NAMJOON
Saturday Night

The music was so loud, the bass too heavy, the treble line like the singing of a fingertip on the edge of a wine glass, and honestly at this point Kim Namjoon couldn't even tell if he was still awake. After stepping onto the dance floor for the first time, he'd only had water (from a water bottle, even - still sealed when the bartender handed it to him over the counter) but still he couldn't help but wonder if he'd been slipped something. The room seemed to roll and twist with the force of the music underfoot, the movement of too many people in a space too tight and too densely packed and far too frenetic.

He'd escaped to the VIP area over the main dance floor (his connections gaining him access with only a hand wave and an arched eyebrow) but it was just a wide balcony open over the larger space and up here the air was hot and for some reason "VIP" still meant a hell of a lot of people, including... including her.

He'd never met her before but the manager of the club had shoved him in her direction with a quick wink and a lascivious flick of his tongue and he'd remembered why the hell he was here (to forget, right? to not think for a couple hours, to think about anything else other than what he couldn't work through no matter how fucking hard he tried) so he'd walked up and offered to buy her a drink. And she'd accepted, blinking slowly up at him through long thick lashes, smiling bright red swollen lips that later she'd wrapped around the straw of her vodka tonic while she'd watched his reaction closely, like some kind of predatory animal waiting for the right moment to strike.

He'd offered to buy her a drink, and she'd accepted. She'd wrapped her swollen, bright red lips around the straw and looked up at him while she sucked, long pale throat working, and then when the song changed and her drink was down to just ice (shifting and tinkling in the glass) she'd moved over him and straddled his hips where he sat on one of the black leather couches in the VIP section and bent down into him and used those swollen red lips for what they seemed to have been made for - pressing into him and forcing his mouth open and invading him, slipping slim hands between them to tangle with the buttons of his borrowed shirt.

It was useless. He couldn't stop, he couldn't stop her, he couldn't stop himself, he curved up into her with his blood pulsing and rushing in his veins, felt his body responding, felt his head go hot and felt his skin tighten up like it was very suddenly three sizes too small and thank god. Thank god, thank god, thank god he could feel like this with a girl in his lap, legs spread over his hips, breasts nearly spilling out of the low collar of her tight black corset top, thank god—

This isn't right, whispered a voice in the back of Namjoon's head. This isn't right.

"Stop," Namjoon gasped against her mouth, "god damn it, hold on—"

"Baby," she murmured, pulling away just a little, "don't tell me you've got cold feet? I can warm you up if you give me just a minute—"

"I need to go," he stuttered out, shifting awkwardly under her - biting back a groan as his erection rubbed over the curve of her thigh. "I have to - it's not you—"

Her eyes went big. "Baby, you okay?"

This isn't right, Namjoon's head whispered to him.

"No," Namjoon choked out, tightening his hold on the couch cushions and closing his eyes. "Shit - shit, no, I don't think I'm okay."

NAMJOON
Earlier That Morning

"Hey," Namjoon yelled through the bathroom door. "Hey, Jin - don't take up all the hot water, okay?" He leaned over the sink on his end of the counter and held down his lower lids to inspect the whites of his eyes in the mirror. Were your eyes supposed to have that many veins? Was that healthy? Maybe he should actually try sleeping more at night like Jin kept talking about, or at least have drunk less alcohol at the Valentine's Day party the night before.

The door leading into Jin's bedroom opened and Jin stepped over the threshold, eyes still mostly closed, bags under his eyes, pillowcase lines on his face still. "What are you yelling about?"

"Your shower is just going really long," Namjoon started to say - then stopped. "Wait—"

"I'm not in the shower," Jin said, and yawned - stretching hugely, the back of one hand against his mouth. "Hold on a second." He padded over to the door leading into the room that held the shower and toilet and cracked it open, poking his head inside. "Yah, hyung - you going to take much longer?"

There are so many ways to wake yourself up. Some are more effective than others - Namjoon's mother had always had a penchant for the bucket of cold water, which was pretty damn efficient. Namjoon, personally, preferred an hour or two of dozing followed up by way too much coffee.

And then there was the shock and rush of finding out that your (whatever the hell Jin was - his friend? roommate wasn't right, they didn't share a room - the only thing that felt quite right was spouse and that was just Taehyung having way too much goddamn influence on his thought processes) had apparently had someone sleep over the night before without you knowing about it. A male someone, whom he called hyung and with whom he felt comfortable enough that he could open the door while that self-same male someone was in the shower. The shower. The shower. Where the guy was probably naked.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

Jin hadn't come home with them the night before, right? He'd stayed later at the party, he'd found his own way home, Namjoon hadn't even heard him come in because he'd been tipsy and listening to music in his headphones so loud that it could have blocked out just about anything, up to and including...

"Cool," Namjoon stuttered, voice pitched high and desperate. "Cool. Awesome. Gosh, you know - fuck, is that the time? I have to... go... somewhere. Right now."

"Okay," Jin replied sleepily, flapping a hand at him distractedly. "Just stop making so much noise. I didn't get very much sleep last night."

"Oh god." Namjoon clutched one hand to his stomach. "I mean... okay. Yeah. Great, cool, great talk, I will... talk to you. Later. At a later time. You and me. Together. I mean talking! Talking together. That's the only thing we'll be doing. With clothes on."

Jin stared at him through sleep-swollen eyelids, lips pursed curiously, red-brown hair hanging in his face. He was wearing a t-shirt that... fuck, that t-shirt used to belong to Namjoon, didn't it? At some point last year he'd gone through that fucking goth phase and cut everything that wasn't white or black or gray out of his wardrobe, and Jin had ended up with this one faded red t-shirt with a stretched out collar that showed his collarbones (jesus christ, his collarbones) and some garbled English screenprinted on the back. At some point last year Jin had started sleeping in Namjoon's clothes and for some reason the reality of it chose that moment to hit Namjoon in the back of the head like a hammer, knocking the breath out of him.

"Don't be weird," Jin sighed, flipping on the tap in his sink and reaching for his toothbrush - but he winced and pulled his hand back, putting his palm on his hip, on his lower back, and leaning back awkwardly. "God, my ass really hurts. I think I need to—"

But Namjoon was leaving the bathroom like a bullet out of a gun, barely avoiding falling flat on his face as he tripped over his ankles, his heart not quite sure whether it was supposed to beat in double time or stop altogether.

He slammed the bathroom door closed behind him and stumbled across the floor of his bedroom (why the fuck did he have so much shit on his fucking floor? what if he needed to make a speedy fucking getaway? did Past Namjoon not have a single fucking ounce of foresight? hadn't he had this very same problem over christmas?) until he got to the hall, which he careered down wildly like a ball bearing in a barrel. Down the stairs, through the second story past Jeongguk leaving his room (prompting a startled "hyung!"), down and down and down until finally he lost his footing right before he hit the bottom landing and slid the rest of the way down the stairs until he came to a stop flat on his ass on the floor right inside of the front door.

"Uh, hey," Jimin said from the floor of the living room, giving him a wide-eyed look. He was in the middle of what looked like a record-breaking plank. "Are you okay?"

Namjoon clutched one hand to his chest. "I think," he said, then paused for breath. "I think - I think Jin might fuck dudes."

Jimin made a face - a sort of sideways look of disgust and disappointment - and rolled his eyes. "So what else is new?" He stopped. "Wait. Had you not figured that out already?"

Namjoon made an absolutely undignified noise of confusion and terror in the back of his throat and threw up his hands in mute desperation by way of response.

"Huh," Jimin said, face clearing. He lowered himself to the floor with a grunt of exertion. "We all thought you were the dude he was fucking. I guess not, if you didn't know about it." He looked confused again, briefly. "Hey, have you ever heard of a guy named Hyosang?"

Namjoon jerked his head up, head going blank. "What?"

"Cause Jin was talking to him," Jimin clarified, shoving himself up into a sitting position. "Last night, I mean. At the party. Jin said he was going to find his own way home, remember? He was talking to Hyosang, in one of the rooms upstairs. Do you think—"

Namjoon lurched to his feet, feeling the walls of what he thought he recognized as reality crumbling to sand around him. "I need to go," he said distantly. "I have to go - somewhere. Somewhere else."

"Hyung," Jimin called after him, "hyung, wait—"

But Namjoon was already gone.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 08:43, Feb 17

Are you okay? You seemed really shaken up by something.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 08:49, Feb 17

Bad news from your advisor?

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:01, Feb 17

fine. everything's fine.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:03, Feb 17

Really? Because you don't seem fine.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:07, Feb 17

Hey. Heeeyyyyyy. Kim Namjoon.

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:15, Feb 17

... Where are you? Are you not at the house? I just checked all over and nobody knows where you went

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:21, Feb 17

what are you, my mom? i have other friends, i don't just hide at home all the damn time

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:24, Feb 17

I know you have other friends, but most of them aren't up this early on a Saturday. YOU usually aren't up this early on a Saturday.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:29, Feb 17

i'm at the library

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:30, Feb 17

don't text me anymore

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:30, Feb 17

i mean... unless it's an emergency

From: Kim Seokjin
Sent: 09:32, Feb 17

Ahh. Okay. It was dissertation stuff after all. Well, godspeed.

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:32, Feb 17

yeah

From: Kim Namjoon
Sent: 09:32, Feb 17

dissertation stuff

Why the fuck did this bother him so much? He didn't give a single shit what anybody did in their bedroom with the door closed. Jin could be hanging from the ceiling fucking sixteen different women at once and the only negative emotion Namjoon would feel would be jealousy (and maybe betrayal, since he'd hope that Jin would at least think to share) but for some reason the thought of Jin in bed with - with a guy stressed him out almost to the breaking point.

He didn't care! He really didn't. Yoongi and Jimin had started spending a lot of time on the couches in the basement and like... whatever, right? Just don't get any weird fluids on communal upholstery and have at it. Jin at least was keeping it to his own room.

It was just... weird. It was weird. He'd never seen Jin with many women but he'd always figured he was just busy. People got busy, right? Hell, Namjoon himself was running on a ten-months-and-counting dry spell and god forbid anyone think that he... well, fuck, they totally did. To hear Jimin tell it the entire population of the house had been under the impression that he and Jin had been fucking for god knew how long.

It was February so it was fucking freezing outside and he'd accidentally grabbed a sweatshirt instead of a coat (just wearing loose pajama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt underneath) but still his face went uncomfortably hot. Again he thought about how Jin had been wearing his clothes to sleep for nearly a year, again he thought about that stretched out collar, again he thought about the divot between Jin's collarbones. Hell, if they were fucking wouldn't he... wouldn't he already know Jin wore his clothes to sleep in? Of course if they were really fucking maybe Jin wouldn't wear any clothes to bed at all.

Whoa! Whoa, fuck. Whoa. No. Okay. Back up, shit. Wrong Way. Do Not Enter.

Namjoon slapped himself in the face a couple of times.

And anyway - anyway - how did that even work? How would it work, even if it were a thing? Would Jin be the one lying on his back on the mattress, spine arching, or would he be the one on top - pushing him down and taking what he wanted? Sometimes it seemed to Namjoon like he was the one in charge, absolutely and incontrovertibly, but then other times it felt like he was only in charge because Jin permitted it, because Jin just didn't really feel like vetoing, because Jin thought it was kind of sweet that Namjoon liked to play the tough guy. How would that even work?

For a second he considered texting Jimin and asking whether anyone else in the house had figured out who exactly was topping between the two of them, but then he remembered that he was mortified and didn't.

And... fuck. It wasn't like this was a thing anyway. Why even wonder about it? He and Jin weren't fucking. They weren't about to do anything of the kind. Right now Namjoon was on his way to - well, the library maybe, he'd told Jin he was at the library and it's not like he had anywhere better to be - and Jin was back at the Beta Tau Sigma house with whatever mysterious Male Someone he'd had over the night before. A one night stand? Couldn't be - in his (admittedly limited) experience one night stands rarely if ever took the time to shower in the morning, and anyway Jin had seemed so damn familiar with him. Did you call a one night stand hyung? It was weirdly intimate. His boyfriend, maybe?

But why the hell wouldn't Jin have told Namjoon about his boyfriend? Why the hell was he only finding this out now? Had Jin tried to keep it a secret from him? Was he just stupid? Had he just missed every single sign?

Somewhere in the back of his head a voice whispered Jin Hyosang and Namjoon stopped cold in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the library. Jin Hyosang. Jin Hyosang.

Last halloween Namjoon had thought that the bastard had just been trying to insult Jin by saying that thing about Jimin being his boyfriend (and what the fuck kinda weak insult was that, implying Jin was gay? who the fuck cared anymore? and if they did, Namjoon had something to talk to them about) but suddenly it seemed to take on a vastly different meaning.

He hadn't been insulting Jin, had he? He hadn't. He'd just been trying to figure out the relationship status of his ex.

His ex. Jin was Hyosang's ex? It made more sense than anything else. The way Jin had tensed up and gone cold. The way Jin never ever wanted to talk about what exactly Hyosang had done. The way Jin had cried (just a little) after they'd run into each other unexpectedly. Namjoon had chalked it up to hurt feelings and Jin being a little drunk but the whole thing made more sense if they'd been... if they'd been romantically involved once upon a time.

And then apparently Hyosang had been at the party last night. Apparently he and Jin had talked. Apparently Jin had stayed at the party and then found his own way home and then... and then there'd been some stranger in Namjoon's shower the next morning, one with whom Jin seemed far more familiar than he had any right to be.

Namjoon had been in the library for all of forty-five minutes, headphones over his ears, a book of empty staff paper open in front of him, when yet another memory from earlier that morning came out of nowhere and shot straight through his gut. What the fuck had Jin said? He'd barely gotten any sleep, and... and his ass hurt?

Oh, shit. Shit. Fuck. God damn it.

Namjoon exhaled a long, slow breath and leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the table. In his ears the bass thumped insistently in time with his heart. He could feel his pulse whispering to him in the back of his head. Why the hell did this stress him out so much? Why was it so much worse now, remembering what Jin had said and knowing what it had to mean? It had almost been better wondering whether Jin would be under him or above (not that they'd ever ever ever do anything of the kind) rather than sitting here, now, in the middle of the library, with his head buzzing so loud he felt sure that everyone around him had to be able to hear it.

His head was buzzing so goddamn loud he almost couldn't hear his fucking music. He couldn't think about transposing or key changes or arrangements. All he could think about was Jin's collarbones under that old shirt (the one that used to belong to him, the one that Jin apparently wore to sleep), christmas morning when the power had come back on at five o'clock in the morning and the tree had lit up and Jin had sat next to him in the almost dark and been quiet with him, the way his suit jacket hadn't really fit Jin's shoulders on halloween.

An hour ago he'd asked himself whether Jin would be under him or above, shoving him down and taking what he wanted or... or flat on his back on the mattress, spine arching - and now Namjoon had to consider the idea that maybe he knew. Maybe Jin had told him without meaning to. Maybe he should have picked up the facts of it a long time ago.

There was so much that he could be thinking about just right then, there was so goddamn much, but instead he sat there in the uncomfortable wooden chair with his forehead pressed to the table and all he could think about was some daydream his head had made up out of nothing, out of less than nothing - some visual of Kim Seokjin flat on his back on a mattress, shirt off, spine arching, eyes closed and perfect thick lips parted.

Kim Seokjin flat on his back on a mattress and someone else leaning in over him. Someone else pulling his shirt off. Someone else making him arch up off the sheet.

God damn it. God damn it. God damn it. Stop it, Kim Namjoon. Pull yourself together.

Namjoon scrambled in his pocket for his phone, punched in the password, flipped through the contacts. Pressed the phone to his ear.

The phone rang three times before someone picked up on the other end of the line. "What?"

"Jiho-hyung," Namjoon stuttered into the phone. "Are you busy?"

Woo Jiho was president of the Tau Deltas when Kim Namjoon had stood on the front porch as a freshman, heart in his throat, presenting his Fall term GPA like some kind of sacrificial lamb. He'd been tall and rude and unimpressed. He'd been simultaneously the laziest and yet still hardest working person Namjoon had ever met, holing himself up in his room for days at a time and only coming out when he'd finished whatever latest project that always without fail blew everyone else out of the water. He'd been the one to make the cut and create Beta Tau Sigma out of the ashes, wielding his presidential power like a scalpel, and Namjoon had followed him.

Woo Jiho been all set to step straight from the graduation podium right into a doctorate, but instead after graduating he took his diploma and cap and robe and stepped straight out into the Hongdae underground hip hop scene and never looked back.

Okay, well. Maybe not never.

"It's February, Joon-ah," Jiho was saying, taking one last long drag on his cigarette before dropping it to the pavement and crushing the ember under his heel. "Don't your existential crises usually hold off until at least March?"

"It's not an existential crisis," Namjoon mumbled under his breath, ducking his head in awkward deference and running a hand through his hair. "It's just... just weird house dynamics. I don't know, I think I just need to get out of the house for a while. A couple hours."

They were standing in an alley somewhere in the middle of Hongdae, one of those hidden-away places behind a row of cafes and restaurants and night clubs. It had taken long enough for Namjoon to finish at the library and get across the city on a busy Saturday that it was already almost five o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was already starting to dip low against the man-made horizon of the Seoul skyline, arcing its strange February light long and low over the paving stones and cement blocks and green-painted dumpsters in the alley.

"Don't you have a dissertation to write?" Jiho put his hands up, palms out in a mockingly defensive response to Namjoon's sharp look. "Right, right, sorry. I get it. Don't poke the academic, right? C'mon, Joon-ah - are you ever gonna drop that shit and come out here and join me in the real world?"

"Maybe." Last week Namjoon would have said maybe and known it meant hell no - he had too much to do, he had too much he wanted to do, he was too attached to the house and his classes and his advisor and (okay, okay) to everyone who lived under the Beta Tau Sigma roof - but now when the word maybe passed his lips his lungs contracted in his chest in some strange, unknowable combination of confusion and despair.

Yeah, he was still so damn attached (how had Jin put it, before sunrise on christmas morning with his face lit up strange by the lights on the tree, eyes exhausted, skin flushed with too much heat? I'm just still so attached - but he'd been talking about his family, his real family, not some strange pile of college kids all living in the same house) but now he was also... scared was maybe the wrong word, but he didn't have a better one. For the last year, two years, three, he'd known where he stood. The ground had been steady under his feet. Now things were shifting, sink holes yawning open under him, and he was suddenly having to face down the idea that maybe his reality had never been quite what he'd thought it had been.

This would pass. This uncertainty, like all uncertainties, would pass into history. He just had to hold on and grit his teeth and do the work like he always had. That was what life was all about.

"Maybe," Namjoon said again, digging his hands deep into the pockets of his sweatshirt.

"Buck up, kid." Jiho elbowed him in the ribs, a smirk playing over his face, eyes hooded, stance loose and lazily confident like it always was. "Where's your swag? That's your best feature, shithead. The fuck's got you so down? I'm not showing you my new club until you 'fess up."

Namjoon rolled his eyes. "You'd show me your new club anyway. It's an offshoot of your first, right?"

"Yeah." Jiho's grin showed all of his teeth like a shark. "God, it's fuckin' sweet, man. Got my bro P.O. fronting it. But seriously what the fuck, am I going to have to kick you out after five minutes for dragging down the atmosphere? Are you going to spill your guts here or do I have to beat it out of you?"

For a second he considered not saying anything, then he considered saying everything, then he remembered that he wasn't sure what to say at all. ("I think the vice-president might be gay and even though I don't have a problem with that usually it's kind of freaking me out"? "There was some guy in my shower this morning and I'm feeling weirdly territorial and it's confusing the hell out of me"? "I can't stop thinking about my best friend's collar bones and it's really getting in the way of having a good Saturday"? Everything was terrible.) Finally when Namjoon opened his mouth all that came out was: "Do you remember Jin?"

Jiho's eyebrows went up. "Your boyfriend?"

There was an extremely complicated few seconds, mostly consisting of Namjoon attempting to simultaneously draw in a choked breath and bark out some kind of shocked exclamation of confusion and defense and then promptly suffocating in the sudden vacuum. Jiho distractedly thumped him on the back a few times as he coughed, bent over almost double with the force of it.

"He's not my boyfriend," Namjoon said finally, having regained some semblance of composure. "He's the vice-president, it's not like—"

"Yeah, yeah." Jiho waved a hand dismissively. "You say that but meanwhile you're the biggest stickler for the College of Music stipulation in the Beta Tau Sigma constitution out of everyone who's ever held the presidency, and yet Kim Seokjin is the de facto VP despite never setting foot inside the Music building—"

"He's been in the Music building," Namjoon muttered darkly.

"—despite never setting foot inside of the Music building except for maybe to bring you lunch," Jiho amended smoothly. "He's a good cook, your Jin. Food Science major, right?"

"He's not my—"

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, Joon-ah." Jiho glanced up at the look on Namjoon's face and relented, sighing and running a hand through his hair. "Okay, fine, whatever. He's not your boyfriend. I'm just giving you shit. You gonna spill or what?"

Well, yeah - but what? What was there to spill? "I don't know," Namjoon said. "I thought I knew him pretty well but I'm not sure I do. The main thing is we've got a new pledge—" It wasn't the main thing, it was just convenient. "—and he's the first in like two goddamn years or something and everything's kind of out of whack, you know? We had a balance and now things are off. Like—"

"I get it," Jiho interrupted, waving a hand. "You don't have to get all philosophical on me. Leave the similes at home, Jin'll take care of 'em for you."

"I just need to not think about shit for a while," Namjoon stuttered out, knowing deep in his chest that that was all there was to it. He just needed a goddamn minute, a goddamn minute to be out of the Beta Tau Sigma house, a goddamn minute to not be a, a parent or whatever. A goddamn minute to not sit in his room with his head buzzing and his skin too tight and just fifteen feet away from where Kim Seokjin was doing god knew what with god knew who. "Show me your new club, hyung. Maybe this time I'll drop out of the doctorate program and come out to work for you as a DJ."

Jiho perked up. "Really?"

"No. Don't be an idiot."

Jiho had taken one look at the clothes he'd been wearing - the same sweatpants and baggy shirt he'd slept in, topped off with the first sweatshirt he'd grabbed off the hook in the entryway - and made a face like he'd bitten into an under-ripe persimmon. "Dongsaeng or not," he'd said, shoving Namjoon through the back door of the club with a glance back over his shoulder like he was worried that somebody important would see him with this unkempt hobo, "I'm not letting you into my club looking like that."

Luckily Jiho kept a room in each of his clubs solely for club-wear (always be prepared, he'd pronounced, holding up a hand in a boyscout salute that didn't suit him at all) but it still took an hour and three arguments and one incident in which Namjoon very very nearly (on accident) tore the cuff of one of Jiho's favorite jackets. In the end Namjoon looked like he was ready to step into a club on the Saturday evening following Valentine's Day and not quite so much like he'd just rolled out of bed and into his own worst nightmare.

"I look ridiculous," Namjoon said slowly, adjusting the plackets of his borrowed shirt awkwardly as he glared at his reflection in the full-length mirror. "Why the fuck do you own a pair of black faux-leather skinny jeans? And how the fuck did you talk me into pouring myself into them?"

"Okay first," Jiho countered, holding up a single imperious forefinger from where he was leaning lazily against the wall watching Namjoon's self-confidence implode theatrically, "they are not faux-leather. A very real cow died a very real, very tragic death to bring those trousers into the world, and you are showing flagrant disrespect to both that heroic cow's sacrifice as well as to me, your host and gracious benefactor." He held his hand aloft, palm up, and cocked his head expectantly.

"Sorry," Namjoon mumbled, tugging gingerly at the belt loops. He was like ninety-five percent sure Jiho was skinnier than him and he would, perhaps, require engine grease to get out of these damn things.

"Second," Jiho continued, nodding benevolently and holding up two fingers in a V, "I own them because I make them look good. You, ah..." He made a face. "I guess you also look good. Better than you did when you showed up, anyway. And third—"

"Are you gonna tell me I don't look ridiculous?" Namjoon met Jiho's eye in the mirror and arched one eyebrow skeptically. "Cause we both know that's not true."

"Course not," Jiho snapped. "Of fuckin' course you look ridiculous. You're going clubbing - everyone looks ridiculous when they go clubbing. It's like the rules or some shit. Leave your dignity and sobriety at the door. Speaking of—" He slipped his cellphone out of his pocket and glanced at the time, at the text notifications that had built up while he was fighting Namjoon into those goddamn leather pants. "Club's opening in thirty minutes. People already stacking up outside, too. You said you didn't want to think about shit for a little while, right?"

Namjoon closed his eyes for a half second - just long enough for that horrible, ethereal image of Jin's collarbones to flash through his head again - and swallowed. "Right," he said.

Jiho wiggled his eyebrows and pushed off the wall, wandering over to the vanity and yanking open one of the drawers. "That," he said coolly, hauling a massive bottle of top-shelf vodka out of the depths of the drawer and setting it on the counter top, "is exactly what pre-gaming is for."

The club opened at half past six on Saturdays and Jiho kept him in the back until seven, pushing shots of vodka on him until Namjoon got to the point where he could walk without stumbling but wasn't quite so steady as to feel comfortable doing anything quite so complicated as, say, chew gum and shake hands at the same time. Once Jiho was satisfied he held out a hand to help Namjoon up out of his chair.

"C'mon, Joon-ah." He pulled hard and Namjoon almost fell on his face. "Time to stop over thinking shit. What do you say we go get you laid?"

Namjoon glanced up, horrified. "Uh - no, that's fine, I don't—"

Jiho rolled his eyes and shoved him out of the dressing room and out into the back corridor of the club. (Namjoon could already hear the bass of the music from here, rattling the pipes hanging from the ceiling.) "God, whatever. You're no fun ever since you became president. I at least knew how to have a good time."

"Yeah, and look where that got you."

"Right," Jiho shot back, pushing open a door into the dark pulsing heat of the dance floor. In his inebriated state Jiho struck him as no one so much as Oberon from Midsummer Night's Dream - a fairy king holding court over a frantic, savage revelry, somehow regal and barbaric simultaneously. His eyes flashed. His teeth flashed. He stood in the portal like a gatekeeper, and held out a hand in welcome. "Look where that got me."

The music was so loud, the bass too heavy, the treble line like the singing of a fingertip on the edge of a wine glass, and Namjoon couldn't help but think of how he would have mixed this differently even through his vodka-induced haze. Even just thirty minutes after the doors opened there were too many people, moving and shouting and grinding together like a tide, and he had to fight against the dance floor just to get to the bar, to yell over the din for a bottle of water.

It took half an hour for him to get sick of being slammed into and try to seek out the VIP section - Jiho had said something about his bro P.O. fronting the club, and had let him know in no uncertain terms that Namjoon had the run of the place while he was here (no doubt in the misguided hope of dragging Namjoon down the rabbit hole with him) - finally finding it up a set of stairs and behind a red velvet rope.

Apparently Jiho had made it clear to everyone else, too, because as he stepped forward and opened his mouth the bouncer was already twitching the rope aside, letting him through with a hand wave and an arched eyebrow. He climbed the stairs and paused at the top briefly—

"Kim Namjoon, right?"

He turned, squinting in the dim club lighting. "Yeah?"

A guy stepped forward, a glass of what was either water or way too much gin and tonic in one hand. He grinned wolfishly. "Jiho-hyung said you'd be by. Looking for a distraction, right?"

Ah. The Puck to Woo Jiho's Oberon. "Let me guess," Namjoon said, ducking into a quick informal bow. "P.O.?"

P.O. flourished his free hand in an easy, broad movement of illustration - as though he were willing to admit that yes, indeed, it was he that could be called by the name P.O. if the one doing the calling was deemed worthy by some infinitely complex maze of fey criteria. "The one and only," he confirmed. "If you're looking for a distraction, we probably have something for you." His eyes dragged down Namjoon's body with a weight that was almost tangible. "What are you into?"

"Girls," Namjoon said, the words popping out of his mouth like a ball bearing in a pinball machine. "I - I'm into girls."

P.O.'s eyes narrowed. "I was talkin' more along the lines of drinks, drugs, various substances of varying legality. But yeah, sure. We got girls here. You have a preference for any particular type of girl?"

"A girl," Namjoon said, feeling like a fucking idiot, feeling like he was about to burst into spontaneous flames of humiliation, feeling like if he couldn't get Jin's collarbones out of his damn head then he might have to surrender his physical form to the inexorable tide. "Any girl. I don't care."

There was a moment of quiet (or, anyway, about as much quiet as one could get in a new club on a Saturday night) before P.O. arched his eyebrows quickly and glanced over Namjoon's shoulder. He gestured toward the VIP bar with his chin. "See her?"

Namjoon followed his gaze - there was a woman at the bar, leaning against it lazily with the stem of an empty martini glass between her fingers. She was built like... like maybe nothing Namjoon had seen before, all smooth skin and round hips and perfect breasts threatening to spill out of the low collar of her tight black corset top.

"Yeah," Namjoon stuttered.

"Go," P.O. said, shoving Namjoon forward with a quick wink and a lascivious flick of his tongue. "Offer to buy her a drink. Get a little bit distracted."

Right. Right. Cause that was what he was here for, right? To distract himself. To forget about shit. To avoid thinking about everything and anything and especially especially especially avoid thinking about Jin's collarbones. About how Jin had apparently been talking to Hyosang at the party last night. About the image of Jin gasping and moaning and arching up off the sheet under someone else's hand.

It was twenty minutes of awkward conversation before he found himself being shoved back onto the black leather couch and being straddled (predatorily, he couldn't help thinking with the very very small portion of his brain which was still getting any oxygenated blood whatsoever) and this girl's tongue in his mouth, her swollen bright red lips against his own, her breasts heaving as she breathed him in—

She had his shirt half undone (her fingers quick and far too deft for having sucked down the vodka tonic he'd bought her as quickly as she had) by the time he figured out what exactly it was she was doing. His blood was pulsing and rushing in his veins, his body responding, his head had gone hot and his skin had tightened up like it was very suddenly three sizes too small and thank god. Thank god, thank god, thank god he could feel like this with a girl in his lap, legs spread over his hips, breasts nearly spilling out of the low collar of her tight black corset top, thank god—

This isn't right, whispered a voice in the back of Namjoon's head. This isn't right.

Jin was at home. Jin was at home - and yeah, yeah, his collarbones and maybe he'd had sex with Hyosang last night but who fucking cared - Jin was at home and Namjoon was in a club with a girl whose name he didn't know unbuttoning his shirt and this was just so wrong. The wrongness of it rose up in the back of his throat like bile. Jin wasn't just a set of collarbones and a knot of confused emotion at the back of Namjoon's head (in the pit of Namjoon's stomach); Jin was his friend, Jin was Namjoon's friend and it wasn't fucking right that he was here under this girl trying to distract himself instead of going the fuck home and dealing with whatever the hell his brain was doing like a goddamn adult.

"Stop," Namjoon gasped against her mouth, "god damn it, hold on—"

"Baby," she murmured, pulling away just a little, "don't tell me you've got cold feet? I can warm you up if you give me just a minute—"

"I need to go," he stuttered out, shifting awkwardly under her - biting back a groan as his erection rubbed over the curve of her thigh. "I have to - it's not you—"

Her eyes went big. "Baby, you okay?"

He wasn't okay. He wasn't okay. Jin was at home. Jin was his friend, they were friends, and he was out here - doing what?

Trying not to be in love with somebody he couldn't have, that's what.

"No," Namjoon choked out, tightening his hold on the couch cushions and closing his eyes. "Shit - shit, no, I don't think I'm okay."

JIN
Sunday Morning

Sunday mornings were usually quiet at Beta Tau Sigma. Jin liked Sunday mornings - he got up earlier than everyone else every day, but Sundays especially he had extra time to himself. To make coffee, to sit at the kitchen table doing something mindless like scrolling through his instagram feed or reading webtoons, to clean up the detritus left over from a weekend of six (wait - it was seven now, wasn't it? eight, if he counted his houseguest) college kids wreaking havoc in their free time.

When he opened his bedroom door (quietly, so as not to disturb the man snoring lightly in his bed) and came face to face with Namjoon's bedroom door he found himself wondering vaguely if Namjoon had ever come home at all yesterday. He'd seemed beyond stressed out the morning prior, panicked and practically terrified, bolting out of the bathroom and down the stairs and then apparently out the front door and into the February cold without anything more substantial than a sweatshirt. (Jimin had just shrugged and refused to meet Jin's eye when asked if he knew where Namjoon had gone, and Jin knew better than to press further.)

He'd seemed distracted over the phone when Jin had texted him, and he hadn't sent a single snapchat, made a single instagram update, sent anyone a text or made a whiny SNS update about how much work he had to do on his dissertation. Namjoon semi-regularly went into hermit mode like this, curling up into himself like an exceptionally creative version of an armadillo, but he usually did it at home. In his room, where Jin could pick his way over Namjoon's cluttered floor and leave him snacks and bottles of water and sticky notes reminding him to brush his teeth and get a little bit of sleep when he came out of his inspiration-induced fugue state.

But he probably wasn't dead, right? This just... happened sometimes. And anyway it was entirely possibly he'd just gotten home after Jin had gone to sleep, and now was behind that bedroom door in bed where he belonged.

Jin made his way down the stairs - to the first landing, tiptoeing carefully past bedroom doors (Hoseok had always been a light sleeper) - down to the ground floor, turning back to wander into the kitchen to make himself some—

"Joonie," Jin said, stopping in the doorway of the kitchen. "How long have you been up?"

Namjoon glanced up from his place at the kitchen table, coffee cup in his hands. He looked... actually he looked practically half dead, shadows under his eyes so deep and dark they almost looked bruised, bleached hair tousled and unkempt, one sweatshirt sleeve pushed up to his elbow and the other hanging so far down that only his fingertips were visible under the cuff. "Hey," he croaked, sounding almost as dead as he looked. "I uh... I actually... didn't go to bed. Last night."

Jin rolled his eyes and moved toward the coffeemaker, pulling a mug out of the cupboard overhead. "School is important," he said, "but your health is more important. We've talked about this, Joonie."

"School?" Namjoon stared down into the depths of his black coffee, eyes unfocused and bleary. "Yeah. Yeah, school. Yeah. My health. I know. Sorry. I got... I got distracted."

"Yeah." Jin set his mug down on the table next to where Namjoon sat, pulling out a chair and falling into it stiffly. (God, if he never tried doing what he'd done last night again it'd be too soon.) "I'm starting to pick that up. Did you at least get everything figured out?"

"Listen—" Namjoon glanced up for half a second before biting his lips together and glaring back down at the table. "—that guy from yesterday, is he—"

Jin glanced up at Namjoon over his coffee. "He's still here, actually. Did you want to say hi?"

If Jin didn't know any better he'd think that Namjoon blanched, all the blood leaving his face and leaving him slightly green around the edges. "Uh," he said, fumbling with the mug in his hands, splashing a little coffee on the table, "n-no, that's okay, I really don't need to - I mean. Shit." He stared down into the depths of his black coffee almost as though it would show him the future. Leaned back heavily. Ran a hand through his hair. "Is he your boyfriend?"

There was an extremely busy few seconds which mostly consisted of the following: Jin inhaling and then choking on a mouthful of coffee; Namjoon dropping his mug in surprise; Jin spitting what remained of the coffee in his mouth back into his cup so that he could cough his lungs out; Namjoon bolting upward, dragging Jin to the sink, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet, filling it up with water so hurriedly that most of it ended up on the counter and the floor and down the front of his shirt; whacking Jin on the back a few times to help dislodge whatever particles of coffee and cream and sugar might remain.

"Oh my god," Jin wheezed, holding onto the edge of the counter like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. "You thought he was my boyfriend? Oh my god." Then he laughed, a quick cough of almost-hysterical bemusement. "My boyfriend. No. Absolutely no."

Namjoon gave him a wide-eyed look. "Then..."

"Choi Minho," Jin said, grabbing the glass of water out of Namjoon's hand and downing it all at once. "My cousin. I've been planning this visit for like a month. Why on earth would you think—"

Namjoon looked like he was going to throw up. "You said you barely got any sleep!"

"I was expecting him on Saturday morning," Jin stuttered, "but he caught an earlier train and got in super late on Friday - he texted me while we were at the Tau Delta party - so I had to pick him up from the train station in the middle of the night, Joonie!"

"And your ass hurt!"

"Oh my god," Jin moaned, running a hand down his face. "Because I had to sleep on the floor. I can't believe—"

"Do you know that everyone in the goddamn house thinks we've been fucking?" Namjoon said suddenly. Then he closed his mouth and went bright red.

"Yeah," Jin sighed. He glanced up at the dumbfounded look on Namjoon's face. "Wait, you didn't? They talk about it literally all the time. At a certain point I just started tuning it out."

"They joke about it all the time, but—"

"They're not really jokes, Namjoonie." Jin rolled his eyes. "But there's a million and one reasons it would never work so who cares? They can think what they want."

"Right," Namjoon said stupidly, clinging to the edge of the counter top and staring into the sink like a man staring into the abyss. "A million and one reasons."

Jin rolled his eyes, and shoved Namjoon gently out of the way to set his empty glass in the sink. "I'm way prettier than you, to start with."

"Oh," Namjoon said sarcastically, his voice already sounding a little bit more normal. "Thanks. Throw my looks in my face. I see how it is."

Jin elbowed him and grabbed a towel to wipe up the coffee they'd both spilled everywhere. "Don't be a jerk. Go get some sleep."

For a few seconds he thought Namjoon had listened to him until he heard Namjoon's voice from the door out into the hallway. "Jin," Namjoon said.

Jin glanced up. "Yeah?"

"If you were gay—" The words seemed to get stuck in Namjoon's throat for a second until he recovered. "If you were gay - you'd tell me, right?"

Jin smiled at him. "Go to bed, Joonie. We can talk after you've had some sleep."