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Namjoon once said Seokjin and Jeongguk could not live without each other. He did not know just how right he was. During their separation, that sentence would play over and over in his head, like the skipping tracks on the scratched CDs from Yoongi’s collection.
“Jin and Jungkook can’t live without each other.”
Just like Namjoon did not know just how right he was, Seokjin did not know just how quickly that would come to be true when he first met the bright-eyed little thirteen year old. The little boy who signed to the label so soon after him, grinning ear to ear as he said “It’s so nice to meet you, Seokjin-hyung!” and Seokjin responded, politely, earnestly, “Likewise, Jeongguk-ah. Let us do our best.”
“Jin and Jungkook can’t live without each other.”
Seokjin hardly knew just what to do when he arrived to the Bangtan dorm, now nineteen, and discovered the other boys he was meant to debut with were living like slobs. He couldn't really blame them, cramped together as they were, but he was determined to make the place somewhat livable. He knew talent was not a part of his resume and so making himself useful was the least he could do. He scrubbed away the mold, and did the dirty laundry, and folded the sheets, and cooked, and cooked, and cooked, and Jeongguk, perched on a top bunk that wasn’t his as Seokjin scrubbed the floor, cheekily remarked: “You’re taking this hyung thing seriously, aren’t you?”
“Jin and Jungkook can’t live without each other.”
Seokjin did not know just what to think when they were expected to do their fanservice photoshoots when Jeongguk was only fifteen. “Lean in, Jin-ssi,” the photographer said, “Like you’re possessing him, you know?” Just voicing mild discomfort earned Seokjin disapproving glares, so he acquiesced, and laid his arms across Jeongguk’s shoulders. He thought about asking “Are you okay?” before Jeongguk began to laugh wildly, pressed up against him, and called him oppa. Seokjin’s ears turned bright red with embarrassment. Jeongguk only laughed more.
“Jin and Jungkook can’t live without each other.”
Seokjin did not have an idea of just how to arrange himself while he helped Jeongguk bathe. There was nothing weird about it, not necessarily–all of the members had taken a shower or two together. It helped to conserve water, and they were brothers. It wasn’t weird. It shouldn’t have been weird, but Jeongguk’s eyes had a habit of moving up and down Seokjin after he undressed in a way that wasn’t brotherly. It was very hungry. The intensity of it only increased as they got older, until Jeongguk was pawing at Seokjin’s thighs, pinching his nipples. If Seokjin pretended hard enough, that could still feel brotherly. If Seokjin pretended hard enough, he wouldn’t have to admit that when he was asked his celebrity crush, he almost said “Jungkook.”
“Jin and Jungkook can’t live without each other.”
Seokjin did not know just how erect he was until Jeongguk’s hand had made its clumsy way to his dick. Seokjin felt the hot, drunken breath on his face, and knew he was returning it in kind. It wasn’t the first time the two of them had gone in for a sloppy makeout; that just happened to young men isolated with very few but each other for almost a decade. But Jeongguk had never grabbed him like that. Very few people ever had. “Hyung. I want to. Before you leave us. Before you leave me.” Jin didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t think clearly. All he could say was, “Jeongguk-ah, I’m a man,” before Jeongguk squeezed down harder and said, “Really? I forgot.”
That was the last thing Seokjin could remember before he woke up, an awful headache and soreness between his legs. But he knew what happened. Of course he knew. When running firearms drills in the army, he wished someone would just shoot him straight through the head for it.
But no one shot him through the head. He instead quickly climbed the ranks as an Elite Soldier. And all he wanted to say to those who served heaps of praise upon him for serving his country, who welcomed him back from conscription with a banner of his face hanging in the sky, was that he had done something very unforgivable. Something that made his hug with Jeongguk upon discharge so brief, so mechanical.
Still, he was an actor. All idols were. It was easy enough to make variety show appearances and speak of Jeongguk casually and with the same sort of fondness he always had. But when Vanity Fair asked “Who do you miss the most?” and would not accept his answer of all of the members, when they made him admit it was Jeongguk, that was not acting. That was the feeling of his heart being carved up and put on display for the world in a way he’d been very particular about avoiding.
Their relationship was shockingly normal after Jeongguk was discharged. It almost felt like that entire night never happened. And if Seokjin thought it was representative of any sort of pattern, if he remembered moments like when Taehyung helped him deepthroat a microphone during a practice session (as a joke), and he made direct eye contact with Jeongguk while it pushed down and back on his tongue (as a joke), he would just dismiss the thought. Thirteen years an idol, two years a soldier, and one gets good at things like that.
Seokjin took comfort in the fact that Jeongguk found it so easy to join Seokjin in whatever bedroom he was in—in Los Angeles, on tour—and cuddle up against his side with no further expectations. The makeouts had stopped, too. Things were so stable that Seokjin thought it might even be okay to do a little fanservice. He danced a little too close, let Jeongguk lean over into his ear one too many times. And ARMY loved it. But Seokjin and Jeongguk knew what they were to each other; what was a little fanservice between idols? It was so easy, so normal, to have Jeongguk’s chin laying atop his head as Seokjin buttonmashed his Playstation controller from the edge of his hotel room bed.
He thought it was easy until Jeongguk pushed his overgrown hair out of the way and began pressing kisses against the nape of his neck. Warm, titillating, wet. Seokjin shivered. “Jeongguk-ah…” Seokjin trembled out and he realized immediately it sounded like a moan. He shut a clammy hand over his mouth.
“Fuck, hyung, I missed you,” Jungkook admitted with a hitch of his breath. His newer casual cursing habit still caught Seokjin off guard. “You haven’t looked at me onstage like that since–I mean, since the military. I’ve been having so much fun with you, but I thought…maybe…I don’t know…” He pressed his mouth to Seokjin’s neck again, but now instead to muffle what seemed like embarrassment. “You were ashamed of me, or something.”
“I’d never be ashamed of you,” Seokjin tenderly intertwined his fingers with Jeongguk’s like he was giving him another physical sensation to focus on. The two of them had always loved holding hands.
“I’m so glad.” Jeongguk took their joined hands to lift Seokjin’s shirt. The touch was so delicate Seokjin could feel the tips of Jungkook’s fingers brushing against his stomach hair. But gentle as it was, it was still wrong. Still a perversion of what they were meant to be to one another. “I thought of you every day. It felt like I’d never get you back. Like, like I was suffocating, or something.”
“I thought of you every day, too,” Seokjin admitted, lowering Jeongguk’s hand back down to the bed. He thought he should play dumb. Idols are good at that.
“You’re—you’re okay being on the bottom again, right?” Seokjin’s heart sank like he hadn’t known exactly what was coming. “You were just so pretty last time—”
Pretty. Seokjin was very pretty. He knew that. He was told that when BigHit signed him; when a man three times his age then dragged a finger down his face and said he was so pretty it was dangerous. Seokjin had never considered beauty to be a danger before.
It felt very dangerous now.
“What are you talking about?” Seokjin stood up and backed away from the bed with a shy arm across his stomach.
“Hyung…” Jeongguk frowned. He looked a little confused; like Seokjin’s ploy was almost working. “When I—when the two of us, you know…?” Jeongguk made a dirty gesture with his hands in the place of words. Jeongguk always had this habit, the one where words became too much in moments where expression should have been paramount. A little part of Seokjin broke knowing he was the one to make him sound like this. Seokjin only swallowed.
“I knew it,” Jeongguk continued, elbows on his knees, hands carding through his hair. “You are ashamed of me.”
“Never of you,” Seokjin repeated, hoping the emphasis was enough to explain it—the deep shame that consumed his body when he laid back in his military bunk at night and remembered Jeongguk’s scent; Jeongguk’s knowing smirk and strong arms.
“Then of what? Why can’t I have you?” Jeongguk removed his head from his hands to beg directly towards Seokjin. He really sounded like a proper brat now. That immaturity was the exact answer to his question.
“Jeongguk-ah.” Seokjin said firmly. Hyung voice. He could tell Jeongguk’s stomach curdled. “Do you understand what you’re asking for? What we did, it wasn’t right then, and it won’t be right now.”
“What’s not right about it?” Jeongguk bit at his lip like a child. Seokjin only looked at him bitterly, eyes half lidded, and Jungkook seemed to realize the answer to his question. “I’m twenty-eight years old! You know that, don’t you? I’m not a child.” Jeongguk began to remove his shirt. Seokjin tried to shove it back down but Jeongguk just pulled it over harder. He knocked Seokjin backwards with the force of standing up and throwing his shirt to the side.
“I’m a grown man,” He announced, chain hanging above his defined abs, arms covered in tattoos. It was a desperate attempt to be seen. Jeongguk had no reservations about telling the members, about telling thousands of fans on VLive, how oppressing it could be as a fully grown man who was still barely allowed to curse.
There was the time shortly after Jeongguk turned twenty-three that Seokjin walked in on him pinching his stomach fat in the bathroom mirror. He tried to excuse himself, but Jeongguk beckoned him back by asking: “Hyung, I’m an adult, aren’t I? Why does no one act like it?”
Seokjin finally mustered up the ability to put together a sentence. “It’s not even our ages,” he said, and it was partly a lie. “We—the two of us are family.”
“Family don’t usually fuck each other!” Jeongguk shouted, exasperated, and Seokjin took an instinctive step back. Jeongguk’s face crumpled in on itself. He took a deep breath and continued, calmer. “That hyung stuff, that maknae stuff, that family stuff, it’s all just for the camera. To not upset sensibilities.”
The distinction had never mattered much to Seokjin. Human or character, fact or fiction. The cameras had been on him his entire adult life. For Jeongguk, even earlier. And then Seokjin had the very harrowing thought—if there was no difference between Jin and Seokjin, then of course Jeongguk would be confused.
“But the two of us,” Jeongguk continued, “We’re equals.”
It was like Seokjin could barely get a word in. It was charming, sometimes, how Jeongguk rambled on and on; how Seokjin could just relax and not worry about meticulously crafting the perfect sentence. Now it felt suffocating. And equals. What did he mean by that? That despite Seokjin being older, that despite the fact that he was the caretaker for six other teenage boys, Jeongguk had always made him feel like he could relax like a child might?
“I’m your hyung,” Seokjin’s voice sounded broken coming out of him. This was all far too much, all at once. “I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
The fans called him a siren. They meant seducer. Even when he didn't mean to, he’d beg for attention. Even though the peace of fading into the background was what he preferred. His fans might have hated to hear it, but his favorite part of music videos was how often he could become unnoticeable next to the other members. It wasn’t like he meant to be scouted as an idol. He was just trying to make his way down the street, just have a normal day, when his pretty boy face caught him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I should’ve controlled myself,” Seokjin hung his head so he wouldn’t have to look at Jeongguk anymore. If he did, all he’d think about was how he could barely remember what it felt like to have him so intimately, and how he really did want to again.
He thought of the night Jeongguk was covering his wrist in playful kisses and Seokjin whispered, very unsure of himself: “I don’t think this is just for fun for me, Jeonggukkie.”
“What do you mean, hyung?” Jeongguk raised his face, staring at Seokjin with eyes big and wide. Seokjin felt something prickling his skin.
“I don’t think I like women.” He admitted. But the crushing weight he always felt on his chest when they were this close did not lift. “So maybe you should be more careful around me.”
“Oh.” Jeongguk responded simply. He made a humming sound as he rolled his head around as if looking for a better answer. “Seokjin hyung is still Seokjin hyung, isn’t he? Why should we stop having fun because you’re different from me?” Jeongguk was so simple; Seokjin responded with a warm smile and a kiss to his temple.
And that was that. So they played around until it wasn’t play anymore. Seokjin should have expected it, with the way that he looked, the lips that he had.
“Chin up, Jin-ah,” Seokjin blinked hard in response to the mannish hand maneuvering his face. Blinding, fluorescent lights were hurting his eyes. He could feel a thumb drag across his bottom lip. “And give a little kiss towards the camera, alright?”
“I can make my own decisions,” Jeongguk’s voice broke open the cave of memories that Seokjin had fallen into. “You didn’t do anything to me. I wanted you. I’ve wanted you for years–”
“You can’t mistake having fun with wanting me,” Seokjin was stone-faced when he said it. Idols, all celebrities, really, liked to dip their hand into honey pots they were unfamiliar with. Very few made a point to handle the sickness that would come with consuming it whole. “Jeongguk-ah, you…well, you’re not like hyung. These silly little fantasies that photoshoots and stage interactions put into your head–they aren’t you.”
Jeongguk was the problem child of HYBE. Seokjin would scold him–an act of protection–but some part of him did appreciate it. Jeongguk couldn’t stand the persona the company wanted him to embody, so why was he embracing this part of it? The ugliest, most uncomfortable part?
“It’s not about photoshoots or fanservice or whatever. It doesn’t matter where we are together; I look at you, and I have to touch you. It hurts when I can’t. When you ignore me.”
“I’m sorry for making you feel that way, Jeongguk-ah.” Every muscle in Seokjin’s body felt like it was tightening in preparation to burst apart. Jeongguk wanted Seokjin to make him a man, but there was no one less qualified to do it. “I don’t mean to look like this.”
“Seokjin,” Jeongguk said, no honorific. Seokjin quieted the impulse to correct him. “You’re beautiful. But this…this, I don’t know, desire…” Jeongguk made small flaps with his hand by his mouth like he was coaxing himself into speaking. “The way you protected me, back when the staff would hurt us, and the fact that you stayed with us, when you could have gone back home any time, it just made me think, ‘This guy is really incredible’. And the more I looked at you, the more I thought I sort of…wanted to be one with you, I guess.”
It wasn’t the more Jeongguk looked at him. It was the more the adults in their life would take advantage of them. Jeongguk only liked Seokjin so much because of how few other people would ever show him kindness. Not to mention Jeongguk’s unhealthy rabbit-like habits since the time he was a teenager. Namjoon called it hypersexuality. And Seokjin knew all of that, he knew it, but still, he—
“I’m not incredible, Jeonggukkie.” He didn’t have any valiant reason for staying with the members. He just felt guilty, really, for how he’d sometimes escape punishment the other boys were forced to endure. He didn’t know why; maybe it was important his face wasn’t damaged, maybe the status of his father had something to do with it, but if he couldn’t take care of his dongsaengs in the practice room, at least he could in the kitchen. And of course there was the selfish validation that came with it. He’d never been anything important before he’d been Jin of BTS, before the members, before Jeongguk. “I’m not even something you should waste your breath on.”
“You were the only guy I ever actually put my dick into, you know,” Jeongguk said suddenly, like this was something very important, something that could shift the conversation. Seokjin felt his face redden at the crudeness. “I mean, I've jerked a couple guys off, did…some other things back then, but until Jimin in the military, yeah, just you. It’s not just for fun. I think I might really like you. So I don’t want to hear you talk like there’s no reason for me to.” Seokjin didn’t respond. He didn’t know how to. This was so far off script, so far anything he knew how to act his way out of. “But Jimin is—he’s a lot easier than you, hyung!” Jeongguk said now, a desperation in his voice like he realized he might have said something wrong. “And it was only because there weren’t any women around. And, you know, I’ve got a bad habit with those sort of things.”
“You shouldn’t talk about another member like that.” Seokjin knew what to say now. Brotherly reprimand, at least, was easy.
Jeongguk only blinked. Not in that hard, twitchy way Seokjin always did, but just with abject confusion. "Aren't you going to react to anything else I said?”
Seokjin shifted his weight awkwardly. “Why would I?”
“Because you like me, too.” Jeongguk grabbed hold of Seokjin’s chin now and forced eye contact between the two of them. Seokjin swallowed nervously, and didn’t like the gleam in Jeongguk’s eyes when he did. “I know you like me, because you said it that night.” Not having remembered that, Seokjin’s lips parted in surprise. He immediately closed them when he realized how he must have looked. “And you’re trying to do everything you can to pretend you don’t, for what? You’re the real golden child, aren’t you, hyung? BigHit’s good boy through and through.”
“Good boy, Jin-ah, spread your legs apart just like that.”
Seokjin tried his best to get his eyes to look at anything other than Jeongguk’s face. He was making it so difficult to pretend the two of them were perfect idols; in confronting Jeongguk’s eyes, he was confronting everything the two of them had endured together.
“Aren’t you tired of it? Don’t you want to make a choice that makes them nervous? Angry?” Jeongguk seemed to have no issue speaking clearly now that his frustration boiled over.
Seokjin could only stutter out: “I can’t–I don’t want you to get in trouble–”
“I’m already in trouble all the time! ‘Jeongguk, you can’t say that. Jeongguk, apologize for this.’ No one lets me be my own man. And you refuse to be yours!”
Seokjin bit his lip staring at Jeongguk’s pecs that were twitching with some sort of adrenaline. Seokjin squeezed his eyes shut and awkwardly lifted Jeongguk’s shirt from the floor. He nervously held it between the two of them.
“Put your shirt back on,” Seokjin demanded. He wanted to at least pretend he had some sort of power in this interaction. “Little brothers shouldn’t act like this."
“I’m not little!” Jeongguk used one hand to tug the shirt from Seokjin’s grasp and throw it to the side and another to grab one of Seokjin’s wrists, any attempt at power for Seokjin crushed in the hold. “Have you ever looked at yourself? You’re so fragile. Breakable. All skin and bones. You need someone to protect you, too. I can do that!”
Seokjin tried to respond in pathetic defense. “I’m an elite soldier—”
“Yeah, okay, anybody can be an ‘elite soldier’ if they do whatever someone tells them to do.”
“…I’m also very good with a gun.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jeongguk, about at his limit, tightened his grip. Seokjin knew he was just winding him up. Something about this banter had become something like their play fighting. “You were a virgin before me, weren’t you? You talk about having fun, but it’s not fun for you. You really have to love someone. You love me.” Seokjin responded by shaking his head rapidly. He wanted to shove those words back into Jeongguk’s mouth; erase them from existence.
He settled on a sentence that succeeded in avoiding the primary question. “I wasn’t a twenty-nine year old virgin, all right?” Jeongguk might have thought he was proving some sort of point. In reality, people often assumed Seokjin was more innocent than he really was. “I’d done it. In our debut years.” And he’d had little encounters here and there since, but Jeongguk didn’t need to know about those.
“Debut years?” Jeongguk furrowed his brow with an unmistakably jealous little face. “With who? Yoongi? Taehyung?"
Seokjin should have played this one smarter. He should have known that question was coming, and also that he’d prefer not to answer it. His silence struck through the air like a hammer crushing a butterfly. Jeongguk, now with a deeply troubled expression, nodded in understanding.
“Yeah, okay.” Jeongguk exhaled. “Me too.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.” There was a beat of silence. Jeongguk took in a sharp breath before speaking again. There was guilt in it. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’d tell you everything they did to me.”
“Because why would it matter? I'm paid to be pretty, Jeongguk-ah. So I did things pretty people do.”
It made Seokjin’s stomach cramp in anguish if he thought too deeply about the abuses Jeongguk suffered in their early years. It felt like a gaping hole split through it when he realized how little of it he prevented. But, the same couldn’t be said for what happened to Seokjin himself. Jeongguk was something very real. Something very talented. Something that deserved much better than the lot he received. But Seokjin, he didn’t have any talent at all, or a personality he hadn’t built specifically for the camera. He knew his face was about all he had going for him. So he didn’t at all mind when people took advantage of that.
“You were just eighteen,” Jeongguk said quietly.
“You were just thirteen,” Seokjin responded.
Jeongguk went through a series of expressions; angry, sad, confused, until he just let out a groan of frustration and pounced on his hyung. He forced Seokjin down to the bed with knees on both sides of his waist to keep him pinned. Seokjin felt a hot sensation building between his legs. He wanted to cry. “One of the managers hit me so hard once I threw up,” Jeongguk said. The sentence was like a bullet through Seokjin’s ears. He hated when it was acknowledged out loud; he couldn’t sleep for a week after Soobin announced to the entire world “We did get hit back then.” It was a reminder of everything Seokjin’s boys had gone through; everything he couldn’t stop.
“You stayed at my side the whole night. You rubbed my back. You sung me to sleep.” Jeongguk moved gentle fingers down the curve of Seokjin’s stomach. Seokjin could feel how much his own face was softening, how heavy his breath was becoming. Something must have been very wrong with him for him to be reacting like that. “And I just knew, hyung is a good person. Hyung would never hit me. Not like that.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Seokjin raised a hand up to Jeongguk’s face. It was hesitant, uncertain, but nothing could compare to the rich warmth in Seokjin’s chest when their skin came into contact from a touch he himself had initiated. He could feel some of the tightness in his body release with it.
Jeongguk’s expression relaxed. “You’re so afraid of hurting me, but people already hurt me. And they hurt you, too.” His words had become so soft from such a small gesture. “Why do you pretend you’re like them? You couldn’t be further from that. It’s okay if you want me, too. Seokjin,” Jeongguk pressed his face further into Seokjin’s palm. “I love you.”
“No, you don’t.” Seokjin laughed into a sweet sigh. Not in mockery, but disbelief. “You're only saying that because you want us to lick each other’s wounds.”
“Who cares? What can people like us do other than that? For what other reason would we be able to love somebody?”
Seokjin couldn’t do anything but stare at Jeongguk. There was a vulnerability across his face that Seokjin wanted to ignore as something childish, but that he knew he was mirroring with an almost identical expression. Both forced to be mature as children, and childish as adults. Maybe they were some sort of equals after all.
Seokjin was still stuck in his own head when he felt Jeongguk’s tongue slip its way into his mouth. He shook his head in temporary shock, but he couldn’t stop himself from relaxing into the rough kiss. The possessive kiss. Jeongguk had such a small, cute mouth, but it was practically devouring Seokjin now. He tasted like the nicotine gum he’d chew to avoid cigarettes. It made Seokjin’s tongue tingle.
Jeongguk threw his head back, panting. “If you don’t want me, tell me now, alright? If you don’t, there’s definitely a few things other than your wounds that I want to lick.”
Seokjin couldn’t help himself. His head was spinning–he had no idea if the sensations flooding his body felt good or bad–but he was laughing again. This time in pure amusement.
“You don’t give up!” He wheezed. “In singing, or dancing, or fucking. You just have to get what you want.”
“That’s right,” Jeongguk confirmed, repositioning himself so he could lift Seokjin’s shirt, and drag a tongue up his stomach. His piercings tickled. When his mouth made his way to Seokjin’s nipple, Seokjin let out a little yelp and clamped down on Jeongguk’s hair.
Jeongguk lazily lifted his face. His eyes were completely glazed over with lust. “I want you to tell me things that are important to you. I want you to think that I can handle them. I want you to see me as a man.”
This was wrong. Seokjin knew it. He knew Jeongguk was unwell, and he knew Jeongguk had troubling reasons for wanting this. But, as Jeongguk had aptly pointed out, Seokjin was unwell too.
“Then show me how much of a man you are,” Seokjin teased. He knew immediately who he sounded like. He sounded like Jin. “Just be careful not to leave a mark, alright?”
“So I can be more intimate with stupid hookups than with you?” Jeongguk groaned. He really was a brat. “Ask makeup to cover it up.”
“But if the fans see–”
“You’re thirty-three years old, hyung. Aren’t you tired of letting the fans tell you what you should do, and who you should be?”
“I don’t know who I am.” Seokjin said finally. And there it was, that bludgeon of honesty that he’d been keeping trapped within his aching chest, thrown up like an offering.
And then Jeongguk said, so tenderly, so easily, “You’re my Seokjin.”