chapter 5

When Jungkook knocked on the front door to their apartment – because neither Seokjin nor himself had thought about taking a spare key with them when they left – he hadn’t expected all four of the other members to be waiting behind the door when it opened only seconds after he had knocked.

He was guided inside by Hoseok and Taehyung, still a bit dumbfounded at the fact that they had all decided to crowd the three of them by the front door instead of waiting for them in the living room, as the small space just through the door where they hung the coats and put the shoes they used the most couldn’t accommodate more than 3 of them at the same time if they wanted to have enough space to move around comfortably.

Next thing Jungkook knew Hoseok was looking at him with concern clear in his eyes, he could see the elder’s mouth moving but no sound was coming out of it. The only thing he could hear in that moment was the deafening buzz ringing in both of his ears.

When the maknae felt a tug at his foot – which would have caused him to fall backwards had Hoseok not been quick to grab onto his arms and steady him – he broke eye contact with his hyung and looked down towards the hardwood floor where he saw Taehyung crouched down in front of him in the middle of attempting to remove his shoes – which actually weren’t his. He had needed to put shoes on quickly when they were leaving and so he had ended up putting on a pair of Taehyung’s shoes –.

Jungkook doesn’t know how much time went by as he stood as if rooted to the floor – with Hoseok still holding onto him despite it not being necessary anymore. Staring down at the older male beneath him and lifting a foot when the elder would nudge him – but at some point both shoes must have come off cause Taehyung had once again risen to his full height beside him.

Next to Jungkook, Taehyung, and Hoseok, Namjoon was trying – and failing – to help Seokjin get rid of his own footwear, but it was difficult with the elder constantly moving his foot around whenever the rapper got his hands close enough.

“Hey! Stop grabbing my foot, or do you want me to fall over?” Seokjin asked the younger and pulled his – still – shoe clad foot out of Namjoon’s hand, gently. He was greatly annoyed at the younger because of how dense he must have been in that moment not to understand that he had been motioning for him to move back and not just been playing with his foot – he was too tired for games –, but that didn’t mean he wanted the younger to accidentally get injured because he had been too rough when pulling back.

“Oh! Uh, sorry hyung. I thought you wanted me to help,” the rapper said and scratched the nape of his neck, redirecting his gaze to rest on the rack of coats and jackets hanging on the opposite wall to avoid the other’s gaze.

“It’s fine. Just. Help Jimin-ah with Yoongi instead? I can take care of my own stuff for now, Yoongi can’t,” Seokjin said and gestured down to Jimin who was working quietly on untying the double knotted laces of the rapper’s black shoes that were keeping him from being able to effortlessly pull the shoe off.

The younger nodded and moved to help Jimin get the older member’s other shoe off, while Seokjin toed his own shoes off easily – now that Namjoon had stopped hindering him – and threw them over where the other shoes stood lined up against the wall with as much precision as a person who was using their feet could.

When both Jungkook and Yoongi had gotten their shoes removed – with Jungkook having been brought out from wherever his mind had taken him during the last couple of minutes by Taehyung, who had wrapped his arms around the maknae and pulled the youngest close while Hoseok had grabbed the maknae’s shoes and taken them over to their other shoes so no one would end up tripping over them – Namjoon walked over to Taehyung and Jungkook.

“You remember the deal Taehyung-ah, Jungkook’s here now so you can’t get out of showering any longer. I hope you’re okay with that Jungkook-ah? You don’t have to wash your hair, just body,” Namjoon told the two youngest, with the last part directed at the maknae. When Seokjin and Jungkook had left to get Yoongi, Namjoon had tried to get Taehyung in the shower, but the younger had resisted and the leader hadn’t relented until the second youngest had said he would bathe when the maknae came back home.

“It’s okay. I probably smell from practice, don’t I? Yoongi-hyung said I did,” Jungkook said and laughed lowly – remembering the light moment from when they had been in the studio – until he had to stop because his throat and chest started to hurt.

“But I don’t want to. I’m tired,” Taehyung said, snuggling further into his embrace with Jungkook – who had gripped the back of the elder’s shirt loosely with his one free hand to reciprocate – and burying his face in the maknae’s neck. He knew it only ended up sounding like an excuse to anyone other than himself, but he was tired, and at this point he would’ve probably been fine with sleeping on the floor if it meant he got to go to sleep within the next 10 minutes.

“Jungkook, could you?” Namjoon asked, pointing at the maknae and Taehyung before gesturing down the hall in the general direction that their closest bathroom was, hoping that the maknae would get the message without him having to say the entire sentence and possibly alert Taehyung.

To his luck Jungkook understood perfectly and handed the two phones in his grasp to the leader – who took ahold of them without any questions –, before releasing his hold on his partner so that he could lightly push the elder away and hold him at arm’s length instead.

When Taehyung looked up at the younger, Jungkook just gave his hyung the best smile he could manage at that moment – considering that he was tired as well, and not just physically – and began walking backwards, dragging Taehyung with him as he walked down the hall.

Namjoon kept his eyes on the two as they walked down the hall to make sure that the two of them would actually end up in the bathroom, not that he thought that Jungkook wouldn’t follow through with it, but because he knew that there – whether Taehyung was tired or not – was a chance that the second youngest would try to escape and hide away in his room.

Once he saw the two youngest members disappear through the door to the bathroom and heard the echo of the lock turn, he let his shoulders untense and took a quick look at the two phones in his hand before dropping his arm and turning back to the 4 others.

Seokjin and Hoseok were talking with each other in low voices, with Jimin leaning against the rapper’s side, arms crossed over his stomach just listening to their conversation without budding in, and Hoseok with his right arm around the smaller male’s shoulder to keep him close.

To anyone else looking, the sleeping man on Seokjin’s back would have looked like he was doing just that, sleeping, but Namjoon had lived with the eldest rapper long enough to know that the other male didn’t move in his sleep, and since Seokjin was standing still he knew that those small movements Yoongi’s head made every couple of seconds meant that the second oldest wasn’t as far into dreamland as you would believe him to be.

When Seokjin caught his gaze, he stopped speaking in the middle of a reply, and Hoseok and Jimin turned their heads simultaneously – Jimin a little slower and less energetic than his partner – to see what had caused the conversation to stop so abruptly.

The leader took one look at the two and made up his mind for the conversation he had been about to initiate, and instead looked to the two oldest members. The eldest whom to Namjoon seemed to be slumping forward further than he had been a few minutes ago, and the second eldest who was undoubtedly on the verge of waking up if the clenching and unclenching of his hands meant anything.

“I think it’s time for you and Yoongi-hyung to get to bed, Jimin-ah,” Namjoon told the younger. Originally he had wanted as many of the other members to be there when he brought up what had been brewing in his head ever since they had gotten home from practice, but Jimin no longer just looked tired, the air around him had even begun to feel like it was being weighed down with fatigue, and so he didn’t want to steal away more of the time the dancer could use to catch up on the sleep he was beginning to desperately need.

Jimin decided to just follow along this time instead of pushing back – seeing as he himself could feel the exhaustion beginning to wear him down – and let Hoseok turn him around and guide him away from the others.

Though, before the two could go far Namjoon stopped Hoseok by putting a hand on the older rapper’s upper arm and pulled the elder closer to him so he could pass a message to him without Jimin hearing.

“Can you meet Jin-hyung and I in the living room after you’ve gotten Jimin in bed? I need to talk with you about something,” the leader whispered to his same aged friend, to which Hoseok just nodded with a tight-lipped smile and continued down the hallway with Jimin, who looked up at the man walking beside him with a confused look in his eyes.

Namjoon turned back around to face Seokjin who was looking at him expectantly with a raised eyebrow.

“What was that about?” The eldest asked the leader as he adjusted his hold on Yoongi, who had felt like he was beginning to slip a bit out of his grasp.

“I asked him to meet the two of us in the living room after he’s gotten Jimin in bed,” Namjoon told the eldest, and slumped against the wall beside him. He was beginning to feel the drag of yesterday as well, but he needed to talk with the two others before he could go to bed, or he would just end up lying awake all night because of the thoughts he didn’t get to vocalize.

“Meet us in the living room? Is this about Yoongi and Jungkook?” Seokjin asked, lowering his voice and leaning forward at the last part as if he was telling the younger a secret nobody else could know about, even though there was nobody else around to hear what they were talking about with Yoongi asleep on his back, Hoseok and Jimin in their room, and Taehyung and Jungkook in the shower.

“Yeah..” Namjoon replied lamely.

“Oh, uh. I’ll take Yoongi to our room and then I’ll meet the two of you in the living room in a couple of minutes,” the eldest said, but somehow it ended up sounding more like a question.

“Yeah, but take the time you need, we’ll wait for you.” With that Namjoon turned around and made his way down the hallway towards the living room, and Seokjin walked to his and Yoongi’s room as quick as he could without jolting the smaller male too much.

Now that Jimin wasn’t around the others he had let his façade fade away, leaving him hanging heavily onto his partner, and with his feet dragging themselves along the floor as they tried to support his weight to the best of their ability, whilst keeping up with the speed they had to match.

Hoseok, seeing the younger struggle to keep up, pulled the younger male’s left arm over his shoulder, and snaked his own right arm around said male’s waist to take as much weight off of the other as he himself could manage, knowing that his own body had limitations as well and that he was slowly nearing them.

When the two of them had gotten to their room and Hoseok had gotten Jimin to lay down on his own bed, the elder turned around to walk to their shared closet for a set sleepwear for both of them. He didn’t get far though, as a pair of legs suddenly wrapped themselves around his thighs, stopping him from moving forward. The elder turned back around to face the culprit only to end up toppling over on top of the younger when the other male unexpectantly bent his knees.

Neither did he expect the younger’s legs to squeeze tighter around him, effectively pushing him further down against the male beneath him, or the arms that in one fast fluid motion were wrapped around his upper body, trapping his arms along his sides.

The rapper attempted to separate himself from the younger, but Jimin was holding onto him firmly with a newfound strength that he himself didn’t have.

“Jimin-ah I’d love to stay here and cuddle, but Namjoon wants to talk with Jin-hyung and I in the living room, so you need to let me go,” the elder told the younger. He truly would love to just stay there all wrapped up in Jimin on the younger’s bed, but whatever Namjoon wanted to talk to the two about had to be something important, otherwise he would have let the two of them go their room without saying anything and have it be a matter for another day.

The younger hadn’t wanted the other to go, but hearing that their leader and eldest were the reason his partner couldn’t stay eased his mind the tiniest bit and made him let the elder off of him, as they all knew the leader didn’t issue sudden secret meetings between a few members if it had no big importance that could affect the rest of them.

“Was that the thing hyung whispered to you earlier?” Jimin questioned his hyung, as he retracted his arms and let his ankles uncross behind Hoseok so he could let his legs fall limply onto the mattress on either side of the elder, leaving the rapper free to get up.

“Yeah,” Hoseok replied as he fumbled a bit to push himself up onto his palms and get off the bed.

“What did he want to talk about?” Jimin asked, rolling lazily onto his side so he could watch Hoseok more easily as the other male walked into their shared walk-in closet and found a set of pajamas for each of them.

“To be honest, I don’t know, he didn’t say,” Hoseok said as he threw the set of clothes he had found for Jimin onto the mattress beside the younger, who looked down at the clothes uninterested when it landed before looking back at Hoseok when the elder put his own set of clothes down on his own bed.

Jimin opened his mouth to question the elder further, when a loud thump sounded from somewhere outside in the hallway.

The two looked at each other with surprised eyes before they both looked to the door, waiting to see whether they would hear the sound again, but when it didn’t happen Hoseok walked to the door and opened it to peer out, only to get back inside after a couple of seconds when he didn’t see anyone or anything that could have made the noise.

“What was it?” Jimin asked, already in the process of changing out of the casual set of clothes he had put on after his shower earlier and into the pajamas Hoseok had picked for him.

“Don’t know, I didn’t see anyone out there, and nothing looked broken. I’ll take a look later,” Hoseok said, approaching Jimin to take the used set of clothes he had been wearing and hang it over the back of the chair standing next to the medium sized desk that the younger and Taehyung had decided on adding to their room sometime last year.

With everything he was supposed to do done, he walked back over to Jimin and rolled the younger onto his back – which said younger male giggled at – so he could get the comforter out from underneath the other’s body and put it over him instead.

Now that that was done, Hoseok turned back around to turn off the lights and leave the room, but before the elder could do so Jimin’s hand shot out to grab his wrist and pulled the rapper down on the bed.

“Hey, I thought I told you that-“ But the elder didn’t get to say anything else before Jimin’s lips were on his, swallowing up the rest of his sentence.

When Jimin started to pull back Hoseok couldn’t help but follow the other unconsciously until he was practically laying on top of the younger.

“I thought you were supposed to go talk with Namjoon-hyung and Seokijn-hyung in the living room?” Jimin said cheekily as he smiled up at the elder who was hovering slightly above him.

“Oh, yeah,” Hoseok said, hurriedly getting off the bed again so he could get to the others who were probably already waiting for him, seeing as he had been here for much longer than he should have.

“I’ll be back later,” the elder said, contemplating for less than a second before leaning down to plant a quick peck on the younger’s forehead.

And with that he turned back around and left the room, turning off the lights and closing the door silently behind him.

He had started to work out more a while back so having to carry the rapper for as long as he had shouldn’t have been as psychically demanding as it was, but his arms and his neck – of all places – had started to hurt not that long ago and he honestly couldn’t wait to get the younger off of his back.

Now that he thought about it, yes, he worked out a decent amount. Not as much or for as long as when he used to regularly go to the gym with Jungkook and worked out with the maknae several times a week – which wasn’t really an option now that the younger always hid away in his and Namjoon’s room, and would say nothing to Seokjin in the few instances where he did end up going to the gym, which they only knew about because he’d repeatedly gotten caught coming home late in the evening by the members – but still a decent amount, so his –

Seokjin was ripped out of his thoughts when he in his distracted state had walked headfirst into the door to his and Yoongi’s room. The elder looked down the hall he hadn’t remembered walking down, mouth still open in a silent cry because of the pain in his forehead, and internally cursed at himself for letting his thoughts take him away.

He shouldn’t even have strayed to such thoughts anyway, this whole thing is about Yoongi and Jungkook, not him, at least not now. He could sort his own things out afterwards, but not now, not when there’s more important things to solve. God, his carelessness could have gotten Yoongi hurt, what was he supposed to have done then? Hurting one of his members because he had let himself drift off was something he never wanted to experience.

Seokjin freed his right hand from where it was holding onto Yoongi’s thigh – intending on using it to open the door – but when he felt the younger starting to slip when he removed his hand, he had to let go of his previous plan and instead grabbed onto the rapper again and bounced the male further up on his back.

Now that that option was out, he had to get creative, and so lifted his right leg and tried to push his knee down on the handle. Surprisingly enough it worked, and the door swung open with a little more force than intended, as he hadn’t been able to stop his leg from falling forward and pushing against the door when it opened inward.

He cringed at the small bang the door handle made when it got into contact with the wall and tried to look over his shoulder to get a glimpse at Yoongi’s face to see whether the rapper was still sleeping, but the pain in his neck was hindering him from turning his head more than 45 degrees and so he had to settle with hoping that the younger was indeed sleeping and hadn’t been woken up by the noise.

Seokjin ended up sitting down on the edge of Yoongi’s bed so he could get the younger off his back without moving him too much, before walking back over to the door and carefully closing it as to not cause further disturbance.

Him taking his time to be careful didn’t seem to have mattered though, as the moment he was going to turn around and walk back to Yoongi, the younger groaned low in his throat and rolled around and onto his stomach. But since the rapper was laying so close to the edge, he ended up slipping off the bed, dragging half of the comforter off of it along with him.

The elder stared at the rapper in bafflement and stifled the laugh building up in his chest before he moved to help Yoongi get back up onto the bed, this time placing the younger further towards the middle. But when the rapper just ended up rolling away from him and falling off the bed again when he miscalculated how far he had rolled, Seokjin couldn’t stop himself from covering his mouth and laughing quietly out loud.

It didn’t particularly help when the rapper then mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like `shut up´, which made tears build up in his eyes as he suppressed his laughing by coughing as if he’d had something stuck in his throat. Now wasn’t the time for laughs and giggles anyway he told himself, despite the way it made his heart feel lighter and his mind clearer.

“Maybe you should just have laid still then instead of pulling that little stunt. You’re already sick and hurt, and you can’t afford to get worse,” Seokijn said, only a small bit of playfulness coating the very edges of his voice. It could be all fun and games if the other had been okay, but no matter how much effort the younger put into attempting to act how he usually did they knew he wasn’t, so playing it off wouldn’t help the rapper in any way.

The grumbling from the rapper quieted down as soon as it had begun when the elder told him to stay still after having picked him up bridal style and put him back onto the bed.

Yoongi mumbled something unintelligible back in response to the elder – which was supposed to have been a `thank you´, but his mouth wasn’t working properly at the moment – before breaking out into a coughing fit that automatically had the younger turning himself onto his side. Seokjin couldn’t do much other than sit on the bed next to Yoongi and rub comforting circles into the younger’s back until the coughing eventually stopped and Yoongi slumped tiredly against the bed.

Seokjin watched as the rapper turned his head so his face was pressed into the comforter in what must have been an attempt to hide his slightly fever reddened cheeks from him – despite the elder having had enough time to catch a glimpse of them several times throughout the last hour – and just patted the younger’s back and ran his fingers through the other male’s hair for a minute before getting off the bed again.

When the elder’s fingers left his scalp, Yoongi turned his head back around with a groan – that he hoped the elder hadn’t heard – and watched as Seokjin walked to the small closet they had decided to keep in their room and pulled out a neatly folded pair of shorts and a loose fitting plain black long-sleeved shirt, before turning back around and catching Yoongi’s gaze, which the rapper quickly redirected onto the white wall across from him instead.

In the next second Seokjin had walked back to him and was sitting on the edge of the bed right next to him with the stack of clothes in his hand.

“Do you want to do this on your own, or do you want my help?” The elder never specifically said what he was talking about, but Yoongi knew what he was referring to so the younger just shook his head against his sheets to the best of his ability and hoped the elder would let him change by himself. Seokjin had already helped him enough today so he needed to show that he could do it on his own, or the eldest would end up following him around the next couple of days, which meant he would get no time to be by himself and that he wouldn’t get a chance to sneak off to his studio – or one of the other studios in the company considering that his own wasn’t in the best condition at the moment – to continue working on his mixtape.

“Are you sure?” Seokjin asked, watching on as Yoongi pushed himself up into a sitting position with shaking arms and closed eyes.

“Yes hyung, I can dress myself,” Yoongi said, but his voice was beginning to drop off and he was slouching more than he did before despite trying to stay upright.

“It’s okay Yoongi-yah, if you need help just say it, none of us are going to judge you for that,” the elder said, softening his voice for the younger as he shifted on the bed so he was less than an arm’s length away and was facing Yoongi.

“I know. I’m sorry, I’m just tired,” Yoongi said, and finally let himself slump forward into his hyung’s chest. Pretenses could go to hell, he was too tired to keep up an appearance in front of the elder anyway.

Seokjin’s arms came up around Yoongi and rubbed circles into the younger’s back and nape. He knew that the other had tried to seem like he was fine at first despite being anything but that – denying that anything was wrong even when it had become a big enough problem that the others could see it as well had become a norm for Yoongi at this point – so he was happy when the younger was no longer forcing himself to uphold the front that the elder knew would have only hurt him in the long run if he had kept it up.

“You don’t need to say sorry. The last couple of days have been tough on you, so I can’t blame you for being tired,” Seokjin told the younger while continuing his ministrations on Yoongi’s back.

“It’s been like that for the rest of you too,” Yoongi said – downplaying his struggles – and tried to straighten his back and get out of his hyung’s hold, but the elder wasn’t having it and just tightened his arms around the younger and pulled him closer until the he had almost been dragged into Seokjin’s lap.

“Maybe, but it hasn’t been as hard for us as it has for you Yoongi-yah. What’s happening with the rest of us are just the normal tiredness we all get during preparations,” Seokjin told the younger and properly pulled the younger into his lap so he could have the other rest against his chest whilst the elder’s fingers ran through his hair.

“What would Namjoon say about this?” Yoongi teased the elder, but the combined feeling of being bone tired and Seokjin’s magical fingers in his hair was beginning to make him feel mushy. He had tensed up and felt awkward at first, but eventually that feeling had melted away with everything else.

“I think he’s okay with it, if he wasn’t so awkward or reluctant to get close to you like this then he would probably be here too,” Seokjin said jokingly – it wasn’t a joke though, and he was more than sure that the others, not just Namjoon, would have loved to be here as well – and Yoongi just laughed breathily and relaxed further in the elder’s hold.

“Has anyone ever told you your fingers are magical? I mean, if you ever decide to become a masseur after bangtan then you could probably make some good money,” Yoongi attempted to say seriously, but it wasn’t long before he started laughing again, with Seokjin joining in as well.

“Oh yeah?” He knew very well that he was good at this, several of the other members had expressed so as well and would sometimes come to him and ask him to do it. He had started doing it with Jungkook back before they had even debuted, whenever the maknae hadn’t been able to sleep because of homesickness he would run his fingers through the younger’s hair until he fell asleep, and it had carried on, though, it was no longer something he used against homesickness, but just something he did whenever one of the other members were feeling stressed, something to help the them relax.

“Yeah...” Yoongi replied simply.

The two of them just ended up sitting there for a couple of minutes, Yoongi breathing steadily against Seokjin’s chest with closed eyes, while the elder’s fingers would caress the younger’s hair.

“Yoongi?” Seokjin asked.

“Mmmh?” Yoongi said. He was slowly starting to drift off – the tiredness finally winning against his determination to stay awake – and his hyung’s words felt farther away, but he could tell his hyung wanted to say something to him, so he did his best to stay awake.

“You know.. Namjoon’s worried about you, the rest of us too. You can come to us and talk if you ever need to. I just want you to know that,” Seokijn said, and Yoongi tried, he really did, but the words didn’t make sense to him anymore, and then it was black like someone had turned off the lights, he could still hear his hyung talking but everything around him was dark.

When Seokjin didn’t hear a reply from Yoongi after what he said, not even a small sound to tell the elder that he understood, Seokjin looked down at the younger cradled against his chest, whom he quickly realized had fallen asleep, and he couldn’t stop the fond smile from spreading across his face.

With the younger sleeping – one out of two things done – he laid the younger back on the bed and proceeded to remove the joggers and oversized shirt he had been wearing to practice, and replaced the articles of clothes with the clean pair of shorts and the long black shirt he had grabbed from the closet. It wasn’t the same as taking a shower and putting on clean clothes, but it would have to do for now.

Seokjin carefully snaked his arms underneath the younger’s back, and while supporting Yoongi’s head with his right hand, he slowly pulled the other further up on the bed until he could lay the rapper’s head on one of the pillows, and then retreated off the bed so he could get the comforter  – which at this point was only holding on with a corner – and put it down on top of Yoongi.

And with one last look at the younger – deeming that he had done what he had set to do – Seokjin picked up the other male’s dirty clothes and took it with him when he left the room with a soft click.

Yoongi’s eyes opened, and he looked towards the door his hyung had just left through.

He knew it had been wrong of him to do, to pretend to be sleeping when they had gotten home, to have pretended right now when his hyung had just wanted to help him, and to have eavesdropped on the three others in the entryway, he knew that, but they had been talking about him – and apparently Jungkook as well – behind his back, and it was raising his anxiety to such high levels that it was a wonder he wasn’t currently in the midst of a panic attack.

He wanted to know what they were saying, he had barely found out about it, but his head and the rest of his body already felt like it was buzzing from the inside out, and he just wanted it to stop.

And so he pulled the comforter off his body and slipped out of bed, and after peering down both sides of the hall and hearing nothing except for the soft voices coming from the direction he was about to walk down, he left the room on unsteady feet, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

When Seokjin finally reached the living room – after a quick detour to the washroom to get rid of Yoongi’s dirty clothes – Namjoon and Hoseok were already situated on separate couches – with Hoseok having taken a seat in the middle of the couch Taehyung and Jungkook had been using during the movie, and Namjoon sitting on the armrest of the couch that he himself and Seokjin had been using earlier – and in the middle of a conversation.

“Sorry it took so long for me to come, Yoongi woke up, and then he fell off the bed, but then he fell asleep again, so I had to change him out of his clothes for him,” Seokijn said in one breath as he sat down on the same couch as Namjoon had taken a seat on, and moved closer to the rapper who immediately wrapped his right arm around Seokjin’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, we hadn’t begun talking about why I asked you both to come here yet,” Namjoon said, looking down at the elder who was leaning comfortably against his side, and pulled his partner just a tad bit closer so he could lean down and peck the top of his head.

“Yeah, and we haven’t been waiting for long, or, well, I haven’t, sorry Namjoon. I ended up having some trouble with Jimin too, but that’s to be expected, he gets clingy when he’s tired,” Hoseok said and ran his hand through his hair as he leaned back against the couch.

“It’s fine, it gave me some time to think a bit about why I asked you to come. Which, now that we’re all here, we can start with.” With that Namjoon sat up straighter and let the hand he had been resting on Seokjin’s shoulder fall down to hold onto the elder’s upper arm.

“I’m guessing you already know what this is about Hoseok. Jin-hyung already knew what it was going to be about before I got to elaborate, so I just want to make sure you’re on the same page,“ Namjoon said.

“I’m guessing this can only be about Yoongi-hyung and Jungkook-ah, anything else wouldn’t have been urgent enough for you to decide to call a meeting between the three of us at almost 1am,” Hoseok told his same aged friend, as he straitened up from his relaxed position and drew his left leg up on the couch so he could lean forward and rest his head against his knee.

“Yeah. We talked earlier, and you brought up some things that you had noticed about Jungkook that Jin-hyung and I hadn’t, so thank you for telling us, or else he wouldn’t have ended up being a part of the conversation we’re about to have, and his problems would have most likely ended up going unnoticed by hyung and I,” Namjoon told the other rapper, sending a grateful smile to the other which Hoseok reciprocated with his own small one.

“You would have noticed it yourself at one point when he would continue to get smaller, something like that isn’t easy to hide anymore after we figured out the signs from when Jimin went through his eating disorder. He wouldn’t be able to hide it behind oversized clothing, and everybody would start to notice how little he was eating at meals at some point and make a comment about it to one of you. So whether I had said something about it now or you would have seen it on your own later on doesn’t matter that much. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have said it now so it doesn’t get the chance to get worse, but I’m confident that one of you would have said something about it before the week was over,” Hoseok said and shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s not true. I’m happy that you put so much faith into me, but I doubt I would have figured it out by myself without you saying anything, so again, thank you Hobi,” Seokjin told the younger man who was tapping his right foot restlessly against the floor.

“To fix it we’ll have to get to the root of the problem. I don’t think it’s because of hate comment like when it happened with Jimin, and the company lets us manage our diets by ourselves so I doubt a higherup would have told him-“ Before Namjoon got to finish he was interrupted by Seokjin.

“I don’t think we should see it as something that only happened because of a physical trigger, we should take the mental and emotional aspect into account as well, or at least that’s what I think,” the elder said laying his own thoughts on the table.

“Why does it sound like you already know what the cause behind this is?” Hoseok asked, and both he and Namjoon turned to look curiously at Seokjin who was staring intently at the floor, trying to piece together a sentence that would make sense to the two others.

“I don’t, I just had a thought. We all know how Jungkook used to go to Yoongi’s studio and talk to him all the time, but now Yoongi’s shutting him out and he’s not going to any of us for help, so what he usually went to Yoongi to unload about began piling up… Maybe this has become his new way of unloading?” It made sense to Seokjin himself. It wasn’t the only reason for Jungkook’s eating disordered behavior, but he was a strong believer that it was one of the bigger reasons.

The other two looked to be thinking over what he had said, with Namjoon leaning back against the couch – and almost falling off because he had forgotten he was sitting on the armrest which meant that there practically wasn’t anything behind him to lean on, meaning Seokijn to have to act quick and grab the younger before he could slide off and get himself hurt – and Hoseok staring at the coffee table with furrowed brows. Seokjin thought that they would both at the very least semi-agree to what he had said, but when the two of them finally looked up they didn’t seem to have come to the same conclusion, if the two different expressions on their faces said anything.

“Are you saying that it’s Yoongi-hyung’s fault that Jungkook isn’t eating?” Hoseok asked the eldest incredulously. He himself had a small inkling that his hyung could possibly have been part of the reason – with how the elder went from talking with Jungkook every single day and at least every third day in his studio, to not talking with him at all unless their schedule required the rapper to converse with the members – but he never believed his hyung to be the sole reason.

“I don’t think Jin-hyung means that it was directly hyung’s fault, he had a part in it, yes, but there were other factors that each played a part in causing it to take this turn. Jungkook wouldn’t just start to starve himself because Yoongi distanced himself from him. And like hyung said, it’s most likely that something in his psyche triggered this,” Namjoon said, defending Seokjin as well as adding his own thoughts to the discussion before their hyung could open his mouth and say anything.

“It happened with Jimin because of the hate comments,“ Hoseok started with furrowed brows and opened his mouth to add more, but Seokjin cut the rapper off.

“Yes, but Jimin was also already self-conscious about how he looked and extremely perfectionistic. The hate comments and the fact that we were being encouraged to lose weight whether by healthy means or not, were just what ended up tipping the scale for him,” the elder said.

“Jungkook’s perfectionistic as well. Could that be one of the reasons?” Hoseok asked the eldest after he had mulled over what Seokjin had said.

“I could be if this was intentional, but that’s where I have to say that, I don’t think he’s intentionally doing this, I think this is just the biproduct of something else,” Namjoon said, surprising the two others at his sudden intrusion as he had been quiet and had looked as if he had been far away in his thought.

“How can’t this be intentional? He clearly knows he’s not eating when he should be, or else he wouldn’t be avoiding me when I try to talk to him during lunch breaks,” Hoseok said as he let his left leg slide back onto the floor next to his other, where it started lightly bouncing like the other. The fatigue he hadn’t felt much of before was catching up to him, and if he didn’t keep moving, he was sure to fall asleep, he could barely fight off the yawn that was constantly threatening to force its way out of his mouth.

“I didn’t exactly mean it like that, but more in the direction that, he knows he should be eating but something is overpowering the part of his brain that is telling him to eat,” Namjoon tried to explain, and started making gestures with his hands that served no real purpose.

“So something is stopping his brain from sending out hunger signals? What could do that?” Seokjin asked, taking ahold of the hand on his upper arm and slipping it off so he could intertwine his fingers with the younger’s hand instead.

“It’s not that they aren’t there, I’ve heard his stomach rumble before and I saw the look in his eyes when we were eating dinner, it’s just that... to be honest hyung, I don’t know, I wish I knew, but I don’t. The three of us don’t hold all the answers. Which is why we need to talk about this with the others, including Yoongi-hyung and Jungkook-ah. This is something we need to solve as a team,” Namjoon said, and smiled down at Seokjin when he felt the other’s crooked fingers slide between his own.

“And that brings the next question. Yoongi-hyung. What about him? We can all see that something’s going on with him as well,” Hoseok said, interrupting the short moment that was taking place between the two others and redirecting their attention to him.

Namjoon cleared his throat and let go of Seokjin’s hand again despite wanting to hold on to it. Physical contact with the elder always improved his mood, but it also came with the backside that it easily distracted him, and he couldn’t afford that at the moment as he had to stay focused on the situation at hand.

“He’s pulling away and hiding in his studio, that we all know, but still talks with us when we start a conversation with him whether it’s at the company or here at the dorm, and responds like he usually does, so the isolation isn’t as bad as with Jungkook,” Namjoon said starting the conversation.

When Seokijn saw that Namjoon was shifting around on the armrest, he moved himself further towards the middle of the couch and motioned for Namjoon to sit down on the now free cushion, which the rapper happily took. The leader was used to taking a spot where he would have a higher point of view whenever they held a meeting so he could get a clear view of everyone in the room, and despite this not being an official meeting with the whole group he had unknowingly done that – and had ended up choosing the possibly most awkward place to sit in the whole living room, just to satisfy the voice nagging at him in the back of his head – and he would have stayed where he was seated if the elder hadn’t gone out of his way to move so Namjoon could feel comfortable again.

“He’s not taking care of himself. I try to make sure he eats most of the time, but he’s lost weight, so I don’t think he does when I’m not there to tell him to do it, or at least he doesn’t eat enough to balance out how much his body needs” Seokjin added. He thinks that Sejin has brought food to Yoongi’s studio as well a couple of times cause there’s times where he’s found empty fast food containers on the younger’s work desk that he knew he himself hadn’t brought, and that he couldn’t imagine that Yoongi had either.

“He stays in the studio until late into the night and comes home around 2 or 3am. I hear him come home during the middle of the night because the noise always wakes me up,” Hoseok said and lowered his head as Seokijn and Namjoon looked over at him at the revelation, not that it was anything new, they all knew that Yoongi was bad at keeping track of the hours that passed by when he was in the studio.

“There’s nights where he stays overnight in the studio and pulls all-nighters or sleeps on the couch as well. Those days he doesn’t do well during dance practice,” Hoseok added after a second thought.

“Why he would go to these lengths to- I don’t even know,“ Namjoon said as he stared intently on the coffee table in front of him. It didn’t make sense to him, Yoongi only ever got like this during the period where they would start production for a new album, but there currently was no album that they had to write for. Their next album was scheduled to be released in a couple of weeks, so the songs for that had already been set, and final touchups had finished a bit over a month ago. Of course, they were free to produce tracks and send them to the other producers for consideration for the album that was going to come after their current one, but talk about that album hadn’t even started yet.

“Hyung usually gets like this when he’s focused on a project,” Hoseok told the younger, while Seokijn just looked on. He was Yoongi’s roommate so of course he knew a lot about the younger, but song production and the things that came with it was only rarely seen by members that weren’t the two other rappers in the group, so he didn’t have anything to add.

“He mentioned working on a second mixtape to me a while back. Maybe he’s stressed about it now that preparations for the album has started,” Hoseok said shrugging his shoulders, not knowing the impact his words had on the other rapper in the room, who was staring openly at Hoseok now.

“Yoongi-hyung’s working on another mixtape?” Namjoon asked, and Hoseok just looked confusedly at the other at the question.

“Yeah, apparently, he began working on it a long time ago, almost 2 years I think it was, but he said that he wasn’t satisfied with the lyrics anymore because they didn’t reflect who he is now, which is understandable considering how long ago he wrote them and the changes he’s gone through, so he scrapped all of the lyrics and told me he was going to start over. I thought hyung had talked with you about it?” Hoseok said, but Namjoon shook his head.

“No, Hyung never told me that he was making another mixtape. I would have helped him if he asked me, but he never did. How come he told you about it?” Namjoon asked. He didn’t want to sound jealous, but he and Yoongi had known each other for the longest out of all of them, so he had genuinely thought that the elder would have come to him about this rather than Hoseok.

“It’s wasn’t on purpose, at least I don’t think so. We were both drunk and we were talking about different tracks we were working on and then he just blurted it out. I thought he had forgotten about it because he never brought it up again, either that or that he had gone to you, but I see now that he didn’t do that,” Hoseok said and fidgeted, avoiding eye contact with the younger during the whole time he spoke. He couldn’t help it, Namjoon’s stare felt piercing and it was making him a bit uncomfortable.

“Is there anything else that either of you have noticed? Anything at all?” Namjoon asked, turning his head from one male to the other, but both of them shook their head.

“I guess there’s nothing more for us to talk about until we sit down with the others then,” Namjoon said with a sigh and leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. Seokjin hesitantly reached out to run his hand along the younger male’s spine, but ended up showing less reluctance and put more pressure into the action when the rapper let out a content sigh and let his head fall forward with both of his eyes closed.

“Yeah. When do we have enough time to sit down and have a group meeting?” Seokjin asked, watching with a content smile as Namjoon slumped further forward when the elder seemed to have hit a particular spot on the leader’s back.

“Don’t we get out of practice early tomorrow? We can do the meeting then,” Hoseok proposed from his sideway position on the couch. He had become tired to a point where he had just let his body continue down on its path towards the plush cushions when he had begun leaning, and now he couldn’t find the energy to even form the thought about getting up again, not that it mattered much to him at the current moment as the couch felt amazing when the cushion gave away and molded itself to fit his body.

“Yoongi’s still sick, so I would rather give him tomorrow to get better and then schedule the talk for another day when he feels better. How about 3 days from now? We have a 2-hour break between vocal lessons in the morning and the tapings we’re gonna do for Run BTS in the afternoon,” Seokjin suggested. Getting this out of the way fast might sound good to the two others, but to the eldest, the health of the members would always come first.

“We can’t. There’s a meeting for the producers that worked on the album that’s scheduled to take place there, and Hoseok, Yoongi-hyung, and I have to be there,” Namjoon mumbled from where his forehead was almost touching his knees, and Hoseok gave a small `yeah´ in affirmation to what the leader said.

“When is there going to be chance for us to talk then? They can’t continue like this, one day, if we don’t do anything about this, one of them is going to collapse,” Seokjin said. His hand had stopped rubbing Namjoon’s back at this point, but it hadn’t registered in his brain, so it just rested on the leaders’ upper back, fingers twitching every couple of seconds as if it still thought it was moving.

“I don’t know hyung, we’ll just have to do it when the opportunity strikes,” Namjoon said dejectedly and pushed himself up, causing Seokjin’s hand to fall down to rest against his lower back.

“That could be a week from now, or maybe even longer,” Hoseok said and turned his head to look at the couple – instead of the coffee table 2 meters away from him that had seemingly ended up becoming very interesting to his eyes shortly after he had laid down, seeing as he hadn’t been able to tear his focus away from it – that was sitting on the other couch.

“I know, but we can’t do much else unless we decide to involve the company in this, which I know none of us want to do right now,” Namjoon said and rubbed his eyes with both of his hands whilst trying to suppress the yawn that was trying to force its way through.

“Hyungs?”

The three elders turned their heads in unison when they heard the voice of the youngest member, who was standing beside a silent Taehyung a couple of feet away from the entrance to the living room, both of them with a big towel around their shoulders – covering them from their shoulders down to their mid-thigh – and with semi wet hair.

The two of them had finished their shower not that long ago – where Jungkook had had to help Taehyung undress and shower as the elder had been dead on his feet – and had after putting the towels around themselves – as they hadn’t taken clean clothes with them before showering – followed the voices they could hear until they stood in the living room, where they had stood – Taehyung with his eyes closed, most likely drifting off and not hearing what was going on around him – for a couple of minutes before Jungkook had made himself and the elder known to the three sitting on the couches.

“What were you talking about hyungs?” The maknae asked the three elders. He already knew some of what they had been talking about as his ears had started picking up the conversation when he and Taehyung had been halfway down the hall. The bits of pieces he could pick up on the way to the living room had been something about Yoongi working on a new mixtape, but when he got to the end of the hallway the talk had taken a turn to them talking about holding a group meeting – or at least that’s what he assumed they had meant as Namjoon had said that they didn’t want the company in over it – and an urgent one at that it seemed, as Seokjin had mentioned the possibility of someone collapsing, and not one person, multiple, his hyung had said “them”, and with the three of elders having talked about Yoongi, he could only guess that his hyung was one of the members involved in the “them”. Jimin had begun looking a little thinner lately, so they could be talking about him. Or maybe Taehyung, he’d been looking more tired recently as well – and with Jungkook being the one closest to the elder, he knew how big the change was despite Taehyung telling him not to worry – maybe they were talking about his partner?

“Nothing really, we just decided to stay awake and wait for you two to finish up, and we fell into talk–,“ Namjoon answered for the three of them. He could have said what was actually going on, but there was no need to stress the maknae out even further that he already was and put him on the edge, which telling the younger what they had really been talking about – including what they had said about the maknae himself – had a high chance of doing.

To Jungkook, the thought of the three elders staying up waiting for him and Taehyung would have been a sweet thing, if it had been the truth. But with him knowing that that was far from the case, he was just disappointed with the elder because of the fact that the other had thought lying to him would be better, when the elder knew this was a serious thing that concerned the health of several of his members, which Jungkook – like Seokjin and Jimin – was known to sometimes have a tendency to fuss about when it came to the others. It almost felt like back in the early days where he hadn’t been included in serious talks like this because the others had decided on his behalf that he was too young to be involved in that kind of stuff. And he didn’t like it.

“–but now that you two are done, we should get to bed. We have a long day ahead of us,” Namjoon finished. Maybe it was a good thing the two maknaes came and interrupted them, or else they would just have kept going until one of them fell asleep out here.

At the leader’s words, Hoseok reluctantly got up from the couch, stretching his arms above his head which in turn lifted his shirt, allowing a small peek at the skin underneath. Seokjin pecked Namjoon on the cheek and let the hand resting on the rapper’s lower back slide up the younger’s spine and over his shoulder as he too got up. The eldest didn’t get far though, as the leader stood up right afterwards and grabbed his hyung’s wrist to pull the elder back to him and into a soft kiss which Seokjin was quick to reciprocate.

When the two pulled away from each other and turned back around to the others, Jungkook had turned sideways and was looking at the wall in front of him with his mouth drawn in a straight line, and Hoseok was staring at them blankly with his head tilted slightly back and his arms crossed across his chest.

“Sorry,” they replied at the same time, and Hoseok’s face lost its lifelessness as the rapper’s mouth stretched into a small smile.

“Nah, it’s fine. Just wait until I’m out of the room before you start sucking each other’s faces off,” Hoseok said and watched with delight as Namjoon bowed his head to hide the blush that had tinted his cheeks pink and as Seokjin’s ears started turning red.

“Goodnight everyone. Except for you Hoseok, I hope you have nightmares,” Seokjin said, joking despite the tone of his voice, as he walked away from the others and down the hallway towards his and Yoongi’s bedroom.

“Goodnight to you too hyung!” Hoseok called after the elder with a satisfactory smile on his face and turned to Namjoon who had turned away from him, Jungkook, and Taehyung.

“Goodnight to you too Joon,” Hoseok said fondly and walked until he had reached Taehyung, where he wrapped his left arm around the younger to help guide him back down the hall and to their shared room, being careful not to walk too fast so the half asleep male didn’t trip. All the while, Jungkook kept his eyes on the two retreating forms, and watched as the elder turned around to wave at him before disappearing into the room with Taehyung, closing the door softly behind him.

“We should get to bed too Jungkook-ah,” Namjoon told the maknae – having turned around only a couple of seconds ago – and gave the youngest’s right shoulder a gentle squeeze, before walking the opposite direction that Hoseok had, towards his and Jungkook’s room that was located in the other end of their apartment.

Jungkook watched the leader’s back as he retreated back to their room, but didn’t move to follow even when he saw the door close behind the elder. Instead he laid down sideways on the couch Hoseok had been occupying earlier – as it turned out the towel he was wearing wasn’t long enough to cover everything important if he laid on his back –.

His eyes caught sight of the two phones on the coffee table – Seokjin’s and Yoongi’s – that he had handed to Namjoon when they had gotten home. It seemed the leader had forgotten about them, which Jungkook didn’t blame the elder for, the room wasn’t well lit at the moment with only a floor lamp turned on to illuminate the room, and the leader had had more important matters on his hands. Matters which Jungkook was still upset about being left out of.

He doesn’t know how long he had been laying on the couch and staring down at the carpet, just thinking, before he heard a door open and close and the person who had been invading his thoughts was suddenly crouching down in front of him.

“Hey, is everything okay?” the leader asked and moved around the couch to sit on the small space left between Jungkook’s body and the edge of the couch. The maknae had been lying completely still when he came back to the living room and hadn’t reacted when he had appeared in the younger’s view, as if his brain hadn’t registered that he was there.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about something,” Jungkook replied, not further disclosing anything just like the leader hadn’t. It may sound petty to others, but to himself it sounded perfectly reasonable. He looked up from the floor and turned his head to make eye contact with the elder for a second before carefully pushing himself up into a sitting position without exposing himself – they may have seen each other ***** more than enough times, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have an unnecessary ****-slip in front of the elder – which in turn made the leader move a bit away from Jungkook so the two of them wouldn’t end up butting heads.

“Are you sure?” Namjoon prodded to which Jungkook just nodded, reluctant to open his mouth as he didn’t know if the words would just start flowing out without his consent because of the leader’s ability to make him open up and talk in situations where he would rather keep quiet.

“Okay,” Namjoon said and stood up from the couch, “we should get to bed now, not just me, you too Jungkook-ah. It’s almost 1:30am and both of us are tired. The others are probably already sleeping.” The leader reached out with one of his hands to Jungkook to help the younger get off the couch as well – having forgotten about the younger only wearing a towel – but retracted his hand when he realized there was no hand for him to grip onto, and let the younger get up from the couch on his own.

Before Jungkook knew it both of them were walking down the hallway to their room. This time Namjoon hadn’t let the younger come on his own but had slung his left arm around the maknae’s shoulder so he could drag him along and ensure that the younger wouldn’t end up staying behind again.

The light in their room was already on so none of them had to fumble for the light switch – which was stupidly placed a meter away from the door. Not that great a thing when it was pitch black and you were Namjoon – and instead Jungkook felt as the weight around his shoulder disappeared and watched as the elder of the two let himself fall face first onto his bed, something which Jungkook wasn’t against doing himself, but contrary to the leader who was dressed in a pair of light shorts and a t-shirt and ready for bed, Jungkook was completely ***** except for the big towel covering him from his shoulders to his thighs.

The younger could only guess that the leader had buried his face in his sheets to give him the privacy to change without a pair of eyes looking on, and despite being slightly angry at the leader, Jungkook was grateful for the action as there at the moment was only one other person whom he’d be fine with seeing him bare.

In his closet he ended up just grabbing the first top and bottom that caught his eyes and a pair of boxers. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Namjoon was still turned away from him, so he dropped the towel and slipped into his boxers and a dark grey pair of sweatpants. He was about to put the black t-shirt he had pulled from his closet on but froze when he had gotten both of his arms through the sleeves. His eyes narrowed for a second as he sniffed the material before he pulled the article of clothing off again.

Namjoon tried to keep his gaze away from the maknae, but the ruckus coming from behind him was awakening his curiosity and he couldn’t stop himself from raising his head and looking over his shoulder where he saw the maknae attempt to put the black t-shirt in his hands onto a hanger, wearing only an old pair of sweatpants with nothing covering his upper body.

With the younger shirtless Namjoon no longer had to picture how the younger’s body looked after weeks of neglect, and despite it being better for him to see the damage done as soon as possible, he hadn’t been prepared for the way his heart would ache at the reveal. Jungkook’s spine was sticking out almost to the same extent that Jimin’s had, and his ribs were peeking out so much that if under better lighting Namjoon was sure he would be able to count each and every one of them.

He knew the maknae had lost weight, but even with Hoseok’s additional information about their youngest’s eating habits he hadn’t imagined that it would have been this bad.

Namjoon was startled when Jungkook suddenly turned around – not to face him though, to the leader’s relief – and dropped back onto his face as discretely as he could – which wasn’t discrete at all – with a suppressed groan. He didn’t dare look up again immediately – a little embarrassed that the younger had almost caught him looking at him changing – but when he heard their door open with more force than necessary, he raised his head to look towards the entrance to their room with a frown, only to see the younger’s back as it disappeared through the now wide open door.

He only waited for a couple of minutes before the telltale sound of footsteps walking down the hallway appeared again – signaling the maknae returning from wherever he had gone – and got louder as Jungkook appeared in the doorway once again, though this time wearing a t-shirt, the same one Seokjin had changed him into earlier when they had been in Hoseok, Jimin, and Taehyung’s room. Yoongi’s. Now that he thought about it, how come his hyung hadn’t mentioned anything about Jungkook’s physique when they were talking with Hoseok when the eldest was one of the members that had made the most physical contact with the maknae lately – perhaps even more than Taehyung, which was absurd considering that the two youngest were in a relationship –.

Namjoon wanted to question the younger about the shirt when the two made eye contact, but before he could open his mouth Jungkook was looking away again and had closed the door behind him and pressed the switch to turn off the lights. The only explanation he could come up with to answer the younger’s actions were that he didn’t want to talk about it, which Namjoon understood, it was late, and it wasn’t something with such a big importance that they absolutely had to talk about it now.

Instead Namjoon watched the younger as he got under his covers and rolled onto his side, facing away from the leader. He continued watching the youngest for a couple of minutes, and when he assumed the maknae had fallen asleep because he had stopped moving around, he turned until he was on his back and stared up at the darkened ceiling until his eyelids felt too heavy to keep open and he fell asleep as well.

Jungkook could feel the elder’s eyes on his back and tried to keep as still as he possibly could, hoping that the elder would believe him to have fallen asleep. He doesn’t know how much time he spent staring silently at the wall in front of him, but when the first gentle snore from the leader sounded he finally felt like he could relax his tense body and sink comfortably into his mattress, no longer having to fear the other pair of eyes observing him from across the room.

He laid there with his eyes closed for a good amount of time, but sleep wouldn’t come to him. He turned around until he was facing Namjoon and took a peek at the small digital clock on his nightstand – that the leader had insisted that they should keep the last time they cleaned their room and threw out unnecessary stuff – 2:07am. He didn’t know what time it was when he laid down, but it felt like an eternity ago. He didn’t know what he should be more upset about at the moment, the fact that he was intentionally being kept out of stuff again, or that his overactive mind wasn’t allowing him get the last couple of precious hours of sleep he would be able to get before they had to get up again and be ready for another tiring day.

His thoughts were running wild in his head, and he couldn’t close his eyes without his mind turning the thoughts into animated pictures. It was frustrating. He just wanted to sleep, but the situation had added more wood to the already roaring fire flowing underneath his skin, and now sleep felt like a concept his mind no longer knew what meant.

In the moments before he threw his comforter off of him and got out of bed, he contemplated just staying in his bed until the time came when Namjoon would wake up again and hope that the fire would die down and sleep would eventually claim him. But that idea was quickly thrown away when his feet touched the floor and he found himself more awake than before.

With a quick look back at the rapper snoring away on his own bed, Jungkook left the room, taking slow and light steps until he had passed the threshold and could close the door behind him, which he did with a barely audible click sounding from the handle when it went into the mortise.

He walked down the hall on light feet until he reached Hoseok, Jimin, and Taehyung’s room, the door wasn’t closed, but instead open just the slightest bit, allowing the low light that the lamp from the living room cast most of the hallway in to peek through.

With practiced ease he pushed the door further open until he could comfortably stick his head into the darkened room. After his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the two figures curled up together on Jimin’s bed, and the lone figure in Taehyung’s. In any of the other situation in the past where he and Taehyung would sleep in separate beds for the night and he had found the fire thrumming in his veins too much and sleep unattainable, he would always end up joining Taehyung in his bed – which the elder happily let him – but this time – like the times in the past couple of weeks – he found himself turning back around and closing the door behind him like he had with his and Namjoon’s room, though contrary to what he did all those other times he continued down the darkened hall towards his two eldest hyungs’ room instead of turning around and plopping down on one of the couches in the living room.

Taehyung’s warm embrace always achieved the goal of lulling him into a restful sleep no matter how many thoughts were plaguing his mind, the arms around him so comforting that the thoughts were temporarily sealed away and he couldn’t do anything else other than melt into his partner. But this time – no matter how tempting it sounded, and how easy it would be to crawl under the sheets and into the elder’s arms – his partner wasn’t the person whom he wanted – needed – close to him if he hoped to get rest this night.

The light was practically nonexistent by the time he had reached the end of the hallway and was able to see the door to Seokjin and Yoongi’s room, since the light from the living room wasn't able to reach all the way down there – but the dorms layout had been seared into his brain a long time ago so even without the light he was perfectly capable of finding this way in the dark –.

The door to his hyungs room was closed and that on its own was enough to make him falter in his step. His hyungs were probably already asleep and Jungkook couldn't imagine that Yoongi would appreciate him waking the elder up at 2:00 AM – whether by accident or not – when he knew the rapper would much rather be sleeping than deal with his inability to fall asleep.

Despite his brain telling him to turn back around, he – with a sudden boost of courage – turned the handle – with more force than he should probably have used – causing the door to pop open with a click. Jungkook stood completely still in the following moment, staring at the door with wide eyes. He was waiting for the sound of sheets being shifted around, but nothing came.

He looked at the door and then down the hall. His brain was telling him that he could just turn around and forget that this had ever happened, but another part of his mind kept him rooted in his place unable to turn away, and before he knew it he was inside Seokjin and Yoongi’s room, his body having moved on its own without him having registered it until he was standing in front of Yoongi’s bed.

The elder was laying on his side and facing away from the direction the door was in, Jungkook could only assume that Seokijn was sleeping too by the light snoring he could hear coming from behind the big white bookcase that was dividing the room into two sides.

As gently as he could do in his sleep deprived state, he slipped under the comforter, making sure to stay close to the edge of the mattress so there was enough space between them that they wouldn’t knock into each other even if one of them were to flip over in their sleep. Now that he had done it he was no longer sure if him doing this was actually okay. Yoongi used to let him slip into his bed and stay there for the night if the younger couldn’t sleep and came to him, but lately he had been avoiding coming to the elder, so he didn’t know if the agreement was still standing or not.

Jungkook was pulled out of his thoughts when the comforter shifted behind him, and the younger heard Yoongi letting out a small groan that stopped abruptly at the same time he felt something make contact with his back.

He laid as still as possible, his eyes had been wide open but the moment he felt the mattress dip behind him as the rapper moved closer to him, they snapped shut. He tried to deepen his breathing so the elder would think he was sleeping, but it was hard keeping himself calm when his heartbeat was increasing every time he could hear his hyung’s breathing getting closer to his exposed ear.

“Jungkook?” He heard Yoongi mutter, and then he could feel a knee rubbing against his lower back and the mattress suddenly dipped further behind him causing him to slide backwards and towards the elder.

“Hey, Jungkook-ah,” Yoongi continued in a low voice, but Jungkook kept his act up. He almost flinched when he felt a hand land on his rib cage and grip at his side – most likely to attempt to shake him awake. A common thing the others would do when waking one of the other members up – but managed to keep himself still even as the hand disappeared as sudden as it had appeared as if the owner of the hand had been burned by the touch.

Jungkook thought the elder would move back to the other side of the bed and leave him to himself, so it came as a surprise to the younger when the bed dripped again and he could suddenly feel the warmth coming from Yoongi’s body settle against him as the elder pressed his front to his back. The arm that found its home around the curve of his waist and the hand that settled lightly on his breastbone weren’t uncomfortable, but after all the time spent away from such intimate touch it took him by surprise, and he forgot how to breathe for a couple of seconds.

Yoongi didn’t end up saying anything else to him, but instead just rubbed soothing circles into his chest that with time began to make him feel drowsy. He thinks the elder said something at one point, but his brain couldn’t decipher the syllables his ears were picking up.

The elder’s forehead felt warm against his nape, but he couldn’t complain – not that he wanted to, Yoongi’s closeness felt comforting like Taehyung’s embraces did –. He could feel something wet drip down on his neck and it tickled the sensitive skin behind his ear as some of it trickled down to collect in the small hollow behind it.

He vaguely felt the arm around him tighten and the chest behind him moving against his back, but all he could focus on in those last few moments before he was pulled under, was the soft press of lips behind his left ear.

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