"Kim Namjoon!" Jin shouted, leaning out of the window. "What are you doing out here? It - it's freezing, Namjoon, why on earth—"

Yoongi shoved through the window next to him, reaching out and pounding on the roofing tiles with both palms in a steady rhythm. "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Jin elbowed him back into the room behind him. "Stop it Yoongi this isn't a joke—" He leaned back out again, bringing one knee up onto the windowsill. Was he brave enough to do it? God but the roof was steep here. "—Namjoon! I'm serious! What on earth are you doing!"

Kim Namjoon was sitting at the edge of the roof, long legs hanging off into thin air, back bowed over and hands holding onto the gutter. He looked like he could just be sitting on a bench at the park, thinking about something or waiting for someone or maybe just digesting, but instead he was sitting at the edge of the roof on the second story of their three story frat house and there was nothing under him but air and dust and concrete.

"It's beautiful up here," he said suddenly, face turning upward to look up at the thick October clouds, the wind carrying his voice back into the window. "Anywhere you are, we're all still looking at the same sky."

Jin's heart leapt into his throat as he braced against the windowsill. He could be brave enough. He could be brave enough. He could do it. Who cared about the angle of the roof, he could go out there if he had to. "Namjoonie," he said, the name coming up out of him like a sob, "listen—"

Behind him the door to the bedroom slammed open and Hoseok and Taehyung tumbled in over the threshold in a tangle of confusion and long limbs. Taehyung was holding his phone in his right hand, pressing it to his ear; Hoseok had a length of garden hose coiled up around his shoulder, the loose end dragging out far enough that the connection was still banging on the stairs.

"Oh, hyung," Taehyung wheezed, pulling his phone from his face and ending the call before tossing it blindly onto Namjoon's bed (always a gamble - lord knew what Namjoon kept in there, badgers maybe?), "you're here already. Listen, it's not what it looks like—"

"Really?!" Jin's voice came out strangled and panicked. "Because what it looks like is Kim Namjoon being driven to suicide over, god, I don't even know—"

"Taehyung threw half a kimchi pizza up onto the roof because Jimin dared 'im he couldn't," Hoseok said, pushing between Jin and Taehyung, garden hose dangling from one hand. "Namjoon went out to kick it off."

"And now he's fuckin' stuck," Yoongi cackled, rocking back on his heels, hands over his mouth.

Jin put both hands over his face, willing his heart rate to cool. "Oh, god," he said. "Oh my god."

"Yah, Jin-hyung," Taehyung said casually, nudging Jin with one elbow. "You seem stressed out. How'd the visit with your family go?"

Out on the roof, Namjoon had started singing trot songs about going to war.

Earlier That Morning

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:17,0 Oct 8

Kim Namjoon! Get out of bed! This is your alarm!

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:18, Oct 8

i fucking hate you

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:21, Oct 8

No you don't. :)

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:24, Oct 8

i'm up, jesus, what do you fucking want

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:25, Oct 8

You asked me to make sure you were up by 9:30 today. How much more of those two dissertation chapters do you have left to edit before tomorrow?

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:29, Oct 8

oh

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:29, Oct 8

oh fuck

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:29, Oct 8

... All of it.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:29, Oct 8

no! i did some yesterday, it's fine

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:31, Oct 8

Namjoon. Don't lie to me.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:35, Oct 8

...... all of it.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:35, Oct 8

sorry. i'm making coffee right now. it'll get done.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:37, Oct 8

are you mad

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:47, Oct 8

Jiiiiiin are you mad ㅠㅠ

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:52, Oct 8

I'm not mad. I'm at my parents' house - I'm not going to be looking at my phone every thirty seconds. If you're that worried about it stop texting me and get to work.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:52, Oct 8

Why would I be mad? What am I, your mom?

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:52, Oct 8

Your girlfriend?

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:52, Oct 8

kind of

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:54, Oct 8

... Excuse me?

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:55, Oct 8

you're kind of like my mom, it's not like it's a secret

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:56, Oct 8

oh fuck I didn't see your second text hahaha fuuuck

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:56, Oct 8

sorry

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:59, Oct 8

Work on your dissertation and try not to drink so much caffeine you hallucinate again. And make sure Taehyung doesn't do anything too stupid before I get back.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:59, Oct 8

Jerk. :)

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 10:00, Oct 8

:D thanks mom

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 10:00, Oct 8

or should i say jagiya~~~

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 10:04, Oct 8

Stop messing around or I won't bring you home any food.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 10:05, Oct 8

i'm working, i'm working, you don't have to pull out the big guns. fuck.

NAMJOON

At about five minutes after twelve Kim Namjoon was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and his headphones blaring and the word processor cursor blinking in front of his face like some kind of goddamn playground taunt. The first chapter had gone okay - he'd already gone over it about a billion times, felt like - but he didn't even remember writing the second. Had he been asleep? Drunk? Maybe both, if the absolutely fucking horrendous spelling was anything to go by. It was due on his advisor's desk the next morning and he'd already had five cups of coffee; part of him figured he should probably drink a little more if this damn chapter was ever going to get done but another (slightly more mature) part of him was pretty fucking sure that if he had yet another cup of coffee so close on the heels of the others he would have some kind of cardiac event and no one would find his body until... well, actually, until that evening when Jin came home and beat his door down when he didn't come downstairs for dinner.

The song wound down and in the half second of silence between the ending of the first track and the beginning of the next a muffled thump filtered through his headphones. Somewhere (sounded like downstairs? outside, maybe?) Taehyung was screaming something incomprehensible and hopefully joyous, but hell if he could gauge the emotion through these damn noise-canceling headphones.

He straightened up and pulled one of the headphones off his ears. Taehyung was still screaming (something about I FUCKING TOLD YOU) and now Jimin's voice came up through the floor after it, the higher tones cutting straight through the floorboards and insulation and the thick carpet of dirty clothes and junk that layered Namjoon's bedroom floor like layers of detritus in the lower levels of a rain forest.

Fuck. Fuck. There were so many days when he looked at his life and wondered why in the freshest hell he'd thought it might be a good idea to become president of a frat and right now, with his goddamn dissertation bearing down on him like a train and Taehyung downstairs undoubtedly causing some form of the worst goddamn trouble he'd been in for five minutes at least, it was beginning to look like one of those days.

He groaned. Pulled the headphones from his ears. Slammed the space bar on his keyboard to pause the track. Ran a hand through his hair and stomped across the bedroom floor until he got to the door and pulled it open.

"What the fuck is happening down there," he yelled, standing at the top of the stairs. "Is anyone dead?"

A sudden silence, falling heavy over the house like a wool blanket. Then a voice from below, floating up the staircase uncertain and shrill: "No?"

"God fucking damn it," Namjoon muttered to himself, starting down the stairs.

Truth be told there was a section of his head that was mostly awash with relief to have a legitimate excuse not to stare at his dissertation for the third hour straight with very little to show for it. Jin wouldn't be mad, sure, but when he got home and found out Namjoon wasn't done yet (and there was no way in hell he'd be done before the clock had ticked over to an hour so late that it was really more like early) he'd probably do that thing where he pursed his lips and arched his eyebrows and cocked his chin to one side in an expression of such maternal disappointment that Namjoon sometimes had nightmares about it. (Sweet jesus. It was beyond horrible.)

"Okay," he said, thumping down the stairs until he hit the first landing. "Why were we screaming?"

Jimin and Taehyung stood in the living room with very carefully blank expressions on their faces. Jimin's cheeks were very faintly pink. Taehyung's ribcage was contracting and expanding just very very barely more quickly than usual. There were a few red leaves and a splatter of mud on the bottom hem of Taehyung's left trouser leg.

"Nobody was screaming," Jimin said.

"We were yelling," Taehyung added delicately, flapping one hand back and forth as if to imply a certain specificity of intent. "Not screaming. Screaming would be more like—"

"Don't," Namjoon said quickly. "Why were you yelling, then?"

The front door swung open and Yoongi stepped over the threshold, hefting his backpack off his shoulder and setting it down on the floor of the entryway with a sickening thud. He dropped to one knee and fumbled with the laces of one black boot, glancing up at Namjoon. "Yah. Do I wanna know why we got four empty pizza boxes scattered across the front lawn?"

"Probably not," Namjoon said.

Jimin and Taehyung both opened their mouths at the exact same time, pointing desperately at each other and talking in ever increasing volume and confusion. Mostly what Namjoon caught had to do with Taehyung being stupid and Jimin being disrespectful and Taehyung being wholly incapable of understanding when something was a joke and Jimin insulting the depth and breadth of Taehyung's quite considerable masculine prowess—

"Hey so I have good news and I have bad news," Hoseok said, sticking his head in the front door behind Yoongi. "The good news is that I figured out where the pizza went."

Namjoon closed his eyes. "What's the bad news?"

"Um," Taehyung said.

"It was Taehyung's fault," Jimin said.

"Oh man," Yoongi commented cheerily, standing up and grabbing one of the straps of his backpack. "I can already tell today's gonna be fuckin' great."

JIN

Kim Seokjin ("Jin" to his friends, "Please Kim Namjoon Please Stop Hitting Me" to his enemies) fumbled in his pocket for his keys, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, arms heavy with canvas grocery bags stuffed with food from his mother's house, Yoongi's step stool tucked under one elbow, earbuds in his ears. He had spent all of 40 hours at his parents' house, and - god - he loved his parents, he really really did. They were great. Fantastic. Incredibly supportive and loving and affectionate and absolutely smothering to a point that even Jin started drowning after about twenty-four hours in their care.

It was almost a relief when Namjoon had stopped replying to his texts, because then he could at least hold up his phone and smile politely and explain that, gosh, you know, this has been so incredibly amazing Mom and Dad but my roommate seems to be in dire straits so I should really leave. Like now. Like right now. But it was really only almost a relief - even asleep Namjoon tended to reply to texts, even if it was only with swearing and incomprehensible keysmashing. What on earth was he doing, that he couldn't respond to any texts?

It was at that point that Kim Seokjin looked up, for no good reason - and saw a pair of long, thin, black-clad legs hanging over the edge of the roof.

The step stool ended up on the ground. The grocery bags got dumped unceremoniously on the porch where he struggled with the door. His shoes went flying as he kicked them off and he had already reached the second landing of the stairs when he realized that the reason he was already so worn out was because of his stupid duffel bag weighing him down, so he struggled out of the strap and let it lay where it fell as he took the turn up the stairs to the third story with his arms out like a merry-go-round, clinging to the banister with one hand and swinging around it with the other outstretched for momentum before bolting up the last set of stairs.

Namjoon's bedroom door was standing open (which was weird), the light was on (which was even weirder still), and Yoongi was standing at the window with both hands on the windowsill (Yoongi, in Namjoon's bedroom? the weirdest yet) leaning out and yelling something incomprehensible and vaguely ecstatic into the early afternoon air.

Jin didn't remember finding his footing on Namjoon's floor, didn't remember one single notable step between the top of the stairs and the window. He was just at the stairs and then he was at the window, nudging Yoongi aside, gripping the windowsill for dear life as he stretched out over the roof. "Kim Namjoon!" Jin shouted, leaning out of the window. "What are you doing out here? It - it's freezing, Namjoon, why on earth—"

Yoongi shoved through the window next to him, reaching out and pounding on the roofing tiles with both palms in a steady rhythm. "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Jin elbowed him back into the room behind him. "Stop it Yoongi this isn't a joke—" He leaned back out again, bringing one knee up onto the windowsill. Was he brave enough to do it? God but the roof was steep here. "—Namjoon! I'm serious! What on earth are you doing!"

Kim Namjoon was sitting at the edge of the roof, long legs hanging off into thin air, back bowed over and hands holding onto the gutter. He looked like he could just be sitting on a bench at the park, thinking about something or waiting for someone or maybe just digesting something, but instead he was sitting at the edge of the roof on the second story of their three story frat house and there was nothing under him but air and dust and concrete.

"It's beautiful up here," he said suddenly, face turning upward to look up at the thick October clouds, the wind carrying his voice back into the window. "Anywhere you are, we're all still looking at the same sky."

Jin's heart leapt into his throat as he braced against the windowsill. He could be brave enough. He could be brave enough. He could do it. Who cared about the angle of the roof, he could go out there if he had to. "Namjoonie," he said, the name coming up out of him like a sob, "listen—"

Behind him the door to the bedroom slammed open and Hoseok and Taehyung tumbled in over the threshold in a tangle of confusion and long limbs. Taehyung was holding his phone in his right hand, pressing it to his face (Jin realized dimly that his phone had been buzzing rhythmically in his pocket for the last twenty seconds); Hoseok had a length of garden hose coiled up around his shoulder, the loose end dragging out far enough that the connection was still banging on the stairs.

"Oh, hyung," Taehyung wheezed, pulling his phone from his face and ending the call before tossing it blindly onto Namjoon's bed (always a gamble - lord knew what Namjoon kept in there, badgers maybe?), "you're here already. Listen, it's not what it looks like—"

"Really?!" Jin's voice came out strangled and panicked. "Because what it looks like is Kim Namjoon being driven to suicide over, god, I don't even know—"

"Taehyung threw half a kimchi pizza up onto the roof because Jimin dared 'im he couldn't," Hoseok said, pushing between Jin and Taehyung, garden hose dangling from one hand. "Namjoon went out to kick it off."

"And now he's fuckin' stuck," Yoongi cackled, rocking back on his heels, hands over his mouth.

Jin put both hands over his face, willing his heart rate to cool. "Oh, god," he said. "Oh my god."

"Yah, Jin-hyung," Taehyung said casually, nudging Jin with one elbow. "You seem stressed out. How'd the visit with your family go?"

"So," Hoseok said, standing in front of the window and unwinding the length of garden hose from around his shoulder into a loose coil hanging from his fist, "I'm thinkin' it'll probably be best for most of us to stay back here to help haul and then just send one person out to grab Namjoon-hyung."

(Namjoon's voice, floating in through the window: "Don't call me hyung!")

"Jimin should go out," Taehyung said quickly. "He's the strongest."

Jimin punched Taehyung hard in the shoulder. "Traitor!"

"No, that's why he'd be best back here," Jin said, shaking his head, one hand cupped thoughtfully over his chin. "He's got the best upper body strength. We need somebody who won't add a lot of weight to the line."

"That rules out Taehyung then," Jimin said darkly, Taehyung's neck clamped tight under one elbow in a ruthless headlock. "He's too fucking fat."

Taehyung scrabbled helplessly at Jimin's wrist, eyes bulging from their sockets. "I can't breathe!"

Yoongi leaned back on his heels, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, rolled his eyes. "So what - you're gonna send somebody small out to haul 'im up and the rest of you are going to hang out back here and pull on the hose? The fuck do you think is gonna volunteer for that shit?" He glanced up, and a look of sudden fear passed over his face. "What? Why are you all lookin' at me like that? What did I say?"

JEONGGUK

It wasn't until Jeon Jeongguk turned onto the street where the Beta Tau Sigma frat house lay that he realized that the high keening noise he'd been half-hearing at the very edge of consciousness was a human voice. Maybe more than one human voice. Maybe even several, at varying levels of volume and intensity and pitch.

It wasn't until he was three houses away from the Beta Tau Sigma frat house that he realized where, precisely, the noise was coming from.

The tableau was like this:

Kim Namjoon, standing near the edge of the roof over the second story of the house, low down to the roof tiles in a sort of constipated squat, screaming something almost unintelligible about the worst possible person to send out on this goddamn motherfucking mission, wasn't there anybody else in the fucking universe who could possibly come out here and give him a goddamn lift up, if you drop me I'm going to haunt your ass until you fuckin' die;Min Yoongi, standing just behind Namjoon with both arms looped around his shoulders as though he were trying to drag him back from a fist fight, feet braced against the roof, face almost completely beet red with effort and what was unmistakably a bright green garden hose looped three times and tied off around his waist with the length stretched out taut behind him up into the open window of the third story above the steeply angled roof, screaming something similarly unintelligible about how maybe Namjoon shoulda fuckin' thought of that before coming out on the godforsaken roof, seriously what the actual fuck had he been thinking, did he have some kind of goddamn death wish, fucking bullshit this motherfucking hose was going to cut off the circulation to the lower half of his body and all you fuckers were going to have to pay the medical bills to reattach his pelvis to his abdomen when all of this was over;Four empty pizza boxes and half of what could only have been a kimchi pizza, upended sadly on the grass.

For just a moment Jeon Jeongguk wondered if he was not, in fact, asleep and dreaming. But no - no - this was real life. He looked down at the sidewalk pavement under his feet. At his red sneakers. At his gray jeans, scuffed at the hem. At the leaves under the soles of his shoes. The October wind sighed against his skin. Somewhere in the distance was a roll of thunder, a half-hearted storm system rolling in from the north. Above him the window on the third floor of the Beta Tau Sigma frat house slammed shut and there was quiet.

This was his life. These were his choices.

From the descriptions he'd been given two days prior, Jeon Jeongguk wasn't exactly sure what kind of person he expected Kim Seokjin to be. Short, probably. Thin-boned, narrow-shouldered. Probably spoke with a soft voice even higher than Jimin's. He expected someone who wasn't exactly fat, per se, but maybe chubby in a comfortable sort of way. In short, a mom.

What he didn't expect was for Kim Seokjin to be slightly taller than him. Slender. Well-muscled. Broadest shoulders he'd ever seen on a guy outside of an action movie. A deep voice, melodic and just very slightly nasal. When they shook hands Kim Seokjin looked him in the eye and smiled and welcomed him to the house and then immediately apologized because Namjoonie got himself stuck on the roof and now needed to be tended to a little bit so if you don't mind waiting just a few minutes he'll be right out.

Jeon Jeongguk stood in the middle of the living room, slightly dazed, hand still warm where Kim Seokjin had held it, and couldn't help but feel as though he'd just had the everloving shit mothered out of him by someone who looked for all the world like the first male lead in a romance-action fusion drama.

"So," Jin said brightly from his place at one end of the living room couch, his cheeks faintly red with exertion. Kim Namjoon was lying stretched out on the couch next to him, head resting on Jin's leg, skin pale and very slightly green, a cold damp washcloth folded up and placed over his forehead and eyes, Jin's hand laid comfortingly on his chest. "Jeon Jeongguk, was it? Tae tells me you're something of a prodigy."

Jeon Jeongguk glanced back and forth from Jin to Namjoon to Taehyung (sitting on the floor with crossed legs and an excited look on his face) and then back again. "Ahh," he said back, voice slow. "Um. I mean. I suppose that might be true. Professor Lee—"

"Professor Lee moved him up from Composition 101 to 210 after the first test arrangement," Taehyung interrupted. "That means he's good."

"And you had good grades in high school?" Jin rolled his eyes upward thoughtfully, mouth working. "I don't see anything wrong with a probationary period. Namjoon has the final say as it is. Can't say why they had you wait for me."

"It's cause you're our mom," came Hoseok's voice from the stairs. He thumped down the last few steps and wandered into the living room, flashing a sunshine grin in Jeongguk's direction. "See? I told ya. Nothing to worry about."

Jin shot him a look. "Where's Yoongi?"

"Sacked out in bed," Hoseok replied, slipping down onto the floor next to Taehyung with one smooth and boneless movement. He met Jin's eyes with arched eyebrows. "Jimin's takin' care of him. He wouldn't stop threatening legal action until I let Jimin in."

"Did his torso actually separate?" Taehyung asked.

"Yes," Hoseok said decisively, nodding quickly with eyes bright and sincere. "There was so much blood everywhere. It was awful."

"Cool," Taehyung breathed, eyes going wide.

"Don't," Namjoon moaned from the couch, bringing his hands up carefully to press his palms to his face. "Jin..."

Jin patted his chest absent-mindedly in a sort of there, there gesture and flapped a hand at Hoseok, lips working hard not to pull into a smile. "Be good," he said. "Our esteemed president is feeling emotionally vulnerable." He sighed and sat back against the couch, shaking his head and rubbing a hand over his face. "Are you sure you want to join, kid? Don't get me wrong, it seems like you're a good fit for the stated purpose of the fraternity, but..." He waved a hand in a broad illustrative gesture. "... this is the kind of stuff that comes along with it. It's a package deal. They'll help you with your homework and get you in touch with production companies and studios and music clubs, sure, but in the meantime..."

"Taehyung needs to be put a leash," Namjoon growled weakly. "Ow! Ow, goddamn it, Hoseok—"

"I'll stop pinching you when you apologize," Hoseok said conversationally.

"I'm sorry, shit - fuck, I apologized! Stop!"

"Apologize and mean it!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean what I said," Namjoon stuttered, tucking in against Jin and the back of the couch to get out of Hoseok's reach. "Just don't throw any more pizza on the damn roof, all right?"

"No need," Taehyung commented. He flashed Jeongguk a self-satisfied smile. "Everyone already knows I can do it now."

"Great," Namjoon moaned, Jin fussing over him to readjust the washcloth back over his eyes. "Great. That's great."

"I think..." Jeongguk adjusted awkwardly in his seat. "I think I'm sure. Professor Lee said this was the frat to join if you were serious. About music," he added quickly, as Jin coughed out a gasp of hysterical laughter. "Serious about music."

Jin took a second to catch his breath. "I guess I have to give you that one. They're all pretty serious about music, even if that's the only thing they'll be serious about at all."

"Right," Jeongguk said. Took a deep breath. Asked a stupid question. "If you don't mind... you're not in the College of Music, right? So why—"

"It's a long story," Jin interrupted, not unkindly. "Or a boring one, anyway. If it helps, don't think of me as so much an official part of the frat. I just live here."

Namjoon reached up and pinched Jin on the shoulder - an impressive feat, considering the washcloth covering his eyes. "Shut the fuck up. You're an official part of the frat, bitch."

"Jin's our mom," Taehyung said. He turned to look up at Jin, hooking one elbow over the side of the couch. "So? Do you say it's cool? Probationary period for Fall term?"

Jin shrugged and sat back against the couch, hand going back to rest on Namjoon's chest. "Sure," he said. "Have at it. It's not like you can get into any more trouble."

In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best turn of phrase to use at this juncture.