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Jimin couldn't remember the last time he had spent an extended amount of time with his hyungs (and Jungkook) without cameras documenting his every move. The LA house not having any cameras at all except for the ones they brought themselves was… weird. Felt weird. It was weird to not be watched; even in the military, Jimin had felt like he was watched all day every day, and then all night every night.
He was waiting for someone to do an interview about how he and Jungkook slept together every single night. Waiting for someone to post pictures of them in bed together during their free time, curled up together, unable to separate, hating to let go.
Most of the guys they served with hadn't been total and complete assholes (only a few of them), but there had been a divide the entire time; no one had ever forgotten that he was BTS Jimin, and no one had ever let him forget.
They walked around in old, torn, stained clothing, and sat in the hot tub naked, and Namjoon left the door open every time he took a shit. They rotated beds, which they would do with the cameras on anyway, but without the cameras, three or four or more naked bodies to a bed every night was the norm, just reveling in being seven again.
The last time they'd gotten to do this had been just one weekend before what Army called their "enlistment era" had begun, and Jimin had suffered from the lack of it for the past few years. Even with Jungkook sticking to his side like glue as much as possible.
The first night in LA, Tae fucked him hard and fast and sweaty, grunting and moving together until they came in record time, maybe even faster than when they'd been teenagers, nothing pretty or beautiful about it — except for how everything they did together was beautiful. Everything, every time, even fighting. They crawled in with Joonie hyung and Yoongi hyung without washing up, and Yoongi only slapped him once on the ass when he smelled them.
The second day in LA, Tae fucked him hard and fast and sweaty, and then slow and gentle, and then hard and fast again before bed, and they didn't stop when Jungkook flopped down and took the pillow Jimin was screaming into and fell right asleep next to them.
They calmed down by the third night, making out softly, mostly just breathing the same air. They paused for Tae to spend time in the hot tub with Jungkook, and for Jimin to shower with Jin hyung and get one of Hoba's special scalp massages, and then for Jin hyung to start shrieking when the smoke alarm went off because Nyamjoonie had tried to help make dinner for everyone and Yoongi hyung had stepped out of the kitchen for "ten minutes only, hyung, I swear to god," and somehow the foil-wrapped garlic bread had caught on fire.
Jimin's family was whole again. His heart was whole.
++
The sun should not ever be this hot. Jimin slung an arm over his eyes, and refused to look out at the yard.
"Are you gonna tell me?" asked Tae. He was not covering his eyes, he was actually lying in the sun, golden skin getting darker and more beautiful by the moment.
"Tell you what?" Jimin demurred.
"Tell me," Tae repeated softly.
Jimin sighed and rolled over onto his stomach. It was so hot even in the shade. He wanted to bury his face in Tae's armpit but was not going out into the sun even for that. But it only took a moment for Tae to come press against him, lie down on his back in the shade, and pull Jimin on top of him.
"Okay," Tae said, "now tell me."
Jimin put his head in Tae's smelly, hairy armpit. "Do you wish I was… more of a man?"
"Like… that you had a bigger dick or something?"
"I dunno. More of a… man."
"I don't really get what you're asking, Jiminah. Are you… coming out to me?"
"Coming out?" Jimin lifted up his head. "What?"
"Are you… a girl?" Tae asked cautiously. "Do you want to be a lady? Are you changing your name?"
"Tae…" Jimin sighed.
"I'll call you anything you want," Tae said sincerely. "Soulmates have no gender."
"I'm not a girl. I'm just not manly."
"What does that even mean?"
"Like look at Namjoonie hyung. He's a man, right? And Jungkookie. They're men, no one ever looks at them and thinks… that guy is a bottom."
"Okay, but… Jungkook is a bottom…" Tae moves his hand to run his fingers through Jimin's hair, and Jimin relaxes back into Tae's armpit.
"You don't get it," he mumbles, and rubs Tae's sweat onto his face. It was gross and felt gross, but also felt… right.
"I don't," agreed Tae. "Can I ask Yoongi hyung?"
"I guess." Jimin pressed his whole body closer. "He'll probably understand."
++
All of the lyrics Jimin had brought out of enlistment were… girly. Namjoon hyung made a face at him when he said so.
"Girly for who?" he finally asked. "Because… these just sound like they're ready to be a BTS song to me? And we're… not girls." Then he looked meaningfully at Jimin with raised eyebrows. "As far as I know…"
"I'm not a girl," snapped Jimin, and childishly pushed his notebook off the table in a flurry of loose papers and post it notes and postcards from Tae.
"Okay…" Namjoon said slowly. "Then your lyrics aren't girly, right? They are… Jimin-ly."
Jimin took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his face. "This sucks," he mumbled to himself.
"Is this about… did… uh…" Namjoon hyung looked so uncomfortable when Jimin glanced over. "Did something happen? In… when…"
"No, no one did anything to me." He sighed and laid back against the couch, keeping his glasses off and eyes closed. "Everyone was fine. It sucked but it was… fine. No one…" He sighed again. "No one did anything to me."
"But something happened."
"No, not really. The worst was being called… whatever, I know I'm gay and a dancer and an idol and I wear makeup. It's the same shit every time, no one's come up with anything new since I was literally six years old, right? Just 천상바텀 over and over, but… mean."
"Right." He sounded like he wanted to say more so Jimin stayed quiet. "You know that they say the same thing to everyone. No matter what you look like or how you behave or what you actually do during sex."
"Did they say that stuff to you, hyung?" Now Jimin looked over. "Really?"
Namjoon blew out air through his mouth and made a farting noise. "It doesn't matter if you're…" He hesitated, and Jimin could see him trying to pick a word, and was weirdly comforted when Namjoon hyung stuck with Korean instead of trying to apply English. "퀴어 or 이성애. They say the same thing if they don't like you. If they want to hurt you, even if you're… 일스, their version of it, if they don't like you, it's what they're going to use to knock you down." He sucked on his lip for a few moments. "It's the worst thing they can think of, all of them, to be like… us."
Jimin felt his eyes go wide, and tried to cover it by blinking normally, but instead of blinking normally he couldn't stop himself and kept going.
Namjoon hyung laughed a little awkwardly and looked down at his notebook and laptop.
"I didn't know, hyung. You never told us?"
Namjoon hyung shrugged. "I don't think I knew. Everyone thinks their best friends are the most beautiful people in the world, don't they? Can anyone imagine loving anyone else as much as they love their best friend?"
"Uh… I… don't know?" Jimin tried. "Is that what happened with… uh…" He wasn't sure they were saying her name even now, years later.
"That's what happened with everyone," Namjoon hyung said, a little private smile curving his lips. "They would always say, you love your members more than me, and I would say… yes? Of course I do? And they would say, I can't come in second place to BTS, and I would say, but… how could you ever not be second place? Right?"
"I don't think that's how it works for Jin hyung, though, hyung." Jimin definitely felt out of his depth. This was a Yoongi hyung conversation, he was pretty sure. He couldn't even imagine what Yoongi hyung would tell Namjoonie hyung if it was them talking.
"The guy who slept next to me." Namjoon hyung made a funny face. "We hated each other. But he would talk to the other guy next to him about his girlfriend, and how he knew he should be calling his best friends more but he just wanted to talk to her all the time about what they were going to do when he got out. Their kids and the apartment they're buying and whatever. All that stuff." He trailed off and looked down at his papers for a long time, the lyrics he had written especially for Jimin.
"And you wanted…" Jimin prompted after a while.
Namjoon hyung grimaced and smiled at the same time. "Ugh," he said. "I just wanted to talk to hyung. All the time. I called him the most and texted him the most, and didn't even care when half the time he was just grunting or texting me back a thumbs up. Just as long as we had that connection. They asked me about girlfriends and what I missed most about the outside sometimes, when they weren't being assholes, and I just…" He made the farting noise with his mouth again. "Who cared about my exes and meeting a new girl? I wanted to see hyung."
Namjoon hyung did not have to specify which hyung he was talking about. Jimin knew. He leaned forward.
"Is seeing hyung now everything you wanted?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah." Namjoon hyung smiled his little Yoongi hyung smile, the same one when Yoongi hyung would push him out of the way and click his tongue and say, "Hyung will do it," or curve his mouth up a tiny little bit when Namjoonie hyung read him some lyrics or played him a beat. "It doesn't even matter that he doesn't know." He dropped his smile for a moment and said seriously, "He doesn't know. Don't tell him."
"I won't," Jimin assured him. "I would never, hyung." But he was pretty sure Yoongi hyung knew, just didn't know that Namjoon hyung knew. Or had finally realized. Someone with a soulmate, Taehyung had told him when they talked about it years ago, recognizes someone else with a soulmate. And he had been right.
"I know you wouldn't, I just… had to say it." He leaned forward and brought his hands together. "I'm still thinking about it, anyway, what it means for me. If it's always meant this or if I've changed over the years."
"We've all changed over the years." Jimin wrinkled his nose. "Well, I don't think anyone of us have changed in this specific way besides you. Maybe Hobi hyung when he realized he wanted, like, 다자간 연애..?"
"Polyamory," Namjoon hyung supplied in English before Jimin had to ask. "Yeah, you guys all kind of… knew who you were."
"You knew who you were, too, hyung," Jimin said loyally. "But you're the one who changes the most of all of us all the time, because you think the most."
Namjoon hyung snorted in the exact way Jimin was hoping he would. "Nice job changing the subject, Chimchim," he replied. "You wanna tell me what's up?"
Jimin shrugged. "I dunno if it matters anymore, hyung."
"It's always going to matter to me," Namjoon hyung said kindly. "But if you want to go back to lyrics, we can."
Jimin leaned over to pick up his notebook and papers from the floor. "I was thinking of this one as like… a 'Serendipity' reference, even though it's so different," he said, opening his notebook to the right page, marked by the postcard from Tae that was just 너는 나 나는 너 in his sloppy cursive.
++
"Okay." Tae threw himself on the bed with a pile of clothing. "Yoongi hyung didn't help at all, but Jungkookie said maybe you need to feel more mask." He said "mask" in English. 마스크? Jimin didn't get it.
"I don't want to wear a mask," Jimin protested. "Unless we're doing roleplay again."
"Yeah, roleplay," Tae said enthusiastically. "But not with a mask — masc like 근육, but Jungkook says it's different in English, like more exaggerated."
"Oh…" Jimin said slowly, trying to process. "So…"
"So even if you don't wanna top me, you can…" Tae sorted out the clothes. "Look, you have all these! You just have to wear them like… together."
Jimin frowned down at what Tae found. Cargo pants and a small black t-shirt Jimin was pretty sure actually belonged to Yoongi hyung, and the black boots Jimin had been avoiding because they were… not quite like the boots that were part of their uniforms, but close enough.
"So, you dress up like this," Taehyung was explaining enthusiastically, "and you come onto me, and you're really aggressive, and you push me around —"
"I don't know…" Jimin said slowly. "I actually… don't think I want to do that?"
"Oh." Tae sat up straight and pushed the clothes to the side. "But…"
"I mean — I'm thinking about it, right? Should I be more of a man? But is this…" Jimin gestured to the clothes. "What a man is? Being aggressive and pushing you around is what I think a man is?"
"Is it?" Tae reached out to touch his knee. "You like it when I push you around sometimes and I'm a man, right?"
"Right, but that doesn't make you a man. Like in your own head. Right?"
"I don't know what makes me a man." Tae cocked his head. "There's a bunch of things I think of as man stuff for me, like I take care of you and I top, but there's a lot of other stuff for me, too, right, that makes me think I'm a man? When they used to make fun of us for wearing makeup and dancing, they were calling me a girl too, even though I'm a man, and Joonie hyung was your example and people have always said that about him too."
Jimin nodded. "Okay…"
"So what makes me a man is that I feel like a man, and think I'm a man?" It sounds like more of a question than a statement. "What makes you a man?"
Jimin considered this for a moment. "I guess… I also feel like a man."
"Is that enough?" Taehyung didn't look like he was expecting one answer or another, and where his hand was still on Jimin's knee, it was strong and reassuring and grounding. Jimin could feel Tae's love emanating out from him in a cloud of feeling. Jimin moved closer so their legs were pressed together every place they could be while still crossed, and tried to let his own love out too, so they could soak into each other, connected even in places where they weren't touching.
"I dunno," Jimin said quietly. "It doesn't feel like enough but I guess it has to be, right?"
"If we had a checklist, we could go down it and quantify. That's what Hobi hyung would do, probably."
"But you wouldn't do that."
Taehyung shrugged. "I would paint it and see how it felt. Maybe I'll still do that, just to see what I think about it."
"I want to see that painting." Jimin took Tae's hand that was on his leg and threaded their fingers together. "Do you see a man when you look at me?"
Taehyung hesitated and Jimin felt his stomach sink. His skin suddenly felt cold and clammy.
"I don't," Taehyungie said finally, and squeezed Jimin's hand tighter like he was afraid Jimin would run away before he could finish what he was saying. But Jimin wouldn't do that. Not anymore. Hadn't done that in years. "I don't because when I look at you, I don't see you like that. I don't think I even see your physical body anymore. We're on a different plane of existence together, I can't even think of you as a separate person from me in that way. I only see my Jiminie, your soul, the way we're connected, our destiny."
Jimin looked down at their hands, and blinked away tears. He could see the red string of fate around their wrists almost as though it were there and real and literally tying them together for everyone around them to see.
"Okay, I know what you mean. That's how I see you too. For me, too, Tae, we just exist together." Jimin bit his lip. "Is it terrible that I still care how other people see me?"
"No, it's normal, right? You care about armys and how they see you, right? But…" Tae wrinkled his nose, and squeezed Jimin's hand twice. I love you, I love you. "If the way they think of you is going to really affect the way you see yourself, maybe that's not great? That probably doesn't feel great. Like… eugh…" Tae squeezes twice again. "Like your body stuff."
"We can't all eat three meals a day and still look beautiful," Jimin huffed, ignoring all the other… stuff… that brought up and implied. All stuff probably more upsetting for Taehyung than for Jimin, really, since for Jimin watching Taehyung struggle was worse than feeling his own struggles.
"You can," Taehyung says quietly, "but I don't wanna talk about that again right now."
"Me either." Jimin blew out a breath and tried to make the same farting noise Namjoon hyung always did. It made Tae giggle. "Okay, I gotta keep thinking about this, I guess."
Tae shrugged. "Can I suck your dick while you think? Jinnie hyung is going to call us for dinner soon, and I don't want Koo to eat all the samgyupsal before we get any."
Jimin laughed as Tae wriggled down to his stomach, and he laid back to let Taehyung take off his pants. "Aish, this soulmate," he said to the ceiling, and shut his eyes when Tae slid his mouth around his cock.
++
They were late for samgyupsal but Jin had set some aside for them in the kitchen, before he even put the serving dish on the table for Jungkookie to ravage.
"Now this was made by a man," Taehyungie announced around his first mouthful; he didn't even wait until they were out of the kitchen to take a bite. "I think Jinnie hyung is more of a man than both of us 'cause he can cook like this and we can't."
Jimin kicked Tae in the shin but laughed anyway.