escapism
Title: escapism
Pairing (or character): v/hope, ot7
Rating: PG
Summary: four days of summer might be just enough for an escape.
Notes: 6.6k~w, disclaimer for accuracy of anything below! a/n at the end!! lovely thanks to my beta, S as always! written for bangtanexchange.
escapism; the avoidance of reality
Hoseok has long since accepted his role in Bangtan. Unlike Yoongi, who has taken it upon himself on his own accord to rule over them as the ultimate voice of reason, he listens to the concept team when they run through mock interviews to determine his very own unique trait to help the public remember his name and face a little easier. Boys will inevitably be boys, but even when Hoseok sometimes has the tendency to pile his laundry over weeks as much as the next person, somebody has to kick the maknaes into running the laundry machine once in a while. And he doesn’t mind that, the ‘mother figure in charge of cleanliness’.
“Jung Hoseok, the team mom,” Namjoon had snorted in laughter after the meeting.
“Shut up,” Hoseok had retaliated with a heartless strike to Namjoon’s shoulder, “it’s got a nice ring to it,” he sniffed, “it’s better than being known as ‘the weird one who doesn’t shower enough’.”
They get a surprising block of time off near the end of July, when summer is in full swing still, and hot air clings to bare skin like unrequited love. Promotions for their fifth mini album has just ended earlier in the month. Normally there will be a grace period of around three weeks where they do absolutely nothing, but this time round, they’ve spent the better half of the three weeks being shuffled around the provinces for various summer open-air concerts. Which is unquestioningly a good thing for their career, really, except for the ‘open-air’ part where they spend anywhere from six to nine hours a day under unforgiving sunlight.
By a ‘surprising block of time off’, Hobeom loosely meant they had a glorified weekend from Thursday to Monday evening, to hide indoors with the air conditioner blasting at obscene levels of electricity consumption. It gets on everybody’s nerves, both the noise from the ancient air-con, and Jimin’s resolute shirtless torso parading around the dorm.
It’s pissing Hoseok off, as he glares a little despite himself. (The heat, not Jimin, not really.)
Taehyung saunters out from the bedroom in only a loose muscle shirt, grumbling under his breath as if the whole world owed him money. He stops in front of the air conditioner and starts making annoyed sounds of frustration.
“Stop that,” comes Yoongi’s commandeering voice, eyes staring unwaveringly at his twitter feed, “you’ll get sick.”
And for a moment, he sounds so reasonable that Taehyung almost does as he says, but that’s just not how Kim Taehyung functions. Instead, he moans in reply, fingers moving to lift his shirt out of the way of his stomach so that cool air would (unhealthily) reach his belly button.
“Move aside,” Jimin drawls, pulling up next to Taehyung, “god, it’s so hot.”
“Park Jimin, you stop that too,” Yoongi repeats, before finally turning his head around from his position on the couch to eye the two, “actually, never mind, you can just catch something and die for all I care.”
And Jimin whines at that, pout fully formed, puffing out his fleshy cheeks, his normal reaction to Yoongi’s teasing. It’s giving Hoseok the beginning of a really terrible throbbing at his temples. Hoseok loves Jimin just as much as Hoseok’s own mother does, maybe even a little more, but Jimin’s high pitched noises above the loud roaring of the air-con is not a pleasant combination.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Taehyung finally snaps, lunging for the sofa and lying half across Yoongi’s legs, pulling Jimin down with him, “anywhere, c’mon let’s go, let’s go.”
Yoongi doesn’t even dignify him with a response, eyes already refocused on Candy Crush and digging his knees deliberately into Jimin’s side. For a full minute there is nothing but the deafening air-con and careless contemplation hanging in the air. Then Seokjin walks in, freshly showered, “go where? Where’re we going?”
“Away!” Taehyung shouts, earning a kick to his stomach from Yoongi too, “owh, ouch.”
“We can’t go outside in the city, too much exposure,” Hoseok reasons out loud, sitting himself down at the foot of the couch and tugging casually at Taehyung’s calf, just to watch him squirm. He’s actually thinking this through, to Yoongi’s surprise, “that, and Hobeom hyung will kill us when he catches us.”
“Wait, you’re seriously considering this?” Yoongi groans, exasperatedly pushing Jimin off him onto the floor with an ungraceful thump because he can feel Jimin’s torso slick with a layer of sweat and that’s gross, but there is only barely a hint of fight in his voice.
Frankly, Yoongi is too fucking lazy to argue.
This is how all seven of them end up at Gimpo International on Thursday evening, decidedly overdressed with sunglasses and face masks. The temperature is reaching well over acceptable varsity jacket wearing conditions, but being recognised is a chance they simply cannot take.
“I’m dying,” Jimin wheezes beside Jungkook, clutching at his collar haphazardly, “I’m gonna melt and die.”
“Shut up,” Jungkook grumbles, quietly adding a hasty hyung at the end, even as droplets of sweat collect at his brow. He wants to curse at the idiot who suggested this, but he has more manners than that.
“Who’s fucking bright idea was this," Namjoon as the leader, however, has no problems with voicing his opinions.
"Hey, hey," Hoseok steps up, pulling on his most pleasant grin, if only anyone could see it behind his face mask, "we all took a vote on this decision, family meeting and everything," he pauses a while to take in the various degrees of reluctant grunts in affirmation, "so we're all in this together, nobody gets hurt--"
“Shh!!” He's cut short by Taehyung suddenly shushing him over an announcement blaring through the speakers, "that's our flight," Taehyung says solemnly, "I might've remembered the time wrong. Oops."
While everyone stares incredulously at Taehyung's continuous poker face, Yoongi snaps into action. "Ok we have to go, like right now, before they fucking start calling our names and then people will know we're here and then Hobeom hyung will have our asses."
Yoongi, the voice of reason.
They scramble with their bags and make it past check-in with minimal complications, one of which includes Taehyung replying to a middle aged woman dubiously asking if he was Bangtan's V (her daughter is so crazy about him she worries for her well being), that he may look like V sneaking away in the night, but was indeed, truthfully and absolutely, not V.
During the two hour something flight, Yoongi and Seokjin sleep like rocks, Namjoon has music plugged into his ears, and Jimin and Jungkook huddle together trying to beat Jungkook’s high score on their communal Nintendo 3DS. Hoseok busies himself over a notebook of their sloppily planned itinerary. He’s not usually one to worry, that’s Seokjin’s job, but he’s sharply reminded that none of them have ever travelled this far away from home all by themselves. Nobody knows where they are, not even their parents. The guilt biting at him must show somehow, because beside him, Taehyung is playfully poking his arm repeatedly, drawing his attention.
“We’ll be alright, hyung,” he tilts his head sideways, his eyes catching light from an overhead lamp a few seats ahead, shining in the darkness of the cabin, “it’ll be fun.”
Hoseok chooses to believe him, against the endless dropping feeling in his stomach, chalking it up to be air turbulence.
The weird one turns out uncontested to be Taehyung, and the concept team didn’t even have to work with him for it. All they did was carefully hide him from exposure prior to debut, labelling him as an enigma. But honestly, when he isn’t fooling around with Jungkook or Jimin, or floating his pretty little head amongst the clouds, Taehyung is a hard working kid. Hoseok notices, because one too many times, he’s caught Taehyung missing from group meals, so he wanders the hallways only to find him quietly frowning at the reflection of his awkward limbs in the dance practice rooms.
It’s endearing, almost, the way Taehyung puts in extra hours of vocal practice with Jungkook, or determinedly tries to keep up with Jimin’s work out regime, or coming to Hoseok with wide inquisitive eyes, asking for dance pointers in a new routine they’re practicing.
It’s so endearing that one time Hoseok pulls the boy into a headlock and promises to secretly buy him spicy ddeokbokki in violation of their diet, because Taehyung had collapsed in a heap on the hardwood floor, pathetically whining about his aching body.
Haneda airport is nearly deserted when they shuffle out through the arrival gates, sleepy and disoriented. The last time they were here, the hallways were lined with fans and curious passerbys alike, cameras and phones shoved in their faces. At nearly midnight on a Thursday, nobody gives a second glance at a group of seven boys wandering towards the taxi counter.
Yoongi sleeps some more on the ride into Asakusa, to a hotel where they’ve decided to make as their base camp for the four day trip. Asakusa is a good distance from the sky scrapers, on the north-east fringe of central Tokyo, on the banks of the Sumida River. It’s littered instead with dusty shrines and rows of old shop houses. The general feeling of the city is ancient, saturated with tradition, carrying with it a distinct air of mystery.
For these reasons exactly, Asakusa attracts a large flow of tourists, which was one of the considerations during Bangtan’s family meeting to plan the weekend getaway, endearingly named as ‘Project Bangtan Escape’.
(“Don’t tourists mean a higher chance we’ll get recognized and our asses whipped?” Jimin had helpfully raised, leaning back onto the cool living room floor.
They spent a few minutes mulling over the possibility, but in the end decided that the flocks of tourists would actually make it less possible to be discovered, because nobody was ready to claim that their popularity has gone anywhere in Japan since their showcase a year ago.)
Upon reaching, Namjoon checks them into respective rooms: the hyungs in one room, and the maknaes in another. It’s quiet, almost uncharacteristically, but the day has been a fairly smooth sailing beginning to their little escapade. And while Hoseok mechanically plugs hip-hop into his ears to lull himself to sleep, he doesn’t even have to try.
When they don’t hear a peep from anybody back home well into mid Friday morning, Namjoon is actually slightly concerned.
“Isn’t it unusual to completely ignore us?” He stares dumbly at his phone. So maybe he does feel the itch of responsibility clawing at the base of his neck. Namjoon absently scratches that spot.
“I bet you Hobeom hyung is just as tired,” Seokjin chirps, much too energetic, “he’s not gonna give a fuck about us this weekend, did you see how fast he left us at the dorm?”
There is a low murmur of assent. Honest to god, they all thought they’d be caught immediately, dragged back onto a plane and grounded by the company. Although nobody would say it out loud, because nobody wanted to jinx it. Now, the disbelief truly settles in, and Namjoon actually starts forming a Tactful Official Apology in his head.
The maknaes, however, pay completely no mind as Taehyung drags Jungkook and Jimin round and round Kaminarimon, taking selcas and posing ridiculously with the stone statues and giant red lantern. At Jimin’s insistent whining for them to come on, let’s go already, hyung buy me some food, Hoseok lets himself be tugged in the direction of Nakamise-dōri, into the throngs of tourists flocking to shops lining both sides of a wide walkway, with Sensō-ji looming magnificently into view on the horizon.
One of the strange outcomes of the mostly unanimous Project Bangtan Escape was the destination. They could’ve taken off in a rented car, all the way to a seaside village somewhere miles away from Seoul; they could’ve gone to a countryside surrounded by mountains where the air is a little cooler and the scenery greener.
Instead, they chose to leave one bustling metropolitan to hide in the heart of an even bigger one, caged in by ribs of metal buildings, with the same taste of smoke in the air, and the same summer heat trapped in every breath they take.
(“Let’s go somewhere far, far away,” Hoseok remembers Taehyung mumbling, eyelids heavy and drifting half asleep with Jungkook’s thigh as a cushion, “but not too far.”)
Tokyo is far, far away from the comfort of their tiny bunk beds, with a strange tongue and stranger people, but possesses the same unrelenting scent of mid-summer that is just that tinge of familiarity, to remind them to come home, not too far away.
They reach the front of the never-ending queue to the altar, where Jimin is fishing in his pocket for spare change and passing them out. After a bit of observation, Hoseok follows suit in offering a prayer: may everyone he loves be healthy, may he find happiness. He turns to his right to find Taehyung scrunching his eyes shut so determinedly, almost physically exuding how strongly he wished his prayer.
“What are you praying so hard for, hmm?” Hoseok simply cannot resist the tease rising in his voice, “to meet a pretty Japanese girl in four days? You might need to offer some more coins.” He nudges his elbow into Taehyung’s side, waggling his eyebrows in a way that coaxes Taehyung’s little frown into a full mouthed grin and Hoseok catches himself smiling back.
Hoseok’s teasing is generally good-natured and even genuinely endearing most of the time. He enjoys pinching Taehyung’s thigh when he’s distracted by a girl group on tv, deliberately waving things in front of Taehyung he knows the other can’t resist, even barging in on Taehyung’s playtime with Jungkook or Jimin just to steal their attention away.
Hoseok does all this and then revels in Taehyung’s conflict, like a child who can’t make up his mind whether to sulk or to just join in the fun. He almost always ends up on the floor next to Jimin anyways, breathless from laughter, and Hoseok would watch fondly, warmth blooming in his chest.
“You suck, hyung,” Taehyung pouts at him exaggeratedly then, “you really do.”
In the evening, the whole bunch of them puzzle out how to buy subway passes, and brave the ten-stop adventure into Ginza. It wasn’t like any of them had the extra cash to waste on expensive brands and high end eateries, but an inert fascination gets the better of them. They stroll along the wide stone gray pavements from 1-chome all the way to the end of 8-chome, passing by glittering window displays and sticking out like complete tourists amongst the well dressed affluent locals.
When the sky darkens completely, Hoseok stops in his tracks and takes in the teetering lighted buildings canvassed against a starless pitch black night. He feels smaller than he has ever in the years since debut, contrasting the stark larger than life feeling when onstage. Without a camera crew following them around or an informed official schedule, they are as good as lost strangers in a foreign land.
Hoseok smiles at that.
Nowadays, walking alone on Hongdae or along the Han River garners attention, walking in a group basically screams ‘celebrity’. He’ll admit that it feels good, to be recognized, to be the target of pointing and hushed exclamations of are they entertainers, are they singers?
The product of hard work, youth and sweat and weary bones, sold to earn recognition. Along came with it a sacrifice Hoseok has known about and accepted ever since he set his mind to those auditions. Hoseok and Namjoon and Yoongi are the same. Even Seokjin, who was the odd one out, knew that he had to bend and shift into the mould that is Bangtan.
Sometimes, when Hoseok looks at the younger members, he wonders if they ever contemplate beyond the shallow praise of onlookers, whether amidst the euphoria they too realise that they've given up a whole other life just to live this one.
Sometimes, when Hoseok sees Taehyung baring every bit of himself for the audience without a thread of remorse, basking in the attention and the loud cheering of his name, he wonders.
Maybe not everybody sees it that way.
(And the way Taehyung’s eyes light up with mirth and excitement every time a convenience store ahjumma praises his good looks turns his own lips into a wry smile too, not that he’s going to say that out loud.)
Hoseok and Taehyung are sent on a coffee run when they lose a round of rock-paper-scissors. There are unfamiliar syllables rolling off Taehyung’s tongue smoothly, ringing foreign in Hoseok’s ears. He’s heard a few of these uttered back and forth in their language classes; hello, good morning, how are you, I love you, but none of that becomes remotely helpful in this situation.
“Hyung,” he startles, turning towards Taehyung who has two plastic bags full of iced coffees, and a frown working its way onto his face, “they didn’t give me cream.”
Hoseok bites the inside of his cheek to stifle a chuckle at Taehyung’s dead serious expression, and grabs one of the cups from the bag instead. He takes a mouthful and it goes down with certain difficulty. Hoseok makes a face which Taehyung imitates, nose scrunching up in disgust.
“What is this,” he blanches, “what did you do, Taehyung.” He had one job, “you had one job,” to use his marginally more fluent Japanese to buy them much needed coffee. Taehyung's face returns to being impassive and unremorseful. Hoseok is resisting the urge to throw things at him.
“They gave me these though,” Taehyung shows him little sealed containers in his palm, “it says gum syrup. Do we put it in?”
Gum syrup miraculously improves the blandness of iced coffees, to their great delight. Hoseok just has to stop Taehyung from simply ingesting the clear syrup on its own. As he pries yet another container from Taehyung’s fighting hands, it occurs to him that strange Tokyo, with its strange language and strange coffee, seems to suit strange Taehyung just fine.
“Come on,” Hoseok hooks an arm around Taehyung’s shoulder, pulling him close, “we should get the coffees back before Yoongi hyung snaps.”
When Taehyung starts tugging him towards the others, making race car noises as he goes, Hoseok has to fight the smile conquering his face.
They return to Jimin muttering curses in Jungkook’s direction again, something about him being older that drives him absolutely up the wall, much to Jungkook’s amusement, and Hoseok thinks it’s really been a long while since they could all breathe the air on a busy street like normal teenage boys.
And when he looks over to Taehyung hanging off Seokjin’s arm, he narrowly catches the smile in his eyes, directed straight at him, before Taehyung’s shouting for Seokjin to buy him expensive takoyaki from a vendor down the street.
On Saturday, Jimin and Yoongi decided it was a great idea to wander off early in the morning before the others woke up. It’s a terribly stupid idea, considering Jimin’s reading comprehension is close to non-existent, and Yoongi has showed up to exactly two Japanese Language classes, ever. The others gather around Namjoon’s cellphone to listen to Yoongi on speaker as he tries to describe where they are, with marginal success. Jimin can be subtly heard in the background, reading out bits of romanized names on signboards and describing landmarks. He sounds close to tears.
“I’m going to hurt Yoongi,” Hoseok mutters half-heartedly, standing promptly behind the yellow line, “he probably did it just to mess with Jimin. Poor kid.” The numbers flashing on a signboard above him says the subway train is arriving in 3 minutes.
“Mm,” comes Taehyung’s faraway reply. He’s very taken by a vending machine in the middle of the platform. “Hyung, this machine sells ice-cream,” he’s already tapping a card onto a surface and a ding resounds, “cool, I just paid with my metro card.”
“Tae, subway,” Hoseok grabs him with enough force that the ice-cream nearly falls out of his hand, within seconds of the doors shutting.
In the end, they send Hoseok with Taehyung in search of Yoongi and Jimin, with orders to rendezvous at the Shibuya crossing, after making Yoongi swear that they will stay put at the entrance of Ikebukuro subway station. Namjoon had to stay with the rest because he’s the only person other than Taehyung who could get by with his meagre Japanese skills. Apparently, he wasn’t lying about being good in school.
“Gross.”
“What?”
“Cheesecake flavoured ice-cream is gross,” Taehyung scrunches up his face in distaste, already pushing the cone into Hoseok’s idle hand, “I don’t like it, you eat it.”
“Oh no, no way, you bought this,” Hoseok chides, pinning him with a look, “so you’re gonna eat this.”
“But hyung,” there it is again, the unrestrained pouting, the big brown eyes, the tugging in his gut.
It startles Hoseok maybe a little bit how used he is to the feeling. Taehyung doesn’t even finish his pathetic plea and Hoseok is already stuffing the rest of the atrocious cone into his mouth with two bites. It’s cold and it hurts his teeth, but the sun is beating down hot outside and Taehyung’s heart-shaped lips form a smile that is both blinding and burning, Hoseok almost doesn’t feel it.
Hoseok isn’t dumb. He can read the signs fairly clearly. He’s no stranger to the breathlessness, the heavy bass thumping against ribcages, the butterflies, the excuses.
Then again, Taehyung isn’t very hard to read.
So it shouldn’t surprise him that much when they’re on their third subway station change, two stops away from Yoongi and Jimin, Taehyung blurts out a confession, and he thinks he might have read the signs wrong after all.
“What?” He stares dumbly at Taehyung, while Taehyung stares back, unwavering. It unnerves Hoseok for reasons he cannot explain.
“I said,” Taehyung repeats slowly as if he’s the one talking to a child when Hoseok has been treating the maknaes like what he thinks they are - children, “I like you, hyung.”
Ikebukuro, Ikebukuro. Please mind the gap, doors are closing.
Taehyung drags Hoseok off the train and into the mid-day traffic of people, coming at them in both directions. He stops in front of a wall of signboards and tries to discern which entrance Jimin and Yoongi are at. Hoseok is so exasperated he wants to yell.
He thought Taehyung was crushing on Seokjin, all the signs pointed to that. Seokjin dotes on him, coos at him, treats him like a precious gem, and Taehyung turns just that bit of shy whenever Seokjin's smile is directed only at him when they think they’re alone. Hoseok read all these signs, including the ones that said that Seokjin doesn’t feel the same way. He’s been cutting Taehyung some slack going on this hypothesis, treating him secretly to nice food and being extra loud when playing with him, just to keep him smiling.
“Hyung, hyung,” Hoseok is struck out of his internal struggle by Taehyung pulling at his shirt sleeve incessantly.
“What?” He shuts his eyes tightly, relying on the cool air from the underground air-conditioning to clear the spots swimming behind his eyelids.
“These signs, I think I’m reading them wrong.”
Hoseok jumps. You’re not the only one.
But Taehyung sounds genuinely frustrated, “I can’t read katakana, hyung.”
When he turns to stare into Taehyung’s eyes, he knows he’s fucked.
Eventually, Jimin does find the pair wandering near the fourth entrance they’re checking, and he bursts into a pitiful wail when he jumps into Taehyung’s arms.
“Yoongi hyung is so mean,” Jimin almost whimpers, “I thought I was lost forever.”
“Yoongi hyung is a fucking asshole,” Hoseok comments drily as he walks over to punch Yoongi’s shoulder with more strength than necessary, “did he threaten to leave you by yourself?”
At Jimin’s reluctant nod and Yoongi’s loud cackling, they needed no further confirmation.
The majority of their little group was against going to Tokyo Tower. It’s too cliché, nothing interesting, everybody goes to Tokyo Tower, Yoongi exclaims.
They end up going anyways. Jungkook can be quite persuasive as the maknae when he wants to be.
“It’s always in dramas!” Taehyung defends Tokyo Tower once they’re all on the main observatory, “It’s big, and red, and kinda romantic, like Namsan Tower.”
Yoongi makes a gagging motion. He firmly believes that Jungkook wanted to go precisely because it’s big and very red, but nothing more.
Only Taehyung, Jungkook and Hoseok pay for the admission to the higher viewing deck, the others opting to hang around the gift shop instead. Fifteen minutes later, Jungkook gets bored and ditches them when Jimin texts him jin hyung is buying ice cream come quick.
Honestly, Hoseok is not interested by the view of the city from above. It’s impressive, yes, but he’s seen a fair share of the same cityscape back in Seoul. Taehyung, however, stays plastered to one large window, eyes darting from one part to another and gleefully identifying places they’ve visited.
But when the clear blue starts bleeding into oranges and pinks, casting a glow across Taehyung’s face, Hoseok finds an exhale catch in his chest cavity. He quietly watches Taehyung as Taehyung watches the sky change colour, until it’s a black that is so black it makes the megacity below seem like it’s rapidly lighting up to keep itself alive and yeah, okay, maybe it is a bit romantic.
Hoseok is reminded of that one time he and Taehyung had kissed. Not the one they did as punishment on that stupid television show, the one that happened secretly two autumns ago. Hoseok had been experimenting, and Taehyung had merely been curious. Hoseok remembers, the memory of it resurging like a wave of sickly nostalgia, that it had felt good.
The way he had cradled Taehyung’s skull in place, gently brushed their lips together and then pulling back, instinctively waiting for Taehyung to shove him away, ready to laugh it off as a big joke. But Taehyung had stayed still, chapped lips slightly parted, waiting. Hoseok had decided to fuck it, and swooped forward to press firmer against Taehyung’s lips, fingers massaging the back of his neck until eventually Taehyung gave access, shoulders relaxing and tensing in maddening succession. Hoseok had almost wanted to laugh when they finally broke apart, but when he raised his eyes to meet Taehyung’s, his face fell. Taehyung’s whole body had turned stiff, shoulders tense, his expression closed off. He hadn’t seemed angry or annoyed or even scared, just faraway. The look had instantly sobered up the euphoria. When thinking clearly, Hoseok had felt a gut wrenching horribleness as he watched Taehyung mechanically bid him good night, fearing that he might’ve destroyed their friendship.
They never mention it again, a lot of self-help books would probably advise against it, but it worked. Hoseok even forgets it happened until today.
Unconsciously, Hoseok fingers the little folded strip of paper in his pocket. Earlier when they visited Meiji shrine, they had taken turns receiving an omikuji by making a small offering and picking a fortune sheet. None of them could understand the writing; it was purely for experience’s sake.
Hoseok desperately hoped to divine an answer to a question named Taehyung.
At 250 metres high up away from the rest of the world, Hoseok tries to be brave. He goes up next to Taehyung, takes a deep breath and before he could change his mind, Hoseok kisses Taehyung’s half smile experimentally, in a place where they are both lost strangers, suspended in the air. There are a handful of people left on the observatory, but Hoseok feels no urgency, except for the speed that his heart is beating at, fighting to burst out of his ribs and just stop altogether. When Hoseok pulls back he is startled by how young Taehyung suddenly looks, his teeth tugging at his bottom lip, uncertainty dancing across his dimmed eyes. He hopes against hope that this is the answer he’s looking for, but the gut tugging feeling from that autumn fleets by him and fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks he’s screwed up again because Taehyung won’t look at him.
At 250 metres high up in the sky, the rest of the world seems tiny and insignificant. Even when Hoseok thinks his tiny, insignificant world is ending, the lights far away below, melding together into rivers of bright gold just keeps flowing; the city of Tokyo never dies.
How pathetic, grow a spine, Jung Hoseok.
The most trivial things keep Hoseok awake at night; like what his cousins are doing for the summer holiday months, or whether the half empty milk carton in the dorm fridge would have expired by the time they get back. The sound of someone’s watch ticks too loud in the heavy quietness of the room. He can barely trace the outline of Yoongi’s sleeping form across from him, and he knows that behind the wall against Yoongi’s bed lies Taehyung.
Hoseok gets absolutely no sleep that night.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Yoongi’s eye twitches, “fuck you.”
Namjoon starts howling in laughter at the anger schooling on Yoongi’s small, pale features as Seokjin pats Yoongi’s shoulder sympathetically.
This morning, Namjoon had arrived at breakfast with an impossible cheshire smile, with Jimin and Taehyung flanking him in similar states. Hoseok swears Jimin’s eyes disappeared from his ridiculous grin. The three of them rush the others through breakfast and onto the subway in record time. The entire trip was spent with Yoongi eyeing them suspiciously, Jungkook a bit wary, and Seokjin trying to control the giggles rolling from Taehyung beside him because an elderly lady is shooting them disapproving glances.
Up a narrow flight of stairs tucked into a corner building in Akihabara is Yoongi’s worst nightmare revisited - A Maid Café. They stand in front of the entrance for only a minute before some really high-pitched voices are resounding throughout the cosy space and they all stare bemused, Namjoon crumbling into hysterical laughter again.
“What did they just say,” Jungkook asks cautiously, “all of them together, it’s kinda creepy.”
“They said,” Taehyung is smiling so wide his face is going to split, “‘welcome home, masters’.”
“We are not fucking going in there,” Yoongi warns dangerously, eyes narrowing into feline slits at the offensive doorway, “Kim Namjoon, I hope you don’t want kids because I am going to castrate you.”
Namjoon just keeps laughing as they’re ushered towards a table.
The Maid Café is an experience in itself. Taehyung orders seven different things off the menu for each of them, and while the others struggle to converse with the exceedingly cutesy waitresses, Taehyung manages to hold a decent conversation with one pretty Natsumi-chan. When the food arrives, colourful and sugary, they are coaxed into doing a series of dancing and strange chanting to ‘make the food more delicious with moe energy’.
“Yoongi hyung,” Jimin pushes his elbow straight into Yoongi’s ribs with deliberate force, “you could work here, I think you looked prettier in a maid dress than some of the girls here,” he pauses to drink in Yoongi’s snarl, “cross my heart, I swear.”
Yoongi doesn’t even have the energy to retort, having spent all of it cringing and glaring at everything. Revenge is sweet, like the multicolored, rabbit-shaped pudding he is resigned to letting Jimin push spoon after spoon into his mouth, repeating hip hop is dead under his breath.
Jungkook, at the other end of the table, just wants to kill himself.
Even Hoseok finds it hard to keep up with Erika-chan, his assigned maid as she chatters about this and that. And out of the corner of his eye, Hoseok is painfully aware that Taehyung appears completely unaffected, way too excitedly taking selcas with Seokjin and the squeaky girls, as if last night never happened, mimicking some sort of sick repetition of that time two autumns ago and Hoseok thinks to himself a hundred times over, motherfuck.
That night, Yoongi finally busts out the sake, his gummy grin in place. Hoseok expected someone to object, maybe a level headed person like Seokjin, or maybe someone is expecting Hoseok himself to raise concern. But all things considered, Hoseok is already eyeing the bottles with anticipation. He could really use a drink, or maybe four.
“Come on, Jungkook,” Yoongi coaxes, pushing his shot glass of clear liquid across, wriggling his eyebrows in the most sleaziest manner possible, “just one more, nobody will know.”
Yoongi is the worst hyung when it comes to having fun at other people’s expense, and Jungkook is obedient, already downing the proffered glass. He makes a face that causes Jimin to burst out in giggles, already a crumpled heap against Yoongi’s side by this point, being the lightweight he is.
“Good boy,” Yoongi coos, absently petting Jimin’s head and Hoseok’s eyebrows shoot up when he thinks he actually hears Jimin purr.
“Ok, I’m out of here,” he stands too fast and wobbles backwards before regaining balance, “before you guys get disgustingly chummy.” He doesn’t think he’s had enough yet to continue watching Yoongi ruin the maknaes.
“Where’re you going?” Seokjin croaks from his bed, ready to pass out. Namjoon has already been out for half an hour before Yoongi had started forcing drinks at Jungkook.
“Onsen,” Hoseok mutters, picking up a spare shirt and his towel, “the hotel has a good hot spring, so I’m going to go and soak, before Jimin starts throwing up.”
“Me too,” suddenly, Taehyung appears at the door to the hyungs’ hotel room with his towel in hand, eyes bright, but cheeks flushed from the two shots he had taken.
Hoseok swallows with some difficulty, considering his options. He vaguely registers Seokjin calling out, “don’t drown,” muffled face first in the pillow, before he’s replying noncommittally and shuffling down the hallway, Taehyung trailing behind him.
At nearly 2am, the onsen is deserted. Hoseok isn’t even sure if they’re supposed to be in here this late, but the lights were on and the doors were open, so he shrugged out of his clothes and tried his damnest to ignore Taehyung’s light humming as they enter the water. Even at night, the summer air is hot. He must be crazy to soak in a hot spring in this weather; he must be crazy anyways to be in here with Taehyung.
Taehyung has ignored him for the entire day, more than enough time for Hoseok to replay all the signs in his head, frustration eating at him from the inside out until he’s anxious and so, so weary.
So he blames it on Taehyung, he’ll blame it on every single thing he can - the soothing water easing out the tension in his bones, the sake thrumming through his blood, the heartbeat pounding in his ears, anything, when he pulls Taehyung forward by his shoulder and kisses him again.
He’s surprised he could even find his voice when he pulls back, shaky as it is, “what do you want from me,” his hand on the back of Taehyung’s neck stays firm, as if stopping him from running away, “Taehyung, tell me what you want.”
The clarity in Taehyung’s eyes, wide and searching, is not what he anticipated. It’s making Hoseok uncomfortable. He’s scared shitless, stripped bare by the circumstances, terrified of the answer. What if it isn’t something they want? What if it’s not the right thing to want? What if Taehyung wants-
“I want you to want me,” Taehyung suddenly presses close, nose to nose, “that’s all, hyung,” he winds his arms behind Hoseok’s neck and pulls him forward, the water slushing around them noisily, "I wasn't sure if you did until just now."
Taehyung kisses his lips open, licks into his mouth, all youthful desperation and clumsiness with no poise, and Hoseok is almost stunned into laughter.
When it gets unbearable, they clamber out of the onsen and sneak quietly into the maknaes’ room, while everyone else is passed out next door. Taehyung is giggling even as Hoseok presses his body back into Jimin’s bed, pulling aside his cotton yukata to mouth down the length of his shoulder blade. The air is cool in comparison to their heated skin, but Hoseok only feels Taehyung’s tongue, hot and slick in his mouth, heat radiating from his chest, pressing against his thigh.
Hoseok is muttering sweet things against Taehyung’s Adam’s apple when they exhaust all their energy. Taehyung curls in against Hoseok’s chest, despite it being a little too warm for cuddling. His breathing evens out, slows down, and eventually lulls Hoseok into a dreamless sleep.
Late into Monday morning, Hoseok wakes up to Taehyung’s breathless laughter, alert because he sounds like he might just suffocate and die from laughing so hard. He sits up to find Jimin and Jungkook by the door, scowling with sharpie whiskers and moustaches smudged onto their faces.
“Please laugh a little softer, Taehyung,” Jimin groans, diving into the bed sheets next to Hoseok, cradling his pounding head.
“I fucking hate Yoongi hyung,” Jungkook whimpers, curling into his own bed like a wounded animal.
Hoseok doesn’t have the heart to laugh, sympathetically pushing Jimin’s fringe from his face only to swallow another chuckle because of the words scribbled across Jimin’s forehead, Taeyang’s Special Unicorn.
The sun is high up in the sky by the time Taehyung stops laughing, opting to move onto taking photos of the two instead, “for blackmail,” he says, the smile tugging his lips so wide that Hoseok doesn’t resist pressing a kiss when Jimin isn’t looking.
A few hours later, someone suggests the sea and nobody argues. They take multiple trains to a beach right outside of Tokyo city. There is nothing planned in Hoseok’s makeshift schedule for their escapade today. Seokjin sits in the shade and checks their return flight details later in the evening, and Namjoon finally gets a call from Hobeom promising hell.
Hoseok’s t-shirt sticks to his back as he watches Taehyung and Jungkook drag sticks through the sand to form scribbles and doodles. He feels like he’s just ran a marathon, rushing without time to catch his breath. Just a few years ago, they were all still teenagers, awkwardly growing up within the four walls of their practice room, and then suddenly growing up too fast once they’re thrown out onto that too big, too daunting debut stage.
He concedes that he’s never had time to properly read the signs anyways, so he’s not going to beat himself up for reading them wrong.
They miss the sunset at the beach; it sets much too late during the long summer days. But they do manage to catch it casting streaks of orange across the faces of people in the train on their way to the airport, orange glinting over the surfaces of the rivers, off the metallic planes of buildings.
“You don’t have to grow up so fast,” Hoseok mutters, before realising the irony because really, they’re merely a short year apart. Taehyung is no more a child than he himself is an adult.
They’re in seats a few rows ahead of the others, waiting for the flight to fill up. He vaguely hears Jimin complaining about something unimportant and Yoongi telling him to shut up.
Taehyung’s eyes don’t leave the screen of his phone when he answers, “we’re running out of time.”
He could be talking about the weekend escapade finally ending. The way he snakes his free hand into Hoseok’s to grasp his fingers makes Hoseok believe he is, and he doesn't pursue any further. Other people get months of summer to experience this, full-blown yet never enough. They only get four fast-forwarded days, as just ordinary boys, rapidly running out of time to live this other life, before they have to return to the life they wanted so much to choose.
So Hoseok holds on tight.
a/n:
- i'm so sorry if it reads like a travel journal lol i went on a short holiday in tokyo last year and i absolutely loved it so a lot of the fascination above are things i was actually fascinated by like the tourist i am
- Senso-ji, Kaminarimon, Nakamise-dori, omikuji
- moe moe kyun~~ aka probably the most embarrassing thing i have ever done in my life
- idk if tae can read katakana but it was harder for me to learn than hiragana heh
- gum syrup in coffee is weird. cheesecake flavored ice cream is really gross.
- anyways i generally enjoyed writing this, even though i'm rusty, and i struggled a bit with vhope ahhahaha /o\\\