spring, summer, winter, fall [1]
bangtan
seokjin/jungkook, r
essentially, jungkook is a hypothetical taken too far.
time travel au
major character death, suicide, car accidents, infidelity
Disclaimer: I am in no way an expert on (or even a student of) quantum physics or time travel, so suspension of disbelief is required. I understand that the character death and time travel tags will raise concerns about the endgame; please click on the endnotes for my answer. Endnotes contain all the spoilers.
Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall
Jungkook wakes up to the sun shining on his face and Seokjin curled up against him. Seokjin’s still asleep, and with his long lashes and parted mouth, he looks like something out of a dream. His hair is almost golden in the sunlight. Their legs are tangled together under the sheets, bare from yesterday, and Jungkook slides his ankle up Seokjin’s calf just because he can.
The Seoul traffic rumbles from outside his apartment. His lover stirs.
“Jungkook?” Seokjin rubs at his eyes.
“‘Morning, sleepyhead.” Jungkook leans in to kiss him on the mouth, but Seokjin sits up quickly, scrubbing his face with his palms. “Are you late for something?”
“No, but...” Seokjin says, and slips out of Jungkook’s grasp like water. He disappears into the bathroom. Something’s wrong. The hard-won peace between the two of them seems to be slipping again, and despite the bubbling feeling in Jungkook’s gut that tells him to fight for it, part of him wants to sink in back into the bed. Watch it unfold and collapse.
“Want me to make you breakfast,” he offers.
Seokjin is silent in the bathroom for a long while. No sound of running water, just a deep, unnerving quiet. When he emerges, he’s dressed in a bathrobe fastened almost up to his neck.
“Jungkook, we have to talk,” he says slowly. He’s standing so still.
Jungkook tosses his head in a last show of defiance. “About what?”
“About Yoongi.”
Jungkook stills and flicks his gaze up to Seokjin’s face “I thought you didn’t love him.”
Seokjin shrinks away from Jungkook’s words. “It’s complicated now. I spoke to him yesterday and he says he wants to renew the marriage, restart the whole thing again.” His mouth curls into a small smile, the kind of smile that makes Jungkook weak, and he looks down and fiddles with the wedding ring on his finger. Seokjin always takes his wedding ring off with Jungkook.
“You were with me yesterday.” Jungkook can’t help the hurt in his tone. Seokjin said he loved him, not Yoongi, and now one conversation with the husband who “was never there” will destroy the only positive relationship in Jungkook’s life.
Seokjin shakes his head, his smile slipping. “You don’t understand...”
“I understand what we’re doing together.” Seokjin shrinks back further. “You wanted this.” Jungkook knows he’s raising his voice but he can’t find the desire to care. Don’t you want this? Don’t you want me?
“Jungkook, stop, please?” Jungkook closes his mouth just because he doesn’t know if he can stop his voice from breaking if they go further. Seokjin stands up to collect the articles of clothing from the floor. “I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To work. And you should go to your class,” Seokjin says, slipping on his shirt.
“He doesn’t even-” Jungkook’s voice does break and he claps a hand to his mouth, willing himself to calm down. “He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t even go home for three months and you-”
“I think he’s trying.” Seokjin shrugs, as though having a bad marriage is just a minor inconvenience.
“Hyung...”
“I’m sorry, Jungkook.” Seokjin reaches for him hesitantly, and touches him on the shoulder with just the tips of his fingers. “I know you’re upset. I had to tell you before it got any further."
He hands Jungkook his pants and shirt, and Jungkook puts it on quickly and without thought.
“Will I see you again,” Jungkook asks, and hates that his voice wavers. Seokjin goes to straighten his tie at the bathroom mirror.
Jungkook lies back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling.
After some time, Seokjin pads out of the bathroom and taps his knee, just like old times. He looks a little frightened and nervous, rocking on the balls of his feet. “I’m going now.” He makes an aborted move to lean down, but seems to think better of it. He smoothes a hand against Jungkook’s fringe, instead, and lets himself out of the apartment.
Jungkook turns onto his side and lets the sun beat punishingly against his back.
***
He spends the first day buried under his blanket binge watching Song Joongki professing his love on-screen and the second day sleeping as much as he can.
In between, he thinks about how much Seokjin doesn’t like to hang out with him in public, talks about himself too much, and nags at him too much about his school work. And then, in between that, he remembers how Seokjin cried when he had gotten really sick, how he stood up to the professor who was grading Jungkook down on purpose, their long walks in the middle of the night… Jungkook feels the ache returning again.
They had met in one of the many parties in Jungkook’s first week of his second semester. They had danced, and then Seokjin had brought Jungkook back to his apartment to fuck. Graduate students at SNU had cushy apartments, it turned out.
“You’re a physics major?” Seokjin looked at him eagerly. “I’m in the graduate school for Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics.”
Afterwards, they talked about string theory and whatever fucking bullshit Jungkook remembers studying in the last six months. It was rudimentary, as Seokjin pointed out, but it got the conversation going.
One time turned into a regular occurrence, until Seokjin told Jungkook that he was married to one of the most famous physicists in the university circuit, the chaebol of Korea-Global Industries.
Jungkook couldn’t even speak, and when Seokjin reached over to apologise, or plead his case-he never got to find out-Jungkook stormed out of his apartment with his shirt askew and pants unbuttoned, defiant and heart-broken. He hoped that this Min Yoongi would catch him there and then, and so Seokjin would suffer the consequences of what he did, but the husband never turned up.
***
Jungkook’s house phone wakes him up. He slaps away the day-old pizza boxes and dirty underwear to reach it, and picks up with a raspy “Taehyung, I told you not to call me.”
“It’s not Taehyung,” Jimin says, and Jungkook’s instantly on the edge. It’s nice to be reminded that his two best friends from high school are still living together. “What’re you doing? Why didn’t you answer your mobile?”
“Sleeping.”
Jimin sighs loudly, the air making the line crackle. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I don’t care.” Jungkook rolls over and jams his elbow into stale cereal.
“Jungkook.” Jimin’s tone becomes reproachable, and it makes Jungkook more irritated. Seokjin was like that, too. It made Jungkook want to be a better person, but now Seokjin’s on the other side of the world fucking his again-husband in the Maldives or something.
“Come spend some time with us. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
“It hasn’t even been two days,” Jungkook sighs.
“You need to get out sometime. And stop calling for deliveries all the time.”
“How do you know?”
Jimin scoffs. “You’ve broken up with Seokjin how many times now?” Jungkook huffs out a bitter laugh and flops back onto his bed. “It’s for real?”
“He’s getting back with his husband.” Even saying it hurts. Jungkook thumps his head against his window sill. He can see the regular evening pile up on the highway from here, and it makes him want to laugh, that no one knows what’s happened between him and Seokjin.
His QC Intro* professor just dropped him an email, asking why he didn’t turn up for his mid-terms. Jungkook didn’t give him an answer, and he doesn’t even know if it was out of fear or out of apathy at the entire situation.
The world still moves, and Jungkook has been lying in the same spot, stagnant, for two days.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Min Yoongi’s super busy right? Being CEO and all.”
“Yeah.” Jungkook sighs. “I thought he wouldn’t even notice.”
***
Seokjin begged for weeks whenever they had a fight, and it used to confuse Jungkook so much. Why beg when you have a husband to go back to? Why beg when you already have everything?
But in the end, he still went back, because he knew he couldn’t deny Seokjin. Happier times were when they were together, much to Jimin and Taehyung’s chagrin.
Then Seokjin graduated and started working at KGI. Jungkook was left behind.
Perhaps he never recovered from that.
***
Jungkook has to drag himself to the restaurant. The roads are crowded with couples and it takes everything in him not to start shouting and cursing at them. The pre-dinner soju wasn’t a good idea after all.
He checks his phone for the address again and looks up to see-
Seokjin-Jungkook knows it’s him, the hair, the face, the gait, he knows it by heart-standing at the curb in his three-piece, waiting to cross the road. He’s frowning, looking at his watch. He’s impatient and waiting. Maybe he’s unhappy.
The words clog at his throat. “S-seokjin,” Jungkook calls, and he starts to run to him. “Hyung!”
Seokjin looks up at him with wide eyes. Jungkook knows he’s seen him. He’s about ten paces away when Seokjin starts to walk into the oncoming traffic.
Jungkook doesn’t even have time to turn away.
***
They sit on the curb, Jungkook in between Jimin and Taehyung, with Jimin’s coat wrapped around Jungkook’s shoulders, as they watch the paramedics and policemen rush around. Jungkook is oddly calm, or numb. He’s seen what happened and Seokjin has been lying on the asphalt for thirty minutes. It’s only when Jimin puts his hand on Jungkook’s that he realizes he’s shaking.
Finally, finally, they wheel Seokjin-covered completely in a white sheet-into the back of the ambulance.
“I have to go,” Jungkook mutters, slipping out of Jimin’s grasp.
“You sure you’re okay?” Taehyung reaches for him, but Jungkook shrugs him off.
“Fine.” And he’s stumbling on home, his hands tucked into his pockets.
Seokjin saw him. He had to. Did Jungkook distract him when he was just trying to cross the road?
He walks about half the distance home before he has to stop and try to stop hyperventilating in an alleyway. When he’s done, he’s kneeling on the dirt floor and winded. He takes a detour to the neighborhood park, but even the greenery doesn’t help; the fresh air burns his lungs. Jungkook settles into an empty park bench while he tries not to throw up.
People stare and whisper while they pass him doubled up in the park, shivering and struggling to catch his breath. He can hear the sirens even from here, and he huddles closer in on himself. His breath get knocked out of him again.
“Breathe in and hold it. You’re hyperventilating,” an elderly man says, and settles into the seat next to Jungkook. He wants to tell the man to piss off, but he can barely speak. “Take a deep breath and hold it in three, two, one…”
Jungkook obeys, helpless. “Let go. And again. Take a deep breath in…”
His breathing slows in time, and when it does, he turns to face the man. “Thank you, sir, uhm. For that.”
The man waves a hand at him, an energetic movement that seems contradictory to his almost fragile frame. It seems like one wheeze can knock him over, and here he is, talking Jungkook through a panic attack. “I’ve had my fair share in my lifetime. It’s always good to help someone out, you know?” Jungkook nods slowly, not understanding. “What happened to you, my boy?”
Jungkook shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”
The man pauses. “I’m sorry if I sound too intrusive.”
“No, uhm.” Jungkook trails off, unsure of how to respond. The old man is sharp, and Jungkook doesn’t want to talk about what just happened just yet, but something in him urges him to stay and listen to the old man. He closes his eyes and lies back against the bench.
“You look tired,” the old man remarks. “Are you thinking of someone?”
Jungkook opens his eyes blearily. The man is looking into the distance with a faraway look, and it makes it feel less revealing, for him to say something.
“I liked this person for a long time, but things didn’t work out,” he says, trying for vague.
The old man fixes him with a strong gaze, the effect startling. “If you could go back and change things, would you?”
“I don’t quite understand, sir…”
The old man sighs. “I’ve had a lot of regrets when I was younger. And I always thought, if I could go back and change that moment-that moment I said the wrong thing or spoke to the right person at the right time-things would have been different.” He speaks as though reciting from a book. His pace is slow and measured, and Jungkook finds himself lulled. “An old man always has a long list of regrets. What about you? Do you regret something?”
Jungkook nods.
“Would you want to go back and change it?”
“More than anything,” Jungkook says, as sincerely as he can.
“I see.” The man smiles at him, the skin around his eyes crinkling like paper. “Some things never change, then, through the generations.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll understand when you get older,” he says, and gives Jungkook a wry smile, as though he knows something Jungkook doesn’t.
“Sir-” A car honks in the distance, breaking their bubble. Jungkook tears his gaze from the man, his heart hammering.
When he turns back around, the man is no longer there.
Jungkook whirls around, searching, but the only people around are young couples sitting under the moonlight. His heart flips whenever he catches a sliver of grey, but the old man is gone, disappeared like he didn’t exist in the first place. Maybe Jungkook’s finally losing it.
He goes home.
The gloomy living room greets him when he unlocks the door, and it’s hard to imagine that a few hours ago in the same house, his greatest concern was how long he was going to take to get over Seokjin.
Seokjin had looked at him before he-it happened. It’s clear that the look on his face hadn’t been surprise.
An arm wraps around his waist from behind and Jungkook nearly screams the house down.
Seokjin springs back, laughing. “Sorry, but welcome home,” he says, and moves back in to drop a kiss on Jungkook’s cheek. Jungkook freezes in his arms. Seokjin looks at him and frowns.
“What’s wrong?” He ruffles Jungkook’s hair, his palm warm-real-alive. “Supper’s almost ready. I made your favourite.” Seokjin gives him one last quizzical look before he goes to the kitchen, leaving Jungkook shaking in shock. Or wonder.
***
Jungkook checks the date on his alarm clock and its three days earlier than what he remembers it to be, one day before their breakup, and three days… He doesn’t want to think about it, but Seokjin’s sitting right in front of him at the dining table, feeding him pieces of marbled beef.
It’s impossible. His hyung still smiles at him in the same way. The way he moves and talks, how he takes a small breath when he’s thinking, Jungkook knows them by heart, spent years looking at Seokjin and memorising his actions. He used to pride himself on how well he knows him and how to respond to him.
Jungkook has to excuse himself to the bathroom afterwards and closes his eyes. This isn’t a dream, and Jungkook doesn’t know why he’s sure, but it feels true. When he walks out, Seokjin looks troubled, but he still puts on a smile for Jungkook. So Yoongi called him then. Jungkook play along, corners Seokjin in the kitchen and press lingering kisses to the knob of his spine.
“I really miss you,” he murmurs into Seokjin’s skin, and he wishes he can imprint the words deeper so Seokjin will know and will not do what he did-has already done-tomorrow morning. He didn’t say anything the first time, probably too tired from school, eager to get to bed.
Seokjin laughs, his voice light. His hands cover Jungkook’s over his waist and squeezes. “I just saw you yesterday, what’re you saying?”
“I know,” Jungkook says, and it’s so earnest it hurts his heart to say it in retrospect.
Seokjin hums and lets go of his hands. The moment is broken.
“I need to go to the lab early tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll go wash up.” He leaves Jungkook alone in the kitchen.
Then the lock on the front door turns.
Now, the night three days ago becomes clear-they didn’t have dinner together because Jungkook was rushing an assignment in the university library and came home late-
Jungkook dives behind the door and waits for it to swing over him and god, it was him, wearing his university sweatshirt and joggers and stuffing his keys into his pocket and the sight is nauseating, to see someone, even himself, slip into their life so easily. Jungkook almost reaches out to touch him-himself, but stops before his fingers make contact.
Panic seizes him, and he takes one last look at his doppelganger before slipping out of the door. He prays that Seokjin will never know the difference.
***
It’s impossible, but there’s no other alternative explanation besides he’s going insane. He’s a physics major, he did quantum mechanics last semester in uni. He’s read about time travel in passing; it’s technically possible, no matter how small that possibility is.
God, he is insane for even considering it. He’s a scientist. Even if quantum physics has made some headway in the recent years, the idea that he’s even trapped in a CTC** is…
He heads to Taehyung’s and Jimin’s shared apartment. Jimin opens the door and gives him a confused smile.
“Jungkook? Why’re you here, what’s up?”
Jungkook opens his mouth to say, I think just got transported back in time and I need to know I’m not losing my mind, but nothing comes out. He gapes and wheezes as Jimin grows increasingly concerned. Finally, he manages a weak, “Taehyung?”
“He’s sleeping. Are you sick?” Jungkook shakes his head. “Oh. Is it Seokjin?”
It’s as good as the truth. Jungkook nods. Jimin puts a hand on his shoulder and guides him in. “Coffee?”
“It’s okay,” Jungkook mutters and curls up on the couch, winded. Jimin pats him gingerly on his side.
“You can stay over if you want,” he says quietly. “If things are rough...I know you don’t like to be at home when it happens…”
Jungkook bites back his instinctive reaction to shrug off Jimin’s touch-which is whenever his friend wants to talk about Jungkook’s relationship with Seokjin-and murmurs a quiet acquiescence.
“What happened?”
“I feel like I don’t belong here,” Jungkook says, and this is as close as he can get to the truth. If there’s another Jungkook around, he’d have to hide in the shadows constantly. Cautiously, he allows himself to think about what has happened: the old man in the park, Seokjin miraculously alive after the accident, himself within arm’s reach. Nothing makes sense. “Even with him in my own house…” And that’s true too. Perhaps even with this chance to fix things, he will still remain the outsider.
Jimin watches him with a frown. “I don’t know what to say, Jungkook. I told you before-”
“I know.” That this will never last. Jungkook knows that this reality has materialized, and will materialize tomorrow. He lowers his gaze and fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt. Jimin is probably giving him a look of pure frustration. They’ve been over the topic of Seokjin for about a hundred times over the two years, and the problem is that Jungkook subconsciously knows that this will be the outcome, but he still hoped.
“You should get some sleep. Deal with this tomorrow,” Jimin says.
“I will.”
He must have sounded so dejected, because Jimin’s voice turns gentle, the kind that never happens when they talk about Seokjin. “You never know what can happen tomorrow, right?” Except Jungkook already does know, and he is powerless to stop it. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new, maybe from the coffee shop or the park…” Jimin pats him on the back. “You’ll be back up in no time.”
***
After Jimin bids him a good night and closes the bedroom door, Jungkook slides out of the couch and closes the door. He says a silent apology in his head to his long-suffering friend, because he has to see Seokjin again, before…
And, he has to go to the park until he can track down the man and make him reverse this, or even to tell him what he’s supposed to do. Now that he has the time to think about it, if the man had wanted him to truly change the event that caused Seokjin’s death, it wouldn’t be to send him to see himself with Seokjin for the last day. He can’t change a thing.
And why today? Something has to happen today.
He walks to his apartment in the cover of night. The silence makes everything lonelier, as if the first time wasn’t enough. Jungkook doses fretfully, and in between sleep and wakefulness, dreams of Seokjin-Seokjin smiling at him at supper, looking at him across the street before he steps off the curb. There’re earlier memories, too. Seokjin ringing his doorbell at 5 A.M. after their first big fight; in bed, whispering into Jungkook’s ear, “what would I do without you?” just to hear Jungkook’s bashful reply.
He wakes up as the first rays of dawn and he jolts upright. It’s soon, then. The other Jungkook will be waking up soon. He conceals himself and waits.
Some time later, Seokjin opens the gate with a tired frown on his face. Seeing him again, and knowing himself, how much he wanted to see Seokjin again before the accident-his regret and latent shock from the loss-
Jungkook waits until Seokjin turns the corner, and then he’s up and following him.
“Seokjin,” he calls, and in his haste, puts a hand on his shoulder. Seokjin turns around, and his frown folds into itself.
“Jungkook, I said we can’t do this,” Seokjin says. He looks so unhappy.
“Does Yoongi know,” Jungkook blurts out. He knows he’s gripping Seokjin’s shirt sleeve hard. “Is that why you’re-”
Seokjin jerks his hand away, his eyes flickering to the people passing by. Jungkook swallows and drops his hand. They look like a sight, with Jungkook still dressed for dinner and Seokjin with his business suit and briefcase, and they’re fighting in the open. It’s exactly what it looks like.
“Does he know?” Jungkook wants to tell him to stay home, stay home until the week is over. He’s ready to stay with Seokjin for the entire two days and not let him out of his sight until he’s sure he did change this event, that Seokjin will survive Friday night.
The Seokjin in front of him doesn’t even want to be with him right this moment. Somehow, that revelation hurts more the second time.
Seokjin bows his head. “For years.”
“Then why…”
Seokjin sighs. “I don’t know why he wants me back. But this is marriage, Jungkook, it’s not…
“It’s not something that’s easy to walk away from.” And Jungkook’s underestimated Seokjin’s ability to hurt, yet again. “I hope you understand my decision.”
Jungkook bites his lip, worrying it until he can taste blood. “When are you going to renew your vows?”
“This Saturday.” Then why, on Friday… “Jungkook, I really have to go.” Seokjin smiles at him, and he looks a little sad. “I have to go to the lab.”
“Can I see you again?” Jungkook blurts out. “On Friday? Just one last time?”
Seokjin opens his mouth, and Jungkook knows he’s going to say no, so he pleads. “For closure.”
Seokjin sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Okay. Just dinner.”
Relief washes over Jungkook. “Thank you.”
“I really have to go.”
“Okay. Don’t keep Yoongi waiting.”
Seokjin hurries down the street and disappears around the corner, and Jungkook slumps onto the ground.
He did it. So why does it feel like a hollow victory?
***
He goes back to his apartment when the other Jungkook is sprawled out on the bed, passed out from crying. God, it’s still strange to see himself without a mirror. He wants to wake himself up, tell him, you’ll get to see him on Friday and stop this. You won’t have him back, but he’s alive. That’s all that matters, right?
He even hovers over his own prone form, inches from touching, but the insistent tugging in his belly tells him to pull back. This is wrong, this is dangerous. This will ruin what he has built. And he doesn’t know how to explain to himself how everything happened. Best case scenario, regular Jungkook will laugh in his face and call the police.
Jungkook bites his lip and takes his mobile, instead. Seokjin will need to call him. Regular Jungkook will not get the closure, but Seokjin will be alive, at least. That’s all that matters.
He texts Seokjin to meet him in a restaurant on the other side of town five minutes before the accident is supposed to happen. Even if Jungkook has to go back, Seokjin will be safe. He gets the confirmation text seconds later. He texts Jimin and Taehyung to meet him at the restaurant, too. Knowing them, they’ll see Seokjin and will want to have a few words with him, and he won’t make it to the place of the accident in time for it to happen.
Just in case he can’t make it himself.
***
The old man is at the edge of park when Jungkook finds him, plucking out the weeds from the ground with his bare hands and dropping them into the small stream next to the grass.
“You’re late,” the old man says as Jungkook approaches.
“Sir-” Jungkook wants to be polite, he really does, but the confusion from the recent events and his lack of sleep makes him want to lash out, grab the man by the collar and demand for things to be righted. “Sir, what’s going on?”
The old man turns to him. “I don’t need to say it; you already know.” And he goes back to plucking.
His apathy stirs something ugly inside Jungkook. “What did you do to me,” he grits out.
“The question is, what did you do to yourself?” Jungkook opens his mouth to argue, but the elderly man plows ahead, as though already anticipating what Jungkook’s words. “You said you want to go back and fix things, so you got what you wanted. Is that not enough?”
“Tell me what you did to me,” Jungkook says, his voice raising. “You-”
The old man finally looks at him. “It’s an opportunity.”
“I’ve taken it. Now let me go back.”
“You think you’ve done what you can. Is it enough?”
Jungkook is silent.
“You young kids never wait until your efforts bear fruit,” the old man mutters, and turns back to his grass patch. “What happened to patience and perseverance?”
“I don’t care. Turn me back.”
The old man shakes his head. “It’s not up to me.”
“Who, then? When will I go back?” Jungkook’s heart is racing, the dreaded question at the tip of his lips. “What’s going to happen to me when I succeed?”
The old man pauses, and then he looks at Jungkook with a sort of sad loneliness. “When it happens, you have to come back to the park,” he said, as if that was the answer to everything. Now, Jungkook is starting to feel like the air is an enclosure. The park seems like an artificial setting-its greenery already out of place in the metropolis, but now even the noise of the water stream to reverberate, as if there are walls caging them in.
“Sir…” For the first time, Jungkook feels a deepening sense of dread. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
The man shrugs, and this motion makes Jungkook unsettled to his core. It’s a boyish movement, a sharpness that’s out of place in the wizened frame. “I can’t tell you. You understand the need to wait, don’t you? That’s the reason why you didn’t speak to your other.” He plucks another weed. “Don’t think you’re the only one who’s seeking to change something.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Time is a delicate ecosystem,” the man says. “The actions and consequences feed on one another to ensure the survivability of life. There are things that need to happen in sequence.” He tosses the weed into the pond next to them, and they watch the strands of grass separate down the stream. “I am only one of its mechanisms to make sure of that. And now you are, too.
“Jungkook, time and change dismantle life. So, don’t change too much.”
***
His first instinct is to go stay over at Jimin and Taehyung’s, but in his original timeline, Jungkook holes himself up for two days. If the three of them talk to each other at all, the paradox will be easily exposed. And besides, if the other Jungkook decides to turn up at their doorstep, there’s no telling what will follow. Jungkook is not ready to drag his friends into this mess. He has already changed something, and if he changes things too much, things might eventually fix itself up, probably. His head spins from the possibilities and how they intersect.
Two days.
The old man said what he has already done isn’t enough, and Jungkook agrees with him somewhat. There’s too little to go off on, and he needs to know more. He needs to know, for sure, that he’s made the right changes.
He sits outside Seokjin’s office, the only other place he knows his other self won’t go near, watching the stream of scientists and businessmen march past him. And there among the flock is Seokjin.
Yoongi isn’t around him, surprisingly, even though he’s technically Seokjin’s boss. Jungkook thought they would have been all over each other after Yoongi asked to renew their vows, but it makes sense. Seokjin did mention on several occasions that Yoongi’s style of mentorship in the company was a little too hands-off, and that extended to their intimate life as well.
“You have me,” he told Seokjin whenever they broached the subject of Yoongi, and Seokjin would smile and lean in, kiss him on the edge of his mouth and echo, “I have you.” God. He was so stupidly eager to please, then, puffing up with pride just because he made Seokjin happy.
So why did that memory alone make him smile and seek out Seokjin in the crowd? His ex-lover is still walking among the crowd, his face set in a deep frown. Jungkook feels the pull at the pit of his stomach, and he follows the feeling, follows Seokjin and tugs at the waist of his coat.
“Jungkook?” Seokjin’s frown deepens, and with a glance at the people around them, he ushers them to one side of the pavement. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I-My class got cancelled,” Jungkook fibs.
Seokjin goggles at him, and Jungkook knows he’s seen right through the lie. “Well, what’re you doing here?”
Jungkook wants to say, I came to see you, but it doesn’t seem appropriate. Seokjin saves him from answering, however. “Your campus is on the other side of the city,” he mutters, and then he’s chuckling and shaking his head, as though laughing at himself, or Jungkook. Jungkook can only watch on in confusion.
Seokjin takes his arm with a gentle smile. “You’re always there when I-nevermind. Lunch?”
***
One time, Seokjin knocked on Jungkook’s door at some time in the early morning, begging to be let in, as he always did when he had a fight with his husband.
“I’m going to leave him soon,” Seokjin murmured when Jungkook let him in. “I don’t even understand why he married me if he won’t even look at me.” Jungkook tucked his chin into the crook of Seokjin’s neck, pressing him back into his chest. I’ll look at you, he thought. So look back at me.
“You’re always there when I need you the most,” Seokjin whispered into Jungkook’s ear, when he was pretending to be asleep. That was probably as close as Jungkook could get to a love confession. Seokjin didn’t do things like that. Or not anymore, after Yoongi.
From what Jungkook understood of their relationship, Yoongi met him at a physics convention in ’05 and swept him off his feet. Everything had been great, until it wasn’t. These days, Yoongi wouldn’t even make the effort to talk to Seokjin over dinner.
And then Seokjin met Jungkook.
***
They have their lunch in one of the restaurants in the outskirts of the industrial park. Jungkook eats his food ravenously; he hasn’t had any for more than a day now.
“Slow down,” Seokjin chides, but he polishes off his food quickly, too.
Jungkook wants to concentrate on committing everything to memory. A part of him feels guilty that he can never share this with the other Jungkook, who’s still trying his best to get back up on his feet. Seokjin’s frowning, though, staring at his food as though it has personally offended him.
“Hyung, did something happen?”
“That obvious?”
“You got that crinkle between your eyebrows.” He almost reaches out to touch Seokjin before he remembers he’s not supposed to anymore.
“Yoongi’s being his usual self. And we have a side-effect with our prototype that we need to fix before the board presentation.”
“When’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Shit.” Jungkook winces in sympathy.
Seokjin smiles. “I know.”
They lapse into silence again. Seokjin props his chin on one palm as he gazes at Jungkook. It’s slightly overwhelming, to be watched so closely as he eats. It’s been one of the more intimate things they’ve done together.
If Jungkook needed someone to rely on, Seokjin would be his best choice. He remembers Seokjin vaguely mentioning his project, something about changing the molecular makeup of inanimate objects. He must know something about time travel, even if it's just an extension of pop-science.
“Hyung,” Jungkook begins carefully. “Do you know anything about time travel?”
The way Seokjin stops mid-bite already gives Jungkook a clear indication. “What about?” His tone is overly-polite.
Jungkook’s heart is beating so loudly he can feel it in his eardrums. He tamps down the twisting feeling in his gut, the ice-cold feeling of wrong. “That time when we talked outside my house.” Seokjin’s gaze sharpens. “I wasn’t me-I-”
Seokjin lunges forward, his eyes wide and his finger pressed against his lips. Quiet. Jungkook freezes. Seokjin takes a long, careful look around the restaurant, and then says, voice tight, “we need to talk somewhere more private.”
He takes Jungkook to the carpark, all the while glancing back and forth at the throng of people with wide eyes.
Seokjin gestures Jungkook into the passenger side of the car and gets into the driver’s seat. Half a second passes before Seokjin asks, “have you told anyone about this?” His jaw is clenched, and it scares Jungkook, to see Seokjin so stoic and tense.
“No. Hyung, what’s going on?”
“I can’t believe it,” Seokjin mutters. “So it happened already.” He takes a long breath. “Then who was it that I left in your apartment? You, or someone else?”
“I don’t know,” Jungkook says honestly, and tells Seokjin about the man at the park. He doesn’t bring up the accident. “I’m not the same person. I think we have different memories now.”
Seokjin sighs. “It has to be this machine. I made a mistake, I miscalibrated the electromagnetic field…”
“You were working on antigravity?”
“We were supposed to. And now I don’t even know if that was the original intention at all. Yoongi.” Seokjin pauses, hesitating. “Yoongi was overseeing the project, and Jungkook, I think-” He turns away from Jungkook.
Jungkook puts a hand against Seokjin’s shoulder, leaning in. Comforting. “You can tell me.”
“I think he planned this. Something’s going to happen soon, I can feel it.” He turns to Jungkook, his eyes glittering in the darkness. “I think...the less you know of it, the better.”
“Hyung,” Jungkook protests. “I can help. But I need to know what happened to me. What’s going to happen to me.”
“According to theory, you’ll keep existing in the same timeline, I think. But we don’t know for sure unless we test it.”
“You mean, until it happens?”
“Until the point of the paradox,” Seokjin corrects.
Jungkook exhales shakily. “I won’t even exist?”
“You will,” Seokjin says with absolute certainty, and takes Jungkook’s hand and holds it between his own. “You will,” he repeats. Jungkook believes him.
Gazing at Seokjin’s determined expression, he remembers his original wish, and the old man’s words again. If you could go back and change things, would you?
Then, he isn’t the only one with a vendetta against time, and the past.
***
“I’m going to look into this,” Seokjin tells him as they get out of the car. “Don’t change anything, Jungkook, until I call you.”
“Too late for that,” Jungkook mutters.
Seokjin shoots him a glare. “You know what I mean.”
“You have a presentation tomorrow, you should focus on that,” Jungkook reminds him.
Seokjin goes rigid. “I don’t think so,” he says slowly, and the realization forms in Jungkook’s mind, too. “If this is so important, if this changes everything, I don’t think Yoongi would want this to even get out to the other board members. I don’t think the presentation will even happen.”
“How’s he going to stop this? You probably had it scheduled for weeks.”
“Months. He’s not going to want to postpone it. He will want to cancel it entirely,” Seokjin trails off meaningfully. “He’s done it before. The airstrike last year I told you about?"
“That was him?” Seokjin nods affirmative.
“Hyung, we don’t know what he’s going to do. I don’t think you should go to the office tomorrow.” Or cross any roads for the foreseeable future.
“Yoongi will tell me if he tries anything. I’m still his husband.”
He’s done nothing but hurt you, Jungkook wants to say. “Okay, hyung. I trust you.”
“Of course you do.” Seokjin smiles. “So sit tight. I’ll figure things out.”
“Hyung. I don’t think this is just about the presentation.”
“Did something happen?”
“Tomorrow evening, but I don’t think I should tell you,” Jungkook says carefully. “But you have to hurry. We don’t have time.”
“That’s our dinner, right?” Seokjin’s smile falters. “Jungkook… did you plan that?”
Jungkook ducks his head. “Please don’t make me tell you.”
Seokjin’s inhale is sharp. “Come with me, then.”
***
They breeze past the security at the ground floor with no problems, but Jungkook is still taunt like a string, waiting for Yoongi to spring out with his army of bodyguards and haul him away from Seokjin. He probably knows what Jungkook looks like and where he lives and studies at. Jungkook stepping into the headquarters of his company, practically gift-wrapped, isn’t an opportunity that a rational man would pass up.
No one comes for them.
Seokjin leads Jungkook into his lab with a tap of his keycard. “Keep your head down, don’t talk to anyone,” Seokjin murmurs to him, handing him a lab coat.
“What do we do?”
“We fix the machine,” Seokjin says. “My team is working on it, but I don’t think they know what they’re even looking at.”
“You haven’t told them?”
Seokjin chuckles under his breath. “It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just don’t trust Yoongi.”
The admission makes Jungkook stop in his tracks. “You just said…”
“He won’t hurt me, but with this machine…” They head upstairs, and now Jungkook can pick up some sort of loud humming. “Anyone will want to use it. You’d be stupid not to.”
Seokjin taps into another room, and this is it. The machine’s at the centre of the room on a raised platform. It’s about as large as Jungkook’s torso, and it’s emitting the humming. Jungkook steps closer, and now he can distinguish the small beeps that are so frequent they sound like a long continuous note.
He reaches a finger to touch the circuitry on the sides. “Wouldn’t it be easier to…” he murmurs, distracted. “I don’t know. Destroy the machine?”
“I was about to, but I think it’s impossible at this point,” Seokjin says pointedly. “Someone has already used it. And I don't want Yoongi to know that I know, if he's really behind this. It might buy us some time.”
Jungkook wants to protest, but he knows that he will have to explain why. And how cruel, to tell someone when they're going to die. Jungkook clears his throat, willing away the tightness coiled in his gut, the feeling of sand trickling in an hourglass. “Is it remote-controlled? I don’t see anything that can hold the object-”
“Remote-controlled. I guess that makes it harder to track the object.” It doesn’t make sense. If Seokjin had made the mistake by accident, then why did they put in the extra effort to make it so complex?
“Did Yoongi work on this with you?”
Seokjin’s mouth tugs up into a small grin. “He probably planned this from the beginning, huh. I thought working on this project together would bring us closer. Um, sorry.”
Jungkook bites his lip. “We should focus on the machine.”
Seokjin clears his throat and nods. His hand moves towards Jungkook, but he seems to think better of it and reaches for the spreadsheets on the desk, instead. “I know."
***
They get dinner from the vending machine outside the lab at 9. They’re not done yet, but the changes should at least cover up the machine’s true properties. It’s ready for the presentation, at least. Jungkook eats enough for a small family. Seokjin just watches him from where he’s perched on the work desk at the other side of the room, biting into his own sandwich.
“How did he propose to you,” Jungkook asks. Seokjin shifts, obviously uncomfortable. “Tell me.”
“We’ve been dating for a year and he got down on one knee in a restaurant,” Seokjin says, his words slurring from how quickly he’s talking. “That’s all. I don’t think this matters anymore. I’m not going back to him.”
“Then, Saturday…”
Seokjin shakes his head. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
Jungkook nods and keeps his silence.
“You know.” Seokjin laughs like he’s gasping for air. “He was going to fly us to the Maldives. You’d think he’d be playing with his new toy instead.”
“He had good priorities,” Jungkook says honestly.
Seokjin raises an eyebrow at him. “Don’t stick up for him. God knows what he’s planning.”
They stew in silence again.
“What happens tomorrow night,” Seokjin asks.
“Hyung, I really don’t think-” Seokjin sets down his food with a thump. He drinks a small, measured sip from his bottle and walks over to Jungkook. The chair creaks as Seokjin leans over Jungkook with his hands caging him in. He lowers his head until Jungkook’s eye to eye with the top knob of spine. They seem to breath as a collective, and Jungkook is frozen in his seat, anticipating and dreading.
Seokjin breathes, shaky, and draws himself up to nose at Jungkook’s jaw. “Jungkook,” he murmurs against the sensitive skin of his neck. And then Seokjin kisses him on the mouth. It’s as good as Jungkook remembers. He draws his arms around Seokjin’s neck, pulling him in.
“We should…” Jungkook says, his protest dying even before he completes his sentence. Seokjin smiles at him with a knowing look, and strokes the short hairs on the back of his neck.
They don’t have anything, so Seokjin hoists Jungkook onto the work desk and slides a hand into his underwear, gripping firm. Jungkook scrabbles at Seokjin’s belt to return the favour while he mouths at Seokjin’s shoulder. The fabric burns the side of his mouth, the heat unbearable, but Seokjin knows how to break him and put him back together. He knows how to touch and tease Jungkook until he’s panting hard, his thighs burning from hooking Seokjin in, their thrusts punching out of their bodies, urgent and furious.
At some point, Seokjin’s mouthing at his chin, his cheekbones, kissing his temple, like Jungkook’s safe and treasured. Seokjin’s fingers brand his hips and his moans singe his bloodstream. Jungkook laughs in delight.
He feels invincible.
***
seokjin/jungkook, r
essentially, jungkook is a hypothetical taken too far.
time travel au
major character death, suicide, car accidents, infidelity
Disclaimer: I am in no way an expert on (or even a student of) quantum physics or time travel, so suspension of disbelief is required. I understand that the character death and time travel tags will raise concerns about the endgame; please click on the endnotes for my answer. Endnotes contain all the spoilers.
Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall
Jungkook wakes up to the sun shining on his face and Seokjin curled up against him. Seokjin’s still asleep, and with his long lashes and parted mouth, he looks like something out of a dream. His hair is almost golden in the sunlight. Their legs are tangled together under the sheets, bare from yesterday, and Jungkook slides his ankle up Seokjin’s calf just because he can.
The Seoul traffic rumbles from outside his apartment. His lover stirs.
“Jungkook?” Seokjin rubs at his eyes.
“‘Morning, sleepyhead.” Jungkook leans in to kiss him on the mouth, but Seokjin sits up quickly, scrubbing his face with his palms. “Are you late for something?”
“No, but...” Seokjin says, and slips out of Jungkook’s grasp like water. He disappears into the bathroom. Something’s wrong. The hard-won peace between the two of them seems to be slipping again, and despite the bubbling feeling in Jungkook’s gut that tells him to fight for it, part of him wants to sink in back into the bed. Watch it unfold and collapse.
“Want me to make you breakfast,” he offers.
Seokjin is silent in the bathroom for a long while. No sound of running water, just a deep, unnerving quiet. When he emerges, he’s dressed in a bathrobe fastened almost up to his neck.
“Jungkook, we have to talk,” he says slowly. He’s standing so still.
Jungkook tosses his head in a last show of defiance. “About what?”
“About Yoongi.”
Jungkook stills and flicks his gaze up to Seokjin’s face “I thought you didn’t love him.”
Seokjin shrinks away from Jungkook’s words. “It’s complicated now. I spoke to him yesterday and he says he wants to renew the marriage, restart the whole thing again.” His mouth curls into a small smile, the kind of smile that makes Jungkook weak, and he looks down and fiddles with the wedding ring on his finger. Seokjin always takes his wedding ring off with Jungkook.
“You were with me yesterday.” Jungkook can’t help the hurt in his tone. Seokjin said he loved him, not Yoongi, and now one conversation with the husband who “was never there” will destroy the only positive relationship in Jungkook’s life.
Seokjin shakes his head, his smile slipping. “You don’t understand...”
“I understand what we’re doing together.” Seokjin shrinks back further. “You wanted this.” Jungkook knows he’s raising his voice but he can’t find the desire to care. Don’t you want this? Don’t you want me?
“Jungkook, stop, please?” Jungkook closes his mouth just because he doesn’t know if he can stop his voice from breaking if they go further. Seokjin stands up to collect the articles of clothing from the floor. “I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To work. And you should go to your class,” Seokjin says, slipping on his shirt.
“He doesn’t even-” Jungkook’s voice does break and he claps a hand to his mouth, willing himself to calm down. “He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t even go home for three months and you-”
“I think he’s trying.” Seokjin shrugs, as though having a bad marriage is just a minor inconvenience.
“Hyung...”
“I’m sorry, Jungkook.” Seokjin reaches for him hesitantly, and touches him on the shoulder with just the tips of his fingers. “I know you’re upset. I had to tell you before it got any further."
He hands Jungkook his pants and shirt, and Jungkook puts it on quickly and without thought.
“Will I see you again,” Jungkook asks, and hates that his voice wavers. Seokjin goes to straighten his tie at the bathroom mirror.
Jungkook lies back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling.
After some time, Seokjin pads out of the bathroom and taps his knee, just like old times. He looks a little frightened and nervous, rocking on the balls of his feet. “I’m going now.” He makes an aborted move to lean down, but seems to think better of it. He smoothes a hand against Jungkook’s fringe, instead, and lets himself out of the apartment.
Jungkook turns onto his side and lets the sun beat punishingly against his back.
***
He spends the first day buried under his blanket binge watching Song Joongki professing his love on-screen and the second day sleeping as much as he can.
In between, he thinks about how much Seokjin doesn’t like to hang out with him in public, talks about himself too much, and nags at him too much about his school work. And then, in between that, he remembers how Seokjin cried when he had gotten really sick, how he stood up to the professor who was grading Jungkook down on purpose, their long walks in the middle of the night… Jungkook feels the ache returning again.
They had met in one of the many parties in Jungkook’s first week of his second semester. They had danced, and then Seokjin had brought Jungkook back to his apartment to fuck. Graduate students at SNU had cushy apartments, it turned out.
“You’re a physics major?” Seokjin looked at him eagerly. “I’m in the graduate school for Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics.”
Afterwards, they talked about string theory and whatever fucking bullshit Jungkook remembers studying in the last six months. It was rudimentary, as Seokjin pointed out, but it got the conversation going.
One time turned into a regular occurrence, until Seokjin told Jungkook that he was married to one of the most famous physicists in the university circuit, the chaebol of Korea-Global Industries.
Jungkook couldn’t even speak, and when Seokjin reached over to apologise, or plead his case-he never got to find out-Jungkook stormed out of his apartment with his shirt askew and pants unbuttoned, defiant and heart-broken. He hoped that this Min Yoongi would catch him there and then, and so Seokjin would suffer the consequences of what he did, but the husband never turned up.
***
Jungkook’s house phone wakes him up. He slaps away the day-old pizza boxes and dirty underwear to reach it, and picks up with a raspy “Taehyung, I told you not to call me.”
“It’s not Taehyung,” Jimin says, and Jungkook’s instantly on the edge. It’s nice to be reminded that his two best friends from high school are still living together. “What’re you doing? Why didn’t you answer your mobile?”
“Sleeping.”
Jimin sighs loudly, the air making the line crackle. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I don’t care.” Jungkook rolls over and jams his elbow into stale cereal.
“Jungkook.” Jimin’s tone becomes reproachable, and it makes Jungkook more irritated. Seokjin was like that, too. It made Jungkook want to be a better person, but now Seokjin’s on the other side of the world fucking his again-husband in the Maldives or something.
“Come spend some time with us. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
“It hasn’t even been two days,” Jungkook sighs.
“You need to get out sometime. And stop calling for deliveries all the time.”
“How do you know?”
Jimin scoffs. “You’ve broken up with Seokjin how many times now?” Jungkook huffs out a bitter laugh and flops back onto his bed. “It’s for real?”
“He’s getting back with his husband.” Even saying it hurts. Jungkook thumps his head against his window sill. He can see the regular evening pile up on the highway from here, and it makes him want to laugh, that no one knows what’s happened between him and Seokjin.
His QC Intro* professor just dropped him an email, asking why he didn’t turn up for his mid-terms. Jungkook didn’t give him an answer, and he doesn’t even know if it was out of fear or out of apathy at the entire situation.
The world still moves, and Jungkook has been lying in the same spot, stagnant, for two days.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Min Yoongi’s super busy right? Being CEO and all.”
“Yeah.” Jungkook sighs. “I thought he wouldn’t even notice.”
***
Seokjin begged for weeks whenever they had a fight, and it used to confuse Jungkook so much. Why beg when you have a husband to go back to? Why beg when you already have everything?
But in the end, he still went back, because he knew he couldn’t deny Seokjin. Happier times were when they were together, much to Jimin and Taehyung’s chagrin.
Then Seokjin graduated and started working at KGI. Jungkook was left behind.
Perhaps he never recovered from that.
***
Jungkook has to drag himself to the restaurant. The roads are crowded with couples and it takes everything in him not to start shouting and cursing at them. The pre-dinner soju wasn’t a good idea after all.
He checks his phone for the address again and looks up to see-
Seokjin-Jungkook knows it’s him, the hair, the face, the gait, he knows it by heart-standing at the curb in his three-piece, waiting to cross the road. He’s frowning, looking at his watch. He’s impatient and waiting. Maybe he’s unhappy.
The words clog at his throat. “S-seokjin,” Jungkook calls, and he starts to run to him. “Hyung!”
Seokjin looks up at him with wide eyes. Jungkook knows he’s seen him. He’s about ten paces away when Seokjin starts to walk into the oncoming traffic.
Jungkook doesn’t even have time to turn away.
***
They sit on the curb, Jungkook in between Jimin and Taehyung, with Jimin’s coat wrapped around Jungkook’s shoulders, as they watch the paramedics and policemen rush around. Jungkook is oddly calm, or numb. He’s seen what happened and Seokjin has been lying on the asphalt for thirty minutes. It’s only when Jimin puts his hand on Jungkook’s that he realizes he’s shaking.
Finally, finally, they wheel Seokjin-covered completely in a white sheet-into the back of the ambulance.
“I have to go,” Jungkook mutters, slipping out of Jimin’s grasp.
“You sure you’re okay?” Taehyung reaches for him, but Jungkook shrugs him off.
“Fine.” And he’s stumbling on home, his hands tucked into his pockets.
Seokjin saw him. He had to. Did Jungkook distract him when he was just trying to cross the road?
He walks about half the distance home before he has to stop and try to stop hyperventilating in an alleyway. When he’s done, he’s kneeling on the dirt floor and winded. He takes a detour to the neighborhood park, but even the greenery doesn’t help; the fresh air burns his lungs. Jungkook settles into an empty park bench while he tries not to throw up.
People stare and whisper while they pass him doubled up in the park, shivering and struggling to catch his breath. He can hear the sirens even from here, and he huddles closer in on himself. His breath get knocked out of him again.
“Breathe in and hold it. You’re hyperventilating,” an elderly man says, and settles into the seat next to Jungkook. He wants to tell the man to piss off, but he can barely speak. “Take a deep breath and hold it in three, two, one…”
Jungkook obeys, helpless. “Let go. And again. Take a deep breath in…”
His breathing slows in time, and when it does, he turns to face the man. “Thank you, sir, uhm. For that.”
The man waves a hand at him, an energetic movement that seems contradictory to his almost fragile frame. It seems like one wheeze can knock him over, and here he is, talking Jungkook through a panic attack. “I’ve had my fair share in my lifetime. It’s always good to help someone out, you know?” Jungkook nods slowly, not understanding. “What happened to you, my boy?”
Jungkook shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”
The man pauses. “I’m sorry if I sound too intrusive.”
“No, uhm.” Jungkook trails off, unsure of how to respond. The old man is sharp, and Jungkook doesn’t want to talk about what just happened just yet, but something in him urges him to stay and listen to the old man. He closes his eyes and lies back against the bench.
“You look tired,” the old man remarks. “Are you thinking of someone?”
Jungkook opens his eyes blearily. The man is looking into the distance with a faraway look, and it makes it feel less revealing, for him to say something.
“I liked this person for a long time, but things didn’t work out,” he says, trying for vague.
The old man fixes him with a strong gaze, the effect startling. “If you could go back and change things, would you?”
“I don’t quite understand, sir…”
The old man sighs. “I’ve had a lot of regrets when I was younger. And I always thought, if I could go back and change that moment-that moment I said the wrong thing or spoke to the right person at the right time-things would have been different.” He speaks as though reciting from a book. His pace is slow and measured, and Jungkook finds himself lulled. “An old man always has a long list of regrets. What about you? Do you regret something?”
Jungkook nods.
“Would you want to go back and change it?”
“More than anything,” Jungkook says, as sincerely as he can.
“I see.” The man smiles at him, the skin around his eyes crinkling like paper. “Some things never change, then, through the generations.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll understand when you get older,” he says, and gives Jungkook a wry smile, as though he knows something Jungkook doesn’t.
“Sir-” A car honks in the distance, breaking their bubble. Jungkook tears his gaze from the man, his heart hammering.
When he turns back around, the man is no longer there.
Jungkook whirls around, searching, but the only people around are young couples sitting under the moonlight. His heart flips whenever he catches a sliver of grey, but the old man is gone, disappeared like he didn’t exist in the first place. Maybe Jungkook’s finally losing it.
He goes home.
The gloomy living room greets him when he unlocks the door, and it’s hard to imagine that a few hours ago in the same house, his greatest concern was how long he was going to take to get over Seokjin.
Seokjin had looked at him before he-it happened. It’s clear that the look on his face hadn’t been surprise.
An arm wraps around his waist from behind and Jungkook nearly screams the house down.
Seokjin springs back, laughing. “Sorry, but welcome home,” he says, and moves back in to drop a kiss on Jungkook’s cheek. Jungkook freezes in his arms. Seokjin looks at him and frowns.
“What’s wrong?” He ruffles Jungkook’s hair, his palm warm-real-alive. “Supper’s almost ready. I made your favourite.” Seokjin gives him one last quizzical look before he goes to the kitchen, leaving Jungkook shaking in shock. Or wonder.
***
Jungkook checks the date on his alarm clock and its three days earlier than what he remembers it to be, one day before their breakup, and three days… He doesn’t want to think about it, but Seokjin’s sitting right in front of him at the dining table, feeding him pieces of marbled beef.
It’s impossible. His hyung still smiles at him in the same way. The way he moves and talks, how he takes a small breath when he’s thinking, Jungkook knows them by heart, spent years looking at Seokjin and memorising his actions. He used to pride himself on how well he knows him and how to respond to him.
Jungkook has to excuse himself to the bathroom afterwards and closes his eyes. This isn’t a dream, and Jungkook doesn’t know why he’s sure, but it feels true. When he walks out, Seokjin looks troubled, but he still puts on a smile for Jungkook. So Yoongi called him then. Jungkook play along, corners Seokjin in the kitchen and press lingering kisses to the knob of his spine.
“I really miss you,” he murmurs into Seokjin’s skin, and he wishes he can imprint the words deeper so Seokjin will know and will not do what he did-has already done-tomorrow morning. He didn’t say anything the first time, probably too tired from school, eager to get to bed.
Seokjin laughs, his voice light. His hands cover Jungkook’s over his waist and squeezes. “I just saw you yesterday, what’re you saying?”
“I know,” Jungkook says, and it’s so earnest it hurts his heart to say it in retrospect.
Seokjin hums and lets go of his hands. The moment is broken.
“I need to go to the lab early tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll go wash up.” He leaves Jungkook alone in the kitchen.
Then the lock on the front door turns.
Now, the night three days ago becomes clear-they didn’t have dinner together because Jungkook was rushing an assignment in the university library and came home late-
Jungkook dives behind the door and waits for it to swing over him and god, it was him, wearing his university sweatshirt and joggers and stuffing his keys into his pocket and the sight is nauseating, to see someone, even himself, slip into their life so easily. Jungkook almost reaches out to touch him-himself, but stops before his fingers make contact.
Panic seizes him, and he takes one last look at his doppelganger before slipping out of the door. He prays that Seokjin will never know the difference.
***
It’s impossible, but there’s no other alternative explanation besides he’s going insane. He’s a physics major, he did quantum mechanics last semester in uni. He’s read about time travel in passing; it’s technically possible, no matter how small that possibility is.
God, he is insane for even considering it. He’s a scientist. Even if quantum physics has made some headway in the recent years, the idea that he’s even trapped in a CTC** is…
He heads to Taehyung’s and Jimin’s shared apartment. Jimin opens the door and gives him a confused smile.
“Jungkook? Why’re you here, what’s up?”
Jungkook opens his mouth to say, I think just got transported back in time and I need to know I’m not losing my mind, but nothing comes out. He gapes and wheezes as Jimin grows increasingly concerned. Finally, he manages a weak, “Taehyung?”
“He’s sleeping. Are you sick?” Jungkook shakes his head. “Oh. Is it Seokjin?”
It’s as good as the truth. Jungkook nods. Jimin puts a hand on his shoulder and guides him in. “Coffee?”
“It’s okay,” Jungkook mutters and curls up on the couch, winded. Jimin pats him gingerly on his side.
“You can stay over if you want,” he says quietly. “If things are rough...I know you don’t like to be at home when it happens…”
Jungkook bites back his instinctive reaction to shrug off Jimin’s touch-which is whenever his friend wants to talk about Jungkook’s relationship with Seokjin-and murmurs a quiet acquiescence.
“What happened?”
“I feel like I don’t belong here,” Jungkook says, and this is as close as he can get to the truth. If there’s another Jungkook around, he’d have to hide in the shadows constantly. Cautiously, he allows himself to think about what has happened: the old man in the park, Seokjin miraculously alive after the accident, himself within arm’s reach. Nothing makes sense. “Even with him in my own house…” And that’s true too. Perhaps even with this chance to fix things, he will still remain the outsider.
Jimin watches him with a frown. “I don’t know what to say, Jungkook. I told you before-”
“I know.” That this will never last. Jungkook knows that this reality has materialized, and will materialize tomorrow. He lowers his gaze and fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt. Jimin is probably giving him a look of pure frustration. They’ve been over the topic of Seokjin for about a hundred times over the two years, and the problem is that Jungkook subconsciously knows that this will be the outcome, but he still hoped.
“You should get some sleep. Deal with this tomorrow,” Jimin says.
“I will.”
He must have sounded so dejected, because Jimin’s voice turns gentle, the kind that never happens when they talk about Seokjin. “You never know what can happen tomorrow, right?” Except Jungkook already does know, and he is powerless to stop it. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new, maybe from the coffee shop or the park…” Jimin pats him on the back. “You’ll be back up in no time.”
***
After Jimin bids him a good night and closes the bedroom door, Jungkook slides out of the couch and closes the door. He says a silent apology in his head to his long-suffering friend, because he has to see Seokjin again, before…
And, he has to go to the park until he can track down the man and make him reverse this, or even to tell him what he’s supposed to do. Now that he has the time to think about it, if the man had wanted him to truly change the event that caused Seokjin’s death, it wouldn’t be to send him to see himself with Seokjin for the last day. He can’t change a thing.
And why today? Something has to happen today.
He walks to his apartment in the cover of night. The silence makes everything lonelier, as if the first time wasn’t enough. Jungkook doses fretfully, and in between sleep and wakefulness, dreams of Seokjin-Seokjin smiling at him at supper, looking at him across the street before he steps off the curb. There’re earlier memories, too. Seokjin ringing his doorbell at 5 A.M. after their first big fight; in bed, whispering into Jungkook’s ear, “what would I do without you?” just to hear Jungkook’s bashful reply.
He wakes up as the first rays of dawn and he jolts upright. It’s soon, then. The other Jungkook will be waking up soon. He conceals himself and waits.
Some time later, Seokjin opens the gate with a tired frown on his face. Seeing him again, and knowing himself, how much he wanted to see Seokjin again before the accident-his regret and latent shock from the loss-
Jungkook waits until Seokjin turns the corner, and then he’s up and following him.
“Seokjin,” he calls, and in his haste, puts a hand on his shoulder. Seokjin turns around, and his frown folds into itself.
“Jungkook, I said we can’t do this,” Seokjin says. He looks so unhappy.
“Does Yoongi know,” Jungkook blurts out. He knows he’s gripping Seokjin’s shirt sleeve hard. “Is that why you’re-”
Seokjin jerks his hand away, his eyes flickering to the people passing by. Jungkook swallows and drops his hand. They look like a sight, with Jungkook still dressed for dinner and Seokjin with his business suit and briefcase, and they’re fighting in the open. It’s exactly what it looks like.
“Does he know?” Jungkook wants to tell him to stay home, stay home until the week is over. He’s ready to stay with Seokjin for the entire two days and not let him out of his sight until he’s sure he did change this event, that Seokjin will survive Friday night.
The Seokjin in front of him doesn’t even want to be with him right this moment. Somehow, that revelation hurts more the second time.
Seokjin bows his head. “For years.”
“Then why…”
Seokjin sighs. “I don’t know why he wants me back. But this is marriage, Jungkook, it’s not…
“It’s not something that’s easy to walk away from.” And Jungkook’s underestimated Seokjin’s ability to hurt, yet again. “I hope you understand my decision.”
Jungkook bites his lip, worrying it until he can taste blood. “When are you going to renew your vows?”
“This Saturday.” Then why, on Friday… “Jungkook, I really have to go.” Seokjin smiles at him, and he looks a little sad. “I have to go to the lab.”
“Can I see you again?” Jungkook blurts out. “On Friday? Just one last time?”
Seokjin opens his mouth, and Jungkook knows he’s going to say no, so he pleads. “For closure.”
Seokjin sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Okay. Just dinner.”
Relief washes over Jungkook. “Thank you.”
“I really have to go.”
“Okay. Don’t keep Yoongi waiting.”
Seokjin hurries down the street and disappears around the corner, and Jungkook slumps onto the ground.
He did it. So why does it feel like a hollow victory?
***
He goes back to his apartment when the other Jungkook is sprawled out on the bed, passed out from crying. God, it’s still strange to see himself without a mirror. He wants to wake himself up, tell him, you’ll get to see him on Friday and stop this. You won’t have him back, but he’s alive. That’s all that matters, right?
He even hovers over his own prone form, inches from touching, but the insistent tugging in his belly tells him to pull back. This is wrong, this is dangerous. This will ruin what he has built. And he doesn’t know how to explain to himself how everything happened. Best case scenario, regular Jungkook will laugh in his face and call the police.
Jungkook bites his lip and takes his mobile, instead. Seokjin will need to call him. Regular Jungkook will not get the closure, but Seokjin will be alive, at least. That’s all that matters.
He texts Seokjin to meet him in a restaurant on the other side of town five minutes before the accident is supposed to happen. Even if Jungkook has to go back, Seokjin will be safe. He gets the confirmation text seconds later. He texts Jimin and Taehyung to meet him at the restaurant, too. Knowing them, they’ll see Seokjin and will want to have a few words with him, and he won’t make it to the place of the accident in time for it to happen.
Just in case he can’t make it himself.
***
The old man is at the edge of park when Jungkook finds him, plucking out the weeds from the ground with his bare hands and dropping them into the small stream next to the grass.
“You’re late,” the old man says as Jungkook approaches.
“Sir-” Jungkook wants to be polite, he really does, but the confusion from the recent events and his lack of sleep makes him want to lash out, grab the man by the collar and demand for things to be righted. “Sir, what’s going on?”
The old man turns to him. “I don’t need to say it; you already know.” And he goes back to plucking.
His apathy stirs something ugly inside Jungkook. “What did you do to me,” he grits out.
“The question is, what did you do to yourself?” Jungkook opens his mouth to argue, but the elderly man plows ahead, as though already anticipating what Jungkook’s words. “You said you want to go back and fix things, so you got what you wanted. Is that not enough?”
“Tell me what you did to me,” Jungkook says, his voice raising. “You-”
The old man finally looks at him. “It’s an opportunity.”
“I’ve taken it. Now let me go back.”
“You think you’ve done what you can. Is it enough?”
Jungkook is silent.
“You young kids never wait until your efforts bear fruit,” the old man mutters, and turns back to his grass patch. “What happened to patience and perseverance?”
“I don’t care. Turn me back.”
The old man shakes his head. “It’s not up to me.”
“Who, then? When will I go back?” Jungkook’s heart is racing, the dreaded question at the tip of his lips. “What’s going to happen to me when I succeed?”
The old man pauses, and then he looks at Jungkook with a sort of sad loneliness. “When it happens, you have to come back to the park,” he said, as if that was the answer to everything. Now, Jungkook is starting to feel like the air is an enclosure. The park seems like an artificial setting-its greenery already out of place in the metropolis, but now even the noise of the water stream to reverberate, as if there are walls caging them in.
“Sir…” For the first time, Jungkook feels a deepening sense of dread. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
The man shrugs, and this motion makes Jungkook unsettled to his core. It’s a boyish movement, a sharpness that’s out of place in the wizened frame. “I can’t tell you. You understand the need to wait, don’t you? That’s the reason why you didn’t speak to your other.” He plucks another weed. “Don’t think you’re the only one who’s seeking to change something.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Time is a delicate ecosystem,” the man says. “The actions and consequences feed on one another to ensure the survivability of life. There are things that need to happen in sequence.” He tosses the weed into the pond next to them, and they watch the strands of grass separate down the stream. “I am only one of its mechanisms to make sure of that. And now you are, too.
“Jungkook, time and change dismantle life. So, don’t change too much.”
***
His first instinct is to go stay over at Jimin and Taehyung’s, but in his original timeline, Jungkook holes himself up for two days. If the three of them talk to each other at all, the paradox will be easily exposed. And besides, if the other Jungkook decides to turn up at their doorstep, there’s no telling what will follow. Jungkook is not ready to drag his friends into this mess. He has already changed something, and if he changes things too much, things might eventually fix itself up, probably. His head spins from the possibilities and how they intersect.
Two days.
The old man said what he has already done isn’t enough, and Jungkook agrees with him somewhat. There’s too little to go off on, and he needs to know more. He needs to know, for sure, that he’s made the right changes.
He sits outside Seokjin’s office, the only other place he knows his other self won’t go near, watching the stream of scientists and businessmen march past him. And there among the flock is Seokjin.
Yoongi isn’t around him, surprisingly, even though he’s technically Seokjin’s boss. Jungkook thought they would have been all over each other after Yoongi asked to renew their vows, but it makes sense. Seokjin did mention on several occasions that Yoongi’s style of mentorship in the company was a little too hands-off, and that extended to their intimate life as well.
“You have me,” he told Seokjin whenever they broached the subject of Yoongi, and Seokjin would smile and lean in, kiss him on the edge of his mouth and echo, “I have you.” God. He was so stupidly eager to please, then, puffing up with pride just because he made Seokjin happy.
So why did that memory alone make him smile and seek out Seokjin in the crowd? His ex-lover is still walking among the crowd, his face set in a deep frown. Jungkook feels the pull at the pit of his stomach, and he follows the feeling, follows Seokjin and tugs at the waist of his coat.
“Jungkook?” Seokjin’s frown deepens, and with a glance at the people around them, he ushers them to one side of the pavement. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I-My class got cancelled,” Jungkook fibs.
Seokjin goggles at him, and Jungkook knows he’s seen right through the lie. “Well, what’re you doing here?”
Jungkook wants to say, I came to see you, but it doesn’t seem appropriate. Seokjin saves him from answering, however. “Your campus is on the other side of the city,” he mutters, and then he’s chuckling and shaking his head, as though laughing at himself, or Jungkook. Jungkook can only watch on in confusion.
Seokjin takes his arm with a gentle smile. “You’re always there when I-nevermind. Lunch?”
***
One time, Seokjin knocked on Jungkook’s door at some time in the early morning, begging to be let in, as he always did when he had a fight with his husband.
“I’m going to leave him soon,” Seokjin murmured when Jungkook let him in. “I don’t even understand why he married me if he won’t even look at me.” Jungkook tucked his chin into the crook of Seokjin’s neck, pressing him back into his chest. I’ll look at you, he thought. So look back at me.
“You’re always there when I need you the most,” Seokjin whispered into Jungkook’s ear, when he was pretending to be asleep. That was probably as close as Jungkook could get to a love confession. Seokjin didn’t do things like that. Or not anymore, after Yoongi.
From what Jungkook understood of their relationship, Yoongi met him at a physics convention in ’05 and swept him off his feet. Everything had been great, until it wasn’t. These days, Yoongi wouldn’t even make the effort to talk to Seokjin over dinner.
And then Seokjin met Jungkook.
***
They have their lunch in one of the restaurants in the outskirts of the industrial park. Jungkook eats his food ravenously; he hasn’t had any for more than a day now.
“Slow down,” Seokjin chides, but he polishes off his food quickly, too.
Jungkook wants to concentrate on committing everything to memory. A part of him feels guilty that he can never share this with the other Jungkook, who’s still trying his best to get back up on his feet. Seokjin’s frowning, though, staring at his food as though it has personally offended him.
“Hyung, did something happen?”
“That obvious?”
“You got that crinkle between your eyebrows.” He almost reaches out to touch Seokjin before he remembers he’s not supposed to anymore.
“Yoongi’s being his usual self. And we have a side-effect with our prototype that we need to fix before the board presentation.”
“When’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Shit.” Jungkook winces in sympathy.
Seokjin smiles. “I know.”
They lapse into silence again. Seokjin props his chin on one palm as he gazes at Jungkook. It’s slightly overwhelming, to be watched so closely as he eats. It’s been one of the more intimate things they’ve done together.
If Jungkook needed someone to rely on, Seokjin would be his best choice. He remembers Seokjin vaguely mentioning his project, something about changing the molecular makeup of inanimate objects. He must know something about time travel, even if it's just an extension of pop-science.
“Hyung,” Jungkook begins carefully. “Do you know anything about time travel?”
The way Seokjin stops mid-bite already gives Jungkook a clear indication. “What about?” His tone is overly-polite.
Jungkook’s heart is beating so loudly he can feel it in his eardrums. He tamps down the twisting feeling in his gut, the ice-cold feeling of wrong. “That time when we talked outside my house.” Seokjin’s gaze sharpens. “I wasn’t me-I-”
Seokjin lunges forward, his eyes wide and his finger pressed against his lips. Quiet. Jungkook freezes. Seokjin takes a long, careful look around the restaurant, and then says, voice tight, “we need to talk somewhere more private.”
He takes Jungkook to the carpark, all the while glancing back and forth at the throng of people with wide eyes.
Seokjin gestures Jungkook into the passenger side of the car and gets into the driver’s seat. Half a second passes before Seokjin asks, “have you told anyone about this?” His jaw is clenched, and it scares Jungkook, to see Seokjin so stoic and tense.
“No. Hyung, what’s going on?”
“I can’t believe it,” Seokjin mutters. “So it happened already.” He takes a long breath. “Then who was it that I left in your apartment? You, or someone else?”
“I don’t know,” Jungkook says honestly, and tells Seokjin about the man at the park. He doesn’t bring up the accident. “I’m not the same person. I think we have different memories now.”
Seokjin sighs. “It has to be this machine. I made a mistake, I miscalibrated the electromagnetic field…”
“You were working on antigravity?”
“We were supposed to. And now I don’t even know if that was the original intention at all. Yoongi.” Seokjin pauses, hesitating. “Yoongi was overseeing the project, and Jungkook, I think-” He turns away from Jungkook.
Jungkook puts a hand against Seokjin’s shoulder, leaning in. Comforting. “You can tell me.”
“I think he planned this. Something’s going to happen soon, I can feel it.” He turns to Jungkook, his eyes glittering in the darkness. “I think...the less you know of it, the better.”
“Hyung,” Jungkook protests. “I can help. But I need to know what happened to me. What’s going to happen to me.”
“According to theory, you’ll keep existing in the same timeline, I think. But we don’t know for sure unless we test it.”
“You mean, until it happens?”
“Until the point of the paradox,” Seokjin corrects.
Jungkook exhales shakily. “I won’t even exist?”
“You will,” Seokjin says with absolute certainty, and takes Jungkook’s hand and holds it between his own. “You will,” he repeats. Jungkook believes him.
Gazing at Seokjin’s determined expression, he remembers his original wish, and the old man’s words again. If you could go back and change things, would you?
Then, he isn’t the only one with a vendetta against time, and the past.
***
“I’m going to look into this,” Seokjin tells him as they get out of the car. “Don’t change anything, Jungkook, until I call you.”
“Too late for that,” Jungkook mutters.
Seokjin shoots him a glare. “You know what I mean.”
“You have a presentation tomorrow, you should focus on that,” Jungkook reminds him.
Seokjin goes rigid. “I don’t think so,” he says slowly, and the realization forms in Jungkook’s mind, too. “If this is so important, if this changes everything, I don’t think Yoongi would want this to even get out to the other board members. I don’t think the presentation will even happen.”
“How’s he going to stop this? You probably had it scheduled for weeks.”
“Months. He’s not going to want to postpone it. He will want to cancel it entirely,” Seokjin trails off meaningfully. “He’s done it before. The airstrike last year I told you about?"
“That was him?” Seokjin nods affirmative.
“Hyung, we don’t know what he’s going to do. I don’t think you should go to the office tomorrow.” Or cross any roads for the foreseeable future.
“Yoongi will tell me if he tries anything. I’m still his husband.”
He’s done nothing but hurt you, Jungkook wants to say. “Okay, hyung. I trust you.”
“Of course you do.” Seokjin smiles. “So sit tight. I’ll figure things out.”
“Hyung. I don’t think this is just about the presentation.”
“Did something happen?”
“Tomorrow evening, but I don’t think I should tell you,” Jungkook says carefully. “But you have to hurry. We don’t have time.”
“That’s our dinner, right?” Seokjin’s smile falters. “Jungkook… did you plan that?”
Jungkook ducks his head. “Please don’t make me tell you.”
Seokjin’s inhale is sharp. “Come with me, then.”
***
They breeze past the security at the ground floor with no problems, but Jungkook is still taunt like a string, waiting for Yoongi to spring out with his army of bodyguards and haul him away from Seokjin. He probably knows what Jungkook looks like and where he lives and studies at. Jungkook stepping into the headquarters of his company, practically gift-wrapped, isn’t an opportunity that a rational man would pass up.
No one comes for them.
Seokjin leads Jungkook into his lab with a tap of his keycard. “Keep your head down, don’t talk to anyone,” Seokjin murmurs to him, handing him a lab coat.
“What do we do?”
“We fix the machine,” Seokjin says. “My team is working on it, but I don’t think they know what they’re even looking at.”
“You haven’t told them?”
Seokjin chuckles under his breath. “It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just don’t trust Yoongi.”
The admission makes Jungkook stop in his tracks. “You just said…”
“He won’t hurt me, but with this machine…” They head upstairs, and now Jungkook can pick up some sort of loud humming. “Anyone will want to use it. You’d be stupid not to.”
Seokjin taps into another room, and this is it. The machine’s at the centre of the room on a raised platform. It’s about as large as Jungkook’s torso, and it’s emitting the humming. Jungkook steps closer, and now he can distinguish the small beeps that are so frequent they sound like a long continuous note.
He reaches a finger to touch the circuitry on the sides. “Wouldn’t it be easier to…” he murmurs, distracted. “I don’t know. Destroy the machine?”
“I was about to, but I think it’s impossible at this point,” Seokjin says pointedly. “Someone has already used it. And I don't want Yoongi to know that I know, if he's really behind this. It might buy us some time.”
Jungkook wants to protest, but he knows that he will have to explain why. And how cruel, to tell someone when they're going to die. Jungkook clears his throat, willing away the tightness coiled in his gut, the feeling of sand trickling in an hourglass. “Is it remote-controlled? I don’t see anything that can hold the object-”
“Remote-controlled. I guess that makes it harder to track the object.” It doesn’t make sense. If Seokjin had made the mistake by accident, then why did they put in the extra effort to make it so complex?
“Did Yoongi work on this with you?”
Seokjin’s mouth tugs up into a small grin. “He probably planned this from the beginning, huh. I thought working on this project together would bring us closer. Um, sorry.”
Jungkook bites his lip. “We should focus on the machine.”
Seokjin clears his throat and nods. His hand moves towards Jungkook, but he seems to think better of it and reaches for the spreadsheets on the desk, instead. “I know."
***
They get dinner from the vending machine outside the lab at 9. They’re not done yet, but the changes should at least cover up the machine’s true properties. It’s ready for the presentation, at least. Jungkook eats enough for a small family. Seokjin just watches him from where he’s perched on the work desk at the other side of the room, biting into his own sandwich.
“How did he propose to you,” Jungkook asks. Seokjin shifts, obviously uncomfortable. “Tell me.”
“We’ve been dating for a year and he got down on one knee in a restaurant,” Seokjin says, his words slurring from how quickly he’s talking. “That’s all. I don’t think this matters anymore. I’m not going back to him.”
“Then, Saturday…”
Seokjin shakes his head. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
Jungkook nods and keeps his silence.
“You know.” Seokjin laughs like he’s gasping for air. “He was going to fly us to the Maldives. You’d think he’d be playing with his new toy instead.”
“He had good priorities,” Jungkook says honestly.
Seokjin raises an eyebrow at him. “Don’t stick up for him. God knows what he’s planning.”
They stew in silence again.
“What happens tomorrow night,” Seokjin asks.
“Hyung, I really don’t think-” Seokjin sets down his food with a thump. He drinks a small, measured sip from his bottle and walks over to Jungkook. The chair creaks as Seokjin leans over Jungkook with his hands caging him in. He lowers his head until Jungkook’s eye to eye with the top knob of spine. They seem to breath as a collective, and Jungkook is frozen in his seat, anticipating and dreading.
Seokjin breathes, shaky, and draws himself up to nose at Jungkook’s jaw. “Jungkook,” he murmurs against the sensitive skin of his neck. And then Seokjin kisses him on the mouth. It’s as good as Jungkook remembers. He draws his arms around Seokjin’s neck, pulling him in.
“We should…” Jungkook says, his protest dying even before he completes his sentence. Seokjin smiles at him with a knowing look, and strokes the short hairs on the back of his neck.
They don’t have anything, so Seokjin hoists Jungkook onto the work desk and slides a hand into his underwear, gripping firm. Jungkook scrabbles at Seokjin’s belt to return the favour while he mouths at Seokjin’s shoulder. The fabric burns the side of his mouth, the heat unbearable, but Seokjin knows how to break him and put him back together. He knows how to touch and tease Jungkook until he’s panting hard, his thighs burning from hooking Seokjin in, their thrusts punching out of their bodies, urgent and furious.
At some point, Seokjin’s mouthing at his chin, his cheekbones, kissing his temple, like Jungkook’s safe and treasured. Seokjin’s fingers brand his hips and his moans singe his bloodstream. Jungkook laughs in delight.
He feels invincible.
***