this camera.”

“Funny how hard it is to take pictures of the moon,” Jimin agrees. “I mean, I’m not a professional, so I guess I don’t know the tricks, but…”

“Mm,” Jeongguk agrees. “I’m a professional and I do know the tricks, and I’m still complaining about it, so.”

Jimin huffs a little and keeps hovering in the doorway, but he doesn’t say anything else. Something in Jeongguk’s chest twists to think about the fact that Jimin isn’t with Taehyung right now. He kind of wonders where Taehyung is, now that he’s thinking about it.

“Jimin-ssi? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jimin says hurriedly. “And please. Call me ‘hyung’.”

Jeongguk flushes a little and bites his lip. “Do you want me to turn off the camera or something? Sorry, I know it’s a weird habit—and, like, I wanna get your consent before I just…”

Jimin shakes his head, ducks his chin. Laughs a little ruefully as he steps onto the porch and the moonlight hits his champagne hair. “I, uh. I’m just indulging a bad habit, I guess. So. Maybe it’s good for me to have to know there’s a record of it out there, like…”

“Jimin-ssi—hyung?” Jeongguk asks, blushing as he stumbles over the syllables.

Jimin looks up at Jeongguk and they’re closer than Jeongguk remembers them getting, the camera forgotten on the picnic table. In the light from a hundred million distant stars, Jimin is impossibly delicate. “I, uh.” He finally drags his hands out from behind him and Jeongguk realizes he’s clutching a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He shrugs a little helplessly, perhaps the slightest bit ashamed. “I don’t do it often.”

“I don’t either,” Jeongguk says, offering out his hands. He’s not sure what he’s doing, letting the scene play out this way—what about Taehyung, what about—

“You—” Jimin starts, and then stops, looking at Jeongguk with this tense sort of longing—not longing. Sorrow? But it’s not sorrow, it’s more like melancholy, something shadowed but not devastating. A heaviness like the weight of the world that catches up to you sometimes, and for some reason it must be catching up to Park Jimin right now.

“Come on,” Jeongguk says, taking the pack from Jimin’s hand and tapping it a couple times, pulling out a cigarette and fitting it between his lips. He holds out his other hand for the lighter but Jimin swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in the starlight, and then he raises his own hand and flicks the lighter on, the flame casting an orange-yellow glow across his perfect cheeks.

Jeongguk leans in, eyes never leaving Jimin’s, and lights the cigarette with a careful inhale, holding smoke in his mouth and then breathing it in once the cherry catches. Jimin eyes him with dark eyes, and then he lets the lighter go out.

“Here,” Jeongguk says, passing over the cigarette and settling himself on one of the Adirondack chairs. “Sit with me?”

Jimin sinks into the other chair and tips his head back as he exhales a cloud of smoke, and Jeongguk suddenly remembers that he’s catching all this on video. That the two of them will be forever preserved like this, quiet and sharing a vice in the middle of summer, just Jeongguk and Jimin, together in this.

Jeongguk wonders fleetingly why it feels like something is missing. Maybe it’s because he’s only ever smoked with Taehyung before—but that couldn’t be it.

“I know I shouldn’t do this. Especially as a dancer.”

“Once in a while is probably not the end of the world, hyung,” Jeongguk murmurs.

“I always say I quit but. I don’t know. I always come back. I guess.”

“A lot of things are like that.”

“Yeah.”

Jimin takes another drag and passes the cigarette back, and Jeongguk takes it, feeling the sultry hot of it in his lungs, letting his head spin. “Jimin-hyung? Hyung-ah, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Jimin whispers. “Just have a lot to think about.”

“Do you want me to go inside? I don’t want to…like. Invade your space. You know.”

But Jimin shakes his head. “It’s okay. You can stay. It’s nice, having someone here with me.”

“Okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Jeongguk says.

“Just finish this cigarette with me so I can feel good about myself, like I didn’t really have a whole one,” Jimin jokes, a little shy.

“Sure, hyung. I’m gonna turn the camera off, though. Probably don’t really need a whole video of us just smoking a cigarette.”

Jimin laughs lightly, turning to Jeongguk with something like gratitude in his eyes. “I’m fifteen percent more likely to confess dark things to you when I know there’s no proof of it, you know.”

“Most people are,” Jeongguk admits. It’s true. People are always a little uncomfortable around him when he’s filming. Busy overthinking stuff, trying too hard to play themselves. The problem is that you can’t just film people when they don’t know they’re being filmed. Or at least Jeongguk feels weird about it. Even if his friends have all given him blanket permission to have a camera on them whenever at this point. They know he won’t misuse the footage.

Jimin smiles. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get my deep dark secrets.”

Jeongguk flashes back to his accidental footage from the other night, Taehyung and Jimin in the kitchen confessing sad things, telling stories of old memories. He feels guilt wash over him and thinks about spilling the truth out into the air right now— I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I shouldn’t have watched it, I didn’t watch any of the parts that might have been sensitive—

But instead Jeongguk shoves away the feeling and stands up. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want,” he tells Jimin. “And I’d never do anything bad with the footage. Like, I’d never misuse it, even if you did tell me something on tape.”

“I know, Jeonggukkie,” Jimin whispers, rising gracefully from his chair before Jeongguk can turn to go get the camera. “I trust you.”

They’re standing so close. Too close, an inch gap between their mouths and Jeongguk could close it so easily, just duck his head and move his chin and there—

“Jeonggukkie,” Jimin breathes, eyes flickering down to Jeongguk’s lips for a second before he lifts them again. Under the moonlight, the whites of his eyes look so bright, the irises dark and fluid.

Jeongguk swallows.

“Hyung?”

Jimin sighs and looks away, raising the cigarette to his lips again and taking another inhale. He doesn’t move away from Jeongguk, but he doesn’t move closer either. “Sorry, maybe I’m just—emotional or something. Manual labor really takes it out of you. I mean, I dance for a living, so I’m tired a lot, but…”

“It’s the sun,” Jeongguk murmurs. “Being outside, the heat. It…yeah. Makes you all squishy and stuff, after you shower.”

Jimin nods. “I feel all used up, but in a good way. But also…sad.”

“Sad?” Jeongguk asks, lifting a hand to Jimin’s shoulder before he can help it. “Jimin-ah…”

“Can I hug you?” Jimin whispers, refusing eye contact, his shoulders scrunching in towards his ears. He looks suddenly small. For the first time, Jeongguk really takes note of the black 13 inked into his left wrist, the hand still holding the cigarette. For the first time, Jeongguk sees Jimin looking like someone struggling. Not the happy-go-lucky ball of sunshine he normally is. Another person kind of broken at the edges, just like Jeongguk.

(Just like Taehyung, a traitorous part of Jeongguk’s brain says. Jeongguk shoves that part away.)

“C’mere,” Jeongguk whispers, tucking Jimin’s small frame into him. Jimin is muscular and strong, lean from years of dancing, but his ribs feel fragile under Jeongguk’s arms. He feels like if he squeezes too hard, Jimin will break.

They stand there for a long time. A minute, then two, then three. Finally, Jimin sighs, and pulls away. “Thanks, Jeonggukkie.”

“You wanna stay out here a while longer?”

Jimin nods. Then he glances over at the table. “Um. Sorry. Guess I forgot about the camera. You should…”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says, voice rough and caught in his throat. He coughs a little and crosses the porch, feeling every inch between his body and Jimin’s with more clarity than he should.

When he gets to the camera, Jimin is staring off into the night, a new cigarette lit between his fingers, his chin tipped up towards the sky.

Jeongguk turns the camera off.

“Okay, you think you can do it?”

Jimin takes a deep breath and looks at Taehyung, all exhilaration and wide-angled eyebrows, a little awed. “I won’t hurt her, right?”

“Nah, Betty will be fine.”

Jimin looks up at Jeongguk, playful and a little nervous, jittery. “JK?”

Jeongguk pulls the camera away from his face to purse his lips. “She hates me. If I were down there with her like you are, she’d be kicking the shit out of me. So you’ve already obliterated my high score.”

Taehyung throws an arm over Jimin’s shoulders and makes a smirky face up at Jeongguk. It would be flirty if Jeongguk were anyone else, but leveled at a best friend, it’s—something else. Not flirty, though, because Taehyung is practically in Jimin’s lap right now, managing a very limber contortion while he sits on a milking stool. “She’d like you more if you didn’t talk like she’s a video game, Jeon.”

“Shut the fuck up and help Jimin-hyung milk the cow, Kim.”

Taehyung sticks out his tongue. Jimin giggles and leans into him. “Yeah, Kim, come on. I’m ready. I can do it.”

“Hell yeah you can. Park. ”

Jimin reaches forward tentatively, jerking his hand back a little when Betty lets out a long bleat. She’s on the milking podium thing—Taehyung probably knows the proper name for it but Jeongguk doesn’t—and her head is safely fitted through the little hole in the board that keeps her from really seeing what’s going on. It’s supposed to help keep her calm, but she always manages to freak out when Jeongguk is the one sitting in front of her udder.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Taehyung whispers, reaching out with his long arms to guide Jimin’s hands, shifting so he’s sort of sitting behind him. Jimin curls backwards into his chest and Taehyung helps Jimin grab a teat.

Jimin sucks in a breath. “Oh. It’s warm.”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a living creature,” Taehyung teases.

Jimin bites his lip, fighting back a smile. “It’s kind of soft.”

“Yeah. Gotta be careful, make sure we clean her off afterwards, make sure she’s not chafed. Be nice to you, huh, Betty,” Taehyung says, bringing his and Jimin’s hands up to Betty’s flank to pat her gently.

Betty lets out a long bleat.

“Yeah, that’s right hon,” Taehyung says. “Okay. Remember what I said. Don’t pull on the teat. You just wrap your fingers here…okay. Now squeeze. Careful.”

“I don’t wanna hurt her.”

“Just like this.”

Taehyung’s fingers curl around Jimin’s, long and lean compared with Jimin’s own. Jimin sucks in a breath and lets his fingers close, and then Taehyung gets them squeezing tight.

A thin stream of milk comes out of the teat and sprays into the bucket, the ring of liquid against stainless steel loud in the quiet of the barn, such a stereotypical farm sound.

“Oh,” Jimin chirps, delighted.

“Yeah?” Taehyung asks, mouth right next to Jimin’s ear. His breath catches a few strands of Jimin’s hair, ruffling the straw-colored locks.

Jimin bites his lips and curls harder into Taehyung. Taehyung wraps them closer together and helps Jimin keep milking the goat.

“ Mehh-eh-eh-eh, ” Betty bleats.

Jimin giggles and for a second Jeongguk wonders if you can see it on camera, the way the sound dances out of him and twirls up towards the roof of the barn, sunny and delighted. Taehyung smiles, turning his head so his mouth is nearly touching Jimin’s ear.

“Just like that, see? And as you get more comfortable, you can try two hands. Just remember, not pulling. Forefinger and thumb to close off the milk in the teat, gently, there you go. And then the other fingers just squeeze.”

“This is—awesome. Wow,” Jimin whispers, barely audible. Jeongguk isn’t even sure if the camera picked it up.

For a long minute, no one speaks except Betty, bleating occasionally with no sort of impatience, just vaguely waiting for it to be over. The rhythmic sound of the milk hitting the bucket is soothing, a beat that lulls Jeongguk into a sort of daze. This is what it takes to raise life, Jeongguk thinks. Gentle care for the creatures under your watch. Milking the goats and the cows, collecting the eggs from the chickens, weeding the garden.

And Taehyung and Jimin, wrapped up in each other even as they focus on the goat before them, their fingers working together, careful, squeezing, the milk which they’ll all drink coming out into a bucket.

“Wanna try by yourself now?” Taehyung asks.

Jimin huffs, and then, inexplicably, he looks over at Jeongguk. Not the camera. Beyond it, to the boy on the other side. “Jeongguk-ah, you wanna try?”

Jeongguk- ah. Not Jeongguk- ssi, not even Jeonggukkie.

Jeongguk-ah.

“Jeongguk-ah? Come on, I bet she likes you now!” Taehyung chides, finally disentangling himself from Jimin. “I’ll help you too if you want!”

“I’m—” Jeongguk’s voice cuts out. He has to swallow past the lump there, this weird pulsating thing in his throat making him wonder—

What would it feel like to go to them? What would it be to kneel at their feet, let them lean over him as they milk the goat in the morning dim of the barn. To let them squeeze sustenance from a warm teat and giggle, and they only need two hands for the milking but they have four and maybe an extra hand could settle in Jeongguk’s hair, pet him, gentle as they are with Betty’s warm flesh—

He thinks of last night, just him and Jimin on the porch, and thinks maybe the feeling of something being missing stemmed from the fact that Taehyung wasn’t there. The whole rhythm of the world is off without him, really.

Or maybe the problem with last night wasn’t Taehyung’s absence, but Jeongguk’s presence. “I’m okay,” he coughs out, a little rough. “Keep milking, hyungs. I have to be quiet. I’m ruining the shot.”

“Taehyung! Look, look, a fuzzy caterpillar!”

“Ooh! Show me! Oh my gosh—”

“It’s so cute! Eek! It’s weird, it’s all crawly on me!”

“Cool! I wanna hold it!”

Seokjin leans over, watching the film feed over Jeongguk’s shoulder, huffing under his breath. “I thought caterpillars were all dead by now.”

Jeongguk shrugs. “I don’t make the rules, hyung.”

“Taehy— oh my god take it off— ”

“It’s on my face! It’s all crawly on my face!”

“Take it off your face!”

“You gotta put it on your face—!”

“ Noooooo, oh my god hands are fine but face is too much!”

“C’mere, Jiminie, gotta put it on your cheek it’s fine, it can’t hurt you!”

“It’s weird!”

“It’s gonna be a butterfly!”

“We’ve been over this! Butterflies are weird!”

“Fine, if you won’t do it…” Taehyung turns around and flashes a wild grin at the camera. “Jeongguk!”

Jeongguk freezes. “No— get away from me stop stop! ”

Taehyung leaps on him, a fuzzy brownish orange caterpillar on his outstretched palm.

Jeongguk drops the camera. When he watches it back later, the lens is half in the dirt, half focused on the bottom edges of a tomato plant. In the background, all you can hear is unparseable words and joyous laughter.

“Hey! Jeonggukkie! Jeonggukkie, come dance with us!”

“I’m filming you. How will I film and dance at the same time?”

“The choreography needs three people!” Jimin cries. “And Taetae told me you like dancing!”

“I like filming you more,” Jeongguk says.

“Oh, get in there,” Hoseok groans. “I’m stuck sitting on this porch all week anyways; I may as well be the one holding the camera.”

“Go on, Jeonggukkie,” Seokjin says, leaning back in his Adirondack chair and sipping his whatever-he-concocted-out-of-Taehyung’s-parents’-alcohol-cabinet. “Show is your moves.”

“I don’t even know this dance,” Jeongguk says, even though it’s a lie.

Jimin and Taehyung exchange a look, and then leap on him together, like they planned it. Like that look they just shared told them all they needed to know.

“Come on, Jeonggukkie, give Hobi-hyung the camera!”

“ Please, JK you have to!”

“Jeonggukkie,” Jimin trills, settling down a little, standing in front of Jeongguk with their chests pressed together, his arms around Jeongguk’s neck. “Jeongguk-ah. Please.”

Jeongguk hands Hoseok the camera. He doesn’t have it in him to watch back the footage later on.

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Flashback from August 17

1 year ago, today

“So we’re drunk and Taehyung is trying to take a selfie—”

“Stop telling them we’re drunk—”

“Hyung they’re literally here, they’re like across the room—ah! Hahahahaha! ”

The camera swirls to a grainy blur of color as Taehyung swoops Jeongguk into his arms—

Flashback from August 17

2 years ago, today

“GIRL I WANNA GET DO-OWO-OW-OWN!”

“Fuck you’re barely in the the frame—”

“I LOVE YOU, GIRL I WANNA GET DOWN GIRL I WANNA GET DOWN—”

“ Taehyung— ”

“Love you Jeonggukkie—”

Flashback from August 17

3 years ago, today

“Wha— device not recognized? Not recognized, my butthole—”

Jeongguk’s giggles overwhelm the audio as he turns the camera on himself, and he’s grinning—

Flashback from August 17

4 years ago, today

Jeongguk and Taehyung, looking at the camera, quiet and holding a pose—Taehyung has his signature peace sign held up over his right eye, his mouth a box. Jeongguk’s cheeks are puffed out and he looks more like a bunny than usual. The frame is almost still but there are a couple awkward seconds of silence, Jeongguk blinks—

“Wait, are you— god dammit Jeongguk this is a video not a pic— ”

“Have you ever had your heart broken?” Jimin asks, standing next to Taehyung at the sink. They’ve been harmonizing on a breakup song as they wash the breakfast dishes, and their backs are facing Jeongguk. Still, it’s a good scene: Jimin singing the girl part and Taehyung singing the guy. Jeongguk caught some cute clips of Jimin slipping in to hum along with the boy part and then clapping his hands over his mouth as his eyes lit up towards Taehyung, “Shit! I’m sorry! That’s your line! I know, I know! ”

But now this. “My heart broken?” Taehyung asks.

“Yeah,” Jimin murmurs. “We never got to that the other night. When we were talking.”

Taehyung bites his lip and then, out of nowhere, turns and looks back at Jeongguk. Oh, right. He probably doesn’t want Jeongguk to be filming him. He opens his mouth to speak but Jeongguk turns away, hits the pause button—

“Fuck.”

“I know.”

“I’m in pain everywhere.”

“Yoongi, trust me, I know.”

“Then you can stop being a dick about it, Seokjin, and hurry the fuck up on your section so we can go eat.”

“Whoa, hey, hey!” Taehyung says. “Okay, calm down you guys, look, just—okay, there’s not much left, we can finish up tomorrow—”

“I can do it,” Jeongguk offers.

“How about if some of us go get food, the rest of us finish up.”

“I claim getting food!” Hoseok shouts.

“You’re not even helping us weed,” Taehyung snaps.

“Look, we’ve been at this all day,” Jimin intervenes. “I think food is a good idea.”

“It’s gonna take like two hours to walk into town and get it though,” Yoongi says.

“Okay, so you choose: walk into town and get food, or stay here and finish weeding the pumpkins,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi crosses his arms. “Food.”

“Me too,” Namjoon says. “If that’s okay. Also I just thought of a beat to fix that bridge, Yoongi-hyung, so I kinda wanna run that by you on the way.”

“Fine,” Taehyung says. “Anyone else?”

“I’m going for food because I’m the only one here who will accurately estimate how much everyone will eat,” Seokjin says. “Considering I regularly cook for all of you.”

“You just wanna go with Yoongi,” Hoseok says.

“I’m mad at him. I called him Yoongi instead of Yoongichi, ” Seokjin huffs, crossing his arms.

“And I called you Seokjin instead of Jinnie. We’re even, motherfucker.”

“Bitch.”

“Asshole.”

“Space cowboy.”

“What the fuck? Did you just call me space cowboy? ”

“Yes.”

“Well. Fuck. That changes things. Fuck, I love you, Jinnie—”

“Stop kissing where I’m filming,” Jeongguk gripes.

“Turn the camera away,” Taehyung snaps. “Why are you even filming this.”

“Aw, be nice to him, Taehyungie,” Jimin coos.

“No,” Taehyung says, and it actually sounds cold.

“Don’t snap at Jimin,” Jeongguk shoots back.

“I’m not snapping at him, I’m snapping at you— ”

“But directing it at him? Take your anger out on me if you’re mad at me, hyung. Fucking dick.”

“Stop filming. ”

“No.”

“Okay, okay, guys! ” Jimin shouts. “Look, I’m gonna go with the others and get food, okay? So you two can stay here and work out whatever issue this is.”

“This isn’t an issue,” Taehyung says.

“Whatever,” Jimin says, sighing a little. “I wanna go hang out with Hobi. And he’s gonna need help walking, so we’re gonna…”

Taehyung deflates a little. “Okay.”

“Bye,” Jeongguk says.

Then the other five slink off, ducking their heads and murmuring together, leaving Taehyung and Jeongguk to finish weeding the garden. It’s just a small section left, but Jeongguk knows by now that weeding always takes longer than you think it will.

“You gonna fucking film, or are you going to actually weed?”

“We’ve been working all day. Forgive me for being tired and hot and sweaty.”

“And sunburned,” Taehyung says.

Jeongguk sighs. “Fuck, am I?”

“A little.”

Silence falls for a few seconds, both of them just standing there under the still hot evening sun, wiping sweat off their foreheads and panting for breath in the humid heat.

“Sorry,” Taehyung offers, a little short but at least he’s saying it.

“Yeah. Sorry,” Jeongguk says. He turns off the camera and gets back to work.

“So this is Taehyung’s living room. We used to always sit in here and drink cold barley tea after Taehyung’s mom made us weed. And now we’re adults, and we’re still fucking weeding. But I don’t mind. Tae’s mom is the best. Except my mom, obviously.”

Behind Jeongguk there are footsteps, and then Taehyung’s voice says, “Turn the camera off.”

“Why. I’m not even filming you.”

“Just—do you have to be filming everything?”

Jeongguk scowls and focuses the camera on the bookshelf, letting it trace over the walls. “I’m just getting filler shots. Don’t worry about it.”

“Do it tomorrow.”

“The light’s good now.”

“ Jeongguk. ”

“Taehyung. Just drop it. Go take a shower or something.”

“I’m fucking tired. Also, here. Tea.”

Jeongguk accepts the glass with a begrudging nod of thanks and continues filming. “You could take a nap.”

“Come just— Jeongguk. ”

Jeongguk kind of slams the camera down on the table, uncaring of what it’s now picking up. “ What. ”

Taehyung is frowning. “We’re the only ones here. It’s like old times, and we’re best fucking friends, and you’re apparently mad. Did you not want to finish weeding with me? You hardly spoke the whole rest of the time, even after we said sorry. And now you’re still annoyed.”

“I’m not annoyed.”

“Okay, you’re tired.”

“Yes, I am,” Jeongguk says. “Obviously. We fucking worked all day. ”

“Well, I’m sorry you agreed to come down to the farm to fucking work, and it turned out to be difficult.”

Jeongguk closes his eyes. “I’m not…fuck.” He runs a hand through his greasy hair, all matted together with sweat. “Fuck.”

“Look, can we just…” Taehyung shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet, chewing his lip. “I wanna…”

“What,” Jeongguk asks, although it’s not mean. He just sounds worn the fuck out, which he is, so—he feels like he has a right.

Taehyung swallows. “Kookie. Stop the camera and just come sit with me. Everyone should be getting back with food in an hour or so and then we can rejoin society and be, like, on for them, but—but for us. You and I, together, we don’t have to be on. We can turn ourselves off and it’s like—us. It’s just us.”

Jeongguk picks up the camera. He toys with the record button, not quite ready to turn it off. He can’t figure out why, but just—the scene feels too tender, too perfectly them to just stop caring. “Okay. Rest in your room until they’re back.”

“Please,” Taehyung says, reaching out to curl his fingers around Jeongguk’s wrist. “Come on.”

They make their way through the twilight-stained hallways, push into Taehyung’s bedroom and close the door, and then it’s quiet. There’s still a buzz of tension, something fizzling and unsettled, but Jeongguk pushes it away and settles on the bed, legs crossed as he relaxes into Taehyung’s pillows.

Taehyung stares at him, and then he flops onto the mattress and squirms around. “Fuck. I’m sort of annoyed still.”

“At me?”

“Yes. No. Not really.”

Jeongguk huffs. “Okay.”

“Can we just…fuck, I’m annoyed but I know it’s just because I’m tired and I kind of wanna— ughh ,” Taehyung groans, flopping over into Jeongguk’s lap. “Are you still recording?”

“Yeah. It won’t be a very interesting video.”

“As if this whole project you’re doing will be interesting anyway,” Taehyung says, a little snappish. Then he sighs. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right.”

“I’m not. Your video about all of us on the farm will be lovely.”

About you and Jimin, you mean, Jeongguk thinks. “Yeah, it will.”

“Turn the camera off, Kookie, and just be quiet with me.”

But for some reason, Jeongguk lets it run. Later, when he checks, he has almost a full hour of film. He and Taehyung don’t exchange a single word. They just lie there, quietly exhausted, resting together. Jeongguk catches a glimpse of his own face when he watches it back, and it seems so obvious how he’s drinking Taehyung’s presence in. All his secrets written bright and burning across his skin.

Taehyung doesn’t seem to notice. Just stays curled into a loose fetal position next to the wall, his hands settled limply in the scant space between them, breathing steadily with Jeongguk’s body beside him.

“You guys get it worked out?” Jimin asks, smiling as he executes another perfect spin. “Did you get that one?”

“Yeah. And…yeah. We were just tired,” Jeongguk says.

Jimin smiles and nods. “Good. You wanna go in and eat?”

“Okay. Um, Jimin? Why’d you pull me out here? I mean, you guys just got back with food and then like…”

“Sorry, Jeongguk-ah. I just wanted to spin for you. And make sure you and Tae are okay. You guys are important to me, you know? I mean, we haven’t known each other long, but…I don’t know. I just really like you. All. All of you.”

Jimin is blushing by the end. Jeongguk lowers the camera and smiles, a little shy. Even if he can’t have Jimin the way he wants him, at least he has him like this.

“Hey everybody, welcome back to our channel!” Taehyung chirps, waving at the camera with a big grin on his face. “Today we’re making strawberry shortcake with strawberries out of my family’s very own strawberry farm!”

“But before we get started, don’t forget to smash that subscribe button!” Jimin yells, doing a weird sort of karate chop gesture that has Taehyung doubled over, laughing. Jimin stares helplessly at Jeongguk, pouting.

“Look at the camera, hyung, not at me,” Jeongguk murmurs.

Jimin’s pout intensifies. “Taetae is laughing at me. Jeonggukkie, can you edit all this out?”

“Sure, hyung.”

“No! Keep it!” Taehyung yelps. “We gotta keep everything, so that we get the honest truth! No bias by omission!”

“Tae, you’re the one who’s always telling me to turn the camera off,” Jeongguk says.

“Yeah but it’s only because you get so distracted filming stuff that you forget to hang out with us,” Taehyung whines.

Jimin grins and nods. “It’s true. Why don’t you come be in our video and we can all make the cake together.”

“I’m not convinced that what we make will even end up a cake,” Jeongguk says. “Jin-hyung is the only one who knows how to cook and he’s in the other room trying to forcefully wrestle his boyfriend away from the computer.”

“I know how to make a cake,” Jimin says, tilting his head at Jeongguk. “Wait, did you not know? I’m really into baking.”

“Yeah, Kookie, Jimin told me all about it the other night! That’s why I suggested that we bake for the hyungs, because Jiminie knows how to make tons of things, like cookies and scones and cinnamon rolls—”

“And pizza dough! I make really good pizza dough.”

“And pizza dough. Kookie, seriously, Jimin is going to add so many quality points to our lives.”

Jeongguk huffs and ignores the pang of hurt in him when he sees Taehyung put his hand over Jimin’s on the counter, his long digits enveloping all of Jimin’s tiny ones. Jimin shakes his head, modest, but he looks shyly pleased.

“Hmm,” Jeongguk says, adjusting the focus on the camera, “I mean, I guess if he has baking knowledge, that could earn him a provisional spot in this friend group.”

When Jeongguk turns the camera onto Jimin’s face, the elder’s lower lip is between his teeth, his expression crestfallen.

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung says, a little quiet and chastising.

“I’m kidding,” Jeongguk says, but the moment hangs tense for a few more seconds. Jeongguk clears his throat. “I’ll, um. Cut this part out.”

Jimin shakes his head, expression clearing back into a comfortable grin that looks convincing enough. “It’s okay. Don’t worry, I’m really, really good at this. Seriously. I’ll prove myself worthy of provisional friend group acceptance.”

Jeongguk’s heart pangs with guilt and he shakes his head. “Jimin-ssi—”

“Okay! Come on, Tae, where’s the flour? Seriously, we walked all the way to the grocery store this morning just to get ingredients for strawberry shortcake—well, not the strawberries, obviously, but the shortcake at least—Tae!” Jimin shrieks, letting out a wild yelp as Taehyung laughs and leans in to wrap his big hands around Jimin’s tiny waist and lift him up, both of them giggling as Taehyung sort of props Jimin’s butt against his chest and awkwardly walks them to the refrigerator.

“Up there, Jiminie. Can you reach, or are you still too tiny?”

“Nooo! Taetae, let me down! I can reach without your help—”

“Oh, sorry, did you want me to drop you—” Taehyung teases, faking Jimin out by almost dropping him and then tightening his grip before Jimin can actually fall, triggering another round of shrieky giggles from Jimin’s open mouth. His smile is like a split open grapefruit, bright and tart and summery.

“The hell’s going on in there?” Hoseok calls from the living room, where he and Namjoon have been curled up playing Mario Party on Taehyung’s Switch. Yoongi and Seokjin were supposed to join them, but Jeongguk is pretty sure Yoongi is still working on the song while Seokjin attempts to coax him into taking a break.

“Nothing, hyung,” Taehyung calls. “All quiet on the western front!”

“It is not! Taetae is being mean to me because I’m short!”

“Mm. Well. You are tiny,” Hoseok calls back. “Guess I can’t help you. Wouldn’t want to intervene in a justified conflict, you know.”

“ Rude! ” Jimin yells, laughing happily as he finally reaches out and grabs the bag of baking supplies that Taehyung had put up on top of the refrigerator earlier when they needed counter space to make sandwiches at lunch.

“Good job, Jiminie,” Taehyung says, smiling as he carries Jimin over to the counter and finally sets him down. Jimin puts the bag to the side and grins as he turns around and throws his arms around Taehyung’s neck, and that’s when Jeongguk realizes Taehyung is still holding onto Jimin’s hips, hands moving a little lower and curling carefully around the Jimin’s hip bones, fingers curling up a little as he pulls Jimin closer.

“Don’t belittle my accomplishment,” Jimin pouts, gazing up into Taehyung’s eyes with a challenging, flirty smirk.

“Don’t be little ,” Taehyung says, leaning in a little, kind of towering over him as he smiles that puppy-dog, shit-eating grin he always gets when he makes a bad joke.

Jimin throws his head back and laughs, but when he tilts his chin back down to look into Taehyung’s eyes, his gaze is hot, proprietary. “I’m not little, baby. But it’s cute that you’ve been thinking about it.”

Taehyung blinks and Jeongguk sees the moment the dynamic shifts, watches Taehyung go a little loopy and small the way he used to get sometimes when Jeongguk would—

“Hey, babe,” Taehyung breathes, smiling shyly, submissive now. “Come here often?”

Jimin laughs but it’s a smirky thing, fiery and dominant. “We should put on music. Can’t bake without dancing, you know.”

“Oh! Is that part of your baking magic, Jiminie?”

“Mmhmm.” Jimin raises his eyebrows and leans back a little as Taehyung leans in, narrowing his eyes and grinning with something like pride, affection, exhilaration as one of Taehyung’s hands goes to the small of his back and pulls him closer, so their hips are aligned.

“Come on then,” Taehyung says, pulling away slowly, reluctant. Jeongguk swallows at the look of vague lust that’s turning Taehyung’s eyes dark, pupils blown. The camera can’t quite pick up that much detail, but Jeongguk doesn’t miss it.

And then Taehyung is going to retrieve the Bluetooth speaker from the dining room, and Jimin is sighing a little hotly as he turns back towards the camera. For all he seemed in charge with Taehyung a second ago, he’s shockingly demure when he bites his lip and looks at Jeongguk.

(Not the camera.)

“Come on, Kookie. You have to dance with us.”

“It’s okay,” Jeongguk says. “Stop talking to me. Remember, I’m not here.”

“You are here, though,” Jimin says, strangely quiet. “You are. ”

“I’m just the camera guy.”

“No you aren’t,” Jimin says. He straightens up, though, and changes his tactic—“ Please, Kookie.”

“You have to teach Tae how to make cake.”

“I have to earn my place in the friend group.”

Jeongguk closes his eyes and sighs. “Come on, Jimin-hyung. You know I didn’t mean that.”

Jimin regards him with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t?”

“I was—it was rude. I didn’t mean it. I mean. We both know Tae’s gonna want you around, I mean, since you guys are—”

“Since we’re what?” Jimin asks, frowning, his lovely brows pushing together in a lovely way that makes him look like a kitten.

Jeongguk swallows and makes a sort of careless gesture with his hand. “You know.”

Jimin opens his mouth to respond, but Taehyung leaps back into the kitchen right at that moment, Bluetooth speaker held aloft. “Ha! Got it. Okay, girl group singles only, and I want Kookie in the video doing the choreography.”

“I don’t know any girl group choreography,” Jeongguk says, which is a blatant lie.

“That’s a blatant lie,” Taehyung says. He hooks his phone up to the speaker and sets both on the far reaches of the counter, where they probably won’t get flour and eggs on them.

“Please, Jeongguk-ah,” Jimin says, his voice a melody Jeongguk has never heard before. Low and raspy, shy, pleading but not in a sad way—begging all cute and sanguine, and Jeongguk is powerless to resist, and—and of course he doesn’t want to. That’s just the thing, isn’t it?

Jeongguk’s heart aches, and Jimin is looking at him so pretty, and Taehyung is holding onto Jimin’s hips from behind again and staring at Jeongguk with a pout that somehow rivals Jimin’s.

“Uh—ugh. Fine,” Jeongguk concedes. “Just let me find a place to set up the camera.”

“Okay, so the most important thing is that you use cold, unsalted butter. Tae, do you have a food processor?”

“What’s a food processor?”

Jimin closes his eyes and laughs, grabbing Jeongguk’s arm and leaning into him, comfortable. “Jeonggukkie, I’m guessing you don’t know what a food processor is either.”

Jeongguk tips into Jimin’s side. He can let himself have this for just an hour while they make the cake, can’t he? “I think…a fancy blender?”

“We don’t even have a regular blender,” Taehyung says, pouting and tipping into the sort of huddle going on between Jimin and Jeongguk. He plops his head onto Jeongguk’s shoulder and groans, fingers reaching for Jeongguk’s hand. He drags Jeongguk’s hand up to his hair. “Scratch my head please.”

Jeongguk huffs and scratches Taehyung’s head. “Jimin-hyung, you need some head scratches too?” Jeongguk asks, trying not to let his voice wobble.

“No, but there’s a spot on my back I can’t reach—oh!”

“Where? Am I getting it?” Jeongguk asks, digging his short nails in as much as he can. The tattoos on his fingers look so dark in the evening light, especially against the glow of Jimin’s baggy, thin white T-shirt.

“Down a little? Over—no, other way, left, left— there, ” Jimin groans, leaning into Jeongguk, leaning equally into Taehyung. “Fuck, Jeonggukkie, that’s—really good.” Jeongguk ignores the zing of arousal that shoots down his spine and pools low in his abdomen, lower still—

“Mm,” Taehyung agrees, tipping his head into Jeongguk’s hand. “Our baby maknae so good scratches.”

Jimin giggles sweetly. “So good he makes Taetae lose the ability to form sentences.”

“To be fair, lots of things make me have—struggle sentences.”

“Struggle sentences,” Jimin says. “That’s a good phrase. I’m gonna use it.”

“Mmh,” Taehyung agrees, snuggling more aggressively into Jeongguk’s neck.

Jeongguk’s eyes flash to the camera, still recording across the counter, picking up all of this. Oh well. He can edit it out.

“Ahhh,” Jimin groans. “Okay. Come on. Gotta—get back to making the biscuits.”

Jeongguk reluctantly pulls away. He goes to the sink to wash his hands, forcibly ignoring Taehyung’s bereft little hnn and the way he immediately latches onto Jimin, clingy and out of it.

“ Tae, come on, we gotta bake now.”

“Mm. Five more minutes.”

Jimin snorts fondly. “You’re not napping. ”

“Am. Jeonggukkie and I can fall asleep anywhere. Used to fall asleep on the bus to band competitions all time. Jeonggukkie such a comfy pillow.”

“Mmhmm,” Jimin hums, still holding Taehyung up. “Up. The butter’s going to get too warm!”

Taehyung straightens up.

Jimin grins at him. “Okay. If you don’t have a food processor, do you at least have a pastry cutter?”

Taehyung offers a wide-eyed stare and then looks pleadingly up at Jeongguk. “Does my mom own a pastry cutter.”

“If I didn’t know what a food processor was, why would I be familiar with a pastry cutter. ”

Jimin sighs. “All right, look in the drawers. It’s like—a handle on top and then the bottom part curves down so you can mash things with it, I guess…about this big?” He holds his hands about six, seven inches apart. “And has maybe six little metal blades across it…”

“To the Random Small Kitchen Items drawer!” Taehyung announces, crossing the kitchen and pulling open the drawer that contains a weird mix of metal straws, old rubber scrapers, an eggbeater. Jeongguk remembers Mrs. Kim rifling through that drawer looking for any number of things, shooing Jeongguk and Taehyung out of the kitchen, go run off all that energy so you can sit down and eat dinner and not end up in another food fight!

“This?” Taehyung asks as Jimin looks over his shoulder, holding up a whisk.

“I—that’s a whisk, Taehyung.”

“Right.”

“Here, I think—ha!” Jimin holds up the right thing and Jeongguk shrugs. The description he gave wasn’t too bad, really. “Okay, so we take this and cut in the butter. I’ll show you guys and then you can try, but we gotta be fast, okay? Like I said, you have to work quickly so the butter doesn’t melt. And then we just add the buttermilk—”

“Wait, so why do you have to mix the dry ingredients first?” Taehyung asks, watching avidly as Jimin mashes butter into the mixture of baking powder and sugar and flour and salt they’d mixed up earlier.

“That’s pretty standard for most recipes,” Jimin says. “It depends with the sugar though, actually…like, when I make cookies, I use a 2:3 ratio of granulated sugar to brown sugar and then mix that with melted butter. Then add the egg and flavors, like vanilla or almond or whatever, depending on the recipe. And then you add the flour mix. So the sugar like…doesn’t count as a dry ingredient in that recipe.”

Taehyung nods, although he seems kind of distracted with the bulge of Jimin’s bicep as he keeps working the dough.

“Why do you do it that way, hyung,” Jeongguk murmurs. It’s mostly just because he wants to hear Jimin talk, likes the way his voice goes all confident and low when he’s talking about something he clearly knows a fair amount about.

“Makes the cookies softer. I also mix cornstarch in with the flour, and I do extra egg yolk. My normal chocolate chip recipe calls for one egg plus one egg yolk. At room temperature.”

“And you mix that with the sugar and melted butter.”

“Mmhmm,” Jimin hums. He pauses his dough-mixing and looks up at Jeongguk, face open and content, eyes crinkling as he smiles. “I can show you sometime, if you want. Or I’ll just bake my cookies for you and Taehyung, make you try them. They’re the best chocolate chip cookies you’ll ever eat; trust me.”

“I do,” Jeongguk murmurs. “They sound amazing. You’re really good at this, Jimin-hyung.”

Jimin flushes, and Taehyung presses up against his back and grins carefully at Jeongguk, ducks his head so his mouth is sort of resting against Jimin’s hair. “Jimin-ah. Have you ever considered opening a bakery.”

Jimin laughs, careful not to toss his head back and risk smacking his skull into Taehyung’s teeth. “Nah. I’m a dancer; baking’s just—fun, I guess, and then you get to eat lots of yummy treats! Plus I bring cookies to the dance studio all the time, endear myself to my coworkers. It’s secretly just a manipulation tactic.”

“Nefarious baked goods,” Taehyung agrees. “I approve of this.”

Jimin laughs. “Glad to know I’ve got the Kim Taehyung seal of approval.”

“Mm. You’d still be doing the world a service, though. If you opened a bakery.”

Jimin shakes his head. “Okay. Jeonggukkie, you wanna help me do the buttermilk?”

“This recipe is so complicated,” Jeongguk says, a little intimidated.

Jimin laughs. “It’s literally not. Wait ’til I show you how I make pizza.”

“Pizza’s not even hard to make!” Seokjin’s voice yells from the other room.

“Weird that you heard that, hyung!” Taehyung complains.

“In his defense, hyung’s not wrong,” Jimin smiles, leaning teasingly into Taehyung and then switching sides, bumping his elbow to Jeongguk’s ribs. “People just get scared because you use yeast.”

“Is yeast a particularly threatening substance?” Taehyung asks, sounding kind of aghast.

Jimin laughs. “Well, if you use too hot of water, you kill it.”

“It’s alive? ”

“It’s a microorganism that ferments and releases carbon dioxide when you mix it with flour. So it makes bread rise.”

“Oh my god, I’ve been eating a microorganism every time I’ve eaten bread ever in my life?” Taehyung cries.

“I mean, it’s not like it’s still alive by the time you’re eating it. And it’s technically a type of fungus.”

“ IS THAT WHY BREAD GETS MOLDY? ”

Jeongguk can’t help but laugh at Taehyung’s scandalized cry, at the way Jimin bursts into giggles. He even leans back into Jeongguk’s chest a little, laces his fingers with Jeongguk’s for some reason.

“I don’t think that’s why, Tae. There are outside sources of mold spores I think.”

Taehyung shakes his head. “Jiminie, Jeongguk, we should open a science baking cafe. That’s our theme, microorganisms, we can teach people about the science of their baked goods as they eat them.”

“That’s an I Fucking Love Science -ass idea if I ever heard one,” Jeongguk groans.

“To be fair, I do actually fucking love science,” Jimin says. His fingers play with Jeongguk’s and he tips his head up, speaking softly, all his attention of Jeongguk. “Fuck that Facebook page, though.”

“Everyone got so into it in high school,” Jeongguk groans.

“You did too, Jeon,” Taehyung teases, regarding Jimin and Jeongguk with a strange look in his eyes. It’s almost jealousy and—fuck, Jeongguk should really pull away, what’s Jimin doing—it’s just skinship, right? Taehyung wouldn’t be mad about his friends being affectionate with each other—

“To be fair, I liked that page too,” Jimin admits.

“You liked it too, Kim,” Jeongguk snaps. “Don’t even pretend you didn’t.”

Taehyung glances sheepishly to the side. “I was 16. Facebook was practically brand new. We all fucking loved science.”

The oven beeps, and suddenly Jimin is pulling away from Jeongguk and grabbing the buttermilk, fixated on the baking process. Jeongguk eyes Taehyung kind of warily, feeling unsteady, off-center.

“Ooh! I love this song!” Jimin says all of a sudden, breaking the tension. “Jeonggukkie, turn it up? My hands are full.”

“Got it, Jiminie,” Taehyung says, raising the volume before Jeongguk can even take a step in that direction. “Wait, but you’re mixing so you can’t dance!”

“Dance with Jeonggukkie,” Jimin says.

Taehyung eyes Jeongguk, cautious—it makes Jeongguk ache, to see his best friend looking that way— fuck, Taehyung should be looking at him with a smirk of assured camaraderie—shouldn’t be looking like he doesn’t know what Jeongguk is going to do, because they’ve been friends for almost ten years and they know each other, they know each other inside and out—

“Come on, hyung,” Jeongguk says, holding out his hand. “Dance with me.”

“ Ugh, you guys are the cutest,” Jimin sighs wistfully, holding the bowl in one hand and mixing with the other so he can turn away from the counter and look at them, smiling. “Wanna see you like this forever. Like, if that were the rest of my life, just us three—I think that would be enough.”

It’s a wild thing to say. Utterly too honest, ridiculously intimate.

But—“Me too,” Taehyung agrees. “I always figured when we were 80, Jeonggukkie and I would be dancing in a kitchen like this—maybe in this kitchen. With all our grandbabies running around us, and we make them listen to old BIGBANG tracks. And Jiminie, you can be there too—”

Jeongguk pulls away abruptly, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

“Jeongguk?” Taehyung asks, sounding strangely bereft.

“Jeongguk-ah,” Jimin intones, soft and mellifluous as he sets the bowl on the counter.

“Sorry, uh, red light’s blinking. On the camera. Means the battery’s almost dead.” Jeongguk goes to the camera and grabs it as he heads out of the kitchen, barely remembering to stop the recording. “Gotta charge it—”

“Fuck. I can’t do this. I— fuck. ”

Jeongguk runs a hand through his hair and stares at the computer screen. His hair is disheveled, his cheeks a little pink. He hadn’t filmed any of dinner, couldn’t exactly bring his camera out when it was supposed to be dead. There wasn’t anything particularly special about the meal anyway, and Jeongguk spent most of it in a sort of daze. Too many thoughts about a future with Taehyung, our grandbabies running around the kitchen —did he mean our like—like theirs together? No, he couldn’t have, he meant like they would both marry other people and then have kids, and those kids would have grandkids—so like, that didn’t really mean anything.

“I shouldn’t have had that third beer,” Jeongguk groans. He’s not a lightweight by any stretch of the word, but he’s tipsy now, just barely. Not enough to really impede his judgment, but enough to make him a little more weepy than he’d usually be. “I should’ve—fuck.”

He sighs tiredly, runs his hands through his hair again. In the background, there’s a peal of laughter—everyone else is still up, playing cards again while Jeongguk snuck out claiming a headache.

“It’s weird, being alone in his room. Like the ghost of him is here, but—or maybe it’s not the ghost of him. It’s high school him, that dorky kid with big ears and a huge fuckin’ smile, it’s—that’s the kid in this room. I look around the walls and he’s here, just like how we used to be—and I’m here too, you know? That’s what so fucking weird. That I’m here, but it’s high school me, it’s like—like being here is making both of us revert back to who we were that year, except it’s—it’s messing me all up. I keep thinking about when we’d have sleepovers in this very bed, and we were kind of tall but so lanky, we fit so perfectly on the bed and now it’s squished and it’s too much, we’re—we’re too much,” Jeongguk whispers, realization crashing over him like a wave. Cold, and loud, and oppressive. The hands of the ocean sneaking out and wrapping around his ankles, yanking him under, and there’s water above, and water below.

“I remember when I first saw him. I thought he was larger than life, you know? Those people you meet and they’re—they’re not famous, they’re not even popular, always. But you just—they’re the coolest fucking people. They just absolutely rule, everything they say, the way they are, whatever they choose to be. One of my English teachers was like that. Just, a person you want to be around. A person who’s happy, and living life, and killing it. And that’s really awesome.

“And Taehyung. Little baby Taehyung, when I thought he was so fucking cute. And it’s weird now, like when I look at our old photos and I’m literally 17 and he’s like 19 and it’s insane, like, we’re adults now, and he’s got those baby cheeks and those big ears and just—I remember him being that kid, and I was a kid too. And now we’re older, and he’s grown into himself so much, and I just—we’ve both changed. We used to sleep in the same bed and his parents didn’t care, didn’t think anything of it…would they care now? Now that they know Tae is into guys, I mean, is that why they let us sleep here together, they didn’t think we were going to — ”

Jeongguk cuts off and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes and trying not to cry. He takes a breath and slumps forward over the desk, shoving his laptop back a little so he has room to put his chin on the desk. The same desk where he and Taehyung used to do math homework together.

Nooo, that’s wrong, Jeonggukkie!

It’s not! We went over this in class today and I understood it!

I took pre-calc last year. This is not right, Kookie—

Tae. Hyung, it’s right, stop erasing my work—

You forgot to divide this side—

No, it’s not—this is the quadratic formula, hyung, I divided by six because that’s 2a. A equals three and then you multiply by two—

That’s not how it goes!

Sing the song, hyung. Negative b, plus or minus square root, b squared minus 4ac, all over 2a.

Ugh, we’re still gonna remember that song when we’re a hundred, I’m gonna sing it all the time and torture you—

Hyung, you’re not gonna sing the quadratic formula to me when we’re a hundred—

Yes I will. I definitely will.

Oh my god, stop hugging me and do your work.

But I love my Jeonggukkie. The best dongsaeng.

Stop trying to help. You’re the worst math sunbae.

Jeongguk sighs again. “Well. Now there’s Jimin. And Jimin is—fuck, he’s so good, you know? He works so hard in the garden and—and he can milk Betty and she doesn’t even get mad at him, and he and Tae are so—so perfect. I mean, Tae and I have known each other for eight years and that’s, like, nothing compared with the connection Tae and Jimin have…but I— fuck. Fuck, it’s so hard, it’s. I have to fucking watch them and record them falling in love and here I am, like—thinking about stupid Taehyung and how all the fuck I had to do was say yes —”

“Jeongguk? You okay?”

Taehyung pushes through the door and Jeongguk spins around so fast in his chair that his tipsy head goes fuzzy.

“Uh. Taehyung.”

Taehyung tilts his head. “You okay?” His eyes are a little glazed, his cheeks flushed. His hair is rumpled up, and his lips are swollen, and—fuck, has he been kissing someone? Has he been kissing Jimin?

“Fine.”

“You look bad. Headache really bad or something?” Taehyung closes the door behind him, crosses the room to put a hand on Jeongguk’s forehead.

Jeongguk ducks away from the contact, squirming a bit. “I’m not—I don’t have a fever or anything, hyung.”

Taehyung leans down to look right into Jeongguk’s eyes, and Jeongguk can smell the wine on his breath. “You seem kind of out of it.”

Jeongguk can’t help it—he scoffs, and it comes out harsh in the quiet of a haunted bedroom. “ I seem out of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Taehyung snaps, voice going hot on annoyance in a sudden about-face from his prior concern.

Jeongguk rolls his eyes and tries not to look around the room at all the history playing itself out like a supercut film reel of Taehyung-and-Jeongguk on the walls. “Nothing, hyung. Why are you here, anyways? Shouldn’t you be out with your boyfriend—”

“I came to check on you, ” Taehyung says, crossing his arms and plopping onto the bed, narrowing his eyes as he stares at Jeongguk. “You know, I was a little concerned about my best friend when he suddenly got a headache and fucking ran off to our room like he’s been doing every night we’ve been here.”

Jeongguk forcibly ignores the our room bit and tosses kindling onto the angry fire burning the pit of his stomach, sitting hot and heavy with the two burgers and all the fries and the strawberry shortcake he’d eaten at dinner. “We’re here to work on your parents’ farm while they’re gone, not to seduce hot acquaintances. Sorry I fucking care about being rested so I can do my fucking chores.”

Taehyung lets out a shocked, angry noise and shakes his head, looking anywhere but at Jeongguk. “You’re gonna lecture me about the upkeep of my own family’s farm? Really? You fucking lived in the suburbs and made your mom drive you out here all the time, you didn’t fucking grow up here. Your parents don’t even live in Daegu anymore, I don’t know why you even came—”

“I fucking care about this place,” Jeongguk snaps. “I may not have lived here as long as you did but I did all the fucking important high school life things here, I—that was my favorite year, hyung, when I first met you. And yeah, I’m nostalgic about it, and I like coming back to this farm and seeing all the band stuff and the musical programs and I like remembering us running around here like we were still kids even though we always talked about how grown up we were, how we had it all figured out— fuck, I fuckin’ knew everything when I was 17. And now I’m 23 and I know nothing. And it sucks. I thought being here would be like it was, but it’s nothing like that. We can’t get that back. We’ll never have it again.”

“Have what? Fucking emo teenage angst-fests, staying up too late pretending to have insomnia because we thought it made us edgy, sneaking cigarettes under the oak tree when my parents weren’t home?”

“ Yes, ” Jeongguk says, surprising himself with the force of the word as it leaps from his mouth. “Yes, Tae, we were—we did everything together. I was here every day. Remember when I fell out of the tree and bled all over your mom’s rug? Remember when I tried soju for the first time and got way too drunk and puked by that bush in the yard? Remember skinny dipping, and figuring out how to climb onto the roof, and the rope swing over the lake? And that party the summer after I graduated, when you were back from college, and we were out on the porch and you were there, you have to remember, I had my first kiss—”

“But not with me,” Taehyung says, sounding so affronted he might cry. “You fell out of the tree and I cleaned up your scraped knee for you. You puked and it was me holding your hair back. Skinny dipping, sitting on the roof, the rope swing—you did all that with me. But not the kiss. That, you had to do with somebody else. I was fucking— fuck. ”

“ What, ” Jeongguk demands, standing up out of the desk chair, throwing his hands into the air. “What, Taehyung, what did you want me to do? You were back from college with your girlfriend and Kyungsoo was hot—”

“That’s not even—that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Jeongguk blinks, flashing back, maybe we should—do you want to…

I can’t.

Jeongguk closes his eyes. “Hyung.”

“We were together all the fucking time. You said it. You were right. And then when I finally worked up the nerve to just ask you, you told me no. ” Taehyung lets out a shrill sort of laugh, standing up and spinning around, shaking his head as he paces across the room. “And what, was I going to, like, convince you? You didn’t want to and I wasn’t going to force you—”

“I didn’t say no, I said I couldn’t —”

“How’s that different? You didn’t want to and it’s fine, people have every right to not want to kiss someone, but it just—it just sucked, how you fucking took over this place. It was us. This place was ours. And then I went off to college and suddenly you were texting me that you came here to help out my mom, which is fine, that’s—I thought it was nice, I thought you were doing it for me, for us, I figured if you didn’t want us to kiss it was fine, we were still friends. But then suddenly I come home for that week over summer holidays and you want to have a party, you want to get Kyungsoo and all his asshole friends over here, you act like you fucking own this place—you stole my home from me—”

“You left me here!”

“I was going to college! I was 19, what was I supposed to do? Stay for a year and wait for you? My parents wouldn’t have let me even if I’d tried—”

“I didn’t expect you to stay, I just thought maybe you’d at least try to make me a priority. I kept coming over here during my last year of high school because I wanted to feel close to you. I was fucking in love with you, hyung!”

“You were 17!”

“And I fucking knew. I was 17 and I knew everything, and—like I said. Now I’m 23 and I don’t know a goddamn thing. You, always parading around your long line of partners. Partners who all got labels, oh, this is my boyfriend, or this is my SO, they’re agender, or my girlfriend is studying medicine, isn’t that cool? You brought them all back here and what was I supposed to think? I thought this was our place just as much as you did, hyung. And then you brought them. It wasn’t ours. And it was supposed to be. I was 17 and I knew that we were meant to be. And even through college, even after, there was always that lingering— thing, I don’t know, like we could never quite—get past it. We couldn’t let each other go, and I just—I always thought that we would—”

“What?” Taehyung says, not confused, not missing the point here. He sounds mad, and disbelieving. “What the fuck, Jeongguk. You said no. I asked you if you wanted to and you turned me down. So what was I supposed to think? You just wanted to be friends.”

“I didn’t though. I just—I hadn’t kissed anyone, let alone a boy before, and I was—I was scared, I thought maybe you didn’t—I thought you just wanted to kiss me—”

“I did want to kiss you!”

“I said I thought you just wanted to kiss me! I got scared that you were gonna kiss me once and that would be it, I’d never kiss you ever again—even though I felt like I knew, I still freaked the fuck out when it was actually right in front of me. I was scared it would ruin us, and you would hate me, I just—I freaked out!”

“You hurt me! I was—I was devastated, I was so fucking sad, Jeongguk? You went to all that trouble in high school to get me to care about you, to endear yourself to me—”

“What the fuck, you make it sound like I was—coercing you—”

“No you weren’t, just like—high schoolers aren’t subtle, okay? You can’t take things slow when you’re 17, you just—full speed ahead. We got close in, what, two months back then? I mean, when you’re an adult it takes ages to get close to someone—”

“Like it’s taking you so long to get close to Jimin,” Jeongguk spits.

“We’re not fucking talking about Jimin, Jeon Jeongguk. Don’t change the fucking subject, don’t bring him into this.”

“He’s fucking in it —”

“Just— fuck, can you just let me talk? When you’re in high school…fuck, Jeongguk, you used to bring me cookies your mom made. You told me all your angst feelings, like, right off the bat, and I was like—emo as fuck with you for a few months or so, but it felt like forever? Remember how it felt like time took fucking forever? And now we’re ten years older and time passes so quickly and it should make us reckless but instead it makes us cowards. Instead it makes us careful, and you know what, I’ve been so goddamn careful? But I hate it. I hate this. I hate that we ended up here.”

“You were the one who fuckin’ wanted to come to the farm for a week with me,” Jeongguk spits, eyes burning like all his anger and hurt have caught fire and settled there in his gaze. “This is all your fault.”

Taehyung stomps forward and they’re so fucking close when he says, “Fuck you, it’s your fault. You said you didn’t want me!”

“I got scared to kiss you because I liked you .”

“And I was scared too, and I’m fucking scared now!”

“Why the fuck would you be scared now?”

Taehyung’s eyes are bright, livid. Burning, he’s burning, and Jeongguk is burning with him. Taehyung’s eyes go to Jeongguk’s mouth and then back up to his eyes, his mouth set in a firm line. “Are you going to kiss me or fucking not?”

“Fuck,” Jeongguk says, throwing caution to the wind. He lunges forward, gets his arms around Taehyung’s waist and yanks him the few inches forward, and Taehyung’s hands come up to fist in Jeongguk’s hair. And then Kim Taehyung is in Jeon Jeongguk’s arms, kissing him furiously in the dim light of Taehyung’s childhood bedroom, eight years after the question was asked.

“ Aahgg—haa, ” Taehyung groans, biting hard on Jeongguk’s bottom lip, fingers yanking at his hair, shoving a leg between Jeongguk’s and grinding in, hips hot, everything is hot.

Jeongguk tightens his arms, grips one of Taehyung’s shoulders from behind, puts the other hand on the small of Taehyung’s back so he has leverage to press their hips together, already uncomfortably turned on. Taehyung’s mouth is hot and wet, and he’s kissing Jeongguk so hard it hurts, and Jeongguk is so, so into it.

“Fuck,” Taehyung groans as Jeongguk trails his mouth down to Taehyung’s neck and bites down, soothing the spot with a gentle press of his mouth. “Fuck, Jeongguk, bed—”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk growls, eyes burning as he lifts Taehyung forcefully into his arms and carries him to the mattress, lowering him just carefully enough to make sure his head doesn’t smack into the headboard. Taehyung is already yanking Jeongguk in by the collar of his shirt, getting Jeongguk on top of him as he spreads his legs—

“Fuck, you’re so fucking hot,” Taehyung groans, running his hands down Jeongguk’s chest over his shirt, flicking at the stainless steel bars through Jeongguk’s nipples.

“Fuck, you too,” Jeongguk moans back, already lifting Taehyung’s shirt to reveal the soft line of barely defined abs running down Taehyung’s stomach. He’s got that perfect mixture of softness and strength, a layer of fat covering muscles Jeongguk knows are there. He looks like a real person, so different from the lanky, beanpole boy he was.

“Get it off,” Taehyung mumbles, hands finding the edge of Jeongguk’s shirt and lifting. Jeongguk kneels up and yanks the fabric over his head, and then he falls forward again and his hands cage Taehyung in, and Taehyung’s eyes rove Jeongguk’s chest, trail over to his arm and down the sleeve of dark ink, all the way down to the letters on his hand, the little designs on his fingers. “Fuck.”

Jeongguk leans in and kisses him again, arms holding most of his weight off Taehyung’s chest even as he lets his hips sink, grinding against Taehyung through the layers of their jeans. Taehyung whines and lets his legs fall open wider, and then he’s tracing his hands over Jeongguk’s biceps, squeezing them and whimpering like the evidence of Jeongguk’s gym rat strength is really riling him up.

“God, Tae,” Jeongguk groans, “get these—come on.” He fumbles with the button of Taehyung’s jeans, gets them open and yanks down the zipper. No underwear. Fuck.

“Gonna fuck me with my shirt on?” Taehyung says, voice rumbling low through the room, and—oh yeah, their friends are outside, they have to be quiet.

“Fuck, wanna get inside you, too impatient—”

“ Fuck, Kookie, calm down,” Taehyung says, laughing a little. “I haven’t done this in ages; I’m pretty sure anal is off the table for tonight—”

“Fine, something else then,” Jeongguk groans, although—fuck, he really wants to go all the way with Taehyung someday, knows he’d sound so pretty with Jeongguk pressing into him, holding him close—“Fu-uh-uck,” Jeongguk stutters as Taehyung leans up and fits his mouth over one of the rings through Jeongguk’s nipple. He’s so fucking sensitive there, and he balances his weight on his left hand just to bring his right up to cradle the back of Taehyung’s head, hold him there—

“Fuck, the camera,” Taehyung mumbles as he draws back, flopping back onto the mattress with a groan, stretching out on the sheets.

Oh. Right. “What, you don’t wanna make a sex tape?” Jeongguk looks down at Taehyung, all rumpled hair and swollen lips and heavy-hooded eyes. His jeans are open and Jeongguk should probably double check that he hasn’t accidentally filmed anything private.

Or—wait. No. He should just delete this, all of it, obviously—

Taehyung squirms impatiently, hips jumping a little, whining in the back of his throat. “Not— nngh— tonight.”

“Fuck. Seem kind of needy.”

“ Want you, ” Taehyung groans. “Fuck, hurry up, shut off the fucking tape.”

Jeonguk fumbles for the camera, yanks it forward without realizing he’s filming his own tousled hair, his Taehyung-bitten lips. He stops the recording and drops the camera on the floor. Hopefully it doesn’t break, but if it does, Jeongguk hella doesn’t care.

Jeongguk wakes up because the door to Taehyung’s room opens and whoever’s coming in doesn’t know that you have to kind of pull up on the handle or else the weight of the wood makes the hinges creak. He fumbles for his phone and goes for the flashlight and—fuck, that’s the camera, no, exit, no not record—

“Tae? Jeonggukkie? Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Jimin’s voice says, small and tentative in the darkness of the night.

Guilt slams through Jeongguk hard, and he doesn’t say anything, choosing instead to lie frozen, dropping his phone on the mattress so the light of it won’t give him away—fuck, does Jimin already know he’s awake? He’s naked and he’s pretty sure he’s got at least one bruise at the base of his throat in the shape of Taehyung’s mouth—

“Jimin-ah?” Taehyung’s voice comes, and then there’s rustling on his side of the bed and he sits up. Jeongguk only realizes Taehyung had his arm slung over his waist when the weight of it is gone.

“Oh, Taetae,” Jimin whispers. “Sorry, I just—it’s raining out, and it got kind of drafty—”

“Need another blanket?” Taehyung asks, yawning.

A second of quiet, and then Jimin says, “Sorry. I really didn’t wanna—wake you.”

“It’s fine,” Taehyung says. “Jeongguk sleeps like the dead, anyways. Here, take this one, we’re too hot together in bed anyways.”

Jimin must walk over to the edge of the bed and retrieve whatever blanket he’s being offered—probably the fleece throw that ended up tangled around the foot of the bed earlier when Taehyung and Jeongguk were—

Fuck.

“If you’re still cold, we have more blankets in the linen closet. I can get them out now if you want—”

“No, it’s fine,” Jimin says. He sounds a little panicked, and Jeongguk really isn’t sure how much detail can be made out in the dark but maybe he can see that Taehyung is naked, that Jeongguk is too, does it smell like sex in here? Fuck, fuck, fuck .

“You okay, Jimin-ah?” Taehyung asks. “Are you okay on the couch?” He doesn’t offer a spot in his bed, though, and Jeongguk hates how guilty he feels when a selfish part of him gets all territorial and satisfied.

“I’m fine,” Jimin whispers. “It’s kind of nice, sleeping in the living room. You can really hear the rain.”

“Okay. If you’re sure,” Taehyung whispers. “Like I said. Come back if you still feel too cold.”

“Thanks, Taehyung,” Jimin murmurs. He must slip out of the room, because there’s another loud creak as the door closes.

Taehyung lies back down, and then he takes a sharp breath like he’s about to say something. Jeongguk’s blood runs cold. Jeongguk, I know you’re awake—

But Taehyung doesn’t say anything. He sighs, and squirms around, and Jeongguk hopes for a second that he’s going to put his arm back around Jeongguk’s waist, tug him into that warm, broad chest—

Jeongguk waits a long time, but Taehyung doesn’t do anything before his breathing evens back out into sleep. When Jeongguk finally works up the nerve to glance over his shoulder, Taehyung has curled away from him, body facing the wall, closed off.

Jeongguk grabs his phone and looks at the camera. It’s been recording for nearly 20 minutes, a blank gray-black vision of Taehyung’s bedroom ceiling.

Jeongguk pushes the button to stop the recording and clicks into his photos, selects the video, taps the trash can icon.

This video will also be deleted from Photo Stream on all your devices.

Delete Photo

Cancel

Jeongguk deletes the video. Then he goes to his Recently Deleted, and deletes it there, too. Permanently.

He lies awake and listens to the rain tapping at the window for a long time, and wonders if Taehyung and Jimin are both listening to it too.

There’s a video saved somewhere on one of Jeongguk’s old flash drives. Back when memory cost a fortune. 15,000 won for a gigabyte.

There’s a video saved somewhere and Jeongguk could probably find it if he went back through his things. But he doesn’t need to, because he can remember it like the back of his hand. There’s a Taehyung-shaped space in his heart for it, and even if he were to take all those pictures down, they’d still be in their frames inside of his head, unfaded as the day they were taken.

Do you want to know a secret? Taehyung says in the video.

Of course, hyung, Jeongguk replies. You can tell me anything. I won’t say a word, promise.

I know you won’t. I trust you.

Oh. Good.

I kinda…wait. Can you turn the camera off?

Oh. Sure. I forgot it was recording.

You can’t see it on screen. Jeongguk knows because he used to look for it, used to pour over the dark, grainy footage of Taehyung’s bedroom, searching for even a glimpse of what had happened. The way Taehyung had leaned in, sort of collapsed across Jeongguk’s lap, hugging him as Jeongguk reached over and turned the camera off—

The recording ends there, and Jeongguk can’t say for sure why he even kept it.

He doesn’t need it to remember what happened after.

It’s off?

Yeah, hyung, it’s off.

Okay.

You wanna tell me?

I…I kind of…

Tae-hyung?

I might like boys. Too. Like, I like girls. But also…

Boys.

Boys.

Oh.

I…I haven’t said that to anyone before.

That’s okay, hyung. Thanks for telling me.

That’s…okay? Like—sorry, I shouldn’t be touching you—

No, no, hyung! No, come back. Come back, hug me. I wanna hug you.

Oh. Thanks, Kookie.

Um. I—I uh—

Kook?

Maybe I…don’t know. Like I—like…boys. Too. Maybe. I don’t know, hyung I don’t—know, don’t—

Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, whatever you figure out. If you do. Or you don’t. I love you no matter what, okay?

You too, hyung. I love you, too.

Yeah. Forever. Promise?

Forever. Promise.

“Um. Hey.”

Jeongguk startles up, nearly dropping his camera as an apologetic chuckle comes from behind him.

“Sorry,” Jimin murmurs. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jeongguk shrugs. Jimin looks so pretty again, the way he does every morning. The way he does all the time. Jeongguk feels guilty just to look at him. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, hopes it covers the bruise he woke up with just above his collarbone this morning. “It’s okay. I was just filming out the window. The yard looks nice in the morning after a rainstorm, you know. Good scenery shot to cut in between the ones of us.”

Jimin looks at Jeongguk with wide eyes, surprisingly awake for how early it is in the morning. “The ones of us, you mean. Like, not you. You’re never in the frame, Jeongguk-ah,” Jimin murmurs. There’s a lingering weight to his words, a vividness that makes it sound like he’s trying to say something else.

Whatever it is, Jeongguk can’t parse the subtle meaning. He turns the camera away from the window and moves to stop the recording, but Jimin stops him with a smile. “You don’t have to stop, Jeongguk. I don’t mind being on camera. Not when you’re the one behind the lens.”

Jeongguk swallows. He feels like he’s blushing, maybe, but then Jimin eyes dart down Jeongguk’s neck and is he looking at the bruise? Can he see all the damning evidence of a tryst that never should have happened, that wasn’t fair because Taehyung likes Jimin, not Jeongguk, and they shouldn’t have started some affair on the basis of old times’ sake —

“So? You going to interview me about the trip? It’s the last day, now, so you better get closing statements from everyone.” Jimin smiles over his shoulder, opening the cupboard where the coffee is kept and pulling down the container, opening the top of the coffee maker.

“Um. Sure,” Jeongguk says, fumbling through the tornado-ravaged inside of his head for something to ask. “Um. You’ve been working as a farmer for five days, Jimin-ssi. How does it feel? Think you could stay on the farm forever?”

Jimin keeps his back to Jeongguk as he hums, tilting his head like he’s thinking of an answer. He finishes making the coffee and it really is an aesthetic shot, the view of this sunshine boy making coffee on an early summer morning, the picture of domesticity.

He turns around and smiles, and it mostly reaches his eyes. “I think I like it here. But it was…hmm.”

“You don’t have to answer—”

“Just give me a second,” Jimin says, shaking his head. He stares out the window for a few seconds, sighs. Looks at the floor, and then finally he looks up. “I’m glad that I came. I’m glad I made new friends, you know? Taehyung is so great, really easy to talk to…he says we’re soulmates—like, platonic soulmates, obviously,” Jimin hurries to say, although with the frenzy he says it with, it seems kind of like he’s hastening to add that part, like he isn’t totally sure of it. “And there’s this other guy. Jeongguk. You don’t know him very well, because he’s always behind the camera. But it’s been nice getting to know him, too. He even said I might be able to join the friendship. Provisionally, of course. Until I prove that I’m worth it, I guess.”

Jeongguk lifts his head and catches sight of his reflection in the glass door of the microwave. He looks guilty, and horrified, completely stricken. “Jimin-hyung—”

“I’m kidding,” Jimin murmurs, smiling again, the grin almost reaching his eyes. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. When we get back to Seoul I’ll be really busy with the studio, so. Hobi-hyung can’t teach for a while, and I’ll be really busy. I hope I can see everyone again soon, though!”

“Hyung.”

“Stop talking, Kookie,” Jimin says, and there aren’t tears in his eyes, but the fact that Jeongguk has to check for them says enough. “You’re the one always saying you can’t interfere with the shot.”

“So. Trip wrap-up. Was it good?” Jeongguk asks, leaning over the back of his train seat to film Yoongi and Seokjin, who are bickering over who gets the last piece of dried squid they’re eating.

Yoongi looks up and nods, eyes a little manic and ringed with lilac circles. “Yeah. Joon and I finally got the song done last night.”

“Stop eating the squid and take a nap, Yoongichi,” Seokjin says.

“I’m fine, Jinnie. I’m all hyped. You know how I get after I make a good song.”

“Just good?”

“Still needs a couple tweaks. I need the girls to sing it, they’re fucking good. I’ll make some adjustments once I have their recordings, make it fit their styles and voices and everything.”

Seokjin looks overwhelmingly fond. “I’m sure it’s great, Yoongichi. Go to sleep. My shoulder is very soft.”

“You just want me to pass out so you can take the last piece of squid.”

“Not true!”

“Extremely true, Jinnie. I know you too well.”

Seokjin sighs and bats his eyelashes at the camera. “The disrespect, lovely viewers. The disrespect.”

Yoongi sighs and shakes his head, and then he leans over and rests it on Seokjin’s shoulder. “Give me the squid.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“ Jinnie. ”

“ Yoongichi. ”

Jeongguk chuckles to himself and turns the camera away, distracted by the view out the window. When he glances back over his shoulder a couple minutes later, Yoongi’s eyes are closed, mouth open and drooling. Seokjin is taking an embarrassing selfie of them where he’s smiling brilliantly and poking the last piece of squid at Yoongi’s mouth.

He winks at Jeongguk and puts the last piece of squid back in the package. “He’s probably just faking because he secretly wants me to eat the squid but doesn’t want to admit it,” Seokjin whispers at the camera, sighing wistfully. “But what he doesn’t know is that I know his game, so I’m gonna leave it for him and then later when he wakes up, I’ll go to the bathroom and leave it so that he can eat it.”

Jeongguk blinks. “You two are going to own that piece of dried squid forever, hyung. Neither of you will ever end up eating it.”

Seokjin sighs and presses his cheek to Yoongi’s head. “Probably. God , we’re so romantic. I love us.”

Jeongguk smiles and stands up, camera still recording as he heads down the aisle to find Namjoon and Hoseok.

The train is surprisingly empty, maybe because it’s the middle of the day on a Thursday—not exactly the prime time for people to be heading back to Seoul from Daegu—and Jeongguk passes a couple empty rows before he gets to a sight that surprises him. Instead of Hoseok and Namjoon in a row, it’s Jimin and Hoseok sitting next to each other, laughing over some video on Hoseok’s phone. A couple rows further down, Namjoon is passed out next to Taehyung, who is enraptured by his Switch.

“Hey, Jeonggukkie,” Hoseok says as Jeongguk approaches.

Jeongguk lifts the camera a little. “End of trip interviews?”

Hoseok nods, grinning brightly. Jimin’s quiet “okay” is a little bit heart-wrenching, but Hoseok doesn’t seem to notice.

“Any closing thoughts,” Jeongguk says. “I know I already got yours, Jimin-hyung. Kinda.”

“Kinda,” Jimin says. “It’s okay. Hobi-hyung, you first.”

Hoseok smiles. “Well. While I would very much like to go do all the farm things on a fully functional ACL, I’m glad I still got to go and hang out on the porch for a week. And it was probably good to have everyone helping me with icing it and stuff. Since Joonie needed to work on the song and all, not be worried about me.”

Jimin smiles. “He likes worrying about you.”

“I know,” Hoseok says. “But you guys are way less overbearing.”

Jimin huffs.

“Hmm, we also got to eat Jimin’s extremely skillful baking. And of course Seokjin-hyung’s cooking, but we always get to eat that, so. Less special.”

“I heard that!” Seokjin whisper-yells. Probably trying not to wake Yoongi.

“Love you, hyung,” Hoseok says. “It was cool that Taehyung invited us, you know? Especially Jimin, since you guys don’t know him as well.”

Jeongguk can’t help but focus the camera on Jimin. It’s easier to look at him through the filter of a lens, the artificiality of a zoom function and automatic brightness adjustment. “Jimin-hyung? Are you glad you came with Hobi-hyung?”

It feels like Jeongguk is asking too much. Too much, and not enough, and Jimin nods at him, a little weary—

“Yeah, I’m glad,” Jimin smiles. “Like I told you this morning. It’s been good. Glad to be a part of this. My summer vacation would’ve been really boring if I’d been stuck in Seoul.”

“You know, Jimin’s from Busan originally,” Hoseok says, looking at Jeongguk now and not the camera. “Your parents moved back there, right? You guys could totally visit together!”

Jeongguk shifts awkwardly. “Uh, sure. Yeah.”

Jimin nods. “Totally.”

“Totally,” Jeongguk echoes. Then he clears his throat. “Well. I’m gonna go talk to Taehyung-hyung, get his—”

The look on Jimin’s face goes heartbroken. Utterly drained, no longer even pretending to be happy. Maybe he’s too tired to keep up the veneer after the long walk from Taehyung’s house to the nearest station, a couple transfers. After a week of farmwork and sunshine that’s left his skin a little tanner than it was a week ago.

After a week falling in love, and having his heart broken. All because Jeongguk was too selfish and desperate to have Taehyung for himself, when Taehyung was never his in the first place.

“Um. Yeah,” Jimin finally says, flashing a faint smile. “Sure.”

Jeongguk looks at Taehyung. “On second thought,” he says, clearing his throat for maybe the fifth time in this conversation, “he seems kind of caught up. Smash Bros, or something. I’ll just catch him later.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you,” Jimin murmurs, yawning. “I’m tired. Might go to sleep.”

“Same,” Hoseok says, either oblivious to the sudden weirdness between Jeongguk and Jimin or (more likely) ignoring it so they can all save face.

“Right. Hoseok. Jimin. See you,” Jeongguk says, turning away.

“See you,” Jimin murmurs, tiny hand darting out to snag Jeongguk’s wrist. The contact feels like a burn, a mark, a bloodstain. “Oh, um, Jeongguk-ssi?”

“Yeah?” Jeongguk asks, suddenly breathless.

Taehyung, and Jimin, and neither one of them for him. Fuck his traitorous, selfish heart for wanting them both.

Both?

Jesus Christ, Jeon Jeongguk.

Fuck. Fucking fuck.

“Just, uh. When you edit the video, make sure you make me look good, okay?” Jimin asks, voice lilting up like it’s a joke, although he’s worrying his lip between his teeth, clearly nervous, a little bit sad. “I just. I wouldn’t want the audience to hate me. Or think I was…um. In the way.”

Jeongguk feels the ocean swallow him again, the wave all crushing, tendrils of cold current dragging him down, down. “What are you talking about? You always look great, Jimin-ssi.”

Jimin’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. Jeongguk turns the camera away.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jeongguk tells his computer, swallowing a gulp of the wine in the glass next to him, tugging at one of his ears the way he does when he’s stressed or embarrassed. “Fucking ridiculous, filming videos of myself like I’m some idol doing a VLive or something—”

He drinks more, finishes the glass, pours another.

Jeongguk settles his gaze on the camera. “I fucked up. I fucked it up and it was my fault, and I shouldn’t have— fuck, and every time I try to edit it’s just Taehyung and Jimin being happy and—and I took that away from them. I did that, and I shouldn’t have, it was—awful. It was the worst thing I ever did, probably.”

He laughs and shakes his head at the ceiling.

“I have to fix it, you know? I think I can do it, I just have to edit it—I got so much footage, more than enough, and maybe if I get it right and I show them—I can be like, ‘Look, you guys, you’re clearly in love, you belong together!’ I just—I spent eight years being careful, not letting Taehyung know I was—and then I just fucking ruin it just like that. In the blink of an eye. I fucking knew something like this would happen, I mean, we’ve been back for three days and Tae hasn’t even talked to me, and we’re all supposed to get together for dinner at Seokjin’s tomorrow night but I don’t even wanna go, I’m like—I don’t have a video ready, I can’t show them anything…”

Jeongguk sighs and takes another swallow of wine. He hasn’t eaten all day and the alcohol is going to his head, making him woozy and sad. “Maybe I’ll just—make something else. At least I can make some montage to a song or something, put that together for tomorrow.”

He stares at the webcam and shakes his head, blinking drunkenly. “Fuck. This is stupid, I’m ending the stream, log off— ”

“Hey, Jeonggukkie!”

“Hey! Hope you smile when you find this!”

“What if he accidentally tapes over it?”

“Jiminie, it’s a digital video camera, I don’t think taping over stuff is still a thing.”

Jimin sticks out his tongue and Taehyung giggles and sticks his out back. They’re sitting on the porch and it looks like morning, the light all yellow and inviting. Jeongguk wonders when they got a hold of his camera to record this. Maybe when he was in the shower or something.

“Mean,” Jimin says. “Did your parents have one of those really big video cameras, the ones that literally had like a whole VHS tape in them?”

“Yeah, oh my god, what was that, like 1999? 2000? My friends and I did a pageant thing in our yard one year and my dad filmed it and my mom got so mad because he didn’t prop the camera on anything and his hands shook the whole time!”

Jimin giggles and grins at the camera. “I’m not sure if I’m more amused by your mom being mad or the fact that you did a pageant.”

“Jeonggukkie has seen the pageant. Remember those tapes, Kookie? If you have somehow forgotten, we can watch them next time we go to Daegu. Oh! We can show Jiminie, since he’s obviously coming with us,” Taehyung says.

“Don’t we have to check with Jeonggukkie to make sure he’s okay with it?” Jimin laughs, nudging Taehyung’s shoulder.

“Absolutely not. My house my rules.”

Jimin giggles some more. He looks so beautiful in the morning light. Taehyung looks beautiful too.

“Anyways. Anything we want to say to baby Jeongguk before we go? Probably don’t have too much time. Sorry we stole your camera, Kookie.”

“Hmm…maybe just thanks for filming?” Jimin says, tilting his head so the light hits his cheek just right. “It’s really cool, you know. That you want to commemorate stuff like this.”

“Yeah, Jeonggukkie,” Taehyung says. “I always tease you to put the camera down, but it really is a cool hobby.”

“Just remember. We want you out from behind the lens once in a while,” Jimin teases, smiling with his tongue bitten between his teeth.

“Yeah, Jeonggukkie. Wanna have our boy with us, not just watching us. Right, Jiminie?”

“Right!” Jimin chirps.

The recording ends. Jeongguk puts his head in his hands and cries.

“Okay, this has been too sappy,” Seokjin cries, sobbing overdramatically and completely fake.

“Jeongguk-ah, you’ve broken my boyfriend,” Yoongi deadpans.

Jeongguk shrugs. “Glad you liked it, hyungs. It’s for you guys, you know, like. Golden Closet Films isn’t just mine. It’s for all of us.”

Hoseok nods. “Your editing just gets better every time I see another one. I’m sure all your wedding clients are thrilled when they see your videos!”

“Seriously, Kook,” Namjoon adds. “You’ve got so much talent. If I tried to film anything, my hands would shake the whole time and the recording would be ruined.”

Across the room, Taehyung’s head snaps over towards Jeongguk, thinking, undoubtedly, of that secret video he’d recorded with Jimin, the mention of the pageant video tapes. Jimin looks at Taehyung and then towards Jeongguk, a smile splitting his mouth open a little too wide.

Jeongguk is hit with a wave of nostalgia thinking of the tapes: five-year-old Taehyung in a gauzy purple dress and dinosaur pajamas underneath for no reason except that he liked them, singing songs from TV programs every Korean kid grew up watching in the ’90s. Jeongguk thinks about curling up with Taehyung on the old couch in the living room of the farmhouse, the one Jimin had slept on. Thinks about showing the tapes to Jimin, bringing him into their fold, all three of them grinning at the way tiny Taehyung sways with the wind, looking like a fairy prince. Laughing at how Taehyung’s father’s hand shakes the whole way through. The imperfection only adds to the magic of it.

“It’s really good, Jeongguk-ssi,” Jimin says, dragging Jeongguk out of his thoughts. “And I’d say that even if you weren’t recording my response to it right now.”

Jeongguk smiles at him, as friendly as he can be. “Thanks, Jimin-ssi. Sorry. I can put the camera away.”

“No, keep it on,” Taehyung says. “It’s kind of your signature move. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it keeps you honest.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hoseok mutters into Namjoon’s ear, not quiet enough. “ Ow, ” he yelps right after. “Don’t step on my foot.”

“Okay, rock-paper-scissors for who does the dishes?” Seokjin asks, talking loudly like he’s trying very hard to make this as not-awkward as possible.

“It’s okay, hyung. I’ll do them,” Jeongguk offers, desperate to get out of the room. Taehyung isn’t looking at him, back to scrolling restlessly through his phone. Jimin is sitting with Hoseok and trying not to look at Taehyung, but his eyes stray over there every couple seconds and just kind of stay.

Jeongguk wonders why he’s even bothering to film anymore. Maybe the buffer did just get to be too easy to hide behind. Maybe Taehyung is wrong, and it’s the lack of a camera that makes him honest. Dangerous. Jeongguk’s honesty is what ruined everything, and he’d done that without remembering there was a camera at all.

“Jeonggukkie, you did all the work of making this lovely film of us—” Seokjin starts.

“Watch it again while I’m gone. Indulge me, and I’ll do the dishes for us,” Jeongguk says.

“Let him go,” Yoongi says when Seokjin starts to protest again.

Jeongguk goes into the kitchen and sets the camera on the counter next to the piles of plates they’d all abandoned there earlier, plunging his hands into the water. Fuck. He forgot to turn off the recording and he’s probably getting weird edges of plates and like half his torso, but now his hands are wet and he doesn’t want to dry them to turn the camera off, so. Whatever.

A minute passes in solitude, the only sound the faint backtrack of indie music Jeongguk had put in the trip montage which the hyungs must be watching again. Then there are footsteps and someone enters the kitchen.

“Hey,” Jimin’s voice says. He stops in the doorway. “Still recording?”

Jeongguk turns and looks at him. Shrugs. “Yeah. It’s stupid, but I like—I don’t know. I forgot to turn it off and now my hands are wet, so. Yeah. You can stop it if you want.”

“Oh. No, I—I wouldn’t want to break it.”

“It’s fine.” Silence, a little tense. Jeongguk scrubs at a plate and lets out a breath. “Did you, um. Need something? Jimin-ssi?”

Jimin shakes his head and holds up his empty glass. “Just came to get more water. Sorry to disturb you.”

“You’re not. Disturbing me, I mean,” Jeongguk says, turning back to the dishes.

Jimin hums. “I always thought doing the dishes was therapeutic, you know? Meditative, for me. And you seemed kind of restless earlier, so I thought—maybe you needed some space or something. I don’t know.”

“But you really needed the water so you thought you’d interrupt me anyways,” Jeongguk teases.

Jimin’s face falls.

“Fuck, I need to stop doing that,” Jeongguk blurts. “I don’t mean to, I promise. I swear to you, Jimin, every time I’m a dick to you it’s really me trying to be joking but it just comes out very shitty.”

Jimin offers a smile that looks surprisingly genuine, given the circumstances. “It’s okay. I get it.”

“I should be less mean.”

“No, I—I don’t mind teasing. I just…don’t always know how to read you, Jeonggukkie. You’re always so closed off.”

Jeongguk shrugs. “I don’t mean to be.”

“I know.”

They stare at each other in the reflection of the window above the sink, the darkness outside reflecting the light from within and turning glass to mirror. Or maybe it’s a portal to an alternate world. Maybe the Jimin and the Jeongguk of that dimension aren’t sad.

Jeongguk wonders if the camera makes a difference. If there’s a story outside of it, or if he’s captured all there is that should be told.

A sharp pain shoots through Jeongguk’s fingers and he gasps and pulls his hand out of the water, holding his right hand up to the light. For a second, it glistens with only water, but then across the tips of his first three fingers, a thin line of blood appears. It only takes a second for the cuts to well up with big heavy drops of blood.

“Fuck,” Jimin yelps, setting his glass down and snatching up a dish rag, practically leaping to Jeongguk’s side and grabbing his hand out of the air to press the fabric against it. They’re chest to chest like this but Jeongguk barely registers it, his head still caught a few seconds back and struggling to catch up—

“Fuck, you can’t put knives in the soapy water where you can’t see them,” Jimin says, reaching into the sink despite his own warning and feeling around. He lifts Seokjin’s santoku blade out of the sink and drops it onto the counter, brushes his wet fingers on his pants. Then he lifts his hand to cradle Jeongguk’s, his other hand pulling the dishrag carefully away. It’s reddened with blood but the cuts don’t look deep, and a couple seconds pass before a slow drip of blood wells up in the cut across his pointer finger.

“Um,” Jeongguk says, head finally getting back online. “Oh. Thanks.”

“Does it hurt? Are you okay? You’re not one of those people who passes out at the sight of blood or something, right?”

“I—I’m fine, hyung,” Jeongguk manages, flexing his fingers a little. It doesn’t hurt that much, really. Just a little sting.

Nothing compared to the ache of having Jimin this close. Nothing compared to the ache of having Taehyung and losing him, of never having Jimin to begin with.

“Come on. Let’s go get Seokjin-hyung and find out where he keeps the bandages.”

Jeongguk follows Jimin out of the kitchen, dishes and camera forgotten. Later on, when he gets home with bandages across the tips of his fingers and the ghost of Jimin’s gentle touch aching more than the cuts, he watches back the clip. It must be either the luckiest or the unluckiest bit of happenstance: the camera doesn’t get their faces, but it doesn’t need to. It gets everything that happens with their hands, and it gets the conversation. It gets Jimin’s tiny fingers working gentle as anything at Jeongguk’s long ones. It gets the feel of it, the heavy atmosphere, the care with which Park Jimin does everything.

Jimin didn’t deserve what Jeongguk did to him. His hands spell that out, loud and clear.

“Fuck. I’ve never had so much trouble editing before,” Jeongguk tells the webcam. “It’s like every clip is perfect, except there’s something off about it all? I can’t describe it.”

He sighs and shakes his head, leaning back in his chair. “I guess probably it was me. I thought I could film them falling in love, but I couldn’t. Particles act differently when you observe them, it’s like—a science thing.” He snorts. “I probably learned that on I Fucking Love Science. ”

Jeongguk stares at the wood of his desk, so new and shiny compared to the surface of the one in Taehyung’s high school bedroom. “Anyways. I know I can get it. I can’t fuck it up any more than I already have.”

“So? Are you going to show me something or not?”

“Not yet,” Jeongguk says, trying to stall for time. “Hold on, I’m testing some lighting things.”

Taehyung scoffs and runs his hand along the window sill. Examines the tip of his finger with a frown. “How are even your windows this clean?”

“I like cleaning,” Jeongguk says. “Look at the camera? Okay. The light’s pretty good like this.”

“Wait, did you ask me to come over so you could film me?”

“No,” Jeongguk says. “Like I told you. I have something to show you.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Taehyung demands, frowning at Jeongguk, ignoring the camera in front of him. “You don’t speak to me for days and suddenly I’m getting a text to come to your apartment urgently? Dude, this is all fuckin’ sus.”

“Sorry,” Jeongguk says, trying not to sound short. He takes a breath and tries again. “Sorry, hyung. Really. I’m just—kind of going through things right now.”

Taehyung scoffs and spins the chair a few inches to the left, then back a few inches to the right. He’s lounging in a position that looks casual. Jeongguk knows it’s anything but. “Whatever. Look, I kind of don’t know what to say here. I mean, I get that after we—you know. I get feeling weird about it. But we’ve been friends for a long time. Friends can have sex and, like, still be friends. I don’t know. You’ve been acting like I’m gonna start begging you to date me or something, but trust me. That’s not my intention.”

Jeongguk swallows, but the lump in his throat doesn’t go away or shrink. “I know. And I didn’t mean to make you feel like we weren’t going to stay friends. I didn’t…”

“What? Didn’t mean to fuck me for the sake of some old high school crush? Yeah, I didn’t mean for that to happen either.”

Jeongguk crosses his arms, blood suddenly hot. He’s embarrassed, and frustrated, and he’s heard that usually people cry more out of frustration than out of sadness and maybe he wants to cry, or maybe he wants to grab Taehyung by the collar and shake him, make him hurt the way Jeongguk hurts.

But that’s not fair. Jeongguk tries for diplomacy. It comes out sharp: “Yeah, well, as far as I remember, I didn’t even fuck you.”

Taehyung waves a hand and laughs, all offense and disbelief. “Close enough. Jesus fuck, you suddenly turn into some anti-woke jock boy who thinks P-in-V sex is the only real sex or something?”

“Fuck you.”

“Stop being an asshole. You’ve been shitty since the start of the trip. Being a dick to me, hiding behind that stupid camera like you didn’t want to hang out with any of us? And don’t even get me started on how you treated Jimin—”

“Shut up.” Jeongguk turns away, pacing across the floor. He squeezes his eyes shut, pinches the bridge of his nose. “You think I don’t know that? I didn’t want to fucking ruin things and then I did anyway—”

“That’s the attitude that annoys me, Jeongguk,” Taehyung snaps. “This fucking poor me, I have to stay behind the camera because if I’m in front of it, or if I GOD FORBID just turn the fucking thing off, I’m gonna make everyone miserable. ”

“Well, congratulations, Me,” Jeongguk announces. “I had the camera on the whole time and yet, I still did make everyone miserable.”

Taehyung throws his hands up. “You didn’t , though! You don’t! You fucking edit together hours of footage and you don’t even see it—” He cuts off, sighs angrily. Gets up out of the chair and turns to look out the window, shoulders tight.

“What?” Jeongguk demands.

“I wanted to go have fun with you,” Taehyung says, whirling around. “I thought we’d go back to the farm and it would be us again, the way we haven’t been in a while. I mean, sure, we’re still best friends, we still hang out all the time, but…there’s always this distance between us. And I thought going back would be fun, and having our friends there would just—make it better. Like a whole family, but you and I would get to hang out together. Us!”

“Look, I’m not the one who’s been going around dating everyone in Seoul for the past six years—”

Taehyung scoffs. “Fuck you, using my dating choices against me? Slut-shame me some more, come on, you think I can’t take it? So what, I like sex—”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jeongguk cries. “That’s not—that’s literally not it at all. Sleep with whoever you want, it has nothing to do with how many partners you’ve had! It’s the fact that you’re complaining about distance between us when you are the one who always has a partner, and I try my best to be respectful of that! I don’t want to come between you and whoever you’re seeing!”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should!”

Jeongguk throws his hands up. “I fucking did, and look where it got us!”

Taehyung freezes. “What?”

Jeongguk stares at him, panting, breathless. “You know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Taehyung says, entirely careful, fingers finding the back of the desk chair and clenching tight. His knuckles look white and bony, gaunt beneath the dim lamplight.

Jeongguk shakes his head. “Yes, you do. I fucking—I knew about you and Jimin. Okay? I knew you guys were going to be a thing, and I kissed you anyways. And then we fucked.”

Taehyung deflates. His shoulders relax, and he ducks his head, suddenly small. “That wasn’t just you, Jeonggukkie. That was me, too. You can’t shoulder all the blame for something that was my choice too.”

Jeongguk closes his eyes. “Hyung…”

A knock on the door. Taehyung’s head jerks up as he looks at Jeongguk, but Jeongguk has already turned away to go for the entrance.

When he swings open the door, Jimin is standing there twisting his hands together and looking incredibly uncertain. He’s wearing a loose pink T-shirt and black Adidas workout pants, the tapered kind that cling to his well-muscled thighs in a way that’s somehow both soft and sexy at once. His hair is fluffy and a little unkempt, like he showered and didn’t blow dry it afterwards. He must have just come from the dance studio, because he’s carrying a half-zipped duffle bag over his shoulders. Jeongguk can see a bottle of workout recovery drink and a pair of ballet shoes through the narrow opening of the bag.

“Um. Hi,” Jimin murmurs. “I, uh. Didn’t know if I was supposed to bring anything. I should’ve stopped somewhere and got something—sorry, I just, I was busy at work and uh—”

“You’re fine, hyung,” Jeongguk says, hoping Jimin didn’t hear any of the argument while he was standing outside the door. “Um. Come in. Taehyung is here.”

Jimin blinks and then looks—somehow—even smaller. Not even hurt, just understanding. Resigned to his place in this world. “Oh. Cool. Makes sense.”

Jeongguk frowns but doesn’t think too much on that, whatever it means. “Come on. Here, house slippers, if you want. You don’t have to wear them.”

“No, it’s fine,” Jimin murmurs. “Can I…”

“Oh, yeah, put your bag wherever. It’s fine. You’re fine.” Jeongguk should probably stop saying “fine” so much.

“Thanks,” Jimin murmurs, slipping out of his Filas and into the slippers.

“Come on,” Jeongguk says. “I have something to show you. Both of you.”

Jimin follows with a slight frown on his face, sliding along the floor in the too-big slippers. When Taehyung sees him, he looks stricken for a second and then nods.

“Hey. Long time no see.”

Jimin nods. “Yeah. Nice to see you.”

So they haven’t been talking. Jeongguk’s fault, Jeongguk’s fault, Jeongguk’s fault.

“Okay,” Jeongguk says, gesturing them towards the couch and grabbing his camera. He wants to see their reaction to this, wants to preserve it too, maybe add it as an addendum, like an after-credits scene. It’s not long, only about five minutes, but Jeongguk thinks they’ll like it. It’s forged from a couple sleepless nights and a lot of tears, so—hopefully it’ll be worth it. “Here we go.”

“Another video?” Jimin asks, settling into the couch. He and Taehyung sit at opposite ends, and Jeongguk’s heart hurts to see them, wishing for something he can never have.

After this, they can leave together, as one. And Jeongguk will be all alone, because Jeongguk does not get to have someone, let alone two someones—doesn’t get to be included in this. He’s the group’s camera man, the seventh wheel, the youngest, the odd one out.

“I made this just for you. Both of you.”

“And you’re filming us as we watch it,” Jimin murmurs, quirking an eyebrow, mouth soft like he’s trying hard not to look uncomfortable being here.

“Just watch it,” Jeongguk whispers, and then he presses play.

Black screen, and then a slow fade-in. Taehyung, sitting in his bedroom, the light glowing on his golden cheeks. “Jimin is nice. I don’t know, we got along right away, so that’s like—good. It’s been a long time since I just, you know, clicked with someone. Maybe tomorrow he’ll milk Betty with me. I bet he’d like that. Ooh! I wonder if he brought clothes he can get dirty in! If not, maybe he’ll let us dress him up in some of our old stuff. It’ll be too big, but he’d look really cute swamped in one of our—er. My. One of my old high school T-shirts.”

That smirk, that wink. A moment too long, and then a cut.

Out in the field, the summer day hot around them. Jimin adjusts Taehyung’s hat, taps his nose. “Hey, Tae, did you put on sunscreen yet?”

“Yes! No—no? Yes. I don’t know.”

“Your nose is getting red.”

Taehyung frowns. “Already? How? How? ”

“We were standing facing the sun, I guess. Also you have to wear the hat like this, if you tip it back that far it doesn’t even help—”

“It doesn’t look cute when you pull it down that way—”

“ You won’t look cute if you get all sunburned—”

“Not true! I am the cutest sunburned person in the solar system. The galaxy —”

“You’re gonna look like a crab—”

“Namjoon-hyung loves crabs—”

“Yes well Namjoon-ssi is in fact not your boyfriend—”

“He can find me platonically cute when I’m sunburned and a crab—”

And then Jimin is laughing, and the farm is verdant green around them, and the sky so blue. Jimin throws back his head and laughs, and Taehyung giggles and tips forward to bury his face in Jimin’s shoulder. He turns his head and laughs into the hollow of Jimin’s neck, his arms coming out to snake around his waist and lift him up, and then they’re twirling through the garden.

Cut.

Jimin looking at Taehyung, late night at the kitchen table. An awkward shot because Jeongguk had to cut himself off the side of it, but that doesn’t take away from the beauty of it when Jimin turns his perfect stare on Taehyung, a seductive smile on his face. “Yeah?” He asks, leaning in.

Taehyung visibly swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing with it, and Jimin’s eyes track the motion like he’d like to leave a dark bruise right there, visceral and plum-bright. “Yeah,” Taehyung says, obviously a little turned on.

Jimin leans sideways against the back of his chair, his whole body angled directly at Taehyung. He lays an arm across the back of Taehyung’s chair, and on the screen, his fingers brush Taehyung’s collarbone. “Hmm. Seems to me like you wanna see the tape.” He looks beautiful in profile. The perfect slant of his nose, the jut of his jaw. Sleek, powerful, but young. Pink and gold, like peach.

“I’m just curious,” Taehyung says. “You know. I’ve never made a sex tape. Maybe I could learn something.”

“Mhmm,” Jimin agrees. “That’s why you want to watch it. For educational purposes.”

“Educational purposes only,” Taehyung says, lips curling up as he smirks. Jimin leans forward, forward, almost a kiss—

Cut.

A dark kitchen, hardly anything visible. Just giggles, the low hum of Taehyung’s deep voice.

“Tae!”

“Shh!”

“Sorry, sorry, I—you’re stepping on my feet on purpose —”

“I’m not, I’m just a terrible dancer—”

“We don’t even have any music!”

“We can’t wake the others!”

“I can’t see anything—fuck, ow, that was my hip—”

“Come on, closer, plehhthliblwwah ugh sorry I just ate your hair—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, come on, dance with me more. Keep singing.”

Cut.

Morning in the kitchen. The hum of cicadas the only sound, and Jimin and Taehyung are looking at each other, smiling.

Cut.

Running through the sprinklers. Jimin on Taehyung’s back, clinging onto him as they leap together through the arch of clear, cold water on a hot summer evening.

Cut.

Milking Betty in the dim copper of the barn, curled together on the stool, hands woven together as they smile and their teeth glitter in the light.

Cut. 

Standing at the kitchen sink, harmonizing over the dishes.

Cut.

Cut, cut, cut, every scene another snapshot of two people together, smiling and laughing, falling in love.

And then the end. A black screen, hanging there, and then—

The image of a train station, bustling, bright and too vivid, rainbow and gold like summer. Park Jimin, in a white T-shirt and chunky Filas. The look on his face when he sees Kim Taehyung.

“Hi. I’m Taehyung,” a voice offscreen says. Deep, the way Taehyung’s voice is always deep. 

“Hi, Taehyung-ssi. I remember you.”

“We’re the same age, I think? You can just call me ‘Tae’.”

Zoom out, so both of them are on the screen.

“Tae,” Jimin says. Quiet, as they look at each other, all rapture, soft mouths, eyes warm with wonder.

The screen goes black, and the last few seconds play out. Then the orange traffic cone icon of VLC media player takes over the screen again, and the story is over.

Ending with the beginning. Not exactly an original trope, but it makes the point, Jeongguk thinks. Taehyung and Jimin, this is not the end. It’s the beginning.

The air in the living room is heavy and velvet, soft in a sense but there’s that worry that if you move the wrong way, that prickly wrongness might brush against you, rough. A collective moment of breath held in too-tight chests, all three of them absorbing the things they’ve just seen. The roles they’ve played.

Jimin is the one who breaks the silence. “When I asked you to make me look good, Jeongguk-ssi, I didn’t really mean for you to make a film like this.”

Jeongguk raises his eyes from his lap and stares at Jimin. In the time since they sat down and pressed play, the sun has set and darkness has fallen. They should turn on the lamp or something, but the moment hangs too delicate for that kind of normal, everyday motion.

“But. Did you like it,” Jeongguk murmurs, barely getting through the words without his voice cutting out, rough on emotion.

Jimin turns his head and stares out the window. Maybe he’s trying not to cry. “I didn’t know I looked—like that. I mean…”

“Yeah,” Taehyung manages, looking at Jimin and then turning desperately towards Jeongguk. “Kookie…”

Jeongguk shrugs. “I just saw the story underneath the other stuff. All of us hanging out, I mean, that’s fun and all. I like showing people off, or like—taking video of people to reveal how I feel about them.”

Jimin’s head snaps up. “Jeongguk-ssi…”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “But I like filming people to reveal how they feel about each other, too. I mean. I’m a wedding videographer. It’s kind of in the job description.” He lets out a wet laugh. Sniffs, shakes his head. Wonders why he feels like he’s going to cry.

Jimin stands up. “That’s not it,” he says, pursing his lips together. With Taehyung sitting on the couch and Jeongguk on the armchair, separate, Jimin is the tallest in the room. Suddenly he’s looking at them both, a little frantic, desperate. “That’s not— fuck. ”

“Jimin?” Taehyung asks, sitting up and reaching a hand out, worry tensing his shoulders, his arms.

“I know you guys are together. I know you— fuck, ” Jimin says, crossing his arms. “Jeongguk, you cut so much out. You—you made a pretty film, of me falling in love, it’s just—I didn’t think you’d—you’d make a film of me falling for your boyfriend? I just—who does that, did you, are you trying to hurt me, because if so, you’re doing a very good job of it, I—”

“Jimin-ssi, what are you talking about? Tae and I aren’t together,” Jeongguk says, shaking his head.

“But you guys—” Jimin says, starting and stopping, and then crossing his arms defensively. “You…I thought you…”

Jeongguk closes his eyes. “I was stupid. It was my fault, I—okay, yes, Tae and I hooked up but it was a one-time thing, I didn’t mean anything.” Taehyung lets out a weird, whimpery noise and then looks ferociously out the window. Jeongguk ignores him. “I’m sorry. I got in the middle of things and I shouldn’t have.”

Jimin frowns, shaking his head. “What do you mean? ” He sounds so agonized, and Jeongguk’s chest bursts with oily guilt.

“Jimin-ssi. Tae-hyung. I knew you guys were falling for each other. I was trying to make a film of it. I mean, I didn’t want to film without your consent or anything, but I noticed early-on that you two were perfect together, and I just thought I could capture it. And make a really good short film of it. For you guys, to see how you looked falling in love.”

“But I—Taehyung’s not in love with me,” Jimin murmurs, ducking his head.

Jeongguk blinks. “Did you not watch the video? It’s obvious, it’s right there—”

“Jeongguk, wait,” Taehyung interrupts, suddenly turning in his chair to face Jeongguk head-on. “Hang on. You put together this video and it’s not wrong, what you captured, just—you cut out a bunch of the important parts.”

“Huh?” Jeongguk asks.

“Jiminie, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Taehyung says, looking at Jimin, all of a sudden standing up. “Jeongguk didn’t either, I think we—Jiminie, fuck, we fucked up, all of us—Jeongguk and I shouldn’t have slept together—”

“Yes, you should’ve,” Jimin says. “You two have been a thing for years, right? Like you told me. I knew you liked him, I just—I also thought maybe…just, I was silly. I hoped you also liked me too.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung says, sounding kind of dumbstruck.

“I mean it—it sucked, but—I knew from the start. You two have eight years of history but I just showed up and thought that—I mean. I don’t know. It’s my own fault, me getting hurt. I shouldn’t have fallen for you.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung murmurs, “nothing that happened was your fault. Except for the fact of you being you and me being head over heels. I mean, sure, Jeonggukkie and I have been best friends since we were teenagers, and right now that feels like a lot of time, but in the long run? That’s nothing. When we’re all old and gray and chasing feebly after our grandchildren, eight years will be nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” Jimin’s voice cracks over the syllables, and tears spill down his cheeks quietly.

Jeongguk shakes his head, aching to go to him, to hold him—but he knows it’s not his place. “I knew you two were in love and I got in the way. It was my fault.”

“Can we stop making everything someone’s fault ?” Taehyung asks. “I’m trying to figure things out here, and we all need honesty or it’s not going to work.”

“I’m just—sorry. For everything,” Jimin says, a little wistful, like he’s resigned himself to the fact that all this is going to hurt. That sometimes life just fucking feels bad.

“Like I said, it’s no one’s fault. But…I’m sorry too,” Taehyung says. “Jeongguk and I shouldn’t have hooked up. Even if we wanted a night in my bedroom, to make up for lost time or whatever, we should’ve talked about it. Communicated. It wasn’t fair of me to…of us , I mean…”

Jimin shrugs. A faint, beautiful, sad smile flits across his lips. “That’s what being young is all about though, isn’t it? Making decisions you don’t think through. Being reckless. Leap first, look later.”

“Jiminie,” Taehyung whispers.

“It just sucked that you didn’t talk to me after,” Jimin murmurs. “Either of you. I…I knew I’d lost, but I hoped we could still be friends.”

Taehyung shifts awkwardly. “Lost?”

Jimin only shakes his head.

Taehyung sighs. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to do. I felt so guilty.”

“I thought I was gonna be sick from how bad I felt,” Jeongguk whispers. He meets Jimin’s eyes. Jimin deserves that much.

Jimin shakes his head. “It’s okay. You two should be together. I…it’s a pretty film, Jeongguk-ah, but it’s not the real story.”

“Jimin-hyung, you can just say it,” Jeongguk says, trying to be firm. “It’s okay. You can tell Taehyung-hyung you like him. I know he’s—it’s never been me, Jimin-ssi. Jimin- hyung. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was selfish. But it’s you, it has to be you. Tae, Jimin, it’s okay,” Jeongguk whispers. “It should be you.”

Jimin shakes his head. “I don’t—I mean. I get that you don’t like me, Jeongguk. I thought you did sort of but that was stupid, so. Yeah.”

Jeongguk blinks. “I—what? I mean, I know I shouldn’t have been flirting when I knew you were into Tae, I should’ve shut it down, but I liked you too, Jimin-ssi, I shouldn’t have been flirting with you or with Tae, I know— ”

“ Jeongguk-ah. Stop that, that’s not what I meant. I’m not mad that you were flirting with me.”

Jeongguk blinks. “You’re not?”

Jimin blushes and ducks his head. “No. I mean…I wanted you to. I wanted to flirt with Taehyung, yeah, but…I wanted to flirt with you, too. Not just flirt. I—I want to be with you. I mean, I get that poly relationships aren’t really common and maybe you guys aren’t poly so I—I mean, just, I don’t—I don’t know how to say what I want except that Jeongguk, fuck, of course I like you. I thought I made it pretty fucking obvious. But I like Taehyung too. So.”

Taehyung sucks in a sharp breath, eyes lifting to flit between Jeongguk and Jimin. “Me too. Both of you, it’s not—it’s not just one of you for me. Jeongguk, you cut out the scenes of all three of us together. You cut out the parts where Jimin looked at you, not at the camera—at you. And you kept encouraging me and Jimin to be on screen together, and I thought I was being selfish. Flirting with Jimin, spending time with him. Imagining, like, dating him. But also aching so fucking much for you. It wasn’t fair to either of you, I thought. And then we hooked up and it was—I couldn’t look at either of you,” Taehhyung admits. “That’s why I never texted you guys. That’s why I was quiet at Seokjin’s dinner. Plus I kind of thought…I thought you two should be together. I thought I was the one in the way. And Jeonggukkie said that us hooking up didn’t matter, so…yeah. I thought this was—I don’t know. I think we all just thought wrongly about this.”

Jeongguk blinks. His heart is beating so hard he thinks he might pass out, and he has to blink hard to get the black spots out of his vision. “Wait,” he whispers. “You—you. Both of you…”

“You cut out the night we smoked on the porch. And those mornings we were in the kitchen,” Jimin murmurs.

“You cut out the evenings when we talked in my room,” Taehyung adds.

“You cut out us baking the cake together, and dancing,” Jimin says, taking a step forward.

“You cut out running through the sprinklers. The way all three of us held hands,” Taehyung says.

Jimin looks at Taehyung, and Taehyung looks back at Jimin. For a second Jeongguk aches, because their soulmate connection is so obvious this way, how they’re looking at each other and resolving themselves without words, just a look that says enough.

Jimin is the one who finally speaks. “You were so blinded by the camera in front of you, you never stopped to look up and see the boys who were falling in love on the other side of it. Not just with each other. With you. ”

Jeongguk’s chest feels like it’s bursting open with butterflies, his lungs and his heart slipping out onto the floor, into the hands of the boys standing in front of him. “What?” He chokes, shaking his head. “No, no no no, it’s not like—that’s not the story—”

“Bias by omission,” Taehyung says. “Changing a story by leaving out half of the facts.”

“I’m in love with both of you,” Jimin says.

“I’m in love with both of you too,” Taehyung says. “Jeongguk, I’ve been head over heels for you forever. And Jimin…you crept up on me. But it’s like soulmates. The string of fate. I know I’ve known Jeongguk longer, but that doesn’t make you less a part of this, Jimin-ah. If anything, it just means we have a bunch to catch you up on. So much time to share, and we want to know what you’ve been doing during all that time, too. I want to tell you. I…Jeongguk, do you…do you want to…”

“You. You love me,” Jeongguk says dumbly. He can feel his mouth opening and closing, opening. Closing. “You love me.”

Taehyung and Jimin exchange a glance. “We sort of hinted at it with each other, I think,” Jimin says, a little shyly. “One night we were talking. And Taehyung let it slip, sort of, that you guys had always been…a thing.”

“ Almost a thing,” Taehyung says. “We were always almost there, but we just never quite took the plunge.”

“I thought I was being the selfish one,” Jimin admits. “Wanting both of you when I knew you wanted each other. But I was flirting with you both.”

Jeongguk can feel his cheeks flushing. “Oh. I…”

“Hey. Kookie.” Taehyung turns towards him and taps his fingers under Jeongguk’s chin, the way he always used to back in high school. “C’mere.” He leans in slowly, waiting for permission.

“I—is this okay?” Jeongguk asks. He’s not even sure who he’s really asking at this point. Taehyung, Jimin, the room at large, the entire world.

“It’s okay,” Jimin says, smiling shyly. “If it’s okay with you. And as long as I get a turn next.”

Jeongguk ducks his head and leans in to press his lips to Taehyung’s. It’s not their first kiss, but it feels like this one means more than any they exchanged the other night as they frantically fit themselves together in Taehyung’s bedroom. Fireworks burst in Jeongguk’s belly, in his head. Taehyung hums into the kiss, and pulls away.

“Jimin, you too,” Taehyung says then, turning his attention away from Jeongguk. “If that’s—if that’s okay, Jeonggukkie?”

“It’s fine,” Jeongguk says, kind of dazed. He wonders if he’s living in a dream and then remembers that he’s still got the camera going, which means he has evidence of this. He can watch it back later, make sure he’s not hallucinating.

Taehyung steps forward towards Jimin and cups his cheeks. “I’ve been waiting forever to do this.”

Jimin giggles. “You’ve only known me for a week.”

“Not true. I wanted to kiss you since the first time I saw you. Like, what, six or seven months ago? At Hobi’s party.”

Jimin’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?”

“Me too,” Jeongguk says, feeling the sudden tug of the ocean again, only this time he’s not being pummelled beneath the waves. He’s on a boat, and it’s rocking with the current, but it’s a good kind of seasickness. A dizzy, salt-air tang like freedom. Like going somewhere new. “I wanted to kiss you when I saw you in your leather pants and all those rings. But I’m glad I waited. So I could get to know you, instead of just thinking you were hot.”

Jimin blinks. “Oh. I just—oh.”

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Taehyung murmurs, and then he does.

It’s a wondrous thing to watch. Jeongguk wonders if he should be feeling jealous, wonders at the fact that he’s not—he likes seeing it, the way Jimin’s tiny hands come up to land on Taehyung’s own, the way they migrate over to the back of Taehyung’s head and hold him a little more forcibly, their mouths moving in a tangle of lips, a flash of teeth.

“Okay, enough,” Jeongguk says, feeling the playful side of him come back online. “Come on, my turn. I wanna kiss Jiminie.”

“Jiminie- hyung, ” Taehyung reminds him, but Jimin laughs, and steps out of Taehyung’s arms—Taehyung whimpers a little and keeps his hands on Jimin’s hips, steps forward with him, caging him in from behind. And Jeongguk is smiling, and leaning in and they’re both there, Jimin and Taehyung, and Jeongguk’s heart is leaping for joy. He bends down and presses his lips to Jimin’s.

“Fuck.” The word tumbles out of Taehyung’s mouth and seems to ratchet the tension in the air up about ten digits—suddenly Jimin is whimpering, and his hands are on Jeongguk’s chest pressing on his nipple rings, and Jeongguk opens his mouth and that’s Jimin’s tongue, fuck, he steps closer, presses his hips to Jimin’s tummy—

“God, wanted to feel these since I saw them,” Jimin gasps, drawing away from Jeongguk’s mouth to rest his head back on Taehyung’s shoulder. “Fucking nipple rings, Jesus—”

“I know,” Taehyung murmurs. “I remember when he got them done. Just fuckin’ shows up at my dorm with ’em one day and I thought I was going come right then —”

“They’re not that cool, hyungs,” Jeongguk mumbles, but then Jimin flicks one just right and Jeongguk tips his head back—there’s a mouth at his throat and it takes him a second to realize it’s Taehyung’s—god. God.

“They’re pretty cool if they make you moan like that, baby,” Jimin says, suddenly sharp and a little commanding. A shiver runs down Jeongguk’s spine.

“Fuck, you wanna—wait,” Taehyung says. “Hold on. Two of us jumping into bed ended in near disaster. Do you think maybe we should like—talk about things a little more? Before we fuck?”

Jeongguk pulls away and smirks. “You wanna talk instead of getting your two new boyfriends into bed for your first-ever threesome, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung lets out a long moan. “Not fair, Jeonggukkie.”

“Wait, it’s your first threesome?” Jimin asks, and then he blushes red red red.

“Is it not yours?” Taehyung asks, half shocked and half delighted.

Jimin covers his face. “No. I’ve never been in a poly relationship before, but I’ve—yeah. I’ve had a threesome.”

“Just one?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says.

Jeongguk pulls his hands away from his face and kisses him hard. “Badass. Right, Tae-hyung?”

“Badass,” Taehyung confirms. “Okay, look. How about we turn off the camera—which is still recording, I think you forgot it, Jeonggukkie—and go cuddle in bed, and we can work out all our issues and talk logistics and stuff and then , if we’re up for it—haha, up for it—then we can have sex. Or just, like, make out for a while. Whatever.”

“I accept this plan,” Jimin says, a little breathless. “As long as I can kiss you both whenever I want during the discussion.”

Taehyung squeezes Jimin’s hips and leans down to bite his neck once, sharp but then soothing when he kisses it, smiling and looking up at Jeongguk with wide, happy eyes. Warm. In love. “Pecks are fine. No teeth, no tongue.”

“Not even one bite—”

“ No teeth, ” Taehyung says.

Jeongguk smirks. “Tae just really gets off on biting, and he knows he’ll derail us if we let that happen even a little.”

Jimin blinks like he’s dazed, and then he turns to look at Taehyung. “Fuck, you’re perfect. Fuck, both of you are so—” He launches himself at Jeongguk, kisses him hard. Pulls away and does the same to Taehyung.

“Come on, you two. Kiss.”

They oblige him, and it’s magic. Kissing Taehyung, the way Jeongguk always wanted. Even better, because Park Jimin is in between them, his arms around their waists, his hair brushing Jeongguk’s neck. Just the way it should be.

They pull apart, and there’s the blinking red light of the camera in the corner. “Come on. We can make our sex tape later,” Taehyung says, eliciting a peal of giggles from Jimin. “And then we’ll watch it back and get off again to ourselves hooking up.”

“Oh my god, come on,” Jeongguk gripes, dragging them towards the bedroom. As they pass the tripod, he reaches out, grinning at the lens with his two favorite people on either side of him, smiling wide. Jeongguk presses the button, and turns the camera off.

“Wait, so while we were all laboring on your farm, Taehyung-ah, you three were falling in love?” Namjoon asks, looking very intrigued.

“Yes. We’re making a movie about it,” Taehyung says.

“Jeongguk already tried, but he cut out all the good parts,” Jimin adds.

“Not all the good parts!” Jeongguk protests.

“All the good parts involving you, silly,” Taehyung says.

Jeongguk huffs and buries his face in Jimin’s neck. “Jimin-ssi. Taetae’s being mean.”

“Oh, calm down,” Taehyung gripes.

“Wait, did you know from the start?” Hoseok asks. He looks at the camera, which Jeongguk has conveniently propped on the coffee table so he can record all his friends’ reactions to the news that he and Jimin and Taehyung are all dating. And so he can get himself in the footage, too, because Jimin and Taehyung are insistent that he stop cutting himself out of it.

“Not really,” Jeongguk says.

“I mean. I liked them both,” Jimin admits. “I kinda thought…or. Wondered. If something could happen. And then I found out Tae and JK had always been a thing…”

“Oh, they danced around each other for years, yeah,” Yoongi says, climbing out of his chair a little slothlike and then slouching to the kitchen. “I’m getting more alcohol.”

“I’m still not over the fact that you knew we liked each other but you didn’t realize we both liked you,” Taehyung says to Jeongguk.

“You guys both didn’t realize that either! And also, the first time you guys met, you clicked over your phone case. The Haikyuu!! one, which I got for you,” Jeongguk says, a little shy. “I was so jealous. I was like, oh, Tae and this new guy just immediately having a meet-cute over my gift. I know it’s silly. I’m sorry.”

Taehyung blinks at him. Holds up his phone. “Wait. You had a whole crisis over this ?”

Jimin throws back his head and laughs. “Oh my god. Because in the train station, I saw the case and thought it was really cool!”

“Yeah. You guys clearly clicked. Forgive me for thinking I wasn’t invited to that party,” Jeongguk pouts, although he hardly even means it.

Jimin laughs harder, and Taehyung joins him.

“ What, guys, stop being mean!”

Jimin looks down at him and pats his head, smiling. “You know the first thing Taetae said to me after I commented on that case?”

“I said, ‘Jeongguk got it for me!’ And then I told him all about how we were best friends, and how Jimin would love you, too,” Taehyung fills in.

Jimin nods. “And he was right. I feel like I was pretty obvious, you know? That I liked you, Jeonggukkie.”

Jeongguk blinks, blankly. “Oh.”

Seokjin stares at all three of them, and then he turns to face the camera. “Oh my god. I am the hyung to the three most oblivious dongsaengs in the history of the universe. I swear to god. Yoongichi! Where are you? I need a drink!”

“Wha—hyung, you knew that this would happen?” Jeongguk whines, sitting up out of the pile of limbs he and Jimin and Taehyung have created on Seokjin’s sofa.

“I’m not talking to any of you right now,” Seokjin says, stalking out of the room towards the kitchen, again calling for his boyfriend.

“Fuck, I’m following him,” Namjoon says. “Hobi?”

“Please get me out of here. You know they’re about to have a feelings-y moment, and I hate feelings.”

“Yeah, yeah. Up you go. Crutches—”

Then there are three.

Jimin giggles. “Guess we should’ve just talked to each other.”

“I know my mantra the other night was to stop making everything someone’s fault, but I have decided to blame Jeongguk,” Taehyung says, picking up the camera off the coffee table. He fixes it on Jeongguk with a pout. “It’s too hard to pick up on vibes when you’re constantly on the other side of this piece of plastic. You were trying so hard to tell one specific story that you twisted all the details to fit that narrative instead of realizing what was actually going on.”

“Hyung, stop,” Jeongguk laughs, reaching for the device. “Come on, your hand is shaking, you’re gonna make the footage all wobbly.”

“Good,” Taehyung says, dropping the camera to his lap and leaning in for a kiss.

Most of the lens gets covered by the edge of a throw pillow. The rest of the room is a little out of focus, but every once in a while the camera gets confused and tries to adjust itself automatically, making the occasional glimpse of an armchair and TV come into view.

Mostly it’s just a blur of color. The sound of kissing, the leading edge of a giggle. A random foot, a wandering hand. Happiness.

Smash cut to black.

“Hey. Jeonggukkie.”

“ Hmm—mmmhhhhuh j’min-aeng, youokaaaay? ”

Jimin giggles and grins at Taehyung, who zooms the camera in closer on Jeongguk’s nose. Jimin leans in and looks at the display screen and reaches up to grab Taehyung’s hand, angling the camera down. “He’s drooling.”

Jeongguk’s eyelids flutter and flutter and then finally open. He gazes blearily at Taehyung and Jimin for a couple seconds and then his eyes drop to the device in their joined hands. “Stop stealin’ my camera.”

“But you’re really cute in the mornings,” Taehyung says, leaning into Jimin with too much force, which causes him to fall over into the wall.

“ Owwww, ” Jimin moans, even though he didn’t hit that hard. He wraps his arms around Taehyung and nuzzles his hair. “Too sleepy to hold you up. Sorry, baby.”

“’Sokay,” Taehyung says, still a little slurry himself. He leans over and sets the camera on the nightstand, and Jimin wrangles one of the pillows out from under his butt so he can push it between his back and the wall, support himself a little more.

“Jeonggukkie, come cuddle with us.”

Jeongguk blinks and tries to push himself up. In their nest of a bed, it’s hard work—there are like four stuffed animals (an Arctic seal, a fox, a bear, and a whale shark) and seven pillows and, now that the weather is cooling, three blankets. Jeongguk somehow has ended up with a lot of those items covering him, which means he knocks the seal and the fox off the bed in his struggle to get up, and of course that leads to Taehyung screeching quietly (but still screeching) about how the animals have fallen.

“Calm down, they’re fine,” Jeongguk grumbles teasingly. He scoots over a couple inches and then just sort of dives into the pile of limbs that is Taehyung and Jimin. They welcome him happily. Jimin coos, and Taehyung leans down to kiss Jeongguk’s forehead a couple times.

“Happy birthday, babe,” Jimin whispers, stroking hair out of Jeongguk’s eyes.

Jeongguk blinks up at him. “Is it my—fuck, I forgot. I was having the weirdest dream and I forgot. Dammit, why did you remind me, I hate getting older,” he pouts.

Jimin giggles and snuggles closer to Taehyung, tracing Jeongguk’s nose with his thumb. “You always have this freak-out at New Year’s, too.”

“I’m gonna give you birthday spanks,” Taehyung announces.

Jeongguk whines. “Not right now, hyung. Later. At the party.”

“Party!” Jimin cheers, raising one hand in the air.

“Can I give birthday kisses right now, then?”

“How about we each give him half of his birthday kisses,” Jimin suggests.

“How about you both give me the full number of kisses,” Jeongguk argues. “I want 24 kisses from Taehyung and 24 from Jiminie.”

“Brat,” Jimin grins.

“Needy,” Taehyung smirks.

Jeongguk groans low in the back of his throat. “ Stop. Be nice to me, it’s my birthday.”

“Aw, baby,” Jimin coos. “C’mere.”

Jeongguk leans up and fits his mouth to Jimin’s, and somehow in the fray of it they end up collapsing against the mattress, making out. Taehyung comes to lie next to them and it takes a second for Jimin to realize they’re all lying the wrong way on the bed now, but none of that seems to matter when Jeongguk is clinging to him all whiny and sweet, Taehyung mouthing his way down Jimin’s chest and fixing his teeth over the line of his hip, sultry and sweet.

“Fuck, it’s—hot, hot, get this blanket—fuck,” Jeongguk whimpers, yanking the duvet from around them and then pressing closer to Jimin’s chest. With the downy fabric gone, Jimin can feel how worked up Jeongguk is—but then their youngest is always a little bit horny in the mornings, needy and easy to rile.

“Fuck, you want us, baby?” Jimin grins. “Want your hyungs to make you feel good?”

“Mm. Camera,” Jeongguk whines, hips jumping when Jimin fits his mouth around one of his nipple rings. “ Fuck, hyung.”

Taehyung sits up suddenly and grins. “You know. While we’re here…”

“ We are not making a sex tape, ” Jimin says, even though truth be told, he’s not totally opposed to it.

“Just want you guys close,” Jeongguk says. “It still feels all new, having you. Wanna have you. Wanna touch you.”

“Okay, Jeonggukkie,” Taehyung says, grinning. “Since you asked so nicely.”

“Camera,” Jeongguk says. “Jimin wants you—turn off the camera—”

“It’s okay,” Jimin says, heart swelling with love, and with desire, and with daring. He loves how these boys make him feel. He loves these boys. “It’s okay, Jeonggukkie. If you guys really wanna leave it on.”

Taehyung blinks. “Really?”

“Really,” Jimin says.

“I want to,” Jeongguk says. “If you two are up for it.”

“Not to show anyone, though,” Taehyung says. “If we’re doing this, then it’s only for us.”

Jeongguk nods. “Us.”

Jimin holds out his pinky. “Promise.”

“Promise,” Taehyung and Jeongguk say. They all three link their pinkies.

The camera stays on the rest of the morning, and when they finally go to shut it off, it’s with flushed cheeks and messy hair.

“Okay, that was awesome,” Jimin grins, lying in bed and watching Jeongguk fiddle with the controls.

“What’s your birthday wish, Jeonggukkie?” Taehyung asks, tucking Jimin close.

Jeongguk flushes. “Nothing special. Just, like, being with you.”

Jimin and Taehyung hum and carefully tuck Jeongguk back into their arms. “I think that can be arranged,” Taehyung says.

“Yeah, Jeonggukkie. Love you lots,” Jimin agrees.

Jeongguk smiles and lies back down, holding the camera so it’s filming all three of them. “You two looked really good together.”

Jimin hums. “Thanks. But we look best when we’ve got all three.”

Taehyung nods happily, and then he bites Jeongguk’s shoulder.

“Tae!” Jeongguk shrieks, laughing so hard the camera shakes.

Taehyung pulls back. “Birthday bites now? C’mon, Jimin-ah. We owe Jeongguk 24.”

“Okay,” Jimin grins, all devilish delight.

“Wait—the camera!”

“Leave it on,” Taehyung drawls. “Fill the memory card with us. We’ll get you a new one for your birthday.”

They end up with three hours of footage. Jeongguk makes a feature-length film.