YOONGI
November 1, about 1am or so who knows

"Just get it out of your system," Yoongi said, sitting on the edge of the tub with his forehead resting on one hand.

"I don't think I have any system left," Jimin moaned miserably, voice echoing in the bowl of the toilet. He was draped over it almost artistically - legs curled under him, feet still in their lace-hemmed white socks, muscular arms reaching up and around to practically hug the tank. His slightly wilted cardboard Princess Daisy crown had been placed jauntily on the lid of the toilet as if to give a certain solemn air to the occasion of Jimin puking his drunken guts out into the royal john.

Yoongi sighed again, relenting just enough to reach out and pat Jimin on the shoulder as reassuringly as he could. "You'll survive, kid," he said, voice hoarse from the smoke machines and yelling that always seemed to go hand-in-hand with every Greek Row halloween celebration. "You'll feel like shit on a stick and you'll be green around the edges for a coupla days but you'll survive. Midterms next week," he added, as an afterthought.

Jimin groaned wholeheartedly into the toilet. "Oh, god. Don't remind me. I have a whole dance routine that I haven't been practicing enough."

Yoongi shrugged his suspenders off his shoulders and left them to hang around his elbows. "No dancing until you're done being hungover."

"I'll never be done being hungover. This is my life now. I'll always be vomiting. Like in the Exorcist."

"I can't believe Namjoon-hyung let you watch that," Yoongi growled under his breath. "It's been a year and you're still not fuckin' over the pea soup scene."

"It was scary."

"It was fake."

"Your face is fake," Jimin mumbled weakly, petulantly, shoving himself up out of the toilet and scrambling almost blindly for the handle to flush all of the solid (and not-so-solid) evidence of his thoroughly unsuccessful halloween down into the sewers. "I'm... I'm so drunk, hyung."

"It'll pass." Yoongi stood up and went over to the sink, turning on the tap and sticking a washcloth under the stream. "I ever tell you about the first halloween I spent at Beta Tau Sigma?"

"... No?" Jimin hazarded after a second, still slumped loosely against the bowl of the toilet. He glanced up. "Was it worse than this?"

"Had appendicitis," Yoongi clipped out, wringing out the washcloth and turning to squat next to Jimin on the floor - rubbing his face down, his throat, his neck, unbuttoning his collar a little to carefully blot at the sweat on his collarbones. "Didn't tell anybody. Kept insisting I was fine. Ended up in the ER with a burst appendix and a hangover. Not a good combination," he continued, tossing the spent washcloth up into the sink. "Think you can stand?"

Jimin stared blearily down at his feet. "Maybe," he said eventually. "The bathroom isn't really spinning, is it?"

"Nope. Just you." Yoongi reached down, palms out. "Come on, kid. You can't spend all damn night on the bathroom floor."

"Sure I can," Jimin sighed, but reached up and hauled himself up anyway. "I feel so gross."

"Brush your teeth. It'll make you feel better."

"Kay." Jimin blinked sleepily. "I wanna take a shower."

"Maybe after you brush your teeth." Yoongi stood over Jimin as he slouched over the sink, fumbling for his toothbrush, toothpaste, the tap. "Fuck, just—" He tugged the toothbrush out of Jimin's loose grip and wet it, shook off the excess, splurted toothpaste onto the bristles. "Open."

"You don't have to brush my teeth," Jimin mumbled, but opened his mouth dutifully anyway.

"You're drunk as a skunk. And your breath stinks. And you dropped your toothbrush four goddamn times before I took the fuckin' thing away from you. Pretty sure I need to brush your teeth if it's gonna get done. Spit."

Jimin leaned over and spat into the sink before taking the glass of water Yoongi offered him to rinse his mouth out. "You're too good to me, hyung," he said, water leaking out the corners of his mouth.

"Don't remind me," Yoongi shot back. "Spit the water out, you're fuckin' disgusting. Now—"

Jimin sighed and tipped over, arms reaching out for Yoongi's waist, but Yoongi caught him before he fell over entirely. "I wanna take a shower."

Yoongi's hands tightened involuntarily on Jimin's forearms and he looked down at their feet on the bathmat, Jimin's white socks opposite his black ones. "You should get out of that costume," he said after a second, his voice tight in his chest. "Into some pajamas or some shit."

Jimin sighed and sagged a little, not a lot, just enough to make panic rise hot and fast in the back of Yoongi's throat - compelling him to step forward and in and wrap one hand around Jimin's waist in case the kid fell over. "I wanna take a shower," Jimin moaned, and - and leaned over, resting his forehead on Yoongi's shoulder. "I feel gross."

Yoongi stared resolutely at the bathroom wall. "You can't take a shower," he said, voice slow and deliberate and sounding distant even to him. "You're drunk. You'll fall over and crack your head open in the tub and Tae will never forgive me."

"You could shower with me!" Jimin picked his head up and gave Yoongi a fuzzy grin. "Then I wouldn't fall over!" He slouched a little into Yoongi's side, hands curling around his elbow, tugging at him petulantly. "Hyung please I just wanna take a shower—"

"I can get Tae—"

"He's sleeping," Jimin interrupted, shaking his head. "And anyway—"

"You're drunk," Yoongi repeated, the strength coming back into his voice. "And I'm not gonna shower with you when your boyfriend's asleep, I'm not—" Jimin jerked his head back and stared at him. "—What?"

"My boyfriend?"

"Tae," Yoongi said slowly. "Your boyfriend." Jimin just blinked. "Jimin seriously you two do everything together, it's not like it's a secret, and nobody—" He swallowed, twisting his arm in Jimin's slowly-tightening grip. "—and anyway it's not like anybody cares."

"Tae isn't my boyfriend," Jimin said. "We're not - he's not—" He grimaced, closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his face. "We're just best friends, hyung. Please, please just help me take a shower and stop being all weird and confusing because I'm seriously so drunk, I just wanna take a shower and go to bed."

"Okay," Yoongi stuttered out. "Okay, I'll - I'm gonna keep my underwear on cause nobody needs to—"

"Whatever," Jimin sighed happily, hands coming up to tangle with the buttons on his gold shirt. He struggled for a few seconds and then pouted. "Help me?"

Yoongi reached up with shaking hands - felt the back of his neck go hot and knew that any second the blush was going to start creeping inexorably over his face. "You're pathetic."

Jimin stepped on his socks to pull them off one after the other and hummed a slow, self-satisfied acknowledgment of his own pitifulness, before blinking and reaching up again - this time for the buttons on Yoongi's green oxford. "You know," he said, voice slurred and drunk and half asleep, "in the games Princess Daisy and Luigi were always paired up. Like Mario and Peach. Luigi and Daisy."

"Yeah," Yoongi grunted, fingers fumbling over the last few buttons. He jerked at the shirt to pull it out of the waistband of Jimin's shorts - just a little harder than he meant to, setting Jimin off balance slightly - and finally managed to get the last tiny, pearlescent button undone. "Put your arms down so I can get this fuckin' thing off you. The hell were you thinking, not even wearing an undershirt? It was fuckin' freezing out tonight."

Jimin let his arms flop bonelessly to his sides, eyes fluttering shut. "Not like I went out in it at all."

This was, Yoongi considered briefly, the absolute worst. Jimin was kind of a fitness nut - maybe it came with the Music/Dance double major territory - and he seemed to subsist almost entirely on kale and chicken breast and protein shakes and gallons and gallons and gallons of water. He ate calisthenics for breakfast every morning and did pushups for lunch and lunges for an afternoon snack and could probably squat twice his weight on the bar, and jesus, jesus, right now Yoongi was taking his shirt off for him and the evidence of all those years of careful attention and diet and work was staring him right in the goddamn face.

"Next year," Yoongi said weakly. "Next year you should probably wear something more substantial."

"Jin-hyung was fine."

"Jin-hyung has the core temperature of a motherfucking volcano." Yoongi dropped Jimin's gold shirt on the floor at the feet and stepped around him to bend into the tub. "Take your shorts off, I'm gonna turn the water on."

"You're still wearing clothes," Jimin said behind him. "C'mere."

"I can take my own goddamn clothes off," Yoongi bit out, yanking at the tap a little rougher than he meant to.

But then instead Jimin was coming up behind him, plucking gently at the back of his shirt. "You're taking care of me," he said, voice singsong and lilting with the telltale Busan satoori that he'd tried so hard to get rid of over the past few years but still always popped back up again when he was drunk, when he was sleepy, when he was distracted, when he was all three at the same goddamn time (with his eyes hooded and that one tired smile tugging at his lips and his cheeks pink with it and Yoongi couldn't fuckin' look at him). "Let me take care of you, hyung."

"I don't need you to take care of me," Yoongi muttered, but he straightened up anyway and let Jimin turn him around by his shoulders. Let Jimin struggle with the buttons on his shirt, pink tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in inebriated concentration.

Jimin had unbuttoned his shorts, unzipped the fly, but they were still hanging loose from his hipbones - the V of his hips peeking out over the elastic of his boxer briefs. (His boxer briefs were red. Yoongi would have expected weird colors from Tae, or Hoseok maybe, but something about bright fire-engine red boxer briefs under Jimin's gold-painted shorts made something twist in the pit of his stomach.) His arms were distracting. His chest was distracting. His abs - jesus, everything was distracting. Yoongi figured he had to be more drunk than he'd thought he was.

"There," Jimin sighed finally, shoving the shirt back over Yoongi's shoulders, hands going down again to tug up on the undershirt before Yoongi could do it himself. The hem came up and Yoongi just - just lifted his arms, like an idiot, like a kid, obedient and speechless under Jimin's intoxicated spell. Jimin blinked, Yoongi's undershirt still in his hands. "Oh."

"Oh?" Yoongi looked down at himself. Everything seemed normal, for a given value of normal. (What the fuck was normal about Park Jimin taking his clothes off?) "'Oh' what?"

"Nothing," Jimin said, and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his boxer briefs. "Just... take your pants off."

Yoongi spun around and god, any second now his entire body was going to be as red as a goddamn lobster. This had been the worst idea in the universe - he'd just wanted to make sure Jimin was okay after everything, hold his hair back as he threw up, clean him up a little and make sure he didn't have anything worse than a hangover in the morning. He hadn't planned for Jimin to strip naked in front of him, he hadn't planned on turning on the water and (god) agreeing to taking a goddamn shower with him, he hadn't planned on anything. But god, god - this was Jimin, and hell if Yoongi had ever been able to refuse him anything.

"I'm gonna keep my underwear on," Yoongi said again, staring at the wall and trying like hell not to think about the quiet rustling sound of Jimin's shorts hitting the floor.

"'Kay," Jimin mumbled behind him, stepping into the tub and moaning a little when the water hit his skin.

This was the absolutely fucking worst idea in the goddamn universe. Yoongi stood on the bathmat, eyes screwed shut, fumbling slowly with the button on his trousers - trying to act like he was taking off his clothes without actually having to do it. Jimin had joined the frat two years ago, arm-in-arm with Taehyung, and they'd been inseparable ever since. They'd been inseparable before that, too, but nothing had changed in the last two years and now - what had changed? Nothing, apparently, but it felt like everything.

"Hyung," Jimin said behind him. "I'm gonna fall over and crack my head open in the tub and Tae'll never forgive you. Hurry up."

"Yeah," Yoongi stuttered out, eyes flying open and button slipping free in his white-knuckled grip. He stepped out of the loose trousers (they were too long and he'd had to have Jin pin them up for him, eyes averted in embarrassment when he asked, mumbling the request under his breath) and toed out of his socks and stood awkwardly on the bathmat for a second feeling as though time had stopped, maybe just wishing that time had stopped, just long enough for him to catch his breath and remind himself that this was fine. "Yeah," he said, and turned around.

When he got into the tub and pulled the curtain over to keep the mist and steam inside the tiled shower stall Jimin was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and his head hanging back on his shoulders and his arms hanging loose. He almost looked asleep, but when Yoongi pulled the shower curtain across the bar and the metal rings scraped over the rod his eyes fluttered and opened just enough to fix Yoongi with a sleepy look. "You look funny in just your underwear," he mumbled, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Come help me shampoo, I can't lift my arms over my head without falling over."

"Your face looks funny," Yoongi stammered, trying to keep his eyes strictly above Jimin's waist. (Ah, holy fuck - his thighs. Fuck. Oh, fuck. Did they even make thighs like that anymore? It should be illegal.) "I can't believe you got this drunk off of just the pre-game shots," he added, swallowing his nerves and stepping forward to gently manhandle Jimin away from the wall, aiming him under the flow of water.

"I drank out of the bottle," Jimin sighed, a little shame-facedly. "When no one was looking."

Yoongi glared at him, hands tightening on Jimin's shoulders. "You little shit. No wonder you ended up under the table. I'm gonna petition Namjoon-hyung to amend rule three to include both you and Taehyung."

"I've never set anything on fire!" Jimin protested weakly. "And anyway it got you into the shower with me, so it was worth it."

Yoongi froze halfway through splurting shampoo into his hand (Jimin's shampoo, the fruity one with citrus and honeysuckle and whatever dumb bullshit he liked to rub on himself that made him smell so - so fuckin' much like himself) so that it overflowed the bowl of his palm and dribbled onto the floor of the tub. "What?"

But Jimin didn't answer him. He just smiled, eyes closing gently, reaching up to thread his fingers together over the back of Yoongi's neck. "I can't believe," he said, his voice low, "that you thought Tae was my boyfriend."

"You're drunk," Yoongi said desperately, stumbling over his words. "You're drunk, Jimin."

"The thing about being drunk," Jimin countered, sounding almost sober for a second, "isn't that it makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. It just takes your inhibitions down. You do things you want to do but are too scared."

"You're drunk," Yoongi repeated, trying to pull back.

Jimin opened his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "I'm drunk."

And leaned in.

Jimin's mouth tasted like the mint of his toothpaste. Yoongi closed his eyes because this couldn't be happening, right? He'd always had a pretty good alcohol tolerance and he didn't remember drinking that much but this was... he had to be way, way more drunk than he thought he was, that was all. He was dreaming, he was daydreaming, Jimin's tongue couldn't possibly be in his mouth, Jimin's body (Jimin's naked body ohhh god oh god oh god) couldn't possibly be pressed against him, Jimin's hands couldn't possibly be over the back of his neck.

If this wasn't really happening it was okay, right? It couldn't possibly be happening, this was just a dream - so Yoongi gave in the way he always did when he had this dream and wrapped his arms around Jimin's ribcage, hands coming up to loop over his shoulders. Yoongi gave in and kissed Jimin back like he always did when he had this dream, like he always did when Jimin came on so strong and Yoongi realized he was dreaming and in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night in his own head, he could let himself have this.

But then Jimin made a noise - a little high noise in the back of his throat, something in between a groan or a sigh or the sound someone made when they were waking up - and Yoongi realized that he wasn't dreaming. He wasn't dreaming and this was real and Jimin was drunk and this wasn't okay.

He jerked back, careful not to push Jimin too roughly and knock him over. "You're drunk," he stuttered out. "You're drunk, Jimin. Come on, just - just wash off and go to bed, you're drunk—"

"You taste good," Jimin said. His eyes were closed and he was smiling and his lips were a little swollen from how hard he'd been kissing Yoongi (oh, god - god god god) and there was a flush of pink in his cheeks. "Can we do that again?"

"We'll talk," Yoongi stuttered out, carefully edging back to scrub shampoo over Jimin's scalp. "When you're sobered up, we'll talk."

"Promise?"

Yoongi bit his lip and felt Jimin open his eyes, felt Jimin's eyes on his face, but couldn't bring himself to meet his gaze. "Yeah. I promise."

HOSEOK
November 1, about 1:30am or so who knows

"Yah! Hoseok-ah, where the fuck are you?"

Hoseok groaned and swung his legs over the edge of his mattress. Rubbed a hand over his face. Thought really, really hard about what would really happen if he ignored Yoongi's shout like he so desperately wanted to - but then of course the first thing was that Jin would probably come to see what was going on and if Jin got up then Namjoon wouldn't be too far behind and then everybody would be standing around, which would be annoying, but then the worst thing would be that he would have ignored Yoongi when he yelled, and Jeong Hoseok's mother had not raised a fool.

He groaned again and shoved himself to his feet, stumbling to the door - scrambling for the knob in the dark to pull it open and stick his head out. "What?"

"Jimin passed out in the goddamn shower," came Yoongi's voice floating down the hall. He sounded strained, like he was holding something heavy. "And he's way too fuckin' heavy for me to get 'im into bed without help."

Hoseok closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on the door jamb. He could feel the joke bubbling up his throat but he knew, he knew that if he even dared to let it past his lips that Yoongi would level some form of long-term and lasting punishment on him that he may not end up surviving. "Okay," he yelled instead, stuffing the joke back down into his gut before closing the bedroom door behind him and wandering down the hall toward the bathroom.

Yoongi was standing slouched over in the doorway to the main bathroom (the one everybody but Jin and Namjoon shared, situated between the room Yoongi and Hoseok shared and the room Taehyung and Jimin had been crammed into) sagging under the dead weight of Jimin's snoring carcass. His face was red from the effort of holding him up and his hair was wet, shoved back from his forehead hurriedly but now beginning to fall back in thickly soaked strands. He was wearing only a pair of absolutely sopping wet black boxer briefs. Jimin was in a similar state - wet and glistening, hair in his face, head sagging forward on his shoulders, but instead of wet black briefs his were dry and bright, fire-engine red.

"Do I wanna know?" Hoseok hazarded.

"Do not," Yoongi growled, "test me. Just help me get me into his goddamn bedroom."

"Y'know, hyung," Hoseok said conversationally, stepping forward to loop his arms under Jimin's armpits and hauling him upward to take his weight off of Yoongi's limp noodle physique, "there's a special place in hell for people who take advantage of delicate creatures such as Park Jimin when he's drunk."

"I didn't ask for any of your spiritual fuckin' guidance." Yoongi straightened up and let out a heartfelt groan as his spine popped in four places. "Goddamn this kid is so fuckin' heavy I swear to god, what does he eat?"

"Kale and dry chicken breast mostly." Hoseok adjusted his grip awkwardly. Jimin's damp hair was soaking through the shirt he'd worn to sleep in and water was beginning to dribble down his abdomen and sneak under the waistband of his pajama bottoms. "And way too much tequila, on occasion. Did you want my help or were you just tryin' to get me to do this for you? Cause let's be real for a second here, Jin-hyung is way stronger than—"

"We don't need to involve Jin-hyung," Yoongi mumbled hurriedly, darting forward to shove his shoulder under one of Jimin's armpits. "He and Namjoon-hyung are probably spooning or some gross shit by now and nobody needs to see that."

Hoseok rolled his eyes as he adjusted his grip so that Jimin's weight was slung between them (slightly unevenly, because Yoongi was a) hilariously short and b) hilariously weak) and began staggering awkwardly toward Jimin's room. "We don't know they spoon," he muttered under his breath.

"They're married," Yoongi shot back. "We all know it."

"Well right because they're our parents but that doesn't mean they're actually fucking."

"I said 'spooning,' not 'fucking.'" Yoongi grunted as he shifted under Jimin's weight enough to scramble with the door knob. "Tae and the fetus are still downstairs, right?"

"Far as I know. Just open the damn door before I drop your damn boyfriend."

Any other day that would have gotten a sputtered protest and a blush that would be record-breaking if it weren't identical to every other damn blush that crept over Yoongi's face (and ears and neck and scalp and presumably the rest of his fish-pale skin, but Hoseok didn't feel like going to the effort of finding out if his hypothesis was correct) whenever Hoseok referred to Jimin as his boyfriend but this time—

"Holy shit," Hoseok stuttered out, staring at Yoongi's slowly-reddening face over Jimin's head. "Holy shit, did you - are you two—" Yoongi didn't look at him as he shoved through the doorway, nudging the light on with his free elbow. "Hyung - hyung, look at me, I knew you were like in fuckin' love with the kid for like a billion years but—"

"Shut up," Yoongi hissed at him, his face absolutely bright pink. "He might hear you." As if on cue, Jimin emitted a truly impressive, window-rattling snore. "Well - okay," Yoongi stuttered out, "but still could you just shut the fuck up? I'll - I'll fill you in but not... not now. Not here."

"Holy shit," Hoseok sang to himself under his breath as they stumbled over to Jimin's bed. (His was the lower bunk, a fact for which Hoseok silently prayed his heartfelt thanks to any deity which might be listening.) "Holy shiiiit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit Tae owes me so much moneyyyy—"

"He what?" Yoongi dumped Jimin onto the mattress, scooping his legs carefully onto the bed before rounding on Hoseok. "He owes you money?"

Hoseok shrugged indulgently. "Tae was pretty sure you were gonna wait until you like graduated or some shit, but I bet 'im you two would break down by the end of Fall term. We got fifty thousand won riding on the particulars of your emotional constipation."

Yoongi took a deep breath and opened his mouth but Jimin took this opportunity to sigh and roll over on his side, one hand coming up to rest on the pillow next to his face - and Yoongi took a second to stare down at him, water still trickling down his legs from his soaking wet underwear. "I'm not emotionally constipated," he said finally, tearing his eyes off of Jimin.

"Did you shower in your underwear with him?"

"Don't judge me," Yoongi hissed, and stomped out of the bedroom - leaving Hoseok standing the middle of the cluttered floor with only a drunken, unconscious Park Jimin for company.

"Kid," Hoseok commented to Jimin's prone form, "you got your work cut out for you with this one. May god have mercy on your soul."

JEONGGUK
November 8

"I can't do this anymore," Jeongguk moaned, faceplanting hard into the book of manuscript paper in front of him. "If I have to figure out harmony between treble and alto any time in the next five minutes I think I'm going to kill something."

He was upstairs in the great room, sitting at the coffee table with his legs folded under the edge. Yoongi was sprawled out across the couch in front of him with a music theory textbook open and laying over his face, blue highlighter held loosely in one hand. Jimin was on the couch at his feet, headphones over his ears, phone on his lap, leaning back on the cushions with his head tipped back and his eyes closed and his fingers tapping out some infinitely complex rhythm on his knees.

Taehyung looked up from his own manuscript paper and grimaced. "Yeah. It gets to you. You'll get the hang of it soon." He sighed and shoved his workbook away from him on the coffee table, struggling to his feet before reaching down and catching hold of Jeongguk's elbow. "Let's go get a snack. My legs fell asleep, I need to move."

"Yeah," Jeongguk sighed, wobbling to his feet.

"We have to be quiet," Taehyung commented conversationally as he started down the stairs. "Namjoon-hyung and Jin-hyung are studying in the living room, and Namjoon-hyung gets super into it so if you distract him it's every man for himself."

Jeongguk paused on the stairs. "What's that noise?"

Taehyung stopped on the stairs. "What? Oh." He listened for a second. "Sounds kind of like music? Might be something Hoseok-hyung is working on in the basement, I don't know."

Downstairs the house was dark, but when they passed the living room a pink glow washed over the floor. The only light on in the room was the tv playing music videos - just right then it was some girl group video, obnoxiously pink and obnoxiously perky and blocked from view just very slightly by Jin and Namjoon, standing in the middle of the room next to each other facing the tv and bouncing off-rhythm.

Jeongguk froze, staring into the living room. "Are they...?"

"It's midterms," Taehyung said. "They always end up like this. I don't think either of them even remember it afterward. Come on, come look." He wandered into the living room on careful steps, sneaking conspicuously until he was almost level with Jin and Namjoon. He looked over his shoulder and beckoned impatiently, grin spreading wide over his face.

Jeongguk swallowed his nerves and trailed after him. Taehyung reached out and grabbed his wrist, dragging him in. "Look," he hissed into Jeongguk's ear, pointing at Jin and Namjoon like he was narrating a nature documentary. "See?"

Both of their faces were blank and slack and staring into the tv as they bounced awkwardly on the balls of their feet. On each OK! from the music video they raised their arms very slightly off-beat, hands twisted into an OK sign. When the girl group in the video moved their hands over their faces they copied along, a second or two behind and not at all managing to even match each other.

"They're really bad," Jeongguk hissed back.

Taehyung just shrugged, and shoved Jeongguk back towards the kitchen. "Midterms," he said simply. "They're basically asleep in there. It happens every term. Spring term it was I Am The Best. Namjoon was humming it until finals."

In the kitchen they grabbed a few things and then made their way back to the stairs. In the living room the music video had ended and now both Namjoon and Jin were lying on the floor with their eyes closed. Namjoon snored very very quietly and Jin reached out in his sleep, shoving Namjoon in the shoulder until he rolled over on his side.

"They're married," Taehyung whispered, starting up the stairs.

"Actually?"

"Nah. Well, not legally. Nobody's really sure. They're just our parents."

When they got back to the great room Yoongi was sitting up, bent over his textbook again with his legs slung over Jimin's lap. When Taehyung got to the top of the stairs Yoongi looked up. "Did I hear music from the living room?"

Taehyung grinned and tossed a melon milk to him in a loose underhand. "Yeah."

"Fuckin' awesome. Do I want to know what they're listening to this time?"

"I think it was a Strawberry Milk single?" Taehyung hummed a few bars, bouncing on the balls of his feet like Jin and Namjoon had been downstairs. "Something with a lot of 'OK!' or whatever."

Yoongi groaned and closed his eyes. "Great. That's great. Namjoon's not gonna be able to get that out of his fuckin' head for years."

JIMIN
November 16

Jimin had a hazy memory of drunkenly pulling Yoongi's shirt off in the bathroom after everyone had gotten back from Halloween (like he'd fantasized about doing a billion times, in the middle of the night when he knew Tae was asleep in the bunk overhead) and talking him into the shower with him and kissing him (even though Jimin had been vomiting less than five minutes prior, oh god, would he ever stop being embarrassed about it) and an even hazier memory of Yoongi shoving him off as gently as he could and then... nothing.

He'd woken up the next morning in bed, on top of the quilt, only a pair of underwear and a screaming hangover to his name.

The memories of the night before had started filtering back in slowly as he stumbled through the following morning but the truth of it hadn't really hit him until he was wobbling unsteadily down the stairs (one hand clinging tight to the banister and the other clasped over the top of his head for fear the top plate of his skull would lose its grip and pop off explosively with the incredible pressure of his unnaturally swollen brain) and he'd met Yoongi coming the other way. The look on Yoongi's face had been - it had been so incredibly carefully blank, but there was a tightness around his eyes, around his mouth, and a voice in the back of Jimin's head had whispered you fucked up.

They'd been awkward and hesitant for a whole two weeks following, treading carefully around each other - Hoseok hanging around in the background growing increasingly agitated with what seemed like each passing minute until finally Hoseok lured Jimin into his room with the promise of help with the choreography for his dance midterm and then had left for just a second, I have to grab my mp3 player from the basement and then instead shoved Yoongi into the room, slammed the door, and then apparently shoved a sofa in front of it because neither Yoongi nor Jimin nor both of them working in tandem were able to budge the damn thing.

So then Yoongi and Jimin stood in the room not talking for twenty of the longest minutes of Jimin's entire life until Yoongi opened his mouth and hesitantly voiced what both of them had been thinking for the last week.

"The fuck are we, anyway?"

"I don't know," Jimin stuttered out awkwardly after a second, standing in the middle of the floor with his hands twisted together behind his back. Hoseok kept his room impeccably tidy, especially compared to the nuclear wasteland any room shared with Taehyung ended up devolving into within a few hours of his taking residence, and Jimin took full advantage of the cleanliness in order to scuff his stocking foot awkwardly on the carpet. "I was really, really drunk," he added, not able to look Yoongi in the eye. "So... so sorry if I, if I overstepped, I was just drunk, it's not like you have to—"

"The thing about being drunk," Yoongi interrupted, voice slow and careful and hesitant and sounding almost like he was quoting something, "isn't that it makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. It just takes your inhibitions down. You do things you want to do but are too scared."

Jimin screwed his eyes shut and bit his lips together and twisted his fingers so hard his knuckles popped, a wave of humiliation and self-loathing rolling inexorably over him like a flash flood or a tsunami or the shock wave from an inescapable blast. "What's that from?"

"Some shit you said," Yoongi mumbled after a second, flopping backward onto his bed, reaching back to prop himself up on his hands. He shrugged and glared down at himself - he was wearing some old torn up jeans that showed his knees (the ones that Jimin had a really hard time ignoring) and he'd skinned one of them about a week ago (on Halloween maybe?), the scab rough and inconsistent over the skin where it had nearly healed. "You were... you were super fuckin' drunk, Jimin, seriously I can't believe you drank outta the goddamn bottle. I helped you shower cause I was worried you were gonna, I dunno, slip and fall and crack your head open in the tub—"

"—and Tae would never forgive you," Jimin said, the memory slotting into the gaps in his head like a puzzle piece. "Yeah. Th-thanks, for, uh, for helping me out. In the shower. That was really nice of you."

"You kissed me," Yoongi said then, suddenly.

Jimin blanched. "I was pretty drunk, it's - you don't have to - I didn't mean—"

"I was really fuckin' worried about you," Yoongi interrupted again. He slumped forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his long pale fingers together and letting his head fall forward from his shoulders. "I was outta my damn mind, I was so fuckin' worried about you when we figured out you weren't with us on Halloween, and then you were - you were okay and I just about... I coulda cried," he stuttered out, shaking his head. "When Namjoon-hyung texted that you were at home the whole time - I coulda cried I was so fuckin' relieved. And you were so goddamn drunk and I was so worried, Jimin, seriously, I dunno what I was gonna do but I was - I was so fuckin' worried about you," he finished stupidly.

"Sorry," Jimin mumbled finally, feeling the blush creep up his chest and his neck and his throat and his cheeks until he felt like he could just about boil alive in the heat of his own humiliation and shame. "I didn't mean to—"

"Just—" But then Yoongi stood up, he stumbled to his feet and he closed the distance between them in three quick steps and reached out and wrapped his hand loosely around Jimin's elbow and glared down at his fingers curled around Jimin's arm and bit his lip and seemed to steel himself. "Did you mean it?"

"Did I mean what?"

"You kissed me in the shower," Yoongi said, eyes downcast. "And you said that, that thing about how bein' drunk just made you do things you woulda done anyway if you weren't so scared, and I just - I just wanna know if you meant it. When you kissed me."

Oh, god.

This was the moment of truth, wasn't it? He could lie. He could pull his elbow out of Yoongi's grip and he could lie, he could say nah, he could tear his heart out and leave it on the ground in the shallow hope that he could keep things loose and easy and comfortable in the house at the expense of Yoongi's lips and his skin and the way he smiled and how careful he was despite the way he spit out curses and tangled contractions and rough, affectionate insults, the way he was so gentle and would take care of everyone when they weren't looking, the way he worked so damn hard that sometimes Jimin would find him passed out on the kitchen table with one of Tae's compositions laid out in front of him because he'd worked all night on proofreading it and noting it and suggesting changes and making sure they'd all get good grades.

He could lie. He could lie. He could lie and save everything that they were and... and ruin everything that they could be.

"Yeah," Jimin said, his lungs constricting in so tight and so fast and so hard that there was part of him that wondered if he was dying. "Yeah, I - I meant it. Sorry. If you don't want to, I mean, if you're not - it's okay, I get it, it's not like—"

"Shut the fuck up, Jimin," Yoongi breathed out.

His hands came up. His face came up. His throat stretched upward. His palms cradled Jimin's jawline like some fragile, perfect, precious thing and he leaned in and pressed his lips to Jimin's mouth like he was terrified that if he moved too fast Jimin would disappear in a puff of smoke.

For a second Jimin had wondered hazily if he was dreaming. If this was really happening. If Yoongi was just playing some horrible, horrible prank on him—

—but instead Yoongi sighed and pulled Jimin's face in closer and parted his lips and licked against the seam of his mouth and Jimin stopped caring if this was a prank because his head was completely taken over by the fact that after two years of daydreaming Min Yoongi was kissing him, he was kissing him in real life, and he couldn't stop himself from breathing out a heavy gasping moan. Wrapping his hands around Yoongi's waist to pull him in tight. Opening his mouth. Letting Yoongi in.

On the other side of bedroom door there was the unmistakable sound of Hoseok yelling something about fucking FINALLY and Yoongi started to pull away to go rip the door off its hinges and no doubt commit horrible, grisly murder but Jimin hauled him back and kissed him again and - and as it turned out maybe Yoongi didn't mind Hoseok locking them into the room together that much after all.

"You're a piece of shit," Yoongi mumbled against Jimin's mouth.

"Yeah," Jimin sighed, hands tightening on Yoongi's waist. "I know."