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The first thing Jimin hears when he walks through the door is the distinct sound of bickering.
“I’m telling you I did not touch it—”
“But I know where I had it and no one else touched it so—”
“What are you doing hiding things in my room anyway?”
“Obviously because—”
Seokjin, spoon in one hand, waving it towards Jungkook, who’s got his hands on his hips and an angry expression on his face.
Jimin leans against the kitchen doorway. "Who’s hiding what?”
Jungkook’s head snaps towards the door, eyes widening. “No one! Nothing.”
Jin snorts. “Very convincing.”
Jungkook’s glare is very easily understood as shut the fuck up.
Jimin ducks his head in Jungkook’s direction curiously and Jungkook is across the room in seconds, pushing Jimin’s heavy bag off his shoulder. “Hi.” He reaches out to grip his hips and then slides his arms around Jimin’s waist. Jimin receives the kiss with a relieved exhale. “How was your day?”
“Mm,” Jimin hums against his mouth. He takes his time to bring his arms slowly around Jungkook’s shoulders, joined behind his neck, and takes a step closer. He brushes their lips together again and whispers, “You think I’m that easily distracted?”
Jungkook groans. “Hyung…”
A peck. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing!”
Jimin gives him a flat look. “Jungkook.”
“I swear, I—” He huffs, leaning in to press his lips against Jimin’s cheek like touching in that way calms him. “Nothing,” he repeats with a pout.
Jimin doesn’t want to push him—he seems upset for some reason, and if he doesn’t want to say he doesn’t want to say. “It’s getting late," he says with that tone Jungkook can't say no to, "so how about some quick dinner and then just melting into the couch, hm?”
Jin snorts from his position on the kitchen table. “Are you sure you’re in your twenties?”
“You’re not invited!” His loud Jin voice instantly melts when he speaks to Jimin, nodding cutely. “Yeah! You go have a shower and I’ll cook something up.”
Jimin was expecting at least a bit more pushback. Usually it takes some minimum needling for Jungkook to cook. “Sure?”
With a pat on Jimin’s butt and a decisive nod, Jungkook proclaims, “Sure.”
Jimin nods back, smiling. "Okay then." He disentagles himself from Jungkook and steps back, but before he has the chance to go too far, he's being swiftly pulled back in by the hand for one more kiss. Jimin smiles even wider then, giddy and endeared. “Make it good.”
“I always do,” Jungkook says with a suggestive raise of eyebrows.
“Okay!” Big clank from Jin dropping his spoon and plate in the sink on top of everything he’d used to cook. “And that’s my cue to leave.”
“And who’s doing your dishes?" Jungkook shoots back, rushing over to him in the kitchen, "I need that pot!”
The sounds of bickering continue as Jimin shuts the bathroom door behind him. It's a lullaby, by this point. He feels himself relax even before he gets under the warm water spray just from the familiar back and forth, the never-ending banter.
He'd thought he'd lucked out when he found Jin as a roommate. Who could have told him back then his luck was only just beginning?
His muscles are pleasantly sore, like they always are at the end of a day like this. Half classes and half studio time and he’s exhausted, brain finished and heart full.
He smiles to himself as soon as the shampoo scent reaches him. It’s all clean and citrusy, chosen specifically by Jungkook, who had spent a good ten minutes in the supermarket aisle just sniffing shampoos until it made him sneeze. But he’d quickly decided that this was the one, so Jimin had no choice.
Jungkook is the one, too. Jimin had no choice there either. The game was lost (won, won, so won) when he kissed Jungkook for the first time.
It's taken him a year, but he thinks he's finally starting to get the hang of it—being taken care of. Jungkook wants to do it. He needs to do it, channel his feelings into actions, into thoughtful little gestures. It means that they're heard. Means that it doesn't all build and build up in his heart anymore until it has nowhere to go.
Jimin likes words better. He calls Jungkook sweet things all the time, tells him how gorgeous he is and how fucking happy he makes him, how his little made-up songs when he washes the dishes are JImin's favourite thing, how his inherent cuteness makes Jimin fucking weak for him. All of that and more, he says it, and Jungkook ducks his head with a shy smile that Jimin would fall to his knees for and lets himself be kissed.
By the time he emerges in the living room, it’s transformed—no sign of Jin, for one. All the lights are off, and the big pillows have been placed on the floor between the coffee table and the couch.
Jungkook is frowning, trying to slide the fried egg that’s resting on top of the ramen a little higher. Jimin stands by him for a second, runs a hand through his hair.
“It won’t stay.”
“It’s okay.” He sits down next to him. “It’ll taste the same.”
“Hyung,” he says in a playful scold, “that’s not enough. The visual is half the game. I can’t give you a subpar plate.”
“I’m sure you’re giving me an incredible plate. You always do.”
“It’s just ramen.”
“But you made it for me.”
Jungkook smiles shyly, hands stilling for a second. God, how Jimin loves to make him shy. It’s the sweet things with him, always. He radiates innocence, but takes dirty jokes in his stride. One sweet word, one cheesy remark, and he melts right in front of Jimin’s eyes.
He puts down the chopsticks and turns to Jimin, nose to nose, smile to smile. Jimin whispers, “Did I tell you I missed you yet?”
“Nope,” Jungkook says, “but if you did I might have to roll my eyes.”
“Roll your eyes at your boyfriend?”
“It’s just been a day, hyung.”
"Has it? Here, baby." He brings his hands to Jungkook’s nape, in those strands of fading blue that he’s been saying he wants to retouch for weeks. Jimin kind of likes it faded.
Jungkook lets out a soft, satisfied sound. "Mmm."
Jimin keeps rubbing at that point of tension, digs into it until it eases.
"Mm, feels good. Thank you." He turns to kiss Jimin's wrist. It send a shiver down Jimin's spine.
"If you want to thank me," one last squeeze, "will you tell me what you were hiding?”
A groan, a miserable thing. “Can’t you drop it?”
“Mm…” He pretends to think, exaggerates his pout and almost breaks into a smirk when he sees Jungkook’s eyes focus directly there, like clockwork. “No.”
Jungkook huffs. He seems to struggle with it for a moment longer, before he says, “Today’s kind of…a special day, you might say.”
Jimin frowns. “Huh? Really?” He runs through the important dates quickly in his mind. “It’s not your birthday, that’s in September.” It’s not their one year anniversary, they just had that a month ago, it’s not the first time they kissed, so…
Jungkook’s looking at him from beneath his eyelashes, eyes eager to see if Jimin figures it out.
Jimin feels awful. Apologetic, he turns to him, “I don’t know.”
Jungkook smiles a little sadly. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s very silly.”
“Ah, so it’s not nothing any more.”
“The ramen will get soggy.”
“Let it.” Jimin reaches out to tangle their fingers together. “Tell hyung, come on. You know how bad I am at guessing.”
Jungkook sighs a frustrated breath of air, and frowns. His fingers tighten around Jimin’s. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just something that came to mind. And recently when I was back home, I found it, so I thought it was the perfect gift, you know?”
Gift? Shit, so Jimin is forgetting something important.
“But I went and hid in hyung’s room because, I mean, you’re always in mine or I’m always in yours and the rest of the rooms are shared too, but he went and lost it. He decided to pick up after himself the one time I needed his mess to hide something in, and now I don’t know where it is.”
“Where what is?”
He seems embarrassed, holding on to Jimin tightly still. “It’s—”
“Yah!”
Jungkook jerks up. Seokjin throws something in Jungkook’s lap. “This it?”
A folder? A pretty, pale yellow folder. “Yes!”
“It was in the books I was going to throw away, Jungkook. I almost threw this away!” He holds it behind his back.
“Well you haven’t touched them in five years, how was I supposed to know you’d do it now?”
It doesn’t even seem like there’s anything in it, from what Jimin can tell. Certainly no more than a few pages, at least. All this over a piece of paper?
“Go!” He makes a shooing motion with his hand to herd him out of the room. “Don’t bother us, bye!”
“Not even a thank you—”
“You don’t get a thank you for finding the thing you lost me!”
As soon as Jin’s door shuts in the distance, Jungkook breathes. “I can’t wait for him to move out.”
Jimin speaks up, finally. “I’m confused.”
Jungkook turns to him, agitation simmering down a little. “Okay.” He straightens up like he’s about to give a presentation in school. “Today is the day we first met.”
Oh, there's no way Jimin could have ever gotten that.
“I remember, because I had a really big math exam I was studying for the next day, so the date is like, carved into my memory.” He barrels on, fingers tight on the folder that’s now between them. “And so, when I was back home, I was sorting through some old boxes, and I found this.”
Jimin reaches for it with a questioning look. Jungkook lets it go, and then immediately wraps his arms around himself. “It’s just something I made. Back when I came to see you for your showcase. Your solo stage.” He bites his lip, looks at Jimin. “I made this.”
It’s a sketch of Jimin dancing. He recognises his costume—he’d taken so long to choose it back then, agonised over it, since it was his first solo. He needed everything to be perfect. The drawing is on black paper and Jimin’s drawn in stark white, mid-pirouette, and he shines.
It's beautiful. You can see the beginnings of the style Jungkook's perfected by now shyly peeking through. It takes Jimn's goddamn breath away.
He looks up at Jungkook. “You really made this? For me?”
“Well," he scratches the back of his neck, "back then, not really for you. I could barely speak to you." He sits back down on his knees, body fully turned towards Jimin. "There’s no way I would have come with this like, hey, here’s a drawing I spent three days on. How embarrassing would that be?”
Oh. “Three days?”
“I couldn’t get it out of my head.” He shakes his head a little, eyes far. “I looked at all the videos that were on the instagram page of the school, but none of them had the costume. It was so vivid in my mind, how white it was. It looked like beams of moonlight.” He shrugs. “Still, I tried to recreate it from memory. It came out shit, and I was so frustrated. But then someone uploaded a full video.”
“Hobi-hyung.” Must have been.
“Yeah. So I had a real reference.” He smiles, pleased and pure like that Jungkook that would look at Jimin under his eyelashes every time he managed to make Jimin laugh, quietly simmering with pride. “Thank god, you know? I was meant to be working on my portfolio back then, but I was stuck on you so bad I couldn’t even think of anything else.”
Ah, this is too much. This is so, so much. The ramen is still steaming less and less. Jungkook's eyes are bright, holding something so tender. Speak, Jimin, go on.
He realises he's been grabbing at the paper too hard, so puts it down gently on the table, straightening the little creases of it. It’s precious. “Jungkook-ah.”
“Mm?”
“I love you.”
Jungkook’s eyes go wide.
Oh, that feels good. Yeah, that feels good, it feels like a relief, like a weight just poof, gone.
Jungkook seems to be struggling with something. “You.” He frowns. “Sorry, I thought you said...”
Jimin interrupts him. “I. Love. You.”
He blinks. “You love me.”
“Yes.” Jimin climbs onto his lap, crawls all over him. Jungkook receives him with wide eyes, and Jimin pushes him back until he hits the carpeted floor with a little oof. He leans over him, holds his cheeks in his hands. “I love you.” He looks at him, his cute surprise. “I don’t have a gift for you. I didn’t realise today was special, but—”
“It’s not! It’s not, don’t feel like you need to—”
“Of course it is, look at you! Look at what you did!” He pushes his forehead against Jungkook’s. “God, I can’t stand you sometimes.”
Jungkook laughs. “You can’t stand me?”
Jimin shakes his head, ducks into Jungkook’s neck and bites him there gently. “No.”
“Why,” comes his smiling, smiling voice. His hand is running up and down Jimin’s back.
“Because. Who does that?” He lifts himself up on his elbows so he can properly stare at Jungkook right in the eyes, the very thing that pulled him in, tripped him up and made him fall, fall, fall. “Drawing that, keeping it—”
“Showing it to you only when I’m sure you like me too much to find it creepy?”
“Love you,” Jimin corrects.
“Love me,” Jungkook mutters, expression softening. He pushes himself up a little too, nudges Jimin’s nose with his own. “You really do?”
“Don’t I kiss you like I love you?”
At the mere mention of it, Jungkook leaps for him, clumsy and sweet in a way he hasn’t been since the very, very beginning. He’s a bit off center, a bit harsh—reminds him of right after they made things official, the obvious hickeys, the hurried pushing each other off when they heard the keys, not to traumatise Jin.
There’s new breath in it, new life. Jungkook’s always kissed him well, even when he didn’t know how.
Peck, peck, peck. “And if you don’t—ah—if you don’t say it back, it’s okay, baby, it’s—” peck, peck, “I don’t need—”
“Hyung." He pulls back, lips already starting to redden. “Don’t be stupid.”
Jimin blinks. “What do you mean.”
Jungkook drops a kiss to his neck, open and dragging, dragging downwards, “I,” down to his chest, “have loved you,” ribs, pulling the shirt up, stomach, “for so goddamn long.” He stops there, presses his lips to the soft skin of Jimin’s tummy. “It’s old news, pretty.”
“Is it?” Jimin slips his hands into his hair, the familiar nickname making his chest warm as usual. “How come you never said it, then?”
He shrugs. “Just wanted to see how long it took you.”
“You’re…” Jimin shakes his head. He drops all his weight on him at once, and Jungkook exhales a strong oof. “Evil.”
He turns them to their sides easily, slipping a leg between Jimin’s. He scoots closer, closer, until their noses brush again, until their lips slow together softly one more time. Jimin’s eyes flutter closed, breath coming short like every time Jungkook kisses him slow.
“I love you,” Jungkook presses into Jimin’s waiting mouth. “For a while.”
“It’s not a competition.”
Jungkook laughs and it’s magical. He slings his arm around Jimin’s waist. “If it was, I would win.”
He's going to frame that drawing. He's going to hang it in their room the very moment it becomes theirs. The instant Jin leaves this house for good, Jimin will be armed with hammer and nails.
"You win," he whispers as he gets comfortable against him. Let him have his win. Jimin's the lucky victor here—he's the one who gets Jungkook.
He presses a long kiss to his neck, breathes in that sweet scent that makes his heart beat home, home, home.