Archive of Our Own

At a certain level of wealth, every hotel room feels the same.

Jimin sorts them in his mind by country, not city. City is too granular. Often he needs to zoom out to keep track of the whirlwind quality of his days. Taehyung, ever the romantic, is always saying he should try keeping a diary, and Namjoon and Yoongi swear by voice note vaults, but Jimin already has to hear himself enough as it is. He prefers to bounce his thoughts off of other people, or he prefers silence.

No matter the country, the quality of his days is the same — slick with the well-oiled repetitions of the music industry.

Airports, hotels, green rooms, dance studios, recording booths, hair and makeup and wardrobe, the comb’s narrow teeth sectioning his blond hair, deft fingers sewing the extensions into place, the hair stylist asking him, “How is this length? Good?” and, when she turns to defer politely to managers, Jimin leans forward in his chair, projects his volume above his usual well-behaved inside voice, and says, “Good! Thank you very much. I think I’ll try this length out for a little while. Maybe a bit longer if ARMY like it?”

Jimin is trying this thing called “loudly advocating for yourself.” Seokjin says they kind of have to nail that skill down by their thirties or they’re doomed to become pathetically stunted half-adults, and Jimin can’t have that when there’s already enough existential dread to deal with as is.

So: some things are new and some things are exactly the same. The hair is new.

And then: the impenetrability of the stage beneath his feet, its trust in him and his trust in it, and at the end of a concert, it’s a privilege to soak his body in Epsom salts and apply kinesiology tape to his overworked muscles, to feel like his limbs have been put to best use, molded and plied and sapped of all they can offer. That’s what he reminds himself, when it begins to blur together.

What better way to spend his days? What, but this? What else to quiet the rampage of his own thoughts?

The hotels are harder to tell apart. Starched sheets, monochromatic palettes, framed stock photos — black-and-white or sepia-toned, artful couples writhing together, inappropriate backdrops for their lives, abstract art no one would ever personally pay for, photographed cityscapes too nondescript to name or so conspicuous you’d never miss them for the obviousness of their landmarks — heavy curtains packed with dust, drink carts, mini fridges, baskets of overpriced refreshments. Will Jimin break, steal a chocolate-covered almond or two? Maybe, just maybe, in the small hours of night when he’s still awake, tossing and turning through the dark, if Jungkook hasn’t come knocking with a haul of his own, scrounged together from who-knows-where.

The curtains Jimin never touches — a paranoid habit. The telephones he touches the most, first with wipes — a habit instilled by their golden maknae — then with his palm, flipping through the hotel menu and reeling off his requests. Rarely does he take or even test the mini toiletries, too frightened they’ll cause an allergic reaction or break him out.

If ever they need something the hotel can’t provide, the managers are usually willing to send PAs out on errands, but Jimin hates to make them feel like his couriers. More often, he InstaCarts an order to the front desk under a false name. Leave at my door option, then a call to have it sent up. His false name, in the app, is ‘MJ,’ since that’s an anagram of his initials, but it seems a bit too on the nose by this point in his career and when Jungkook asks about it while inspecting one of Jimin’s receipts, Jimin says, “It stands for Minjoon, of course,” and then Jungkook, training his eyes casually on a leave-in conditioner bottle in the bag (guilty pleasure), says, “You should change that.”

“Why, because the anagram is too obvious?”

“No, because that’s your international ship name.”

“My international … ?” Jimin says, uncomprehending.

“With Namjoon-hyung,” Jungkook says, beginning to take on a hostile tone.

Jimin stares, too stunned for a moment to say a single thing. Then he starts laughing. “Ah, why do you know that?” he says, scandalized. “You’re far too online these days.”

This was weeks ago, however.

It’s been so long since Jimin has lived between hotels that he even finds the whole ordeal a little bit exhilarating. The newness — the novelty — has returned. Before the military, he felt himself becoming jaded about it all, but then, so did his members. All of them, each and every one, they’d developed hard spots over the years, patches of skin so thick nothing would ever again pierce them. And in another sense, weren’t they sensitive and melancholy, weren’t they so cynical about their industry they felt they no longer knew themselves or each other?

The highs are high and the lows are low, as they say.

The stage was Jimin’s home and the hotel rooms his prison. Airports were worse. Maintaining his composure amid the close crush of bodies and flashing cameras, microphones and shouting, extended wrists and the frantic quiver of cell phones, thundering feet trailing them to their cars, interrupted (occasionally, blessedly) by a small touch from Jungkook, his ever-present solidity sliding after Jimin, large dark body leaning over to pull the door shut or reach for his seat belt. The sound of that — metal buckle clicking into place — became a balm to Jimin. His body’s subconscious cue to relax into the leather seats.

During the military, however, this was all he dreamt of: the privilege of performance, and every stupid, blissful moment of monotony that came in between. Being shuttled from hotel room to hotel room, dipping in and out with ducked heads to try out a trendy restaurant, departing after a flurry of bows and a signed t-shirt, sitting in tinted SUVs with Jungkook while they debate their food opinions.

Then: the stage, the highest of highs, beside these people he so loves, faces sheened with sweat, euphoric, flying, dizzy with laughter, and always, if Jimin searches him out, if he lets his attention drift for even a moment, he’ll feel his gaze land on this person who knows it best, the double-edged sword of celebrity, a willingness to surrender themselves for one single second more, to wring their bodies for all that they’re worth, this fundamental need to succumb to the obsession, the thing that yanks Jimin awake in the mornings and makes living a simple matter of routine and regimen.

Why else? Who, but him?

On Jungkook’s face, this obsession is the same. Shared. Exchanged, even. Jungkook kindles and maintains this obsession with the same fastidious loyalty that Jimin lives by. It’s not simply the making of music — the creation process is an addiction shared by their rap line — although that, too, is transcendent. It’s the ability to inhabit the music after the fact, to live in it for a little while longer, to tell twenty or thirty different stories with their bodies, one after the other.

When Jimin is onstage and he sees this intensity confirmed, echoed by Jungkook, the swell of endorphins quickens, a heady rush, a roar of blood to match the music reverberating up through his bones. His life, his career, the near-constant demands made of him, all of this put together can be complicated and inconvenient and perilously unforgiving, but it is the culmination of that complexity — the stage, the lights, the booming speakers, the upswell of singing voices from the stands, seven pairs of feet and every back-up dancer under their employ, all the light and sound technicians, security and concessions and ticket takers, too — that pull everything together for Jimin.

It’s Jungkook — whether he’s an arm-length away or a hundred meters too far to reach — seeking Jimin out, following him with his eyes or his body, like a moth drawn to the briefest blip of light. Highest of highs.

The way that Jimin feels when he performs beside Jungkook sometimes seems so violently sexual, it’s a wonder they aren’t worse during tour.

This time around, Jimin is on his best behavior. The sameness is even a relief. He won’t ever take it for granted again, not after enlistment, which saw fit to grind daily existence into labor without reward. Pure, grueling discipline, enforced like a temporary life sentence. Madness, Jimin maintains, all that sameness with no room for boredom or bickering, no sense of creative fulfillment, no stereo and wall of mirrors, no microphones, no stage, no scream of the audience feeding them.

Now, living between hotels, he sprawls on starched bedding and he kicks his feet, scrolling on his phone until his neck is numb, using two screens at a time. Three, even — and why not? Why not be excessive, if they’re lucky enough to do this together one more time? Why not soak up every last second like an inebriated king?

Until he’s bone-tired and depleted. Nothing left to give. In anything he does, that’s the way Jimin has to do it.

Today, the knock arrives late in the afternoon. Jimin glances up from his phone, listening in. He debates ignoring it. Again, a hard rap of knuckles to the door, more impatient this time. It’s instinct to suspect bad actors, but he knows their security detail is tighter than ever — they can’t afford to make mistakes, can they? — and the entire floor belongs to Bangtan for the duration of their stop.

If it was staff, they would have announced themselves already. If it was a hotel employee, the “Do Not Disturb” door sign would have deterred them. If it was Taehyung, there would have been a baritone drawl to accompany the knock: “Jimin-ahhh … open up … !”

The knocking begins then to grow cadenced, almost playful, like someone is using their knuckles to improvise a song. Jimin has an ear trained for time and meter, so he hears in this knocking a rhythm too slow for hip-hop. Something more sultry. Something R&B-inflected. He gives it a minute more, listening closely. The song, beaten out by someone’s knuckles, is flowing with the ease of water.

Jimin rolls his eyes and swings to his feet.

He bypasses the peephole entirely. When he pulls open the door to his hotel room, there’s a slouching figure filling the doorway, knuckles raised in midair. The figure pauses that way, unhappy to have his song interrupted. He was probably starting to get really into it, this exercise of annoying Jimin to death. He’s wearing a hoodie, a hat, and a hanging sunscreen mask, as if they’re in autumnal Seoul and not one of the deeper crevices of Florida during the month of April.

“Have you come to rob me?” Jimin says and turns on his foot to return to the salvation of his king size mattress.

The figure catches the heavy door with a foot, sliding nimbly inside. Already he’s shedding his layers, kicking off a pair of too-big sneakers, setting aside the black ball cap and the black face mask, pulling off his oversized black hoodie and with it, a little bit of the thin tank-top beneath. Jimin does his best to ignore the brief flash of abs.

“Yup,” Jungkook says.

“Take what you must,” Jimin says and collapses belly-down onto his mattress, returning merrily to his phone.

Jungkook begins an immediate circuit of the hotel room, with the air of a bomb-sniffing dog. Jimin pretends not to notice. It’s by this point a bit of a well-worn game — Jungkook’s insistence on downplaying or passing his attention off as something else.

Jimin nestles his chin more comfortably in the crook of his arm, hiding a silly smile there.

The mini fridge opens. Jungkook stoops over, inspecting the contents as if they’ll be at all different from his hotel room. He shuts it. He picks up a bedazzled t-shirt tossed over the back of Jimin’s armchair, offering it a passing sniff.

Jimin feels his own left eyebrow twitch. Striving to appear unaffected by Jungkook’s antics, he opens KakaoTalk and reviews the group chat’s recent activity.

Namjoon and Taehyung seem to be engaged in an ongoing battle of Whose Photo Dump Is Superior? Yoongi, who’s been conducting himself with the subtlety of a hitman in recent weeks, has already bowed out. Seokjin and Hoseok are sending sticker reactions to each individual shot, with a little bit of commentary a la photo credits to me~~

Jungkook disappears into the bathroom. Jimin can hear the tap of fingers to a flat surface.

“What are you doing?” he says without looking up from his phone.

“Hyung, you have to remember to check for two-way mirrors,” comes Jungkook’s voice.

The faucet turns on. Off. He reappears armed with one of his many cell phones, flashlight turned on. Jimin watches with amusement as Jungkook conducts a new and perfunctory sweep, aiming the beam of light at small objects, squinting as if he expects to find a hidden camera tucked away somewhere in Jimin’s hotel room.

“Are you trying to make sure all of your devices are still recording?” Jimin jokes.

At that, Jungkook pivots on his socked feet, finally fixing his black-eyed stare on Jimin. Jimin can feel it — a subtle tingle up the back of his neck. He slits a little look over his shoulder. Sure enough, Jungkook is standing there and boring a hole into the side of Jimin’s head.

Jimin would really rather not make eye contact with those tight nipples, but it’s no longer possible to ignore Jungkook’s sculpted chest or the necklace layering he has going on near his clavicle. It’s Jungkook and Hoseok’s combined fashion sense that keeps the group young — that’s what the hyungs are always saying.

Jimin wants to blink, but he wants to win this staring contest more. Jungkook, who is a professional people watcher, isn’t conceding even a single centimeter.

Jimin feels a thrill go through his stomach. He wonders sometimes whether he’s been trained to preen for this person because he’s spent so much of his life either sharing a screen with Jungkook or posing for Jungkook’s cameras. If that might, somehow, some way, explain the unspoken gravity called up by this gleaming, black-eyed stare. It’s a stare that was once large and innocent, the boyish beauty of a child still coming into himself. Now, that stare is like a little camera following Jimin, centering him in frame, waiting with patience for a personal performance to begin.

Jungkook raises his eyebrows and says, “If I wanted to record you without your consent —”

“If you wanted to … ? You already do!” Jimin says. “And that’s why we have joint custody of a phone — because you can’t be trusted with a camera roll full of my face.”

“I don’t even do anything with that camera roll.”

“Nothing the public knows about,” Jimin says under his breath, then returns his warm cheeks to the bend of his elbow. He fiddles with his phone, pulling up YouTube and clicking on the video he was in the middle of watching, before he was so rudely interrupted.

Jungkook turns his flashlight off and tucks his phone away, beginning a languid approach. Hands buried in the pockets of his baggy sweats (also black), he pulls up to Jimin’s bedside. He taps a knee to the mattress, as though to test its durability. This, too, he sweeps with his eyes, surveying the rumpled quality of the bedding, the clothing Jimin is wearing, the arrangement of leanly golden limbs.

“We’re staying in a five-star hotel,” Jimin says, eyes on the screen of his phone. He brings his volume down slightly. Itches casually at a calf with the toes of his left foot. “What do you think will happen?”

“What do I think will happen?” Jungkook repeats, with that same unblinkingly black stare. “I don’t know what’ll happen, how ‘bout that? How about … I’m looking out for your safety and well-being?”

Jimin pauses his video and rolls over onto his back, righting his zip-up hoodie before the hem can drift up his belly. “Get out.”

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” Jimin says and tries to deter a bedside ambush with a small foot to Jungkook’s chest. “This is your first visit to my room and you’re —”

“You could’ve visited me.”

“I’m busy,” Jimin says, biting his lip as his bare foot is caught in two large palms, his plan of defense temporarily delayed.

“You used to visit my hotel rooms more often,” Jungkook says, with a note of accusation in his voice.

“That goes for everyone’s hotel rooms,” Jimin says. “And it’s because I’m more comfortable being alone these days.”

“I know,” Jungkook says, eyes on Jimin’s ankle. He pushes up with his fingers, taking a handful of loose denim with him, baring another little bit of hairless calf. “I don’t like it.”

Jimin studies Jungkook’s crestfallen expression and represses a smile of pure entertainment. Jungkook wears his misery so well — like a puppy put in time-out. “You don’t like that I enjoy my own company now … ?”

“Why can’t you enjoy it with other people?”

“That defeats the purpose of being alone, doesn’t it?”

“Work out with me,” Jungkook says. “After our shows.”

“No way,” Jimin says, already shaking his head. It’s true that they each have their own comedown routines, ways to circumvent the dopamine crash following a high-caliber stage and a nervous system on the fritz, but Jimin’s preferred method begins and ends with a hot bath, takeout in bed, perhaps a little bit of webtoon-reading. Perhaps a whole lot of jerking off. Perhaps, if he can spare the energy, a slicked-up toy. “To be honest, I find you a little bit crazy for that. I think you’re addicted to being in your own body. I don’t think you know how not to be in your body.”

Jungkook is apparently unimpressed by this character analysis. “You’re exactly the same as me.”

“I know how to —”

“You practice more than anyone else. You see sleep as a waste of time, too. You’re always restless and moving.”

“Not like you,” Jimin insists. “If I was crazy like you, I’d get myself a motorcycle license … maybe overcome my fear of heights …”

Lower, as if to appeal to Jimin’s good nature, Jungkook says, “You should. Then we can ride together.”

“No thank you,” Jimin says. “Anyway, Taehyungie is your gym buddy. Or grab Namjoon-hyung. Not me. If I ever have any leftover energy to burn off, I’ll do some wind-down yoga in my room.”

“What yoga?” Jungkook says, suspicious-sounding.

“What do you mean, what yoga? Mobility exercises, core-strengthening stuff. Pain relief. Anything for flexibility.”

“Show me.”

Jimin takes a closer look at the expression on Jungkook’s face. At first glance: utterly innocent. At second: keen-eyed, maybe even hungry. He feels his belly bottom out, a familiar throb rising up through his groin that makes him want to hide a schoolboy flush in his bedding. Growing vengeful, feeling a tiny bit of evilness towards this person, someone who knows — intimately — the effect he has on Jimin, Jimin wriggles his toes. He contemplates kicking Jungkook in the windpipe. He contemplates it, then he does away with the idea.

These days, wrestling with their golden maknae never ends well for Jimin.

“Another time,” he says and tries to take his foot back.

Jungkook tightens the grip he has on that foot. “Tell me what time it is and I’ll leave you alone. Don’t try to look at your phone. Look at me. Look at me while you say it.”

Thinking fast, eyes burning with the effort of keeping his gaze locked in place, Jimin says, “Somewhere in the — three or four range … ? Afternoon. Late afternoon.”

“Wrong.”

“Five. No — what is it? Four-thirty? I can’t remember … we don’t have any schedules today, so why would I need to know?”

“When did you wake up?”

“Not that late! Ten!”

“Have you left this room even once today?”

“Yes,” Jimin says primly, pleased to finally get to tell the truth.

“For?”

“… For an eighty-minute sculpting facial,” Jimin informs Jungkook, “to promote cell renewal and plump —”

“Plump?” Jungkook repeats, squeezing down harder on the little foot he’s holding captive. “And what are you watching?”

Jimin swings his other foot up into the air. This second foot promptly joins the first, caught and flattened against Jungkook’s chest. Jungkook immediately pets them, happy to have a complete pair.

Through the soles of his feet, Jimin thinks he can feel the distant thud of a heartbeat and it jolts something in him to recall the strength of his own regard: that this heartbeat has so often been the difference between dissociation and endurance. In the military, his small hand brushing Jungkook’s carotid artery on the way to his nape, leaned forward to whisper, Jungkook-ah, time to get up, palming this person awake before dawn, his boyish features transformed by the impersonal haircut and the heavy circles under his eyes, and the thudding pulse served as a near-constant reminder to Jimin.

Feeling that heart awaken underneath his palm, relearning the meaning of time and meter, all of that music reminded Jimin: Keep going. Keep going, because he has to keep going, too.

“I’m watching a video on tawny owls,” Jimin says.

“On …” Jungkook blinks. “What?”

“Tawny owls,” Jimin repeats and flexes his feet, gazing at his toes, tiny and fragile-seeming beneath the wide-set grope of Jungkook’s hands. “Two little owlets were blown out of their nest — well, actually they were nesting in hay bales, but the bales were really high up. And now Luna the tawny owl is adopting them. The babies. She just started brooding —”

“Give me that.”

Jimin yelps, trying to fight off the assault of grasping fingers, but those fingers belong to Jungkook’s right arm and Jimin is no match for that arm. Not physically and not aesthetically. Physically, the arm is terribly overpowered — it’s the deus ex machina of right arms — roped in thick bands of muscle. Aesthetically, Jimin finds the roil of tattoo ink highly distracting. He feels his phone slip through his fingers, the YouTube app closed by Jungkook’s swiping thumb.

“No more owls for today,” Jungkook says and tosses the phone to the foot of the bed.

Jimin sets his mouth in a frown (not a pout).

“Don’t pout,” Jungkook adds. He picks Jimin’s feet back up, returning them to their rightful place at his breastbone. As if to soften this display of brute strength, he smooths his hands up the bridges of Jimin’s feet, then runs his thumbs over the toes, a horizontal glide like someone drawing their fingers across the keys of a piano. “I came to check that you were alive, that’s how little we’ve heard from you.”

“You’re worse than me!” Jimin says, because he can no longer count the number of times Jungkook has gone AWOL with unanswered company messages in the triple digits, and because Jungkook is a consummate introvert, thoroughly entertained by himself, able to subsist on video games, YouTube karaoke, and pure ramyeon fumes. There was a time in their careers when Jungkook would sooner binge-watch Jimin interviews than personally text Jimin a message reading, when can we see each other, lest he interrupt his hyung’s jam-packed solo schedules. “What did you do today?”

“Gym, choreo, anime,” Jungkook recites, to the surprise of no one.

Jimin says so with his eyebrows: as expected.

“A bit of Premiere editing,” Jungkook goes on, ignoring Jimin’s nonverbal taunting. “Admired photos of my baby-to-be.”

“Your baby-to-be,” Jimin says.

“Yeah. My new motorcycle.”

Jimin doesn’t rise to the bait. Whenever Jungkook broaches the subject of bikes, it inevitably devolves into conversion attempts: C’mon, Jimin-ah, what about a moped? What if I bought you one and paid for lessons?

“What choreo?” he says, because you have to clarify these things when you’re speaking to Jeon Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook and his many, unending side quests. “Tour stuff?”

Jungkook sucks a breath in through his teeth, delaying the inevitable. “TikTok trend.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Jimin says. “I’m just pointing out that you’re also a hermit.”

“I’ve been to eat with the entire group since we got here. Have you?” Jungkook says. When an answer doesn’t immediately make itself known, he leans forward, as if to skewer Jimin alive with his stare. The stare is unshakeable. “Are you tired?”

“I’m lazy,” Jimin corrects.

“No you’re not. Sore?”

“Yes,” he responds and wriggles his toes demonstratively where they’re braced against Jungkook’s chest.

Jungkook’s gaze slides lower, scanning the skin-colored kinesio tape wrapped around the arches of Jimin’s feet. He takes Jimin’s heels in hand, as though to weigh them. “Where? Here? Why don’t we go do a massage?”

“I don’t like getting naked in hotels,” Jimin says.

Jungkook’s eyes return to Jimin’s face, dark, weighty.

Cheeks tingling, Jimin mutters, “I mean hotel spas. And … it’s different when we’re doing schedules and … when we’re on tour. I mean … you know what I mean. I don’t like undressing for massages in — in other countries. The whole time, I’m too paranoid to unwind.”

“Hm,” Jungkook says. He sets Jimin’s right foot aside — returned to the mattress and starched bedding below — and focuses in on the left, closing two hands around it. Then he cocks his thumbs, gliding them firmly up the arch before homing in on the ball. Jungkook circles this ball like he wants to roll out any meddlesome knots. He slides back down, pushing up with the pads of his fingers, beginning a massage of his own. “I saw your ‘this is Jimin’ video.”

Jimin, who just a moment ago had his head lifted at the neck, lets it drop back down for a groan of utter ecstasy. “You …” he says, “… can just say dance video.”

“Is it not called ‘this is Jimin?’ That’s what your dance series is always captioned.”

“It is, but you’re calling it that because you want — ah — to be able to say my name. Like that, like a little punk.”

“Like a little punk,” Jungkook says, mouth twitching with amusement. “Do you think I need an excuse to use banmal with you? Or do you think I’ll do it regardless?”

It’s true: Jungkook has taken naturally to using crude language around Jimin. He no longer seems to notice it, not even as it leaves his lips, not unless someone else notices it first and points it out to them. Hey, isn’t he your elder? What’s with that tone? Cue awkward laughter. But it is by now something of an accepted custom among the members and their staff. Jimin has stopped objecting to it in front of other people. Is it scandalous? Yes. Does it thrill him a little? Also yes. He lets Jungkook get away with haeche, the most intimate level of speech, the syntax and honorific-skirting used between same-age friends, friends too close for formalities. It’s the level of speech wielded by hyungs speaking to dongsaengs who sit below them on the social ladder.

Once or twice, this has resulted in a funny misunderstanding between strangers who hadn’t yet recognized Jimin and Jungkook as “Jimin and Jungkook of BTS.” To these strangers, it seemed undeniable Jimin was the dongsaeng and Jungkook the hyung.

“Whatever,” Jimin says, annoyed he’s been bested, and spends a moment enjoying his impromptu foot massage.

“I commented,” Jungkook says. He clarifies: “On my repost, I left a little comment.”

“You comment on everything.”

“Let’s film one together.”

“Film … ? Film what?”

“A choreo trend.”

“I still have to film mine with Hobi-hyung. Maybe I’ll open my own TikTok later,” Jimin says, halfhearted. Mastering Instagram is already a full-time job, and even then, he’s not immune to fucking up his contracted posts. His members love making fun of him for it. “Who knows.”

Jungkook’s eyelids are sitting low, like he’s growing irate. “Why do you film with everyone but me?”

Jimin releases a huffy little laugh. “I don’t.”

“Let’s do a live soon. Let’s order food and talk to ARMY.”

“No. You and I are on a live moratorium.”

“On whose orders? Staff?”

“Well — yes, maybe them, too. But no. And — yah, I thought you said you wanted to do less lives after the drunk karaoke debacle?”

Jungkook makes a face and sighs. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Jimin rolls his head to the side, pinning Jungkook with a fond stare. “No, I didn’t think it was bad, either,” he says, quieter than before. “Aside from the hyungs caught in your crossfire —”

“Aish, they’re — they got over it,” Jungkook mutters, clearly embarrassed to have to rehash this topic.

“— but the singing and the middle finger and the sucking on a lollipop, yes, those parts I thought were quite nice,” Jimin continues, biting back a smile of mischief.

“I thought …” Jungkook directs his stare at Jimin’s foot, pink and pleasantly tender under the careful ministrations of his massaging hands. “I thought you might chew me out for it. Afterwards. Or … the next day, when I was sober.”

“Me? Why me? I’ll leave the scolding to Jin-hyung. He’s best at it, and it really cuts deep, when he disapproves of something or someone,” Jimin says. “As for me … I told you, I think you should be able to do whatever you want. You’re an adult. The days of … of studying between schedules, trying to pass your tests, figuring out how to be a kid — how to be sane — while … while juggling this … they’re long gone. Haven’t you earned your freedom?”

Jungkook doesn’t speak for a moment, just makes himself busy with his kneading hands and Jimin’s small foot. His eyes are anywhere but Jimin’s face. Then, abrupt, almost jerky, he takes his left hand back, scratches once at his nostril, too nonchalant not to seem forced. His lips part, but he doesn’t speak.

Jimin watches him, the flash of bunny teeth, this feature he fell in love with over a decade ago. He chews his bottom lip, wanting badly to laugh. “Don’t cry.”

“Why would I cry!” Jungkook says, high and sulky. “Am I not an adult?”

Jimin dissolves into laughter on the spot. It’s too difficult, trying to maintain his control around this person. “Adults can cry!”

Jungkook switches from the left foot to the right, refusing still to meet Jimin’s gaze. He starts in on this foot, thumbs pressing upward, as though to roll out any errant pain. “… I know,” he says softly.

“As you made clear,” Jimin continues, “you quit. And there are worse things than a bit of nicotine. No one should judge you for that, since it’s your body before it’s anyone else’s. If anything … well, maybe your eomeonim, maybe your abeonim, but that’s about it. Maybe your hyung. But everyone else … it’s none of their business.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

A dramatic sigh. “What about you … disapproving … ? Getting to judge. Me and my smoking.”

“I have no right to judge, considering —”

“But if that weren’t the case, if we were — if we were still … ?”

“But we aren’t,” Jimin points out.

Jungkook draws a breath, deep, deep enough that it’s audible, a lungful of air so great his chest and shoulders expand beneath it, seeming to grow larger, impossible to see past. That chest, large and sculpted, and the heartbeat it contains — is that not also music? Time and meter made into a man. Is that not also a story Jimin has learned how to tell with his body, over and over? A story he’s helped to shape, learning and memorizing the rhythms and melodies of Jeon Jungkook.

“What about the cursing?” Jungkook says.

“You know me,” Jimin says. “My mouth is foul, too, when the mood is right. It’s up to you what you want to show the cameras. That’s highly individual. Anyway, haven’t you always been the best at that? The best of any of us — being an individual.”

“Don’t say that,” Jungkook says and finally fastens his eyes to Jimin’s face, brow furrowed. “I don’t want to be an individual. I want to be with you — you all — for as long as I can.”

“You can do both,” Jimin says.

“Right now, what I want most … I want to be a group. I want to be together, to be close. I want … for the next year, two years, I want to be closer than ever. And … I’ll figure out the rest, what I want to show the cameras, if I should or shouldn’t open up … if it’s wrong …”

Jimin wrinkles his own eyebrows, startled by the solemnity radiating from Jungkook. “I told you this back then — I think it’s nice you opened up that way. I think you’re setting a new standard, and we need new standards in our industry. It’s too old and restrictive, isn’t it? The way everything works. Your methods … people find them refreshing.”

“‘People,’” Jungkook says. Lower, more gruff, he adds, “I’m not asking about people. I’m asking about you.”

“And what about me?” Jimin repeats, because this emphasis is beginning to make him nervous. “I find you to be a huge brat, banging down the door to my hotel room and sticking lights in my face because you saw a ‘hotel safety hacks’ TikTok you wanted to test out.”

Jungkook scrunches his whole face up, a bit like a feral puppy. “Film something with me.”

“That’s all right,” Jimin says. “I like watching your solo videos and I like the trends you do with everyone else. I like everything — your editing, the flashing, the way you move on beat, all the angles and effects you use. I should be thanking you for the content, director-nim.”

“Yah,” Jungkook says, in the long-suffering tones of the recently rebuffed, “you’re the brat, denying me —”

“Watch it,” Jimin says, teeth gritted for a playful glare and another attempted kick, “with your tone —”

“Jimin-ah, let’s drop the theatrics —”

“Theatrics — ?”

“It’s only in private that you pretend to dislike it —”

“In private? In public, you give me no choice! Do you think the rest of the world doesn’t notice?”

“You like it,” Jungkook says, “when I say, ‘Jimin.’ You feel smug about it. Wanna know how I know? Because when I say that, you always come running. You come running, with the biggest smile on your face.”

Jimin sucks his bottom lip beneath his front teeth, wanting to try for another kick. What a nightmare it is, to be seen and known and understood. And what can he say to this person? What recourse does he have? No, I don’t like it. No, it doesn’t make me feel smug, this strange preferential treatment you give me. I don’t like being babied by you, I don’t like it when you assume the role of my hyung, backing me into linguistic corners, asserting over me all this invisible power. He would be lying if he said any of that.

Anyway, Jimin has his own shame to confront, a laxness in morals reserved specifically for Jungkook. The only other person Jimin makes such obvious exceptions for is Kim Taehyung.

With Taehyung, it all ties back to their earliest trauma, the shared suffering of the trainee model, the scraps they had to fight over as a duo and a group, their closeness in age, the starving quality of their love for each other and their members. Anything threatening, they would have to face as one. If someone hurt Taehyung, they were hurting Jimin. If someone hurt Jimin, they were hurting Taehyung. Soulmates.

With Jungkook, it’s different. The favoritism is more tricky, more layered. Jimin owes this person a lifetime of care, by virtue of their age gap. History notwithstanding. It’s built into the social strata of their world. Jimin owes Jungkook his ear, and his empathy, and his forgiveness. He owes Jungkook care and Jungkook owes Jimin deference. He owes Jimin his submission. But so often this social debt has been upset — turned on its head, subverted — by Jungkook’s stubborn consideration for Jimin, by his insistence on bending cultural norms, to hell with consequences.

It used to shame Jimin. Hasn’t this favoritism always been his worst kept secret? And why did he favor his dongsaeng in such a way, in ways that raised eyebrows and became radio sound bites? Jimin likes Jungkook. Jimin likes Jungkook, with the subtext being: in ways unfit for a hyung and a dongsaeng. Then Jungkook began to meet that favoritism with his own rule-breaking and the shame softened into something more like sexual pleasure.

Jimin didn’t just like Jungkook. Jimin was liked by Jungkook. The laxness was reciprocal, and context-based, and it was sometimes a secret, and at other times so obvious it might as well have been a formal announcement to fans. Why were these two always together? Why did they go out of their way for each other?

Why so many exceptions?

It’s the most difficult part of being close to Jungkook, now that they’re no longer having sex. They’ve had sex for so long, with such diligent attention-to-detail, that even the most innocuous social rituals feel like extended foreplay. Speaking to this person, listening to his heartbeat, engaging in a little bit of innocent skinship: it’s the height of eroticism. It’s muscle memory. It tells Jimin’s body: this is going to end in sexual intercourse. It has to.

Doesn’t it?

Jimin gazes up at Jungkook, twinging beneath the dire awareness that he’s close to breaking. That’s when his cell phone lights up with an incoming call. He considers rolling over and reaching for it, but Jungkook has already snagged it and hit answer, with barely a glance at the contact name. He taps the speaker option, presumably to make Jimin feel included.

Be a good dongsaeng for your hyung. That’s what Jungkook’s impropriety is always saying to Jimin.

Jimin resists the urge to glare.

“Min-ah!” says a familiar voice. “Are you busy or have I caught you during a quiet moment?”

Jimin plants his elbows on the mattress and sits up. “Eomma!” he says. “No, I’m free. How are you and Appa?”

“Good, good. I just wanted to call you to quickly say hello! I was watching your live with your abeoji and we had to put it on pause because he was feeling a bit fussy. I told him not to worry, that I’d call you and check in.”

“Check in?” Jimin says, confused and wracking his brain for any worrying tidbits he might have let slip.

“Yes, because we think it’s an injustice!” his mother says, already on her way to a full-blown rant. “Why is anyone trying to dissuade you from long hair? And why did no one come to your defense? After I spent so long telling you how lovely it’d look, grown out past your shoulders! And do you see how the fans like it? We have so many people coming to the café with photos of your new look. They’ve even made your abeoji fancards and he put one of them in his wallet! A shot from Goyang, I believe. Not Tokyo. You have your hair in a little ponytail and you look about fifteen years old in it!”

Beginning to feel embarrassed by the force of his mother’s affection, Jimin says, “Eomma … it’s all right —”

“Your ajumeoni now calls you Rapunzel,” she continues, undeterred. “That’s what they’re saying online, she says, and the kids she teaches talk about you often. They’re always pestering her in the middle of class, saying, ‘Tell us about Park Jimin! Did you really know him as a baby?’ and she has to remind them to stay on track.”

“Eomma,” Jimin repeats, cheeks warm. “I’m … with Jungkook right now.”

A pause, comically loaded.

“Hello, Eomma,” Jungkook says, without removing his eyes from Jimin. “How are you?”

“Jungkook-ah!” Jimin’s mother crows and Jimin hears himself laughing, a palm pressed to his forehead with exasperated fondness. “Ah, had I known — ! And what are you two up to, hm? Let’s come back to Busan very soon, okay? Very, very soon. Pay me a visit. I’ll cook you something tasty. Are you enjoying yourselves? Busy as can be, I suppose. I see how hard you’ve been working. My weather app says it’s sweltering where you are!”

“Yes, but it’s the good kind of busy. It’s the kind we crave. We like the heat, too, since it feels tropical near the sea — a bit like Busan. I’ll be sure to visit as soon as we have a free moment,” Jungkook says. “Just now, I came to check on our Jiminie in his hotel room.”

“Uwa, what a good dongsaeng you are,” she says, triggering a smile from Jungkook so gloating Jimin wants for a moment to roll his eyes. “I’ll tell his abeoji you’re keeping an eye on his precious son. He’ll be very pleased. You two, be sure to drink lots of water or you could faint in that weather. And tell Jiminie — Jungkook-ah, is it not an injustice? Surely you don’t hate the hair like the rest do?”

Jungkook hums in consideration, his gaze molten against Jimin’s face. Slow, almost proprietary, Jimin feels the touch of a large hand to the back of his head. He doesn’t think anything of this hand — Jungkook has always had a penchant for Jimin’s longer hairstyles — not until that hand is clasping him by the hair, blond pulled taut at the roots. With a small exhalation, Jimin submits to the touch, his skull wrenched back, guided by the ponytail Jungkook is now fisting.

“No, I don’t hate it, Eomma,” Jungkook says, tone turning intimate. “The company — their opinions don’t hold much weight, if you ask me. Anyway, I ignore anything that doesn’t suit my agenda. I’m trying to teach your son my ways.”

“Good, very good, because I hate to think that my son is walking around feeling bad about the way he looks.”

Jimin latches onto the arm fisting his hair, fingers circling Jungkook’s wrist. He means it as a warning touch. He means it that way, but he knows it’s going to be interpreted as a challenge, and that, too, feels like anticipatory pleasure. Jungkook tightens his hand, just as Jimin knew he would, yanking the ponytail harder. Jimin’s entire pelvic floor tenses up in answer, interested, ready to tune in.

“Eomma, I don’t feel bad,” he says in his hurry to conclude their call. “I was only thinking aloud. I like it a lot. It’s — it’s just the upkeep that I find annoying. But for now, I’ll wear it well, since you and ARMY enjoy it so much.”

“ARMY and I — what other opinions matter?” his mother says.

“And Jungkookie,” Jungkook says.

“Ah, yes, and we can’t forget our Jungkookie,” his mother replies, a smile in her voice. “Jimin-ah, take good care of your dongsaeng. Look how sweetly he tends to his hyung.”

“I will,” Jimin says, ignoring the glint of irony in Jungkook’s eye. “Eomeonim, I love you very much. Tell my abeonim I said hello, I love him, I’ll call you two very soon. Okay? I have to go — practice.”

“All right, all right — this lady knows how to take a hint. I’ll let you two go. Jungkook-ah, bye-bye! Take care and remember to rest! You’re working so hard, bringing all this pride to our country.”

“Of course, Eomma. You take care as well,” Jungkook says.

Jimin snatches the phone from Jungkook’s free hand and ends the call, tossing it back to the foot of the bed. He can’t quite manage a glare in all his overpowered pleasure, the slow unclenching of the more tightly controlled segments of his body. The hand at the base of his skull, Jimin doesn’t know how to interpret that as anything other than a prelude to sex. Nonverbal domination.

“Rapunzel, huh?” Jungkook says.

Jimin swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. He squeezes down around Jungkook’s wrist. “Let go,” he says, trying to sound like the hyung his mother identified him as and not like a needy bottom raving for orgasm.

Jungkook ignores the command. “Your eomma also wants us to do a live together,” he says, like the overfamiliar punk that he is.

“When did she say anything even remotely resembling that?”

“It was in the subtext, Jimin-ssi,” Jungkook says, still ironic, still gloating. Still fisting Jimin’s extensions.

“Let go,” he repeats, almost whining. “You’ll ruin my extensions and my hair appointments already go on for far too long …”

“I really like them,” Jungkook murmurs, gaze raking down the blond he’s still gripping one-handed.

“I know — that,” Jimin says, stumbling over the delivery. “Mm —”

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” Jungkook says, a teasing croon, as his fingers finally make contact with Jimin’s hair tie, “let down your hair …”

“You’re worse than Tae,” Jimin says, which is quite the honor given how often Taehyung spams Jimin’s inbox with edits and art and fan captions reading, PSSPSSSPSSSPSP JIMIN PLS DO THIS NEXT and, someone take one for the team and dm this to taehyung.

“Am I?” And Jungkook hooks a finger in that hair tie, begins to tug it free, loosing a sheet of damp blond hair. It’s wavy from the recent shower, since Jimin can’t be bothered to go to all the work of straightening it during their days off. The large, tattooed hand that recently apprehended Jimin by his extensions now begins to comb everything out, fingers sifting through shampoo-sweetened locks of hair. “I hope you don’t hate it.”

“I don’t,” Jimin says, which is the honest truth — hair care notwithstanding.

“I hope you know,” Jungkook goes on, gaze wandering, turning almost abstracted, “how much everyone else loves it.”

Jimin senses his subtext: how much I love it.

He says nothing, stopped by a burst of shy pleasure and the requisite modesty that always compels him to deflect direct praise. He knows enough. He knows his own tastes, how they often slant subversive, and he’s seen enough of the fan reception to trust in his choice, to feel like he’s cultivated the confidence he was summarily deprived of in the military, back when he’d felt so small and naked and terrified. This, here, the blond hair drifting over his shoulders, is a new kind of naked — novel, exhilarating. Himself, even as it’s completely different from anything he’s ever tried before.

He’s long since outgrown any industry-imposed insecurities. It doesn’t faze him when articles use words like “androgynous” or “cherubic” to describe him. Never “sturdy” or “hulking” like Seokjin and Namjoon. Jimin even likes it — all the places where he deviates, where he’s finally allowed to be soft and sultry and full-lipped free of judgment. All the places where he doesn’t have to pretend he’s something else.

“Thankfully, I received a bit of encouragement from a predecessor,” Jimin says, his way of deflecting.

“Who? Yoongi-hyung? His blond was always so short, though.”

“Taemin-hyung —”

“Aigoo,” Jungkook says, voice deepening in all his displeasure, “I really fucking hate it when you bring that guy up unprompted —”

Jimin swats away the hand playing with his hair, laughing at the audacity of this person — his ostensible dongsaeng. As if. What a laughable notion, with the way Jungkook conducts himself behind closed doors. It’s already bad enough when they have an audience. Behind closed doors? Jungkook is unmanageable.

“He’s our peer,” Jimin says. “And watch that tone, discussing your elders like they’re gum beneath your shoe!”

“Might as well be. And you do it to piss me off,” Jungkook says, so far beyond the realm of indecorum that he probably no longer recognizes the human emotion known as shame. “You do it to remind me of a time when I was being driven out of my mind by you and your flirting — you, running around with that bastard like he was your boyfriend, like he ever felt about you the way that I —”

“Let the record show, before I flirted with anyone else,” Jimin cuts in, “I was flirting with you.”

“All right,” Jungkook says, returned immediately to lazy pleasure. He eyes Jimin, tattooed knuckles flexing at his side like he wants to take up another fistful of blond hair. “So let’s go back to that.”

“Did you come in here to pick a fight with me?”

“No,” Jungkook says. “Like I told you, I came in here to” — and then, in the middle of constructing this latest sentence, still eyeing Jimin, not so much like Jimin needs to be scrutinized as he needs to be laid out and mastered for the crime of existing with any degree of separation from Jungkook, Jungkook abruptly changes tack — “actually … you know what? Yeah. Yeah, I came in here to pick a fight with you.”

It needs stating. Jimin and Jungkook’s sexual appetites are by now running along the same grossly codependent, psychosexually volatile lines. They get off on the other person getting off. They get off on the other person getting angry. They get off on the other person — full stop.

What can be done? What recourse do they have?

Here we are, Jimin thinks, here’s some more foreplay for us, and very likely there’s a version of himself who exists in a timeline two or three hours into the future, and very likely this version has already been bent over and fingered into an overstimulated crying fit, and very likely future Jungkook is feeling supremely accomplished by this crying fit, like all of his wildest dreams have come true, like their fights exist solely to propel them back to stage-five clinging, like they should only pull apart if it means they’re going to rebound into worse, more kinky sex with each other.

“Oh, really?” Jimin says, eyebrow cocked gamely. “You want to start?”

“Sure,” Jungkook says. “Stop ignoring me during our concerts.”

Jimin snorts, because he has no clue how Jungkook’s arrived at this conclusion. “What are you talking about? I interact with you plenty!”

“You used to interact a lot more,” Jungkook argues. “During concerts in the past, you would always … and now, why are you giving me the cold shoulder?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘cold shoulder.’ I feel I’m very warm with you,” Jimin says. “And what are you talking about? Back then … during that time, that was when we were all rascals — basically overgrown children — and these days we’re trying to present a more mature image. I can’t always play with you, or seek you out.”

Eyebrows lowering in a show of skepticism, Jungkook says, “Going on about mature images when you’re up there doing body rolls and sticking your tongue out …”

Jimin reaches for a pillow, fisting it in his lap for something to do with the resentful arousal coursing through his system. “Stop watching me so closely! Mind your own business!”

“My business? My members aren’t my business? The group I’ve been in all my life?”

“You want me to chase you like I did back then, when I was still nursing a stupid crush —”

“Yah, are you really — what do you mean ‘still?’ As if the crush has magically vanished sometime in the last few months! It currently — that crush exists. It always will. Don’t pretend you dislike me.”

Jimin can’t explain it, but something about hearing the word ‘hey’ in Jungkook’s voice, this voice he knows so well, this voice that has dogged him since he was a teenager, shifting, deepening, but maintaining its golden purity all the while, something about that sends his pulse skyrocketing. Jungkook has always been a bit bratty — always stocking up on this brattiness, saving and rationing it for special occasions — but these days his troublemaking is a lot more targeted. He makes trouble with one singular purpose: provoking Jimin into reacting.

“I never said dislike. I simply —”

“You’ll have a crush on me for the rest of your goddamn life,” Jungkook says. “Even — when or if we date other people, we still —”

“You’re such a fucking punk,” Jimin says, with feeling.

“First love is first love,” Jungkook says, since he’s speaking from personal experience and since his personal experience (transparently) involves Jimin. Jungkook’s personal experience is Jimin’s personal experience, and vice versa. You are me, I am you, and such. “It follows you for life. You can’t get rid of it. It’s like a disease.”

“Very flattering.”

Jungkook leans in, propping his fists against the edge of the mattress and creating a subtle barrier, his way of boxing Jimin into this terrible arousal they’re kindling together. “You can try to pretend, smiling politely and glancing away, but I know what you’re really feeling,” he says. “Deep down, in this place no one else sees, the one you’ve shown me … what you feel isn’t polite. It’s not dignified. It’s not this image you give the cameras. The things that exist between us. The things that won’t ever go away. And I say that as someone who’s read the worst kind of interpretations about us.”

“Don’t bug me about it any longer,” Jimin says, unable to deny it but trying to maintain his blasé energy. He leans very subtly away, wanting space from the pounding of his own heart, from the Cupid’s bow belonging to that distracting mouth and the mole beneath it. “I owe ARMY all my attention, since we’ve been apart for so long. I can’t just split it evenly between you and them. I have to think about fairness, since we enlisted together and —”

“Between them,” Jungkook says, “pick one.”

“Pick one, what?”

“Me or ARMY? Answer. You have to choose one or the other.”

“Ah, I don’t want to play this game,” Jimin says, caught up in a new peal of laughter. “You get to act cool and superior in other areas. It’s only during tour that you turn into a clingy monster. You become rowdy because performing gets the blood flowing, and blood flow reminds you of sex, and since I’m nearby, your body thinks, Oh, well, I’ve had so much sex with this person that I can’t help but associate —”

“Not true.”

“It is true,” Jimin says. “You treat performing onstage like fucking.”

“So do you.”

“I can’t even look at you up there sometimes because you — your expressions are … are … and if I glance away for even a second, you start humping the air, or poor Jin-hyung, or —”

“‘Poor?’” Jungkook says with a laugh of amazement. “That man is a menace.”

“You’re both menaces. Anyway, since you and I are on a break, I’m trying to master the art of maintaining boundaries. So that’s why I occasionally act more professional than usual. Otherwise, it gets confusing … being around you …” Jimin says. “The rest of the time, I’ll be normal and warm. I’ll take good care of you, as expected of a hyung.”

Jungkook purses his lips, trying and failing to disguise a shit-eating grin.

“What?” Jimin says, already irked.

“You said we’re on a break. Not that we’re broken up. So we’ll get back together soon enough —”

Jimin shoves forward to take a swing at Jungkook with the pillow fisted in his hand.

Jungkook catches his wrist and disarms him without the slightest effort, lobbing the pillow against Jimin’s headboard. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Looking back on our careers,” Jimin continues, flopping back down against the mattress, “haven’t I been the embarrassing one more often? This time around, I want to switch things up. So I’ll be less embarrassing going forward, and I’ll focus on having fun with our fans.”

“We’re both embarrassing. Do you remember Rose Bowl?”

Jimin lifts his foot and jabs his toes into Jungkook’s breastbone, annoyed by the reminder of his own tears. “Yes, that was embarrassing for me.”

“For me,” Jungkook says, enunciating pointedly, “since I didn’t realize they had such a high-definition angle on my mouth, and now they make videos and GIFs of my saliva all over your ear —”

“Why are you so fucking online!” Jimin cries, flushing from forehead to throat. Terrible, awful, horrible dongsaeng. Jungkook should have his internet access revoked. He should never be allowed near another piece of technology again. “Stop reminding me! And stop liking art of us!”

Jungkook seems totally unbothered by this display of melodrama. He only stands there in his tight tank-top and oversized sweats, smiling something privately amused, leaving Jimin’s small foot right where he’s insinuated it. “Let’s get back together.”

“No! We’re on a break like we agreed!” Jimin says, leg bending where Jungkook is subtly bracing his weight, straining that small foot in an attempt to press closer. “We’ll go on innocently, and we’ll see if we can stay friends —”

“We’re dating still.”

“We are not.”

“If we’re not married to other people by our mid-thirties, we — you have to go with me to some country where it’s legal, and we have to have a ceremony —”

“What are you going on about? See, this is how you get during tour, when your endorphins and adrenaline are high — all you want to do is get naked with me —”

“Obviously. Yes, of course I do,” Jungkook says, like Jimin is insane to want anything but hotel sex with Jeon Jungkook of BTS. “What are we in America for, if not to get naked together? We’ve always had crazy sex here. As soon as we’re across this border, you get really kinky.”

“Shameless bastard,” Jimin says and yelps as a hand latches onto his ankle with the speed of a viper, clamping down hard.

“We can’t be friends — not when we work together, not when we see each other every single day,” Jungkook says. He sets Jimin’s foot down, squeezing himself between a pair of stubborn knees. “It just doesn’t work. After everything we’ve been through … there’s too much history and the sexual tension is impossible while we’re touring.”

“Yes, we can. We’ve done fine so far! And in the military, we were excellent —”

“In the military, what choice did we have? We couldn’t be anything but friends.”

“During the filming of our show, we —”

“During our show, if you recall, at night we’d —”

“No, never mind,” Jimin says, speaking over Jungkook to drown out a mortifying trip down memory lane. “Let’s not discuss that time!”

“Let’s go out with each other,” Jungkook says, eyes widening on the delivery — doe with a side of leonine fervor. “Seriously. I mean it. We’ll try again, for old time’s sake.”

Jimin takes a breath, regarding Jungkook with something more shrewd. Jungkook is bluffing. Of course he is. He doesn’t mean it. Give him shameless right back and he’ll flinch away. Struck by his own genius, Jimin makes his monolids go sultry, gazing through the curtain of his lashes, and he stretches his arms out at his sides, drawing his zip-up sweater higher, high enough to bare the sharp jut of his hipbones, the shallow well of his belly button. Then — killing blow — he parts his thighs as wide as they’ll go, as if to say, Come take me. Butterflied open, his knees touch the mattress.

“All right then,” he says, pitching his voice until it’s become silky-soft, an inviting murmur thickened by his satoori. “I want another ring.”

Jungkook runs his eyes across those jutting hipbones, the pale sliver of Jimin’s belly. He turns on his foot and begins his retreat.

Jimin smiles to himself, triumphant.

Not even a moment later, he realizes Jungkook is booking it for his luggage pile and he sits up slightly, alarmed. “What are you doing?”

“We’re back together, so I’m looking for your carry-on.”

“Yah, y-you little — !” Jimin says as a spike of panic hits his gut.

Jungkook is ripping into Jimin’s belongings like a man on a mission, flinging wrinkled clothing every which way. The visual is so ludicrous that Jimin feels all the blood draining from his face. Draining from his face, and rushing headlong towards his dick. Anyway, it’s not like he has any right getting upset about the mess, not when his hotel room is already covered in small piles of his personal effects.

Jungkook pauses at a pair of underwear, flipping them inside-out to offer the fly an investigative sniff.

“What’s wrong with you!”

“Checking if you’ve been masturbating,” Jungkook says without sparing Jimin a glance. Then he tosses the underwear away, uninterested in an article of clothing he’s deemed inoffensively dirty. “Where are your toys? Did you bring any? Should we InstaCart lube? No condoms, obviously.”

Obviously — ?

“Lower your voice!” Jimin whisper-hisses. “We aren’t back together!”

Jungkook straightens up where he was just hunched over Jimin’s deconstructed luggage. “Then stop wearing my clothes and give back every piece of jewelry I’ve ever gifted you — that includes the Chrome Hearts — and we’re no longer sharing a phone and tell your abeonim — tell him, because it’ll really break his heart, say, I’m done with Jungkookie for good, don’t get your hopes up anymore, stop asking about him —”

“My abeonim? What about your hyung, who says I’m practically family, that I always will be, that I’m missed at every single Jeon family holiday that comes to pass? And — no, as a matter of fact, you can’t take back gifts. That goes against basic etiquette.”

“You can’t dress like my boyfriend if you’re not my boyfriend.”

“It’s too late for that! We’ve already metabolized each other’s styles! And it’s you who likes to copy me, taking and requesting the same kinds of accessories from our stylists, getting all smug when it sparks rumors —”

“You raid my shit constantly —”

“I haven’t!” Jimin says. Then he adds, slightly more damning: “… In — in like, three or four months!”

“And stop using words like ‘metabolized’ and stop watching videos about fucking barn owls and get up, leave your hotel room for once, why don’t you soak up a little sunlight instead of —”

“Tawny owls. And no, I won’t. I want to lie here and do nothing!”

“Then take off your pants,” Jungkook says in a tone that brooks no arguments. He returns to Jimin’s bedside to convey the severity of his next words, laced with outrageous levels of impatience. “You want to do nothing? All right, let’s do nothing together. If you want to stay in your hotel room all day, wasting precious hours, I’ll help you out.”

“We’re on a break, so no,” Jimin says, unable to contain a hysterical rush of laughter, turning hot-faced the longer he allows this to continue, and this laughter Jungkook interprets as a nonverbal signal to launch into a little bit of wrestling.

He catches Jimin’s hands in his own, ignoring another yelp, another helping of laughter, dodging a knee to the chest and applying himself tenaciously to the task of pinning Jimin’s wrists against the mattress. “Why? Why are we on a break? It makes no sense,” he says. “For this leg of the tour, at least, we’re back on. I want to be naked with you, I want to rub off whenever we’re alone, I want to play with your asshole —”

“You are such a horn dog!” Jimin shouts, trying for outrage and failing utterly while immobilized beneath Jungkook’s undisputed strength. “We — we went over this already! Because it’s a distraction and it’s dangerous and it makes our work more complicated, when we — while we’re prioritizing the group, it doesn’t make sense, we struggle too hard to divide our attention —”

“It always makes sense,” Jungkook says, dark hair hanging in his face. His expression right then is serene (must be nice), almost imploring. “Our art is better when we’re fucking. Some of our best lyrics, they exist because of our relationship. ARMY, they should thank me and my dick for —”

“Let go,” Jimin says.

“Why, do you want to fuck now?”

“No, I want to slap you, bring me a shoe so I can toss it at your fucking head —”

“Stop cursing,” Jungkook says and releases Jimin’s wrists. “It turns me on when you get foul.”

An outpouring of sensation rushes back to Jimin’s arms, prickling from elbows to fingertips. “You’re such a damn brat.”

“No, I’m not,” Jungkook says. “This afternoon, you’re going to let me be the hyung again.”

Jimin wraps his arms around his own face, hoping to block out the ridiculousness of his life. It’s a wonder he’s still in love with this person. It’s a fucking miracle his feelings haven’t vanished underneath the embarrassment of their obviousness, that these feelings only — every day they’re left unattended, whether Jimin sees or smells or feels Jungkook, whether he's a meter away or a mere presence glimpsed through a screen — continue to intensify.

“Jimin-ah.”

“What?” Jimin mutters into his criss-crossed arms.

“Be sweet with me,” Jungkook says from somewhere past those arms. “I like when we fight — I like getting rough with you, I like it a lot, you know I do, and I’ll even give it to you that way once we’re done with this argument — but I want you to be sweet again. Right here, right now, I’m tired of fighting with you. I want to play, to be silly, to feel you pet me like you used to —”

“I still do all those things with you,” Jimin says.

“Not like before,” Jungkook says. “Although we weren’t … formally or … or officially back together during the last season of our show, that time … you were so sweet with me. It felt like I was twenty years old again. It felt like … like the early days of our relationship.”

Refusing to drop his arms, Jimin says, “That’s because … I get that way when …” And he trails off into silence.

“Because … ?” Jungkook says.

“Because when we travel together … you and me, on our own … it … also reminds me of …”

“It reminds you of the early days? Of my confession?” Jungkook says, his voice deepening, rich with satisfaction. “Shall I confess again?”

Jimin feels a tingle of true, shivery pleasure stealing over his body.

“Take down your arms.”

“No.”

“Take them down so you can hear my confession.”

Jimin thinks, face hot with spite: I won’t! I’m cool and professional! I’m not possessive at all! I don’t need romance to be happy! Then, elbows trembling, he lowers his arms a little bit, just enough to expose the blond hair at his temples and a flash of his feline eyes. “… What.”

Jungkook, leaning forward, forcing himself into Jimin’s line of sight, isn’t smiling when their eyes meet. “Do you want to hear?”

Jimin shakes his head no.

“Are you lying?”

He nods his head yes.

Jungkook breaks, a smile splitting his face. His eyes crinkle up at the corners, written over with old lines of joy. The crow’s feet do little to detract from the youthful image he cuts, in his tight tank-top and dangling necklaces. “I love you,” he murmurs. “Do you realize that?”

The tingle of shivery pleasure widens, growing stronger, gripping Jimin from the crown of his blond head all the way down to the tips of his toes. In his loose-fitting jeans, he’s already half-hard, throbbing with the urge to unbutton and turn over onto his belly. His arms slide a little bit lower, baring his button nose. His mouth, behind the shield his arms are providing, is a fat moue of distaste. Of spoiled delight.

“Why do you always save that one for last …” he whispers.

“Why?” Jungkook says. “Because if I say it too often, you’ll get spoiled.”

Punk, Jimin thinks, with vehemence. I’m already spoiled.

“However … if I dangle it in front of your face …” Jungkook goes on, “… if I leave you hanging every once in a while … when I do use it … you turn into a little puddle. That way, it hits harder. I starve you so you’ll come to me hungry.”

“I didn’t come to you today at all.”

“All right,” Jungkook says, smiling still, tone turning indulgently amused. “You didn’t come to me. Today, I ran to you begging.”

“Begging and dressed like … like a gangster. Why are you wearing a white tank-top? Why, when everything else is black?”

“To seduce you, of course,” Jungkook says, the subtext being, So you’re forced to make eye contact with my tight little nipples.

Jimin’s elbows waver where they’re folded over his mouth. It’s true: the white cotton is thin, near-translucent, outlining the small dark peaks topping off Jungkook’s defined pecs. The pecs are impressively distinct, like terrain raised for the singular purpose of appealing to Jimin’s aesthetic tastes. He wants to tongue-kiss them. He wants to suck them while conditioning his thighs to hold up his weight, stuffed full and bouncing in place, body bowed over that savage chest like a wedding arch.

“Is it working? Are you seduced yet?” Jungkook asks.

“No, not yet,” Jimin says, muffled into his arms. “Keep trying.”

Jungkook nudges his tongue against the inside of his cheek, distending the flesh until it looks like he’s moments from taking a bite out of Jimin. “Show me your fingers,” he says a moment later, when he’s gotten his expression back under control.

Jimin, caught off guard by this request, flexes his fingers where they’re hanging by his ears. They straighten, silver rings flaunted. That must be what Jungkook means. He wants to know more about Jimin’s little teasing display from earlier: I want another ring. By the looks of it, Jimin has plenty of rings already, thick bands of silver — gnarled and knotted, hammered into intricate designs — gleaming at his knuckles.

Jungkook hums consideringly, inspecting these fingers. “You haven’t had a prostate orgasm in a while.”

Jimin can’t believe his ears. Flummoxed, his arms slide unfeelingly from his face, baring the plush O-shape of his pink lips. His cheeks blaze with astonished heat — mingled fury and mortification. What does Jungkook mean by that? But of course it’s obvious what he means.

Jungkook asked to see Jimin’s fingers to check the length of his nails.

“I — I —” Jimin starts to say, suddenly implicated by his own fingers, the long, sharp white crescents at the tips of his nails. “I can use toys to do that — !”

“Oh?” Jungkook says. “Prove it. Where are they in this room?”

A trap.

Jungkook has become a bit too excellent at laying them, leading Jimin by the hand down dark alleyways, then revealing, slow and sinister, that they’ve been running heedlessly towards a dead-end the whole time. Leaving Jimin to languish there, forced to take his losses on the chin.

Into the crackling wall of silence, Jungkook says, conversational-sounding: “Do you want to see my nails?”

“No,” Jimin says. “I don’t.”

Jimin already knows Jungkook’s nail length. He’s obsessive about clipping them, easily overstimulated by sharp edges or hangnails, slow and self-righteous when Jimin needs something shoved a couple of inches up his asshole. That something is rarely, if ever, Jimin’s fingers. Jimin prefers to keep his own nails long, cleaning and maintaining the cuticles.

(He also likes scoring half-moons into Jungkook’s back, not unlike the tattoos inked down Jimin’s spine.)

(The moons Jungkook wears are always bright red and burning.)

(Jungkook likes it, too. Overstimulation doesn’t count when it’s initiated by someone else.)

Jungkook leans back down, his palms pressed flat against the mattress. His mouth brushes Jimin’s right ear. “Do you have lube or do you want me to buy us some?”

Jimin really hates it when he uses collective pronouns.

“I have a bottle,” he says, voice dipping as his embarrassment mounts.

“Is it the brand I like … ?”

“… Yes.”

“Because you like me so much,” Jungkook whispers and kisses the pierced lobe, a little bit of Jimin’s silver hoop. “Because you were hoping I’d come knocking.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“When I go looking for that bottle, Jimin,” Jungkook says, “will I find it used? Or is it unopened?”

Jimin twitches against the glancing stimulation of Jungkook’s words, breathed like wind down the bend of his neck. He tries to turn away, to press his cheek into the bedding, but the mouth follows him over, stirring up the blond hair tucked behind his ear, eliciting a full-body shiver. “I … put it … in something else.”

“You put it in something else.” A pause, as Jungkook digests this. “What, you washed out an empty shampoo bottle and poured the lube in … ?”

Jimin nods, throat tingling.

A scoff of a laugh, and then there’s a hand at his chin, guiding his face back around, forcing Jimin into the black sweep of those gleaming eyes. “You really wanted me to come fuck you …” Jungkook whispers. “But you didn’t want anyone else finding out.”

Jimin flushes up to his hairline. “… Put some music on at least,” he mutters, too turned on to avert his eyes, to do anything but lie there and take it. “Just in case.”

“Of course I will,” Jungkook says. His lashes flicker avidly as he gives Jimin a searching look, soaking up the obviousness of his embarrassment, enjoying the pink flush warming his cheeks, the plump discontentment of his mouth. “Tell me where the bottle is.”

“It’s … the leave-in conditioner. In my shower.”

“Ah, so that’s why you placed an order for that all those weeks ago,” Jungkook says and leans down to drop a kiss to the hinge of Jimin’s jaw, the most unsatisfying reward in the world. “Toys … ?”

Jimin closes his eyes, too embarrassed to face this head-on. “I didn’t bring any.”

It’s as good as saying, I knew we would go back to having sex before this leg of the tour concluded.

Jungkook doesn’t laugh. Maybe he’s smiling. Maybe he’s smirking like the worst kind of dongsaeng, the kind who grows into a keen-edged hyung, the kind who learns what it means to shirk his deference and begin to disobey. But Jimin feels the touch of a fingertip to his temple, moving aside a lock of blond hair. He feels Jungkook’s hum before he hears it, and he doesn’t know how that can be possible. It’s soft and musical. It’s a private performance, away from the shouting and the cameras and the impenetrability of a stage shared by seven.

Although Jimin can’t hear Jungkook’s heartbeat at this distance, he thinks again of the military and the sharp, overstimulated edges of Jungkook’s anguish, his silences of withdrawal, his vacant black eyes as he began, over time, to perform every action by rote. All that obsessive life, all the euphoria and glee: gone. A miracle there was any music left to find in a man robbed of his worldly passions.

It’s absurd then that Jimin isn’t more grateful to get to do this. To watch Jungkook hound him into his hotel mattress, to argue over jewelry and lube, to hear the words, I love you. Do you realize that? and fear no repercussions but a moment more of their bickering. Isn’t Jimin the luckiest person in the world? Isn’t it the greatest gift to experience a version of Jungkook free from that old anguish, alive again, obsessive enough to hound, harass, poke, prod, cajole?

Jimin’s eyes are becoming damp. He’s afraid to open them, lest the tears roll free. “Do you …” he whispers. “I mean … have I really been giving you the cold shoulder?”

A small exhale and Jungkook’s thumb moves in on Jimin’s cheek, tracing the high-set bone. “No,” he whispers back. “That was an exaggeration. That was me guilt-tripping you into taking off your pants.”

Jimin rolls his lips inward, fighting off a wave of laughter. How silly. How absurd. How wonderful. “I don’t need to be guilt-tripped.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because,” Jimin says, eyes closed. “I love you, too.”

The thumb pauses. Vanishes. A moment later, it’s back, tracing the curve of Jimin’s bottom lip. Pulling down on it to expose a flash of white teeth, the touch gently adoring. “I know,” Jungkook says after a long silence. “Hyung, that’s why I can’t ever leave you alone. The way that you love me … you’re the first man to ever trust me with something like that. I don’t want you to give anyone else what you’ve given me.”

“… Then don’t leave me alone.”

Jimin listens in, ears perked, as the body looming above him withdraws, mattress creaking. The bathroom door whooshes open and Jungkook, fumbling past the glass door to the shower, calls something like, Very inconspicuous, Jimin-ssi, in a playful voice.

Jimin is having a hard time following his words just then. He’s busy sweeping away the pain of those old military memories, writing over them in his head with the more light-hearted anecdotes, the rare sweet moment shared with a soldier younger than the both of them. He thinks of the last month of his life. Slowly, the creeping tendrils of anxiety begin to slide away. He listens to Jungkook moving around the hotel room, tossing items onto the mattress, humming to himself, circling the bed to empty his pockets onto Jimin’s nightstand (keys? lip balm? wallet? phone?).

It’s such boyfriend behavior — the body language of a lover getting ready to hunker down and fuck for at least an hour straight — that Jimin’s entire body tightens in anticipation.

He’s finally and fully ready to return to that body, to live in it a little bit longer. To live in it alongside this person. His person.

“YouTube,” Jungkook says over the sound of the TV turning on. “Preferences?”

“You choose,” Jimin says through closed eyes.

He lies there waiting.

After fifteen seconds of blissful silence, he hears the opening notes of Lana Del Rey’s “Body Electric” swelling through the room, the dewdrop-like instrumental building into something more stormy right before she sings, Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend …

“Ah,” Jimin says, followed by a wave of déjà vu so violent he feels all of twenty-one years old again. “I wanna kick your ass.”

“Why, remind you of anything in particular?”

“If I open my eyes and you’re wearing nothing but eyeliner, I’m making you walk back to your room that way,” Jimin says, because he’s not above punishing Jungkook for his practical jokes.

“Open your eyes,” Jungkook murmurs a moment later, over the sound of Lana crooning, We get down every Friday night.

Jimin blinks them back open. Jungkook has returned to his bedside, one knee raised against the mattress. In all honesty, Jungkook fully clothed — tank-top and sweats right where he left them — is not the ideal visual at this moment in time. But Jimin can’t exactly come out and say, Please grab my makeup bag, strip naked, and come back when you look a little more emo.

“Still using the same old tricks, I see,” Jimin says, referring, of course, to the playlist choice.

“Same old tricks still work on you,” Jungkook says. “What’s the saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“Oh, really? Okay then,” Jimin says, stifling a cackle. “Take me back to Japan.”

Jungkook makes a face of theatrical exasperation. “Is that realistic to you right now?”

“Yes. Book me a ticket.”

“That’s what it takes?”

“Book me a ticket or tell me we’ll go back.”

“We’ll go back,” Jungkook echoes.

“When?”

“When we’re dating again,” Jungkook says, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world.

“Cameras or no cameras?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“Both,” Jimin says, because he likes both.

He likes showing off for ARMYs, prancing about and playing around with Jungkook, and then he likes when they extend their trip a little bit longer, taking a detour, turning off all the cameras, booking hotels with lewdly designed rooms, rooms well-suited to Jimin and Jungkook’s exhibitionist tendencies. They have so few outlets for these tendencies, what with the global pop star situation.

“Come talk to me in like two hours. I may be feeling a bit kinder then,” Jungkook says and joins Jimin on the mattress.

For all Jungkook plays up his nonchalance when it suits his agenda, this is where his act always falls flat: when he knows he’s won. Ask the world-class performer to give his all onstage, and he will. Ask him to disguise his hunger when he’s ravenous and Jimin is close enough to touch? That’s a different story. That’s a tale as old as time — one of Jimin’s favorites.

The clamber up that mattress is so stupidly eager Jimin hears himself laughing. He sees two versions of Jungkook superimposed — the rail-thin teenager with the bowl cut and the smudged eyeliner, and this older, sharper iteration, pierced and tattooed, filled out at the chest, cooler but no less obvious with his agenda. No less hungry.

It’s as if they’ve returned to the honeymoon stage of their relationship. Back in the early days, Jimin and Jungkook really did conduct themselves like eloped teenagers, sneaking around hotels and blaming anyone but themselves for being found out.

“Why,” Jungkook says, more to himself than Jimin, “do you like to roam around naked twenty-four seven? Why, on the one day I decide to ambush you, are you fully clothed?”

Then he sets about undressing Jimin, sliding two hands over the waistband of his jeans and freeing the button closure. He tugs the zipper open. If it weren’t already obvious, now it is — Jimin’s underwear are tented, soft cotton bulging obscenely around his hardness.

Jungkook licks his lips and wrenches at the waistband of Jimin’s jeans, making a huge commotion of it, like Jimin’s ass is a criminal offense. An affront to mankind. Jimin’s whole body is wrenched with these jeans, because, as he’s said, Jungkook is the proud owner of deus ex machina arms, arms designed to overpower any plot device under the sun.

Under the sun, right here, right now: Jimin’s criminally offensive ass. One more wrench and the jeans clear his cheeks, hitting mid-thigh.

“What are you thinking about?” Jungkook says, perhaps reading in Jimin’s expression something inscrutable.

“A god from the machine,” Jimin says, his eyes on Jungkook’s biceps.

“Wanna know what I’m thinking about?”

Jimin considers saying, No, but it would be a lie. Often, he wonders. More than often. Every day. Sometimes, zoning out to Jungkook’s zoning out, or yanked from a revery by Jungkook’s quiet fidgeting, Jimin thinks it to himself, as if to siphon the very thoughts from Jungkook’s brain: Tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking about. I just want one peek inside. One peek and I’ll be satisfied.

“What?” Jimin says.

Another wrench of the jeans. “I’m thinking about,” Jungkook says, arms working, enough corded muscle to make Jimin feel faint and he bathed butt-naked with this man in ice-cold rivers during the military, “the time you broke chopsticks with your ass.”

Jimin uses the next wrench as encouragement to roll over onto his belly. His face nestles in his arms. He feels denim sliding past his knees, then shins, then ankles. “So embarrassing …”

“Really? Embarrassing?” Jungkook says over the sound of those jeans being mercilessly hurled across Jimin’s hotel room. “Then why did you roll over to show me?”

“Because,” Jimin says. He feels like there’s currently a spotlight following his ass. He feels like he’s the subject of a documentary on the trials and tribulations of being desired by a single-minded introvert. Introverts with an obsession are hard to shake; Jimin hasn’t been able to lose this one since they were teenagers. “… You like it. That’s why. Even if I find it embarrassing.”

“Mn,” Jungkook says, unapologetic. “I do like it.”

Jimin picks his head up to peer behind himself. It’s true that his ass is being a bit excessive at the moment, a sudden and sharp incline from his dimpled lower back to the swell of his cheeks in tight black cotton. The cheeks are trying to steal the scene, sitting so high and round. There’s a softly subtle depression in his underwear, a cleft forming where Jimin’s ass cheeks split down the middle. This cleft is not helping matters. It’s making Jimin look like he’s begging to be impaled on someone’s cock.

Someone in particular.

Jungkook, for his part, is kneeling on the mattress in black sweats and the cheapest tank-top money can buy, the kind that comes in packs of five or ten, white and paper-thin, perfectly contoured to hug his bulging pectoral muscles.

Jimin’s eyes linger there. He, too, has his fixations and he’s never been very good at hiding them. He thinks about Jungkook’s net worth and the simplicity of this latest seduction attempt, which by now requires so little it’s genuinely laughable. Back in the day, it took tickets to Tokyo and see-through showers to get into Jimin’s pants. Today it just takes a little bit of cleavage from Jungkook. A foot massage and a few rounds of heady eye-fucking.

Jungkook, following Jimin’s gaze, says, “Yah, my eyes are up here.”

It’s evil. Hey, in Jungkook’s low voice, liquid gold, modulated precisely to appeal to Jimin’s taste for overly assertive men. Men who have no right being so assertive with him. Why does he like it so much? Jungkook has his hands in every kinky pie Jimin has ever wanted to try. All of Jimin’s sexual fantasies, they’ve been built by and for this person.

His neck tingles. “Take it off,” he says, displeased to have to ask.

“No,” Jungkook says and flips Jimin onto his back. Then he crawls up Jimin’s body to touch their noses together. More embarrassment for Jimin, who just wants a kiss, who now feels like they’re two bunnies paying each other a greeting. “You take it off.”

Jimin reaches for the hem of Jungkook’s tank-top, eager to obey this directive. He reaches for it without breaking eye contact. At this distance, eye contact with Jungkook is like alcohol to his bloodstream; Jimin can’t avoid it. He can’t do anything but ride it out.

Distracted as he is — distracted and aroused — he’s slow to react. He’s too easily overpowered, and Jungkook knows it. He catches Jimin’s wrists and offloads them against the pillow before Jimin can so much as make contact with his tank-top. Cast aside like Jimin’s strength counts for nothing, arms framing his blond head.

“I didn’t mean mine,” Jungkook says, a hot breath that tickles its way down Jimin’s neck. “I meant yours.”

Jimin’s mouth feels wetter than it had a moment ago. “Kiss? First, give me a kiss …”

“When I take down your underwear,” Jungkook says, a hair’s breadth from heaven, so close that Jimin is already imagining a cool greeting from that lip ring, “I’ll give you the kiss that you want.”

Jimin’s pulse spikes. He can hear it in his own ears, a deafening soar that threatens to drown out the sound of Jungkook’s breathing.

“C’mon. Let’s get these off,” Jungkook says. There’s a featherlight touch to Jimin’s waist that wakes him from thoughts of that dark head bobbing on his dick. “Or do you like wearing them to feel closer to me?”

For a moment, Jimin doesn’t understand what Jungkook is insinuating. Then he realizes, with a sick jolt, what brand he’s flashing along his elastic waistband.

Why? Jimin thinks, to the tune of a million miniature violins. Why do I still wear these?

It’s because of Jungkook, of course. Jungkook, who’s a global brand ambassador for Calvin Klein, who frolics around under neon lights with this very waistband peeking out, cocking his hips and tugging his shirts up for a brief taste of his six pack, who, following each and every ad campaign, sends his members PR packages with personally signed notes. Jimin’s packages have always felt like a practical joke. Why do Kim Seokjin and Jung Hoseok get to post piles of free denim to the group chat, with a string of ecstatic emojis? Why does Jimin lift the lids off of his boxes to find lace thongs and cotton jock straps wrapped in tissue paper, endless underwear and a handwritten note reading, I thought these would suit you. JK #mycalvins

“These” referred to a pack of jock straps so obscene, Calvin Klein would not show the model from every single angle in their online catalogue. Jock straps described as offering “minimal back coverage.”

Thank goodness Jimin went with the much safer cotton trunks today.

He asked Jungkook once, because he couldn’t help it: “Do they contour your abs in those campaign videos?”

Then Jungkook said, “Why don’t you come find out?” and they spent an hour or two rolling around on the floor of his apartment, wrestling themselves into orgasm.

It was a genuine question. Jimin wondered — wonders. And now he wears the underwear Jungkook sells to consumers through the ubiquity of his face and he does it because it makes him think of Jungkook’s bulge. Always. Without fail. Jungkook’s commercials are tame and Jimin’s memories worse.

Even soft, this bulge fascinates him. It’s like a Pavlovian response. He pulls on his Calvin Klein trunks and he thinks of Jungkook’s cock tenting tight cotton. He remembers all the times he’s mouthed at it, laving black fabric with his tongue, soaking it in spit, breathing harsh and panicked with arousal, wanting to take it out, choke himself, even as Jungkook sat patient and watchful up above, his eyes somehow both doe-wide and alarmingly devilish. How such a dichotomy is possible — well, that’s beyond Jimin by this point.

Whenever he pulls on the underwear, he remembers the bulge and his mouth floods with saliva. Jimin is like a dog. Jungkook’s dick has trained him to behave this way.

“I …” Jimin says.

“You … ? You what, Jimin-ah?”

It’s possible Jimin is also nursing an obsession.

“I want to kiss,” Jimin says and tries not to pout. “On the mouth.”

“On the mouth?” Jungkook says, with unflattering subtext. The subtext is: You have some audacity, Jimin-ssi. “If you want to kiss on the mouth, we’ll have to get back together. Agree to it right now. Otherwise, I can’t do that. Not unless hyung is ready to be a boyfriend again.”

Fed up and too horny for mind games, Jimin shoves at Jungkook’s shoulders. “Go, get away … you can’t trick me …”

“Can’t I? Wasn’t it you who convinced me last time? How did it go … ? Do you need a refresher?”

Jimin’s bottom lip begins to grow fatter. “I … last time … if you recall, I was very drunk and that’s why we ended up that way. I wasn’t manipulating you. Alcohol … it makes me want to have sex with you.”

“Being next to me makes you want to have sex with me,” Jungkook corrects.

Jimin shoves harder at those unyielding shoulders. He shoves until the shoulders begin to distract him, pleasantly strapping, large and hard against his palms. His shove starts to become something more like a caress. He hears his own breath speeding up. Horrified with himself, Jimin throws his head back into his pillow and whines, bucking up against air, but Jungkook is propped up on his elbows and knees, too distant for any dirty grinding. Jimin feels ready to cry.

“Take them off me,” he says up to the ceiling. “My underwear.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because you already took off my jeans, so now I expect the full treatment, and because you won’t kiss me, and because I’m starting to get pissed off.”

A chuckle. “First, make up with me.”

“I am! We’re making up!”

“No, in the other way. Not just sex. Let’s go back to dating. We’ll try it out. Until Bangkok. If it doesn’t work, if it distracts us or becomes too much of a problem, we’ll pause things again.”

“Bangkok? That’s — that’s in December!” Jimin says, his tone turning incredulous. “At that point — just come home with me, why don’t you? I’ll tell my eomeonim you’re spending the holidays with us!”

“All right,” Jungkook says, a smile lurking at the edges of his mouth. “Sounds like a deal to me.”

“This is manipulation,” Jimin says and returns his gaze to Jungkook’s hovering face.

“And? What about it?” Jungkook says. “Unlike you, I don’t need alcohol to turn evil.”

“It’s not that I turn evil,” Jimin mutters, suddenly abashed. “It’s just that it lowers my inhibitions and then I start … I … I get crazy ideas in my head. I have no patience when I’m drunk. Everything has to be instant gratification or I’m unhappy.”

“Ideas like deep-throating my dick … ?”

Jimin wishes he would stop bringing that night up.

“Deep-throating me, taking all these long pauses … saliva dripping from your mouth, trying to wipe it away with your fingers … saying, Kook-ah, I might throw up. Don’t you think it’s better if you get off in my ass? I’m too drunk to keep sucking. It’s less dangerous if you give it to me while I’m lying on my side. Bring a bucket, just in case, but I think I’ll be fine as long as I can breathe.”

“I didn’t say that … exactly …”

“No, you said something more like, Let’s do another shot. Shouldn’t we get back together? It feels more natural that way. When we drink and it doesn’t end in sex, it’s a bit off, right?”

Jimin can’t win, can we? All right, he used soju as an excuse to get down on his knees and start laving his tongue over Jungkook’s dick. But it’s not like he had to do any coaxing, did he? The dick bobbed free fully hard, long and thick and pulsing with blood. It was obviously waiting for Jimin, keyed up by their closeness, already sticky with precum. It slid between Jimin’s lips like it belonged there, hugging the wet pink walls of his mouth, collecting all of his errant spit, and he had plenty on that evening, between the shots of rice wine and the sips of water Jungkook kept force-feeding him. Jungkook was not so drunk he was wavering on his feet, but he, too, had lost any semblance of rationality. His eyes were ink-black, no iris visible, and he was flushed from the liquor.

So he let Jimin go to his knees.

So all right. So Jimin gets tipsy and it makes him want to fool around. So he fondled and he sucked and he plopped himself heavily onto his ass to yank his own jeans off and when Jungkook demanded to know what he was doing, making clear Jimin wasn’t allowed to touch himself just yet, Jimin hurried to clarify, “I won’t come … I just want to feel the rug burn my knees, I want it to hurt a little …” because Jimin becomes a bit of a nightmare when he’s horny.

Jimin considers saying as much.

If you recall, you looked at me like I was a sex demon sent to destroy you and the tip of your giant cock started getting a lot wetter, dribbling a long strand of precum that I darted forward to catch in my open mouth, like a shot thrown down the hatch. If you recall, you instigated the deep-throating. I was sucking you very lovingly. Then you held me by the back of my neck and drove forward with those hard, unrelenting thrusts I like so much, hard enough that your swinging balls began to smack impolitely at my chin, and still I moaned and ground my knees into your living room carpet, because I love it. Because I love you.

The truth is, Jimin didn’t feel the least bit nauseous. That night, he was drunk, but not so drunk he was wavering. Not so drunk he was in danger of throwing up. It’s why he now goes out of his way to avoid solo Jungkook hangs. If Jimin is left alone with this person, and if alcohol is introduced into the equation, he turns opportunistic.

He gets naked and he tugs Jungkook onto the nearest mattress and he leans in, strokes his fingers down that strong jaw, whispers, It’s better than before, isn’t it … now, because we know each other so well, and because we’re older, because we’re less embarrassed, because there are no secrets to make us fight … it just keeps getting better. So why don’t we do it again … let’s see each other … just for a little while, let’s fool around. Do you want to have sex with me tonight? All the way. Let’s do it all the way, let’s go until we can’t keep our eyes open any longer. Kook-ah ... go out with me again … do you want to?

Jimin recalls that night and his face goes wicked hot.

Yes, okay, he’s greedy and he’s opportunistic and he gives in quite quickly. All right. But Jungkook is just as bad. Jungkook released a groan of resignation — a clear show of weakness, an acknowledgment of Jimin’s continued power over him — and he rolled Jimin over, stuffed a pillow underneath his hips, and ate him out for so long and with such dogged focus that by the time an orgasm claimed Jimin, he’d developed pins and needles in his left leg, and when he stood to hobble his way into Jungkook’s bathroom, he had to catch himself against the edge of the nightstand to avoid collapsing, and Jungkook, the heartless bastard, he just watched from his smug spot on the rumpled mattress and he laughed. Laughed long and loud. He laughed and he reached over — to help with balance, Jimin thought — and he took a mean swat at Jimin’s ass, eyelids low, watching hungrily as the jiggling fat went pink.

So cruel, this person.

“Why …” Jimin says. “You have a terrible memory ninety percent of the time, and then … the rest, the other ten percent, it goes to useless junk like this.”

In answer, Jungkook sinks low, low and unhurried, dark eyes holding Jimin in his thrall. Pretty lips part, skimming Jimin’s zip-up hoodie. With a cocky tilt of the head, Jungkook’s teeth catch the small metal tab of his zipper. He continues his slow descent, taking the zipper with him, letting Jimin listen in as metal teeth separate from metal teeth in that hissing zzzzzt sound. With a hard flick of the chin, Jungkook yanks Jimin’s hoodie open, baring his naked chest.

His belly quivers, sucking in shyly at the sudden exposure, the coldness of the metal zipper tab caught in the divot of his left hipbone.

“Show me your nipples.”

Jimin reaches reflexively for the cotton, looking to open it more fully, but his hands are swatted away. “I’m trying,” he mutters.

“Hands on the headboard while you do it,” Jungkook says, no mercy.

Jimin exhales, stretching his arms out and palming the wood waiting at the crown of his head. He thinks of the early days of his career, tank-tops yanked up to his throat for a body roll baring the brutally sculpted cut of his abdomen. How he’d agonized over that abdomen. It seems silly here and now, his oldest priorities chafing up against the impossibility of his new life. New and old, the same body, more his than ever. More Jungkook’s than before.

Jimin is no longer the wide-eyed teenager whose biggest worry was thrusting flyers advertising their first free show at unsuspecting strangers. Gone are the days of debut anxiety, of skipping all but one meal, of waking up before everyone else to cram for an album, of tearing himself to pieces over his perceived imperfections or the privileges for which he’d been deprived. Jimin is less of a fearful knot these days and he’s no longer scrabbling at a far-off cliff face. He’s scaled it. He’s looking out over the dark, frothing ocean below.

It’s terror and victory both.

That there’s still fear left to feel, and that it belongs so wholly to Jungkook, seems the strangest gift in the world. Jimin’s belly sucks in a little harder, this time with a laugh of warmth and disbelief, and then the pretty lips have returned. He watches Jungkook’s Cupid’s bow touch down on the hollow of his belly button, bringing with it a circle of hot damp sensation.

A kiss, Jungkook’s expressive eyebrows quirked, framing the pair of eyes watching Jimin. Waiting for his reaction.

Jimin pushes up into the heat of that mouth, palming the headboard harder. His fingertips scrape lacquered wood. He hears himself breathing loudly. With an impatient twist of his hips, he undulates against Jungkook’s mouth, his cock sitting within kissing distance, so close and so ready for it he could weep.

“Needy,” Jungkook murmurs into his belly.

Jimin’s ribs contract under another rush of in-drawn air. His hips roll harder to encourage his hoodie’s retreat and his dark tattoo moves with him. The cotton slips from his chest, pooling at his armpits and baring the taut brown tips of his nipples.

“Are they tight yet?” Jungkook asks.

Heat rushes to Jimin’s cheeks. He considers ignoring the question.

“Answer.”

But of course he’s not allowed to ignore it.

“I want to put my hands back down ...” Jimin says.

“First, answer my question.”

Jimin directs a frustrated look at his own body and by consequence the boyishly pleased face propped against his belly. For every breath he pulls in, Jimin’s abdominal muscles flex back into existence, a far subtler portrait than the one from his former life onstage. These days, his body is more slender than toned, more delicate than dangerous-looking. Still ruthlessly athletic, but nothing like the obsessive desperation from before.

“Yes,” Jimin says, and leaves it at that.

Jungkook’s eyebrows move higher. It’s a shame the right one is no longer studded with silver barbells.

“Yes … they’re …” Jimin pushes back an instinctive cringe. “Tight.”

There. He said it.

A hum of satisfaction. Jungkook slides a little higher, lipping his way over to the darkly inked lettering of Jimin’s NEVERMIND. It’s this spot he kisses next, mouth opening over the tattoo, offering it a swirling greeting with the tip of his tongue that promises torment to come. Torment of the sweetest sort.

“Mm,” Jungkook says, finally dropping eye contact. His gaze greets Jimin’s nipples before his mouth does. “They look tight ...”

Jimin wants to say, Stop. He wants to say, Keep looking at them. At me. But neither leaves his lips. He’s too busy turning his chest into that roving mouth. A small, plaintive sound emerges from the back of his throat when he doesn’t immediately get what he wants.

“Hands …” he begs.

“Take them back,” Jungkook says, deliberately aggravating wording, as if he’s granting Jimin a privilege.

It’s wording designed to prickle.

Jimin’s brain goes a little wonky from it. His hands abandon the headboard, groping at Jungkook’s shoulders and neck, any little bit of skin within reach. The mouth continues its investigation — lips open, grazing lightly, kindly. Jimin wants it firmer. He wants meanness. He doesn’t want to say so. The thin fabric of Jungkook’s tank-top wrinkles beneath his dissatisfied touch.

“Hyung, do you want my piercing … ?”

And Jungkook tilts his face into Jimin’s nipple, his bottom lip jutting cleverly, the cool ring of his piercing butting up against Jimin’s fat areola. Jimin can’t decide if the visual or the sensation is worse. Visually, this is reminiscent of Jungkook’s more pensive expressions, the crafty look he gets when he’s turning a complicated problem over in his mind. The sensation is just this side of unsatisfying though, pointed little nudges from a lip ring that feels too tiny to get Jimin off.

Jimin tries and fails to rub up against that mouth. “Can you …”

Jungkook hums questioningly, still rolling his bottom lip against Jimin’s bouncing nipple, shoving harder at it, warming the metal piercing his own mouth.

Jimin moans, his groin throbbing in time with a new, oozing spurt of precum. “No more …”

But Jungkook has made himself cozy, chin propped against Jimin’s pec, soft and pointy. That, too, enthralls Jimin. His own smallness, the soft flesh at his chest, softer when he calls to mind Jungkook’s monstrous pecs, huge and raised with muscle, outlined through his tank-tops like the worst kind of cleavage.

“No more?” Jungkook says.

“A different way,” Jimin whispers and tries for a little enticement, his hands kneading Jungkook’s shoulders.

Jungkook’s cheeks pull up in a smile, the briefest show of bunny teeth before his pretty lips are fastening to Jimin’s right nipple, well and truly seizing the point of his small brown tit. Jungkook begins to suck, eyelids lowering. It’s a tight, lashing suck, lip ring jostled from the force of it, teeth clamped around Jimin’s areola. Just this side of unsatisfying has become absolute agony, a fleshy pleasure-pain that tears from Jimin a sound both high and hoarse.

His hips rabbit up, looking to grind, get off together, but Jungkook is still too far away for any fun. A big palm alights on Jimin’s waist, sliding up the smallness there, thumb turned in to catch Jimin’s left nipple along the way. Immediately Jungkook begins to circle his thumb over the little pebbled peak. Finger and mouth work in counterpoint, tending to both tits, until Jimin is groaning, pushing up repeatedly with his hips, humping at air, his fat pink cock trapped too tightly to bounce the way it wants to.

Jimin goes to reach for it. In reaching for it, he knows somehow that he’ll be caught, that even while his attention is split, Jungkook is capable of frankly unimaginable amounts of multi-tasking, and no sooner has this exhilarated thought taken root than Jimin’s wrist is being snatched up and tossed back down against the white bedding.

Jimin’s slit dribbles harder. He lets his wrist fall limply to the mattress, refusing to fight his punishment. His punishment — however brief, however nonverbal — is only ramping up the pleasure-pain, and Jungkook hasn’t let up for a moment. He’s tongue-kissing Jimin’s poor, abused nipple. He’s thumbing the left, firming his thumb until his stroking has become a pinch. Index and thumb tugging on the little brown rosebud.

Jimin moans louder.

Abruptly, Jungkook breaks away, but it’s only to switch between the nipples, to move his mouth over to the left and bring a thumb up to the right, swapping hot damp tongue for unsparing calluses, thick and abrasive, chasing the friction of soft tit against rough fingertip.

Jimin’s nipples always seem hard-wired to wind his cock up even worse. There’s so much blood flow going on down below that he can’t decide if he’s still getting harder or if he’s in real danger of spurting inside of his underwear. This thought, too, is exhilarating, so he tries again to reach for his dick, making a big performance of it. Slow and weak-seeming, wedging an arm between their bodies to shove at the waistband of his Calvin Klein trunks.

Jungkook doesn’t hesitate; he releases the full weight of his body, every bit of muscle he’s so far withheld, until Jimin’s wrist has been flattened and crushed between their bellies, its attempt callously cut down. Jimin’s fingers are so close to the ridge of his own cock, so close to ecstasy, so close to the wet patch forming over his drooling slit.

But he’s been ensnared. And right when he thinks it can’t get any worse (better), Jungkook’s nipping teeth retreat, replaced by the slow, audible slurp of his tongue swirling around Jimin’s tingling tit. He traces the circumference of the small brown areola, nudging pointedly at the tautened peak the way his piercing had only moments ago.

“Can you …”

Jungkook hums around his mouthful, a question.

“Give it …” Jimin says, whiny with frustration. “Back. Give back my hand …”

Jungkook, draped heavily over Jimin, lifts his hips up and away. He takes his mouth back too, but only for a moment, only to part his lips like he wants to say something, only to free up the accumulated saliva he’s been collecting, only to pretend he’s made a mistake by doing so, that he didn’t mean for exactly this: a thick strand of drool escaping past his lips, where it lengthens, gleaming, before snapping and splattering Jimin’s nipple.

“Ah, sorry,” Jungkook says, a bit of reciprocal theatrics, and ducks low again to lick his own froth away, sucking every last bit of spit back into his mouth.

Jimin cries out, his hand laying forgotten at his belly. “Don’t — stop —”

Jungkook comes back up for air with a mouth pinker than before. “‘Don’t stop?’” he repeats. “Is there a period between those two words? Or are you asking me to keep going?”

“Jungkook,” Jimin says, both nipples shining from the recent treatment, pulled tight and pointy. They’re covered in Jungkook’s spit. His skin won’t stop tingling, and from two separate erogenous zones now. Chest and groin.

“If I were a marketing director,” Jungkook says, “I’d tell the CK execs — I’d sit them down at a big conference table — and I’d say, ‘For the next Jungkook ad campaign, let’s go with this. This right here. We’ll make millions.’” And he indicates Jimin’s hand with a nod.

Jimin’s hand is small, short-fingered, silver rings layered and glinting, his restless knuckles brandished along the same fault-line as his Calvin Klein waistband. Below it, there’s the hard bulge of Jimin’s cock, a thick outline breathing wetly against black cotton.

“Jimin-ah, do you agree?”

“No …”

“No?”

“No … take them off …”

“Ah, you think we should go soft-core for our next ad campaign? A bit of nudity from our main model?”

“No,” Jimin says. “I’m not. You are.”

“I’ll make you the next main model,” Jungkook says. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?”

Jimin’s face crackles with heat. “I can’t …”

“Why not?”

It’s only for you to see. He thinks of saying that, but he can’t get the words past his lips. “Help …”

Jungkook says, “Have your arms recently stopped working?”

Then he lowers his mouth to Jimin’s left nipple, not quite sucking, just more of that irritating flex of his bottom lip. Jimin can only stare, low-lidded, nearly pouting. He won’t ask for it directly. He won’t. He’ll only beg with his body, giving up on his underwear entirely to fist two hands in the dark hair waiting and ready for it.

Of course Jungkook is waiting and ready.

Jimin knows this person like the back of his hand. The obsession is reciprocal. As soon as he gets his fingers in all that black hair, intent on reacquainting Jungkook with the meaning of bedhead, his dongsaeng unhinges his jaw, pink tongue lolled, wide and flat, more unforgiving, more gluttonous in its teasing strokes.

Jimin tightens his knuckles, taking up two fistfuls of hair. Jungkook moans, firming his tongue, slurping at the brown rosebud of Jimin’s nipple. The tip of the tongue keeps snagging against the pointy tip, bouncing it, catching each bounce with another firm suck.

Jimin is starting to feel like he’s controlling that head, yanking harder at it to encourage the wet heat, to ask for more, his eyelashes fluttering open and closed. “Ju … Juh …”

Jungkook pulls off, his mouth swollen to match the spit-shiny pair of tits he’s been torturing. “Who’s Juh-Juh?”

Jimin scowls. Jungkook knows exactly what buttons to push to get a reaction, and this one sees frequent use. A simple but effective trick: repeating back to Jimin something he’s said in a teasing tone of voice. It’s always delight or vexation with this one.

“Come on,” Jimin says, hiking a knee up to brush Jungkook’s left hip.

“Come on, what?” Jungkook says. “That whole time, you could’ve put a hand down your underwear. Why were you pretending to struggle? Mn? Just stick a hand in and stroke.”

Jimin pulls his other knee up, hugging Jungkook to his body. “… You do it …”

“Me?” Jungkook says wryly.

Jimin nods, fighting a bratty whine.

“Aish,” Jungkook says, flashing a lopsided grin, a gleaming canine. “No, never mind, I think you are a little bit lazy. I think this is your favorite place to be lazy — with me, while we’re naked in bed.”

“We’re not naked yet,” Jimin says in a voice of complaint. “Kook-ah, hurry up.”

“Ah, is it ‘Kook-ah’ time already? No more ‘Jungkook?’”

Jimin twists his mouth to the side, trying not to smile. “Can we kiss now?” he mumbles, averting his gaze to avoid the smugness of those big black eyes.

“Mhm,” Jungkook says and crawls down Jimin’s body to remove his Calvin Klein trunks, tossed away without so much as a second glance. Then he settles in, framed by the thick spread of Jimin’s thighs. Two big hands squeeze Jimin’s hips, one tattooed, one unembellished. “We’re gonna kiss my way in just a second.”

Jimin readjusts the lower half of his body, trying not to seem like he’s ogling himself. Even still, a small part of him wants to snap a photo of his own body, now almost completely nude aside from the unzipped hoodie. There’s only the occasional glimmer of his silver rings, only the hard flop of his pink dick as he makes himself more comfortable on the king size mattress, only Jungkook’s rough palms lying in wait.

That’s the truth of it: vanity of this nature is bolstered by Jungkook’s presence, by his dark, roaming gaze, taking in Jimin’s nudity, soft and hairless, the grooming habits he still maintains because they both prefer their sex this way. Jimin no longer feels guilty or ashamed of this equation; so much of his furtive self-appreciation exists because it’s been confirmed by Jungkook.

“You like how we look together?” Jungkook says, accurately reading in Jimin’s expression a gleam of naughty appreciation.

“You’re full of questions today,” Jimin says.

Jungkook laughs and Jimin reaches automatically for that dark head, carding long-nailed fingers through his hair. It’s nice and fluffy, freshly washed. He relishes the little groan of pleasure Jungkook releases in response to one of his favorite kinds of stimulation. So much like a puppy.

Jimin’s chest goes tight, overcome with warmth. Lower, his belly erupts in butterflies, trying to contain itself and the sudden tumble of elated feeling called up by Jungkook’s face, near enough to Jimin’s naked cock to finally kiss it.

Jungkook gives Jimin’s hips one last squeeze, skating low, lower, then catching his waiting cock. He closes a hand around it.

What Jimin lacks in length he more than makes up for in girth, although his dick feels a little less impressive relative to Jungkook’s giant hands. A little less impressive, a lot more humiliating. The humiliation is like a leash, tightening around Jimin’s desire, drawing it out into the light. Exposing the contrasts Jimin and Jungkook strike — large and small, younger and older, indulgent and bratty.

Any disparity between them ramps up the hot thrill of their relationship. Jimin’s small dick clutched in that giant hand. One single hand — that’s all it takes to swaddle Jimin’s cock, a roughly textured palm pulling up on his too-sensitive foreskin.

Already he’s flexing his toes and whining for more.

“Hyung,” Jungkook says.

From Jimin-ah, all the way back to hyung. So soon. Why? Why, oh why?

Because Jungkook has an entire arsenal of traps at his disposal. That’s why.

“… What,” Jimin says, eyes on the ceiling.

“Are you wet yet?”

Obviously a rhetorical question. Obviously bait.

Like a fish lured from water, Jimin falls for it. He trails his eyes back down his own outspread body, watching that big fist pull down on his foreskin at the precise moment that his slit begins to bead up with precum. Jungkook intercepts Jimin’s gaze, mouth kicking up on one side. It’s the side that’s pierced. His tongue darts out, playing with his lip ring, the little silver gleam that makes his smiles look crooked — optical illusion — that makes all of his facial expressions seem unspeakably devious. And he lets go of Jimin’s cock, watches it bob forlornly in midair for a moment.

It’s only a moment. A moment, and then Jungkook switches hands — left to right, making a juggling maneuver of his handjob.

Jimin can’t do this right now. He really can’t.

“Hyung.”

“What,” Jimin says, belly trembling under a sudden spike of annoyance.

“You’re really small.”

Jimin’s cock pulses, hardening further under a new and powerful rush of pleasure. “Be quiet,” he whispers, too frightened to raise his voice lest it shake.

“You’re really small when I come near you,” Jungkook continues, stroking once with his left hand. He considers his own knuckles, decides they're lacking somehow visually, and swaps again to the right. A new stroke, slower, tighter, his tattooed knuckles displayed. “When I’m away, you seem normal — your proportions — but when we’re together …” And he hums in that voice of dark honey, of silver-gold, of good and evil. Vast amounts of evil, and a little tiny dash of good.

Jimin’s left leg jerks, startled out of laying flat. He watches his knee rise up, buttressing the maknae reclined between the cradle of his thighs.

Jungkook, noticing the movement of this leg, glances at the golden thigh brought within breathing distance of his face. His eyelids lower a bit, with the kind of lazy focus that makes every last nerve-ending in Jimin’s body — every last pore — feel alive. Awake. Then Jungkook leans forward to brush his open mouth against the soft inner thigh. He kisses it, ending this kiss with a gentle suck that makes Jimin’s balls tighten.

“Well,” Jungkook amends, after departing from the thigh. “Certain parts are smaller than others.”

Jimin breathes out through his nose. His entire leg flexes.

“Do you think you could strangle me with these thighs?”

“Yes,” Jimin says, without hesitation, “I think I could.”

“It’d feel really good,” Jungkook concurs, unbothered by the hypothetical threat to his life. “You’re so fat and hairless here … so smooth …”

Jeon Jungkook, do you want to die? Jimin thinks, a thought shot through with affection and spite, as another kiss is dropped to his inner thigh, higher than before, following a band of muscle joining leg to pelvis.

“But sometimes you try to seem bigger than you truly are.”

“What …” Jimin says, “… are you going on about …”

“Wearing shoes a size or three too big for your little feet.”

“That’s — because I’m a dancer,” Jimin says. “Not … to seem any one way. It’s … I prefer to move around in … in big shoes. It’s more comfortable for me.”

“Do you remember your insole phase?”

“No I don’t,” Jimin says around the buzz of his own embarrassment.

“I’m glad you gave it up,” Jungkook says, gaze coasting back to the small cock patiently awaiting the return of his attention.

“You’re not that much taller,” Jimin mutters. “You’re — you’re not even big. Compared to … everyone else in the group.”

Contrary to custom, Jungkook is a difficult creature to rile while they’re fooling around. In a public setting, in front of cameras, at ages eighteen or nineteen, high stakes and hormone-fraught — then yes, maybe, perhaps. Easy to rile. If Jimin is in a frisky mood and if he sets his focus on the triggers and traps Jungkook leaves out, for Jimin specifically and in particular, Jungkook might be riled. In bed, however, he’s a lot more difficult to provoke into reacting.

The opposite is true of Jimin. In his day-to-day, he is a paragon of composure and control. In the bedroom, his fuse is practically nonexistent. Nonexistent, and prone to explosive overreactions.

“Do you like being small for me?” Jungkook says, in a voice of tranquil unconcern.

For me. Jimin doesn’t know why, but it’s that last part that winds him up. A vein ticks to life in his forehead. His entire face goes warm and he wants to scream, shout, kick, bite. Something, anything to undo the frisson of wonderfully addicting embarrassment moving through his body.

“No,” he says in a low voice, near-inaudible. “I don’t. I’m not.”

Jungkook squeezes his hand down tight, forming an unforgiving fist, a burning hot clamp designed to make Jimin wetter. He resumes his original task, pulling on the loose skin of Jimin’s cock. Jimin watches it move, bleary-eyed, bowled over by the eroticism of those tattooed knuckles tending to him.

“Do you like it when I treat you like a toy?” Jungkook says.

“I’m — not,” Jimin says, voice climbing into something almost shrill, his skull so heavy he has the sense that he’s about to sink into his pillow and vanish forever.

In his head, he hears his want ringing loud and clear: I am. I am your toy. Let’s keep playing. Let’s never stop.

“Remember when you would say it to anyone who asked? Running around, shouting it from the rooftops, writing it out during our fansigns?” Back down Jimin’s foreskin goes, revealing the gleaming tip of his cock, tiny next to those inky knuckles. Jungkook’s gaze right then is darker than black. “Desperate to play with me all the time. Are you happy I treat you like that now?”

Jimin can’t even begin to guess what that gaze heralds. In truth, Jungkook doesn’t need to resort to fancy party tricks to impress Jimin. Jimin is too easily impressed by Jungkook as it is. It’s by this point historical precedent, and if he casts his mind back far enough, he sees in terribly embarrassing high-definition every instance of their documented puppy love. Jimin, gazing openly at their golden maknae, grinning with infatuation, exclaiming over Jungkook, heaping him with effusive praise, bouncing into his personal space, then leaping away when it was reciprocated with an overstimulated bout of play-fighting.

Gritted through his teeth, Jimin says: “Like … what …”

“Like a dongsaeng,” Jungkook says, crisply spoken. “Are you happy I started acting like your hyung?”

“You’re … you aren’t,” Jimin says, as if he’s above this kink. As if it isn’t mutual.

“Are you happy I pull your little dick out and play with it whenever I want?”

Jimin wants to say, Stop, don’t call it that, but Jungkook doesn’t even sound disparaging when he says it. His tone of voice is reverent, and his gaze is unswerving. His gaze is fanatical. It’s the worst thing in the world to discover that you’re being humiliated by a man who loves the most humiliating parts of you. How do you survive a realization like that? It liquefies all of Jimin’s most unruly urges. It makes his little dick drool and his other leg kick up, both of them sitting high and bent at the knees, the callused heels of his feet fidgety against the hotel bedding.

Jungkook doesn’t seem to care one way or another whether Jimin answers his questions. He meets every silence with more: “Should I stroke you with lotion?”

“No, please don’t,” Jimin says in a distraught voice.

Jungkook moves in on Jimin’s cock slowly, eyebrows raised. His expression is almost speculative. “Why not?”

Jimin doesn’t say, Because I want to see you kiss it. He doesn’t say that. He says, “I … don’t need it.”

“Because you’re already so wet,” Jungkook says, plain as day.

“… Because … I’m … I … and all the skin catches it for me and — and I have to wash it differently than you do,” Jimin mumbles, almost whiny, almost, his head turned to fix the linen curtains with an offhand stare.

“But I’m going to be the one washing it afterwards,” Jungkook says and follows this up with a self-assured flick of his wrist, stroking the drooly little cock wetter, folding it away in that dark restless sheath of skin, then down again, Jimin’s head peeping out shyly once more.

Said just like that. Not a question. A statement of fact. A prediction. A peek into the future. Jimin’s entire expression crumples, until his stare is less offhand and more desperate. Don’t be so easy, he thinks, struggling against his abating temper, but he’s already blinking against a thin film of tears, an uncontrollable reaction to the rapturous humiliation, the warm regard in that voice, its total conviction that it owns Jimin, that it knows exactly what he needs, that it will be able to distill and feed those needs more efficiently — more reverently — than Jimin himself. Jimin almost can’t breathe, it feels so good.

That voice. Separate from the hand, separate from sensation itself. The voice is enough to drive Jimin out of his mind.

“Do you want that?” Jungkook says, quieting as his own arousal thickens, turning his typical vocal color into something richer than honey.

“I … mhm,” Jimin says, after an internal struggle and a small kick of his left foot.

He can’t manage a full yes, so mhm it is.

“Do you know what, Jimin-ah?”

“What,” Jimin whispers, glancing back down at the face of his favorite person.

“Even if you didn’t want it, I was going to do it,” Jungkook says, deathly serious. “I was going to follow you into your shower and finger you clean.”

Jimin can feel himself reddening again. Fingering. Who said anything about fingers?

Jungkook strokes up on his cock and continues, watching Jimin like a hawk: “I want to wash your hair when it’s this length. I want to see what part of your back tattoo it reaches while it’s wet. I want to massage your scalp and play with your extensions.”

“Then … okay …”

“But you don’t need to tell me okay,” Jungkook says, unmoved by this display of obedience, “since you’re my dongsaeng and my word is law. Even if it’s not okay, it’s going to be done my way. You don’t have any control right now.”

It’s true. Jimin no longer has any control over his reactions. He’s forced to resort to old body language, a rerun of earlier — arms crossed over his own face. Hiding there, he quivers, not so much flustered as stupidly flattered.

It’s impossible to explain why he’s flattered, given how much of his life is controlled by external influences, systems and people beyond his power. Beyond his purview. It is precisely because so much of his life is controlled by others that Jimin expends all of his energy — vast amounts, ceaseless restriction and routine — trying to control himself. His body and its abilities, their potential, their perceived development and growth.

Under Jungkook’s influence, there’s nothing at all to develop. Nothing at all to grow but the pleasure snaking between them. Jimin can’t restrict, punish, drill, regulate, obsess, avoid. He can’t lose himself to the lunacy of repetition. He has to stop and cede to this person. Cede everything, all the unruly energy, runoff from the dissatisfaction he so often turns inward.

“Did you miss it? Having sex with me?” Jungkook says, a bit of true inquisitiveness edging out the impromptu hyung-dongsaeng role-play. “Look at me for a second.”

Jimin releases a huffy little breath, then removes his arms. He lifts his head up. Enough to snatch at this image of his dongsaeng, relaxed, reclining, as confident as a king, and barely moving any muscles while he’s at it.

Jungkook extends his neck, leaning down a fraction. Then he blows on the tip of Jimin’s drooling cock, catching a new spurt of precum as it races down the head, encouraged by the air driving it down the shaft. Again: “Do you like it? Do you like when I play with you? Tell me.”

Jimin’s head thumps down hard against his pillow and he lets out a porn-worthy moan, a truly debauched mmm! yes! A new frisson of embarrassment and vanity hits him, hearing his own voice launched into something so soft and high-pitched.

“You were right, you know,” Jungkook says. “I am addicted to being in my body. Addicted to getting you out of yours.”

Jimin spreads his arms out, searching for purchase. He catches the corner of a spare pillow in his left hand and yanks it closer, kneading at it in the manner of a kitten.

“Always so tightly held together …” Jungkook watches his own tattooed thumb, cocked against the dark, paper-thin skin encasing Jimin’s fat cock. He rubs that thumb against Jimin’s drooling slit, darts him an assessing glance. “Why don’t you let me take the reins for a little while? A little bit everyday? Yeah? You’re getting really horny now, aren’t you? I can tell … I can see it in your neck …”

Jimin makes a conscious effort to untense his throat, but it just leads to a rough, gulping swallow.

“Do you like letting go for Jungkookie?”

Jimin shuts his eyes. “Yeah …”

“Remember, hyung, you can’t make a mistake with me,” Jungkook says gravely. “It’s not possible. Whatever you do with your body when we’re like this … I love all of it. Whether you try to fight it or give in, whether you come too fast or not fast enough … whether you’re tight or you’re loose … quiet or noisy … cold or warm … whether you’re too lazy to move or moving so much I want to hit you …”

“Hit …” Jimin mouths, toes already curling.

“Even if I scold, even if I spank. Even if I bite you. No matter what, I love it,” Jungkook murmurs and presses a kiss to the opposite thigh, a ticklish rush of sensation. “I love having sex with you. Don’t forget that.”

“Okay,” Jimin says, suddenly soft-hearted, and swallows against a burst of anguish. It’s anguish because the pleasure is so acute. It’s anguish because it’s all Jimin wants for the rest of his life: this and this and more of this. “I … won’t forget.”

“You’ll remember it for me? If or when we’re on a break, I need you to remember. Remember it, so you come crawling back to me or — if you can’t, if you’re not ready — you let me crawl back to you. You let me into your bed again. Even if you’re not feeling soft. Even then, I want you. When you’re hard and stubborn, too.”

How to articulate it? What is it about the quiet ones? This one in particular, this quiet one, the watchful quality Jungkook brings to everything he does, the obsessive force of his attention, whether he turns it inward (finding his external environment lacking, too dull to dwell on) or aims it at something or someone nearby. During sex, sitting on the receiving end of that obsessive attention is genuine torture. Jimin is given no quarter. It never ends, this attention, and although he’s never considered himself camera shy, the few times he’s experienced true stage fright, there’s been no stage to speak of. There’s been a mattress, a bottle of water-based lube, and a pair of too-bright doe eyes belonging to Jeon Jungkook.

“You’ve — grown up too well,” Jimin manages, finally locating something adequate. Something to describe the strength of his mortified pleasure.

“Mn,” Jungkook hums. “Have I gotten better at making you feel good?”

Jimin opens his eyes, wanting to make clear his sincerity on the subject of intimacy. “Even when you sucked,” he says, “I really liked it.”

At that, Jungkook’s eyebrows spasm. “Seriously? Why?”

“Because I’d spent so long wanting to have sex with you,” Jimin says, and averts his eyes to put off Jungkook’s reaction. “So by the time it happened, I was ready to take whatever I could get. And because … even if you weren’t the best in the beginning, you tried your hardest.”

A guffaw.

Jimin slits him a look.

Jungkook is beaming, bunny teeth on full display, his gaze fixed on the fat, dusky cock filling his palm. “When it happened … the first time, I mean, the two of us alone together, and … and I’d done a lot of research, and I jumped through all these hoops to get everything we needed without tipping anyone off … I was so nervous I thought I’d throw up. And it ended up going horribly.”

“It didn’t go horribly,” Jimin says.

Then he recalls the cold hard facts.

The cold hard facts are as follows: following a clumsy bout of fingering, Jungkook snapped a condom on and had scarcely taken six effortful strokes into Jimin’s ass before he began to violently orgasm, hunched over, sweaty forehead nestled against Jimin’s shoulder with an air of excitable shyness. Afterwards, they’d lain together in awkward silence, until Jimin finally worked up the nerve to say, “Did it feel nice …”

Jungkook picked his head up where he’d buried it in the pillow Jimin was laying on, openly sulking. “Hyung,” he said, barely above a mumble. “I’m … the one who’s supposed to ask that, so … that means … for you, it didn’t feel nice at all … did it …”

Jimin saw in Jungkook’s expression something profoundly self-flagellating and began to laugh. This laughter appeared to lessen the mortal humiliation Jungkook was still carrying in his eyes and his lips twitched, although this particular faux pas would haunt him for a little while longer. He muttered an apology and leaned down to kiss Jimin, and Jimin felt so unaccountably pleased by the turn his life had taken that he came with Jungkook’s spent cock still lodged up his ass, hips bunching up beseechingly, his fat pink cock riding Jungkook’s belly, smushed and leaking between them, foreskin moving delicately to the quivering rhythms of Jungkook’s breathing. It was so good. It was Jimin’s favorite orgasm of his life so far, spurting messily against their maknae’s shocked belly. Jimin had been too bashful to look, biting his lip to contain his reaction, and then Jungkook sat up, passing a palm over the semen striping his navel, his expression amazed. His expression was saying something along the lines of, Do you really like me? This much? Enough to orgasm after my disappointing performance?

“… I didn’t even make it past seven,” Jungkook says now.

Jimin presses a palm to his temple, laughing with glee. “Ah … I really like that memory.”

“Hyung,” Jungkook says, and Jimin glances past his palm, gaze fixing on that patient face. “Me too.”

“Fine, okay,” Jimin murmurs, heart hammering in his chest, thinking to himself: Please never love anyone but me. Don’t love anyone the way you love me. “Let’s do it now …”

“Do it … ?” Jungkook repeats. “Do what?”

“Let’s … I want to have sex … so hurry up. I want it inside. Don’t let me come until … it’s all the way inside …”

“With who?”

“With — with — who else but — !”

“With me?” Jungkook says. “Me, Jeon Jungkook of Bangtan Sonyeondan?”

“Yes,” Jimin whispers, refusing to speak above this near-imperceptible volume.

“Say it — show me your aegyo,” Jungkook says.

Jimin’s mouth actually drops open.

“What, did you think I was that easy?” Jungkook says and squeezes demonstratively, cruelly, around Jimin’s neglected cock. “‘Let’s do it now,’ and we do it? No. I’ve learned from the best, haven’t I? Don’t you remember the time you almost edged me to death in an RV? I couldn’t even talk because you’d stuffed your underwear in my mouth. You were under the blankets for so long, I started wondering if you’d suffocated on my dick. Every time I humped, you’d pull off and lick around my belly button, or you’d pinch my thighs.”

Jimin goes back to crossing his arms over his face. There’s no safer place to be at the moment. He might as well make a life for himself here, where he won’t be subjected to Jungkook’s humiliation rituals.

“Aegyo,” Jungkook says.

“I’m — you can’t be serious.”

“Give me your cutest puppy eyes. Make your mouth fat, too. As fat as it’ll go. Throw in a finger heart if you’re feeling generous.”

“Jungkook!” Jimin exclaims, arms slipping away from his face in all his irritability, because it’s unfair how far they’ve come since that initial six-stroke debacle and the tied-off condom, that as a result of that debacle they’ve imposed a strict no rubber rule with each other and no one else on Earth, that Jungkook is no longer that shy, gawky creature who ducked his head and showed a sweet flash of teeth every time Jimin darted forward for another little bit of flirting.

It’s horrible and humiliating and everything Jimin has ever dreamed of, in the shameful safety of his own head.

“Here, do you need a little bit of encouragement?” Jungkook says, relinquishing his hold on Jimin’s poor cock to crawl up that fussy body. Chest slides against chest, nipples briefly catching on cotton, as Jungkook settles himself more fully on top of Jimin. His mouth has returned to its default state: glinting smirk, a rakish uptick in his pretty lips. Those lips are already moving in on Jimin’s left ear, whispering Jungkook’s next words: “I want a pet name or I want your aegyo. Give me the prettiest trick in your book. Play dirty if you have to.”

“Pet name …” Jimin parrots, hating this. Loving it.

“Whatever strikes your fancy. Surprise me. Make it cute or make it lovely.”

“Then … what about …”

Jungkook pulls back, eyebrow quirking. “Sexy?” he says, with sudden interest.

Jimin blinks up at that shameless face, too appalled for a moment to move. He lowers his eyes, overwhelmed by a fit of sudden shyness, and he says, low and resentful, “Naekkeo …”

Jungkook goes still, top row of teeth touching bottom row of teeth. His expression looks exceedingly thunderstruck. Then he’s shaking his head minutely and saying, “Seriously …”

“What? I said it …” Jimin mutters, ears hot, and puts together a little scowl to drive home his displeasure. “Naekkeo … take it or leave it …”

Jungkook is already surging forward to crush his mouth against Jimin’s, breathing out hard, like a panting puppy too excited to control itself. Jimin wants to laugh, but he’s busy trying to kiss back, his brain flooded with the kind of chemical excitement he’s only ever experienced during sex with Jungkook. Their lips catch, mashed together, dragging softly to tighten the fit. Even without tongue, Jimin feels perfectly content. Just dragging at each other repeatedly, just feeling Jungkook’s intensity, feeling the strength of his perception, feeling his own fatness relative to Jungkook’s thinner mouth.

“Yeah?” Jungkook murmurs against Jimin’s lips. “Am I yours … ? Yours and no one else’s?”

“Naekkeo,” Jimin repeats, because third time’s the charm, his stubby fingers smoothing up Jungkook’s sternum.

“I’m really hard now,” Jungkook whispers, dropping a fiendish kiss to the edge of Jimin’s mouth. “Don’t pout at me. Seriously. You have the worst case of dick-sucking lips in the world. Ah … fuck … say it again …”

“Stop getting so horny,” Jimin says, rolling his hips to test the groin flattened against his own and feeling in that upward grind a deliciously demanding outline, something long and thick and trapped behind a lousy layer of cotton, moving in counterpoint, skimming Jimin’s naked cock.

“So fucking horny,” Jungkook whispers, ducking his head to sniff Jimin’s throat out, lips smacking audibly at anything within reach, brief, enthusiastic kisses to Jimin’s pulse and Adam’s apple, the curlicue roil of his YOUTH tattoo.

“Jungkook …”

“Say my name,” Jungkook says, muffled into Jimin’s neck. His breathing has begun to take on the percussive tempo he usually reserves for rabidly passionate dirty talk. “I love it … I love your voice …”

Like a stick of butter left on the stove, Jimin has been warmed, reduced to a simmering liquid. He wants now to give Jungkook anything he asks for. He’s grown indulgent, a little bit shameless, as if he’s performing for a camera no one else but Jungkook will ever have the privilege of handling.

Lashes flickering, voice reduced to something distinctly sweet, he whines, “Jagiya, I want it. I really want it now. Your cock … give it to me … make me swallow it already …”

Jungkook freezes mid-throat investigation. With the speed of a hunting dog, he picks his head back up. He blinks down at Jimin like his brain has short-circuited. Then a hard breath of air has been expelled from his lungs and he’s kissing up Jimin’s jaw, eyes hooded with need.

Jimin moans, fretting against the rapid skim of lips. “Me too,” he says. “I’m getting horny too …”

“You’re so sexy when you’re shameless …”

“How is it shameless? You started it. You made me act this way. And I haven’t even come to your room once to raid your luggage, not since tour started …”

“It was only a matter of time,” Jungkook says assuredly.

“Says who?”

“Says me. Me and that unused bottle of lube you were hiding in your shower.”

Jimin shifts, head tossed back in laughter.

“I’m so fucking horny right now that everything sounds good,” Jungkook says, unable to go a moment without confirming they’re on the same wavelength. “I even want to fuck your calves.”

“My … what?” Jimin says, certain he’s misheard.

All right. Perhaps today their wavelengths are slightly different.

“Calves,” Jungkook says. “If you folded your legs a bit, I’d crouch and fuck the little space between the back of your thigh and your calf. From the side. We’d have to be perpendicular to each other.”

“It used to be me who was the shameless one,” Jimin says, dumbfounded by this newest development, “and now it’s you.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook says and leans in to touch his mouth to Jimin’s. “Do you like it?”

Jimin exhales shakily, lips opening. “Apparently so.”

“Don’t say ‘apparently.’ Take that part out.”

“So,” Jimin says, per Jungkook’s instructions.

Jungkook pulls back to glare. His glares are often usurped by the boyish sulk of his bottom lip. Almost a pout. “Say it the right way.”

“Say what?” Jimin says, sighing dramatically even as his lips lift for an affectionate little smile. He slides his arms around the broad shift of Jungkook’s shoulders. “What do you want me to say, hm?”

“Say something nice to me or we’re breaking up,” Jungkook says.

“We’re not even back together yet,” Jimin feels it prudent to point out.

Jungkook’s glare deepens. “We’re divorced.”

“We were never married!”

“Well, now we’re never going to be.”

“Come here,” Jimin says, laughing, tugging Jungkook forward by the nape of his neck. He tips his chin up for a light, conciliatory kiss. “In the middle of sex?”

“In the middle of sex,” Jungkook says. “Sad sex now, since we’re breaking up. Going away sex. Goodbye sex.”

“No, I don’t want that. I never like it,” Jimin says, and presses another, firmer kiss to Jungkook’s mouth, a loud smack of a peck, followed by another, then another, moving in on the silver piercing. “I either want reunion sex or drunk sex or angry, jealous sex — just a bit, just a little tiny bit of jealousy — or celebratory sex, sex after an award win, the kind where you’re really restless and amped up and you keep trying to find excuses to ditch everyone else and then as soon as we’re alone you fuck my ass for so long I have to beg you to stop because I have no more cum left.”

By the end of this speech, Jungkook’s eyelids are looking a lot heavier, almost completely closed, and his tongue keeps darting out to take small, sympathetic swipes of his own lip ring, feeling it out, trying to relearn its shape from the perspective of Jimin’s mouth. Jimin’s mouth, on the next attempt, is caught and nipped into submission, a rough bite to the bottom lip that makes his hips jerk up, searching for a rough chafe to match the hurt coming from his face.

Apologetic, Jungkook frees the bottom lip, pressing a soft kiss to it. “‘Our ARMY won an award,’ and then I fuck you for an hour straight, because you love me more than ARMY — don’t argue, I know you love our fans. Because ARMY is our code word. Let’s do that next.”

“If that’s the case, then we’re not broken up,” Jimin informs him testily. “This isn’t goodbye sex.”

“Fine, we’re not broken up,” Jungkook says, with the air of a man who’s gone to great lengths to secure exactly this end result. Jimin hears him saying, Unlike you, I don’t need alcohol to turn evil, and marvels at how readily he’s allowed himself to be manipulated today. Jimin walked right into this one. “But I’m gonna make you sign a contract this time around.”

Jimin huffs a laugh, smothered by their next kiss. “I don’t think that’s legal.”

“Your next five years belong to me, no royalties — none at all — and you have to give me one kiss a day, at minimum.”

“No royalties … ?”

“None at all,” Jungkook says, uncompromising.

“Heartless manager,” Jimin whispers, trying to push forward for a little bit of shared tongue activity.

“No, no more kissing. Like I said, I’m really fucking horny and I don’t want to embarrass myself right now.”

“Huh? Embarrass how?”

“I will prematurely ejaculate if we make out for even a minute. Gonna suck,” Jungkook says, pressing one final kiss to Jimin’s top lip.

Already Jimin’s shame has shrunken back. He’s teeming with happy chemicals. “No,” he says, striving to appear courteous, even kindhearted. “You won’t. You’re really good at it. I’ll — I don’t dislike anything, either. With you, I like it all. I like everything, so it could never suck.”

Jungkook pauses to issue Jimin a bright look — gently teasing, endlessly endeared. “I meant I’m gonna suck your dick,” he says, “but thank you very much for the compliment.”

Jimin’s heart stutters, then redoubles its effort to send him into an early grave. A wall of crackling heat descends, taking every part of his body with it. He’s too embarrassed for a moment to speak, feeling so regretful over his little hiccup that he wants to say — cruel, accusatory, punishing — let’s stop here. Let’s never continue. I’ve ruined it. You’ve let me ruin it.

“Look at me,” Jungkook says.

Jimin wants to close his eyes. He drags his gaze unwillingly over.

“Yeobo,” he says, disarmingly tender, “please focus on enjoying my mouth. I know I don’t have lips like yours, but I like to think I’m still pretty good.”

Jimin’s short fuse sparks back to life, confused, caught up in a tumult of emotional whiplash. “What do you mean — ‘y — ye — yeo — !’” he says, unable to even get the word out without cringing in humiliation and awe.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Jungkook says.

“No! Now — !” Jimin cuts off with a hard click of teeth, craning forward at the neck to watch Jungkook slither back down his body. “Take off your shirt, at least. Why, if I can’t even see your … ?”

In a flash, Jungkook has torn the tank-top over his head, hair tousled appealingly. It joins the rest of their discarded clothing, cast off into some lesser known corner of Jimin’s hotel room. Jimin barely gets to enjoy the new visuals — tight, flexing six pack, really prominent tits, the neat border of Jungkook’s sleeve as it unfurls down smooth, golden muscle — because Jungkook has settled in again at Jimin’s thighs. His shoulders, however, are remarkably delectable even from this angle, so Jimin is less sorry about having to sacrifice the six pack.

It’s a fair trade if he can look at Jungkook’s trapezius muscles, huge and raised, a harsh slope up to his thick neck.

“Aish,” Jimin says under his breath, face flooded with the kind of heat he’s endured since he was a teenager, standing over a much scrawnier version of Jungkook to ogle his push-up form, to coo over his straining bicep muscles, to ask if he could possibly do that while Jimin sat on his back?

“Aish, what?”

“You look really good naked. Why are you so big … why do you ever wear clothes …” Jimin says, then amends this when he remembers Jungkook is still in his black sweatpants: “Partially naked.”

“Give me your cock,” Jungkook mutters, disgruntled-sounding.

Jimin settles back against his pillow, barely whining when that big fist returns to his dusky little dick. Small and stupid. Fine. If Jungkook says it’s so, it is so. Jimin breathes through the first clasping touch, as familiar as a handshake with an old friend. His hips flex, trying to chase the sensation of that slow and splendid stroke to his oversensitive foreskin.

“Hyung, can I tell you something?”

“What now?”

“I recently learned this part right here — this part trying to hide from me — is our equivalent of a clitoris,” Jungkook says, tugging up on Jimin’s soft pink shaft, then back down, watching the flesh of his foreskin pull back down to reveal his fat tip, welling up with a new gush of precum, “since the clit and the glans are made from the same tissue.”

“Huh?” Jimin hears himself say.

“Basically, they develop from the same cells, and their structures and purposes are really similar. The foreskin is just like the clitoral hood,” Jungkook says. “And the glans is where most of the dick’s sensitivity comes from, so during circumcision, a lot of that is lost. Do you know what that means?”

“That I’m … sensitive … ?”

“Exactly,” Jungkook says in a voice that lights up the section of Jimin’s animal hindbrain labeled WAITING FOR PRAISE. “You retained all that nice sensation. And since I’m circumcised, I don’t have a dick as responsive as yours. Isn’t that a bit tragic? We should thank the Parks for sparing you.”

“What …” Jimin says, struggling to keep up with the twists and turns in Jungkook’s dirty talk.

“I’m circumcised and you’re not,” Jungkook reiterates.

“I know that,” Jimin says.

Already his mind is brimming over with memories of Jungkook’s long, dark cock slapping his navel, enough shaft to draw the eye, an untold elegance to its uneven slant, always sitting at a very slight angle, the large, blunt flare of his tip pearled with wetness.

Jimin was destined to develop a fixation with cut cocks the first time he realized not everyone pulled down their pants and had to retract their foreskin to pee; he’s fascinated by what he lacks. Really, he was destined to develop this fixation the day he first learned Jungkook is cut.

He thinks it must be the same for Jungkook, who’s always been strangely obsessed with Jimin’s dick: fat, pink, uncut, pubic hair carefully shaved. Jimin knows there’s a stigma attached to people like him, a judgment and prejudice, but he’s never felt particularly insecure about being uncircumcised, and anyway, Jungkook has zero complaints.

By some miracle, all of their kinks either run tandem, or they exist at a crossroads and the oppositional friction just makes everything hotter.

“That means you still have your little clit and now I can play with it as often as I want,” Jungkook says, interrupting Jimin’s thoughts.

“What — what are you saying?”

“Does it feel nice when I touch it, hyung? Your clit?” Jungkook says, voice dropping to something more conspiratorial, and then, as Jimin’s foreskin is tugged back, he feels a gentle swipe of a touch to his glans that makes his breath catch.

“Don’t … call it that — mm —”

“Is that not what it is?” Jungkook says. “The clitoris is definitely the original sexual organ. The rest of us are just copycats.”

“I don’t know,” Jimin pants. “I — I need to read the article first. Or — watch the video. Whatever.”

“This one, this little dick right here … it doesn’t have as many nerve-endings as a clit, but still a lot more than I do …”

Jimin swivels his hips, trying unsuccessfully to chase the teasing flash of Jungkook’s pink tongue, withdrawn just like that. “Come back,” he says, a sharp cry caught in his throat.

“Hang on … let me make everything a bit more sticky …”

Horrified, torn up with arousal, Jimin focuses his attention on Jungkook, right in time for a repeat of his earlier performance. He pushes a long, bubbling strand of saliva from between his lips and strokes Jimin’s foreskin back down. The saliva lengthens, swinging idly. Then it snaps and soaks Jimin’s throbbing glans, tingling under the sensation of all that stickiness spreading. The crown of his cock is a darker pink than Jungkook’s lips, but it now gleams just the same, swollen, overwhelmed with wetness. So much wetness, so much overflowing saliva, trying to race down his shaft.

Jungkook smacks his lips, piercing jostled, watching himself stroke Jimin’s foreskin back up. The collected wetness is displaced, frothy spit sucked back into the dark sheath of skin, a filthy, squelching stroke that makes Jimin’s entire groin tense up.

“You have a fat fucking clit, hyung,” Jungkook mutters, and it’s clear by the lack of eye contact he’s saying this for his own gratification rather than Jimin’s.

Jimin chokes on his next protest: “Stop … it’s not — that.”

“Come hump my tongue.”

Jimin almost screams.

Jungkook mouths more fully at his cockhead, enveloping it in his mouth for one blindingly bright moment, a pulsing suck as his tongue tends to Jimin’s dark furled flesh, searching out his tiny slit. Once he’s located it, he offers it a tickle of greeting. Jimin’s cock throbs harder. He fists his hands in the sheets, fighting the urge to shove as much of it as he can down that dutiful throat.

Jungkook pulls off, breathing out hard. “Rub against my mouth. Yeah … mm …”

“Mmm,” Jimin whines, a reflexive response to Jungkook’s moan, and he undulates messily against the point of that flicking tongue, tiny spattering smacks to his humping cock that are disturbing all of the frothy precum and spit, dislodging heavy drops, sending them dripping down his shaft.

“Ah, fuck …” Jungkook murmurs, sucking Jimin’s glans back into his mouth, rubbing the entire head hypnotically against the soft pink flesh of his inner cheek.

With one big fist, Jungkook begins to stroke Jimin’s fat little cock, slowly palming the shaft to the rhythms of his tightly suctioned tongue. His head bobs, taking Jimin deeper, pushing his dick against Jungkook’s soft palate. The next hum that Jungkook releases seems to reverberate up through Jimin’s body, a song starting at his groin and echoing through him.

Jimin’s eyes burn with the effort of overriding his instinct to blink. He doesn’t want to miss a moment of it: Jungkook’s pretty lips stretched open around him, the silver glint of his piercing rubbing gently against Jimin’s dick, the big black eyes watching Jimin react to every flutter of Jungkook’s mouth, every fluctuation in his damp breathing.

Jungkook pulls off again, letting that drenched cock slip free covered in his saliva. He catches his breath, mouth quirked, clearly enjoying Jimin’s hump of objection, an immediate twist of his hips that says, Come back, where did you go, why did it stop? His ass bounces ineffectually against the mattress and he moans, upset by this sudden turn of events.

“Problem?” Jungkook says with evident humor.

“Jungkook …” Jimin says, mournful.

Then Jungkook is back and dropping vulgar, open-mouthed kisses to Jimin’s bobbing cock. His tongue laves along the way. It’s so visually arresting that Jimin squeezes his eyes shut as a wave of wicked heat coils through his body.

“Hyung’s hips get so slutty, don’t they? Is this what you practice your body rolls for? So you can hump your Jungkookie’s tongue? Hm? Drooling for it … getting nice and sticky now …”

“A little more,” Jimin hears himself saying. “Suck a little more?”

“Which should I call it? Your slit or your clit?”

“N … Neither!”

“How about both? How about you rub your fat little clit all over my mouth?” Jungkook murmurs. “Are you my good girl?”

“No — no, I’m not,” Jimin says, rejecting this premise on principle, even as his throat blazes beneath a bolt of titillation.

“Just for today, jagiya,” Jungkook says, the husky quality of his voice an irresistible lure for Jimin’s brain. “What about just for today you’re my good girl? Just while I eat you out? Is that okay? Mn? If it’s just for today, while we’re alone … ?”

Jimin moans and pries his eyes back open, blinking down at the dark head bent over his cock, lip ring catching the light as Jungkook extends his tongue for another ticklish caress to Jimin’s gushing slit, the tight stretch of his glans where it’s poking past his sheath of dark pink skin. “F … Fine then. Then — today only and that’s it and — and no more … uhnnn …”

A hum of consideration, and those watchful black eyes are sketching their way back up Jimin’s body lines, wandering the open vulnerability of his thick thighs, the concave heave of his belly where his navel gleams with rivulets of shiny precum, and higher, where his zip-up hoodie has been parted, flung open at his tattooed chest, the peep show of his tight brown nipples, small and beaded up.

“Yeah?” Jungkook says in a voice of obvious approval and Jimin is still such a glutton for praise that his whole body starts squirming, overzealous, totally, one hundred percent on board.

“Yes,” Jimin gasps.

“Spread your cheeks if you’re a good girl for me. Grab one of them … spread your ass open nice and slow … use your other hand to lift your fat little balls up so I can see that hole …”

“For what … what happens … if I show you …”

“I’ll spit on it like I’m spitting on this clit.”

Jimin whines and hurries to comply, sliding one hand underneath his left ass cheek. He clasps at anything he can reach with his fingers, a long-armed touch to separate all that fat. With the other, he cups his balls, small pink palm sliding over his belly, past his doted-on cock, until it’s come to rest against that fragile offering of flesh. He lifts up on his dark wrinkled sack and before he can even conceive of what comes next, before he’s caught his breath, Jungkook is tilting his head insouciantly and leaning forward to take a ravenous swipe up the underside of Jimin’s exposed balls, the long point of his tongue tracing the subtle seam between each one.

Jimin is shaking his head as if to negate the act, moaning louder, his hairless hole pulling tight, then loosening, pulling tight, then loosening.

“Already showing off for me down here?”

“Not … no,” Jimin says, trying and failing to deny it as his hole begins to throb faster. It’s so humiliating he wants to cry.

“Mm, so fucking perfect,” Jungkook whispers, sucking kisses into the dark pink flesh of Jimin’s balls, one after the other, a polite prelude for what’s to come. “You like when I kiss your balls? Hm?”

Perfect. So fucking perfect. It echoes through Jimin’s head, turns his tongue loose: “Y … Yes, I do. I like it …”

“Say it,” Jungkook orders. “If you want another kiss, say you’re my good girl.”

“I am …” Jimin says, trying for a loophole.

Jungkook tuts, still too scrupulous to outsmart at a time like this. “You are … ? What?” And he waits.

“Your … your good girl,” Jimin whispers.

“Whose?”

“Jung … Jungkookie’s …”

“Put it all together. Let’s turn it into a full sentence.”

“I’m … then I’m … Jungkookie’s good girl,” Jimin whispers, tingling with the awareness of every last lock of blond hair brushing against his face, of the sweat dampening his throat and chest and thighs, of the warm exhalations Jungkook is sending out over his slick, oversensitive cock.

Jungkook hums and rewards Jimin by tossing his wrist away, freeing his trapped ball sack. He pins Jimin’s palm to the white sheets a hand-span away. Jimin doesn’t try to fight it. He just settles in to watch as Jungkook lets his tongue loll flat, tickling the needy little seam of Jimin’s balls for a more full-mouthed kiss, saliva-rich, too wet, far too wet, and the sounds are driving Jimin out of his mind. Jungkook begins to lap his fat little sack into a heavy bounce, toying with Jimin, and then, no warning, he sucks the left into his mouth, sealing his lips around the chubby, too-sensitive weight and slurping loudly, rudely at it.

Jimin cries out, head flung back. He’s too mortified — too turned on — to look for even a second longer, even as the sounds coming from between his legs grow more intense, lusty suckling noises ringing out where Jungkook is working him over, darting low-lidded looks up at Jimin’s face all the while.

Jungkook loosens his mouth and Jimin slips free, bouncing again, abandoned, a slippery weight returned to its twin until they’re something of an uneven pair. One is now much wetter. It’s coated in Jungkook’s dripping spit, far more spoiled than the other. His entire cock seesaws, flexing needily against the air.

“Good girl,” Jungkook says and wedges his thumbs between the split of Jimin’s ass cheeks, spreading them wider. “Ah … look how tight you are down here. Even while I’m licking you, you go back to being tight …”

“S … Sorry …”

“Sorry? Do you think I should take action?”

“I — don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Are you feeling naughty or nice right now?”

“… Both,” Jimin admits, and aims a coy glance down at Jungkook.

“Both? Then let’s see your nice. Show me your niceness, baby.”

Spotlight returned to Jimin, he begins to balk, experiencing a tremor of true stage fright. “No, never mind. I don’t want to.”

Jungkook shakes his head, gaze sharpening as his wolfish grin kicks higher. “Why are you backtracking already? C’mon. Tell me something really nice.”

“I can’t — no. No more aegyo, please.”

“No? Then naughty it is. Come here. Give me your hole. Push your hips up. You’re gonna take your punishment now.”

Jimin makes a tiny noise. He wants to kick his feet in a show of attitude, but against his will — against his better judgment — he’s shoving his pelvis into the air, cock bouncing excitedly against his navel, and then he’s picking his heavy skull up to watch Jungkook. Jungkook leans forward, holding Jimin’s eye as he purses his lips, urging a new mouthful of bubbly spit out, letting it lengthen until it’s dangerously long, and finally the ribbon of froth swings forward hard enough to catch against the shallow clutch of Jimin’s asshole, dribbling, oozing down the rounded split of his fat cheeks.

He moans, flushed, unable to see the whole thing but turned on by the sensations alone. He’s so stupidly turned on that his knees are trembling.

“Is that enough for you? Do you feel you’ve been punished as you deserve?”

“My … you decide,” Jimin whispers.

“All right. If jagiya insists,” Jungkook says, playing at benevolence, and then he thumbs Jimin’s ass cheeks further apart and spits directly on the tight little hole.

There’s no more drawn-out drool. No more dangling spit. This time, it’s just pursed lips, the jostled lip ring, and then a hard spatter of wetness against Jimin’s tiny, bullied entrance. He clenches his ass, unable to do a thing but take it, accept this disrespect. His glutes squeeze as if to draw the wetness inside.

“Bring your hips back down.”

Breath speeding up, Jimin lowers his pelvis to the mattress, feeling those impolite fingers following him down.

“Mm, now let’s rub it in. Give me your hand … come rub it into that tiny hole with Jungkookie … let’s make a mess together, since you want to be so naughty today …”

Jimin gasps aloud, his middle finger swirling searchingly, then landing on his tightly flexing anus. He draws a sinful circle around the little divot, tugging on the furled skin. It throbs harder. “I’m — I’m not, no — ohh —”

“Tell me what you are. Say it and Jungkookie will go in … I’ll give you exactly what you want, baby …”

“I’m a good girl,” Jimin moans, bleary-eyed. “For you, please. Fuck me there. Go — can you go inside now?”

Jungkook hisses, gaze flaring dark. It’s a mad dash then. He swings himself into a seated position, shirtless and markedly impatient, surveying the mattress for what he needs.

Jimin decides he should enjoy the view while it lasts and cups a small hand to his fat dick, steadying his wild arousal. His eyes skate lower, riveted to Jungkook’s iliac crest, the thickly curved border on the way down to the cut cock he’s still keeping from Jimin. Those sweatpants are Jimin’s number one enemy.

“What?” Jungkook says, like he senses Jimin’s gaze.

“What do you mean ‘what?’” Jimin mutters. “You’re … really good at setting the mood these days. That’s all.”

“I mean quit looking at me like that,” Jungkook says and reaches for the leave-in conditioner bottle Jimin has repurposed for just this scenario. He’s not even looking at Jimin while he says it. “And don’t touch yourself without me.”

“I’m — barely touching!”

“You’re holding your dick and you’re staring at me,” Jungkook says. “And with this new hair of yours … you’re way too sexy. It’s becoming a problem.”

Jimin abandons his dick to press his palms over his face, laughing. “What am I staring at you like … ?”

“Like a puppy.”

“Kangyangie,” Jimin corrects and stretches his arms above his head.

“That too,” Jungkook says, crawling back over with lube in hand. He jams the pump nozzle down repeatedly. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is, watching and listening to all that cool liquid catching in his open palm, warmed by the caress of tattooed fingers. “Sometimes your eyes are like a cat’s and other times like a puppy’s. Either way, you look at me like you want to eat me.”

“I look at you like that because I find you so cute.”

“Today,” Jungkook says, growing a bit grumbly, “don’t find me cute. Find me handsome or find me sexy. You can pick between those two. Nothing about ‘cuteness.’”

“Fine.” Jimin represses a foolish smile. “Today, you’re sexy …”

“And today, you’re my good girl. Remember that,” Jungkook says, as he urges Jimin onto his belly.

Jimin feels a little like a doll, long hair and all, rearranged as his owner sees fit. He stretches out, chin pillowed on his arms. His eyelashes flicker in wait. Jungkook scoots in, a large, dark presence at Jimin’s back. Then comes the sweep of a big palm, slotted between Jimin’s ass cheeks, separating all that fat to watch the slow ooze of warm lube.

“We need a bit more …”

“We do not,” Jimin says, a pointless objection given the immediate return of that pump nozzle, slammed down for more. The coldness is immediate and shocking, a sudden sensation that draws Jimin’s hips from the mattress with a small flinch. He can feel a heavy gush of liquid sliding slowly down the crack of his ass, closing in on his balls where they’re hanging between his thighs. “Jungkook, that’s more than ‘a bit …’”

“Fuck yeah,” Jungkook is muttering to himself, lost in his own world, and then there’s another enthusiastic pumping sound, more wetness dripping and sticky, gushing past Jimin’s asshole, wasted without a finger to push it in, put it to good use.

“It’s cold!” Jimin complains.

“Jimin-ah, you look so fucking …”

Jimin, huffing against the splay of his own elbows, tries to steal a look behind himself. “What?”

“Sexy. Sexy fucking Jimin … arching like a good kangyangie while I get you wet … wearing your sweater so low … just that slutty little sweater … showing me your tattoos and your tight hole … yeah, you want it bad …”

“In,” Jimin says, flushing against a wave of wonderfully hair-raising power. It’s not undue power, because Jungkook is the one making it worse, feeding into Jimin’s private need for praise. It is exactly what Jimin is due in the bedroom. “Okay, let’s go in now … in, get in …”

“Only because you’re being so sweet for me. And because you agreed we’re back together …” Jungkook says, the pad of his pointer finger soaking wet, swirling teasingly at the tiny wrinkled hole hiding between Jimin’s cheeks.

It’s not simply the sensation of a finger moving slowly but unashamedly up his hole, stretching out that tight ring of muscle and hunting for the soft, smooth little nub of tissue that makes Jimin’s toes curl and his feet kick out, instinctive, overstimulated. It’s the image itself.

Jimin doesn’t need a camera. He doesn’t need his eyes. He’s lived the sensation so many times — with such unswerving, stubborn devotion — that even the simple scratch of white bedding is agony. Even the smell of Jungkook, mingled sweetness of shampoo and hand lotion, recently applied, overcome now by sweat. Even the sound of his breathing, controlled but growing audibly insatiable. Even the snap of the lube bottle’s plastic pump, the protesting groan of the mattress adjusting to a pair of keyed-up knees, scooting closer, crowding in for a more optimal vantage point.

The image itself is burned into the back of Jimin’s brain. He sees it when he sleeps. He feels it ringing through him — hollow but haunting, a phantom with exquisite weight — any time Jungkook so much as brushes his fingers against Jimin’s blond hair, a touch too innocuous to call outright manipulation. Still, Jimin feels manipulated by it, forced to wipe his face smooth and wait out his longing like it isn’t eating him up.

Consuming him from the inside-out.

Jimin longs for this — this exactly — and always will. He’s been trained to long for it. He’s fed the longing for over a decade. It lives inside of him now. Jungkook is right: it’s a disease, dormant but waiting for any excuse to come awake. Awake again, he whines against the weight of this finger, rolling his temple into the white bedding, chasing the impossible agony lighting up his pelvis and a portion of his spine.

So: the image itself. The image itself, even without the sensation, is enough to topple him. The image attached to the sense-memory, all of the many times they’ve done this together, and then the sensation, the real thing as it’s happening right now. All of it has coalesced. It’s become monstrous, this attack on Jimin’s arousal. Jungkook sitting hunched over Jimin’s prone form, a large, shadowy presence looming above, tickling Jimin’s tight little anus with a single slicked-up finger.

Why is it so filthy? Something unexceptional, something Jimin has watched happen in porn a thousand times over, something he’s taught himself to do half-awake. Why is it so much better with this person — this person, ducking his head for a closer look, breathing audibly, feeding Jimin one single finger?

“Which finger do you want?” Jungkook murmurs.

Jimin absorbs this from his hiding spot in the white bedding. When he next speaks, his voice sounds high and thin. “But I … already have one …” he says, glancing over his shoulder.

Jungkook tilts his head, considering Jimin with a small smile. “Is that the one you want?”

Eyelashes moving restlessly, Jimin whispers, “It’s … index. Finger. Index finger.”

He knows each finger by their length and corresponding stretch. He knows them blind, sweaty, temple mashed into the bedding of a Tampa hotel’s presidential suite.

“Mn.” That hummed note, and the tight corkscrew of Jungkook’s forefinger, long and thick, dispersing the lube with a disgustingly wet sound, fucking it deeper. “Correct.”

Jimin swallows and fists a hand in the bedding, hanging on for dear life, twinging around the thrusting knuckles. “A … the …”

“Which one, Jimin-ah?”

“Okay then,” Jimin says, toes curled tight with shyness. “… Thumb.”

“Thumb?” Jungkook says warmly.

“No … the … I want the ‘JM,’” he decides, then shoves his face into the mattress to hide a flush of pure vanity.

“The ‘JM?’ The ‘JM’ isn’t my longest,” Jungkook reminds him. “You don’t want the middle finger?”

“I want the ‘JM’ finger,” he says, a note of whiny protest entering his voice.

Jungkook asks no further questions. He pulls his index finger free, a tight little suckling sound ringing out as a new gush of lube is loosed. Jimin’s hole breathes a little easier then, emptied, relaxing around air. The crack of his ass is soaked, excess wet attracting a small chill, and Jimin is as empty as ever. So empty he wants to kick his foot and whine for more. Whine, saying, Where did it go? Where did you take it? Give it back now. His lower back unlocks, even as his brain settles into this sour-hearted dissatisfaction.

A moment later — no warning — Jungkook is shoving his fourth finger up Jimin’s little flexing hole, unforgivingly fast, not tentative in the slightest. A slick squishing sound, and the length of Jungkook’s tattooed finger, a finger he’s devoted to Jimin. It’s nowhere near as thick as the dick Jimin is being prepped for, but still so gloriously good. Still enough to send him into a tailspin. His lower back tightens in sympathy and his glutes give a clench of dispute, jolted by the surprise. Lower, his groin throbs, cock twitching greedily against the mattress.

Jimin rolls his hips into this throb, trying to shove backwards, humping horribly. His fat pink cock drags against the bedding. It’s agony, absolute agony, this softness coupled with the harsh invasion coming from his suckling anus. He whines, a small note of effortful bliss fucked out of him.

“Don’t hump,” Jungkook says.

“Why …” Jimin moans into the sheets, upset by this instruction. “Why … why not … why can’t I …”

“Because I said so,” Jungkook says, finger stilling before it can make contact with his needy prostate. “Because you want to listen to me today.”

“Not any more …” Jimin mutters.

“You do,” Jungkook says. “And if not … if you want to be a brat, jagiya, you’ll get treated like one.”

Stymied, not a little humiliated by this infantilization, Jimin says, “It’s not that I want to … I just am … and who cares? You’re a brat, too.”

He feels a brief, perceptible change in the quality of the air, an invisible chorus, some new frequency establishing itself just beyond the boundaries of his comprehension, seconds before it happens. A hard crack catches him across the left cheek of his ass. The pain is bright, a blindingly painful bloom against too much flesh, far too much, jiggling energetically, rippling under the savagery of that large, callused palm. Jimin’s groin throbs harder, the tip of his cock spurting, a happy pulse of precum to accompany the pain.

“Mmmm …” he whines, kneading at the bedding.

“Is that what you want? To be treated like a brat? Or do you want to listen?”

“Wh … what if I listen …” he says. “What happens … ?”

“If you listen, I won’t have to slap you,” Jungkook informs him.

Whiny still, Jimin says, “But I like it … I like it, mm … for some reason … I … I do,” and he pushes back on the finger, trying to brace his knees, anything to cant his hips into the contact, to ask for more, to extend the mean vulgarity between them.

“Yeah? Is that how horny you are right now? So horny you want to be spanked?”

“Yes,” Jimin says, too out of breath to be demure, but trying his hardest.

“Then why pretend?” Jungkook says and twists his slippery finger, stirring up all the sloppy wetness trying to leak free, shoving it deeper, pushing it out of sight. “Why, jagi? Why keep up the ruse? Acting like you’re above it, so professional ... so mature … like you aren’t waiting for my knock, like you won’t let me pull your underwear down and play with your tight little ass as soon as I ask …”

“Ah …” Jimin moans. “Be … because …”

“Because, why? I can put my cock in you whenever I want. Whenever the thought strikes, whenever my balls feel a bit too full, whenever I’m bored … I can come in here and I can pull it out and I can put it in you. Can’t I? Because that’s how we are … you and me … that’s the way we operate. Whenever the thought strikes.”

“Oh, fff —” Jimin cuts himself off with a small grunt, toes flexing open and closed, relaxed, then tight with tension, the only semblance of control he currently has over his disobedient body, its receptiveness to Jungkook’s terrible power plays. “I … I like it … I like it too much …”

“What do you like?”

“When … when you … make me … when you tell me … what to do … when you chase …”

Jungkook hums, pausing his thrusting finger to measure his own opinion on the matter. “Yeah?”

“Yeah …” Jimin whines.

“But you don’t react, do you?”

“I … I do!”

“Shyly,” Jungkook murmurs, a smile in his voice. “Stilling your whole body … or trying to look away … smiling politely … like a little virgin maiden … and now, with this hair you have … Jimin-ah, you really piss me off …”

“Huh? Why?”

“Why? Why do you let anyone touch you but me? Why? Why do other people get to look at you, when I want it more than everyone else? Hm?” Jungkook murmurs and resumes his slow, slick fucking, a squishing thrust against the liquid dripping out of Jimin’s puckered hole. On the next entry, Jimin feels the stretch widening, another finger added, and he cries out.

Jungkook scissors his third and fourth fingers open, hand stilled, as if he’s studying the dark gape of Jimin’s hole.

Jimin, trapped and trembling, twists his ankles, trying and failing to cross them. There’s a big body in the way. Too much body, this clever person who’s insinuated himself between Jimin’s knees. The feeling of that black gaze, pointed like a camera, tracking Jimin’s vulgarity, is worsening the tremble, the jittery heat skittering up his spine.

“Please … please, can you …” Jimin moans.

“This — your attention — it’s mine,” Jungkook says, fucking back inside. “You, like this … wanting it, whining for it … that’s mine. And if you ignore me, if you look away, if you don’t reciprocate?” A dangerous pause. “That pisses me off.”

“That …” Jimin buries a flush of pleasure in the bedding. “I like it, too.”

“What?” And a hand appears at his overlong blond hair, fisting it, forcing his head back. “Say again.”

“Ah … I like … pissing you off,” Jimin says. “Now, these days … before … when I pissed you off, you’d … just get flustered. And now —”

The hand holding his head up vanishes. Jimin’s face drops back into the bedding at the precise moment that a new slap to the ass connects, a wordless display of discipline that drives him into another humiliatingly greedy hump, his tight little hole throbbing against the tattooed fingers moving inside of him. Too short. Still too short to reach his prostate.

No, not too short. Too stubborn, avoiding the spot Jungkook knows perfectly well how to locate. Jimin needs a third finger now. He needs the index finger and the thumb, too-wide, rough, rasping. He needs every single one. He needs so much sensation there’s no room for anything else.

“And now,” Jungkook repeats, “you’re shaking your little ass like you need something thick to ride.”

“Give me … please … I don’t want it this way …”

“You don’t want to come from your ass?”

“A … Alone …”

“Alone?”

“I want it — together —”

“Jimin-ah, we are together.”

“I want it inside … I want you to … please come inside now,” he says, reduced to this beseeching tone of voice. “Jungkook-ah, please — can we do it together now?”

“Aish, you’re so fucking cute when you start begging …”

“Come in. In, get inside now? Please, I’m saying it so politely, I’m being nice again …”

“Jagiya, when I push you this close to the edge, you never have a mean bone left in your body.”

Jimin turns his face into his pillow, soaking the white fabric with a small splash of irritated tears.

“Are you crying yet?”

“I don’t like it. You’re being a punk today,” Jimin mutters, breathing damply against the white cotton. “I don’t want to. No, go away … unfair …”

“Show me how well you cry for it. Lemme see. Maybe I’ll take mercy on my little Jiminie …”

“Why … why …”

“Because I like when you turn puffy — whether it’s your eyes or your tight little hole, I like that your body responds to me so prettily …” Jungkook says and resumes his original thrusting, moving in on the nubby flesh full of delicious nerve-endings, curling his joined fingertips against it, over and over, unforgivingly pointed. “I want you to come before I join you. I want to give you the kind of orgasm you’ve been missing out on for the last few months. Mm … that’s it … get yourself nice and loose …”

“You’re tickling it — t … tickling — why does it feel, why — !” Jimin shouts, as the sensation gathers at his groin, radiating outward, taking his tailbone and his arched spine, too, until he’s begun to thrash against the ruthlessly targeted stimulation.

“Even after this many years,” Jungkook says and continues to stroke the rough pads of his fingers against that tight little nub dragging Jimin into knots, “you’re still surprised by it?”

“J … Jungkook … I — I have to —”

“Don’t say pee,” Jungkook says, no-nonsense, wrist working, fingers crooked, just sitting there and taking Jimin apart like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “You know that’s not true. And even if it was, I’d just get off on it — you wetting the bed while I pet this fat little nub you have hiding up your asshole ...”

A jolt of horrified arousal goes through Jimin. The humiliation is so absolute he wants to keel over beneath it, to start demanding incomprehensible things, to tell Jungkook to call him names or hit his thigh, anything to heighten the horror, but Jimin has lost the ability to speak and even now, even this, sweaty and thrashing against his hotel bed, a vein standing out in sharp relief against his flushed throat, he feels that he’s well and truly been outdone by his better, that he’s been mastered, that perhaps there are worlds where a lack of control is not frightful but freeing.

“Yeah? You like that? You like when I finger your little ass, don’t you?” Jungkook murmurs, voice going tight to match the writhing blond on the bed below him. He ups the speed of his stroking fingers, shoving in and out of Jimin’s little hole, playing with that sensitive bundle of nerve-endings, rubbing it to a tempo gradually driving Jimin up the wall.

He’s always found that prostate orgasms are slower to begin, but longer and more intense than garden-variety ejaculation. Garden-variety ejaculation — standard masturbation, a fist around his cock — sneaks up on him. With Jungkook especially, Jimin rarely sees it coming, a sudden explosive release followed by involuntary spasms of his quivering dick. Quick to set in, quick to fade out.

Flashy, but not as vividly alive as this.

It’s the prostate that he can sense coming from kilometers away, that tightens him by slow degrees, a length of rope to cut off his circulation, to tauten his groin until it feels like he’s going to wet himself and his waiting dongsaeng, to do something obscene and embarrassing, and then, finally, the deep-set throbbing begins and he can’t contain his wailing shout, he can’t do anything to calm the frantic, rhythmic swallowing of his ass around that very precise impression of penetration, rubbing him through it, bullying his nubby prostate as his thighs clamp together and he goes hoarse with astonishment, and that’s how it happens right then.

A slow, bewildering, deep-seated pleasure rolling through him. He can’t demand relief from it. He wouldn’t demand it even if he wanted it, and anyway, Jungkook wouldn’t let up for anything. It’s all Jimin can do to lie on all fours and blink his heavy eyelids against the wash of golden light, his lower half locking up tight with impending climax, and he glimpses a flash of the horribly breathtaking tableau, his own fat, drooping cock, softened from inattention but leaking still, a strand of pretty, translucent precum sliding from his slit, dribbling lazily against the white bedding where his hips have been raised, and Jungkook — somewhere nearby is Jungkook’s wrist, the bend of his elbow, that strikingly large arm made more striking by the sleeve of tattoos, two fingers disappearing into Jimin’s little suckling hole.

All at once it fuses. The deep, unhurried trajectory towards that peak hits him and he’s being forcibly tossed over the edge.

Jimin isn’t aware of much. He never is during his prostate orgasms. He might be moaning or screaming or cursing Jungkook for knowing him so well, for finding and exploiting Jimin’s most surreptitious desires with brutal competence, an absolutely sterling performance every single time.

(Well. Maybe not in the beginning, but they’ve both improved leaps and bounds since that time.)

Jimin’s body feels like the inside of a struck bell, hollow, trembling, ringing repeatedly, caught up in the tremulous aftershocks of too much sensation. He blinks back to the present with the awareness that he’s still shuddering, that he hasn’t stopped shuddering, that deep inside of his body he’s achieved that extra sensitive unwinding that makes sex with Jungkook the perfect shade of sumptuous, almost excessive, that he’s looser and more relaxed, but also that he’s so keyed up he feels like the sex demon Jungkook framed him as, when Jimin deep-throated his dongsaeng into getting back together with him so long ago.

“Ah, look how well you wear your orgasms,” Jungkook says and rolls Jimin’s limp body back around. He trails a finger down the lefthand side of Jimin’s face, streaked with sweat, dislodged tears. “You turn pink from top to bottom … everywhere, all over, you’re pink and you barely know how to breathe …”

Jimin whines feebly, wanting to swat the hand. Wanting to turn his face into it — so he does. He pushes his sweaty temple into the touch, demanding more real estate. Perhaps the whole callused palm?

Three other fingers join the first. Four in total, trailing down Jimin’s face, playing in the unkempt arrangement of his long blond hair. “We didn’t even need any toys today, did we?”

Jimin shakes his head no. He opens his mouth, murmurs, “I wanna see it …”

“See what? How wet you made my right hand?”

“No …”

“Tell me. What does jagiya want to see?” Jungkook says.

“Take it out,” Jimin demands, his gaze trailing its way over to Jungkook’s waistband. “Why are you hiding it from me …”

A huffy little laugh, the bright gleam of Jungkook’s teeth, his lip ring. “Ah, is my Jiminie upset with me?”

“Coming to my room in a white tank-top … but wearing black sweats,” he mutters, feeling wronged by this wardrobe choice. “If you want to seduce … then at least wear gray. Next time, don’t bring the black sweats to my room …”

“Gray?” Jungkook cocks a thick eyebrow. “Now you really want me to look like a gangster.”

“No … I want to see the outline of it,” Jimin says. “Since you’re keeping the real thing from me … I should at least get the print …”

“I’ve offended the tastes of my humble host, haven’t I?”

“Mhm.”

“Next time I should dress accordingly? Show you how much my cock likes you … ? Making it nice and thick whenever we’re alone …”

“Uh-huh,” Jimin says. He’s already back to aroused. “Give it to me …”

“Give it … ? Why, does it belong to you?”

“It’s mine … take it out already …” Jimin says, sounding pathetic. He no longer cares. He’s past the point of shame, reaching over to paw at Jungkook like an overeager kitten.

“Greedy hyung, hiding your feelings, then whining ‘naekkeo’ as soon as it’s time to get naked …”

“It’s mine, since we’re back together,” Jimin says, trying and failing to get Jungkook closer, to shove his sweats down his hips. “Give it — take it out. Hurry. I want to see it … I want it … is it thick … I can’t see it well like this …”

“Oh, it’s thick, all right,” Jungkook says, taking up Jimin’s right wrist and drawing his pinkened palm up the thick tent his cock is forming through his black sweats. “Come here, come feel how fat you’re making me …”

“No, let me in,” Jimin says, firming his hand, cupping it over the smothered shaft to feel that hungry, bobbing jut against the heel of his palm. Dirty weight, unseen, but so familiar he can recreate it in his head down to the last detail. “Let’s go inside together …”

“Come with me then, we’ll both hold it … I’ll let you stroke a little,” Jungkook murmurs, watching Jimin’s face, and together two hands — large and small, tattooed and ringed — slide past the elastic waistband of his sweats, fumbling around in that dark heat for the full and unencumbered weight of Jungkook’s naked cock.

Even while blind and robbed of the best elements of Jungkook’s cut cock, Jimin is turned on by that first bit of contact, by the demanding clasp of Jungkook’s hand, by the unwavering eye contact. Jungkook steadies his own cock, fisting the thick root of his shaft and aiming it more assuredly in Jimin’s direction. Jimin follows the satiny weight with his fingers. He holds Jungkook’s eye as his index finger pinpoints a prominent vein, the curved frenulum of his dongsaeng’s huge dick, and then the head, less sensitive than Jimin’s, but just as pretty. Just as drooly.

Jimin bites his lip, buried to the wrist in those black sweatpants. He rubs the pad of his thumb over Jungkook’s slit. Sticky-wet. He spends a moment playing there, enjoying the precum webbed to his fingertip. It tries to follow his withdrawal, oozing harder on his return. Another bubbly gush. Jimin’s dick throbs in sympathy.

Jungkook breathes out hard, gaze leaping between Jimin’s puppy-dog stare and his bitten-up lip. “Your rings are cold …”

“Now you know how I feel,” Jimin mutters, because he’s still suffering from all that excess lube Jungkook used.

Jungkook releases a half-laugh, examining Jimin’s expression. “See how wet you’re making me?”

“Yes …”

“Like that?” Jungkook whispers.

“I want to lick,” Jimin confesses. “Bring it, come up here, let’s put it in my mouth —”

“Not today.”

Jimin can’t help the morose dip in his voice. “Why not?”

“Because I want to fuck your ass and if I let you put it in your mouth, I’ll never want to take it back out again.”

Jimin pouts, yanking his hand from the sweats. Before Jungkook can scold him, he pops his wet thumb into his mouth, sucking at the tang of Jungkook’s precum with a small humming moan. Cheeks hollowed, Jimin’s thick lips form a splendidly obscene beak, enclosing the bent knuckle of his ringed finger.

“All these years later,” Jimin says when he’s slipped the thumb from his mouth, “you still taste so good. You’re the only person in the world who makes it taste good … for you … I really love tasting it …”

Jungkook shakes his head, like he’s convinced he’s hallucinated the whole thing, and he leans down for a long, tongue-heavy kiss, a great sacrifice considering his paranoia over premature ejaculation. A moment later: “This is what I wanted all along.”

Jimin’s eyes flutter open. “What?”

“When I come to your room, it’s because I crave this every day that I go without it,” Jungkook whispers. “Soft, needy hyung. Like the time I was given a secret mission to make you say the word, ‘Stop,’ but no matter what I did to you, you enjoyed it. You took it so well, letting me play with you however I liked …”

“Don’t … recall things like that,” Jimin says with a flustered blink of his eyes. “… Too embarrassing.”

“Is it embarrassing to be well-behaved? To let me do whatever I want to you?”

“It’s embarrassing how obvious my weaknesses are …”

“Weaknesses, meaning … ?” Jungkook says.

“Whenever you give me attention,” Jimin whispers.

“If I give you attention, you can’t ever tell me to stop,” Jungkook whispers back. “If you do, it needs to be temporary. Not permanent. Nothing permanent.”

“Okay,” Jimin says, breathing through the raucous thump of his own heart. “Then keep giving it to me. Don’t take it away and I’ll let you. I’ll do anything …”

“Yeah? Will you let me come to your hotel room any time I want? Sneak in so I can bend you over and fuck you?”

Jimin bucks his hips and releases a small noise of need. “Come here. Fuck me now …”

“Naekkeo,” Jungkook murmurs.

There are days when Jimin knows exactly how to commandeer a bedroom, when it feels like the most natural thing in the world to extend the performances he gives onstage, every body line savagely upheld, every movement dissolving efficiently into the next, engaging as many muscles and bones as possible in this ongoing exhibition he calls his artistry. It’s natural, and familiar, and control has always been Jimin’s favorite weapon, the blade he’s turned on himself when no part of his life but his body could be mastered or quieted to his satisfaction. When nothing else was satisfying, when the stakes were sky-high and the money scarce, he at least had his body. He would always have his body, wouldn’t he? The strange, fragile, cruelly enduring animal willing to abide by his best and worst habits. 

So it’s not impossible, and it’s not unenjoyable, and sometimes his moods swing towards that relentless search for competence he always imposes on himself. Sometimes he needs to control the performance, to judge his own body in this realm as in all others.

But more often, Jimin wants to have sex in inefficient ways, in ways so terrible and so humiliating, he won’t have room to remember his own lapses or blunders once it’s over, he won’t even get to marvel at the fact that he’s allowed himself these lapses and blunders in the first place, he’ll have forgotten what it means to sieve himself through the cruelty of self-perception. No perception will matter but his dongsaeng’s and his dongsaeng will have judged him to be satisfactory no matter what — even when or if Jimin is terrible, mortifying, needy, out of his mind, even when the most he can control is the small timid noises escaping his throat and the rhythmic clenching of his lower body. 

Jungkook, who so rarely gets to be savage, who reserves that violently controlled energy for the stage and perhaps his personal workouts and little else, becomes, in the bedroom, a weapon wide enough to eclipse Jimin’s worst habits.

Is it any wonder Jimin loves it so much? Seeing this doe-eyed creature — so happy to be babied by the rest of the world, so happy to become absent-minded or deferential, to obey the unseen laws of social decorum in his interpersonal relationships, fidgeting and playful and flattered by his hyungs — temporarily become something else? Something sharper, something too self-assured to ignore. 

For Jimin, Jungkook will slough off all of the usual obedience. He’ll impose himself on Jimin. He’ll overpower Jimin’s restrictive thought patterns. However briefly, he’ll liberate Jimin from this weapon, the keenly hewn tool he calls his body. Jungkook will conjure that violent control he saves for the stage until Jimin is so overstimulated he can only lie there, twitching, amazed at himself, amazed to have accomplished nothing in the sweatiest, most drawn-out fashion possible, amazed an orgasm can produce the same sense of chemical reward that an impeccably executed stage can.

Most miraculous of all, Jungkook will even enjoy this peculiar role reversal.

On the stage, of course it makes sense to feel rewarded, to ride out the release of dopamine and endorphins. But in the bedroom — doing nothing, relinquishing the tool to Jungkook, letting him have his fun with it, whether his methods on that particular day are gentle or cruel, whether he wants Jimin’s obedience or his brattiness, whether the orgasms are delayed or doubled up, whatever the demands — how can that be the same kind of rewarding? How?

How, how, how?

To this day, it makes no sense to Jimin.

Jungkook sits up to undress. When the waistband of his sweats is brought down, Jimin sees the head first, wide and flared and attempting to glue itself to the chiseled navel above it by means of a thick strand of precum, and without the weight of tight cotton, the full, ferociously large cock swings forward, buoyed by the hard throbs of blood keeping it upright. Jungkook is so hard, he looks almost purple.

Jimin has no choice but to act, to reach forward and stroke an index finger up a bulging vein, the one he visited moments earlier. He rests his eyes at the darkest part of the whole affair, a pair of heavy balls bordered by coarse pubic hair. It’s more hair than Jimin expects, considering Jungkook’s hygiene habits.

Jungkook balls up his socks and tosses them in the direction of his sneakers.

“You’re so hairy down here,” Jimin says in an accusing voice. “You really wanted it, too. You wanted to sneak into my room. I can tell because you haven’t been shaving. You forced yourself to grow it all out, even though you get annoyed when I ask you to stop trimming it …”

“You see the things I do for love?” Jungkook says, finally and fully naked.

“Jungkook,” Jimin says, against a surge of deliriously powerful affection. “Seriously, let’s fuck now. I’m sick of foreplay. Come here. I want you inside me. You’re right. We can’t do it — there’s too much tension. Until Bangkok, then we’ll reassess. And I’ll try not to be too clingy around cameras or staff, I’ll try to be subtle about it, and let’s fool around whenever we have a bit of time, let’s kiss and touch and have sex …”

Jungkook avoids Jimin’s eye a moment, like this latest declaration has finally landed, flustering him into a reddened throat and a self-conscious smile. He sits there a moment, naked but for the layered necklaces at his throat, his ever-present earrings and his lip ring, too. And he says, with this evasive eye contact, “I can’t go on like this.”

For a moment, Jimin is too afraid to speak. “Like what?”

Jungkook half-turns, cheek sucked in against a besotted smile. “After this, after today, we seriously need an engagement ring or — something. No more ‘until X, until Y, until Z.’ No. Forever.”

Jimin flops back against the mattress, laughing, dizzy with relief. “Come up here.”

By the time Jungkook settles himself above Jimin, one-handing the base of his swollen dick with his inked fingers, Jimin feels flayed open. His ankles shift against the sheets, unable to settle. At this stage, any tiny movement he makes is like bringing a magnifying glass to his desire, enlarging it, making it enormous, impossible to ignore. Even the hotel’s high thread-count sheets. Even the sound and smell of Jungkook, this large, hungry version of his dongsaeng, hair mussed, pupils blown wide.

“Jimin-ah,” he murmurs.

“Kook-ah,” Jimin says, because he’s out of patience. “Inside.”

“You can’t be subtle,” Jungkook says, like this thought has been bothering him for the last minute, like he needs to expel it before they can continue. “At the first opportunity, you start referencing things like … like how I sleep or how I shower, my underwear or my morning routine. You do it every single time. You can’t stop until you’ve peed on your territory. It’s like you’re wired to do it every five to seven business days.”

Jimin rolls his eyes. “Oh, well. You can throw everyone off our trail. Or just sit there and be quiet and pretend it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I’m good at sitting there and being quiet,” Jungkook says, leaning in to press his lips gingerly to Jimin’s for a chaste kiss. “If you let me do this when the cameras are off, then I’ll be good and subtle for you.”

Jimin inclines his head, nearly panting into Jungkook’s mouth. “Come on,” he whispers. “Come in, come in now, with me — let’s —”

When Jungkook sidles closer, when he teases the drooly head of his cock against Jimin’s pouting hole, Jimin is already so far past the realm of normal that he immediately strains forward at the neck, trying to follow the muscled arm braced above him — Jungkook’s left — fingers gripping the bed’s wooden headboard. For a moment, Jimin isn’t even sure what he wants. It’s beyond conscious thought. What he wants is muscle memory, pure instinct drilled into his bones. Body straining still, he catches a heady whiff of the musk emanating from the exposed hollow of Jungkook’s armpit.

It’s like an aphrodisiac. Even if Jungkook has recently shaved, even if he isn’t as hairy as Jimin prefers him, just a bit of black stubble growing in and the strong tang of sweat, natural pheromones Jimin associates with being folded up and fucked into a mattress, or even, more simply, enjoying the sheen of perspiration slicking Jungkook’s shoulders and chest during a joint workout, a bit of overly complicated choreo. Even then. 

Already that’s enough. That one whiff of Jungkook’s natural body odor. Already Jimin has collapsed back against his pillow, shifting needily, whining from how badly he needs it. His fingers scrabble at the rumpled bedding, and still Jungkook waits with the head of his huge cock tickling Jimin’s hole, kissing the divot between his cheeks. He isn’t pushing in. He’s playing with his meal. He's supporting himself, one-armed, against the headboard, and he's gazing down at the pitiful blond writhing below.

It’s beginning to infuriate Jimin to no end.

He kicks out with one of his ankles, looking to find a target for his aggression. “Go in, go in soon. Please, okay?” he’s babbling. “Go in already — go — please, please. Today I’m — like you said, I’m being a good girl, so go in. And — and we’re together again, so do it — the way I want it, you have to. Don’t stop, just go in, shove everything in. I want it —”

“Just the tip,” Jungkook says, a smile playing at his lips, and repeats himself once more for dramatic effect: “The tip, just for now.” And he fists his cock, stroking himself, dragging the head up and down the slickened crease of Jimin’s ass, mixing precum with lube, toying with the sticky little ribbons of wet his wandering dick keeps creating.

“No, no, no,” Jimin is chanting, winding up for a full-blown argument, but then the taut pressure between his thighs increases and without thought his hips try to jerk away from the stretch, to lessen the all-consuming strain, a wrongness so good he’s already gasping and trying to adjust to it, rolling halfway onto his belly, trying to give Jungkook unimpeded access to his ass, one knee hiked high.

He just has to wait out the wrongness, until his body elects to take it all. Every last bit of Jungkook. A single thickly inked finger, two, the letters JM lovingly touched up while all the others fade to hell and back? The easiest pressure in the world to endure. Better than easy: two fingers from Jungkook, knuckles crooked, calluses out in full force, are a walk in the park. Long and not too thick, always hunting for the raised nub responsible for Jimin’s sobbing fits.

But Jungkook’s cock, not just long but girthy, not just girthy but impatient, overeager, kicking forward with feral exuberance at the first taste of tightness and moisture, is harder to sit through. Jimin has forgotten. He’s taken for granted the initial struggle. It’s been many months since he’s sat on this cock and he’s never been particularly diligent about keeping himself trained and stretched for it. 

On tour, a simple fist around his dick is so much easier, perhaps a fingertip to tickle his own perineum, searching out his prostate from the outside rather than the inside. If Jungkook’s not around to help, Jimin gets complacent with his pleasure — lazy, resorting to cheap tricks to get off. 

Now, it’s costing him to sit through it.

Jungkook, sensing Jimin’s about-face, lets out a small laugh. “Ah?” he says lowly. “Jagiya, I thought you wanted it? Should we raincheck?”

“No, be serious,” Jimin moans, reaching backwards to clasp Jungkook by the hip. Jimin is almost completely sprawled on his belly by this point, face digging into the sheets. “Come in, come in — I mean it.”

“Just the head.”

“No — ohhh —”

“Breathe through it,” Jungkook says, his own breathing labored, and the acuteness returns, a slick wet slide up Jimin’s ass until the head of Jungkook’s giant cock has slipped past his sphincter, pulled down tight, panicked.

The first thirty seconds are the hardest. His body — trying to send signals to his brain to escape the pressure, to send the invading force packing — has to be waited out. Jimin breathes as he’s been instructed, tiny, whistling exhalations into the sheets. He feels his sweaty dongsaeng shifting his weight around on top of him, panting with excitement, leashing his own impatience so Jimin can get comfortable.

In most respects, Jungkook is tolerant and calm with Jimin, but there are moments like this one when his restlessness and aggression are like a third presence in the room, so palpable Jimin begins to feed off of all that energy.

“Does it …” he murmurs into the bedding, “… feel nice …”

“Ah, what?” Jungkook says, after a moment of disbelieving silence. In one of the most affectionate voices Jimin has ever heard, he adds, “Shut up.”

Jimin begins to laugh. Look how far we’ve come, he thinks.

“Shut up, seriously. I lasted a minute the first time I was inside of you. Do you torture me on purpose?”

The laughter comes harder, involuntary, a pressure release so potent that tears spring to the corners of Jimin’s eyes. 

“Laughing while I have my dick up your ass,” Jungkook says. “Not many have an ego strong enough to survive you, Park Jimin.”

“S … Sorry …” Jimin says, laughing still.

There’s a rustle and then Jimin feels lips grazing his nape, sliding, open-mouthed, past his mole. Another rustle, as Jungkook wrestles Jimin’s unzipped hoodie lower, tugging it down and baring a pair of slender shoulders. His mouth moves in on the first crescent in Jimin’s constellation of moon tattoos, like this was his goal all along, and he hums.

“Do you like me?” Jungkook murmurs, kissing at the highest moon.

“I … think so,” Jimin says, trying for airy, his voice shredded by the fat cockhead stuck up his ass. “Take it out.”

“Out?”

“Take the head out a little, then — then go back in and see if — if that makes it —“

Jungkook withdraws by just an inch, the only inch Jimin has so far endured. Then he pushes his dark cock slowly back inside, watching Jimin’s tiny little hole flutter and suck wetly at it. Jimin can sense it. He can sense that gaze, the inescapable camera that’s followed him since he was a teenager. “Fuck,” he hisses, pulling up on Jimin’s ass cheek with the pad of his thumb to stretch his tiny anus open wider, studying it as it squeezes down in response to his groping tug. “God … damn …”

Jimin gasps. All semblance of humorous nostalgia has fled him. Now, it’s true desperation driving his questions: “Is it tight … inside — is it …”

“So fucking tight,” Jungkook whispers and Jimin feels his own hips wriggle the smallest amount, softened by the pleasure of a compliment paid, by Jungkook’s guttural approval. “And what about you? Do you like it? Like me inside?”

Voice high and frantic with excitement, Jimin blurts, “Kook-ah, put some more in please …”

“But I love how you look hanging off of my dick …”

Jimin cries out, his excitement reaching a fever pitch, and he flushes hot as Jungkook’s thick shaft twitches against his tightness. Mind over matter. It’s miraculous, but all of that former panic and pain has left, too. The panic and the nostalgia, forced out by his excitement, by over a decade of emotional intimacy. Jimin will endure anything. Anything at all, he’ll endure it for this, this reciprocal intensity. The only thing he wants right now is more.

“It’s so fat …” Jimin moans. “I don’t remember it being this fat … go in … go in just a bit more, I need …”

A rallying inhale, and then the mattress is creaking as Jungkook’s hips nudge forward, following the tight suction of Jimin’s clinging asshole, beginning now to throb as that smooth, bluntly-shaped cockhead closes in on his prostate, sliding, the both of them, the both of them seem somehow to be sliding, and Jimin feels like he’s never been this wet in his life, he thinks Jungkook must have drenched him, an entire bottle’s worth of lube — they’ll have to InstaCart more tomorrow — and maybe it’s also the neglected dick pinned underneath his pink belly, streaming desperately, and the entry sounds so disgustingly delicious that Jimin starts throbbing harder, grinding his forehead against the bedding, wishing, just a little more, just a tiny bit of impatience and aggression, he just needs that final puppyish kick forward.

“Oh my god …” Jimin exclaims into the bedding.

“Fuck — fuck — I can’t wait — I don’t think I can — sorry, Jimin-ah, ah, fuck —” Jungkook bursts out, no warning, just as excited as Jimin, and then he releases a pent-up grunt so loud Jimin flinches, his sweetly sucking anus startled into its own overreaction. Jungkook grunts louder, knees shifting up the mattress, and then it’s there. The impatience and aggression. Jungkook shoves closer, forcing more of his girth inside, forcing Jimin’s knees apart so he can make room for himself on the mattress behind that raised ass. This opens Jimin’s pelvis up at a nice, irresistibly obscene angle. He’s speaking now like the words are pouring out of him, like he can’t help himself or the crude direction of his dirty talk: “Look how slutty you fucking sit on it … half, just half of my fucking dick and your hips are already this high …”

Jimin hears himself shouting into his pillow, toes curled tight, a wash of excruciating pleasure coursing through his body that reminds him of monsoon season back home, the brightness of the sun seconds before the sky opens up and dumps a shower heavy enough to flood everything in sight, to flatten flowers and shrubs, to soak the world to the bone. It’s exactly like that. He kneads anything within reach, crying out, something high and stuttering, it sounds like a whole lot of babbled nonsense, but in the back of his brain he recognizes that it’s just one single word spoken over and over again.

“Jungkook — Jungkook — Juh … Jung … Kook … mm … !”

Jungkook’s thighs feel like weapons, large and tensed for the vigorous thrusting he’s about to unleash where he’s straddling Jimin’s ass. As is, he’s still just tensing and untensing the knees holding the full weight of his body up, rocking his hips forward and back, little minute flexing motions, homing in on Jimin’s prostate and stroking his thickly engorged cock-shaft against it, wider, worse, better than a mere finger or two.

“Oh, fuck,” Jimin is saying, fingers scrabbling at the sheets, ripping at them, wanting to do harm, something, anything to take his mind off of the powerful fullness of that giant cock. “Oh my god, stop — why — why — it’s so good, yes, yes, give it to me, oh my god, mmm —”

“Stop — saying things — like that. You’re driving me crazy,” Jungkook mutters, breathing high and ragged. “You have the lowest standards — in the world — holy fuck, you’re so fucking tight today, what the fuck —”

“Jungkook …”

“Yes? What? What … Jimin-ah …”

“Don’t … be mean … to yourself … right now …” Jimin manages. 

“Fine. Fuck. I’m the best — and — ah, shit — I have the biggest dick in the world. Biggest … ever … ah …”

Jimin hates him. He buries a new laugh in the crook of his arm. 

“Happy? Happy — with that?”

“Mm … mhm … I like it. I like it, ah …”

“Push back. Push back on it, push with me … move your ass a little, just a little,” Jungkook murmurs, feverishly enthused. “Come suck on my fat tip, baby.”

Jimin cants back, stretching catlike, spine a smooth gliding arc on the way to the rippling fat being impaled on that cock, a cock at once aggressive and slow to thrust, enjoying its own slowness, its own barely bridled aggression, relishing it, even, just teasing Jimin’s swollen rim and greedy prostate. “Oh, yes …”

Jungkook curses, glute muscles tensed and ready. His navel heaves where his sweaty groin is plastered to Jimin’s parted ass cheeks. Then he grinds forward into the clutch of that rippling ass, a long, sensual undulation of the hips, fucking in so deep Jimin has to shut his eyes against the hot pleasure caught and intensifying between his legs. 

“Yeah?” Jungkook says, hushed with awe.

“Yes — oh, fffuuuck —”

Jungkook begins thrusting his dick in and out of Jimin’s body, deep, squelching thrusts, and he’s rewarded with a series of hiccuping moans, each one perfectly timed to match the turbulent thrusts he’s subjecting Jimin’s pert little ass to. Above, higher, Jungkook grips the headboard, head hanging between his shoulders where he’s watching Jimin bounce and mewl beneath him, his swinging ball sack catching those sweet ass cheeks on every re-entry. 

“Little hole is breathing around me.”

“All of it, please — faster now, go faster with all of it inside — all of it — every single time —”

“Put all of it in yourself. Come on. You’re a world-class dancer, aren’t you? Move your hips if you want more of me.”

Jimin adds some more height to his tensed hips and feels the dark slick shaft moving in on his tightly clinging hole, allowing him to set the tempo, following along to Jimin’s rhythms. Jungkook is content to kneel above like a slothful prince while below Jimin is cornered against his unforgiving cock, skewered on a weapon intent on stuffing him stupid. 

“Now take it out,” Jungkook whispers. “Listen to how wet you are …”

Jimin draws away with a long, slickly wet noise, excess lube roping out of him like a ribbon of cum. He whines and flexes his ass, little hole breathing against Jungkook’s notched cockhead. “You do it now.”

A snort. “Already?”

Even the snort, mean as can be, makes Jimin want it more. He wants all of it. Jungkook’s impatience and aggression and meanness. His affection, how terribly he clings, how he bullies Jimin into obeying. He wants it.

“Yes, please,” he says, no longer a sore loser. Only endlessly pleased. “You do it? I’m lazy … today … you do it … I don’t want to dance right now. You, please. You do it. I can’t.”

“Hyung …” Jungkook marvels, starting to penetrate Jimin on his fat dick all over again. “My little pillow princess …”

Another slow inch plunges — thicker than all the rest, wonderfully ridged, too veiny to ignore — past his sphincter with a squishing sound, lube fucked out of his hole, forced past the bullying shaft, and finally there’s enough length up his ass that he feels the rounded glans of Jungkook’s cut cock somewhere near his stomach. It’s not true. It’s an illusion. But right then, right at that moment, it feels true, that Jimin has been mastered by Jungkook’s cock, that it’s subsumed every last square centimeter of his body, that each breath he pulls in belongs to that cock, filling him, stretching him beyond what he thought humanly possible. And the shaft, the thickened shaft, jostling his walls, is chafing Jimin right where he needs it, right against his chubby little prostate, that raised nub of tissue Jungkook has already stroked into overdrive. 

Once more Jimin’s hips are trying to dance away, skittish, too shy to contend with that glittering strain, desperate to escape the unrelenting pleasure sparking him back into overstimulation. Jungkook doesn’t let him off that easy this time around; he follows this withdrawal with a brutal buck of his own hips, forcing his veined shaft to vanish again, returned to that puckered little ring of flesh in the span of a blink. 

“Don’t move,” Jungkook says and Jimin stills his hips at once, breathing hard but obeying. “Good girl.”

Jimin’s fists clench in the white bedsheets.

Jungkook groans at the sound of his re-entry, a lewd cascade of too-much lube. The wetness has turned any residual friction into a glossy slide of tight against tight, Jimin’s ass slurping at his fat dick, suctioning it more tightly in place. Another thrust, faster now.

Jimin lets out a noise of enthusiastic terror, exhaling through the effort and endurance of taking that large dick, a dick fully seated inside of his body. It’s the best. The only thing he wants is this — this feeling, the overwhelming sense-impressions, the fluctuations in this familiar strain of fear, edged out by trust and arousal and a need to feel cornered, robbed of his control, with no choice but acceptance. Acceptance at any cost. 

Jungkook catches Jimin’s cheeks, this time with both of his thumbs, tugging up on all that pale fat to gape the taut little pout of his asshole, forcing it to hold this new and filthy shape as he bucks again, rougher, studying himself and his flexing groin, nudging the prostate he’s found with single-minded resolve. He fucks his shaft against it, forward and back, small, persistent nudges, not removing enough of himself to lull Jimin into a false sense of security, just ramping up his mounting pleasure until Jimin is gasping for every languorous thrust inside, his ass swallowing around the darkly pistoning cock. 

Jimin can’t get his legs to cooperate, is barely holding himself up against the largeness of Jungkook’s length. Jungkook just keeps bucking, forcing another little bit of dick inside of Jimin’s tight wet body every time, choking him out from the inside, and finally Jimin can’t take the humiliation of those dark insistent eyes watching his stretched-open anus.

“Let go,” Jimin whines.

“Let go? Why, so we can listen to your fat fucking ass smacking me instead? Yeah?”

Jimin whines louder.

“Jagiya, if I let go, you’re gonna bounce nice and pretty for me, okay?”

“But I can’t …”

“Why can’t you?”

“You’re — too on top …”

“That’s never stopped you before. Bounce for me. Bounce on my cock, c’mon — ah, yeah. That’s it. You’re so fucking loose for it now, huh? All that work you’ve put into taking this fat dick ...”

They’ve left the TV on, cycling through a playlist of old pop and R&B hits, lyric videos stuck on autoplay. It won’t do much to drown out the wanton sounds — flesh joining flesh, wet and rhythmic squelching, the smack of Jungkook’s balls against Jimin’s ass and thighs, the breathless tempo of two bodies chasing their pleasure — but it’s at least an alibi. An attempt. If nothing else, an attempt was made. Background noise to Jimin’s high, lilting whines and the frantic thump of the headboard against the hotel wallpaper. Jimin’s twitching ankles quiver every time Jungkook drives back into his body with an audible slap, his shoulder muscles pulled taut, sweat pouring down his hunched, lust-locked spine.

“Yes — mm — mmm — yes — !” Jimin hears himself moaning and rather than shaming him, the sounds of his own uninhibited pleasure are further igniting him.

“Are you loose?” Jungkook growls. “Hm? Answer.”

“Only … only right now … for you … be … because … I like it …”

“Shit,” Jungkook curses. “That’s right. You only get this horny for Jungkookie. Letting your dongsaeng stuff your slutty fucking ass … you like that?”

“Yes — please, mm — please — stuff — me — uhn — uhn —”

“Louder. Louder if you love this cock.” 

Jimin unhinges his jaw, mewling high and fraught as Jungkook drives his thick, cut cock deeper, hunting Jimin into the mattress where he’s lying small and spread-legged on the starched bedding of a five-star hotel. When Jimin dislodges his sweaty face, blinking against the blond hair stuck to his brow and searching out the body behind him, he finds Jungkook watching him right back. One moment of eye contact — confirmed, kindled — and Jungkook’s jaw is flexing open wider, lip ring glinting. Then he ducks his head to watch his own slick, pumping cock slide unerringly inside, as deep as Jimin can take it before the dripping shaft pulls free of that tightly clinging asshole. 

“Harder … I want it harder …” Jimin chokes out. “Fuck me — like th-ah-at —”

Jungkook’s breathing stutters on his next thrust in. He returns his left hand to the headboard, braced anew, kneeling tall and relentless. He seems stupefied by his own power over Jimin, by his leaking desire and how boldly Jimin is now meeting it with his own shameless convulsions, trying to grind back against the viciously unforgiving girth Jungkook is hammering into his squelching hole. Jimin writhes, tossing his lithe hips in little answering circles, screwing his ass down where the milky jiggle of his pert cheeks is caught and clapping against Jungkook’s harshly thrusting dick. 

“That’s it,” Jungkook encourages, the rise and fall of his chest quickening. 

“Kook-ah!” Jimin moans and on the next noisy thrust in a gush of excess lube even squirts out on Jungkook’s fat dick. 

“Oh, fuck …” he curses, happily pained, painfully happy, tattooed hand sliding loosely down Jimin’s hip, his thumb tracing the cleft of Jimin’s high-set crack as he splits him open on his length. “C’mon, jagiya. That’s it. Squeeze that perfect fucking ass around me … drench my dick … god, yeah — I love it. I love that tight fucking hole, ha —” 

He ruts into Jimin’s tight body faster, swearing under his breath as a new gush of lube drenches the base of his cock. His pubic hair grinds in against those soft slick cheeks, tautened flesh catching briefly and teasingly against Jungkook’s wiry curls. The feeling is apparently mutual, incandescently addicting in both directions, because Jungkook hisses and then he’s surging forward, dropping his weight over and around Jimin, biceps boxing him into the merciless thrusting. He moans against Jimin’s nape, pressing forward to catch Jimin’s right earlobe in his mouth.

Jimin cries out, lashes clumped together with sweat or tears or both. He can no longer tell. He reaches for Jungkook’s tattooed hand, digging his nails into the wrist. At his back, he can feel the rhythmic swing of Jungkook’s necklaces, agitated by the force of his thrusts. His precision is beginning to dissolve beneath the frenetic energy building between them. Panting, Jungkook tongues any little bit of cartilage on offer, lipping at Jimin’s hoop earring, a wet slide that sharpens Jimin’s pleasure until it feels just this side of unbearable.

“Slower?” Jungkook mutters into his ear. “Should I — ? Slower now?” 

Jimin shakes his head no, a forceful gesture, almost violent. And he nuzzles his head backwards, trying to force his spit-slick ear back into his dongsaeng’s mouth.

“Good girl, baby,” Jungkook croons, nearly laughing to himself as his hips speed up, heavier than before, deeper, too, or perhaps Jimin only thinks so because those thrusting hips are no longer being propped up by Jungkook’s knees, because Jimin and his boyfriend are now plastered to each other from head to toe, calves overlapping calves, Jungkook’s hard pelvis pinning Jimin’s ass to the mattress where their balls are mashed together, grinding slickly. 

“Uh — uhn — uhnn … p — please … please … mmm …” Jimin whines, listening in on the lewdness, the sounds growing wetter all around them, Jungkook’s balls slapping his tensed-up ass thighs harder, louder. 

“Fuck — baby, yeah — milk me, so good, haaa, so fucking perfect,” Jungkook growls into Jimin’s ear.

There’s a faint squelch as the tight cling of Jimin’s hole engulfs, for one immaculate moment, almost the entire length of Jungkook’s thick cock, slick ass cheeks kissing coarse pubic hair, just a plunging grind and the unavoidable churn of Jungkook’s hips, rubbing off on that raised tissue deep inside of Jimin. Jimin, immobilized by the bigger body, flattened into a whining mess against the white sheets, can sense his growling dongsaeng getting ready to unload, empty himself for all that he’s worth, and it’s only the succubus-like foresight written into Jimin’s psyche that prompts him to tighten his whole body, to shift against the rut of those powerful thighs, to say, “Wait —”

“Wait — ?”

“Pull out, please pull out,” Jimin says, brought to true begging. “Please, do it all over, please … come on me, come on me, Jungkook-ah, please, on my ass, come on my ass, I want it everywhere —”

A little snarly sound and then, as the rut of those clapping hips shatters under the force of Jungkook’s impending orgasm, he wrenches himself free, every last inch of his demanding dick, taking himself in hand, mattress dipping beneath his frantically readjusted weight, and Jimin dips with it, body jouncing, his hips offered up, one hand darting back to pry his cheek open further. He can feel Jungkook stroking himself off, beating his fat dick with a tattooed fist and dragging his black gaze all over Jimin’s body, his sweetly vulnerable ass fat, soft and baby-smooth, held open, so accepting of anything on offer, and finally, the panting moans crescendo, hitting a beautiful high note, and hot roping cum starts splattering his skin. Jimin moans in answer, nudging back against it, trying to catch the twitching cockhead with his cheeks, but Jungkook has already read Jimin’s mind, has met the mental request with an answering action, stroking his veiny shaft, smacking it lovingly, cruelly against Jimin’s cheeks, his little dusky clutch of an asshole, anything, everything, Jungkook is rubbing his throbbing shaft over all of it, shooting off, smearing his oozing semen wherever he and his lecherous hips go.

“Inside, one last — inside,” he grits out and the blunt head of his engorged cock sinks back inside of Jimin’s stretched-open hole, shooting a final load deep inside. Jungkook can’t seem to help himself then, fucking in against that load, the first few inches of his veined cock streaking in and out, his moans starting back up again.

Jimin can’t take this. He’s breathing like he’s about to die and he shoves a ringed hand between mattress and belly, lifting up in his search for his poor abandoned cock.

Never let it be said that Jungkook is a slacker. Still notched to the head, he stabilizes his knees and uses his superior wingspan to cut Jimin off, large, rough palm closing around Jimin’s fat cock. He’s already jerking at it, scooting in, his own cock starting to soften inside of Jimin as he plays — blind, panting — with Jimin’s foreskin, thumbing it, pinching gently for every jerking stroke.

“Hump,” Jungkook says from behind Jimin. “Come hump my hand, Jimin-ah.”

“Yes, please,” Jimin moans deliriously, shaking like a leaf, hips working forward and back, trying to chase the sensation called up by all his excess, too-sensitive flesh, pulled forward and back, sheathing and unsheathing his drooly slit. 

He gasps, too overwhelmed for anything more substantial, and starts shooting off into the sheets, hard, eager arcs of cum, trajectory hindered by the angle and the mattress. He flushes bright red as Jungkook moans in sympathy, catching anything he can with the tips of his swirling fingers, rubbing it into Jimin’s glans, murmuring something, something humiliating, humiliatingly good.

Jimin tries to ignore it, it’s all too much, but there’s nowhere to go, and that cut cock he loves so much is still sitting inside of him, holding him open where he’s so needy and overfull, and he hears Jungkook saying, low, impassioned: “Good baby … get that fat fucking clit off … yeah? Still so sensitive from my tongue, huh …”

“Oh my god,” Jimin mutters, hips slowing, tucked face-first into the white sheets. There’s no reason this should make him feel so sexy. He needs the sexiness to stop. He needs a break. “Stop. Stop. Too much … mm … mmmm …”

“Hyung, when you moan for me, you sound just like a woman,” Jungkook says, bulldozing past Jimin’s recoiling shame. “Someone is going to hear and start a rumor. They’re going to say Jeon Jungkook has a secret girlfriend and she moans for him like a porn star.”

Jimin slumps over, too exhausted to deal with this right now.

“Stay still.”

“‘M not even moving …”

“Your vocal color like this … ah, seriously … we need to get you into voice acting …”

Jimin shuts his eyes. “Take my jacket off, please?”

“So true,” Jungkook says. “You should be naked for the photo.”

Jimin has nothing at all to say to that. He lies there in a boneless heap, wincing slightly as Jungkook exits his body. His arms are lifted one after the other, as if by some unseen force, the fabric of his zip-up hoodie tugged free. Probably, the hoodie is about to join their giant pile of unwanted clothing collecting in the corner. 

“Push your ass back for me … show me … show me your —” A hiss of endorsement. “Yeah …”

Jimin, who knows exactly what’s happening at his back, widens his thighs obligingly. He holds his pose for exactly ten seconds. That’s really all he can offer Jungkook after a round of sex so strenuous. Then he slumps back down, his entire body aching, a superb utilization of his muscles, and he can’t even say in good conscience that it was him who used those muscles. Jungkook has more of a claim to this particular workout than Jimin. Jimin barely put any work in.

“Ah, really good,” Jungkook murmurs, in the voice of a real director, and sets their phone beside Jimin.

It’s a silly little gift, but Jungkook leaves Jimin to sit with it — or lie with it, rather. Flattened, heaving into the ruined bedding as his body comes down from that chemical peak, a second rush of orgasmic pleasure. The lit screen is waiting for his attention. Jimin drags it over, blinking against the light.

This is one of their more sordid traditions. Jimin can’t remember when it started, but it’s always spiked his pulse, brought blood to the surface of his face. Jungkook pulling out a camera for the sole purpose of documenting a cum shot, lining up a photo, snapping it. No matter the quality, the lighting, the composition, none of it truly matters — it’s the thought that counts. It’s Jungkook’s way of replicating his perspective, allowing Jimin a glimpse of himself through Jungkook’s eyes.

This evening, it’s a close-up of Jimin’s splayed thighs, the wicked jut of his plumped cheeks, the crease of his lube-slick ass, and his rim, puffy beyond belief, bullied into something more swollen than usual. All around, streaked haphazardly, no care for neatness, is Jungkook’s spend, gleaming white ribbons of semen caught and rolling down Jimin’s pale skin. Marking him, moles and all. Lower, the chub of his dark pink balls, peeking between his thighs. A bit of his dimpled lower back. White bedding all around. Cum everywhere.

Jimin can’t stop tracing the cum with his eyes, cheeks burning.

Thank goodness I shaved recently, he thinks, a little bit of old school vanity, then scolds himself for thinking it in the first place. Jungkook isn’t squeamish about things of that nature; he does, however, have a tactile attachment to Jimin’s freshly shaved skin — and Jimin isn’t afraid to exploit that attachment. If it means more attention, then of course Jimin will play to Jungkook’s tastes. Anyway, he, too, enjoys the look and feel of it.

There’s a touch to his back that startles him from his thoughts.

“You like it?” comes Jungkook’s voice, followed by a damp towel swept over Jimin’s body, mopping up the mess.

“Mhm,” Jimin hums, bringing the screen’s brightness up a little bit. “Gonna delete it, okay?”

“No — wait,” Jungkook says, sounding alarmed. “I didn’t even get to look at it for that long. Don’t delete anything yet. You can do that later.”

Jimin ducks his head, stifling a laugh. He, too, has his own ways of trapping Jungkook, backing him cleverly into accidental compliments.

“We should go back to analog,” Jungkook says.

“Analog is just as dangerous.”

“Not if we’re careful about our faces.”

“The both of us, we’re tattooed,” Jimin says. “In some very inconvenient places. Those tattoos make us easy to recognize.”

“That’s what Sharpies are for.”

“That defeats the whole purpose of dirty photos!”

“We’ll go back to Polaroids. I have a lockbox for a reason,” Jungkook says in a reasonable voice. “Yah, Jimin, roll over. You’re basically lying in a puddle. Don’t you feel wet?”

Jimin sighs, rolling towards the foot of the mattress. Unfortunately for Jimin, he and Jungkook have never been very adept at containing their so-called splash zone. They’re both monsters in bed, recklessly sloppy, rolling around, practically wrestling their way towards the end. Inevitably, their setting of choice reflects this carelessness. Today, it’s the hotel bedding. At least half of that bedding is wearing their lube and spend. Probably also saliva. Probably also tears.

“Wanna shower now?” Jungkook asks.

“If we’re showering, why did you even bother using hand towels on me?” Jimin says, eyebrows raised.

“Dunno,” Jungkook says, in a way that makes clear he does. He clasps Jimin by his wrists and gives a full-body tug, hoisting him to his feet and herding him towards the bathroom. “Hyung, we’re gonna need more lube.”

“I know,” Jimin says.

“Hyung.”

Trying not to smile, Jimin says, “What?”

“Did you change your in-app name? On InstaCart,” Jungkook says, pausing at the sink to remove his jewelry.

“What does it matter?” Jimin says and copies him, plinking his rings one at a time on the counter.

"Earrings," Jungkook reminds him.

"Oh," Jimin says, then removes his hoops. "Thank you."

Jungkook glances at Jimin in the mirror. “Change your name to ‘JK.’”

"What?"

"Your in-app name. Change it from 'MJ' to 'JK.'"

Jimin braces a hand against the shower door, cracking it, and leans over to switch the hot tap on. The showerhead emits a brief hiss, seconds before it starts spouting a deluge against the limestone tile. “Why would I change it to ‘JK?’ The whole point is anonymity —”

“It doesn’t stand for Jungkook. It stands for Jikook.”

Jimin pivots on his foot, aiming an expression of complete and utter exasperation at Jungkook. Jungkook doesn’t immediately notice this expression, because he was using the moment of inattention to ogle Jimin’s naked ass. Bent over to a nearly ninety degree angle, it was momentarily displayed to best advantage. Now, he redirects his gaze to Jimin’s face. Jimin’s face is saying, You are the biggest nuisance in the world.

“What?” Jungkook says innocently.

“This is why we’re on a live moratorium.”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” Jungkook mutters, backing Jimin into the glass door. “I’ve watched you read out our ship name during a live before. You pretended like you didn’t know what it meant … it was worse than fucking porn acting …”

Jimin dodges a bite to the jaw, laughing foolishly as his body is assailed with a new wave of tingly heat. “At least the comments I find are real! You make yours up! You pretend to see someone saying stupid, absurd things, things like, ‘Oh, Jimin and Jungkook, you look like a married couple!’ No one said that, no one ever —”

“Someone has said that,” Jungkook says. “In the history of — in all of history, someone has definitely commented something like that at some point in time. We have a decent amount of people who —”

“Not while you’re looking for comments to read out! Not then! They don’t exist,” Jimin says. “And anyway, you and I aren’t even the biggest Bangtan ship.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. Under his breath, he says, “Bigger than Minjoon.”

Jimin touches the tip of his tongue to his top row of teeth. “Let it go,” he says, in a voice of repressed laughter.

“Why was Namjoon-hyung posting about your birth flower, why was he writing you poems for the entire world to see —”

“Oh my god, let it go. How long have we been in a group? Years. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for over a decade. Everybody is going to act a little bit like a couple at one point or another. In a way, aren’t we all dating —”

Grumbling now, Jungkook says, “Get in. We’re wasting water.” Over the sound of the glass door opening them into a cloud of steam and hot water, he adds, “We’re not all dating. We all love each other. That’s different. You and I, we’re dating.” A pause. “Agree to it. Right now.”

“What do you think the last hour was —”

A pinch to the right cheek of Jimin’s ass and a small, affronted ouch! as he stumbles into the shower, steadied a moment later by Jungkook’s hands at his waist.

Jimin, who by this point is also grumbling, shuffles under the spray, saying, “Yes, we’re dating,” and then he loses about forty minutes to the most luxurious aftercare in recent memory, a long, hard, hot body ushering him into the water, rough hands skating up and down his wet flesh, cupping his belly and thighs and flaccid cock, pulling the loose furl of skin away from the head to thoroughly wash Jimin, the kind of knowledgeably attentive care that only comes from loving someone with an uncircumcised dick for the last decade. Jimin tries not to feel flayed open by it, but he’s weak, and Jungkook, as per usual, knows each and every one of these weaknesses, chin nestled against Jimin’s shoulder, singing under his breath in that honey-sweet voice and watching his own big hands retract Jimin’s foreskin, fingers skating around the glans, cleaning away all evidence of their sex.

So much for trying not to waste water.

After washing each other’s hair — and after a truly mind-numbing massage to Jimin’s scalp, fingers sifting his blond hair — they towel-dry and tumble back onto the last remaining slice of untainted bedding. 

It is a small slice. To all appearances, Jungkook, the larger of the two, is unbothered by this smallness, shoving a pillow to the foot of the bed and dragging Jimin against his chest.

“Hungry?” Jungkook murmurs.

“Wanna nap.” Jimin recalls the current state of his hotel room and feels a tiny stab of regret. “But … maybe we should get food in a bit so I can request … new bedding.”

“Towels, too. We used them all.”

Jimin yawns. “That, too.”

A beat.

“If you want to nap, you can just sleep in my room,” Jungkook says, over the sound of a Troye Sivan song caught in the TV’s autoplay rotation. “Bring your carry-on. We’ll come back for everything else tomorrow.”

Jimin sits up slightly. He squints down at the boyish purity of Jungkook’s face: large glittering eyes, a mouth made slightly pouty by the sleepiness taking root. “Is that why you used almost an entire bottle of lube on me.”

It’s not a question.

Jungkook blinks, expression unchanged. “What do you mean?” he says.

“You know what I mean,” Jimin says.

“I used almost an entire bottle of lube on you because you have a really tight ass and because I like the way it sounds,” Jungkook says, “when you’re so wet everything leaks back out.”

What a load of bullshit. The other half of the bed is still glistening from all the wasted liquid.

“You used my hand towels. You used all three,” Jimin says, accusation high in his voice, “even though you asked to shower right after.”

Jungkook’s lip ring twitches the smallest amount. The shape of his mouth is unchanged, but it’s this ripple of aborted movement, this near-smile that tips his hand.

“You really are a punk,” Jimin says and collapses back down against their shared pillow. “I’m not staying in your room.”

“Yeah you are.”

“Am not.” Even as he says it, Jimin knows it’s untrue. Give him twenty or thirty more minutes and he’ll fold. As soon as he finds a clean change of clothes, he’s going to let Jungkook corral him down the hall. “We have to try to be more low-key this time around.”

“They can always tell. No matter what we do, they find out within the month every. Single. Time. Sometimes sooner.”

“I don’t want another lecture right now,” Jimin says, scooting in, damp blond hair brushing the underside of Jungkook’s jaw. “If anyone scolds us, I’m blaming you. I’m telling them you seduced me. You made me sign my life away.”

Jungkook hums, unaccountably pleased by this interpretation of events. “Hyung,” he says.

“What?”

“I missed you.”

Jimin’s eyelashes flicker, face tucked into this small, warm space — Jungkook’s throat before it becomes Jungkook’s shoulder, soft and fragrant and unblemished, no more necklace layering. Just ink and flesh. Just time and meter, the music Jimin loves most in the world. A small palm rests on the opposite shoulder, smoothing up the roil of tattoo ink, touching timidly the place where Jungkook’s carotid artery is beating out the rhythms of this age-old song.

“During the military …” Jimin swallows, mulling over his next words. “I thought … during that time, it felt like this would never happen again.”

“Jimin-ah,” Jungkook says. “As much as I love sex with you … during that time …”

“What?” Jimin whispers.

“Ah …” Jungkook takes a breath, struggling around his own feelings on the matter. “What am I trying to say? I … in that time … even though I couldn’t have anything more, the — the things I wanted most … even then, I … just you, just your face and your voice … just your hand on my neck, every once in a while, when it was dark and quiet … that and nothing else … that, without that, I don’t think I would have survived. That … I feel … about it … like the luckiest person in the world. Even though I hated that place and that time. The one thing I didn’t hate was you.”

Jimin tucks his face more firmly into place, struggling around his memories of it — shared hardship, a reciprocal agony, although it felt worse having to see it reflected in Jungkook. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m really sorry I couldn’t … be more like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like … I … I had a hard time stepping up … taking care of you the way you —”

Jimin pushes up onto an elbow, mouth turned down at the edges. “Jungkook,” he snaps, powered back to life by a burst of real indignation. “The way you feel about me is the way I feel about you. Face, voice … all of that, everything. I didn’t need anything more from you. And I’m older than you, and I took care of you before you ever took care of me, before you learned that you wanted to, I was happy to watch over you, to support you and … and to look after you, and what are we if not a partnership? We pick up the slack when — when the other can’t, when someone struggles, the other will step up to the plate and be more of a leader. It’s a switch-off. It always has been. You know that. And I love it —”

Jungkook releases a deep sigh, half breath, half of his grousing voice, so rarely low and dark, and so, on the rare occasion that it is, the effect is honestly a bit belly-quivering. He rolls Jimin over onto his back, boring down on him with that black stare, lip ring stilled by the seriousness blooming between them.

“You love it,” Jungkook repeats. He shakes his head, like he can’t believe his life. “You’re not allowed to leave me. Ever. We’re gonna buddy-system our way into the afterlife.”

Jimin can’t help himself. He bursts into laughter, too taken by the ridiculousness of it all. Just like that, with a handful of sentences, the misery has been undone, the memories of anguish and hardship receding, eclipsed by affection and humor.

Jungkook watches this reaction take hold, his mouth finally succumbing to a small twitch of amusement. “Agree to it.”

“Agreed,” Jimin says.

“Agree I’m the best sex you’ve ever had.”

Jimin touches his fingers to the back of Jungkook’s neck, to the still-damp ends of his hair, heavy with water. “Of course you are,” he says, too amenable after orgasm to put up any kind of fight. “I told you. Even when you suck —”

“I suck really well. I suck like it’s my second breakfast.”

“And why is it so rewarding to me?” Jimin says, tone turning contemplative. “I don’t get it … just now … I accomplished nothing … I didn’t even lead at all … I didn’t do anything but …”

“You endured,” Jungkook says, matter-of-fact.

“Yes, but that … that’s … that’s nothing at all …”

“To me, it’s not nothing,” Jungkook says.

“But what about me? I’ve never felt this way about doing nothing, about giving up control. In other realms, I mean. Everywhere else, this kind of thing doesn’t make me feel so happy or accomplished.”

Jungkook gazes at Jimin, expression lax after their unruly orgasms. “Sex isn’t supposed to make sense,” he says. “Well — not to anyone but the people having it. It’s … hyung, it’s so … chemical and circumstantial … sometimes afterwards, you can’t really explain why you liked any of it. Or what about those things you liked so much.”

“A lot of the things I like with you,” Jimin whispers, eyelids lowered in sudden shyness, “when … I’ve done them with other people … or tried things … things we don’t do … they weren’t even half as pleasurable as this …”

Jungkook lets out a small, flattered laugh, then noses forward to nuzzle Jimin’s throat. “That’s the power of the mind. That’s not the body, Jimin-ah,” he murmurs. “The body, if that’s the only thing we give importance to during sex — obviously, the body’s also important, basic physical safety and such, but — if it’s just the body with no importance for the brain, a lot of stuff will suddenly seem absurd.”

“Absurd,” Jimin repeats, sighing through a tingly touch of wet pink tongue to his pulse.

“Yeah, because sex … at its core … is such an absurd thing to do with your time,” Jungkook says. “It no longer makes no sense to me, unless my brain wants it as well. And that’s why … when the brain is engaged, when the brain is … when it’s right there with you — your body — the absurdity becomes really sexy. The most absurd things in the world, don’t they suddenly seem worth it? Good enough to do over and over?”

“Aish,” Jimin mutters and slides a hand up Jungkook’s skull, raking long-nailed fingers through the dark hair there. “I think my brain really likes you then.”

Jungkook departs from Jimin’s throat to return himself to Jimin’s mouth. He gnaws a kiss into Jimin’s bottom lip, puppyish, impolite. “For example, before you,” he murmurs, lips against lips, “I didn’t realize how little I could care about … hygiene, exchange of bodily fluids, sharing certain things …”

“Don’t remind me,” Jimin says. “You’re really weird about my bodily fluids …”

“Really normal, considering my brain,” Jungkook says. “You’re the most interesting thing in any room I’m in.”

“What are you saying,” Jimin mutters, ears hot, and rolls them more fully onto their sides, tucking back in, wanting to be closer, wanting to feel the drag of skin against skin, wanting closeness at any cost, and he feels then too quivery to resist a kiss of his own, to press his lips to the edge of Jungkook’s mouth, to catch the cut of his harsh jawline with his tongue, its underside, his dongsaeng’s bobbing throat. “Nuisance … I really like you … stop saying romantic things or I’ll want to go again …”

Jungkook chuckles, turning his face up agreeably, giving in to the too-sweet explosion of attention. “Stop being so afraid of my romance.”

“No. Stop collecting my tissues.”

“It’s not that weird.”

“It is weird. It’s really, super weird that you do that, or that — when we drink together, after we finish, you always put your finger on the place where my mouth was touching the — the cup. Collecting dishes and bottles, trying to clean up, but you touch that part first. You do it without thought.”

“You always leave a lot of saliva behind,” Jungkook says in his own defense.

“You like licking my chopsticks at the end of a meal. Staff had to ask you to stop doing it while there were cameras rolling.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes, a wordless snub, the equivalent of, Don’t care what staff asks.

“I don’t trust you,” Jimin says and kisses the jawline again. The jawline he likes quite a bit, cupping it with his hands, head down, blond hair brushing the face he’s set about harassing. “I think … in a zombie apocalypse, you’d become a cannibal without any qualms. You’d eat me first thing. You wouldn’t hesitate at all.”

Jungkook’s eyelids get a little lower, like this thought exercise is arousing him, and the left side of his mouth twitches. “I’d have to start with the thighs … fattest fucking thighs in the —”

Jimin silences him with a kiss to the mouth, an uneven meeting of lips, precisely the kind of mistake he would never allow himself in any other realm. Jungkook, encouraged by this kiss, rolls himself flat on his back and he takes Jimin with him, tugging him securely in place with an arm belted to Jimin’s waist, until their hips have been flattened again, Jimin’s soft cock mashed sublimely against the cradle of Jungkook’s groin. He scoots into this flattening effect, dragging at the groin, wanting to feel the coarse abrasion of Jungkook’s pubic hair, wanting that pubic hair to leave a mark.

“Want to know something funny?” Jimin says, elbows folded on Jungkook’s chest.

Jungkook trails thoughtless fingers up and down Jimin’s tailbone, staring up at him. “What?”

“For a long time, I thought you had a small dick,” Jimin admits, studying the sweet face resting against his pillow. Aside from a minute twitch of his eyebrows, Jungkook doesn’t let on any kind of reaction to this admission. “Because you’re a grower and I’d never really seen you fully hard, I thought … not that I minded this hypothetical … and because … because you were so shy back then, I wondered if … when I would fantasize about it, I kept having to ask my subconscious: Should I change up the scenario a little? Will he want me to fuck him instead? But the reverse turned me on more, so I could never get through it … trying to fuck you in my mind. That’s how I felt back then, even before I knew you had so much length. I really wanted you to push me down and make me swallow it whole. Even if it was small, I would swallow it for you …”

Jungkook snorts, looking not the least bit offended. His face, glowing with pride, says he’s too endorphin-high to be brought down by a hypothetical small dick. “It’s better this way.”

“What way?”

“It’s better that you need me to fuck you,” he says. “Better that you don’t get to fuck anyone with a dick that goddamn fat.”

Jimin drops his forehead to Jungkook’s throat, too astounded to show his face after listening to something so crude. His face, he knows, is firecracker red. “Don’t say that …”

“See how easily you can talk about my dick, but when I turn the conversation on you, you suddenly become a blushing bride?”

“I’m not a bride …”

“You have a really short dick,” Jungkook says, in a voice of undeniable admiration, “but it’s so girthy. It stretches my mouth out nicely.”

“Stop.”

“Why? Didn’t your eomeonim dream it that way? Before you were born, with the little chili pepper …”

“Don’t bring up my eomeonim while we’re having sex.”

“We’re not actively having sex, though.”

“This part, to me, it’s still sex.”

“Really? It arouses you that much — even afterwards, when we lie together naked, talking about nothing?”

“Yeah,” Jimin whispers.

“... Ah … I really love it when you give me compliments,” Jungkook murmurs and readjusts his body like a new frisson of arousal has sparked to life in his lower half.

“I gave you so many compliments,” Jimin says. “Back then, back when we were just starting out in this group. I even thought … I even thought you were my hyung when we first met …”

“I know,” Jungkook says, a smile in his voice. “It’s like you were trying to will me into becoming your dream boyfriend.”

“You were already my dream boyfriend,” Jimin corrects. 

“And now, because you like to play hard to get … I get really horny, trying to shake a compliment out of you … like the ones you’d give me when we were teenagers …”

Jimin makes a face, burrowed still in that warm throat. “I was really embarrassing back then.”

“No you weren’t,” Jungkook says. “You only feel that way because I didn’t know how to react to it. Whenever you … when you would give me all that attention, it brought up my own feelings and … I couldn’t figure out how to deal with them. I’d never had a crush that — intense. I’d never had one … that seemed so reciprocated. But I didn’t know whether you were being serious, and I didn’t know what I would get to do if you were, if I’d get to do anything at all. And then, when you started giving me less attention … I felt like you were the most heartless hyung in the whole world.”

Jimin starts laughing, clutching one-handed at Jungkook’s shoulder. “How unfair of you.”

“Is it? These days … although I had a lot of fun listening to you go on and on about your crush, about how we should go on dates or kiss or get closer … I’m really happy to chase you now.”

Jimin dislodges his own face, watching his own fingers move against Jungkook’s golden skin. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t we have a show by the same name?”

“Shut up.”

Laughing, Jungkook says, “Yeah, I’m sure. Didn’t I come here ready to bang down your door?”

“But won’t you get tired of it … eventually …”

Won’t you, says a small voice in the back of Jimin’s head, get tired of me?

“Never,” Jungkook says. “No matter what, I want to chase you to the ends of the Earth.”

Heart rate picking up, Jimin murmurs, “Someday … you’ll get tired of it. There’s no way you won’t.”

“Won’t,” Jungkook says. “Will you … ?”

“Hm,” Jimin says. “Maybe I’ll pretend to be tired of it, just to test you.”

“To test me,” Jungkook repeats.

“Even if … days or weeks or years from now … I say, I’m tired, no more, I can’t do it any longer,” Jimin murmurs, “you should still find it in your heart to push me down and make me take it — so long as the setting is acceptable. If it’s an acceptable setting, then I’ll lie there and squeeze you to the best of my ability … while you thrust in and out …”

There’s a scoff and then a violent readjustment of limbs beneath Jimin’s body, like Jungkook is appalled he’s being made to listen to this. “You really are such a deviant when we’re on American soil,” he mutters.

“Need I remind you,” Jimin says, “that you’re responsible for about three-fourths of my kinks.”

“Not biting,” Jungkook says.

“Footjobs,” Jimin says, a counterpoint. 

A beat.

“Fine, that one, yes,” Jungkook says, followed by a small exhaled laugh. “You have pretty feet, though, so it didn’t come out of thin air. And you wear huge fucking shoes, huger than you have any right wearing, given your size. All of it … together, it’s for some reason super erotic ...”

“As I’ve said, bigger is more comfortable for me,” Jimin says. “... And exhibitionism, too. That’s your fault.”

“Shared,” Jungkook says right off the bat.

“Cameras. Anything involving cameras — taking photos or videos. Hidden devices that record me. Dirty Polaroids. Yours.”

Jungkook squints up at the ceiling, pretending to think about it. His mouth looks like it’s moments from a laugh. “All right,” he says. “That one you can blame on me.”

“Blindfolds,” Jimin says.

“No, that one is yours. I remember you blindfolding me when you were still too shy to show me how you sucked dick. You made up some excuse about heightening the senses.”

“You loved the blindfold.”

“I loved the blindfold,” Jungkook agrees. “I love handcuffs. Ropes. Even the time you slapped me for every thrust I took into your mouth, telling me I had to stay still, lie flat, and my nipples burned for like an hour afterwards —”

“And — and you’re big, that’s why I was shy at first!” Jimin interjects, glaring down at the ludicrously smug creature beaming at him. “Beforehand, I felt I had to practice on inanimate objects to make sure I could do it without messing up, but I didn’t want to have to order a toy that large, so I was using — food, and that — that was so embarrassing, even unzipping your pants and pulling down your underwear made me think about it, and it was too hard trying to be serious and sexy …”

“Ah, what?” Jungkook says in a glum voice. “Why wouldn’t you record something like that … I wanna watch you deep-throat a cucumber, hyung … fuck, let’s try to get hard again …”

Jimin holds out a hand, beginning to tick items off on his fingers: “Spanking. Yours. Speaking filth. Yours. Crying. Yours. Overstimulation. Very much yours. Hair-pulling? Yours. Spit? Yours, yours, yours.”

“No, see, this is too unfair,” Jungkook says. “Now you have to list one of yours to even it out. Something that made you horny before we’d even had sex for the first time. I feel too vulnerable, hearing you go on about what a freak I am …”

Jimin sighs. It’s true — he hates being in the hot seat. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Jungkook echoes. “Say it. Hurry up before I get too excited and decide to lick your ass.”

“Quiet,” Jimin says. “Okay. Then … when … really far back, when you would … I — spying on you.”

Jungkook’s eyebrows draw together. “Spying on me … ?”

“Eavesdropping. Spying. When we all lived together and you’d masturbate … being in the same room as you while you did it … or … I … I really … that was the main thing,” Jimin says, “that made feel like a freak.”

“How is that freaky? You had no choice but to eavesdrop at the beginning of our careers. All of us, we were basically breathing down each other’s necks, that’s how little privacy we had and … with the amount of sleepovers and roommate swaps … it’s not that surprising.”

“I … would memorize your schedule,” Jimin says, in one mortifying rush. “So I could share the shower with you, in the hope that you’d … I’d walk in on you while you were doing it or … if I wasn’t feeling so shameless, if I was too embarrassed to interrupt … I’d just set an alarm and … try to see if I could hear you through the door, since … if everyone else was asleep, you were a huge moaner.”

Jungkook’s eyes are huge. “What the hell,” he mutters. For a moment, that’s the only thing he says. Then, as if a lightbulb has gone off above his head: “Should I make you a solo sex tape?”

Ignoring the rush of arousal this suggestion elicits, Jimin says, “That’s not the point. The point is that you didn’t know I was spying …”

“Hyung is a voyeur,” Jungkook says in an awed voice. “A little Peeping Tom. Next time we’re sleeping together, I’m gonna wake you up with how loud I beat off, and then I’m gonna pretend I don’t know you’re awake, and I’ll roll over, I’ll yank off the blankets and show you what you wanna see — my hand on my dick —”

“In the dark, I won’t be able to see.”

“Your eyes will adjust.”

“These days, I use a sleeping mask.”

“Come here. You’re pissing me off now ...”

Jimin laughs, rolled over onto his back. 

“I love when you get a post-orgasm high,” Jungkook mutters, kissing at Jimin’s neck. “Orgasms are like catnip to you. You get — emotional zoomies.”

“Why do you make me feel so good?” Jimin whispers, stroking a hand down Jungkook’s cheek. “I really … why … why can’t I like anyone but you … and why are you so hot and why do I love all your body parts and why do I always think about you and your hands and your mouth and your voice, your voice is my favorite in the world —”

“What the …” Jungkook mutters, pulling back to squint at Jimin. A flush is stealing over his entire face, from the dark hair at his forehead to the thickness of that bobbing throat. “Okay … hyung … stop … I’m starting to feel a bit shy now …”

“I want to time-travel so I can suck you again — for the first time, I mean. I want to do that again, swallowing your cum,” Jimin continues. “Because back then, I didn’t know if I could do it, and you shot into my mouth so quickly … I almost came from the taste of it ...”

“You can do it in a couple hours,” Jungkook says, bashful.

“The first time was my favorite,” Jimin says, “because you were really cute back then, really extreme with your reactions to me.”

“Okay, I get it — but I’m better now, right? Being hot and sexy and handsome?”

“Back then, I was so obsessed with you —”

“Jimin-ah, what the fuck?” Jungkook says, bottom lip turning fat with discontent. “You — you’re starting to make me jealous of myself.”

“Should we get married? Or eloped. I guess it would be eloped …”

“Suddenly … ?”

“I’m saying it now because I’ll have changed my mind by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s why I have to keep you on my dick — so you never, ever change your mind,” Jungkook says, in the voice one reserves for wedding vows. “So long as you’re given your weekly allotment of orgasms, you’ll stay like this … sweet and needy … like an obedient dongsaeng, doing whatever I say …”

Jimin doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t deny it. It is by this point a foregone conclusion: he doesn’t need much to be happy.

Just this.

So he lets a smile take hold and he presses forward to fit their mouths back together.

bangtan

jung hobi-hyung

jimin and jungkook are awol i repeat jimin and jungkook are awol

at the same time

iykyk

min yoongi-hyung

we must be bored today

jung hobi-hyung

i’m theorizing with taetae

don’t be so cold hyung 😢😪🤣

kim namjoonie-hyung

how do we know

tae tae

well well well

look who we summoned

namjoon-hyung you ignored my other texts about going exploring 🙄🥱

jung hobi-hyung

keke

kim seokjinie-hyung

jungkook hasn’t reposted anything on insta in like 12+ hours

what else would he be doing in our hotel??

min yoongi-hyung

anime marathon?

although i’m not seeing any recent spotify activity either

which is a bit suspicious

kim namjoonie-hyung

gamers pls chime in

tae tae

gamer here

jungkook is definitely holding jimin hostage

jung hobi-hyung

hm yea my sixth sense is tingling

kim seokjinie-hyung

what’s the sixth sense

manifestation??

min yoongi-hyung

psychic intuition

kim namjoonie-hyung

i don’t chase i attract

tae tae

no one is trying to attract those two bffr 😭😭

jung hobi-hyung

no

the sixth sense is gaydar

kim seokjinie-hyung

o

i see

yes that’s a useful sense to have in this group

kim namjoonie-hyung

has anyone tried knocking on their doors?

tae tae

i don’t need to knock to know

trust me

i have a degree in hotel vibe shifts

kim seokjinie-hyung

vibe discernment could be the seventh sense

jung hobi-hyung

kekekeke

this takes me back

omgomg i’m feeling nostalgic now someone boot up the live!!!!!!

min yoongi-hyung

i want no part in this nostalgia

kim seokjinie-hyung

should we be scared

tae tae

i did honestly think they’d make it until the west coast at least

jimin

hello all

i fell asleep after a spa package involving a bit too much champagne. very sorry!

catching up now ☺️

not sure what jungkookie has been up to

i’ll let you know if i hear from him

kim namjoonie-hyung

sounds good! thanks for checking in, jimin-ah

JK

hello all

jwimin and i are back together

jung hobi-hyung

omg

kim namjoonie-hyung

???????????????????????????

tae tae

called it

pay up

min yoongi-hyung

-₩100 000 ㅜ_ㅜ

thanks. thanks a lot

fucking gay people

kim namjoonie-hyung

when did you even have time to make a bet???

tae tae

just now

i messaged yoongi-hyung individually 😏😏

jung hobi-hyung

i'm ctfu 😆😆😆😆

is this a new record for fastest jungkook fold???

kim seokjinie-hyung

i think so yes

what is “ctfu” am i srsly ancient..

min yoongi-hyung

yea

kim seokjinie-hyung

shut up bag of bones

min yoongi-hyung

i’m a runner now so your insults have no effect on me -___-

ppl describe me as lithe and supple

kim seokjinie-hyung

no one describes you as supple

if they do they’re a pervert!!!

tae tae

yeah this is definitely a record

usually jungkookie at least pretends he doesn’t want to be found out

jimin

you. mother. fucker.

jung hobi-hyung

😧😧😧😲🤯

tae tae

putting in a group order for ear plugs yall want anything else ?

jung hobi-hyung

ice creaaammmmm!!!!!!

kim seokjinie-hyung

yessssss

jung hobi-hyung

rocky road???

something rlly sweet

kim seokjinie-hyung

hmmm i could go for some rocky road~~

jimin

we’re broken up

JK

no we’re not

jimin

we are

i’ve decided

JK

jimin-hyung told me he wants to get gay married

jimin

you!!!!!! suggested that

JK

yeah and you corroborated it like 2 hours later jagiya

tae tae

dick too bomb 😭😭😭😭😭

jung hobi-hyung

girl 🤣🤣

min yoongi-hyung

the jagiya pull after being reunited for like 24 hours is crazy

tae tae

some of us are romantics hyung

kim seokjinie-hyung

everyone i think i’m ctfu now!!~

and if that’s not applicable to this situation then ignore the above message

min yoongi-hyung

just search it up

kim seokjinie-hyung

no i’m scared if i close this app for even a second jimin and jungkook are gonna get gay married in america

jung hobi-hyung

florida wedding oml 😱🥺😫

tae tae

i call ring bearer

no wait i’m best man!!

omg whose best man tho 😭😭

they’re gonna fight over me....

kim seokjinie-hyung

ummm jiminie would never allow his future husband to poach his best man

tae tae

so true~ take me jimin i’m yours

kim namjoonie-hyung

everyone clear the fucking chat

jung hobi-hyung

sir yes sir 😆🙄

tae tae

important news

the rocky road is on the way

t-minus 17 mins

kim seokjinie-hyung

yyeessssss

jung hobi-hyung

yayayayayaya

tae tae

everyone plan to meet in yoongi-hyung’s room in 20

min yoongi-hyung

????!? what

why am i in this

tae tae

i need that ₩100 000 u owe me for the ice cream 😎