Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Bangtan Sonyeondan, also known as BTS, was the most popular band at the end of the world.”

Namjoon clicks the title slide past and pauses for the video clip he chose from the Earth archives. It’s around three hundred years old, BTS performing at an awards show. They’re wearing silver and purple, gauzy with smoke and colored lights, and thrashing together in precisely timed choreography as a crowd screams with one voice.

It’s opulent in a way that nothing in life on the ship is, a moment Namjoon pulled from the hundreds of hours of BTS footage because it shows not only their skill but the plush luxury of what they were. Awed murmurs ripple among the assembled senators, diplomats, and dignitaries in the conference room.

He passes the slide to an overview of their history. “They were formed in the Republic of Korea in 2013 CE, and there are reports of the last surviving members performing as BTS until the very end of the final days. At their height, just before the Climate War began, they achieved worldwide success. Here’s a look at some of their accomplishments—”

He passes the slide, and there’s general laughter. He’s put as many awards and honors as he can one slide, in tiny font, just to demonstrate the vastness of it. He’s devoted his life to trying to understand the history of Earth, and even he can barely wrap his mind around this. There were almost eight billion people on Earth before the Climate War. More people than even exist on the Eastern fleet probably knew BTS’ names. “You won’t recognize most of these, of course, but note here they received the Order of Cultural Merit from the Republic of Korea and here, delivered a speech on youth empowerment to the United Nations.”

He clicks through to another video clip, of that speech. He shivers—this always gets him. He can feel history reaching out and grabbing him. It’s a weird coincidence that both he and Min Yoongi from the Ministry have the same names as two of the BTS members… he even flatters himself he sort of looks like BTS’ Kim Namjoon, though of course much less handsome.

Namjoon has watched the speech dozens of times. He thinks that Kim Namjoon had some good ideas. Maybe Earth’s disasters could have been diverted if people had listened more to calm voices like his.

The clip ends, freezing on that ancient, radiant face. Namjoon passes to the next slide, which just says “Earth Apocalypse.”

“I’ll do a quick recap for anyone who’s not up on their ancient Earth history.” It will be most of the assembled group, but they’ll all pretend they paid attention in class and that only the others need the lesson. Everyone understands Earth was important, but it’s been so long, and it’s so far from what they know. Namjoon loves history—he’s always felt so close to it, like it’s in his bones somehow—but for most people, it’s as distant as any of the other prickles in the dark sky.

“The Climate War began in what’s called Hot October, when a series of hurricanes decimated most of the eastern seaboard of the United States, part of a longer series of weather events that affected coastal regions all over the world. Even at that late stage, experts were suggesting humanity could have altered its behavior and kept the planet habitable, but instead, the United States revealed its top-secret space station program and began evacuating its citizens to Venus. Shortly thereafter, Russia began its own evacuations. In an effort to stop Russia and the States from stripping the last of Earth’s resources to power their space programs, China declared war, but their attempt to fight on two fronts was stifled after only a few months. Most of Earth’s nations decided to ally with Russia or the States in order to get ships to evacuate as many of their own people as possible, instead of trying to save the planet. Less than two years after Hot October, humanity had given Earth up for good and was evacuating to space as quickly as possible.”

“Like most Earth citizens who were not able to evacuate, the majority of BTS’ members spent the end of days at their homes, with their families. As I mentioned, there are records of them performing at peace rallies up until the records stop completely. However, two of them…”

He clicks again, to a picture of Jeon Jeongguk and Park Jimin. Jimin took dozens of pictures of them both together over his career, but only a few where they were both smiling. Namjoon spent hours combing through them for the very best smiles. They look young, healthy. Happy.

“...came from a coastal region called Busan,” Namjoon continues. “And so, of course, by the end of days, sea levels had risen so much that there was nothing for them to go back to. There are no records of how, exactly, the decision was made, but Park Jimin and Jeon Jeongguk volunteered for the cryogenesis program. In their capsule, the President of the Republic of Korea called them, ‘honored representatives of Korea’s culture and language.’”

“At the beginning of the Climate War, the Republic of Korea called most young men into military service. You can see Park Jimin and Jeon Jeongguk here—”

He clicks one more time, to a clip of the two young men in military uniform, performing their national anthem. He almost included one of the funny clips in this presentation, something that would show the endearing personalities he feels like he’s gotten to know during his research. But this was the right call—the somber, dignified tone will help these bureaucrats and politicians understand that the BTS project is serious work. He sees nods around the room.

“I understand they did not serve on any active fronts, that they were well-known enough to have a symbolic value as performers. In the end, after about six months, the Republic of Korea got ships from the United States and began its own evacuation. They sent most soldiers home with weapons to protect what peace they could. That is when these two entered the cryogenesis program.”

The clip finishes, freezing on a frame of the two young men standing tall. “And now,” Namjoon says, keeping his voice steady though he feels almost giddy, “we will get to meet them. The process of cryodegenerating them has already begun, and we look forward to welcoming them into the newly expanded Ministry of Language, Music, and Arts in the Eastern fleet very soon. For more about that, please allow me to welcome Music Division Assistant Director and the Ministry’s BTS project lead, Min Yoongi.”

Namjoon has heard Yoongi’s speech a dozen times and doesn’t need to listen. It’s a carefully orchestrated combination of dramatically overpromising about the knowledge and leadership these expensive frozen pop stars will be able to provide, and setting expectations about how much work they’ll be able to do while adjusting to humanity’s new order.

To split the difference between the government’s hunger for results from this program and the adjustment that Jimin and Jeongguk will need, Yoongi has planned a showcase concert in one short month. He’ll commit to nothing beyond that until he’s had a chance to work with them. It’s less than the board wants and more than he feels comfortable giving—a true compromise, because everyone is unhappy.

While Yoongi speaks, Namjoon stares at the screen behind his head. He doesn’t have slides, so it’s that frame of Jimin and Jeongguk at the end of the anthem, turning their glowing faces up to the sun like it hadn’t already betrayed them. After a decade of interest in their work and months of deep study of their archives, Namjoon is really going to meet them. His heart is racing so hard it has the life support monitor on his phone flashing red lights of alarm.

Most of the questions are about the budget, for Yoongi, but the ambassador from ship twelve asks, “What do we expect in terms of their well-being?” Yoongi defers to Namjoon.

“We expect to watch it very carefully,” Namjoon says, smiling in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “Outcomes among cryodegeneration candidates vary widely, mostly depending on the circumstances of their cryogeneration in the first place rather than anything we can control. We know that Jeon Jeongguk and Park Jimin were in strong physical condition and had the resources to undergo thorough training, so we’re optimistic, but we can’t say for sure until we meet them.

“I’ve been brushing up on my ancient Korean to help communicate, but they also both know some standard English and should be able to understand modern Korean without too much trouble, once they adjust. I hope you’ll be able to meet and speak with them soon. And on that note, I should get back to the cryo theater, I don’t want to miss them waking up. If there are no more questions for me?”

There are none, though Yoongi glares as Namjoon abandons him to more interrogation about the budget. He hurries down the hall as fast as he can without slipping into an unprofessional jog, his heart rate monitor flashing at him to calm down.

###

The first thing Jeongguk knows is that it hurts.

He won’t remember (like he doesn’t remember the grinding suffocation of the last stages of cryogeneration, or the first, truest pain, the squalling terror of his birth) but in the moment it hurts so much that only the walls of machinery around him and the brainless ceaseless spark of his body’s human yearning toward life keep him from succumbing to it, letting the frozen dark take him back and keep him.

The light is searing fire, and his body has forgotten how to move, to blink, to protect itself. An old instinct shoots up like a flare, to lift his hands over his face, but when he tries, his arms are caught. He thrashes.

Voices: fast, short, unrecognizable. Panic rises, acid, in his throat.

“Shh. Try to stay calm.”

He gets sounds out around the vise on his chest, a whimper and then a choked-off roar.

“Jeongguk.” He knows this voice. “Please try to relax.”

It hurts it hurts it hurts but he has a lucky instinct to obey that gentle command, and as he drops his tension into the burn, it starts to let him go. Finally, he remembers how to blink, and again, and again.

The blur over him dips into focus, disappears behind a flash of light, comes into focus again. Glasses winking off the light, a dimple Jeongguk recognizes. He knows this face. He knows.

(Namjoon?)

(They told him so many times that everyone except Jimin would be dead.)

(Jimin, is Jimin here?)

(Unless they haven’t frozen them yet, maybe Namjoon changed his mind, maybe he came back, maybe Jeongguk will go to Ilsan after all.)

He hurts too much to be confused too, it hurts, it all hurts, but before he blacks out, his dry mouth manages one word: “Hyung?”

Chapter Text

The cryo theater is a riot of alarms and shouting. Namjoon is trying to keep track of the chaos behind while focusing on the person in front of him—“How much adrenaline?” one of the doctors shouts, and numbers fly back and forth.

It sounds like Jimin is smaller than they expected, like they overloaded him with something meant to wake him up and now they can’t calm his system. Namjoon twists over his shoulder to watch them work, fighting the urge to jump up and go help. How could he help?

A hand grips Namjoon’s wrist. This is how he can help. He bends over Jeongguk’s bed and watches his eyes as he blinks awake again. “Hi, Jeongguk.”

“N’mjoon hng,” he mumbles, his fingers closing tighter around Namjoon’s arm. “Hng. Come back.”

It’s just nonsense—there’s no way around it, they’ll be very confused when they wake up.

“Sedative!” the doctor barks. “Start with a quarter.”

Fuck, if they both wake up. Again, Namjoon deliberately focuses on the man in front of him. He’s struggling to move, jerking his limbs as if they’ve strapped him down, though it’s only the lingering effects of the cryogenesis weighing on him. “Jeongguk,” Namjoon says again, to ground them both. “Move slow, be careful. You’ve been asleep for, uh, about three hundred years.”

Jeongguk’s eyes pop wide open at that, and he freezes.

Jeon Jeongguk’s eyes. Namjoon has spent countless hours looking at these eyes through screens, catching his breath as Jeongguk stared at him across incomprehensibly vast measures of time and space. He just has such big eyes, expressive, soulful. They were famous. Anyone would notice them.

Right now, they look terrified. Namjoon smiles encouragingly, like Jeongguk has stilled on purpose instead of freezing in fear. “That’s right. Move slow.”

The alarms swirling around Park Jimin’s bed finally stop, dropping the racket to a dull roar. Namjoon checks over his shoulder again, but it’s just the doctors and nurses bustling. Jeongguk pulls on Namjoon’s arm and starts to roll; Namjoon gets his other hand around his back to help him. He’s lighter than he looks, terrifyingly fragile. One of the nurses should be doing this, but they’re all busy keeping the other one alive, and Namjoon isn’t going to distract them. He just moves very, very carefully, and doesn’t let go until Jeongguk is sitting steady on the edge of his hospital cot.

Namjoon moves back enough to look at his face and, when nothing is visibly off, steps back farther and gets the cup of water from the table next to him. He hands it forward, but Jeongguk lifts his face and opens his mouth. Namjoon puts the straw to his lips.

He drinks hungrily, and smacks his lips in a funny way when he pulls away.

“Are you okay?” Namjoon asks. Even that simple sentence requires a few flourishes to say politely in ancient Korean; Namjoon is the foremost living expert on the language, but of course he’s never spoken it to a native speaker. The last one died generations ago. It’s the least important thing right now, but he really hopes he’s getting it right.

“I’m okay,” Jeongguk says, matching Namjoon’s polite speech level but knotting his face in confusion as he does so. “Namjoon-hyung? What are you doing here?”

Namjoon swallows hard. The affinity he feels with BTS’ Kim Namjoon is unprofessional and frankly embarrassing, a fancy he’s never admitted even to Yoongi. It seems like Jeongguk has confused him with that ancient man, but entertaining the idea still makes Namjoon blush like an amateur. “I’m not who you think I am, I’m sorry. My name is Kim Namjoon, but I was born on a spaceship on the edge of the solar system.”

Jeongguk shakes his head. His eyes search Namjoon’s face and then, abruptly, he lifts his hand to check, too, fingers pressing into Namjoon’s cheek.

Namjoon jumps. His exhale bounces back to him, hot, off Jeongguk’s palm.

Jeongguk blinks sleepily, and again, slow and calm like he has nothing better to do than sit here and hold Namjoon’s face, until he suddenly jerks his hand back. “Namjoon?”

Namjoon nods, even though he isn’t sure whether Jeongguk has it or they’re starting over. “Yes. I’m a historian and linguist, and I’m working on your cryodegeneration.”

Jeongguk squints at him.

Namjoon fumbles for simpler words. “I helped wake you up.”

Jeongguk nods. He glances around the room and then quickly, like he regrets that, back to Namjoon’s face. “Namjoon,” he says again. “My hyung.”

The lump is back in Namjoon’s throat, and he swallows it down again. It was too much to hope they’d understand this as soon as they woke up, and no one else speaks their language to explain it. “The Kim Namjoon who was the leader of BTS never left Earth,” he says as gently as he can. “He lived a valuable, remarkable life, about three hundred years ago.”

Jeongguk stares at him steadily—those eyes—and then sits back, resting his weight on one hand and using the other to wipe down his face. Namjoon steels himself to watch him cry.

But Jeongguk doesn’t cry. He sits there in silence for a long time as machines beep and hum around them. “That is right,” he finally says, very formal, his voice cool and clear. “I remember. I understand. Is Jimin here?”

Namjoon twists to check again. He doesn’t want to worry Jeongguk, but he also can’t make any promises right now.

Park Jimin is lying still on his cot, hooked up to several machines and hovered over by three nurses. The doctors and another nurse huddle around a computer screen behind him, whispering.

Jeongguk leans around Namjoon to see, and sucks in a hurt breath. Nobody looks good on a hospital bed, and even when healthy, Park Jimin was a small, pale person—but he looks like a scrap, like something bled dry.

Namjoon turns back, trying to make himself big to block the view. “They’re working on it.”

“Okay,” Jeongguk says unsteadily.

“Would you like some more water?” Namjoon asks, because it’s literally all he has to offer.

Namjoon helps him drink some more, and one of the nurses comes to refill the glass. “How do you feel?” he asks Jeongguk in modern Korean. Jeongguk starts and only gapes at him.

“He asked how you feel,” Namjoon repeats in ancient Korean.

“Oh,” Jeongguk says. “A lot. But, fine. I think. Fine.”

Namjoon translates; the nurse nods and goes back to hover over Jimin.

“The people on this ship speak modern Korean,” Namjoon says. “It’s not that different from ancient Korean, it’s mostly simplified. There are a lot of new words, and the sounds have changed some. They’ll probably be able to understand you if you speak slowly, and I bet you’ll be able to pick it up. There are also a lot of people who speak standard English, which is pretty much the same as what you learned.”

“English.” Jeongguk shakes his head. “Okay, put me back in the freezer.”

Namjoon laughs, loud in the somber room, more surprised to hear a joke than delighted by the particular humor of it. Jeongguk smiles shyly. It’s just heartrending, but of course it is. He’s an idol, his smile is supposed to stop hearts.

“I’m here to translate for as long as you need,” Namjoon says. “And I can help you learn, too.”

Jeongguk doesn’t answer, he just stares back like he’s seeing something more than Namjoon’s face. Namjoon has a strange urge to wipe his mouth or hide.

A deep choking sound wrenches from Jimin’s body and Namjoon turns just in time to see him arch and spasm on the cot—he twists sideways, thrashes hard again, and vomits a spray of yellow bile down the front of the nearest nurse.

She jumps back, shouting, and Jimin blinks his eyes open, pouting at her with a sleepy glare. Vomit drips down his chin, but his eyes stay open, and his ribs rise and fall with breath.

Namjoon can’t help it; he bites his fist to hold back a laugh. Jimin looks like a petulant child woken up from a nap, a dissolute princeling with a hangover. He looks… not like the rare, valuable treasure he is. He looks like a person.

Jeongguk laughs too, a tiny, nervous giggle. “Gross, hyung.”

Jimin turns his face to Jeongguk, blinking over and over to bring him into focus. After he finally stills, he doesn’t speak, just drops his head back onto the hospital-issue pillow with a sigh. But he reaches his hand toward Jeongguk over the edge of his cot, thumb up.

###

Namjoon sits on a cot in the cryo theater and watches them sleep, which is fucking creepy but the lead doctor insisted, since he’s the only one who can communicate with them if one of them wakes up confused again.

Jimin, maybe due to the lingering effects of uppers and downers together in his system, was even more confused by Namjoon’s name and face than Jeongguk was. He just kept saying hyung and crying, and Namjoon’s attempts to help made it worse. It was pure luck that Jeongguk had woken up so strong and lucid; he took over, wrapping an arm around Jimin’s shoulders and murmuring to him in a dialect of ancient Korean that Namjoon could barely follow. He caught a few phrases: three hundred years, you and me. Love you. Hyung.

Jeongguk took a nutrient shake, Jimin an IV of fluids and electrolytes, and then they had to go back to sleep. It was wild how tired they got, how quickly—the nurses were joking about how long they’d already slept. Centuries.

That’s just joking, though, not true science. Cryogenesis held their bodies in stasis, so they weren’t resting. They’re still living in the effects of whatever stress they experienced during the final days on Earth. A lot, presumably. Add in the physical stress of cryodegeneration, and it’s incredible that they were as awake and aware as they were.

Namjoon had dinner on the cot in the cryo theater, nodding politely to the nurses who came through every half-hour, and now he’s sitting with his computer, because he could get some work done this evening. Look for evidence of Park Jimin’s stress coping mechanisms in the archives, for example. Instead, he’s just holding his own breath to stay silent as he watches them breathe.

The door cracks open. Namjoon looks up with his professional greeting face, but it isn’t one of the nurses.

“How’s it going?” Yoongi asks in a whisper.

Namjoon lets his professional face relax, and Yoongi grimaces. “That bad?”

“No.” Namjoon pats the cot next to him. “It probably wasn’t even as stressful as it could have been. Just tired now.”

Yoongi sits. “Next time, you can handle the budget questions.”

“Sure.” Namjoon smiles lazily. “Next time we pull some ancient pop idols out of the freezer.”

Yoongi’s smile, which has been growing to match his, fades as he nods. There are no second chances here; it isn’t funny to joke about.

“Speaking of ancient idols—” Namjoon starts.

“When are we not?” Yoongi asks lightly.

“—have you ever noticed you sort of look like the Min Yoongi who was in BTS?”

“Oh. Oh, well that’s. Hm.” Yoongi makes a sort of fluttering gesture Namjoon doesn’t recognize. “That’s very flattering. But I don’t think so. He was all like—you know—and I’m just—” He waves a hand down his own body.

“What?” Namjoon asks.

“You know. He was so.” Yoongi opens his hands away from his face, implying some kind of radiant beauty, or maybe cranial explosion. “I’m just like…” He hunches his shoulders and pulls his fingers into claws like a little gargoyle, baring his teeth and scrunching up his face.

Namjoon starts laughing—he claps a hand over his mouth when Jeongguk stirs on his cot. Yoongi shoves him.

“You are like that,” Namjoon says. “All the time. Uh, but… they were confused when they woke up. They thought I was Kim Namjoon.”

Yoongi frowns at him.

“Their Kim Namjoon, I mean. The ancient one. They were really confused, like I said. Hopefully it will clear up tomorrow, but… I just wanted to let you know, because I think they might get confused about you, too.”

Yoongi nods thoughtfully. “Okay, thanks. But really—” he waves a hand— “You look a lot more like that Kim Namjoon than I look like that Min Yoongi. I’m sure it will be fine.”

Namjoon squints at him. “I think you look more like Min Yoongi, actually.”

“I have hygiene, that’s why.” Yoongi pokes Namjoon’s bare cheek. “You look like a little Kim Namjoon impersonator when you shave.”

“You told me to shave!”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s better than looking like a slob. You have to grow an actual beard and take care of it, if that’s what you want.”

That is not what Namjoon wants—taking care of a beard is as much work as shaving is, the whole thing’s a scam. It’s nobody’s problem if he looks like a slob most of the time.

But Namjoon doesn’t continue this argument, because he has a feeling Yoongi’s changing the subject. Yoongi’s gone all pink, like Namjoon was complimenting him or something instead of trying to solve a problem, so maybe he doesn’t quite get it. They should have talked about this before, made a contingency plan, but Namjoon really thought it was just some fannish nonsense in his head.

“Jimin was awfully upset,” Namjoon says. “I don’t know what we’ll do, if I can’t work with them. Maybe I can train someone—”

“Oh, sure,” Yoongi says. “We’ll get the other expert in ancient Korean who’s been intensively studying BTS’ archives to prepare for this.”

Namjoon gives him a sour look.

“There’s no one else,” Yoongi says more gently. “But that’s okay, you’ve got this. Don’t borrow trouble.”

Namjoon shrugs. This trouble feels like his own.

“The first few hours were always going to be hard,” Yoongi says. “We can’t make any plans based on this.”

That part, at least, is true. Namjoon nods, and Yoongi takes his dinner things away when he goes. Namjoon opens up all three academic journal databases on his computer and searches “BTS Park Jimin stress.” He reads to the gentle soundtrack of beeping monitors and Jeongguk sniffling in his sleep until the timed lights in the room fall to dark, chiding him to go to bed, too.

And Yoongi was right—it’s better in the morning. He has to explain to them both, again, that he isn’t who they think he is, that he doesn’t even really look like that guy, that some synapses in their brains are probably connecting wrong to help them understand a world that has changed far beyond what the evolutionary history imprinted in their genetics could have predicted. Does he over explain? Maybe. But they get it. At least, they stop arguing with him about it.

A nurse needs to help Jimin into the bathroom, and Namjoon needs to go with them to translate the nurse’s questions about how exactly Jimin feels, whether anything might be wrong. Namjoon is furiously embarrassed, his head so hot with a blush he feels dizzy, but Jimin is completely unself-conscious, even being held up half-naked by a stranger.

The doctor prescribes a few days of normal rest and food and to call her the absolute instant either of them looks weak; Namjoon promises that’s the plan. Jeongguk is sitting sideways on his cot, watching with his eyes wide and unblinking, his shoulders tense. As soon as the doctor says he and Jimin are free to go to their rooms, he asks Namjoon, “So what are we doing?”

“Well, I was going to show you to your suite, help you get settled in,” Namjoon says. “Maybe have some breakfast?”

“No, I mean…” Jeongguk looks around the cryo theater, gestures to the door to the hall to the rest of the ship. “What are we doing?”

“Would you like to settle in somewhere more comfortable so I can explain?” Namjoon asks, aware of the doctor and nurses still moving around.

“No.” Jimin climbs up to sit next to Jeongguk, a slow and laborious process in a weak body, but once he’s there, he looks evenly at Namjoon like he expects to be obeyed. “I want to hear now.”

“Of course,” Namjoon says. “No problem. Well… as you might guess, humanity spent a lot of time when we first came to space just trying to figure out how to survive. A lot of knowledge was lost. But recently, the government of this fleet was able to expand the Ministry of Language, Music, and Arts, and we’re working on a new music program. We’d like to reestablish music education, and eventually work on making new pop music. We’d like you two to help lead that effort.”

He phrases it gently, a request, even though it isn’t. There was no way to ask their permission or gauge their interest before waking them up, and there’s no way to put them back into cryogenesis or send them home to the past they gave up. This is their new life, whether it’s what they wanted when they agreed to cryogenesis or not.

They don’t look resentful, though, or afraid or any of the other things Namjoon is worried about; mostly thoughtful, maybe still confused.

“Plenty of time to go over the details, though,” Namjoon says. It’s so hard not to explain too much—he wants to nervous-talk at them about a thousand tangents that will just make them overwhelmed. “For now, the only plan is to put on a showcase concert soon.”

Jeongguk’s head pops up. “Concert?”

“Oh, a concert, good.” Jimin smiles brightly, making eye contact with first Jeongguk and then Namjoon.

Namjoon is just stricken. “Is that all you understood? I’m sorry, my ancient Korean is—”

“No, I understand,” Jimin says. “I mean, I think we understand your words, just not—everything you’re talking about.”

“Breakfast,” Jeongguk says. “I understood concert and breakfast.”

“I’ll show you the rooms.” Namjoon leads them to the door.

They have to take the monorail around the outside of the ship, a windscreen-walled car that clings to her steel hull. If Namjoon were in their position, he thinks he’d be asking a lot of questions. But it will do no good to over explain at them, so he says only to let him know if there’s anything they want to know, and then he watches as they boggle in silence at the endless view of black velvet sky and glimmering stars out the monorail’s window. They hold hands, so tight Jeongguk’s knuckles go white.

The rooms are a generously sized family suite near the tail of the ship. A wall of windows in the sitting and dining room looks out over the view of the endless stars. Namjoon points out Jupiter, an orange coin fading in their wake, and Jeongguk gawks at it while Jimin winces nauseously.

Five sleeping chambers go off the living space like honeycombs. “I think your bags should have been delivered,” Namjoon says, typing the dummy code, four zeros, into one keypad. “Yeah, that’s one of yours, right—”

Jimin makes a wailing gasp and puts his hand over his mouth at the sight of the black suitcase he packed for himself a few centuries ago, and walks slowly toward it.

“Uh, that should be yours,” Namjoon says to Jeongguk. “The keycode is four zeroes, you can reset it if you like.”

“Awesome. Thank you, huu—Namjoon-ssi.”

Jeongguk opens the door and checks his suitcase, too.

“The doors in the back are bathrooms,” Namjoon says, loud enough that they’ll hear him in their separate rooms. He gets embarrassed again, thinking of having to translate for Jimin in the bathroom this morning, and he steps back instead of following them or peering into their rooms. “I’m in this last room, while you still need a translator. Again, if you have any questions at all, please just let me know. And these two here are empty. This isn’t a permanent arrangement, we just want you to be comfortable for now.”

“I think this is fine,” Jeongguk says, coming into the common space again and standing square, hands on his hips, to gaze out at the stars. He looks like he’s about to do something, take charge, but he just pinches the back of one hand a few times. He’s checking if he’s dreaming. Namjoon gives him a very gentle, very fake smile and doesn’t know what to say.

“Everything looks fine,” Jimin agrees, joining them with a red heart-shaped plush toy stuck in his elbow. Jeongguk squints at it like it’s affronted him.

“Tata,” Namjoon says, proud to have recognized it. “I wrote a paper on BT21 and the hero’s journey in undergrad.”

Jeongguk tilts his head and makes a wide-eyed face that Namjoon can’t help but laugh at.

Jimin hugs the plush to his chest but doesn’t say anything about Tata. “What’s for breakfast?”

Namjoon checks the refrigerator, where six regulation nutrient shakes are waiting. “Nutrient shakes,” he says, removing three. “Breakfast is always nutrient shakes and supplements.”

People on Earth ate a more varied diet, and Namjoon is worried this will be a hard adjustment, but they seem unfazed as Namjoon explains the stricter rations in space. They take their shakes and sit at the table. Jimin tucks his plushie under one thigh, so it’s hidden, but Jeongguk is still staring in its direction through the table.

“What’s our concert going to be like?” Jimin asks.

“I’m not really in charge of that, but I can get the person who is if you have questions.” Namjoon pauses. “Is there anything you want to ask about? Anything at all?”

They exchange a look, communicating on some level Namjoon can’t access.

“The concert is the only thing you’ve mentioned so far that isn’t completely scary,” Jeongguk says. “I think we want to hear more about that.”

“Totally doable,” Namjoon says. “Just let me call Yoongi.”

Jimin almost drops his shake. “Who?”

###

Namjoon-ssi is openly annoyed that the ambassador from ship twelve sent a psychologist to check on them, but Jeongguk is pretty glad to talk to the guy.

Because he’s starting to feel crazy.

Also because talking to Dr. Kim is really nice, since he’s obviously Jin-hyung.

It’s their second full day of work, though work so far is still just sitting around a paper-thin computer with Yoongi-ssi and watching old BTS videos, answering his random questions, and learning how to get through their daily routines. Dr. Kim showed up with Kim Seokjin’s face and what he described as “treats” for Jeongguk and Jimin—the shakes are all they have for breakfast and lunch, but he had bags and bags of little sugar candies and something he called “chips” that seemed to be made entirely out of salt. It made Yoongi-ssi mutter ship twelve under his breath in a way that Jeongguk could tell meant rich fuckers, even though he doesn’t know the politics yet.

The shakes are plenty of nourishment—they might be more than Jeongguk is used to eating twice a day like that, and even though it’s lunchtime he still feels a little bloated from breakfast. (He’ll have no problem with dinner, though, the one meal of real food everyone gets each day.) Eating pure salt probably shouldn’t feel so good, but Jeongguk finds he’s a little obsessed with the chips, sitting there thinking about them when he doesn’t have one in his mouth. Jimin eats the sugar candies the same way, holding them still in his mouth and closing his eyes.

They’re being rude, more interested in the snacks than their guest, but Dr. Kim doesn’t mind. It’s so much like when Jeongguk and Jimin used to send their dinners to Jin-hyung’s room and sit around on his floor to bother him and absorb the wisdom he pretended he wasn’t doling out. Even skeptical Namjoon-ssi, insisting he’s not who Jeongguk thinks he is and it’s all just a coincidence with a face Jeongguk wants to believe when it tells him absolutely anything, was thrown off by Dr. Kim’s appearance, and jumped like a shot had gone off when he introduced himself as Kim Seokjin.

Namjoon-ssi tried to act calmer than everyone else, which Jeongguk assumed meant he was really pissed, insisting that Dr. Kim couldn’t “interrupt this work.” Yoongi-ssi grabbed his arm in warning and Dr. Kim mentioned an ambassador gently but firmly, and now they’re alone on the floor of Yoongi’s music studio. Namjoon-ssi said he’d be waiting outside the door in case they needed help with translation, but Dr. Kim speaks slowly and clearly, softening the sounds so they’re closer to what Jeongguk and Jimin recognize. Really, if Namjoon-ssi hadn’t explained that no one spoke their Korean anymore, Jeongguk would assume this man did.

It’s like a dream, except Jeongguk keeps pinching himself, counting his fingers, reading text, all those things that aren’t supposed to work in dreams, and he can’t wake up. A prank, maybe, except that it would be monstrous. How far back would they have to go to tell him it all wasn’t real? Years. Before the cryogenics, before the war, before the footage on the news of Paris burning in an endless riot and the ocean lapping flat and calm where Hong Kong used to be and a six hundred year old temple in Busan crumbling into rubble.

If somehow they do reveal it’s a prank, Jeongguk won’t even be mad. They got him; they won; does he get to go home? But for now he has to go from the assumptions that seem likeliest.

His first guess is that it’s all real, and he and Jimin are having some sort of psychically linked mental break that’s simultaneously projecting their hyungs onto the nearest strangers; the second is that it’s even realer, and somehow Namjoon and Yoongi and Seokjin are all here. They’re new versions of themselves that don’t remember, that don’t recognize their own faces and voices in the footage they’re watching on their computers, but Jeongguk knows them, even with funny short haircuts and sharp, strange accents.

Their presence isn’t even the problem, really. It’s what it means, what Jeongguk is called on to do with it. He can’t imagine. It’s a problem.

(Jimin is eating candies with one hand and holding that Tata plushie in the crook of his arm with the other. He hasn’t put it down since he got it out of his suitcase. And that’s a problem, too, but it’s a problem Jeongguk can’t even get his head around right now.)

Jeongguk can’t begin to think of how to phrase his confusion, his fears, but Dr. Kim is in control of the conversation, asking easy questions about what they’ve been up to and how their bodies feel. Jeongguk is used to other people being in charge; he’s used to one of those people being Jin-hyung. He just answers.

“Please, eat up.” Dr. Kim pushes the salt snacks toward Jeongguk when he hesitates in getting another. “They’re for you. I know you’re used to eating a lot more. The food will probably be really hard to get used to.”

Jeongguk glances at Jimin to see if his own thoughts are reflected back to him. The food here is weird, but he understands why it would have to be carefully rationed on a spaceship. He doesn’t want to rail against necessary circumstances or act entitled to something just because he’s had it before.

Also, he almost never just ate whatever he wanted. That burden weighed even heavier on Jimin, and it looks like that’s where Jimin has gone now. He scoots the nearest candy bag away from himself. Before he has to say anything, Jeongguk takes over. “I’m used to people telling me what to eat. At least here I don’t have to think about it at all.”

“Food was rationed on Earth, at the end,” Jimin says. “People went hungry. It wasn’t always good there, either, even when it was really good for us.”

Dr. Kim’s expression darkens. “Right, of course not.”

“Namjoon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung talked about that a lot,” Jeongguk says. “Those years when things were so big and so good, before the war, when it was all just money and celebrities and flying all over the world—they’d remind us that it wasn’t like that forever, not for anybody, and to stay grateful.”

“And not turn into assholes, basically,” Jimin says.

“Right.” Something swerves sickly inside Jeongguk’s heart and he can’t look too close at it right now, he just can’t, so he puts on a brave, bratty grin instead. “So we ended up somewhere else, just like Namjoon-hyung said we would, and I’m mostly trying not to be an asshole.”

Dr. Kim nods thoughtfully. Jimin’s still watching Jeongguk quietly.

“They want us to do music,” Jeongguk says. “I know how to do music. So, that’s what I want to focus on.”

“Are you excited?” Dr. Kim asks. “How do you feel about getting back on stage?”

Jeongguk checks Jimin’s face, finds it looking pretty and professional, like they’re doing an interview. “I’m always excited to perform,” Jimin says.

Dr. Kim just raises his eyebrows.

“In a way, it hasn’t been that long for us,” Jeongguk adds. “I mean, I know it’s been—” he can hear Namjoon-ssi saying three hundred years in his head, but it makes him queasy to imagine saying it out loud. “But I don’t remember that. It feels like we did our farewell concert a month ago.”

The last night, in Seoul and streamed online, they’d played for hours, played everything, started over again when they finished the set because they didn’t want it to end. They might have stayed all night, or for days, but the air quality was so bad it was hard to sing. They had to end the concert, eventually, because armys in the upper levels started fainting.

And the next morning, the rest of the members had taken their bags and left all over Korea, back to their families, and Jeongguk had gotten into a military van, squeezing Jimin’s hand hard. They’d done a month of training for their cryogeneration, mostly putting on as much weight as they healthfully could and getting told over and over again, in every possible way, that there was no plan or, at the time, technology to wake them up, and if they did end up coming back one day, everyone they knew would be dead.

Jeongguk was in a fugue the whole time. He couldn’t say anything specific about those days, just the scene. It’s gotten a little mixed up with the “N.O.” video in his head. But the farewell concert? He remembers every detail. It was only a few weeks ago in his body, and it was the most important night of his life. He remembers hugging Jin-hyung goodbye, and Jin looking at him with exactly the same watchful expression on his face Dr. Kim has now.

“But,” Jeongguk says, before Dr. Kim can ask him a question to make him explore that deeper. “This concert is definitely going to be an adventure.”

Jimin snorts.

“What’s that, now?” Dr. Kim asks.

“It’s just… you guys have forgotten a lot,” Jimin says.

Dr. Kim nods. “We have.”

“It’s scary, in some ways,” Jeongguk says. “We’re used to having a lot of support when we perform that we won’t here. But also, I think we’re going to blow your minds.”

Jimin laughs a little more truly, and squeezes Tata under his arm to extend his hand to Jeongguk for a high-five. Jeongguk gives it to him, but he’s looking at Tata, and he thinks Dr. Kim is, too.

“It seems like music will be a good shelter for you,” Dr. Kim says, instead of asking about Tata.

“Oh, for sure. But we need to find a baritone,” Jimin says, looking slyly at Dr. Kim. “That would make such a big difference.”

“Or a rapper,” Jeongguk says, before Jimin can say something that will make Dr. Kim think he isn’t well. “We’re trying to get Yoongi-ssi or Namjoon-ssi to do it, but they’re all shy about it.”

“Why do you think they’d be able to rap?” Dr. Kim asks.

“Just a hunch,” Jimin says, grinning ironically.

“Well,” Dr. Kim says. “I think that’s enough for lunch today. And actually… I don’t know about getting Namjoon or Yoongi to perform, but I know a rapper.”

###

Kim Seokjin’s friend (the “rapper,” as if anyone’s a rapper anymore, as if that’s been a job title anytime in the last eon) is another rich guy from ship twelve, skinny and pointy inside a shocking amount of expensively voluminous clothing. Namjoon is barely even surprised when this absurd person introduces himself as Jung Hoseok, though he is worried about the knowing looks on Jeongguk and Jimin’s faces.

“Jung Hoseok?” Yoongi asks. He looks a little panicked. “Like the one who was in BTS? That’s… a crazy coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” this Hoseok says.

Those expressions on Jeongguk and Jimin’s faces carve deeper, and Namjoon would intervene if he could think of something to say fast enough.

But Hoseok puffs out his chest and says, “BTS’ Jung Hoseok was my fifteen-greats uncle. He was a great man, and a pride and honor to our family.”

And that is unexpected. Seokjin is leaning against a wall of Yoongi’s music studio looking very smug. Jeongguk’s face drops into open, comical surprise.

“What?” Yoongi asks.

“My honored fifteen-greats-grandmother Jung Jiwoo won a space on fourth ship in the lottery,” Hoseok says, still with his whole chest, like he’s reciting this. “She developed many of the textile manufacturing processes we still use today, and I’m proud to come from her family. And her brother’s, of course, the great dancer and singer and my honored eponym Jung Hoseok.”

That explains why he’s rich, then, and the wasteful excess of fabric in his clothing. Namjoon translates quickly, and Jimin—who’s been convincing himself he’s seeing ghosts for three days—only now actually looks like he’s seen a ghost. He clutches that plushie close to his chest. “So you’re Jiwoo-noona’s… did you say fifteen-greats grandson?”

“It’s an estimate,” Hoseok says. He slips naturally into softer, more open sounds, closer to ancient Korean. Maybe he knows from all the old BTS songs, or he’s instinctively trying to speak in a way everyone can understand. “But—wow—I guess you have actually met her, huh? That’s amazing! What was she like?”

Jimin and Jeongguk nod, but they still look stunned in a bad way. “She kept us in line,” Jeongguk says. “She thought it was her job to keep us from getting too cocky. I was kind of scared of her, but in a cool way.”

Hoseok laughs, huge and bright, and it makes the singers smile tentatively, too. “Do you have a sister?” Jimin asks.

Hoseok looks surprised. “No, I’m an only child.”

Jimin frowns. The singers’ surprise is settling, but they still look scared. Something eventually had to make them realize—or maybe not realize, but understand, really feel the time that has passed. Now that it’s here, though, Namjoon wants to cushion the blow.

“So you rap?” he asks quickly, to change the subject.

“Oh, yes,” Hoseok says. “I mean, I’m sure I can’t compete with you two, of course—” He gestures generously to the singers, who both lean back from his open hand, looking slightly ill— “But BTS songs are a great tradition in my family, and I’ve been singing and dancing along with them my whole life. I know all the words, the choreography. So if I can help in any way, I’d be happy to.”

There’s this weird moment that keeps happening, where the singers look at Yoongi like he’s the boss and he stares back at them like they’re the boss, and it happens now. They need to figure it out, but it’s not Namjoon’s job to intervene here. He has neither the authority or the expertise on the music part.

“Maybe… let’s try singing something?” Yoongi asks.

Jeongguk is visibly relieved. “Where do you want us?”

“Uh… just around the keyboard, let’s not not try to add in choreography for now,” Yoongi says. His voice gets stronger as he talks. “Hoseok, what songs do you feel strongest in?”

“How about ‘Ma City’?”

“Oh, gosh,” Jimin says. “It’s been so long. I’d have to brush up on that one.”

Namjoon can’t help but laugh—it’s all been so long. But Hoseok nods seriously and says, “‘Run’?”

Jimin nods, and then Jeongguk.

“Cool,” Yoongi says. “Do you want to just do Hoseok-hyung’s part, or—”

He stops as Jimin muffles a giggle and Hoseok’s face knits in confusion. “What?”

“Did I say that wrong?” Yoongi asks.

The singers have been saying hyung when they talk about their old bandmates and using more formal forms of address for the rest of them—Yoongi-ssi, Dr. Kim. It’s all old-fashioned, lost with much of the etiquette contained in ancient Korean, but it’s worked well so far, and Namjoon can see why Yoongi picked it up.

“It might be less confusing if we all used those words to keep track of everyone,” Namjoon says. “So, you know, I’m Namjoon-ssi, the one in BTS is your Namjoon-hyung. To help make it clear that we’re two different people,” he adds, just in case anyone needs a reminder. “Is that okay, or is it insulting?”

Namjoon, a historical linguist by profession and vocation, really mourns the formality of the language that was lost. It was beautiful, all the subtle social order that could be contained in grammar. And the reason his people gave it up was that when their ancestors first came into space, they were tenants on leased American military ships, and they picked up those much blunter standards of etiquette, which is just a shame. It’s one of the many things that twists up painfully in Namjoon’s heart, when he looks back at the broken path humanity walked.

But to Jimin and Jeongguk it’s only words, and they shrug off his concerns.

“It’s fine,” Jeongguk says. “It’s really funny to hear him say Hoseok-hyung.”

“Technically, BTS’ Jung Hoseok is his hyung,” Namjoon says. “By several hundred years.”

“Right.” Jimin doesn’t quite suppress an eyeroll. Namjoon watches the back of his head for a while after he turns back to the computer.

“So,” Yoongi says again. “Did you—which parts did you want to do?”

“I can do all the rap,” Hoseok says. “Or less, if you’d rather?”

The singers make eye contact in silence and then shake their heads at once. Namjoon could believe they’re actually psychic, they’re so close. “I can take some of the rap if we do new arrangements,” Jeongguk says. “But we can figure that out once we see how you fit. Let’s just sing for now.”

Yoongi pulls the track up on his computer, and they sing along with it, Hoseok rapping and Jeongguk and Jimin glancing at each other to trade vocals back and forth. It’s hesitant and imperfect, and it doesn’t even compare to the quality of the smoothly produced vocals on the track.

But it’s real music, a whole song on its way to being performed, here on a ship in the vast endlessness of space. The pure, perfected quality of Jeongguk’s and Jimin’s voices is unlike anything Namjoon has ever heard, projecting out of their chests to fill the room. It changes the air, makes it something headier. By the time they reach the end, Yoongi is smiling so huge and hard they all have to smile along with him.

###

Too much hits Jeongguk when he tries to sleep—the absolute blackness of the tiny box of his room after he closes the door, the strange whooshing hum of the ship, the enormity of history and space around him, a certain claustrophobic sense memory he thinks might be the cryogenesis—and loneliness, so heavy it aches, and deep washes of something like loneliness but worse that he’s afraid to look at long enough to name.

As he has every night so far, he goes to Jimin’s room. The beds are these tiny cots, smaller than twin size, but they cuddle close and Jimin’s hardly anything, anyway.

Jeongguk moves the Tata plushie out of the way to curl into Jimin’s arms and Jimin carefully puts it between his own back and the wall.

The first night, when Jimin was still weak and sick, he cried against Jeongguk’s chest and spat angrily about how he didn’t want to be crying, he just wanted to sleep, he was so tired, why couldn’t he sleep? But he’s looking stronger now, and he holds Jeongguk’s head and hums bits of their songs. He doesn’t sound unhappy.

“What do you think?” Jeongguk whispers. He means, what should I think?

“It’s so good,” Jimin says. “I was so scared, but it’s only been three days, and we’ve found almost everyone.”

Almost. “What does it mean, you think?”

“Well, it means it’s right,” Jimin says, like it’s obvious. “Everything is so weird but it’s not that different after all, really. Just people making music. The hyungs.”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says, but it isn’t safe on his heart like it apparently is on Jimin’s.

“Where do you think Taehyungie is?” Jimin asks.

Jeongguk doesn’t know, and wondering doesn’t seem like fun speculation, it makes him want to be sick. There’s no guarantee that they’ll find Taehyung, or that having all seven of them together would create anything like what they once had. This new world is darker and colder and his hyungs don’t know themselves, and it frightens him.

But he doesn’t want to argue Jimin into being scared with him. He wants Jimin to argue him out of it. So he digs deep and finds something cheerful to say. “I hope wherever he is, he’s practicing his vocals like Hoseok-ssi. Like you said, we could really use a baritone.”

###

Taehyung puts the last stack of dishes from the washer on their high shelf. He aches from crouching and lifting, but this stretch doesn’t feel bad, so he moves through it slow. After he has the dishes safely in place, he rolls his arms back and and all the way down, feeling his muscles tighten and give.

Unload the cutlery, pick up his rations for the night, and he’s done. He grabs a handful of spoons and turns nearly into Jongsoo’s chest.

“Jongsoo, sir,” he says evenly, and moves around him to put the spoons away. Jongsoo is his superior but not his boss, and he is exactly as polite as he needs to be to avoid trouble, but no more.

“Picked up your rations for you.” Jongsoo lifts a small box with Taehyung’s name on it. It makes Taehyung itch all over to see his food in someone else’s hands, but he doesn’t give that away.

“Thanks,” he says, and finishes putting the cutlery away around Jongsoo’s unhelpful body standing too close to the dishwasher. He doesn’t panic and he doesn’t leave his work undone. But the second it’s finished, he turns and opens his hands for his rations.

Jongsoo pulls the box closer to himself, like he’s trying to lure Taehyung in. He’s not as tall as Taehyung, but he steals other people’s rations, and he’s sturdy, bigger. It’s hard not to jump forward, desperate, but Taehyung holds himself in place. He feels his breath in his nose.

“Trade you for a kiss,” Jongsoo says.

Taehyung can’t stop his lip from twitching in revulsion, but he keeps his voice cool. “No, thank you. Just my rations will be fine.”

“Come on,” Jongsoo says. “You can’t be that pretty for nothing.”

No, indeed he’s not—Taehyung looks like this so he can wear his face like a mask, the one gift fate gave him. He holds it steady, thinks regal thinks calm thinks please, please, please, and does not reply.

“Ah, fine.” Jongsoo relaxes and moves the box closer, but before Taehyung can get his hands on it, he lets go, and something cracks sickeningly as it hits the floor.

Taehyung is on his knees before he can think of the consequences, bowing at Jongsoo’s feet as he tries to save his food.

“Oops.” Jongsoo’s boots turn and walk away.

Taehyung’s hands are shaking as he gets the box open and everything upright. It’s tomorrow morning’s nutrient shake that broke, and about half of it is on the floor and making his dinner soggy. Taehyung could cry.

But not here. He gets everything patched up enough to move and then stands, brushes down his uniform, and heads out through the dining room, the fastest line to the barracks.

He tries not to think about anything but his breath as he walks, the cool clean air around him, but someone says, “Not like our Taehyung, though,” in this secret-rich voice, and he has to stop and look up.

“Huh?”

Eunmi laughs, where she’s standing with two other girls. “I delivered dinner to the new men, you know, the ancient singers they unfroze the other day? And I was just saying they’re so handsome. But not as handsome as you.”

Taehyung just—he doesn’t care. He has a vague idea of what they’re talking about, because everyone heard this news, but he hasn’t followed it all that closely. He just could not care one fucking iota less what those famous, mythological, well cared-for people he’s probably never going to see look like, except that now that Eunmi’s interrupted him to make him think about it, he hopes they feel as cursed by their faces as he does sometimes. He hopes they choke on it, that they’re miserable like he is. He hopes everyone is.

But being liked is currency, and Taehyung is too poor to squander any. So he puts on a handsome smile. “I hope they use it well. Goodnight, ladies.”

They giggle and he goes, as fast as he can without sloshing any more of his nutrient shake, and closes himself into his pod in the barracks. He sets the food out on the desk and now that it’s okay if he cries, he feels just empty, dried up inside.

If he drinks the rest of the nutrient shake for dinner, he can sleep through the worst of his hunger, and eat his now-soggy rice and kimchi in the morning to get himself through the day. It’s the obvious solution, the only one, but he still stares at the food for a while like he can divide it in some way that will make it multiply before he gives in.

He drinks the nutrient shake as slowly as he can while he strips out of his uniform—twelve carefully tiny sips—and then he brushes his teeth, flicks out the lights, and gets in bed.

There are weird noises coming from somewhere down the hall, something rhythmic and almost beeping. An alarm? If things were on fire, he thinks the alarm would let him know. Then again, if things were on fire, they’d all be dead soon anyway, and at least Taehyung’s mother would get a nice payout.

It’s not until he decides to ignore the sound even if it is an alarm that he places it—it’s music, probably those ancient singers the government unfroze. People dug their stuff up from the archives and they’ve been playing it a lot, because apparently they have extra energy to burn. Someone in the barracks is playing it too loud.

He groans and puts his pillow over his ear. He doesn’t understand why it’s so special that a couple of ancient men can sing, or look handsome. Taehyung can do those things, and it’s just more that people want to take from him.

Here’s his last piece of luck for the night: Taehyung is exhausted all the time, so even around his hunger and the obnoxious noise and the thing Jongsoo left festering in him that he doesn’t want to acknowledge is fear, fear, fear, sleep comes for him soon enough, and holds him fast until it’s time to go back to work.

Chapter Text

On the morning of day four, they come into the music room to find Yoongi has been up most of the night making a plan. He made a set list out of the songs the three performers all felt comfortable with, and then broke that down to ones where he could play piano accompaniment and ones where he’d have to make backing tracks.

They’ll work their way down the lists to figure out vocals and choreography, alternating one piano song and two track songs to get a good mix on stage. They’ll just sing as many as are ready by the time they perform.

Namjoon thinks they could stumble onstage with exactly what they have and the people in charge would be impressed enough to give the project the support it needs, which is the only standard they have to meet right now. He says that several times, even though he can tell no one finds it encouraging.

On the other hand, the standard of performance Jimin and Jeongguk were used to on Earth is just not possible here. They are consummately professional and don’t complain—their standard wasn’t even possible for most people on Earth at the time, or for them for a lot of their career—but Namjoon is still sorry.

In the middle—the standard they will actually try to meet—is a line Yoongi has drawn in his head, probably just a few steps past what’s reasonable. He’s very, very organized in a way that Namjoon can tell means he’s freaking out.

On day five, Yoongi is working on breaking songs down to build backing tracks while the performers practice harmonies. Jeongguk pauses to help him when he gets frustrated, showing him how to use the software more efficiently. Yoongi thanks him, and Jeongguk laughs like he can’t help it.

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says, looking a little hurt. “I’m self-taught, you know—”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Jeongguk says. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, I’m not self-taught, because… you taught me.”

Yoongi squints at him.

“My Yoongi-hyung, I mean. You… look so much like him.” Jeongguk smiles winningly, and of course Yoongi is immediately won over, smiling back. “You’re doing awesome.”

You taught me. So maybe he still thinks this Yoongi is his Yoongi, somehow? It’s a weird coincidence, but it has to be a coincidence. Namjoon almost says that again, but he catches Seokjin watching the conversation, too, a frown twisting his face. Maybe it is good that there’s a psychologist here. The singers seem to respect him, deferentially calling him Dr. Kim. Namjoon has tried to explain these coincidences his way so many times—this time, he decides to sit back and see how Seokjin will handle it.

On day seven, at lunchtime, Jimin splashes a few drops of nutrient shake on that plushie he’s been carrying around and gasps like he’s ruined it. The plushie disappears after that, stowed somewhere safely away.

As they’re sitting around the living space in their rooms that evening, Namjoon is working on some notes about the patois they’ve developed, a mix of of ancient and modern Korean they can all understand. It’s nice for the overwhelmed new ones, and linguistically it’s a fascinating development. It’s not going to help them learn modern Korean, though, and eventually they’re going to feel the isolation of having invented a language with a few friends instead of learning the one everyone speaks.

Namjoon tries to insist on modern Korean, to conduct little lessons when he can, but it only makes Jimin and Jeongguk try even harder to avoid taking breaks from their work. “Just stop worrying about it for now,” Yoongi finally said. “They’ve got plenty of time.”

Namjoon did drop it, but only because he thinks Yoongi’s calm “plenty of time” was hiding a thought process that’s approximately I only have three weeks left to put on the first concert this ship has ever seen what the fuck, and Namjoon conceded.

Plus, it is really cool as a language, and he could probably publish a paper about it. He works on that while Jeongguk and Jimin sit together over video footage of their practice from that day, discussing it quietly.

Namjoon is making himself available in case they have any questions about the language or the history or the new world around them, but they have hardly any. Very small, practical things—how do they use the tooth powder, why isn’t there any toilet paper. Nothing bigger. Namjoon set them up with phones and payment apps and bank accounts linked to they money they both have in trust, but they haven’t tried to use any of it.

It seems like they know music, and music needs doing, and so all they’re going to do is work on that and eat and sleep. It’s worrying, but then again, Namjoon is working on a linguistics paper instead of voicing all the worries he has piling up.

A gray-uniformed server comes to take their dinner dishes away, and Jeongguk and Jimin stand and bow and say hello to him. He looks fairly terrified. Jeongguk asks his name and then thanks him by it; the server looks at Namjoon for help. Namjoon tries to split the difference and nods silently. The server says, “Thank you,” and leaves so fast the dishes clatter gracelessly on his tray.

Jeongguk turns to Namjoon. “We’re doing that wrong,” he says, not a question.

“Why is it always different people?” Jimin asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen one person twice.”

Namjoon nods. “The people who work in service rotate through so the rest of us don’t get to know them too well. And, yes,” he adds to Jeongguk. “You’re not breaking any rules, you’re not going to get in trouble or get anyone else in trouble, but the etiquette is to basically ignore them, and let them do their jobs while you do yours.”

They pout in unison, though it looks like some kind of flirtation when Jimin does it, and Jeongguk just looks confused and sad. “That’s awful,” Jimin says.

“It’s really to keep them safe,” Namjoon says. He puts his hand on his chin to think about how to say the next part, and they both sit down again and turn their faces attentively to him, like they already know his thinking face, know he wants them to pay attention to what’s next.

That’s a thought. Namjoon ignores it.

“I understand exploitation of service workers was pretty much endemic during your time,” Namjoon says. “What people thought of as good manners also required a lot of emotional labor and exposed people to harassment. And then humanity moved into space, and you know, people were squeezed so close together and resources were scarce. There were a lot of ships, especially some of the small, privately funded ones, that ended up turning into more riots or weird feudal systems or… well. Anyway.” They don’t need horror stories: Jeongguk looks sick already.

“It took a lot of time to stabilize, and to come up with laws and rules and etiquette that keep everyone safe. One way to we do it now is kind of… pretend we aren’t all as stuck together as we are. People are very careful of their privacy, very careful of the boundaries around what’s work and what’s personal. You’re certainly the experts on what was polite in your time, but from what I understand, a lot of things that were good manners then would be considered invasive now.”

“Even saying hello to the guy who brings dinner?” Jimin asks, still horrified.

“That guy is in a tough position,” Namjoon says. “He’s not in charge of who gets how much food, but he’s the one handing out the plates. Historically, most people who’ve tried to become friends with him are trying to bribe or trick or force him into giving them more. And—we grow food on this ship, but on some, if your population eats up the rations too soon, you don’t have any choice but to starve in space.”

Jimin’s still pouting, Jeongguk is still thinking. Namjoon feels like he’s said a lot, and it isn’t nice stuff, so he waits to see if they have more questions before saying anything else.

He has, maybe, been a little too generous to the upper-class passengers on this ship. It’s true, that the laws and etiquette in place are there to prevent exploitation, but he doubts many people know that history, or feel responsible for it. They’ve just learned it’s proper to treat service workers like they’re invisible, and a lot of them have internalized some gross ideas as to why. Exploitation is still pretty much rampant, especially on the smaller, private ships. If Namjoon was building a new society, he likes to think he’d have come up with something more different than the broken class system from Earth, something truly better.

“Where is this ship going?” Jeongguk asks.

Something tight around Namjoon’s heart eases—there’s a real question, some curiosity and some acknowledgement of the present. “This ship travels with a fleet of her sisters between a space station on Venus and another on the edge of the solar system. It takes five to seven years each way. We’re headed in, now, about three years from the Venus station. It’s not really a destination, though. We’ll take people on and off at both stops, but more people live on ships than on the stations. I’ve lived on this ship my whole life.”

Jeongguk nods.

“Are aliens real?” Jimin asks.

Namjoon laughs. “We haven’t found any yet, but voyages past the edge of the solar system are still experimental. You can hope.”

“Okay, I will,” Jimin says. That’s the end of the conversation, but Namjoon is heartened as he goes back to work.

###

On day ten, they have a formal dinner with the leaders from the Ministry and the fleet’s sister ships. Namjoon is sort of offended he doesn’t have to give remarks, and Yoongi is offended that he does. Jimin and Jeongguk speak, too, just quick greetings in modern Korean that would have Namjoon believing they understand it much better than they do, if he hadn’t coached them through every word.

He’s worried about them (always, endlessly, his entire job is hanging around and fretting) but they don’t seem to mind sitting down to eat after they speak and chatting with Namjoon and Yoongi, even though a room full of dignitaries is watching them curiously.

Hoseok and Seokjin bear most of the burden of being charming and personable, and Yoongi answers all the technical questions about making music and producing a concert. Namjoon handles translating small talk to the singers and talking to them during gaps, telling them the history of the dishes they’re eating and how food is produced on the ship and where the etiquette has changed since their time. They’ve gotten more curious as they’ve settled in, but they still need information in tiny bits, attached to something they’re doing.

Namjoon notices the gray-uniformed servers more than usual. He’s been aware of them since the conversation a few days ago, how pervasive and silent they are, how much more often than he realized they’re around. He’s watching them take away the dessert dishes and offer last drinks, anything else anyone might need, before dinner ends, and so he’s the first one to see a face that he—impossibly, infuriatingly—recognizes.

Namjoon wrote a term paper in his Master’s program about the performativity of Kim Taehyung’s facial expressions on stage, so there was a time in his life when he was looking at Kim Taehyung’s ancient face more than any in the real world. He had not resented the work; it was a good face to look at. But he almost panics to see it now, performing no expression at all as he collects plates from a nearby table.

Namjoon’s first thought is whether they can rush the singers out before they see him—his second is that it’s an absolutely shameful idea, terrible—his third, that maybe he should do it anyway. He’s still hesitating when the crisis comes on its own. Jeongguk sits back and yawns; Jimin, who’s been speaking to him, sits back too and looks away; he gasps loud enough to startle this entire half of the room and claps his hands over his mouth.

Jeongguk follows his gaze and says, “Oh shit,” in, of course, crisp English that everyone will understand.

“Taehyung,” Jimin says in a small rasp, and then he takes a deep breath and almost shouts it: “Taehyung!”

The server looks up, wide-eyed, and stops. The guest he’s standing behind thinks Jimin is staring at him, and starts looking around and pointing in confusion at himself. Even though the server is right behind him, it’s like he can’t see him.

“No, Taehyung!” Jimin cries.

“Can I help you, sir?” the server asks, hesitant.

“Taehyung, it’s me!” Jimin tries to jump up, gets caught between the table and the chair in a clumsy jerk that doesn’t look anything like his usual grace. Jeongguk grabs his arm, maybe to help him stand or to keep him in place. Jimin lets Jeongguk stand him up, still talking: “We found you, I knew we would find you, it didn’t even take that long, Taehyungie it’s me—”

He’s slipped completely into ancient Korean, and even Namjoon can barely understand the softness of it. People are going to think he’s drunk.

Jeongguk, still holding Jimin up or back or something, quietly says, “You have to calm down, hyung. They don’t remember. He probably doesn’t remember.”

The server puts his stack of dishes carefully on the cart behind him and smooths his hands down the front of his shirt, a tight gesture at once controlled and nervous. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” His eyes flick to Namjoon’s. “Does he need something?”

“Just one second,” Namjoon says, and then, to Jeongguk, “Maybe we can take a break? Out in the hall?”

“No!” Jimin whirls on Namjoon and gets a fistful of his shirt. He has tears in his eyes. “Please, I just want to talk to him, please, I’ll never ask for anything again—”

“Jimin,” Jeongguk hisses, “you have to calm down—”

“I’m calm!” Jimin wails.

Everything is happening at once, more than Namjoon can keep track of—another server, much stronger in his uniform, has appeared and bowed to the other table with a simpering apology, and now he turns to Taehyung he answered to Taehyung how can his name actually be Taehyung and snaps, “What did you do?” low but loud enough to carry. He grabs Taehyung’s arm roughly.

“Hey!” Namjoon and Jimin shout at once, and the rest of the room goes still. Somewhere in the chaos Jimin has started weeping, tears streaming down his red face.

“I will fix this.” Namjoon looks into Jimin’s eyes, makes sure he’s paying attention. “I promise I will fix this. Please, if you could just go somewhere a little more private, I will talk to him and get everything sorted out.”

He doesn’t know how he’s going to do it and can’t imagine why Jimin would believe him, but he does, and lets Jeongguk and Seokjin take him away. The new server, too, leads Taehyung away, still holding his arm, and Namjoon rushes over before they can disappear into the kitchens.

“I deeply apologize for the disturbance, sir,” the new guy—he’s wearing name tag that says Jongsoo—says, bowing again.

“That’s not necessary,” Namjoon says, trying and only sort of succeeding to keep his voice civil. “It was our fault, not yours and not his.” He opens his hand, trying for a commanding gesture, where Jongsoo is gripping Taehyung’s arm. “This is uncalled for.”

Jongsoo snatches his hand away. Taehyung has been staring at the floor, but his gaze snaps up and finds Namjoon’s.

“Thank you,” Namjoon says. “Are you in charge here?”

Something twitches around Jongsoo’s eyes, like he isn’t, but it’s a close enough thing that he might try to keep control. Before he can, Taehyung says, “Dahae is manager tonight, sir.”

“Great. Jongsoo, could you please get her while I speak to Taehyung?”

It’s a relief when he walks away, but he doesn’t get far—a tall woman in the jacketed gray uniform of the supervisors is already striding over. Jongsoo hangs back but doesn’t leave; as Namjoon looks around the room, all the guests are filing out, and the servers who are left seem to be working as slowly and quietly and close to the scene as they can.

“I apologize for the disturbance,” Dahae says as she approaches.

Namjoon shakes his head. “Really, not at all. No one on your team did anything wrong.”

Dahae glances suspiciously at Taehyung, who’s just staring at Namjoon and holding himself almost eerily still.

“It’s sort of complicated, and I don’t want to waste your time,” Namjoon says. “But our guests just woke up from several hundred years of cryogenesis a week and a half ago. As I’m sure you can imagine, they’re still adjusting. There are some etiquette changes they’re still getting used to.” Technically, that’s true, although Namjoon doubts standing up and screaming in a crowded dining room was appropriate in Jimin’s own time.

Dahae nods, but there’s still a tension, something winding around them all, that Namjoon doesn’t like. “I’m really concerned that you all seem to think it was Taehyung’s fault,” he says, just to make it explicitly clear. “It was absolutely not. It’s my job to help Park Jimin adjust, and if random people are going to get in trouble when he makes a mistake, it puts our whole project, a major Arts Ministry priority, in jeopardy.”

That gets their attention; Dahae and Jongsoo start apologizing with more fervor, and Taehyung’s mouth falls open in surprise. It’s a tiny expression, really, a change of a few millimeters, but the most Namjoon has seen from him so far.

“Great, I’m glad that’s clear,” Namjoon says briskly. “Do you mind if I speak to Taehyung in private?”

Dahae bows again and backs up. It looks like she starts snapping at Jongsoo as soon as they’re out of earshot. Namjoon is not very sorry. He turns to Taehyung and tries to look calm and organized and not like he’s putting out fires in order of their proximity to him. “Have I introduced myself? I’m Kim Namjoon.”

Taehyung nods and repeats his name, “Kim Taehyung,” really just like BTS V how is that fucking possible how can they all—

Namjoon ignores that. “You okay?”

Taehyung is still gaping. He closes his mouth, takes a breath that flares his nostrils. “Of course, sir. Thank you for your concern.”

“Good. So, my next problem…” Namjoon smiles like they’re in this together; Taehyung smiles back like he can tell that’s what Namjoon wants him to do. “This is going to sound impossible, but, the reason Jimin got upset when he saw you is that… he thinks you look like someone he used to know. On Earth, centuries ago.”

Taehyung frowns. “He knew my name.”

“He guessed your name,” Namjoon says. He thinks of Jeongguk, just waking up, blinking at him all bleary, hyung? “They’ve both been kind of fixating on certain coincidences. I think it’s a way they’re trying to understand what’s happening around them, since the human brain just didn’t evolve to comprehend what happens in cryogenesis.”

Taehyung’s face goes blank. “Yes, sir,” he says, flat. So that was too much information.

“Anyway, the point is, he really wants to talk to you,” Namjoon says quickly. “And I think it might help him understand that you’re, you know, an actual person with your own history and not someone he knew on Earth.”

Taehyung still looks sort of blank. Namjoon tries to make it even simpler: “Could you come up to our suite for a few minutes? If you wouldn’t mind?”

“Oh.” Taehyung’s face goes a little confused or something, some twitch, before he schools himself steady again. It takes him a long time to answer. “Yes, sir.”

“Can you come now?”

“Um… well, I’m on duty until the dining room is clear.”

Namjoon looks around. He doesn’t really know, but it looks to him like most of the work is done, and Dahae and Jongsoo are still doing nothing a few meters away, and he has a crying three hundred year old idol back in the rooms. “Do you think we could pull you away early?”

Taehyung has followed his gaze, and Namjoon catches him watching Dahae and Jongsoo with something gone sour in his expression, like he’s holding back sick. It’s frightened, or frightening, a little… twisted, somehow, but before Namjoon can grasp what the emotion exactly is, it’s gone, and Taehyung is nodding at him with routine deference, nothing wrong left except the unease in Namjoon’s chest.

“I’m sure we will be happy to help with whatever you need, sir.”

###

“He wants me to go with him,” Taehyung says to Dahae—he doesn’t mean to whisper, but that’s how it comes out. “I guess I look like someone...” He doesn’t know how to explain what Namjoon told him, doesn’t understand it. He’s just saying yes, sir and trying not to get in any more trouble.

It doesn’t matter, because Dahae’s already waving him away. “It’s fine,” she says. “You’re dismissed. Just do whatever he says.”

Jongsoo snorts, tossing his whole head. “You shut up,” Dahae snaps, but she stalks away to say something to the servers gathering up the tablecloths, and it makes Jongsoo meaner.

“Yeah, go do whatever you’re told,” he growls, too close, so Taehyung can feel his breath. His skin crawls away from it. “I’d pay to see that. Hey, maybe soon I’ll be able to.”

He taps the tip of Taehyung’s nose cutely, like he’s playing with a toy, and Taehyung doesn’t have the reflexes to get his head away in time. At least now, Taehyung can just turn his back and walk away, returning to Namjoon, who’s texting but looks up and smiles. “We all set?”

So casual, like it’s nothing. Taehyung knows exactly what Jongsoo meant: that man is going to take you somewhere and fuck you and then that will be the only thing that you are.

Taehyung really doesn’t think that’s what Namjoon is asking him for—if nothing else, because he doesn’t understand anything that Namjoon is saying or what he wants to hear, and during his time on this ship Taehyung has heard and talked his way out of every possible solicitation, sleazy and clever to insulting and violent. But maybe that’s naive. Maybe this is how you disappear, some expensive-looking man huffs at your boss about “the Ministry” and tells you you’re special in the kindest, calmest voice you’ve ever heard and it just happens, faster than you can think, before you even notice you should fight back.

Everyone is about to watch Taehyung leave with him, and it might not even matter what happens or doesn't after that, because they’ll all think the same thing Jongsoo does. But if he doesn’t leave with this man who might want to hurt him, he’ll have to stay here, where Jongsoo will definitely try to hurt him—and anyway, he doesn’t have a decision to make, Dahae already told him to go.

The only thing Taehyung can say is, “Yes, sir.”

The singers are staying in the same part of the ship as the banquet room and all the fancy offices, so they don’t have to get on the monorail or even walk for very long. Namjoon is talking, but Taehyung’s head is too floaty to hear much, and what he does he can barely understand. He eventually gets it—something about the ancient language the singers speak.

“I didn’t understand him at all,” Taehyung says. They’d told the servers before dinner to speak to the singers as slowly and clearly as possible, and they’d get it, but when the one started yelling, all Taehyung understood was his own name. Is that a problem? Namjoon would have asked him before if it was. Funny, kind of, that the word he was using to describe this was talk.

“He was upset,” Namjoon says. “They’ve been much clearer most of the time. And I can translate, if it’s necessary. Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.” Almost to himself, he mutters, “It’s probably best if it’s a little awkward.”

Namjoon is leading, a step in front, so Taehyung indulges in a moment of letting his confusion warp his face, glaring at the back of Namjoon’s head. But when Namjoon comes to an abrupt stop in front of one door, Taehyung pulls it back under control—he goes for the dipped chin and the big eyes, not a subtle choice but a reliable classic—to follow.

It’s the parlor of one of the family suites, and there are a lot more people in this room than Taehyung was expecting. His voice leaves him as fear clenches his throat, but he doesn’t need it. Namjoon introduces them all: Dr. Kim Seokjin is a psychologist who works for the ambassador from ship twelve; Jung Hoseok is a socialite, Taehyung already knows of him, but Namjoon introduces him inexplicably as a rapper; Min Yoongi is the assistant director of the music program overseeing the BTS project.

And then, of course, BTS themselves: Jeon Jeongguk and Park Jimin, both of them staring wide-eyed at Taehyung. Jimin has his hands clutched against his chest, like he’s praying for something, and a smile pulling on his lips even though it's obvious he’s been crying. Jeongguk is a little more guarded. They say archaic, complicated hellos; Taehyung bows and says his simpler greeting as solemnly as he can.

They’re all looking at Taehyung like he’s supposed to talk. Being liked is currency, and maybe Taehyung’s most important, right now. “Nice to meet all of you,” he says, speaking as slowly and clearly as he can, like they instructed the servers. “It must be exciting to work on this project. It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

“Really?” Jeongguk’s whole face lights up. “What are they saying?”

Taehyung’s thoughts go white, and all he can remember is that Eunmi said he’s more handsome than they are. (Taehyung doesn't see it. They look so healthy, with pink cheeks, glowing skin, round, sculpted muscles.) He understands the question, but he lets Namjoon translate so he can gather his thoughts to speak. “Someone was playing recorded music in the barracks a few nights ago,” he says. “I’ve never heard that before.”

“Oh, wow,” Jeongguk says. “That’s… wow.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Yoongi says. “This is important work.”

Taehyung doesn’t know why they look so grave, but Jeongguk gazes into Yoongi’s face and nods. It’s true, the singers aren’t hard to understand when they’re speaking clearly—some of their words and phrases are completely familiar, matching the people around them, and otherwise they just have very soft accents, even softer than the ones back home, and add some extra complex syllables to their sentences. Taehyung knows, from watching old Earth movies, that they’re for certain nuances of etiquette. He wishes he’d learned—he’d like to avoid insulting them. He’d like to be able to tell, just to know, if they insult him, even though he wouldn’t be able do anything about it.

“You can come sit.” Jimin pats the seat of the chair next to the couch where he and Jeongguk are sitting, so Taehyung goes there. “I’m sorry I was so intense at dinner. You just… you look so much like someone I knew. I do understand how you’re different, though. I’d be really interested in hearing about your life.”

Taehyung can only blink at him—he’s a little overwhelming. Not even in a bad way, just in a huge way. Maybe it’s because Taehyung knows what it’s like to miss someone. He can’t imagine what he’d do if he saw his mother across a room somewhere on this ship. But he's not the person Jimin misses, and even if he wanted to help, he wouldn't know how.

Jeongguk tosses his head back to laugh, slurs something quick at Jimin that Taehyung can’t understand, and then more clearly says, “This is him trying to be less intense. Sorry, he’s really bad at it. Where are you from? Were you born on the ship, like Namjoon?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “I’m from Venus.”

Most of them make appropriately somber faces, but Jimin actually laughs. “Sorry,” he says—they apologize a lot, considering they don’t have to care how Taehyung feels. “That’s so weird to hear.” Jimin turns to Jeongguk and stage-whispers, “Taehyungie’s from Venus.”

“Right,” Taehyung says. “Not a lot of people make it out.”

Namjoon is lurking behind them, leaning back against the dining table to watch, and he shakes his head. Speaking very fast, he says, “He doesn't mean that. When they went into cryogenesis, humans had only just started leaving Earth. They don’t know anything about Venus now.”

Jeongguk frowns and twists to look up at him. Namjoon smiles down and, in a completely different voice, says, “Translating for Taehyung.”

Jeongguk looks at Taehyung, who nods, and he seems satisfied. “What’s Venus like?”

Taehyung can’t even start to answer, but luckily Namjoon takes it. “It was the first settlement people made when they left Earth. We use the sulfuric acid in the clouds to make water, oxygen, and fertilizer. It really powers humanity’s ability to live in space.”

It’s a neat trick—a few choice facts, presented neutrally, not lies but truth with a hole in it. Most people, if you asked them what Venus was like, would just say it’s hell.

Taehyung tries it: “My family works in the acid mills, but I wasn’t good at it, so I got a job on this ship instead.”

Jimin giggles. “Yeah, you don’t seem like you would work in a mill.”

Taehyung thinks he understands now, what Namjoon was trying to explain. How weird they are. All the laughing at the wrong stuff is like the apologizing for the wrong stuff—they aren’t trying to be especially kind or unkind, they just don’t know how it’s coming across. But this particular laugh still stings so hard, and Taehyung ducks his head for a second in case it shows on his face. He feels uncomfortable and small and really bad at this, and they haven’t even done what he’s afraid of.

When he looks up again, though, Namjoon is giving him a thumbs up behind Jeongguk’s head and putting his hand over his heart like thank you. Across the room, the others are giving him encouraging smiles of various wattages, too.

It was better when they were talking about music. “How about your work? I know everyone is really excited for your concert.”

And that’s it. Not only are Jeongguk and Jimin excited to talk about what they’re working on—and more fluent, no longer stumbling into awkward gaps in their own knowledge and accidental insults—everyone else can jump in, too, and Taehyung mostly just has to smile and make the dipped-chin-big-eyes face a lot. Time passes like water rushing down a drain. He doesn’t really follow the conversation, but Hoseok and Jeongguk get into the friendly, laughing kind of argument and no one needs him, anyway.

In order to prove whatever point he’s making, Jeongguk stands and grabs Jimin’s hand to pull him up, too, and asks Namjoon to play a song. Namjoon’s got a computer on the dining table; it only takes him a few clicks.

Jeongguk and Jimin start to move.

Taehyung understands that what he’s looking at is dance, but it’s like no dance he’s ever seen—the joyful spinning people sometimes do when they’re singing together in a common room on a holiday, or the grinding pairs they make when somebody puts on a drumbeat in the dark. This is a complicated, specific orchestra of movement, elegant and clever. They’re telling a story with their bodies.

“See?” Jeongguk says. “Even though the melody is slower, you have the beat to move to.”

Taehyung doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s obviously right. Who would argue with someone who can do that? Hoseok, too, nods. Jeongguk, having won, stops moving, but Jimin keeps spinning to the music. “Save me,” he sings along with the track. His body is like a wire, like a soap bubble; he reminds Taehyung of the time the artificial gravity broke in the upper levels and everybody was gliding, half their true weight, across the floor. That exhilarating, and that dangerous.

It’s incredible to watch.

It would be incredible to do.

Something tries to open up in Taehyung’s chest; he smashes it closed.

Jimin drops himself back onto the couch next to Jeongguk and catches Taehyung’s eye. He looks awfully proud of himself, and okay, maybe he earned it. For lack of knowing what else to do, Taehyung gives him the lifted chin and narrow eyes. He’s unexpectedly delighted when Jimin does it back.

As Namjoon turns the music off again, Taehyung’s stomach betrays him and growls furiously in the suddenly quiet room. He hasn’t eaten since his midday shake—tonight’s rations would have been distributed after work, so he missed them, and he didn’t get to sneak any of the scraps he was hoping for while he was clearing plates, either.

He claps his hands over his stomach. “I’m sorry!”

“Why are you sorry?” Seokjin asks. He hasn’t talked much at all, but he’s loud now, taking over. “Have you eaten tonight?”

Taehyung shakes his head.

“Oh, no,” Jimin says.

“Oh. I’m okay.” Taehyung’s stomach growls again, the traitor. He wants them all to stop looking at him even more than he wants something to eat.

“I need to head back to my rooms anyway,” Seokjin says. “Why don’t I walk you back to yours, and then I’ll be able to find you later so we can pick this up again another time?”

“Tomorrow night!” Jimin says. “We can have dinner together.”

It doesn’t seem possible that this is really all they wanted from him, but goodnights start happening and Taehyung is being led into the hall with Hoseok, Seokjin, and Yoongi. Jimin makes a strange little leap, like he starts to hug Taehyung but he thinks better of it, and as Taehyung is leaving, no one even touches him.

Hoseok turns down a hall to wherever he’s staying, here in the posh end of the ship, but Seokjin and Yoongi go with Taehyung to the monorail. Taehyung is trying to hold his face as still as he can. Some of his fear is letting go, but a new fear—he messed that up, somehow—is taking its place.

“Thanks, Taehyung,” Yoongi says. “You were awesome.”

“Really?” Taehyung is whispering again, not because he wants to but because he can’t talk.

Seokjin gives him a canny squint. “Namjoon was very, very clear with you about why he brought you over tonight, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Taehyung says automatically. And maybe Namjoon was clear—he explained a whole lot, and it’s probably Taehyung’s fault he couldn’t understand.

“Hmm,” Seokjin says, but he doesn’t agree or argue. “Where will your dinner be?”

“Someone would have been assigned to take it to my pod in the barracks.” The truth, though, is that whoever it was will probably have stolen it for themselves, especially if a rumor got around that Taehyung wasn’t coming back tonight.

It did occur to Taehyung as he was leaving what everyone else in that dining room would think of him, but it seemed like an impossibly faraway problem at the time. Now it’s only a few hours later, and he has to figure out what to do.

“Perfect.” Seokjin nods briskly. “We’ll make sure.”

“You don’t need to come all the way,” Taehyung says.

Seokjin waves his hand airily. “I’ll just check everything’s all right. And I want to be able to find you again tomorrow, of course.”

“I can give you my contact.” Taehyung takes out his phone and exchanges information with both Seokjin and Yoongi, but they still get out of the monorail with him as he walks to his room.

Taehyung gets that floating feeling again, like he should stop this but he doesn’t know how. He has a little defensive urge to make them go away, even, to say he can take care of himself.

But maybe he can’t. He isn’t expecting to find his rations when he gets back to his room, and so Seokjin’s going to discover that things aren’t fine by his standard, and Taehyung can’t imagine what he’ll do. His only plan was to wait meekly to eat until lunchtime tomorrow.

He’s afraid of what people will say or maybe even do to him when they see he’s back, and if they find him walking down the hall with a couple of upper-class men that will only make it worse later, but it will protect him right now. He doesn’t know which is better or what he could control even if this is worse.

He feels like he’s barely hanging on, like it’s been so long on the edge that his grip is starting to slip. Maybe, if this is the best he can do, then he can’t take care of himself all alone. Maybe, somehow, if he lets Seokjin and Yoongi walk with him, something new will happen.

And it does, the new thing happens as he’s walking up to his pod. His vision tunnels with raw panic. His rations have not been stolen—they’ve been smashed on his door, smeared together and left to run down to the floor. The milky stuff in the nutrient shake has mixed with the vinegar in the kimchi and gone sour. It smells like puke.

The wastefulness of it is the horror, the worst taboo on the spaceship. It’s obscene, like Taehyung is so disgusting that destroying the most valuable commodity they have is better than giving it to him.

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says inanely, turning and lifting his hands like he can stop Yoongi and Seokjin from seeing, but Seokjin’s face arrests him cold.

It seems like Seokjin has assigned himself the role of pleasant, low-key one, in contrast to all the high-strung people around him, but his anger is so total and hard he’s even got Yoongi leaning away from him. His face is basically perfect, and glaring so grimly, he looks like pure murder.

“This won’t do at all,” he says mildly, already taking out a phone.

He steps away from them to speak quietly—Taehyung can’t hear what he’s saying and doesn’t try. “Hey, you okay?” Yoongi whispers, and Taehyung makes his worst mistake of the night. He answers honestly, shaking his head tightly no. He's dizzy, hot; he's not breathing enough, but he doesn't remember how.

Yoongi nods small, stepping back and glancing over at Seokjin. Seokjin is ending one call and starting another, sure and efficient, but Yoongi looks more nervous. “Okay. We’re going to help you,” he says quietly.

Seokjin shoves his phone into his pocket and Dahae appears, dressed in off-duty clothes with her hair up. Taehyung ducks his eyes. Dahae’s not mean for fun, like some of the supervisors, but she’s not someone Taehyung would choose to go to for help. It’s the servers’ responsibility to take care of problems even if they didn’t cause them, which means it’s literally in his job description to apologize to Seokjin and Yoongi until they feel better and then clean this up without bothering her, and that’s what she will want him to have done.

She winces away from the mess on Taehyung’s door and bows to Seokjin. “I’m so sorry, sir, we’ll take care of this. Taehyung, go get a mop—”

“Taehyung didn’t do it,” Yoongi says.

“We’ll just get this cleaned up.” Dahae is not as good at the unrelated-facts game—it’s obviously not quite an answer to what Yoongi said.

“Isn't that destroying evidence?” Yoongi seems genuinely confused, though next to him, Seokjin’s face is growing steadily angrier. “It wasn’t Taehyung, he’s been with us all night.”

Disgust crosses Dahae’s face, first fast as a reflex and then stronger, like she visibly decides not to try to suppress it. And Taehyung gets it, kind of—she’s spent her entire night being ordered around by rich men who she thinks are doing the kind of whoring people usually at least keep private. Yoongi said he was going to help, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or how he’s coming across, and he’s making it worse.

But Dahae's the manager in charge, so if she thinks they’re trying to hurt him, she’s the one with the authority to get help, and instead her patience snaps and she says, “Sir, you're really not supposed to be down here. If you want him, can’t you just take him somewhere?”

It's gotten so hot somehow, and the mess smells so bad. Taehyung puts his hands over his mouth, afraid he might throw up.

Yoongi drops his face, eyes tightening. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Seokjin puts his hand on Yoongi’s arm. “There’s no reason to be vulgar,” he says, deadly calm.

The next fifteen minutes are a blur, with first Jongsoo ordered out of bed, and then Director Han and Chef Lee, who are in charge of the whole kitchen staff, and a few more uniformed people Taehyung doesn’t recognize. Doors open up and down the hall. Taehyung finds a spot on the floor and stares at it, burning so hot with shame he could explode, even though he only did what everyone told him to. No one asks him questions. Seokjin is yelling.

He stops himself mid-rant and turns abruptly to Yoongi, who flinches but asks, “Can I help?”

“I think Taehyung needs his dinner and somewhere safe to spend the night, don’t you?”

“On it,” Yoongi says, and he gets out his phone and tells Taehyung to gather his things. Somewhere safe. It seems melodramatic—his pod is perfectly safe once he locks the door—but gives Taehyung a clawing emptiness.

He gets his bag—the mess on the pod door seeps thickly when he opens it—and someone is pressing a fresh ration box into his hands, and Yoongi is guiding him away.

Taehyung turns back once, and Jongsoo is on his hands and knees, cleaning the floor, while Seokjin keeps yelling at the people above him. It is not satisfying. Taehyung thinks, the next time they’re alone together, Jongsoo will actually kill him.

Back in the monorail, Taehyung clutches his things in his lap and waits for whatever Yoongi will say to him. But all Yoongi says is, “You can go ahead and eat,” and then he looks politely out at the stars instead of watching. It is the finest kindness Taehyung can remember.

He’s done by the time the monorail returns to the tail and Yoongi takes him back to the singers’ suite. The settling of his fear and hunger is dragging Taehyung down, and his eyelids start to droop. He often has to just push himself until he drops, and he’s close now.

Namjoon lets them in looking distressed and immediately pulls Yoongi aside to start whispering. Jimin, though, bounces up in that antigravity way with an incongruous smile rounding his face. “You’re back!”

So they must still be mostly lying to him. Taehyung tries it again. “Yoongi thought it would be better if I stayed up here.”

“It is!” Jimin claps his hands, delighted, and doesn’t ask any questions. He seems so innocent—they all do, really. Normally that would make Taehyung angry or jealous, but tonight, because it's all been so different than he expected or maybe he's just too tired to get mad, he wonders instead. He's always thought everyone knew how cruel and grasping life was, that they were all scrambling together for whatever they could get out of it. He thought anybody who acted like they knew different was lying. But Jimin is from someplace else, and he's grinning and glowing at Taehyung like wherever he came from, it's the truth.

Taehyung's only choice is to trust him, whether he feels it or not, but he almost does feel it. At least, it doesn't scare him as much as it should to ask, "Where should I go?"

“We have a couple of empty rooms, which one do you want?” Jimin opens two doors, and laughs like it’s unexpected when he finds them identical.

Taehyung chooses the one farther from the others. He closes the door and sets a new code on the lock.

He wakes up confused about where he is, and there’s no shock of a shift bell to jolt him into awareness, just the gentle glow of artificial sunlight rising in his room. He sits up slowly, rubbing his eyes, and even though he waits a while, no one comes to wake him up.

He gets himself ready and cracks open the door eventually, and finds Jimin and Jeongguk sitting with Namjoon at the dining table. Jimin starts waving, smile growing like the light. “Taehyungie! Come have breakfast.”

###

Namjoon sleeps fitfully and is awake with his caffeinated water when Jeongguk and then Jimin wake up. He gives them a minute to get their own caffeine and their breakfast shakes, but once they’re seated, he says, “I wanted to talk about a couple of the things that happened last night.”

They both make their attentive faces, good little students.

Namjoon spent a lot of last night talking about it, first with a kind but devastating empathy by Yoongi, and then over voice call by a hollering Seokjin. He feels wretched, and he knows he made some mistakes. He’d just talked about how asking the servers for personal favors had a long history of exploitation, and then as soon as he needed something he started wheedling like a gangster. He thought his reasons were important—but everyone probably thinks that. And when that man was dragging Taehyung, Namjoon had almost enjoyed throwing some power around to make it stop.

Looking back, he’s not surprised that Taehyung was scared, that he didn’t say so, that the people around him thought it was open season for cruelty.

But there are also things Seokjin blamed him for that Namjoon just won’t admit are his fault. Seokjin told him to back off, to stop over-explaining the history and science of their work. Seokjin said that he’s frightening and confusing everyone who doesn’t have his expertise, which is everyone.

But maybe the reason they keep ending up scared and confused is that they are dealing with something scary and confusing. Namjoon has been tripping over himself trying not to explain too much at a time, and he’s been leaving so much out it sometimes approaches the territory of lies. And he’s still getting a lot of blank stares and upset people, and Jeongguk and Jimin are filling in the gaps with nonsense instead of asking questions or looking at the facts.

So Namjoon is not backing off. He’s doubling down—it is time to take control of the message.

“First of all,” he says. “Jimin, last night, when you first saw Taehyung, you were saying, ‘I’ll never ask for anything again,’ do you remember that?”

Jimin’s eyes widen. “Yes.”

“Okay, I just want to say—you’re not a hostage. It’s not causing me or anyone else any trouble to help you get what you need.” He smiles, happy to see Jimin mirroring it to him. “Please continue to ask for anything, or any questions, any time. Got it?”

“Got it.” Jimin hides his cheek in one hand. “I was just really surprised, I was a little upset. That’s all.”

“Totally understandable,” Namjoon says. “Coming out of cryogenesis is a big deal. Nobody expects you to understand everything or be able to deal with it all yourself right away. You can say anything you want to me, or Seokjin or Yoongi, or anyone you feel comfortable with, and I really hope both of you will. Okay?”

“Okay,” they say together.

Namjoon nods, and turns to Jeongguk. These young men are just… so beautiful. They might actually be too handsome. They make him feel like such a nerd. But maybe he’s been letting them smile at him and move on too much.

“You also said, ‘he doesn’t remember.’ Jimin was upset but you were still calm, you were very sure. Can you tell me what you meant?”

Jeongguk squirms nervously in his chair and shrugs, but he doesn’t answer.

“I’d really like to know exactly what you meant,” Namjoon says.

“He meant that was Taehyung,” Jimin says, pushing his lips into a pout. “Our friend. He looks the same and he talks the same and—he’s the same. I understand that he doesn’t remember, but I know him.”

So, okay. Namjoon knew he was going to say it, and now he’s said it, and they weren’t going to be able to move past it until it was out here. “Taehyung remembers his life. He told you—he comes from a milling family on Venus, but he got a job on this ship, so he lives here now.”

Jimin gives a big eye-roll. “I know that. I’m not saying his life now isn’t real. I’m just saying his life before was, too. I remember that as well as he remembers this.”

“That was a different person,” Namjoon says. “It’s just a coincidence he has the same name.”

“And the same face, and the same voice, and the same hands—”

“Same freckles,” Jeongguk adds.

“And he looks at me just the same way when I dance,” Jimin says proudly. “He’s the same.”

“All of you are the same,” Jeongguk says, though he can’t quite look at Namjoon’s eyes. He’s looking at his shoulders or chin or something, near or past him. “That’s a pretty big coincidence, five strangers who look and sound just like the people we knew.”

“I agree,” Namjoon says. “But it’s a coincidence, what other explanation is there? This is like someone from Joseon Korea turning up in your time, that’s how long it’s been.”

“That happens in dramas all the time,” Jimin says, petty.

“Nobody has made a drama in centuries,” Namjoon replies.

Jeongguk makes eye contact like he’s forcing himself. “Dr. Kim says faith in reincarnation is a venerable religious tradition.”

Namjoon has to snap his mouth shut to keep from saying something out of shock. Dr. Kim did this? That’s a bigger problem than Namjoon thought, and maybe it’s time to stop for now. Jeongguk’s voice is almost shaking, and Jimin is sitting with his arms crossed, staring away.

Jeongguk leans forward, holding Namjoon in that gaze of his. “Namjoon-hyung was the best person I knew, ever. It makes me even more excited to know you.”

And it hurts. It just… really sucks. Maybe it’s because of who they are, but probably, no matter what, it would hurt like this to sit in front of people, looking in their eyes, and know they don’t really see him.

But ultimately, this is a job, and it’s about them, not Namjoon’s feelings. The problem is what happens to them when these fantasies inevitably shatter. “I know that you know where you are,” he says. “But I’m a little afraid you don’t really get it, like…”

“Like it feels like I’m going to wake up from this weird dream any second?” Jeongguk asks. “Like I’ve been trying to figure out how this is the world’s worst prank?” He shrugs. “I still do, sometimes. But I don’t think there’s any way to fix that but time.”

Jimin looks honestly confused. “We’re all together again. Where else would I want to be?”

Namjoon sighs. Jimin collects their empty cups and goes to get another round of caffeine water out of the cold case.

“You said we could tell you anything,” Jeongguk says.

“You can. I’m not mad.” Namjoon fidgets with his empty shake, peering into the bottle, but makes himself look up and confront Jeongguk’s frightened, beautiful eyes. “But I know who I am, and it’s challenging for me when you try to tell me something else.”

Jeongguk frowns hard, but he doesn’t answer. He’s really thinking about it. Namjoon appreciates that, at least, and doesn’t push him.

Jimin comes back with fresh caffeine, and Namjoon pulls up video of their speeches last night (it feels like dinner was days and days ago). They always want to watch themselves, careful and critical, teasing and encouraging one another in turns but serious about their own work.

Namjoon has messages about Taehyung—Seokjin is getting the ambassador involved with the kitchen supervisors and says not to send him back yet; Yoongi says he’s welcome in the music room—but still no Taehyung. He’s wondering if he should knock and check on him, if Taehyung will want to hide until someone gets him, how he could possibly have fucked that up so badly, when the door to the last room cracks open and Taehyung peeks out.

He’s still puffy and bleary-eyed with sleep, but his uniform is neat, like he took the time to run the steamer over it.

“Taehyungie!” Jimin waves. “Come have breakfast.”

Taehyung comes to the chair Jimin pushes out for him. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Jeongguk says. “Sleep well?”

Jimin jumps up—Taehyung doesn’t watch, answering Jeongguk instead—but he gawks when Jimin puts his shake, supplements, and another glass of caffeine down in front of him.

Jimin smiles cheerfully back. He looks like he doesn’t get what’s strange about him serving Taehyung, but Namjoon isn’t convinced. Jimin puts on a guileless sweetness, especially in contrast to Jeongguk’s more visible work, but when it comes down to a conflict or a decision, Jimin is suddenly the one in charge.

“Taehyung, would you like to come to the music room with us today?” Namjoon asks. “They’re going to rehearse. Yoongi says you’d be welcome. Of course, you don’t have to.”

Namjoon doesn’t say “you can’t go back to work” but now he’s paying better attention to Taehyung’s reactions. The little narrowing of his eyes, the rest of his careful evenness, suggests he knows. He nods, and Jimin bounces happily in his chair and starts telling him a bunch of things about the songs they’re working on that Taehyung won’t understand. Taehyung just nods some more, staring at him unblinking and blank.

Whatever; no one wants Namjoon to butt in, anyway. He says, “I’ll be ready in a few minutes,” and goes back into his room. Jeongguk watches him leave, or watches something inside his own head as he stares in Namjoon’s direction, until Namjoon shuts the door. He drops his forehead against it and breathes, hand on his chest as his heart settles down.

Chapter Text

Each work day begins with a run-through of the songs they’ve learned so far—four, now, with the first two coming together pretty much completely. Hoseok keeps up well, especially considering he’s self-taught—he must be preternaturally talented, and also have spent hours and hours every week for years in the archives, watching and practicing.

Namjoon knows all about that. He’s spent those same hours with the old footage, too, trying to rebuild the world through the way they lived in it until it was real inside his head, and he’s talked to Yoongi about the time he spent breaking the songs down like clocks to figure out how they work.

Namjoon knows obsession, and he can see it in the machinelike precision of the way Hoseok moves, all the way down to his fingertips. Jimin, self-appointed dance instructor, takes an almost gleeful pleasure in holding him to a high standard, but Hoseok just keeps getting better.

And, of course, Jimin moves like something more ethereal than human, like the laws of physics are a game he can cheat at. Namjoon would have guessed the effect couldn’t hold in a setting like this—up close in a brightly lit room, Jimin dressed in simple track pants and yawning through his breaks—but it’s only amplified.

Jeongguk does not look like a machine or an angel. He looks—like a person, like a human in a body working hard to do something well. Jeongguk dances like the concept of excellence brought to tangible life.

They’re all incredible, but he’s the one Namjoon can’t look away from.

With nothing else to do, Taehyung sits next to Namjoon in the corner. His jaw drops when they work smooth sections of choreography, just like it did when they were dancing in the living room last night. Taehyung is too frightened or polite or both to do much besides nod and say “yes, sir,” but his reaction to the dancing is real. After the performers finish their run-through and gather around the keyboard, he looks almost bereft.

Namjoon leans closer to him. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

Taehyung is dazed. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“You said people have been in the archives. Have you seen any of the videos of what they used to do?”

Taehyung shakes his head. Namjoon is already pulling his computer out of his jacket and unrolling it before he realizes he should ask— “Would you like to see?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all.” Not only is it really fine, but Jeongguk and Jimin are watching over their shoulders, too, so maybe this is a teachable moment for everyone in the room.

Namjoon pulls up one of the videos he’s tagged fan experience. It’s one of the stadium concerts, and the footage of the choreography isn’t so clear but the incredible scale of it, the lights and the loudness and the pyrotechnics and all the people, comes across.

(Namjoon didn’t do this on purpose, but as he watches, he’s glad he chose one where Taehyung won’t be confronted with the ancient Kim Taehyung’s face. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Taehyung to react appropriately, even if he does notice a resemblance—but whatever he does, he’ll set Jimin off again, and that conversation this morning is still gnawing on Namjoon’s bones.)

On the screen, Jimin holds out his microphone as the crowd sings back to him. Taehyung looks back and forth between the image and Jimin standing over them; Namjoon can almost watch his brain knitting them together.

“That’s really you,” Taehyung says.

“Of course it’s me!” Jimin laughs.

“It’s like, I knew they pulled some ancients out of a freezer—” Taehyung starts.

“Ancients! I bet we’re the same age,” Jimin says.

Taehyung squints at him and then turns to Namjoon, hesitant.

And it is… incredibly gratifying. Namjoon is a little scared of Taehyung, of messing up with him and of his handsome, carefully controlled face, but in this moment, he’s never liked anyone more. He knows what he’s talking about, and it is just nice to have someone acknowledge that. “Records of the early space years are unclear, so we don’t know exactly. Jimin is somewhere between two hundred and ninety and three hundred and forty years old.”

Taehyung’s face gives way to shock that makes Jeongguk laugh way harder than necessary. Jimin puts his nose in the air. “Well, I always said I was your hyung.”

“You what?” Taehyung asks, but Jimin maybe finally thinks better of it and doesn’t elaborate. Taehyung gets distracted by the screen again. He starts to say something but stops himself.

“Do you have another question?” Namjoon asks. “I’m happy to answer them. Like… more than happy.”

“He’s a huge nerd,” Yoongi confirms.

“You’d know,” Namjoon replies without heat, and then makes an open, teacherly face at Taehyung.

“I just… how do all those people know all the words?” Before Namjoon can answer, Taehyung adds, “How many people is that?”

“That’s around forty thousand,” Namjoon says. “This isn’t the first time they’ve heard these songs. They would have listened to it a lot, associated it with all kinds of personal and social rituals.” That was a little too historian-y; when Taehyung gets confused, his face goes noticeably blank. Namjoon pauses for it to sink in. Jeongguk is still staring down at them… kind of like he wants to punch someone. “Please correct me if I’m wrong,” Namjoon adds.

Jeongguk shakes his head. “People really stopped making music? How is that even possible?”

Jimin sits down, hugging his arms around his knees, and Yoongi and Hoseok move closer, so they can join the conversation.

“People are always going to make some form of music,” Yoongi says. “We sing together all the time, and me and Namjoon and Hoseok definitely aren’t the only people who find listening to old stuff from Earth interesting. But, anything like this?” He points at Namjoon’s computer. “No, we stopped doing that.”

“For so long, it took all people’s effort to survive,” Namjoon says. “There might be a handful of musical instruments that people kept in their personal possessions, or in one of the American museum ships, but certainly nobody’s manufacturing them. We’re much safer and more stable now, and still, this is kind of a fringe project.”

“People in my department think I’ve lost it, is what he means.” Yoongi grins proudly.

“My parents have never liked how much time I spend on this,” Hoseok says. “I mean, they like that I can sing for the family at Chuseok, but somehow they want that without my working on it for the rest of the year. They always thought it was a waste of time. Though really, none of us ever imagined I’d get to perform, or do anything with it, so maybe it was.”

Taehyung looks up at him like he’s awestruck, but whatever thoughts are behind that, he keeps to himself.

“Lots of people in our time thought pop was silly, too,” Jimin says. “But it could be more than that. We really helped our armys.”

Jimin hasn’t been talking about his life on Earth like this, in the past tense, as a fixed time that ended, and his mood is hard to read. He looks serious, but maybe not as sad as he could. Eventually, he adds, “I think we can help people now.”

“I think so, too,” Yoongi says.

“You said you still sing,” Jeongguk says. “What do people sing?”

“Hymns, folk songs,” Namjoon says. “Especially around celebrations.”

Jeongguk looks expectantly at him, and then to Yoongi.

“Oh, no,” Yoongi says. “When I said we sing I didn’t mean I, personally, sing.”

Namjoon shakes his head too. Jeongguk looks to Hoseok, but he says, “In my family, we sing BTS songs.”

Jimin tilts his head and looks sweetly at Taehyung. "What about you?"

“There’s a hymn I really love,” Taehyung says. He winces when all eyes turn to him with interest. “I can’t sing like you.”

“That’s all right,” Jeongguk says. “I’d love to hear it, if you don’t mind.”

Taehyung takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes. His voice warbles when he starts, but he finds steadiness after a few lines and settles. Namjoon puts his hand over his mouth when he recognizes the song. Jeongguk is astonished; Jimin smiles.

Taehyung finishes the chorus he’s singing and opens his eyes.

“That’s not a hymn,” Jeongguk says.

“It’s—it’s not?” Taehyung looks to Namjoon again, like he’s afraid he did something wrong.

“That was great. You did awesome. It’s just, that’s an old BTS song, too,” Namjoon tells him, and then to Jeongguk, “I swear I didn’t coach him to do that. It’s been so long, people don’t always remember where the songs come from.”

“I… need to sit down,” Jeongguk says, already sitting down hard on the floor as Yoongi reaches too late for his arm.

“Are you all right?” Jimin asks.

“Hyung.” Jeongguk has blanched so far he’s a little green. “It’s three hundred years in the future, and he just started singing ‘Spring Day.’ I just… I…” He rubs his thumb under his eye. “Look, I have goosebumps.”

He sticks his arm under Jimin’s face. Namjoon has goosebumps, too.

“I wish,” Jeongguk says, stops and swallows. Starts again: “I wish I could tell Namjoon-hyung.”

Jimin rubs the goosebumps off Jeongguk’s arm and, when Jeongguk slumps into his lap, strokes Jeongguk's hair. “Maybe, somewhere, he knows.”

Something tenses under Namjoon’s skin, pulling it tight, but they don’t look at him. After they finish their moment, Jeongguk sits up and pushes his hair back, all business. “So you sing?” he asks Taehyung.

Taehyung ducks his head. “No more than anyone else.”

“You’re pretty good,” Yoongi says. “I bet you’re always popular at Christmas.”

Taehyung gives Hoseok that awestruck look again. “It’s like Mr. Jung said. People want to hear it sometimes, but they never act like it's important. I didn’t know it was something anybody really cared about.”

Hoseok nods. He doesn’t know exactly what happened last night or why Taehyung is here—at least, Namjoon hasn’t told him—but he handles it well. “Yes, exactly. It’s hard for me because it’s always been so important to me. You do sing beautifully, it was wonderful to listen to.” Before Taehyung has to react, he adds, “And please, call me Hoseok.”

“Okay, sorry,” Taehyung says, and Hoseok presses his lips together, unsatisfied, but doesn’t correct him again. That’s kind, too.

Jimin smiles with too much well-worn, comfortable fondness. “Taehyungie, you're so modest.”

“Um…” Taehyung shrugs, ducks his face. It looks worse than modesty.

“Can you match pitch?” Jeongguk asks quickly.

“I don’t know what that means.” Taehyung’s eyes flick back and forth, still afraid he’s going to get in trouble.

“Nobody’s had formal training anymore,” Yoongi says. “Not like you did.”

“And we’re here to give it to them, right?” Jeongguk asks. “We need a baritone. Can we try?”

Yoongi waves him on, and Jeongguk sits up very straight. “I’m going to sing a note, and you try to sing it back to me, okay?”

Taehyung nods, but looks hesitantly at Namjoon.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Namjoon says.

After the assurance, Taehyung is braver. “No, I can do it.”

“Okay. Listen.” Jeongguk sings a note in his smooth, clear voice. Taehyung returns it in a smokier, less steady tone.

It sounds good to Namjoon. It sounds—though it pains him to think it—an awful lot like the Kim Taehyung he’s listened to in the archives. But something passes Jimin’s face, briefly stricken, and Jeongguk frowns and nods in a workmanlike way. “That was a little flat—that means low—did you hear? Let’s try again.”

He holds the note. Taehyung answers it back, and frowns. “I can hear it’s wrong, I just can’t get it to the right place.”

“Relax here—” Jeongguk reaches forward, for Taehyung’s throat.

Taehyung throws himself back, lifting his arm in front of his face and neck. Jeongguk freezes, hand still outstretched.

Hoseok gasps, and it’s loud, because no one else is breathing.

After one stretching, awful second, Jeongguk pulls his arm back and moves on like nothing happened. “Relax here,” he says shakily, touching his own throat, just under his jaw. “This is where the vibration comes from. Do you want try again?”

Taehyung rights himself slowly. His face is red, but he nods and takes a deep breath.

Jeongguk sings a note, cradling his throat. Taehyung puts his hand in the same place and sings it back.

It all sounds the same to Namjoon, but this one makes Jimin brighten. Jeongguk nods once, firm. “Really good. You’re a natural.”

“Can we work on ‘Spring Day’?” Jimin turns his face up to Yoongi. “I know Taehyungie wouldn’t be ready for the whole concert, but it would really really help to have the lower register for that one.”

The door beeps and slides open, and Seokjin sails in looking frankly inhuman. His hair is tidied up off his face and he’s wearing a tie. His belt and shoes shine sharp, freshly polished. He looks good, obviously, but the effect goes past handsome and into purely intimidating.

They’re all gawping at him, which gives him a second to stare back and figure out what’s going on. “Is our Taehyung singing?”

Our Taehyung?

“We were just talking about that,” Yoongi says, and tells Jimin, “It’s fine with me if it’s all right with Taehyung.”

He winces when they all look at him—every time, like a reflex. “I’m happy to help.”

“You’ll need him full-time through the concert, then,” Seokjin says, not quite a question and not necessarily the obvious conclusion, but Yoongi reads Seokjin’s terrifyingly well styled face and nods. “If  you want to figure it out with your department, I can let the kitchen know. I’m actually headed there now.” Seokjin looks down at Jeongguk and Jimin with a gentler expression. “I hope you won’t mind if I have to cancel on lunch today?”

The singers nod. Their private lunches are where Seokjin has been doing his therapy or whatever, apparently where he tells them they should believe in reincarnation, so Namjoon isn’t sad to see this one canceled. It gives him, at least, one more day to get his thoughts together.

Seokjin says they’ll see him tomorrow and sweeps back out again, leaving a general stupor in his wake.

“Uh, ‘Spring Day’?” Hoseok asks.

“Right,” Yoongi says. “Back to work.”

###

Jeongguk stays at the gym long past Jimin—that’s partly Jimin cutting his workout short, to go spend time with Taehyung, but it’s also Jeongguk hurling himself through burpees until his legs and lungs are burning too hard to keep going and people are staring.

This is a big gym, full of strangers, the kind of place Jeongguk has rarely worked out. He can’t understand anything anyone is saying, and without Namjoon-ssi here, there’s no one he can ask. But that’s not unusual. Whole nations on Earth were only open to him when Namjoon-hyung was by his side.

Namjoon-ssi would be proud of him for that thought, maybe—he’s starting to think of Earth as somewhere else, somewhere gone. It didn’t even make him feel like throwing up, this time. But maybe Namjoon-ssi would just be annoyed that Jeongguk’s comparing him to Namjoon-hyung again.

They’re so alike. Even the way Namjoon-ssi gets mad—saying “I’m not mad” all firm and careful, and simmering deep as a volcano—it’s just like Namjoon-hyung. Except when Namjoon-hyung got mad it was at Yoongi-hyung or the company or some stranger who deserved it. He never got mad at Jeongguk, not truly.

Back in the suite, they’re still in the past. Namjoon-ssi is missing, but Jimin and Taehyung-ssi are sitting together on the sleek couch with one of the paper-fine screens they call computers. Or rather, Taehyung-ssi is holding it, and Jimin is curled up to him, leaning over. He’s sitting on his hands, a small thing but a generous one. If this were a few months (centuries) ago, with a different Taehyung, Jimin would just be draped over him, holding on, but this terrified person doesn’t want to be touched.

Jeongguk fucked that up today, too.

The sounds of laughter and talking over each other, an old Bangtan Bomb or Run episode, come from the computer, and Jeongguk’s heart does something rushed and sickening.

Taehyung-ssi pauses the video and turns the screen to Jeongguk on a still of Taehyungie-hyung’s face. He’s got blond hair, straight and straw-like with overprocessing, and he’s in the middle of whispering something to Jin-hyung, looking sly.

“Jimin thinks I look like this guy,” Taehyung-ssi says.

“You do,” Jeongguk says. More than that.

Taehyung-ssi brings the screen back to himself and plays the video again. “Why does he do such weird stuff with his face?”

Taehyung-ssi makes a lot of the same faces, cute when he wants something, but Jeongguk has learned his lesson about arguing today. Jimin says, “It’s the charm of BTS V!”

“He looks like an asshole,” Taehyung-ssi says. It could be encouraging—he sounds more relaxed, sharing an opinion, and the reason Jimin sat down with him was probably to help him open up—but Jimin doesn’t look encouraged. His whole face falls.

Taehyung-ssi sees it, too. He pauses, considering, and then sticks his tongue out of the side of his mouth and makes one of his eyes bigger than the other, a classic silly-sexy Kim Taehyung face.

Jimin starts laughing before he cheers up, laughter sloughing the sad look off his face like a good clean rain. It's too much for a small thing, but who cares? If Jeongguk could make somebody smile like that, he’d never do anything else.

He needs a shower but he sits down in one of the chairs, an eye on Taehyung and Jimin and another on the wall of windows, black velvet sky and sparkling stars by the millions, stars like Jeongguk has never seen before. Like he never saw on Earth, he thinks sternly at himself, get it right. Get it right.

Taehyung-ssi turns back to the video. Taehyungie-hyung must make another silly face on screen; Taehyung-ssi mimics it to Jimin to make him laugh again.

Namjoon-ssi comes out of his room and gives everything a sharp surveying glance before sitting down next to Jeongguk. He doesn’t say anything. He’s been quiet all day, answering questions with his same patient thoroughness but not volunteering any more information after their conversation this morning, and Jeongguk can’t tell if he’s still mad.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Namjoon-ssi doesn’t like them. Just practically, it will make his life here difficult—it’s so easy to understand the people he works with every day that he’s constantly surprised at how little he understands from everyone else—but it cuts more profoundly than that.

He ventures a smile, shy like he thought he grew out of years ago. When Namjoon-ssi sees it directed at him, he starts like he’s surprised, and there’s a lag where Jeongguk really thinks Namjoon-ssi is going to turn away. But he smiles back, his lips closed in a kind crescent, and even though he’s got a couple days’ beard dusting his cheeks, his dimples press deep enough to see.

Just like every time he’s seen that smile—anywhere, everywhere, time or space—Jeongguk’s breath hitches, and he has to fight it under control so hard he can’t stop his own smile from breaking wider, just glowing back.

“What do you think?” Taehyung-ssi asks, turning the screen once again to show Namjoon a paused still of Taehyungie-hyung’s face. “Do I look like this guy?”

It’s unfair, because side by side with the image on the screen, he doesn’t. It’s a different video, a Bangtan Bomb so old it feels ancient even to Jeongguk. Taehyungie-hyung is much younger there than Taehyung-ssi is now, and he’s tiny as an elf, fully masked in contour and eyeliner and a pile of orange hair. Jeongguk no longer looks like the skinny, round-faced creature behind Taehyungie-hyung’s shoulder on the screen, either.

And Namjoon-ssi must know how old that video is, but if he feels it’s disingenuous to take the win, that doesn’t stop him. “Not really, there.”

Jeongguk knows what Taehyungie-hyung looked like under the makeup and the photo editing, and he experienced the pile of scraps Namjoon-ssi calls “the archive” in real life and in order, so he knows what Taehyungie-hyung looked like as he got older. It wasn’t always the perfected image on the screens.

(After the last girl Jeongguk tried to date broke up with him over the phone, he crawled into Taehyungie-hyung’s anonymous hotel bed for hugs. She was moving back to the countryside from Seoul because she was worried about the pollution, but Jeongguk was still too oblivious to notice the end of the world coming, and only cared that it was the fourth “maybe we can try again when there’s room for anything in your life besides BTS” conversation he’d had in a year and half. It was late and Taehyung was exhausted, bruised circles under his eyes, but he stayed awake for Jeongguk. He listened as Jeongguk struggled and stalled and finally admitted he wasn’t sure it was the schedule that kept his relationships from working out, that he was afraid maybe he used the pressure as an excuse because the person he really wanted didn’t want him back. Taehyung started crying instead of answering. He didn’t look like a beautiful little elf, then.)

Jeongguk knows what his hyungs looked like, and he doesn’t know how they can’t see it now. Maybe it’s all the skincare and makeup and styling and photo filters they used to use, or something about whatever gymnastics people’s brains go through when they look in the mirror. Maybe it’s just too hard to believe in magic, and the gap between seeing it and living it is enough that they can convince themselves of explanations that feel more rational. Whatever it is, none of them will admit they recognize themselves.

Seokjin-ssi won’t say anything about his own opinions, turning their questions around all therapist-y. Hoseok-ssi is honored that they see a family resemblance. Yoongi-ssi blushes and demurs like they’re giving him a too-nice compliment, which is so adorable Jeongguk can’t even be annoyed. Once, when they were alone in the music room, Jimin tried to press him on the strangeness of the coincidences around them. He got frazzled and said he had to go work on the backing tracks, an exquisitely Min Yoongi response to stress.

And now Taehyung-ssi is scared of them and only trying to tell everyone at once what they want to hear, but he can’t because they all disagree and Namjoon-ssi is mad, and that makes Jeongguk want to give up and curl in a ball and stay there forever. He doesn't care what they think, as long as Taehyung-ssi stops springing Taehyungie-hyung's smiling face on him.

“Hey,” Jimin says in a high, soft voice, to Taehyung-ssi but loud enough to encompass the room. “It’s okay if it’s weird to you. You’re doing his parts because you have the voice for it, but it doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”

Taehyung makes an awkwardly cut-off sound of assent—he’s probably figured out Jimin doesn’t like it when he says yes, sir but he doesn’t know what to say instead yet.

Jimin smiles even though he looks really sad. “Okay. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. We’re working together now, that’s the point, right? It’s not about the past.”

“Right,” Namjoon says. Taehyung nods, too.

Jeongguk consciously drops the tension out of his shoulders. Jimin is so good at manipulating people, for the kindest possible definition of manipulating. Jeongguk is so glad they're in this together. He gives Jimin a smile that he hopes tells him so, and Jimin sticks out his tongue like he gets it.

“So,” Jimin says to Taehyung-ssi, “the point of these videos is to connect with fans, right?”

They go back to quieter, more focused work. Jimin’s got his arms tucked even farther under his thighs, but other than that, they look calm and normal. Namjoon’s watching with an easy expression, too.

“Hey,” Jeongguk says. “Tell me something new? I want to understand stuff, I just don’t always know what to ask.”

“Uh, okay.” Namjoon smiles, pleased but abashed. Talking to Namjoon—any Namjoon—is one of Jeongguk’s favorite things, and he’d do a lot worse to see this smile. “How about…”

“These archives they’re looking at,” Jeongguk says. “What does that mean?”

“It’s essentially the internet, except every seventy-five years the UN backs up and archives everything as it is—” Namjoon stops and goes wide-eyed, like he surprised himself with his own thoughts. “I guess I should start by explaining how the internet works in space, huh?”

“Sure.” Jeongguk laughs and pushes his hair out of his face. “I didn’t understand how the internet worked on Earth. Wires, or something, I guess? I’ll be smarter in space, because I have our Namjoon-ssi to explain things to me.”

He pushes his hair back again—he still needs a shower, and he can feel it falling into weird shapes as his sweat dries—but he pauses in the pose of it, because Namjoon-ssi is giving him a look. He’s hiding a little, red-faced at the compliment, but he's still focused this way. It’s not eye contact. He’s watching Jeongguk move, gaze low around his jaw or shoulders or chest.

Jeongguk’s heart thrills, he can’t help it. Maybe that just happened. Certainly he should let the moment pass even if it did, but—he can’t help it. He doesn't want to help it. Namjoon-ssi is good at spinning long threads of words, but this is Jeongguk's most fluent language. He leans back to stretch his body long and roll his neck and shoulders languidly and watch as Namjoon definitely goes redder while he watches back, and Jeongguk thinks no, please no, not again, I can’t take it, and he thinks, yes.

###

As he settles in, Taehyung gets good at asking questions. He’s familiar with the rest of the way things work, and is only new to the specific weirdness of the cryogenesis program, but there’s something more to it. He’s quiet not just because he’s scared but because he’s observant, and when he asks a tentative question, it’s obvious that he’s thought a few steps ahead. He’s curious in an uncommon way, wide-ranging and scholarly.

Namjoon would want to honor that no matter what, even if it wasn’t something helpful to him. But it also happens to be really useful to have Taehyung’s curiosity around, because once he starts asking questions, Namjoon can answer them in a broad, clear way that gets Jeongguk and Jimin learning, too.

A couple of days in, Namjoon mentions how well Jeongguk and Jimin are adjusting to being out of cryogenesis, just to make conversation, and Taehyung looks nervously at the floor as he admits he doesn’t know what that means.

“Oh, that’s all right!” Namjoon says, putting on his cheer. “Do you understand what cryogenesis is?”

So quiet Namjoon has to lean closer, Taehyung says, “People said they were frozen?” His face is skeptical.

“That’s sort of right. It’s just a vast oversimplification. Their bodies were put into stasis, which means all their different systems were paused exactly where they were, through a combination of drugs and machines. Lowering the body temperature is one part of it.”

Taehyung nods. Jimin is working with Hoseok on some choreography, but he’s listening. He keeps glancing over. And Jeongguk is openly watching their conversation.

“Why?” Taehyung asks. “They knew they’d need to teach us music again?”

He’s looking at Jeongguk, or past him, where Jimin is dancing, but neither one of them answers, so Namjoon keeps talking. “At the time, most people going into cryogenesis didn’t know when they were going to wake up, or why. After the Climate War, people on Earth knew they wouldn’t be able to save everyone, or everything, so they were doing what they could to save as much as possible. Cryogenesis was an early, experimental technology, very dangerous. It ended up being very effective, but it was a big risk. In a way, it shows a lot of hope that they even tried.”

Jeongguk’s face puckers, a sour bite, and he smooths it away but not fast enough.

“Please, feel free to disagree,” Namjoon says. “I’m very interested in what it felt like to you.”

Jeongguk shrugs. “It didn’t feel like anything. I just did it so Jimin wouldn’t be alone.”

Hoseok stops dancing and both he and Yoongi are paying attention now, so Jimin has no choice but to stop, too. He tosses his arms around Jeongguk’s shoulders from behind and nuzzles into his neck. Jeongguk reaches back and pats Jimin’s head.

If Jimin was the one who drove the decision, Namjoon is almost desperate to know what he was thinking. Everyone in the room is waiting for him to volunteer his story, vibrating with the tension of it, but they all must be afraid to ask. Namjoon certainly is.

Jimin sighs. “I remember watching the typhoons wreck Busan on TV. I never really paid attention to the news, and then all the sudden they were saying the world was ending. I hated going home, but I wanted to go back so bad once it was gone. I still want to go back. When I close my eyes, that’s what I see, that last typhoon. I just felt…”

He makes brief, slipping eye contact with Namjoon. “Really hopeless. Like we’d done so much and it had been so hard sometimes and got so big but none of it mattered, because now everything was just going to be horrible, forever. And the cryogenesis people said all this stuff about how brave and selfless and important it would be, and I guess I liked to hear that. But really, I just liked the idea of going to sleep, of letting someone else decide where I should end up.” He looks up from his shuffling feet with a sad, grimacing smile.

Taehyung is chewing on his lip.

“Do you have another question?” Namjoon asks.

“Is… that okay?”

“Sure,” Namjoon says. “Even if you ask something we don’t know, or they don’t want to answer, we’ll just tell you that and it won’t be a problem. Right, guys?”

Jimin and Jeongguk nod dutifully.

“Why didn’t the others come, too?” Taehyung asks.

Jimin looks a little hurt, or something—startled, raw.

“I don’t think anyone else even thought about it,” Jeongguk says. “Everybody had different responsibilities they had to take care of. Houses, families.”

“And they still had so much important work to do,” Hoseok says.

That makes everyone turn to him, Jimin and Jeongguk obvious in their surprise.

“The peace rallies?” Hoseok says. He looks at Namjoon with a sparkle in his eyes that Namjoon has felt in his own heart. “Show them the one in Gwangju.”

“That is a good one.” Namjoon unrolls his computer and opens his files from the archives. He’s kept the final days password-locked so Jimin and Jeongguk won’t stumble into them. Some of it is ugly. The video of the first peace rally is wonderful, though.

“The peace rallies are one of my favorite things humans have ever done,” Namjoon says as he pulls it up. “There were some huge riots on Earth in the final days. A few Western European cities were lost that way. Most countries had to leave more people behind than they took. The peace rallies were a response to that, to promote the goal of spending the final days in dignity and unity. People weren’t really traveling, but they kept the power and the internet running for a decade or so, and there’s a lot of footage preserved.” Namjoon clicks on the file. “This is video from the first major rally after the last ships left. There were events all over the world, but this is Gwangju.”

He turns the computer out, because he doesn’t need to look at it to know what they’re seeing. Jung Hoseok—looking an awful lot like his however-great grand-nephew in this room and also wholly unique, more noble than anything Namjoon has ever seen—stands in the center of a stage.

Screens on either side of him show the rest of BTS in two pairs, Min Yoongi and Kim Taehyung holding hands on a stage in Daegu and Kim Namjoon and Kim Seokjin leaning into one another’s shoulders in Seoul, but Hoseok is alone. He has no musicians or dancers, no pyrotechnics or props, just a spotlight and a backing track and those two screens, and he is captivating thousands of people.

The crowd spilling out before him sways with candles and cell phones and flashlights, and he holds the microphone out as they sing the chorus of “DNA” back to him. He wipes tears off his face with one hand, but when he brings the microphone back to his mouth, his voice is strong. He slams his choreography through the last half of the song—on the screens behind him, the other men turn to watch him on their own videos, all smiling—until the very end, when he turns his back, and he lowers his head and covers his face again, just for a moment.

He whirls back to the crowd with a smile. “Yah!” He wags a finger at the screens. “Don’t think you can get away with skipping choreography! I can see you!”

Here in the music room, Jimin laughs with an audible wetness, and Jeongguk already has a tear on his cheek. Namjoon pauses the video before they get too upset. “There’s almost fifteen minutes of footage from that concert preserved, if you want to watch more later. I don’t want to derail Yoongi’s whole work day.”

“You’re not derailing anything,” Yoongi says. “This is important.”

Namjoon certainly thinks so, too. With Yoongi’s permission, he could go all day, except they’re tiptoeing towards knowledge he’s not sure it’s time to share yet.

“Are there more videos like that?” Jeongguk asks. “More concerts from after we left?”

Namjoon nods slowly.

“What?” Jeongguk says.

“Well, you’ll want to be careful,” Namjoon says. “Some of the footage can be hard to watch.”

Jeongguk’s face falls. “What does that mean?”

“The last—” Namjoon stops himself before he says “surviving”—he’s given talks on this footage many times, but never to someone who knew the people in it— “members were performing up until the very end of the final days. I was serious, the peace rallies were incredibly important, valuable work, they kept going for a long time. Really through desperate situations.”

“I want to see,” Jeongguk says, right away. “I don’t care if it’s hard to watch, I want to see.”

Jimin glances at the back of Jeongguk’s head, something both exasperated and loving crossing his face, and this feels like something Namjoon needs to learn, something about Jeongguk. He files it away to think more about later.

“Are you thinking of the last one in Daegu?” Hoseok asks, and his knowledge of the archives suddenly feels much less helpful. Jimin’s face goes deadly serious.

“I was,” Namjoon says.

“I want to watch it,” Jimin says. Jeongguk nods.

Namjoon pulls the video up, a feeling of both regret and anticipation, a kind of inevitability, swirling inside him. “This is about ten years after the one I just showed you. What got most of east Asia in the end was the air quality. Dancing was out of the question; even singing would have been very hard. So, that’s what they’re dealing with. Here you go.”

He turns the screen, and Jimin gasps. Min Yoongi and Kim Taehyung are sitting together on the edge of a stage, both looking much older than the decade that has passed since the first video Namjoon played. They’re still holding hands, but Yoongi is also leaning into Taehyung’s side, and his chest moves slowly, visibly laboring for each breath. Taehyung has a microphone, and he still sings snatches of each song along with the tracks, but he has to stop and catch his breath for longer than he can sing. They’re barely performing—barely moving.

“This is a concert?” Jimin asks, appalled.

Namjoon sighs long while he thinks. He notices the air, the clean, well-balanced air the ship makes to keep them safe, as he pushes it out of his lungs. “The peace rallies, especially towards the end like this, weren’t about entertainment. They were about… people remembering they were still human. That they could still show up and use what they had left to take care of each other. That’s what they’re doing here, showing up.”

Jimin makes a small noise, hand over his mouth, but he nods.

Namjoon points to the woman sitting next to Taehyung in the video, using a huge old Earth laptop to apparently control the screen over the stage. It’s not showing feeds of other cities anymore; it’s music videos, the performance part of the show.

“Also,” Namjoon says, “Just practically, by this time most people wouldn’t have had electricity in their homes, so it would be special to walk to a park and see videos there.”

“Oh.” Tears run freely down Jeongguk’s face, though they don’t seem to stop him from leaning forward and watching the video with a penetrating gaze.

Taehyung, too, is rapt, but Jimin keeps flinching back and forth from the screen.

In the video, people walk up to the stars in an untidy line, shaking hands or giving hugs. They both still have smiles for each person they greet, even though Yoongi’s is obviously hurting him.

A woman comes up in an orange jacket with thick white stripes down the sleeves. Yoongi sees it and laughs, which makes him cough. The woman smiles, too, and gives him a hug, and the she starts shrugging the jacket off.

Yoongi tries to refuse, but the woman shakes her head, pushing the jacket into his hands and then walking away. He stares down at it, frowning—Namjoon has spent years wondering what he was thinking, there—while Taehyung mumbles a few lines into the microphone. The next verse is Yoongi’s, and Taehyung points the microphone to him. He takes a deep breath—waits, like he knows which line he wants—and then gets out the end of the verse in a rasp. “Just the fact that you’re by my side.”

Taehyung takes the microphone away as Yoongi coughs and wipes his face. Taehyung holds him through it and then helps him get the jacket over his shoulders, a shock of bright orange in a dingy scene.

Taehyung spends too long smoothing it down over Yoongi's back, his face as closed and unreadable as Yoongi's, but when he lifts the mic again he's strong and cheerful. “This hyung is thinking of an old friend.” There are sounds of applause. “We’re all looking forward to seeing our old friends again, so let’s keep our hopes up together!”

And there are real cheers, though it would have hurt every one of the people in the audience to find the breath for that.

Namjoon turns the computer back and pauses it. “There’s more of the same, but we can watch later, maybe. You guys okay?”

Jeongguk scrubs his face, maybe nodding or maybe just pushing his head back from how hard he’s smashing his tears away. After a second, Jimin nods, too.

This time, Namjoon has a question. “Do you know who that woman with the computer was? She’s not in the record.”

“That was Tae’s sister,” Jimin says. His voice has gotten small.

Namjoon catches Hoseok’s eye—he looks guilty, even though it’s not his fault. This is Namjoon’s part of the job, his call. His responsibility if it was a mistake to show them all of this. It looks like it was.

Everyone is quiet, a suffocating thickness in the small room, except for the huffing of Jeongguk trying to get his breath under control. Jimin pulls him into a side-hug, and he slumps over to fit into Jimin’s arm.

"They all said we were so brave to leave," Jimin says. "But I wouldn't have been able to do anything like that, if I stayed."

"I don't think anybody thinks they can until they have to," Yoongi replies. 

"That was all a very, very long time ago," Namjoon says. "I know it still feels real to you, but that lifetime is safe in the past now. The people who were left on Earth did wonderful, powerful things with the final days, and they're not suffering anymore."

Jeongguk straightens up and nods more surely. He takes his hands away from his face to give Namjoon a brave, tearful smile, like Namjoon is the one who needs it. Namjoon returns it to him.

“Thank you,” Taehyung says seriously. He’s sitting up taller, hands on his knees to hold his shoulders broad. Namjoon just showed him the most frightening thing he knows, and Taehyung finally looks a little less afraid. “I understand, now. Why you decided this was important.”

Chapter Text

Jeongguk grew up with no space to himself. It was hard at first, but, like a broken branch, the part of him that would have known what to do with it withered and died. Even during the brief, gilded years of his life when he had access to all the room he wanted, his own apartment and whole suites in luxury hotels and walled-off capsules in first class flights, he didn’t really know what to do with it. He got lonely by himself, ended up refreshing Twitter to see what his members were doing when he didn’t want to message them and admit it.

Then, now, always: when Jeongguk is upset, he wants to talk to someone.

There’s enough private or semi-private space on the ship to spread out—their little bedrooms and the living space of their suite, Hoseok’s smaller suite, the music room they’ve been practicing in, the gym. Namjoon has offered to show them public areas they could hang out in, once they get used to the people they’re sharing the ship with.

But Jeongguk doesn’t feel like he needs more space, and it seems like neither does anyone else. Even Yoongi and Hoseok and Seokjin, who are staying in their own places on this ship, end up back in the BTS suite a lot, sitting in groups around the dining table or the sofas to talk about the distant past, the confusing present, the possible future.

The night after Namjoon-ssi shows them the peace rallies, Jimin wants to watch every old BTS video he can find and Jeongguk wants to stay as far away from them as he can. They end up across the room from one another—on the couch, Taehyung-ssi and Jimin are watching Bon Voyage on Namjoon’s computer. Jimin is still sitting on his hands. Taehyung-ssi watches the videos in a focused silence, but he listens to everything Jimin chatters at him about the way things were.

And Jeongguk sits with Namjoon-ssi at the table, nursing a couple of drinks Namjoon calls “beers.” They’re barely alcoholic, and they remind Jeongguk of vodka-sodas or the seltzer that used to be trendy—a descendant of beer, maybe, the way the caffeinated water they drink comes from coffee.

He asks questions about the present, government and education and media, even though he doesn’t always follow the answers, just to keep Namjoon-ssi talking in his soothing voice. This Namjoon is more prone to rambling than the one Jeongguk knew, disappearing into his own thoughts or interrupting himself with a new idea. Namjoon-hyung could be like that, especially when he was younger, but he worked hard to train himself out of it as he grew up and learned to work with the media. Namjoon-ssi hasn’t had to edit; he’s learned to tell even longer, deeper stories, to follow every tangent to its end.

Comparing things now to what Jeongguk knew on Earth is not fun—so much is just worse, smaller, more dangerous, less. It hurts to think about, and he’s still mostly avoiding it inside his head. But the hyungs are so clearly themselves, people as whole and complex as they ever were, and there are moments of genuine joy in the opportunity to see how different lives have turned them into new people and also left some things unchanged. Jeongguk finds himself searching for the qualities that feel familiar, the most essential truths.

Namjoon-ssi’s hair is shorter than Namjoon-hyung wore it most of the time, though not always. Sometimes it was short like this, close on the sides and longer on top. Namjoon-hyung’s hair was usually much lighter, though; Namjoon-ssi has probably never dyed his hair, and it’s dark and looks like it would be smooth and thick to touch. He’s shaved today, but he’s often got a little stubble—maybe he only shaves once a week, like he doesn’t want to waste the water or it’s just not worth the trouble.

He wears glasses every day and nobody manufactures colored contact lenses anymore, so he always looks at Jeongguk with his own piercing dark eyes, as intense as ever. He wears pants and pullovers most days, not identical pieces like the gray slacks and button-down of Taehyung-ssi’s uniform, but usually similar. Namjoon-hyung would have been sad to wear such basic clothes every day, but really, Hoseok-ssi is the only person Jeongguk has seen here who wears interesting clothes, and he’s literally sole heir to the biggest textile business in space. Namjoon-ssi's clothes fit him well, like Namjoon-hyung’s clothes did, not afraid to show off his height. Those long legs. That hasn’t changed.

Namjoon-ssi finishes explaining the state-run media system and looks at Jeongguk with an achingly familiar patience. Jeongguk has been staring at him too much and might have missed some of the details, but a lot of it sounds the same as what he remembers. “I thought the future would be more… futuristic,” he says, and feels like an idiot, though Namjoon-ssi nods seriously.

“We had to invest a lot in developing space travel very fast,” Namjoon says. “You’ve probably noticed the communication technology is a lot more efficient than it was. The rest of it, anything beyond travel and survival, we’re still trying to get back to the quality of life you had on Earth. In some ways, it’s probably not possible. And really, by now, people have completely forgotten about things you might have thought of as basic necessities.”

Sure. Daily shaves, formal speech levels, a closet full of different clothes, so much food Jeongguk is still just doing his best not to think about it. Every species of bird except for a few kinds of genetically engineered poultry, according to Namjoon-ssi. New music on the radio. If Jeongguk lets himself list what was lost, he could go forever. He nods. “Is that why you decided to study history? You seem to really love it.”

“Oh, well.” Namjoon sits back in his chair and shakes his head a little as he smiles, like the question is too big to fathom but he’s excited to try. It’s a gesture Jeongguk recognizes but also something new, something interesting to this person he’s just getting to know, and seeing both of those things at once makes all the emotions Jeongguk has been slogging through today settle together in his chest. “I think that’s part of it. Someone has to remember, so we can try not to repeat our mistakes but also so we can try to save what was good, you know?”

“I really believed that,” Jeongguk says. “That what we were doing mattered.”

“I think it did, too.” Namjoon’s hand jumps, like he wants to put it over Jeongguk’s. He stops himself, but Jeongguk can feel the phantom touch on his skin. “I was serious today, when I said the peace rallies are my favorite thing humans have ever done. And… this? What you did, for humanity’s future? I think that was really brave.”

It wasn’t. It was a desperate longshot, and he only went through with it because Jimin seemed even more scared. But he looks in Namjoon’s eyes and decides to be brave.

###

Taehyung pays for the lowest tier of rations. Not even the richest are allowed to buy more actual food—everyone gets a calorie and nutrient count based on their biometrics—but the higher tiers have more variety and flavor. More of the nutrients come from meat and vegetables instead of rice and supplements.

Taehyung couldn’t afford a higher tier even if he wanted to, but he’s never thought he would—nutritionally, it’s all supposed to be the same, and he’d want to buy himself the luxuries, like alcohol or candy, before he’d change his rations. That’s hypothetical, though. For now, and for the foreseeable future, it’s all he can do to keep himself in socks without holes and his little brother out of the acid mills.

He saw them all noticing, the first night he ate dinner with the BTS project people. Yoongi and Namjoon get mid-tier rations, meat three times a week and different fresh vegetables every day, and the rest of them are on the top tier, meat six days a week. Taehyung eats rice and kimchi, fresh vegetables every Sunday and meat every other week, and a whole lot of nutrient shakes and vitamin pills.

Of course, that first night happened to be one where they were all together, and they all had meat except him, and the air smelled thick with it, and Taehyung was trying to eat tiny bites so he wouldn’t finish his much smaller meal first but also not eat in a way that looked weird. They all noticed—Jimin in silent outrage and Jeongguk leaning over to Namjoon to whisper, probably asking whether some mistake had been made. But nothing was wrong, that was just how things were. It didn’t seem fair that Taehyung was the one who had to be ashamed, too.

The next night, Taehyung opened his dinner and found a perfect square of pink fish sitting next to a bowl of green leaves. The same meal sat in front of Jimin, next to him.

Now, it was Taehyung’s turn to look for a mistake. He checked the side of the box again—his name and ID number. Namjoon sat across the table with his own salad and gave Taehyung a calm smile.

Taehyung opened his mouth, closed it again. He was scared, but he wasn’t stupid. He wrapped his arm around the back of his box and he ate it all.

It happened again, and again. It’s been a week and Taehyung has had meat and vegetables every night. And it turns out—they’re worth it. It’s so, so worth it, better than he’d ever let himself imagine it would be. All that stuff about the nutrition must be a lie. He can feel his muscles using the protein, keeping him going longer each day, and maybe it’s partly that Namjoon keeps answering all his questions so kindly, but he thinks his brain is working better, too. He feels sharper, calmer. Stronger.

It’s better than the beers Namjoon buys them or the candy Hoseok brings to practice, better than the extra sleep Yoongi lets them have because he likes to start the work day a little late and go into the evening. It’s as good as Seokjin keeping him at work here, away from Jongsoo. It’s worth every cent people pay for it, except that Taehyung definitely still can’t afford it. He did get his last paycheck, but no matter how much Seokjin blusters around the kitchens, eventually someone’s going to notice that Taehyung isn’t working.

He’s not stupid, but he’s so scared.

So finally, on an evening he and Namjoon go back to the suite while Jeongguk and Jimin are still working in the music room, he checks the rations that have been left in the cooler case, and he’s got another top-tier box. “Um,” he says.

“What’s up?” Namjoon asks.

“These rations…” It hurts to say it. “I don’t know how this change got made, but I can’t afford the top tier.”

Namjoon’s eyebrows jump. “I’m not sure how it happened either, but I can’t imagine you’d be paying for it.”

Taehyung can imagine. Someone’s paying for it, so if Taehyung isn’t going into debt in cash, he’ll be paying in another, less tangible currency.

He can’t answer, but he must give himself away. “Hold on, I’ll figure this out,” Namjoon says, and takes out his phone to start typing.

Taehyung sits on the couch with his arms crossed, looking out the huge window at the unchanging stars. On the space station where he grew up, Venus hulked outside, a beautiful and terrible golden haze through light-dimming glass. Not that it mattered all that much to him—he’d rarely seen windows.

“Hey.” Yoongi’s face pops up on Namjoon’s phone, a video call. He’s standing in the hall outside the music room. “Sorry, Taehyung, I should have mentioned. The music department’s covering the difference on your rations as part of your compensation. I can’t have you dancing all day without enough fuel.”

Taehyung squints, looking for the trick. “It’s a lot less work than the kitchens were.”

“Well,” Yoongi says shortly. “I’m not in charge of the kitchens. It’s my budget, so it’s my call. Unless you want your old rations back?”

He says it like a sincere question, like it’s possible, but it feels to Taehyung like a trap he’s walked himself into. He has to admit the truth: “No, I don’t want to go back.”

“We’re all good, then?” Namjoon asks.

“I am,” Yoongi says.

“As long as—” Fear rushes Taehyung, and he doesn’t want to be tedious but he has to be sure. “I won’t be able to pay it back, even later—”

“Got it,” Yoongi says. “You know what, I’ll just double-check with my boss. I know it’s been a messy transition, I promise the music department isn’t usually like this. We’ll get something in writing for you. How’s that?”

“That’s fine,” Taehyung says. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” Yoongi says. “I need my talent healthy and happy.”

“Yeah, speaking of the talent, go back to work,” Namjoon says, and hangs up the call.

Taehyung changes out of his uniform and into the jumpsuit he wears when he’s off duty, and then waits inside his room, just feeling the space and time to himself unfold around him. Healthy and happy, Yoongi said. Healthy and happy.

The other question, the biggest, strangest question, the question he hasn’t been asking, rises again in this new pool of quiet. It whispers at him, but he ignores it, and stays still until he hears the door to the suite open.

Jeongguk has come back alone. “Jimin went to the gym. He said we can have dinner without him, he’ll eat when he gets back.”

Now, Taehyung eats slowly. One day, maybe very soon, he’ll leave all this luxury and go back to the kitchens or wherever else he finds work, and he’ll want to remember every bite of these meals. They sit around the table for a while after they finish—Namjoon is explaining how the greenhouses in the ship produce food, water, and oxygen to a fascinated Jeongguk. They’re enjoying their conversation so much they get wrapped up in it, and they don’t notice that Taehyung is sinking underneath the unasked question until he’s far gone, twitching nervously in his seat.

Namjoon’s been reading questions on Taehyung’s face a lot, and stops himself now. “Was there something you wanted to ask?”

Taehyung’s fight-or-flight response jumps, as it always does when someone speaks to him or looks at him or, who knows, maybe thinks about him somewhere. He holds himself steady. “No.”

Namjoon looks suspicious, but says, “Okay. Will you two excuse me for a while? I need to pick up some stuff on the other side of the ship.”

He disappears a few minutes later, and maybe he really has an errand, but it feels like it was to leave them alone. Jeongguk is the best person for Taehyung to ask the unasked question, and it balloons inside him, unstoppable now. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Jeongguk looks up with just his eyes, making them huge.

But it’s not like Taehyung doesn’t know that trick—he dips his chin, doing the same thing. “The Taehyung you knew, the one in BTS. The one I remind Jimin of.”

“Yes?” Jeongguk says, very slowly.

“I’ve been watching the old videos, and it seems like they were really close.” He’s lying, it’s not the videos. Well, he can see it there too, but he mostly sees it in the way Jimin stares at him when he thinks Taehyung isn’t looking back, and the different, equally powerful way he looks when he knows Taehyung is.

Jeongguk nods.

Taehyung’s heart knocks his ribs, but he can’t back out now, and he’s almost desperate to know. “Were they together? You know, like… romantically?”

Jeongguk freezes, like something will save him from answering, but nothing does. “Don’t you think that’s a question for Jimin?”

Taehyung shakes his head, jerky through fresh wave of cold fear. He can’t ask Jimin because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jimin looks him in the eye and says the answer is yes. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s offering anything. Or, if not, he doesn’t want to freak Jimin out and have to leave. Maybe this is all in Taehyung’s paranoid head. Jimin has been so nice.

Jeongguk sighs. “The truth is, I don’t know. I always kind of thought… one day they would announce they’d already been married for years. They were close like that. But sometimes friends are really close, too. They never said anything, and Jimin, you know, he came here instead of staying with Taehyung.”

“I see.” That’s not very helpful. Taehyung notices himself feeling afraid, numb and shaky, how his body keeps rushing him with it, even though if he thinks about it, he knows that nothing is necessarily wrong. Jeongguk is obviously trying very hard not to scare him, even. Jimin has not asked him for anything, really anything at all.

“If he’s doing anything to make you uncomfortable, I’m sure he doesn’t mean it,” Jeongguk says. “I can talk to him, if you want me to.”

Taehyung shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to say it’s all this kindness that’s so frightening.

The door behind Jeongguk, the one to the hall, opens slowly. Jimin is standing in the center, looking sheepish, and the delay while Jeongguk turns and then startles—“Shit , hyung!”—is long enough for Taehyung to pass through every level of horror and come out, nauseated with adrenaline, on the other side.

“Sorry,” Jimin says. “I’m sorry. I was standing in the hall and I could hear you, and I almost hid or something, but I was like… what kind of bad drama, you know? Can we just talk?”

Taehyung nods, but it’s only because he’s stuck to his chair with fear and he’s trained himself to be accommodating.

“I’ll give you some space,” Jeongguk says, starting to rise, but Jimin stops him.

“Would you rather he stayed?” he asks Taehyung.

Taehyung shrugs, but after a second he nods. Yes, he would rather Jeongguk stayed. Which is silly, really—he’s in equal danger from any of them, and maybe, possibly, not in any danger at all.

Jimin gestures, and Jeongguk sits reluctantly back down. Jimin takes the chair next to him, all pink and sweaty from the gym. He’s not even going to clean up, like there’s nothing more important than telling Taehyung what he needs to hear right now.

“I just want to get to know you,” Jimin says. “To be friends here and now. And I guess, I want to help you be safe, and know that you’re safe, but I know that might be too much. It’s okay if it’s too much. I can back off.”

Taehyung thinks that all the way through before he answers. It’s all nice stuff to say, and it could even be true, but it’s not what he asked. “So you were with him.”

Jimin shakes his head no, but the expression on his face is just tragic, and Jeongguk is looking at him very tenderly, and it seems obvious they’re lying. For the first time, Taehyung wonders if he’s overstepping, being unkind.

“I guess it was complicated,” Jimin says. “I can tell you. I’m—” He glances at Taehyung’s eyes, quickly away. “I’m very ashamed of myself. But maybe it will be good to get it out.”

Jeongguk sits back in his chair, crossing his arms, like he’s trying to escape the conversation without actually leaving. Taehyung moves in a little, to try to be kinder, and because he really needs to know. He's starting to feel safe here, and he keeps dropping his guard when they're in the music room, getting absorbed in what he's doing and losing track of where everyone is around him. After he notices he's relaxed, the pressure comes back twice as crushing. He has to know where he stands.

Jimin closes his eyes to speak. “One time, really early on, when were trainees and we were all seven of us living in one room, Taehyung walked in on me in the bathroom one night, jerking—I mean, uh—you know, touching, uh—”

“I got it,” Taehyung says. He’s pretty scared of what he’s about to hear, but Jimin being afraid to say “masturbating” is so obviously gentle of him that it makes Taehyung’s heart open a little more softly.

“Right.” Jimin is even pinker, eyes still squeezed shut. “Which was honestly not that rare, we were all so hormonal all the time and stuck in that tiny little place.”

Jeongguk snorts. “True.”

A wry smile twists Jimin’s lips and disappears. “That night, though, he offered to—to help, I guess. He said it didn’t have to be a big deal, that it felt better when it was someone else touching you. And I—I said horrible things to him.”

He finally opens his eyes, looking between Taehyung and Jeongguk and talking faster. “It’s not just that I said no, you can always say no. I said he was disgusting and get away and if he said anything like that again I’d get him kicked out of the group. He kind of laughed, like ‘fine, sorry,’ and left, and we never talked about it after. We both went back to normal like nothing had happened.” Just to Jeongguk, he says, “That was right before he told BigHit to keep me, said all those nice things about me, even though I’d done that. Can you believe it?”

Jeongguk jerks one shoulder. “Yeah, I can.”

Jimin nods sadly. “Yeah, me too. Well. It took me a long time to realize that was mostly shame, and I was afraid I’d get kicked out of the group. Everything I said to him was just the stuff I was most afraid of someone saying to me. It got to the point where I thought about it all the time. I really wanted him to offer again. I would have said yes. Except I would have wanted it to be a big deal, and I don’t know if he ever meant it like that. I don’t know if he ever even thought about it again. We had this running joke that Taehyung was going to go on two dates with everyone in kpop. Jin-hyung made a chart.”

Jeongguk laughs once, sharp, and claps his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I forgot about that chart.”

“It’s all right. It was funny,” Jimin says. “It just also made me feel like I was dying inside.” He pauses, and when he continues, it’s in a much firmer, clearer tone of voice. “So it was a little complicated. But that was also the least important thing about us. He was my best friend. And I know you’ve had a different life, that it’s not fair to put all of that on you. I think we could be friends. I just want to get to know you, for you, now. Is that okay?”

And Taehyung… is afraid. But Taehyung is always afraid, and now that he’s noticed, he can feel how the fear is a hungry animal living inside him, not the only or the truest thing. What if he believes Jimin now? What if he decides to believe him, even past the fear, what if he tries for a real friend? Would it hurt more, if he turned out to be wrong, or if he lost it in the end?

No—that would hurt no matter what. He’s been hurt before, and he can pick himself up if he has to.

Stretching toward hope is something new, a good burn, the ache of getting stronger. Taehyung takes a deep breath and reaches for it. “That’s okay.”

###

The next moments are some of the most awkward of Jeongguk’s life, and it’s even worse because he’s sitting with Taehyung and Jimin, two of the people he should be most comfortable with in the entire world.

But like, what does that even mean anymore? The “entire world.” The world is a deserted trash dump. If Jeongguk’s hands weren’t held tight under his crossed arms, they might be shaking.

Maybe Jimin and Taehyung don’t feel as awkward—they’re looking at each other, tentative and hopeful, like Jeongguk isn’t stuck here because five minutes ago, Taehyung was too scared of Jimin to let him leave. The next thing anyone says is just Taehyung’s quiet, “Excuse me,” before he goes to his room.

Jimin sighs and rocks back in his chair, pushing his hair away from his face and rubbing his eyes. “Okay,” he says, almost to himself, “Okay.” He finds Jeongguk’s gaze. “I always felt like the world was going to end if I said any of that.”

“The world ended anyway,” Jeongguk says.

Jimin flinches. “Right. I just meant… the expression.”

“That’s a terrible expression.”

Jeongguk is not the one who just did a difficult thing and he is being horrible, he can feel himself. They’re the only two people who can understand each other and he ought to be helping, but he can’t stop.

(Except he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand at all, how you could have what Jimin almost did and miss it because you just never said. Jeongguk asked, he asked so many times, he begged and argued and negotiated, even at the very end when no one had any hope left for anything, he asked for Ilsan—)

And Jimin makes it worse by not fighting back, by looking at Jeongguk with so much impossible care and asking, “Are you okay?”

Jeongguk’s heart is pounding and the edges of his vision are bleeding red and his neck and shoulders hurt from how tight he’s holding himself and he’s fine, he’s fucking fine, it’s just that Jimin is so stupid. “I can’t believe you just never said.”

Jimin sucks in a breath. “Well, if you think about it—” He makes a wry, empty laugh. “I said as soon as he asked.”

“You told him not to ask.” Jeongguk tastes salt and discovers he’s crying. “Did you hear that story you just told? You said you told him to never ask again and then you waited for him to ask again and then, and then we left, we left them, what the fuck—”

Jimin gasps again, but he doesn’t say anything or if he does Jeongguk doesn’t hear, because he’s thinking about Taehyungie-hyung swirling the drain of the end of the world and never knowing that Jimin wanted him back, and Hoseok on stage alone and Namjoon with his family maybe regretting that he let Jeongguk go or maybe not, and maybe that’s worse, maybe nothing he can imagine for them is good.

Jimin’s voice is far away. “Please come. I think Jeongguk is having a panic attack.”

But he’s not, he’s fine, he’s right, he only just noticed how fucked up everything is and now he’s never going to be able to think about anything else. He’s going to think about how much food Seokjin’s mom brought them in the early days, and the way his own mom smelled when she hugged him, and the trees and the birds—

Cold hits him like a slap and Jeongguk looks up, gasping, into Jin-hyung’s face. No—not Jin-hyung—Dr. Kim. He’s kneeling in front of Jeongguk’s chair, searching his eyes and holding a cool wet cloth against the back of his neck.

Dr. Kim says Jeongguk’s name until Jeongguk gets himself together to nod, to repeat it back, to say hello.

Dr. Kim grips his shoulder. “It’s okay to be sad.”

Jeongguk is still crying. He gives into it, sobs while Dr. Kim gets him up and murmurs about helping him into the shower. Taehyung-ssi and Jimin are standing together in the door to Taehyung-ssi’s room, both looking terrified. “I’m so sorry,” Taehyung-ssi says, as if he’s done anything wrong.

Jeongguk still can’t sleep on the spaceship alone. He crashes out through pure exhaustion after Dr. Kim leaves, but when he wakes up in the suffocating perfect dark he’s immediately too lonely and frightened to go back to sleep. And now that his mind is clear, he’s not sure it’s fair to go try to snuggle with Jimin after he was so nasty.

He rolls onto his back and shuts his eyes against the dark and sings to himself—he looks for the first thing that comes to his mind that isn’t a BTS song, and hears himself singing “Ending Scene” almost before he decides to pick an IU song. He wonders if Jieun made it off of Earth.

Maybe Namjoon-ssi could look it up. But he bets Namjoon wouldn’t, would tell him whether she lived short or long, died peacefully or painfully, she’s not supposed to be here and it’s okay. Jeongguk is doing the strange thing, still living, and it makes sense that it hurts. But she’s safe in the past, like Namjoon-ssi said.

Jeongguk can’t quite wrap his head around that if he thinks of his family or his hyungs, but he gets a little closer if he thinks that way about a friend. He admired her so much, and she left all that beautiful music that he can help share with the future. He sings it in the dreadful dark.

He only gets through one chorus before the lock on his door starts beeping and it cracks open. “Can I come in?” Jimin whispers.

“Of course. I’m so sorry, hyung—”

“Shut up.” Jimin crawls in with him. The only way to work these tiny beds is spooning—Jeongguk scoots back and Jimin’s knobby spine curls against his front. “I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to talk again. These rooms are just too dark.”

Jeongguk nods so Jimin will feel it but doesn’t answer. He matches his breath to Jimin’s and holds him just a little bit too tight, so he’ll feel the sorriness even if he won’t hear it yet.

He dozes off, or goes fully back to sleep, maybe, he can’t tell how much time has passed, but he wakes again because Jimin is shaking in his arms. He’s so silent it takes Jeongguk another bleary second to understand that he’s crying, biting down on something to keep from wailing out loud.

“Jiminie-hyung,” Jeongguk says, squeezing him harder. “Hyung, hyung. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, I just—”

“Of course I did something wrong.” Jimin’s voice is vicious, spitting. “Don’t be stupid.”

The shock of it shuts Jeongguk up.

Jimin twists around to lie on his back, even though they can’t see each other even if they talk face-to-face. His breath is all messed up, like he’s still crying, but he speaks more clearly. “You are never going to talk to me like that again, because it’s none of your business how I deal with the love of my life and you were horrible, and you’re literally all I have so you have to be nice to me.”

“I promise,” Jeongguk says. “I really didn’t mean it, I was just scared all the sudden. I’m so sorry.”

Jimin’s hand finds his and squeezes. “But there is a lot of stuff I should have done differently. I know that. I don’t think it’s good, how people are never willing to regret anything.”

“The pressure was so bad,” Jeonguk says. “It’s not like I don’t know that.” The fishbowl they lived in made Jeongguk fearful and selfish sometimes, too, it just manifested differently. And Jeongguk was probably the person who got the most from the way Taehyung and Jimin created all that love between them, manufactured it like a power plant, and let so much of it pour outward.

“I just thought we’d have more time,” Jimin says. “We made so many tradeoffs to do the idol thing, and it was worth it, but then at some point we were supposed have the rest of our lives.”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says. “History wasn’t fair.”

“You mean people fucked up,” Jimin says. “Including me, I know I did. Look around. Everybody fucked up.”

“Okay.” He’s right, probably, but Jeongguk still reels away from thinking about it, and agrees so he won't have to.

"Basically nobody gets second chances like this," Jimin says. "I've been thinking a lot about how I want to use mine."

"That's really smart, hyung."

"Hmm," Jimin hums, wary, in reply. "Why are you talking like a baby? You only do that when you want something."

Jeongguk hasn't noticed, but that checks out. "I think I want you to tell me what to think. I've been trying not to think about any of it, at all."

"How's that working for you?" Jimin says dryly.

Shitty, obviously. Jeongguk growls.

"Well, I can't tell you what to think," Jimin says. "But I've decided... I don't want to look back and have regrets like this again. And maybe, maybe Taehyungie needs me. So I'm going to be here for him. I won't be scared this time."

“You’re doing really good,” Jeongguk says. “It’s hard ‘cause he’s so scared.”

Jimin snorts. “It’s awful. But it’s easy because he’s so scared. All I have to do is give him basic human kindness and he acts like I’m a hero. That’s the simplest part of all this, being good to him.”

Jeongguk feels a little sick when he thinks about it, and he can’t answer that. “Well, you’re still doing good. I see it. I’m going to tell you.”

"Okay," Jimin says. "I just didn't think I was going to have to remember like this. I didn't—I should have expected—but I didn't think I was going to have to miss him so much—"

Jimin cuts himself off crying, and Jeongguk stops asking him questions and holds him through it. 

“I didn’t leave Taehyung,” Jimin says abruptly. “We decided together.”

“Ah, hyung. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Jimin takes a deep, deep breath and sighs. “I feel like all I do is cry anymore. Which is weird because, until they froze us, I hadn't cried since the typhoons.”

He must mean the ones that destroyed Busan. Even if Jeongguk doesn’t count the centuries they spent in cryogenesis, that was a long time ago, a couple of years. Jeongguk probably cried dozens of times.

“When we were talking about what we were going to do after the disbandment,” Jimin says, “Taehyung said I could come stay with his family at the farm.”

It stabs Jeongguk, a literal and searing physical pain in his chest. He's glad he and Jimin have each other, but he would not be here if he could have had Ilsan. That was several of the many times he’s cried. The pain messes up his breath; Jimin pauses in case there’s something he wants to say, but no, Jeongguk isn’t ready to speak these words yet. He’ll have another panic attack. “You didn’t want to?” he asks instead.

“At first I thought I would,” Jimin says. “But I think I scared him. I was talking about how we’d be giving everything up, going back to die, and Daegu was as good as anywhere else. I don’t remember feeling anything at all. I think I was more depressed than I realized. That’s when he started telling me I should do the cryogenesis instead. He said there might be something better in the future, and I should go find it. He was excited about it.”

Jeongguk makes a noise to show he heard, not words. It still doesn’t make sense to him, how they could both choose to settle for a future apart. “So he let you go because he loved you, and that was best for you?” Jeongguk has always thought that line of reasoning is pretty much bullshit, but, well—he has his own reasons.

“Maybe,” Jimin says. “I guess it sounds stupid to you, but the more important it felt to ask because we were running out of time, the more important it felt not to ask and ruin what little time we had.” He sniffles and says, voice thicker, “I know it’s stupid—”

“It’s not,” Jeongguk finds Jimin’s head and pats it. “Don’t say that.” He has never really understood Jimin’s anxiety, how his brain lies to him, how it makes him the most insecure about the things he ought to be the most sure of. Jeongguk finds it incredibly frustrating sometimes, wishes he could just grab Jimin’s shoulders and shake him out of it. But that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s fake, or dumb—he believes it’s there, that Jimin is fighting it every day. The hyungs were better at knowing what to say to make it better. Jeongguk just hugs him.

“I don’t know if it would have been different, if we had ever figured out the romantic thing.” Jimin’s voice is getting softer, sleepy or musing. “He still would have put his little siblings first, the cryogenics program still would have wanted us. He said that I had to be brave for both of us, but—I think he was being brave for me. I think I might have stopped believing in the future at all, and he did it for both of us.”

Jeongguk hums in sad agreement. He didn’t believe in the future either. The simple truth is that he thought he was going to die in that cryo chamber. The military made them sign so many papers saying they understood they might never wake up, and by that time, plenty of solutions that seemed more sensible than cryogenics had failed. People all over the world were dying by the hundreds of thousands; his country and his hyungs told him this was the time they needed him to go; it seemed like it would hurt less than hanging around watching things get worse.

His wild fantasies during that last month, before they went to sleep, weren’t about waking up on a spaceship in the future—they were about Namjoon coming to get him before the cryogenesis could start.

He doesn’t know how to admit all this, but he won’t have to. Jimin hums on a soft sigh, falling asleep.

Now Jeongguk has to live through exactly the thing he was most afraid of—alive past the end, having to carry on. But he also got the thing he knew it was foolish to hope for, his impossible fantasy—Namjoon came and got him. Not how he imagined it, of course it never goes just how you imagine it, but it’s still real.

Why does it always end up like this, the impossible highs and the scraping lows? He can’t trade one for the other to even out the pace of his strange and exhilarating life, can’t do anything but hang on, white-knuckled on the ledge. Jimin sighs again, sleepy. Jeongguk hangs on.

###

Taehyung goes with Jimin to the music room at the usual time in the morning, but they leave Jeongguk in the suite so the doctors can check on him. To Taehyung, it’s obvious what happened, and he feels awful about it—he made his new friends dig around in stuff better left alone, and didn’t know anything about how to help them deal with the consequences.

When Jimin explains to Yoongi and Hoseok, though, he doesn’t blame Taehyung at all. “We’ve been talking about the past a lot, and I think it got to be too much for him. He had a panic attack, I guess, last night.”

“Oh, no.” Hoseok makes a sympathetic pout; behind him, Yoongi’s face does the same thing, a little more internal.

“We had a good talk after,” Jimin said. “I think he’ll be all right. It’s just a lot, obviously.” He waves a hand vaguely, encompassing pretty much everything.

“I’m really sorry, again,” Taehyung says. “I didn’t mean to make you bring all that stuff up.”

Jimin tilts his head. “It’s not your fault. I mean, we had to talk about it eventually.”

Taehyung twists his fingers together. They didn’t have to talk about it right now, though, or have that big fight, just because Taehyung was worried. They're going through so much pain he didn’t see. He’s swamped by a particular anxiety that’s new to him, worried not about his own safety but whether he was good enough. His life gets better and the bar just goes up.

“Hey, it’s really okay.” Jimin ducks his face under Taehyung’s to catch his eye. “It’s fine. Sometimes when you love people you have to have miserable, painful conversations with them. It sucks, but like, what’s the alternative, right?”

Taehyung knows the alternative, and yes, it’s worse. “You’re right,” he says, and then, to be cute and because it’s true, “You’re always right, Jimin. So smart. I have a good hyung.”

Hoseok jumps in. “Yes, our good Jimin! You love little Jeongguk so much.”

“God help me, I do,” Jimin says in a heavy, resigned way. After a second, he adds, “To be honest, though, I meant all of you.”

Taehyung pauses inside, waits to see how to feel about this, and Yoongi’s eyes go wide in something like alarm.

Jimin laughs at the look on Yoongi’s face. “Sorry if that’s weird for you. No pressure, but I definitely love everyone in this room. You can catch up whenever.”

There’s almost another awkward moment, but Hoseok laughs and throws his arm around Jimin’s shoulders, his huge silk shirt floating like a parachute over them both, and declares he loves him back. Taehyung is… well… he hasn’t caught up yet. But he watches that hug and the smile Yoongi fights and fails to suppress, and he imagines himself taking one step closer today.

###

Namjoon translates Jeongguk’s conversation with the doctor, because he doesn’t want to miss any medical advice, but Jeongguk remembers her from the cryodegeneration and manages all the pleasantries before and after his exam in a nicely functional combination of modern Korean and standard English. She’s charmed, and whispers to Namjoon and Seokjin how well he seems to be doing as she leaves the suite.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Seokjin’s eyes are already smiling as he asks.

“A lot better,” Jeongguk says earnestly. “Jimin and I had a good talk last night.”

“Good. I’ll see you at lunch?”

Jeongguk nods and Seokjin ruffles his hair familiarly before he leaves.

“Are you really okay?” Namjoon asks once he’s gone.

Jeongguk laughs a little, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, I really am. I’m sorry if I scared you. I wouldn’t lie to Dr. Kim.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes at “Dr. Kim,” just to make Jeongguk laugh some more. He missed what happened last night, hanging around the library to stay out of the way while they discussed whatever they needed to and returning to find Taehyung and Jimin huddled in awkward, nervous silence as Seokjin was helping Jeongguk get cleaned up.

Namjoon feels like this is his fault—like he showed them too much or didn’t explain enough, like he should have found the right way to interpret their own lives to make it easier for them to bear. “You don’t have to apologize,” he says. “It was only so surprising because you both have been doing so, so well, better than anyone could have expected. But you don’t have to be strong all the time for us.”

“Okay,” Jeongguk says, nodding resolutely, like he intends to be strong all the time for Namjoon. They’ve only known each other a couple of weeks—how can Namjoon’s heart be so swollen and tender with fondness? He wasn’t prepared for how hard Jeongguk would immediately be prepared to work, how devoted he'd be to this project that’s so important to Namjoon.

“It’s a hard adjustment,” Namjoon says. “We all know it is. It’s okay to need time.”

Jeongguk nods slowly, thinking, and then shakes his head. “People keep saying that, but actually… it’s been really easy. Everyone I knew on Earth said it was such a brave, risky thing, volunteering for cryogenesis, but as it turned out, they all lived harder lives than I did. You brought us here and you’re taking such good care of us and…everything’s fine. Everything’s great.”

He sounds so sad, Namjoon pushes down the glee he feels at those words. “Well, good. I want things to be great for you.”

“I just mean… I feel like I stole it.” He frowns, eyes beseeching. “Everybody who said I was being so brave, I just abandoned them.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I think… anybody who encouraged you to enter the program would be delighted to find out it went so well. This is probably exactly what they were hoping for. The idea that things could get better, that’s the only reason anyone carries on.”

“You think so?” Jeongguk leans forward like something vital hinges on Namjoon’s answer. Maybe Namjoon doesn’t get why it’s so important, but—well, he does think so. He feels like that’s sort of obvious, even, that Jeongguk didn’t steal anything or abandon anyone. That sometimes it’s easier to have hope for the people around you than yourself.

“Yes,” he says. “I really do.”

Jeongguk relaxes. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Namjoon repeats. “Do you want to take the morning off?”

Jeongguk’s eyes bug out. “No! I want to sing. I can sing, I promise I can.”

“All right, I won’t stop you. If you’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Jeongguk jumps up. “It’s an actual miracle I get to be here doing music. I know that. I want to go do music.”

Namjoon gets up to follow him to the door, but Jeongguk turns abruptly around, almost glaring at him. Namjoon raises his hands in surrender and question.

Jeongguk takes a deep breath and jumps forward, throwing his arms around Namjoon’s shoulders for a sudden hug.

Namjoon freezes first, before he figures it out, then wraps his own arms around Jeongguk’s body in return. He’s deceptively smaller than he looks, just like Namjoon thought the first time they touched. Like he’d shatter if Namjoon squeezed too hard.

“I might get sad sometimes,” Jeongguk says into Namjoon’s neck, his breath hot. “But I’m glad it’s now. I’m glad it was you.”

Chapter Text

So Taehyung and Jimin are going to be friends now, which means Jimin is allowed into a circle in Taehyung’s heart with pretty much only his mother and little brother. And maybe he’s still not quite sure how Jimin fits there, but that doesn’t mean anybody else gets to talk shit.

Like… for example… Taehyung wonders what Jimin and Jeongguk would think if they could hear how the others talk about them when they’re not around.

It’s been two days since he talked to Jimin about the past, about a week and half since Jimin called across the dining room and turned Taehyung’s life into this fantasy or fever-dream. They have exactly nine more days to practice, and then Taehyung is going to get onstage with them in the stadium and sing “Spring Day” and maybe “Fire” if he’s good enough at the dancing in time. Yoongi, Hoseok, and the singers are going to prep one final song tomorrow and then their eight-song set will be complete, and they’ll be making it perfect until the day of the show.

The work days are getting longer. Jeongguk and Jimin went straight to the gym after the music room, claiming they wouldn’t get back up if they sat down first. That’s why Taehyung came back to sit down.

Taehyung told Yoongi that singing isn’t as hard as work in the kitchen, and that’s true—he doesn’t end his days as drained and bone-deep achy as he used to—but it is hard, and it’s work that takes more of his mind and imagination. He loves it already, but when it’s time to rest, he takes it. Hoseok, too, seems close to his limit, though he’s good at keeping up a cheerful, hardworking face, and Taehyung only notices when they finally flop at the end of the night.

That’s where they are now, Taehyung and Hoseok sprawled across the couch in the singers’ suite and Yoongi lolling sideways in a chair. Seokjin appeared a few minutes after they did. He’s wearing a dark suit that was probably sharp this morning, but now he’s got his tie pulled loose and his jacket draped over an empty chair. He and Namjoon have a couple of beers at the dining table, and they’ve both forgotten how to shut up.

“They are going to have to deal with the reality they’re in eventually.” Namjoon sounds calm, but he’s tense around his shoulders and eyes, signs Taehyung interprets as deep, dangerous anger. “Nothing good is going to come from letting them prop themselves up with weird coping mechanisms.”

“Don’t you lecture me about psychology.” Seokjin is raising his voice and pointing, but he actually seems much less angry, as close to laughing as he is to losing his temper for real. “They’re adjusting remarkably well. They’re not sick just because they don’t agree with you.”

“They don’t agree with reality. They think we’re three hundred year old pop stars. Do you want to get up and do some choreography?”

Seokjin makes a face like something smells bad. “I do not. But they don’t think that, they think we’re reincarnated, which is a venerable tradition about death and new life—”

Namjoon snorts. “They’re projecting their legitimate grief on coincidences.”

“You really think a coincidence this huge is the likeliest explanation?”

“Lots of things seem too big to be coincidence,” Namjoon says. “But look at humans, at anything we’ve done, at where we’ve ended up. There’s no one in charge here. There’s no master plan. You can look at history a lot of ways, but one is that it’s the story of people squandering everything over and over because they didn’t want to take responsibility for their own lives.”

“I think some people would say that’s why we need second chances.”

“‘Some people,’” Namjoon repeats. “You won’t even admit you believe this, you just want me to let them believe it.”

“Yes, I want to let them believe whatever makes them feel better!” Seokjin shouts. “They’re smart kids. It’s not your job to control their thoughts.”

“It’s not yours, either, and I’m not the one who got them started using the word reincarnation, I know that was you. It’s not your job to be here at all.”

Yoongi clears his throat. “It is, he’s officially on the project, and he got our budget for the month doubled to accommodate our unexpected staffing growth—” He gestures to Taehyung and Hoseok on the couch. Hoseok raises his eyebrows mildly, but Taehyung can’t hear a money-related word while someone is looking at him without a sharp spike of adrenaline. He breathes hard through it.

“So you both have equal authority on the BTS project,” Yoongi continues, “and it is, to be clear, not as much authority as I have. As your project manager, I forbid you to fight anymore whether we are reincarnated idols.”

Seokjin opens his posture, going lazy in his chair with a grin, and takes a drink of beer. Namjoon, though, darkens. “So you believe in reincarnation now, too.”

“I believe that I need my talent to keep doing whatever they’re doing for two more weeks, and then we can figure anything else out,” Yoongi says. “All we have to do is get through the showcase.”

Something about the way he says it feeds the spike of fear still making Taehyung a little dizzy. “What happens if it doesn’t go well?”

Yoongi shrugs with one shoulder, absolutely faking a casual posture. “They won’t shut the program down. But it’s the difference between me being the guy in a closet with a keyboard forever, or something the department will really invest in. And if we want to build a real ecosystem, you know, kids learning and people making all different kinds of music again, we need that investment.”

Taehyung’s fear sharpens to a point: what’s the outcome that lets him keep doing this, that doesn’t force him back to the kitchens? How does he stay?

“Letting them tell themselves lies is just going to hurt them in the long run,” Namjoon insists.

“Then we’ll figure it out in the long run,” Yoongi says. “I don’t know, Joon. They seem fine.”

“Do you know your genealogies?” Hoseok asks. “I told you, it’s not a coincidence that I look like the honored Jung Hoseok, I’m related to him. Maybe you guys are descendants, too.”

He says it like he’s trying to bridge the gap, calm and reasonable, and of course he’s very sure. It doesn’t add up to Taehyung: five descendants of the original BTS’s families just happening to coalesce around the BTS project would still be a huge coincidence, or a huge magic, whichever it is. But Taehyung doesn’t say anything—because no, he doesn’t know his genealogy. Even the idea of a family keeping track for so long sounds impossible to him. He doesn’t know how normal that is, so he can’t tell if saying so will make him sound poor.

“The historical record doesn’t really support that,” Namjoon says, which is one of those dry, academic things he’s always saying that takes Taehyung a few extra moments to break down—he’s talking about a time when millions or even billions of people died.

“I bet you’re fun at parties,” Seokjin says sourly.

“I really am not,” Namjoon replies.

So there Taehyung is, keeping silent in discomfort and riding down a rush of his endless money fears, when Seokjin says, “What do you think, Taehyung? You have the least preconceptions about our little stars, probably.”

“Hey,” Yoongi says sharply. “Don’t pull him into your fight.”

“We’re not fighting, we’ve been forbidden.” Seokjin smiles.

“Taehyung’s one of us now, he can have an opinion if he wants,” Namjoon says. “Do you think you’re the literal reincarnation of BTS V?”

Taehyung, in fact, does not have an opinion. This is the kind of cosmic question he would say he works too hard to have time for—though it’s not that he doesn’t think working people can think about philosophy or religion, if they want. He knows plenty who do, and also rich people who aren’t using their leisure for anything so meaningful. But Taehyung, whether it’s because he’s been too busy surviving or because he just isn’t built that way, has never wondered about god or the afterlife. He lives in an oversaturated present.

Something about the question sticks to him now, though, so he sits with it, frowning thoughtfully enough that the rest of them stay quiet and let him work through it.

Taehyung is better fed and rested than he has ever been in his entire life, not an exaggeration. Jimin could tell him the sky outside the windows was the same fragile blue as the sky on Earth instead of void black, and Taehyung would probably say, “yeah,” if it made Jimin happy.

He could say “yeah” because Jimin doesn’t make him say “yes, sir.”

Namjoon thinks Jeongguk and Jimin look at them all and see other people, but nobody has ever tried as hard as Jimin to look at Taehyung and see him for himself. Nobody’s ever told him in plain words that’s what they wanted, and if they had, Taehyung probably wouldn’t have believed them.

But nothing Jimin has done makes it seem like he’s lying, and nothing he’s said contradicts the reality Taehyung remembers or observes. If he looks at Taehyung and sees something bigger than Taehyung can, well, maybe Taehyung wants to be bigger.

It’s only been a few days. He’s only had a glimpse of the way Jimin sees things, sees him. But he wants more. And now he’s figured it out, what bothered him about Namjoon’s question: “So that means Jimin isn’t ‘one of us’? He doesn’t get to have an opinion? Or Jeongguk?”

Namjoon’s eyes widen. “I didn’t mean… uh…”

“Ha!” Seokjin slaps the table.

“It’s not just him,” Taehyung says. “They’ve been so careful about not bringing up this reincarnation thing again since it was bothering us, and you came in here and picked a fight about it.”

This is the kind of backtalk Taehyung would not normally risk, even though Seokjin is the one who asked, and he pauses with his breath caught to see how it goes over. Seokjin looks genuinely delighted, though, and claps as he concedes the point.

Even the way Yoongi talks about the “talent,” or Hoseok lumps the singers in with his honored ancestor—they do all have a lot of preconceptions. “I think… everyone thinks they’re set apart from us, and it’s not helping. Maybe we should just try to see them.”

It feels weaker out loud, like he distilled his thoughts too far, but he can’t wrap his head around how to articulate the details. And anyway, Yoongi makes a low, surprised noise of affirmation and Namjoon says, “Interesting. I’ll think about that.” It cuts the conversation off awkwardly and it might just be how he’s getting Taehyung to shut up, but it might also be high compliment, coming from him.

###

When Jimin and Jeongguk get back from the gym, Namjoon can still taste the argument hanging in the air like they burned it. Yoongi, Hoseok, and Seokjin excuse themselves pretty quickly to find their dinners and go to bed, and the rest of them eat in a stilted quiet. Taehyung seems nervous, like he’s afraid he’s offended Namjoon or he’s thinking himself into a new knot. Namjoon tries to give him a sympathetic smile, but he doesn’t want to go back to the conversation in front of the others. He’s really not mad at Taehyung. He’s just… thinking.

After they finish, Taehyung says he’s going to watch something in his room, and Jimin asks to join him. Jeongguk goes to take a shower, and Namjoon spends the whole time dawdling around the dining space, stacking the dishes up and arranging tomorrow’s nutrient shakes and wiping down the table. He dims the lights to nudge his circadian rhythm towards calm, to brighten the stars outside the ship.

When Jeongguk comes back, so pink from his workout and shower that he glows, he asks, “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, sure.” Namjoon takes one of the chairs and pulls out his computer like he might read.

“What I meant was,” Jeongguk says, sitting down on the couch next to him, a close angle, “what’s wrong?”

Namjoon makes a dry laugh and puts his computer down. Relief washes him almost before he understands it—this is the person he wants to talk to. They’ve started to have great conversations each evening, as Jeongguk asks more questions. He’s gotten more comfortable comparing the answers to things he knew, and Namjoon is just as interested to learn from him. He likes talking to Jeongguk so much that he doesn’t want to go back to a topic he knows they disagree on—but he will always be honest. “It’s really fine. I let Seokjin get to me earlier, that’s all.”

Jeongguk’s face falls, those big, worried eyes. “Jimin was asking about reincarnation at lunch today.”

“Was he?”

“He asked if Dr. Kim had any idea how it worked,” Jeongguk says. “And Dr. Kim, you know, he was therapist-ing, like, ‘how do you think it works?’ It ended up taking all of lunch.”

“You know, you don’t have to call him Dr. Kim.” It grates on Namjoon’s nerves every time. “He said Seokjin is fine.”

“I guess. It’s not really appropriate.”

“I have my Ph.D., and I don’t make you call me Dr. Kim.”

“We could call you Professor Namjoon.” Jeongguk smiles in a private way, like there’s a joke in there just for him. “But you’re not, like, a medical doctor.”

“Psychologists aren’t medical doctors!” Namjoon grabs his hair in a fist—he could honestly tear it out. “You think somebody let Kim Seokjin into medical school? He doesn’t have any more access to the truth than anyone else. You don’t have to believe everything he tells you.”

That smile is gone. Jeongguk searches Namjoon’s face, eyes moving. “I don’t understand why this makes you so upset.”

Namjoon sighs. “I don’t know either.”

He was surprised to find himself on the alone side of that argument earlier, in a whole room full of people willing to believe superstitious, unscientific nonsense to keep some peace. In their different ways, they all wanted him to drop it. But lies aren’t peace.

“It’s not just that I believe anything Dr. Kim tells me,” Jeongguk says. “I know Namjoon-hyung. I don’t even have to say remember, because if I was in stasis all that time, then my eyes and my mind saw him a few weeks ago. I know what he looks like and how his voice sounds and how patient he is when you ask him a question and—” A smile teases his lips— “How frustrated he gets when he doesn’t understand something. I know him. And whatever the word for the science or the magic of it is, you are the same person.”

“It’s hubris to be so sure about something like that,” Namjoon says.

Jeongguk frowns. “Then isn’t it hubris for you to be so sure it’s not?”

Namjoon swallows hard, holds back words. His voice will betray him if he tries to talk. He takes a second to think about it, look for a new thought besides mute hurt. Taehyung said, “We should try to see them,” so Namjoon tries.

He thinks he’s been trying. He spent years alone in the BTS archives when no one else cared, watching this person sing and laugh and cry. Staring into his eyes through a screen. Namjoon’s only purpose these past few weeks has been to be here for Jeongguk and Jimin, to help them understand the new world around them, and he is apparently not doing very well but he is trying. He is trying so hard.

Namjoon looks. Jeongguk is sitting in front of him, earnest and almost hopeful, his eyes wide and his hand gripping the arm of the couch like he could jump up. He’s so happy when he’s talking about his Namjoon-hyung. He’s excited about the idea of finding him in Namjoon now, and he is trying to be kind.

He’s sweet, and his enthusiasm is infectious. He has a mobile, shifting smile, so picture-perfect until it’s suddenly irresistibly goofy. And this is maybe not the moment to be looking at him so closely, because he’s slick all over and still a little damp under his shirt from his shower, and his hair is sticking up at angles while it dries, just begging for someone to smooth it down, and if Namjoon looks any longer he’s going to start searching out details that aren’t his to wonder about.

He drops his gaze. His fists on his lap are clenched tight—he doesn't feel it until he sees it. He spreads his fingers, trying to relax.

Jeongguk’s hand appears in his field of vision, reaching for the arm of Namjoon’s chair, and Namjoon looks up and Jeongguk is there, his face so close it blurs and Namjoon’s eyes close by instinct. Jeongguk’s mouth, the gorgeous changeable mouth he was just staring at, is already open as it presses into the center of Namjoon’s and nudges his lips apart. For one second—less—Jeongguk slips the tip of his tongue over Namjoon’s and he’s sweet, too sweet to be real, something about the chemistry of him candy-sweet like no kiss Namjoon has ever tasted—

And then Namjoon’s brain kicks on and he presses Jeongguk’s chest to get him away, not hard but as firmly as he can while still being gentle with him. He sits back in his own chair to make space, puts his other hand over his mouth. It feels different, huge, his lips hot against his fingers, like he’s been branded with this one small kiss.

“Jeongguk,” he says—to remind himself, who this is, and why he can’t— “We really shouldn’t do that. You don’t even—it’s not right—I’m responsible for you—”

Jeongguk straightens up and barks an empty ha!, short and almost mocking, that makes Namjoon stop. “See?” He gestures at Namjoon like he’s proved a point. “It’s still definitely you.”

Namjoon goes cold.

Yes, he sees now.

He sees that he’s still melting under a kiss that might have been the most shameful thing he could have never admitted he wanted so, so badly, and Jeongguk is just continuing an ancient argument with someone else.

Taehyung was wrong—Namjoon is seeing fine. It’s Jeongguk who isn’t even trying to look at him.

Maybe that’s fair, maybe Jeongguk has bigger problems than getting to know Namjoon right now. Maybe it was Yoongi who was right. None of this matters. They just need to get through the work.

Namjoon follows one careful breath in and out to make sure that when he speaks, his voice will be calm and clear. “Do not touch me like that again.”

He rises and goes into his room before he has to see what Jeongguk’s face does in return.

###

After dinner, Taehyung says he’s going to go into his room to watch something, and Jimin asks to come with him. Maybe it’s just to escape the awkwardness, but Taehyung is really interested to spend a little time alone with him. He’s been thinking all through dinner about what the singers are being protected from, and why.

Jimin sits down on the edge of the bed. Taehyung has it retracted so he had room to steam his uniform and get dressed this morning; now, he goes to the keypad on the wall and feeds it halfway out so they’ll be more comfortable.

Jimin yelps as the bed starts moving underneath him, jumps up and whirls to stare at it. “They move?”

Taehyung can’t help but laugh. “Of course they move. You can’t—” He pauses, considers. “Jimin, have you been sleeping on your bed all the way in? Like this?” He retracts the bed back to where it was, so there’s just a seating ledge sticking out of the wall.

“Um… yes.” Jimin says tentatively.

Taehyung laughs again, more out of surprise than at Jimin, but Jimin stamps his foot. “I didn’t know they moved! Namjoon didn’t tell us!”

“He probably didn’t realize you didn’t know to pull out the bed. Did he have to tell you how to flush the toilet?”

Jimin starts blushing, but he doesn’t answer.

“Oh, no,” Taehyung says.

“No!” Jimin makes one of his odd half-gestures—like he moves to shove Taehyung playfully and only remembers to stop himself at the last second. “It was just, we were confused because we couldn’t find any toilet paper.”

“Toilet… paper?” Taehyung understands those syllables separately, but he has never heard those ideas together before.

“It’s what we used on Earth more often than bidets,” Jimin says. “A little roll of paper you’d keep in the bathroom, wipe up any… you know… residue.”

Taehyung's jaw drops. "You didn't wash?"

"Not every single time," Jimin says, and makes a garbled noise of horror. "Why are we talking about this?"

Taehyung can’t stop himself from gagging a little. “That is the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. Ew. Jimin, ew.”

Jimin hides his face, giggling. “It’s not that bad! It worked fine!”

“That is the worst thing possible.”

Jimin, blushing bright red and laughing too hard to talk, moves to shove him again—remembers to stop himself, again. Which is good of him, this deference to Taehyung’s discomfort, but Taehyung doesn’t feel as afraid of him anymore. Especially now that he knows he’s just a disgusting little caveman. Taehyung puts an arm around Jimin’s shoulders, breaking the barrier of touch between them. His body is as warm and hard as it looks, but not as small. He fills Taehyung’s space.

“It’s okay,” Taehyung says gently, patting his back. “It’s not your fault you’re primitive. Just don’t tell anyone that ever again.”

Jimin squawks, and squirms like he’s protesting, even though he might just be wiggling around to feel the new closeness. It makes Taehyung think of the first time he saw Jimin dance, the fine wire of him, how he looked more than human. Taehyung was wrong—Jimin is just a person, here in his arms, after all.

Taehyung looks at him—really tries to see, like he told the others—and can actually watch the shyness and bravery moving over Jimin in waves as he lets Taehyung hold him. It hasn’t even been a minute, but it feels like an age.

He lets go and turns back to the keypad. “Okay, watch, since apparently you need to learn how to work a bed.”

Jimin sighs dramatically, but he watches as Taehyung opens the bed all the way across the room, retracts it back into the wall, and then returns it to the half-out setting where he likes to keep it when he’s relaxing for the evening. He sits down by the pillow, and Jimin takes the foot of the bed.

“Do you think we have to show Jeongguk, too?” Taehyung asks. “Would he have told you, if he figured it out?”

“Oh, no, he, uh— don’t laugh.”

“Okay,” Taehyung says gravely.

“We’ve been sharing. On, uh, on just the small bed.”

Taehyung bursts out laughing. He doesn’t really try to stop himself, but he probably couldn’t anyway. The image of both of them, trying to squeeze up on a little ledge… it’s too much. He can’t believe he’s been so afraid of them. Jimin goes on all fours to shove at Taehyung’s shoulder, and Taehyung just lets him do it. He’s not really pushing, he’s so careful.

Jimin sits back on his knees, pouting.

“Aww, I’m sorry,” Taehyung says.

“We didn’t know,” Jimin whines. “Everything is different, and it gets so dark in the rooms with the lights off—”

Taehyung puts his hands over his face and groans. He stands Jimin up again and takes him back to the keypad to show him the light settings: the blue lowlights, the dimmer, and the ambient starlight-to-daylight timer he prefers when he sleeps.

Jimin is blushing so much it might be permanent, he might just be purple forever. But it really isn’t his fault he didn’t know, and it’s sort of sad to think about: the two of them lonely and afraid, squeezed up on a narrow ledge in the pitch-dark. Not even knowing they’re just a few taps away from being so much more comfortable. And well-meaning Namjoon a room away, waiting for them to ask for what they need.

Taehyung sticks his tongue out sideways, one of the faces that makes Jimin smile, and Jimin does.

“I bet you don’t get lonely, because you have this friend.” Jimin picks up the floppy-eared doll sitting on top of Taehyung’s bag. He’s filled with scraps of torn spacesuit, and he crinkles in Jimin’s hand.

“That’s Sergeant Jim,” Taehyung says. “My mother made him when I was a baby.”

Jimin coos and gives Sergeant Jim a gentle hug before setting him back on top of the bag. “That’s sweet, that you keep him in your travel bag.”

He says “travel bag” as one word, a fixed idea, like “toilet paper.” Another Earth thing. This one, Taehyung can figure out from context. He almost keeps the thought to himself, but this is what he’s been thinking about tonight. What are these lies and half-truths protecting? Who is it helping?

Taehyung settles Sergeant Jim back into the bag and holds the top open, showing how Jim guards a single neat stack of undershirts, briefs, and socks. “This isn’t a travel bag. This is everything I own.”

Jimin’s face goes on a quick journey, lips parting in some surprise or horror and then sealing carefully closed.

“This is mine,” Taehyung says, pressing his hand to the jumpsuit on his chest, “and my boots, but the uniforms actually belong to the kitchens. I’m responsible for the damage if they get messed up. I have toiletries and stuff in the bathroom. My phone doesn’t belong to me, I rent it from the ship, so that’s everything. Sergeant Jim is special, though, most of the people I worked with in the kitchens who weren’t from this ship didn’t have anything from home at all.”

Taehyung pats Sergeant Jim’s head and buttons the bag up slowly before he looks at Jimin’s face. Jimin is curled in a tiny ball on the bed, hands cupped around his elbows. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Taehyung joins him on the bed. “There’s still a lot of stuff you don’t know.”

Jimin twists his mouth, considering. “Will you tell me about where you grew up? About Venus?”

Taehyung nods slowly, thinking about how to approach it. “When I say on Venus, I mean on the space stations around it. Nobody lives on Venus, the surface is hot enough to melt metal. But the sky is full of clouds of sulfuric acid, and the space stations have these huge mills to harvest it. There’s tons of work running the mills and processing the acid and getting it shipped out, but a lot of it is really bad work. Hard and dangerous and since nobody lasts long, they don’t even pay very much.”

Jimin nods, his forehead knitted. He said that even on Earth he wasn’t someone who followed the news or thought much about politics; this is probably a lot for him to digest. But he looks like he gets it.

“School is more expensive depending on what job you train for,” Taehyung continues. “It costs more to train for a good job that might make you more money so you can pay for your kids to train for a good job… you see?”

Jimin nods.

“So, I started training on the strainers that pull debris as the acid comes out of the atmosphere.” Taehyung’s voice shudders on the word strainer, even still. “Free school, but a terrible job. It’s delicate work on heavy equipment in a space suit. And the hardest thing about it is, there’s empty space behind you and a river of acid in front, so you can’t really move at all outside the range of the equipment. Whole shifts without stretching or pacing or even taking a break from your position sometimes. A lot of the training for it in school was just learning to stay that still, to haul the equipment around without letting the momentum pull you off track. Nobody’s good at it when you start, but I was really, really bad at it.”

Taehyung rubs the side of his neck, where he still has an achy numb spot. “When I was fourteen I was still behind, so they, um—”

He’s never had to explain this to anyone before. The people who were there know, everyone else gets the gist when he says he’s from Venus and doesn’t need the details, and he’s never gotten close enough to anyone to want to share. He remembers what Jimin said, when he told his secrets, and repeats it now. “I’m ashamed of myself.”

“It doesn’t sound like you have any reason to be,” Jimin says. He’s gotten even smaller, knees tucked up and chin disappearing behind them. “But I’m sorry people made you feel that way. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

Taehyung nods. “When you get behind, they start using electricity. You have to wear this practice spacesuit with an, um, collar—”

Jimin gasps, cutting Taehyung off. He slaps his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Taehyung nods again, shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see. He says the rest of it kind of fast, just to get it over with: “It’s horrible because it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be so painful and humiliating your body forces itself not to move, because, you know, if you don’t learn eventually you’ll get up there in space and just die. But I never learned, it just made it worse. It hurt so much. I was so scared of hurting I’d get shaky, and then it would shock me and I’d fall and I’d get shocked again. I started shaking all the time, and talking weird. I couldn’t feel my tongue.”

“How is this possible?” There’s Jimin’s outrage again, firing off on Taehyung’s behalf. “Why doesn’t anyone stop this?”

Taehyung opens his eyes and half-smiles. “Well, someone did. People had tried to recruit me into server programs since I was a little kid, because, you know, I have a pretty face and that’s all server programs care about. My mom never let them—that’s how people end up trafficked, sometimes, and even if she found a legit one she knew we’d probably never see each other again. But nobody would listen to her about the mill training, so she got me a spot in a server program before they messed up my speech for good. And then, of course, they told her there must have been a problem with the collar, there are supposed to be safeguards so they don’t hurt that much, but they didn’t take her seriously enough to notice until she’d already pulled me out.”

Jimin shakes his head. His hands are curled into little fists, which is silly but very endearing.

“So,” Taehyung says briskly. “I left Venus for this ship when I was sixteen, did another year of school here, and then things were pretty much the same until I met you. And… that’s where I’m from.”

Jimin opens his mouth and closes it again. He looks away to think, cheek on his knee, and then finds Taehyung’s gaze. “Can I give you a hug?”

“Sure.” Taehyung won’t mind, if it will make Jimin feel better. What he isn’t expecting is that when Jimin crawls into his arms, rests his cheek over Taehyung’s heartbeat and wraps his arms around Taehyung’s waist, the warmth of him seeps under Taehyung’s skin. A knot stuck somewhere in his solar plexus, lodged into his ribs, a knot so old Taehyung might have thought it was just a natural part of him, starts to unwind in the glow of it.

Taehyung doesn’t want to let go of him. The hug should be ending, but Taehyung squeezes tighter. “Did you still want to watch something?”

Jimin looks up—surprised, hopeful. “Sure. Is this okay?”

“Yeah.” Taehyung pats Jimin’s shoulder to keep him in place, tucked neatly into Taehyung’s side, and takes out his phone. “Have you ever seen Jen and Kimmie?”

“Nope.”

“Cool. They’re so funny.” Jen and Kimmie are two women who work on one of the American ships. They make a video series called Bad Service where they take questions about how to handle rude passengers from people all over the solar system, and then they act out extremely terrible advice. The jokes look like they’re making fun of the idea that servers would behave so poorly, but they definitely work on another level where they’re making fun of how obnoxious and entitled passengers can be. Taehyung can’t believe they haven’t gotten in trouble for it yet, but maybe posh people really can’t tell.

Taehyung still feels weird inside, skinned raw and vulnerable, and he’s very aware of Jimin’s body running down the length of his. Each of Jimin’s inhales lifts the arm Taehyung has over his back, and his exhales float across Taehyung’s chest. But Jen and Kimmie are so funny they physically force his body to laugh, no matter what’s going on. He’s used their videos to feel better even when he’s felt a lot worse than this, and after a few minutes he’s wheezing with it.

They both act in their full servers’ uniforms, except when Kimmie is playing a passenger character she puts her hair up in this complicated bun and uses a napkin to make an ascot, and there’s this snotty way she pronounces please that makes Taehyung laugh so hard he has to pause the video so he doesn’t miss any more jokes.

Jimin is smiling, too, lopsided against Taehyung’s chest, but he’s not laughing nearly as much.

“I think it’s funnier for servers,” Taehyung says as he recovers. “They’re sneaky about it, but they’re definitely making fun of passengers.”

“Okay,” Jimin says. “To be honest, I don’t really understand why any of this is funny.”

Taehyung lifts his head to look down at Jimin’s sheepish face. He’s all pink, from leftover blushing or tears or giggles or all of the above, Taehyung couldn’t say. He thought Jimin was smiling at this, too. “We can watch something else,” Taehyung offers.

“No, no,” Jimin says. “I like how much you like it.”

That’s what he’s lying here smiling about—not the show, but Taehyung’s laughter.

Taehyung’s heart tries to deal with that, but he has felt the maximum number of things it is possible to feel in one night. He needs to keep laughing until he’s ready to fall asleep, or he might start crying.

“I’m going to send in a letter about my passenger who doesn’t know how to work a bed,” Taehyung says.

“You should,” Jimin says pertly. “They can make fun of me as much as they want, I won’t get it.”

“Sleeps on a ledge,” Taehyung says. “Doesn’t understand jokes. Covered in poop.”

“I was not! Paper worked fine!” Jimin howls, but he’s laughing now, too, and squeezing Taehyung tight. “You know,” he says haughtily, “most people are very concerned about helping us adjust. Namjoon-ssi would never talk to me like this.”

“Whatever,” Taehyung says. “You’re rich and talented and beautiful, you’ll be fine.”

Jimin catches Taehyung’s eye, grinning like he heard a secret. “I’m what, what was that?”

Taehyung's cheeks are hot. He clears his throat. "Covered in poop," he repeats, articulating slowly.

"Beautifully?" Jimin beams into Taehyung’s face. Taehyung gags again, theatrical and fake, and Jimin snickers as he snuggles back down.

Taehyung turns the video on again and lets it make him laugh some more. He doesn’t quite think about Jimin, smiling to himself as he feels Taehyung’s chest move under his cheek, but he lets the feeling burrow its way inside him, in case he wants to come back to it later.

###

If you think about it—

And Jeongguk thinks about it, he agonizes and obsesses over it, he ruined every other relationship for it, he put himself in a freezer and hurtled past the edge of the apocalypse to get away from it and he’s still here, floating through a blanket of stars in an impossible future thinking about his stupid hero-worship teenage crush—

So if you think about it, the whole thing is Halsey’s fault.

The first crisis came the night of the BBMAs, the one where they performed “Fake Love” and then went back to the hotel to do a live and drink champagne. No champagne for Jeongguk, though—he was still too young to drink in America.

He wasn’t very good about following that rule, and people told him no one cared, but he could feel that they had crossed a line that night, that more people were interested in them and new eyes were watching. Guests were moving in and out of the suite, their staff but also friends and friends of friends and artists they’d just met, and he didn’t know what pictures might end up on the internet. It wasn’t worth the risk, not when he was so close to turning twenty-one anyway. Even after they turned the live stream off, Jeongguk laughed while Hobi-hyung got adorably trashed on a few sips and Jimin opened his whole throat like a snake to toss glasses down, but he stayed tediously sober.

Halsey dropped by toward the messy end of the night. She had changed into sweats but hadn’t washed off her burgundy stage makeup yet, and she was braless under her tank top, which was probably normal for an American woman but made Jeongguk hide in the back of their group. (Jeongguk isn’t afraid of pretty girls, okay, it’s just that his desire to throw himself at their feet so they don’t have to walk on the dirty ground sometimes overwhelms his reason.)

To her credit, she always talked to all of them more than a lot of people tried to, building a conversation out of Namjoon-hyung’s translations and as much English as the rest of them could put together and a lot of enthusiastic smiles. Like many of their English-speaking friends, though, she did end up in a corner talking to Namjoon eventually.

Jeongguk got a little distracted trying to find a washable rather than permanent marker for Taehyungie-hyung to use to draw on sleeping Yoongi-hyung’s face, and was surprised to find that much later, when almost everyone else had gone, she was still there. That she and Namjoon were sitting close together, speaking seriously, and she had her hand on his knee.

Jeongguk was suddenly, absolutely sure that Namjoon was going to kiss her and Jeongguk was going to have to see and then just die or something, and instead of sensibly excusing himself to avoid it, he wandered closer and tried to eavesdrop. He understood almost nothing—hearing was the hardest part of learning English, nearly impossible when he wasn’t watching lips—but he was pretty sure Namjoon said “sex.”

It was another long five minutes of spying before he figured out that the word they kept saying was “bisexual.” Jeongguk had read their mood all wrong. Namjoon looked nervous when they stopped talking, hunched over, and maybe it was sleepiness or her makeup, but Halsey had the red threat of tears in her eyes. She hugged Namjoon like she was trying to gather him up, warm and full, even though she was the tiniest little person and she had to stand on her tiptoes to do it. Namjoon said "thank you" too many times as she left.

Namjoon was the least drunk after Jeongguk, and all the rest of them had reached the point where they were either asleep (Yoongi, Hoseok, Taehyung) or belligerent (Jin, Jimin, somehow also Taehyung), so Namjoon and Jeongguk worked together to get them all to bed. Jeongguk felt so sober, and, because it was tiresome to be so close to the United States’ annoying drinking age, too mature for the nonsense around him. He was sober and grown up and not even sleepy, even though he’d been awake for twenty hours, because his body knew it was the middle of the afternoon in Seoul.

And Namjoon—leader, hyung—was never going to complain to Jeongguk about his sexuality or the rules and norms that bound him, but he didn’t keep it secret. It was all there to see if Jeongguk looked, and of course he’d answer any question Jeongguk asked. All of the things Jeongguk had feared for so long felt like they’d disappeared in the pure light of the sun.

He should have realized it was the middle of the night, and the lights in Las Vegas were all neon and fake.

He went with Namjoon back to his room and Namjoon didn’t even look surprised when Jeongguk followed him in. That felt like a sign, too.

Jeongguk knew you were supposed to ask—he does know—but he’s always been so much braver in his body than his mind, so as soon as Namjoon closed the door, Jeongguk just… stepped forward.

One step.

He turned his head and lifted his face and the fullness of Namjoon’s mouth was there under his, giving for him, and—Jeongguk would never accept any revisions of history on this point—Namjoon kissed him back right away, opened his mouth first, licked past Jeongguk’s lower lip and made a soft noise of pleasure that Jeongguk felt everywhere.

It was just a second, though, it wasn’t really anything, and then Namjoon put his hands on Jeongguk’s shoulders and pushed him back so, so gently, too gently to fight with. “Jeongguk-ah,” he said. “We can’t.”

It was only the first time Jeongguk tried. Sometimes he did ask before, sometimes he argued more after, but it never made a difference. Namjoon was so careful, so kind, and he always said no. His expansive patience surrounded this, too, like he could guide Jeongguk out of his ill-advised crush the same way he might help him through his other insecurities. Like doing that wasn’t just settling himself deeper into Jeongguk’s heart.

It was always about their responsibilities—to the company, to the fans, to the members—or, often, about Namjoon-hyung’s responsibilities to Jeongguk. But he never drew a hard line, he never just said stop, and Jeongguk suspected it was because the agonizing cycle was all he would let himself have of something he did really want. That was the hardest part, dangling half-in his thrall, but, in a way, it was the best.

Namjoon-hyung never, ever reacted with the anger, the coldness, with what Jeongguk suspects is the terrible hurt, that Namjoon-ssi did tonight. Jeongguk has made a mistake.

He sits on the couch, alone in the living room, and waits first for Namjoon-ssi to come back and tell him it’s okay, and then for him to come back and say more calmly why he’s upset so they can work on it, and then he’s just afraid to go to bed and have to face him tomorrow morning.

A really, really big mistake.

It’s Jimin who eventually appears, from Taehyung’s room. He looks absolutely exhausted, eyes heavy, and he meets Jeongguk’s gaze with an ironic recognition. “Come on,” he says, “I have to show you something.”

Jeongguk follows him into his room. Jimin starts swiping over the pad by the lightswitch, and with a low hum, the bed begins to move forward, feeding out of the wall. Jeongguk jumps back in surprise, but as soon as he realizes what’s happening, he starts to groan.

“Yeah,” Jimin says. “Taehyung made so much fun of me for sleeping on the little bed. He called it a ‘ledge.’ Now, watch this.”

Jimin taps some more, and when he flips the lightswitch down, the room plunges not into frightening total dark but into a cool, dim blue glow that traces the outline of the floor and just illuminates the pale lines of the sheets and Jimin's face.

Jeongguk sighs. He regrets every instant of lost sleep after the past few weeks. Why didn’t Namjoon-ssi show them this?

But as soon as the question crosses Jeongguk’s mind, he knows why. Namjoon thought they knew, or at least that they assumed these things were possible and messed with the keypads until they figured it out their own. Alone in a room with a keypad on the wall, Namjoon-ssi’s the kind of person who would press all the buttons just to see what they would do. Uncomfortable in a tiny bed, he’d have asked if that could change. He told them a million times to ask for what they needed, and it’s probably on Jeongguk that he didn’t.

Namjoon-ssi has never come into their rooms—he even told them people on the spaceship are careful of their privacy. That’s what his life has taught him is kind.

He’s the person who has worked the hardest to understand where Jeongguk and Jimin are coming from, and he’s been so good at it that an impossibly strange transition has felt almost seamless. But he’s just a person, doing his flawed best, and he comes from a completely different world. He can’t know what Jeongguk is thinking.

Jeongguk sits down on the edge of the bed and then throws himself back with a grunt of frustration, hands over his face. Jimin slaps his knee on his way into the bathroom.

Jeongguk doesn’t know what he was thinking, either, kissing him like that. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all—it was an instinct, not a decision. Maybe he saw the way Namjoon-ssi was looking at him and turned his brain off. He could spend a thousand lifetimes with a thousand Namjoons and not understand why you’d look at someone like that, so intense and hungry, if you didn’t want them to kiss you.

Or he was thinking that so many fight-shaped discussions with Namjoon-hyung had ended with impulsive kisses, a single perfect moment before the inevitable rejection, and he trusted that Namjoon-ssi would have the same infuriating, condescending, wonderful patience for something that wasn’t quite right.

Or maybe he was hoping that it would be different, if Namjoon-ssi was so sure he wasn’t the same person. Things are different, the beds and the lights and the food, but not this. Everything else is unrecognizable, but Jeongguk still knows how it feels when Namjoon doesn’t want him back.

Chapter Text

Namjoon gets out of bed early after a restless, confused night, determined to be professional. He slicks his hair down hard, finds a shirt with a collar, and strides into an empty room.

That’s not unexpected, but it takes some of the puff out of his attitude.

Taehyung usually comes out last, bleariest and best dressed, and he wakes up around the normal time. But Jeongguk and Jimin are so late Namjoon starts to worry they’ll miss this morning’s call for practice. He could wake them up, but he does not want to, not after last night. Could Jeongguk be doing this on purpose, avoiding Namjoon or—

What if he’s not coming? What if he pulls out of the project?

Nerves shudder quick down Namjoon’s body. He rubs his palms down his thighs.

Yoongi would tell him not to borrow trouble. Though Yoongi also told him it was a bad idea to keep fighting. Yoongi will tell him what to do.

Yes, he should call Yoongi. And he should go out in the hall to do it—he can tell Taehyung to wake the singers up, and make sure to be out of the room. Jeongguk might make some big plans about quitting, but he’s soft inside, he’ll fold if Taehyung pouts at him.

“Taehyung,” Namjoon says.

He looks up from his caffeine.

“Show me a pout.”

Taehyung tucks his upper lip under his lower, dropping his chin and opening his eyes wide. Yeah, this will work.

But Jimin’s door opens and he and Jeongguk stumble out together, dressed in soft cotton pajamas they bought from Earth. Jeongguk doesn't always have a shirt on in the mornings, but he does now.

“You two sleep well?” Taehyung asks, his voice heavy like that’s a joke.

“Ah, fuck off,” Jimin says, yawning, and Namjoon is just appalled, but Taehyung laughs and Jimin grins back, ruffling Taehyung’s hair as he walks by to get to the cooler case.

Jeongguk sits down as far from Namjoon as he can get, across the table on Taehyung’s other side, and slumps down with his head on his arm, hiding his face. Jimin puts his shake and some caffeine in front of him, and he starts drinking with his eyes closed. He looks really sleepy, but also like he’s avoiding eye contact with Namjoon.

Namjoon turns away, too, so he doesn’t get caught staring. “What did I miss?”

“I taught Jimin how to roll out the bed yesterday,” Taehyung says.

“Shh.” Jimin tries to stop him, but it’s too late.

“Oh no.” Namjoon has never even thought about how they roll out the beds to sleep—though now that Taehyung mentions it, he knows people on Earth had more space, that their beds were usually fixed pieces of furniture that stood alone in dedicated rooms. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think—”

“That’s what I said,” Taehyung says. “Why would you think they don’t know how to work a bed?” He snickers, and Jimin rolls his eyes.

It feels much more serious to Namjoon. “I just—there was so much to keep track of, and I wanted to give you your privacy in the bedrooms. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, please,” Taehyung says. “I almost felt sorry for them last night. But really, on a scale of one to a tragedy, these two sleeping on a tiny bed for a while is… maybe a zero-point-five. And you have to imagine—” He starts laughing, wheezing through his nose. “The both of them, trying to squeeze together on a ledge—” He dissolves completely into giggles.

Jeongguk squints sleepily into Taehyung’s face. “You’re in a good mood.”

“I guess.” Taehyung shrugs.

That’s enough reason for Jeongguk and Jimin to exchange sincere, overly obvious smiles, and Taehyung ducks his face to hide that he’s going red, and, so, fine. Namjoon isn’t going to argue them into being more upset than they are. Maybe he’s just not going to talk. Jeongguk is so pretty when he smiles. At least he’s got plenty to smile about that isn’t Namjoon.

“Finish your breakfast, hyung.” Jeongguk nudges Jimin’s shake closer to him. “We have to go practice the choreography for ‘Fire.’ Taehyung-ssi’s in too good of a mood.”

Taehyung gives him the pout, but Jeongguk is unmoved.

Yoongi hadn’t even planned to incorporate dance into the first showcase, but in truth, none of them had planned for Jimin and Jeongguk to wake up from such a long stasis so fresh. It’s like Jeongguk said (last night), his body remembers performing concerts a few weeks ago. They’re not only ready to work, they’re still in top form, committed to achieving the quality that’s important to them.

And when Namjoon and Yoongi were planning this project, they had no idea that Hoseok was a ferry-ship ride away, obsessively practicing the choreography of every BTS video down to his fingertips. He’s so thoroughly prepared it feels like he was made to join this concert.

Taehyung, though, just doesn’t have the background in dance. He sings beautifully, and he knows enough to internalize Jeongguk’s instructions and get better very fast. He’s never danced like this before, though, probably never even seen it. Namjoon spends his days watching, fascinated by the pedagogical problem of how they try to help him learn. “Fire,” especially, they insist will only work with his deep voice to shout the post-chorus and enough choreography to communicate the energy of the song.

They break the movements down into tinier and tinier pieces, teaching him one step at a time and then, when that’s still too complicated, limb by limb. They tell him exactly how to hold his hands, his hips, his face. He’s so attuned to Jimin, that’s when he gets it—he instinctively repeats anything that will make Jimin smile, from the proper dance steps to a sly expression on his face.

They spend the morning running it, and Jimin has a list of corrections after every time, but about an hour in, they reach the point where Namjoon can no longer see anything wrong, and so neither will anyone in the audience. He says so, and Jimin waves him off but Taehyung looks encouraged.

“What do you do if you get it in practice but then you forget on stage?” Taehyung asks. “Just lie down and cry, I guess? Run away?”

Jimin grins, but Hoseok pops up next to Taehyung, alert, like he would like the answer to this question, too.

“It’s no problem,” Jeongguk says. “You step out of the formation, so no one runs into you, and you do an ad lib like you got so emotional, the music just took you over.” He puts his hand over his heart and leans over to wail into an imaginary microphone, “Fiy-yah!” He stands again. “Or give people high-fives in the VIP standing, they love that.” He mimes touching the hand of a person far below him.

Jimin giggles at the impression, and Jeongguk glances at him and immediately commits to it, jogging a few steps down the mirror and slapping invisible palms like the waves of people devoted to him will never stop washing up the shore.

He’s looking at those people in his imagination instead of where he’s going, maybe, because where he’s going is toward Namjoon, who’s sitting on the floor against the wall. Everyone is watching—Jimin still amused, Taehyung and Hoseok riveted, Seokjin detached and handsome against the door, and Yoongi thoughtful over the keyboard and computer—and so Namjoon plays along. He stretches his hand up like a supplicant, and Jeongguk passes in front of the overhead light so it flashes through his hair like a halo, and then the tips of his fingers brush down the line of Namjoon’s pinky before he snatches his hand back and turns away, rubbing his palm on his hip. He doesn’t stop running until Jimin’s laughter settles, but now he stays away from Namjoon.

Namjoon curls his hand into a fist and tucks it under his thigh.

“Or wave up at the fans in the upper levels,” Jeongguk says. “Taehyungie-hyung did that a lot.”

Taehyung nods and smiles up into the corners of the room, like he can see the fans there, too. Like he’s as confused as Jeongguk is about whether he’s the one who used to wave to those people.

“Excuse me,” Namjoon whispers, and Yoongi nods at him but the rest continue their conversation about the choreography as he goes to stand in the hall.

He just stops there, slumps against the wall and rubs his hands down his face, up again and into his hair and around his neck like he can wring this feeling out.

He was not prepared for this. Maybe he should have been, should have realized his one-sided attraction to the boy on the screen would haunt him once he was living and working every day with the real man. But it’s so much more than that. It’s how sweet and careful Jeongguk is, how funny, how he hurls himself into his work and holds himself to impossible standards.

It’s not just how he looks, how he moves, how he fills a room, how that’s really his body and his face all the time, though god, that is part of it. The sharp lines of him slice through the air, leave it shattered around him where Namjoon is trying to breathe.

And, apparently, part of the problem is that what he sees when he looks at Namjoon’s face—the not-quite-Namjoon thing, the memories he projects like images flickering over a screen—is something he wants, too.

It’s so close to real—Jeongguk kissed him, Namjoon can still taste it—and all he can see is how it’s broken. It’s like he dreamed of being a champion pilot, so someone shot him into deep space without a suit. Except that metaphor sounds noble, when in fact, he’s derailing the real work because he’s thinking about a kiss.

He wishes he’d been nicer, calmer, less afraid. Or meaner—maybe he should have let this feeling spill over into a fight like pus leaking from a wound. He just wishes it hadn’t happened. No, that’s not true. He wishes it had been better.

He should not be thinking about this. He said no so unequivocally, he’s got no room to be out here still wondering how much of him says yes.

But he stays, slumped against the wall, until one of Yoongi’s coworkers comes out of an office down the hall and he ducks back into the music room to avoid her weird look.

They’re taking a break. Jimin is leaning against Taehyung’s shoulder with his eyes closed, so apparently the new ease between them is permanent, or at least stable. Taehyung is unbothered, phone in his palm, until something there makes his jaw drop.

Jimin lifts his head, glancing first at Taehyung’s shocked face and then his phone screen. “May I?”

Taehyung nods. Jimin takes not the phone but Taehyung’s whole hand and turns it close, sounding out what he reads in slow but crisp modern Korean:

“Dear Kim Taehyung, I’m writing to confirm your transfer to the music department of the Ministry of Language, Music, and Arts, in the job of Singer reporting to Assistant Director Min Yoongi, is complete. Thank you for your patience and flexibility during these unusual circumstances. I have discussed the issue of your time missed with the Kitchen department and back pay to cover the salary difference from the last two weeks has been deposited into your account. In addition to standard benefits, your contract includes first tier rations, so please let me know if you require any changes to your meal plan. Finally, please return any Kitchen property in your possession as soon as possible and alert me if you discover any discrepancies going forward. Otherwise, welcome to the team and I look forward to your concert! Best, Kang Miyoung, Executive Assistant, Ministry of Arts, Music, and Language.”

Jimin gives Taehyung his hand back and looks up. “What is ‘benefits’?”

Namjoon translates it into the ancient Korean word. “We picked up an English loanword when these were American military ships.”

“Oh, interesting,” Jimin says.

Taehyung makes a grating sob-gasp and slaps his hand over his mouth. Jimin looks at him; Namjoon turns politely away and raises his eyebrows to a sheepish Yoongi.

“Sorry it took us so long to get it sorted,” Yoongi says. “Hoseok, you should have an email, too.”

Hoseok makes a cheerful little noise, probably trying to draw attention off Taehyung, who’s still holding a shaky hand over his mouth. He checks his phone and chirps again. “Welcome, new coworker!” he says brightly to Taehyung.

Taehyung looks at him with the biggest, most stunned eyes Namjoon has ever seen. Frankly Namjoon would not be able to deal with that if it was all pointed at him. But Hoseok, luckily, laughs and leaps over to nudge Taehyung’s shoulder.

“I”m really sorry it took so long,” Yoongi says again. “We do normally run a professional department here, folks are just skittish about this project. I should have talked to Miyoung first, she was like, ‘paperwork is the only thing between us and the void!’”

Seokjin snorts. “I can feel that.”

“Right? I was like, um, also a meter of steel hull, but she did get shit taken care of.”

Namjoon grins for him, but this rambling isn’t working. Taehyung is still stuck, and Jimin’s paying more attention to him than Yoongi’s jokes.

“You know what,” Yoongi says, “why don’t you take the afternoon and wrap up that stuff with the kitchen, Taehyung? We can work on other songs and go back to ‘Fire’ tomorrow?”

Taehyung blinks at him a couple of times, and Seokjin moves to help him up off the floor.

“Right,” Taehyung finally says. “Okay.”

“Cool, that’s cool.” Yoongi lets his fingers trip nervously up the keyboard, sending out a tinkling sound. “Miyoung will actually come for my balls if the kitchen calls her again.”

“You guys are adorable,” Seokjin says, and then affects a bright, wailing call as he leads Taehyung out of the room. “We’re going shopping. Have fun at work!”

###

Seokjin strolls along with his hands in his pockets. “What do you need to do?”

“Just get these uniforms back, I guess.” Taehyung looks down at his gray clothes. It makes him feel dizzy; the floor seems far away.

“Oh, are we really going shopping?”

Taehyung hasn’t even thought that far—he imagined himself putting his off-duty jumpsuit on. “I guess I will need more clothes.”

Seokjin puts an arm around his shoulder and whisks Taehyung through the next hour, not to the commissary like he imagined but to a small, fancy shop with no storefront hidden in the maze of offices at the tail. He guides Taehyung to a bunch of impractical silky stuff that Taehyung loves but would never have let himself choose. Seokjin reminds him that his job title is “Singer” now, and he needs to dress the part the same as he did in his uniform.

Taehyung has all this fucking money in his account, but Seokjin insists on paying, calling himself “the hyung” in the same expansive way Jimin lords it over Jeongguk.

“You’re his brother?” the salesman asks, looking ready to be charmed but a little confused as to why he’s folding up an old kitchen uniform to pack away with the rest of Taehyung’s beautiful new things.

Seokjin shakes his head. Namjoon would go into a whole lecture here, about how the word used to be used among friends and why the usage changed and what a terrible loss everything is, but Seokjin only says, “I just mean I’m in charge.”

Once they’ve left and they’re alone again in the hall, Seokjin pauses and turns Taehyung around so he can look at him, evaluating the clothes once more. He straightens Taehyung’s collar and moves a piece of hair into place at his part, his face serious and hard to read. Taehyung thinks he might owe Seokjin a lot—he knows Seokjin has been doing something in the kitchens these past few weeks that has helped keep Taehyung here—but he doesn’t know what, and they’ve never been alone together.

“That’s all right,” Seokjin says quietly, more to himself than Taehyung. “That will be fine.” He presses a bag with more clothes than Taehyung has ever owned into his hands and says much more cheerfully, “This will get you started. Get Hoseok to take you shopping on twelve after the concert, he’ll really hook you up.”

“Okay,” Taehyung says, even though he can’t imagine anything of the sort.

“I need to go have lunch with the others, you all set?”

“All set,” Taehyung says. Seokjin nods at him for a little while longer before he lets him go.

Taehyung gets back to their rooms at a weird time, the middle of the afternoon, and he walks in on the back of a person in a gray uniform, getting yesterday’s dishes and leaving tonight’s rations.

“Excuse me,” Taehyung says, so he doesn’t scare the person—he always hated when people walked in without saying anything—but still, when she turns to him, she screams.

“Taehyung!” It’s Eunmi. “You look so good, oh wow! How are you? You look amazing!”

“Ha, thank you.” Taehyung nervously smooths his hands down his silky new shirt. “I just got officially transferred to the Arts Ministry, so I have to give my old uniforms back.”

She claps her hands. “Yes, I’m so excited for your concert. You were always my favorite when we sang for holidays.”

Taehyung isn’t going to be able to take it if good things keep happening today. He puts his hands over his hot cheeks. “Stop, you’re going to embarrass me!”

“You have to get used to it. Everybody’s excited to see you. It’s—oh, Taehyung, everything—” She hesitates, like she’s about to say something she shouldn’t, but if there’s one thing Taehyung knows about Eunmi after working with her for a decade, she’s going to say it anyway. She drops her voice and steps closer. “Everything is so much better. Thank you.”

He just blinks at her. Taehyung’s life is so much better than it was a few weeks ago that he can’t recognize it, which is how he knows for sure he didn’t do anything to make it this way. It was all Seokjin and Yoongi and the rest of them. It was Jimin, reaching for him across the dining room. “What?”

“Jongsoo got fired. You didn’t know that?”

Taehyung shakes his head. He hasn’t heard any news, and he’s been too afraid to ask.

“And Director Han got demoted,” Eunmi says in a rush. “Dr. Kim got the ambassador involved, and she insisted. There’s a new boss now, and she has all these rules—but it’s not complicated, it’s just keeping everything so much more under control. She oversees the rations herself so no one can steal them.”

“Paperwork is the only thing between us and the void,” Taehyung says seriously, because he doesn’t know how else to react. There’s a lot wrong with how these spaceships are run—more than they can fix in a few weeks—but a huge part of how much better he feels is his simple trust that his next meal will be there for him. The whole solar system would be a different place, if everyone could have that security.

Eunmi laughs at his stolen joke. “Dr. Kim comes by every day to check on things.”

Right, Taehyung did know that. “He did all that.”

“He did! He’s so nice, isn’t he so nice?” She leans in even closer. “And, oh my god, so handsome. He even looks like a hero.”

“I mean…” Taehyung opens his hands. “He did all that. I didn’t do anything.”

Eunmi’s face falls. “You spoke up. I know… I know none of us ever spoke up for each other very well.”

Taehyung isn’t sure. He’s not some kind of fighter, he never has been, and the people who fought back got fired, not helped. What feels different now isn’t what he said—it’s that people with power listened. “Well, anyway. I’m glad things are better now.”

She smiles. “All right. I guess I’m in your way.”

“You’re not,” he says. “It’s nice to catch up.”

“You, too. You said you have to return your uniforms, do you want me to talk them back for you?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Taehyung says, but she presses. Maybe she wants them, to lend legitimacy to whatever gossip she’s going to share about this. So handsome! He can imagine her saying. We knew him when he was only singing Christmas carols! Maybe it’s years of listening to her gleeful takes on the news, but the Eunmi in his head is nicer to Taehyung than he is to himself.

They chat a little more—she updates him on all the romantic entanglements among his old coworkers, a series of painful dramas Taehyung never wanted to get involved in but doesn’t mind hearing about now—while she helps him pack the clothes up. Before she goes, she asks, “Can I give you a hug?”

Taehyung has never been a hugger, never liked to be touched. But that’s been thawing, lately. He likes hugging Jimin and the others and he likes that she asked, so he says, “Sure,” just to see how he feels about it. She squeezes his shoulders, rocking back and forth, and it’s good. It’s pleasant. She looks so happy as she steps back, and Taehyung likes that part too.

An idea occurs to Taehyung. A little gift for Jimin. “Do you think you could help me with something? It’s kind of a secret.”

“I love secrets!” Eunmi says.

After she leaves, Taehyung gets halfway through putting his lovely new things away before he starts seeing dizzy stars and has to sit on the edge of his bed. Everything is so much better, Eunmi said. Everything is so much better. What a small, clear way to say it. That is the truth.

“Taehyungieeee!” Jimin comes squealing into the living room, and it sounds like the rest of them are walking in around him. Taehyung sticks his head out of his room to find Jimin’s brilliant smiling face. “We’re having a party!”

###

Namjoon-ssi explains that the largest theater in the entire fleet is in the ship they’re on, a round stadium-style venue that seats ten thousand. So they can get to know the space, and to celebrate Taehyung’s and Hoseok’s promotions, Yoongi-ssi’s got them the ministry box to go to a game. (Yoongi-ssi calls it “football.” Jeongguk asks if he means American-style or soccer, and neither he nor any of the others know what that means. Once the game starts, Jeongguk can’t recognize it as either.)

The box is a room with a semi-circle of sofas and chairs around a monitor of the game down on the field, and another row of stools in front of a big, open window that looks down over the real thing. Jeongguk takes a perch there and leans out over the ledge, looking around the seats and the ceiling.

“What do you think?” Yoongi-ssi asks, clambering up onto the stool next to him.

“It’s cool,” Jeongguk says. “The light’s good, I was afraid it would be super dark.”

“Will we perform in the middle, there?” Jimin points down at the field as he and Taehyung come to sit at the window too. “Or will they build out a stage?”

“There’ll be a stage, auditorium-style,” Yoongi-ssi says. “It seats about eight thousand that way. All the tickets are reserved, so that’s pretty cool.”

“I talked to my friend Eunmi today, she was in your suite,” Taehyung-ssi says. “She said a couple of times how excited everyone is.”

“Ah, I can already feel it.” Jeongguk cups his hands like he’s gathering energy out of the air. “There’s nothing like the strength you get from a crowd.”

Namjoon-ssi’s been hanging away from the conversation, staring blankly at the monitor. Hiding from Jeongguk. But he turns around and comes to watch through the window. “I know eight thousand is a lot less than you’re used to. Does that bother you?”

Jeongguk finds Jimin’s eyes and tries to read them, to see if he can figure out his own thoughts by their reflection there. No, it doesn’t bother him, though he couldn’t say why.

Jimin smiles a little wickedly. “We’re used to selling out the biggest venue around, right? So that’s what we’re doing here.”

“Let’s get it!” Jeongguk leans behind Yoongi to slap Jimin’s hand in a high-five. There’s laughter, and they go back to the game, but he keeps thinking about it. There’s more to it than that.

“There was definitely a time in my life where, you know, we might have started a riot if we tried to play a venue so small.” It’s only when everyone turns to him in surprise that he realizes he spoke out of nowhere, that some time has passed and people have moved around and they haven’t all been thinking about it. But he’s already started, so anyway, he continues. “But… there were definitely also times when selling out eight thousand would have felt like a dream.”

Jimin huffs a laugh. He’s moved over to the sofa, sitting with his arm over the back behind Taehyung’s shoulders. “That’s true. Remember handing out free tickets in the street?”

Taehyung twists around to gape at him. Maybe they left parts like that out of all the videos they’ve shown him.

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says. “Like that. When you get to the big venues it feels like the end, like the little venues were just the challenge that makes it a good story, but if I think about it now… it was all real. It was all the same Bangtan. It was always an honor that people wanted to listen to me sing.” He looks to Jimin again. “Does that sound right?”

Jimin nods. “Honestly, I always remembered the humiliating parts. Sometimes that felt realer than the stadiums, like one slip and I’d be back there. But, uh—” He nods to Namjoon. “If this is what you’re asking, being here doesn’t feel like one of the humiliating parts. Being in the future, because the smartest people trying to save music thought we could help… Being here with you all….” He leans lightly into Taehyung’s side. “This is amazing.”

“Well.” Yoongi-ssi’s blushing. “I don’t know about smartest.”

“Stubbornest,” Namjoon-ssi suggests.

“Yeah, we can say that,” Yoongi-ssi says.

Namjoon-ssi grins at him, and then says to Jeongguk, “Thank you. That was interesting, I’ll think about that.”

I’ll think about that, the stupidest thing to make Jeongguk’s heart flutter this way. Namjoon-ssi says it all the time.

There’s a small bar with something Yoongi-ssi called popcorn (it reminds Jeongguk of packing peanuts, the old styrofoam ones, if they were made out of salt) and pitchers of nectary beer. Two servers, a young man and a woman, come in to check on it. They start when they see who’s in the suite, whispering to each other. Jeongguk knows that feeling—people who recognize him, who are excited to see him—but it’s not him they’re looking at.

Taehyung-ssi has an empty beer in his hand; one of the servers takes the glass and puts a fresh one almost without Taehyung needing to move his fingers. He beams up at her. “Thank you!”

She winks at him. Namjoon-ssi told them not to talk to the servers, but Taehyung-ssi, who was a server, is much friendlier with them. Maybe Namjoon told them wrong. Then again, maybe they are actually Taehyung’s friends. Jeongguk resolves to ask Taehyung sometime when Namjoon isn’t around. Namjoon might not know everything.

“Does anyone else need anything?” The server asks. “Dr. Kim?”

Dr. Kim shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

“Okay. We’re going to go around again but we’ll be back in about an hour, so let us know if you need anything then.”

She seems to say it directly to Dr. Kim. “That’s wonderful, thank you,” he replies.

“You’re welcome. Enjoy the game.”

They’re being very helpful. They remind him of the servers he knew on Earth, who were trying to provide fine service, not the silent, militaristic ones who work here—and as Jeongguk’s thinking that, Hoseok-ssi says, “Wow. Attentive service in the box.”

And if it’s weird to Hoseok-ssi, the richest and most coddled among them, then it’s definitely just weird.

“It’s because we’re with Dr. Kim,” Taehyung-ssi says. “He’s a hero.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Dr. Kim says.

“The kitchen staff would,” Taehyung-ssi insists. “I know, I talked to Eunmi today. She literally said ‘hero.’” To Hoseok-ssi, he explains, “He got them to change the harassment rules and fire some bullies. Eunmi says things are a lot better. She tried to thank me, but I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s cool,” Hoseok-ssi says.

Dr. Kim shakes his head. “It’s not. I don’t feel like I did that much, either.” He points his chin at Taehyung-ssi. “I didn’t notice anything until I saw what was happening to you. And I get to be the hero for rolling through in a suit and yelling at people a few days a week?” His tone darkens. “It’s nonsense. I’m sick of it. When are people going to figure this out?”

Taehyung blinks at him. “I'm sorry.”

“No, you're okay,” Dr. Kim says. “It’s just, everywhere I go now, somebody I’ve never met is either thanking me for rescuing them or doing this over-the-top whining, like I’m trying to get them fired for my own fun. I just didn’t know it was that bad.” His gaze slides past Taehyung, lands somewhere on the ceiling. His ears are turning red.

“I feel guilty that I didn’t realize how bad things were,” Yoongi says. “There’s so many people who work in service.” 

“It wasn’t always like this,” Taehyung-ssi says. “It’s just the past couple of years, I think. A couple of bullies got promoted, a couple of supervisors didn’t care…” He shrugs uncomfortably. “I think it will be better if they’ve gotten the rations under control, even if most people are still on the bottom tier.”

Jeongguk doesn’t know what that means, but Seokjin squints sharply. “All the rations are supposed to be the same.”

“I’ve heard that too,” Taehyung says. “But they're not. I've had both and I'm telling you they're not.”

Namjoon’s been hanging back, but he comes to sit in a chair next to Taehyung, leaning in. “Maybe they never studied it properly. If they only tested it in the lab, not in real living conditions…”

“I feel like this is obvious,” Yoongi says. “Nobody actually believes the food is all the same, right?”

“Well… it’s supposed to be,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi snorts.

“All right, fine,” Seokjin says. “I could probably study it.”

“Who’s going to fund that?” Namjoon asks.

“I can talk to the ambassador,” Seokjin says.

“We could fund it, if she says no,” Hoseok says. “The family foundation, I mean.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask your board about that?” Seokjin asks.

Hoseok sparkles at him. “Developing better solutions for necessities is part of the mission statement. I’d get it through.”

This is a new sort of conversation to hear from this group of people—government studies, foundation boards—and it’s hard to follow. But it’s profoundly familiar for Jeongguk to listen to his hyungs sit around and talk about changing the world. These are some of the ways things get better, these are the tools they have now. Taehyung is watching them go back and forth just glowing, and Jimin, of course, mirrors the light he sees on Taehyung’s face.

Jeongguk is done with his beer. He gets one of the pitchers from the bar and tops everyone off, and when he sits back down, he takes a stool in the corner of the window and focuses on the game. He thinks it’s most like rugby, but that might be because he never really understood rugby.

He’d like to ask Namjoon-ssi—even if Namjoon doesn’t know this sport’s rules or history, he’d know how to look them up—but, well. What kind of nonsense is he imagining? That Namjoon-ssi would want to come over here and hold his hand or some bullshit while they talk, wrap his arm around Jeongguk’s shoulders so they could look at his computer screen together, let Jeongguk study it by himself until he gets bored and then take over and explain the rest in his deep, rambling tones?

(Yes. Yes, that is what Jeongguk is imagining.)

He watches the game and tries to figure it out himself, though each play ends in a tumble of bodies he can’t quite figure out. He feels anxiously over-aware of Namjoon-ssi’s place in the room as the minutes pass, but he’s still somehow startled when Namjoon’s body appears on the stool next to him.

“What do you think?” Namjoon asks.

Jeongguk stares at him.

“Of the game.” Namjoon nods to the field.

“Oh. I think it’s like rugby. I was wondering if you’d help me look it up later.”

“Of course I would.” Namjoon gives him another glance that hits too quick and heavy, like a punch. “I’d be interested. I’ve never heard that word, rugby?”

Jeongguk nods, going through what he remembers of rugby in his head. What a strange responsibility, not to get it wrong. “Have you ever seen a haka?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “No, I’ve never heard of that, either.”

“Cool, we’ll look it up.” Jeongguk smiles into another sip of beer. He’s had enough it might almost be getting to him, taking the edge off his jitters. Maybe he’s just happy, to imagine how much Namjoon-ssi is going to love this. “You’ll like it.”

“I’m sure I will.” Something’s gone wrong in Namjoon’s voice, thick and tentative.

Maybe the cool thing is to ignore it all, maybe that’s what Namjoon-ssi wants to do, but Jeongguk can’t. He will explode. He will die. It’s Namjoon-hyung that taught him to talk about everything all the time, and maybe this is another way Namjoon-ssi is different but Jeongguk has to speak.

He turns toward Namjoon and leans closer, enough that he can whisper under the other conversations in the room. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Namjoon-ssi, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or—” His throat catches before he can make himself say hurt your feelings, and Namjoon must read the pause as a stop.

“It’s okay,” Namjoon says. “It’s totally fine. Don’t worry about it.” In a strange chanting cadence, like he’s reciting a mantra, he says, “It’s very understandable that you’ll get confused sometimes.”

And, yeah, maybe he is repeating himself. Jeongguk has heard him say that before. He can’t stop something exasperated from flashing across his face, even though he quickly decides not to voice it. A question lights and dims on Namjoon’s face in reply.

Jeongguk sighs. This is a small, full room, not the place to be having a real conversation, but he started it and now they’re here. He shifts a little closer so he can really whisper. “I’m sorry because I should have asked first, because I got upset and said something I knew would make you feel bad. It was a mistake because I hurt your feelings,” he adds, clear now even though he can feel his neck getting hot. “It was a mistake but I wasn't confused. I knew what I was doing. I understood it and I meant it.”

Namjoon’s jaw drops. “I don't get this. Are you asking me to get mad?”

The first time they had this fight, Namjoon getting mad seemed like the worst thing that could happen. But now, Jeongguk thinks—sure, if mad is how he feels once he hears Jeongguk out, then let him get mad. At least they can deal with it. “I just want you to hear me. You keep asking me how I feel and then telling me I don’t actually understand how I feel.”

Namjoon blinks and jerks, like Jeongguk snapped that in his face, though he didn’t. He takes a second, and then says, gently, “How do you feel?”

Jeongguk doesn’t even know now. He feels cranky, like a dumb, pouty baby who needs to go to bed. “Embarrassed,” he admits, which is the truest and worst of it, even if it’s the shallowest. “And I’m worried you don’t want to be friends with me anymore.”

“Of course I still want to be friends with you,” Namjoon says, whispering so quiet Jeongguk can barely hear. He doesn’t offer any comfort about how embarrassing Jeongguk is, but there probably isn’t any to be had. “And I hear what you're saying and I accept your apology, thank you.”

“Okay.” Jeongguk rubs his hot neck. “How do you feel?”

Namjoon twists his lips, thinking. “I feel… frustrated. Because I am trying really hard to understand you, and you’re trying really hard to be understood, and we keep missing each other. But I think we’re going to keep trying and we’ll figure out how to understand each other eventually, so I also feel hopeful.” He starts going pink, like that wasn’t a completely kind and perfect thing to say. “How was that?”

“Good,” Jeongguk whines. “Yours was way better than mine, that’s not fair.”

Namjoon smiles—genuinely, with his dimples and his narrow, expressive eyes, and Jeongguk’s heart interrupts his next breath.

A roar comes up from the stadium and Jeongguk jumps, turning back to it. The tumbles of bodies have come to a conclusion, and someone has lost and someone has won.

###

The box splits into separate conversations, and Taehyung tries not to eavesdrop. He thinks Seokjin, Hoseok, and Yoongi are talking about him, an extension of their earlier conversation about the rations, and even though he’s sure they’re being nice, he doesn’t want to hear it. And Jeongguk and Namjoon are whispering together, serious and tense, so Taehyung tries to let them have their privacy. It’s hard not to watch them, though—Taehyung has finely tuned sensors for conflict, wired to old fears. It doesn’t seem like Namjoon or Jeongguk are people who deal with their problems by hauling off and punching each other, but Taehyung doesn’t know a lot of other ways for fights to end.

Jimin is sitting with his warm head on Taehyung’s shoulder, watching the game vaguely on the monitor and offering stories from Earth it reminds him of. He’s quiet now, though, and when Taehyung checks, he’s watching Jeongguk and Namjoon, too.

“Are they going to fight?” Taehyung whispers. “Do you think we should stop them?”

Jimin’s eyebrows pop up, quick, and fall. “I think they’re fine. I was wondering if they were going to kiss.”

Taehyung glances at them—their closeness and tension and whispers, the ruddy flushes on both of their faces. Oh.

He turns back and notices how close Jimin is—has been, all night. His shoulder on Taehyung’s arm, his elegant face just under Taehyung’s, turning toward him as they speak. The delicacy of his tiny eyelashes.

“Is that allowed?” Taehyung asks.

Jimin shrugs. “I don’t think there are rules anymore.”

“I see.” Taehyung steals shorter and shorter glances across the room, watching Jimin watch them instead.

He looks very intent, like he’s trying to untangle wires that have gotten into one of those frozen, hard-edged knots. “Maybe they are fighting. I don’t know what’s going on here at all,” he mutters, more to himself than Taehyung.

Jimin pouts as he thinks, his lips puffing on a huffed exhale, and Taehyung has his own knot to untangle.

Chapter Text

Taehyung gives his magical new life a few days to make sure it’s real, but when the usual day he transfers some money to his mother comes, he has to call her and explain so she’ll understand why there’s so much.

He takes out his phone after dinner, when he and Jimin are settling into their new routine of hanging out in Taehyung’s room for a while. She might be as excited that Taehyung made such a good friend as she is about the money. “I have to call my mom. Do you want to say hi, too?”

Jimin looks delighted. “Of course! Is she going to grill me?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “My sweet caveman…”

This is a joke between them now. Jimin groans and shoves into him, and Taehyung laughs before he explains. “You can’t actually talk to someone as far away as Venus. I’ll make a video and upload it for her, and then after she watches it she can make one back. So no, she’s not going to grill you. It’s hard to go back and forth a lot.”

Jimin’s happy face fades. “You don’t get to talk to your mom for real?”

“This is how we talk.” Taehyung pushes away the sad feeling so he can look cheerful on the video. “Here, come on.”

He gets Sergeant Jim and settles down next to Jimin on the ledge of his bed. He opens the video and lifts his phone in front of their faces. Jimin puts his chin on Taehyung’s shoulder and takes the phone himself to put the screen at a more flattering angle—like they’re going to fool Taehyung’s own mother, or like she cares. It’s a little funny, and a little not. Jimin is so vulnerable sometimes.

“Hi, Eomma,” Taehyung says. “This is my friend Jimin.”

“Hi!” Jimin waves fast to the phone. If he thinks it’s odd or upsetting that they’re talking to a video instead of a person, he doesn’t show it here. He’s totally natural. “I look like I could be Taehyungie’s same-age friend, don’t I? Guess how old I am!” He leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “Three hundred.”

Taehyung grins. “I’ll send you some articles so you can see the whole story. But Jimin’s from Earth, can you believe it?”

“I’m a singer,” Jimin says. “And so is Taehyungie, now.”

They trade back and forth as they explain Taehyung’s new job. Taehyung skims over the unpalatable details, which is most of the beginning of the story, and Jimin follows his lead with instinctive ease.

He leans against Taehyung’s shoulder so they can both fit in the frame, but he still stays curled into himself, careful of how much he puts his hands in Taehyung’s space. Taehyung appreciates it, but it isn’t necessary, and it makes it harder to deal with the camera. He puts his arm around Jimin’s back and brings them closer together.

“I’m going to send you some money,” Taehyung says. “And some of it’s to buy yourself something, okay? Don’t forget.” He tries to look serious, but he goes soft inside—that place in his stomach where he used to have a knot, he just has loose threads now, and sometimes they get wiggly.

Jimin takes over again. “And we’ll send you a video of the concert! Taehyungie’s going to do so good, and he’s already everyone’s favorite anyway. I’ll take good care of him, so don’t worry.”

“Love you, Eomma. Talk to you soon.” Taehyung gives Sergeant Jim a kiss on his head and stops recording. He sets both the toy and the phone aside, but he doesn’t unwrap himself from around Jimin.

Jimin’s hand is lying on Taehyung’s thigh, and Taehyung looks down at it. Maybe he’s never noticed Jimin’s hands before. They’re so smooth and soft, the prettiest hands Taehyung has ever seen. His own are red from washing dishes. The comparison won’t be flattering—but as Jimin pulls away and starts to take his hand back, Taehyung grabs it anyway.

He holds Jimin’s beautiful hand in his battered one, awestruck by it. The nails are neat and round, like Jimin’s been taking care of them. The tininess of his fingers makes Taehyung want to cry.

Jimin sighs. “Go ahead and say it.”

Taehyung glances quickly at his face and back again. “You have the prettiest hands I’ve ever seen.”

Jimin makes a little noise, surprised. Taehyung gives him a longer look. “What did you think I was going to say?”

Jimin shrugs. He holds the side of Taehyung’s hand, turns it over to look at the back. Taehyung’s knuckles are still raw. He hasn’t washed anything more than the cups in their suite lately, but the healing is going slow.

Jimin traces one finger from the back of Taehyung’s wrist slowly up to the nail of his index finger. Taehyung’s nails aren’t nearly as well kept. He should ask what Jimin does with his. This is embarrassing.

He’s afraid Jimin’s going to say something nice, which is a problem because it will be a lie. It’s so important that Jimin doesn’t lie to him. It’s the only reason he’s here. But Jimin is going to want to say something kind—

“I’ve always loved your hands,” Jimin says. Which is—okay—okay, just fuck Taehyung up, because he guesses that probably isn’t a lie, it’s probably really how Jimin feels, and it’s also the nicest thing Taehyung has ever heard, and how is Taehyung supposed to handle any of this?

Taehyung studies Jimin’s face, its strong lines and soft features. Jimin lifts his gaze and catches Taehyung’s and holds it, holds it, and his pink lips part and they feel so, so close together, and then Jimin sets Taehyung’s hand back down carefully, like it’s a breakable thing, and he shifts away.

Taehyung already asked what Jimin wanted with him, though it was before he understood anything at all and it feels like it was a long time ago, now. Jimin gave him an answer that was very gentle and all true, but probably not all of the truth: I want you to be safe, and to know that you’re safe. He didn’t say anything about how he wanted to feel.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Taehyung asks.

Jimin freezes, searches Taehyung’s eyes, like such a simple question might be a trick. But it’s not tricky at all, it’s yes or no if he’s going to answer it, so Taehyung waits him out, and finally, Jimin nods. “Only if you’re sure,” he says, breathless.

“I’m not, really,” Taehyung says. “Sure.”

“O-oh.” Jimin’s face falls. “Okay.”

“I meant, but we can still try it,” Taehyung says. “I want you to have what you want.”

Jimin flinches with a sharp breath—he looks stung, which isn’t what Taehyung meant—and shakes his head. “Not if you’re not sure.”

Taehyung looks at this person, this loving, precious, astonishingly beautiful person. This person, who has the smoothest rose-petal lips he has ever seen. This person, who he is still not sure he wants to kiss. He hasn't known Jimin very long, but Jimin has been so good to him every second of it—there's nothing more time could prove. “The thing is, I’m worried I might not ever be sure about something like that.”

Jimin hitches one shoulder like it’s casual, even though he isn’t making eye contact and his neck is blotchy with a blush. “Then we won’t ever do it.”

Taehyung thinks that all the way through, careful, and then nods.

Jimin nods back. “I think I’m going to go to bed.” He rises, patting his hips like he’s checking his pockets, sort of distracted or dazed.

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says.

Jimin stops and turns to him. He hugs Taehyung around his shoulders, his chest in Taehyung’s face. Taehyung drapes his arms around Jimin’s waist. “Don’t be sorry,” Jimin says. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“But that’s not fair,” Taehyung says, still into Jimin’s chest. “We’re friends, so we should both worry about each other, right?”

“I guess so.” Jimin stands back, hands on Taehyung’s shoulders. He looks determined. “But I don’t want you to worry about this. I love you right now, okay? Not because of something I remember, or something I’m hoping for. Right now. You don’t have to be anything different for me.”

“But I—” Taehyung stops himself before he says he doesn’t deserve it, because he already knows Jimin won’t hear that. He has to be nice to himself, for Jimin. “I haven’t done anything.”

“It’s not about what you do.” Jimin’s hands hover like he wants to touch Taehyung’s face or his hair, but he doesn’t. He takes them back. “It’s just my promise to you.”

Taehyung opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t want Jimin to go, but maybe he needs a minute to sort this out alone.

“So no sorry, all right?” Jimin goes to the door. “Sleep well. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

But as Jimin leaves, Taehyung feels like maybe he did. Like he missed something.

Taehyung has made a lot of new friends, but so far, Jimin is the only one he’s even thought about kissing, the only one his body seems to crave like this. The one who draws into him too, fitting up under his arm so sweet. That’s attraction, and chemistry, Taehyung knows that much.

But just because he feels it doesn’t mean he wants to act on it. It’s a vulnerable thing, kissing someone, or doing more than that. A lot of people in Taehyung’s life have treated sex like a battle someone has to lose. Jimin isn’t acting that way, but that means Taehyung has even less experience with what it would mean instead, and the risk is one he doesn’t know how to measure.

Sure. Sure. Taehyung’s not used to wondering whether he’s sure, but then, he’s never had a lot of choices. He doesn’t think of himself as a very sure person, but it’s not that he’s usually unsure, either. He has always done things because he’s scared of something worse, or taken the only next step open in front of him. His life has always been that same oversaturated present, and this is a question about the future.

He doesn’t know where to run, because there’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s not afraid of being Jimin’s friend forever. He’s not afraid of becoming something else. He’s not afraid that Jimin, or Yoongi or the music program or anyone else he’s met, would hurt him if things went sour.

He’s just not afraid.

###

Dr. Kim insists that his lunchtime talks with Jeongguk and Jimin aren’t therapy. He says it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to have shown up and forced them into therapy the way he bulldozed them into these chats, and now that they’re hanging out in a friendly way he wouldn’t be the right person to work with them, anyway. He tells them if they think they need real, structured counseling, he can refer them to someone, but all they’re doing is talking.

Still, the talks mostly feel like therapy—especially because Dr. Kim doesn’t talk about himself, turning all their questions around to make them imagine answers. So it’s a weird day when he walks into the music room, hurls a bag of candy at Jimin, and immediately lies face-down on the floor to groan.

“Are you okay?” Jimin asks.

Dr. Kim groans again and rolls up, laboring, to sit. “You remember we talked about publishing a study on the effects of the different ration tiers? So I started doing the literature review—”

“What’s that?” Jeongguk asks.

“Look it up!” Dr. Kim says, raising his voice. “Namjoon gave you those phones, what are you using them for?” Without pausing, though, he immediately explains, “It’s when you look at all the previously published research on a topic to make sure you’re not repeating it or missing something. So ask me what studies have previously been done.”

Jimin says, “What studies—”

“None!” Dr. Kim shouts. “Nothing. Namjoon’s making sure I didn’t miss anything in English or Russian—”

“He knows Russian?” Jeongguk asks.

“Fucking nerds,” Seokjin says, at once vicious and fond. “They have their uses. But yeah, if he doesn’t find anything... there’s nothing. The plan was always to develop combinations of food and supplements that were nutritionally equal, but did anyone ever actually confirm they succeeded? Maybe not!”

“Oh my god,” Jimin says. “So people are just going hungry?”

Dr. Kim shakes his head, not like no like what the fuck. “Maybe? Or maybe it is enough food, but there’s a mental health cost to eating so little? There are a lot of questions that someone needs to ask. That I need to ask, I guess.”

“You have to do everything around here, huh?” Jeongguk says. He’s trying to be smarmy, make a joke, but Dr. Kim looks all sad again.

“I do bullshit, just like everybody else here,” Dr. Kim says. “Every time I look at Taehyung, I think, he was on this ship for years, living like that…”

Jimin makes a small, hurt sound. He’s sitting in a ball on the floor, staring down at his hands.

“I mean, there are so many people,” Dr. Kim says. “Living like that. It isn’t right.”

Jimin doesn’t look up, but he asks, “Is there anything we can do?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Kim says. “Get famous and popular again so you can champion the cause?”

“Cool, on it,” Jeongguk says.

Dr. Kim winks, but he keeps studying Jimin. “You’re the only one Taehyung is talking to, I think,” he says. “That’s probably what he needs more than anything.”

Jimin nods. “He’s told me some stuff.”

“Good,” Dr. Kim says, but Jimin doesn’t look like it is.

“I want to say, I didn’t know people’s lives could be so awful,” Jimin says. “But I guess I did, actually. I just didn’t know things like that would happen to people so close to me.”

He doesn’t say what “things like that” means. Dr. Kim doesn’t ask because he’s looking at Jimin with an open, calm face and staying quiet, waiting for him to say more. He’s being a therapist, even if this isn’t really therapy.

Jeongguk doesn’t ask because he isn’t sure he wants to know. He’s playing games with Taehyung-ssi and helping him learn to sing better and watching him open up, and he’s happy he gets to witness it, but the care Jimin is giving him is something unique, a delicate balance Jeongguk is afraid to disrupt.

“He asked if I wanted him to kiss me,” Jimin says eventually. Jeongguk starts, but Dr. Kim just folds his lips together, disappointed but not surprised.

“Not because he wanted to, that’s not what he said.” Jimin continues, picking at a thread in his track pants. “Just because he thought I wanted it.”

“Did you?” Jeongguk asks, which seems like a relevant question, but Dr. Kim gives him a quick frown and Jimin curls tighter into himself.

“Kind of,” Jimin says. “I like how he treats me like a friend, and every time I look at him—I mean—you know. I really like him so much. But I don’t want it if he doesn’t, not like that. It makes me want to throw up just thinking about it.”

“Right.” Jeongguk can’t help thinking about his stolen kiss. But ultimately it feels petty, thinking about these smaller troubles of his own creation. It was a childish mistake, not even his own largest problem. It's probably just a personal failing that he can't think about anything else.

“I know he’s been through so much, and I just want to help,” Jimin says. “But I don’t know if all of this being around him and touching him and telling him I love him is helping. I messed so much up with him by being afraid to say anything, that now I want to say everything. But now it’s hurting him to hear it.”

Jeongguk doesn’t know. He looks to Dr. Kim.

“I’m a big believer in talking about things,” Dr. Kim says, sitting back and speaking broadly, philosophically. “A professional liability, maybe. But I don’t think you’re hurting him just because he might have misunderstood something, and it must be good for him to have someone he can talk to.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I don’t know what Taehyung needs, but I don’t think it’s being alone.”

“He won’t be,” Jimin says seriously. “I’ll be with him, whatever he needs.”

“I believe you will,” Dr. Kim says. "And I hope you'll take care of yourself, too."

"I feel like the only thing I need is just to—to do this right." Jimin gives himself a brisk shake. "And for more people to cry when I sing 'Serendipity' than when Jeongguk does 'Euphoria.'"

"'Euphoria' isn't a crying song," Jeongguk says. "It makes people feel happy."

"Sounds like loser talk." Jimin sniffs. “What about you? I saw you whispering with Namjoon-ssi in the box the other night.”

Jeongguk makes a tiny growl he means to be dismissive, but it sounds frustrated. Dr. Kim’s eyebrows jump.

“It’s nothing like—” Jeongguk gestures to Jimin, to everything he just said. “It isn’t that important.”

“If it’s important to you, it’s important,” Jimin says, more bossy than kind, which is his way of being kind.

Jeongguk shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk about the kiss, and there’s something underneath or around it he does want to get out, but he doesn’t know what it is. “Do you believe you’re reincarnated?” he asks Dr. Kim.

“Why not?” Dr. Kim says lightly. “This face can’t be an accident.”

“I’m asking for real,” Jeongguk says.

Dr. Kim levels him an even gaze. “I know what you’re asking. And my answer is, you have an entire lifetime ahead of you, and you're the only one who can decide how you're going to live it.”

Jeongguk huffs. “Namjoon-ssi doesn’t believe it. And he won't listen to anything I say while he thinks I do believe it. He said we were trying to understand each other, but I think maybe we do understand each other, we just don't agree.”

Jimin nods.

“So what do I do with that?” Jeongguk asks. Even if they disagree forever, Jeongguk wants to keep Namjoon-ssi's friendship. “When we aren’t talking about this one thing, I think he’s my favorite person to talk to.”

“Wow, rude,” Jimin says, and Jeongguk shoves him, and they only stop because Dr. Kim clears his throat and draws their attention back.

“If you like to talk to him, then talk to him,” Dr. Kim says. “If you get it wrong, talk to him again. But remember, this is just one argument, it’s not what your whole life is about.”

It does feel like the story of Jeongguk’s whole life. Jimin has talked about this ship as a second chance, but everything feels like an old pattern reiterating, like the tail of a long string. This love is in Jeongguk like music or breathing. He will never escape. He doesn’t want to.

“He might leave,” Jeongguk says. “After the concert, he won’t necessarily be working with us anymore.”

Seokjin snorts. “Damn right. Even if Yoongi wants him, I’m taking him for the ration study.” He starts gathering up up the candy bag and their empty shakes. “But it’s a spaceship, Jeongguk. You can try not to deal with it for as long as you want, but there’s only so far away you can go.”

###

The last few days before the concert get more hectic, more people in and out of the music room. Experts from the stadium are helping with sound and lighting and costumes and makeup, and it’s never just the core team anymore. Namjoon has to translate a lot, often more than one conversation at once. They work late and roll into bed.

According to Jeongguk, because they need to go to bed early the night before the concert, the second to last night is the night to party. It’s too late to practice but too early to prepare, so there’s nothing to do but relax.

However, Namjoon watches him go around the room and find no one’s ready to relax with him. Yoongi has to put together the budget documents that will be due right after the concert. Hoseok’s parents have ferried in from ship twelve for the concert, and he and Seokjin are going to have dinner with them. He says, kindly but bluntly, that he wants to make sure they plan to be nice about the whole music thing before he introduces them to Jeongguk.

Jimin and Taehyung are going to stay late in the music room and keep practicing, even though Jeongguk just said it’s too late to practice. Jeongguk doesn’t press—he’s very deferential to whatever is going on between Jimin and Taehyung, leaving their conversation even though he still seems welcome there.

So Namjoon is obviously his last choice, and honestly Namjoon wouldn’t fault him if he didn’t even try. But he doesn’t seem anything but genuinely interested as he comes over and crouches down next to Namjoon’s customary spot on the floor by the mirrors. “You said there are more places you can show us, on the ship, public spaces,” Jeongguk says. “Right?”

“What do you want to see?” Namjoon asks.

“Your favorite.”

They stop by the suite to pick up their dinners, and then Namjoon takes him to the greenhouse.

Namjoon understands how restaurants worked on Earth, where there was an abundance and variety of food that, as a responsible historian, he realizes he probably can’t even fathom. That you could go to one of thousands of places in a city and get anything you wanted, as long as you could pay for it.

They don’t have that here—rations are structured for everyone, all the time. But there are places, like the greenhouse, where people will gather with their ration boxes and maybe a drink or some sweets from the commissary and turn their meals into a little social event.

Namjoon’s favorite is the greenhouse, deep in the belly of the ship. The vast spaces where they grow plants for food, water, and oxygen are off-limits to everyone except the high-security clearance staff who work in them, but there’s a cozy room of tables and chairs next to one. Through the pure glass wall, artificial sunlight, dipping orange toward sunset, shines down on the orchard.

Jeongguk gasps when he sees it across the dining room. He stops cold, half-in the room, and then walks slowly forward, ignoring the tables and everyone around him, all the way to the glass wall. He’s entranced.

Namjoon hangs back, pleased as if he made the trees himself, to give him time to enjoy it. It lingers on and on, though, and finally Namjoon walks up to check on him.

Jeongguk is crying, tears streaming down his face to meet a wide, radiant smile. A brief panic sparks and then Namjoon thinks—of course. Of course he is. Jeongguk wears these emotions on his face that Namjoon recognizes because he spends a lot of time trying to dissect and organize them in his head.

Also, maybe it was a bad idea to surprise him with trees, too much for him. Namjoon loves the orchard more than anyone he knows, but still, maybe this is something his starborn mind can’t understand. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Jeongguk nods rapidly and wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I don’t usually cry.”

Namjoon has known him for one month and seen him cry… several times. He raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t!” Jeongguk insists. “I only cry if something makes me cry.”

“That’s… that’s everyone,” Namjoon says. He can’t help how he’s smiling.

“Whatever.” Jeongguk wipes his face again. “Let’s eat.”

There are a few people dotted around the other tables, and they’re all definitely staring at the beautiful crying man, but Jeongguk takes a seat at the table nearest to the glass wall and stares through it as he gets himself together. “I was never the biggest nature person,” he says. “I mean, I liked it, when there were cool views or sports to do especially, but I was more interested in the different people and cities we got to see. Namjoon-hyung was the nature person, really, he needed it. And Yoongi-hyung, I mean, I think he just liked it when we did stuff that was a little quiet.”

“I think I would have liked nature,” Namjoon says. “Even the little things, like…” He gets shy, telling Jeongguk about his own planet, but Jeongguk only looks interested. “Flowers on a sidewalk,” Namjoon suggests, images from old movies in his head.

“LA was cool like that,” Jeongguk says, opening his dinner. “You’d be driving down the road and there’d be some huge tropical flowers growing out of a crack in a big concrete wall.” Jeongguk disappears into the memory, frowning unseeing down at the table. “Pink, or orange,” he murmurs, and Namjoon can see it like he was there. Pink flowers, dipping like drowsy heads, spilling out of a gray wall in the true sunshine.

“Oh,” he says softly.

Jeongguk glances up and gives him a tiny smile.

“I really like talking to you,” Namjoon says. “You always give me something new to think about.”

Jeongguk’s smile grows and then shrinks, disappearing into an embarrassed laugh. “I like talking to you, too. It’s hard to think about Earth, but it’s nice to remember, sometimes.”

Namjoon would love to hear about Earth, and he can think of a thousand questions, but it’s a dangerous territory to poke around in. What else do you miss? Do you wish you could go back? No, better not.

But Jeongguk must be thinking the same thing. “It’s not that I regret it. The things I’ve gotten to see here, I couldn’t even have imagined them. And I’m glad to be useful.”

“You’re more than useful,” Namjoon says. “You’re a friend.”

Jeongguk gives him a brilliant, watery smile. Namjoon isn’t qualified to deal with this.

“I think Jimin would have hung out with you tonight, if you’d asked,” Namjoon says.

“Don’t worry,” Jeongguk says. “I mean, if he doesn’t get out of Taehyung’s ass pretty soon, I’m going to drag him out. But… I think they’re doing something important. I want to let them figure it out.”

Namjoon nods, though he doesn’t know what exactly is going on. He must not look convincing.

“I will!” Jeongguk insists. “He owes me. I came here for him.”

“You keep saying that,” Namjoon says. He doesn’t ask anything too probing—what would you have done for you? Isn’t that a lot to put on Jimin? But he places the opening in the conversation, if Jeongguk wants to take it.

Jeongguk doesn’t. He eats his dinner and watches the artificial sun set over the trees. Namjoon finishes, too, and a server comes to take their things. “Thank you,” Jeongguk says, and smiles, and the server smiles back.

“The government repossessed a bunch of luxury buildings,” Jeongguk says. “They said it wasn’t safe, in case there was looting. Did you know that, from the history?”

Namjoon nods. “That’s only sort of how it turned out. Mostly, people in power to took those things for themselves. Sometimes the difference between looting and surivival is who gets to name it.”

“I knew it.” Jeongguk points at him. “Well. They stationed a bunch of military officials in my place, and they took our old dorm. I had some family in my brother’s house, and we’d have been happy together, but there wasn’t a lot of room. It was just like when I was a kid again—my family was relying on me more than I could rely on them, the company couldn’t take care of us all. I didn’t have anything except myself and my hyungs. But, you know, I’d been there before, and it turned out all right.” Jeongguk smirks. “That’s how we conquered the world.”

Namjoon returns his smile, but it fades.

“So… I asked Namjoon-hyung. I asked if I could go with him, to his family’s house in Ilsan. Not just to stay but to be with him.” He glances at Namjoon’s face and away, quickly, like he’s shy. Namjoon has guessed, obviously—he's not surprised.

“He always said we couldn’t be together because of the press and the fans and the band. But it was the end of the fucking world, man, no one cared about that anymore.” Jeongguk closes one eye and peers into the bottom of his water glass like he’s divining something there. “And he still said no, because we still had responsibilities. He had to take care of his parents and sister, because his family didn’t have anyone else, and Jimin needed me.”

“You don’t think that was true?” Namjoon asks. It sounds right to him. It sounds agonizing, it sounds like the worst kind of torture, but it sounds true.

“Lots of things are true,” Jeongguk says wearily. “You think I would have stopped him from taking care of his family? He never said he didn’t want me, all the times I asked. There was always some other reason. Someone else who mattered more. The actual apocalypse, and he was still thinking himself into twists about it instead of just saying yes or no. And—” He stops, still staring down.

“And what?”

Jeongguk shakes his head.

“What?” Namjoon says again.

Jeongguk looks up, face just miserable. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel, and you’re going to argue with me.”

“I won’t,” Namjoon says.

Jeongguk raises an eyebrow.

“I swear I won’t.”

Jeongguk sits back and crosses his arms, pouting. “And so I came here because Namjoon-hyung told me not to leave Jimin alone, but Jimin found Taehyung in like three minutes because of course he did, and you’re here and you still don’t want me.”

Namjoon is startled by his own gasp.

"No pressure, or anything," Jeongguk says, mumbling and red. "It's just hard."

And Namjoon… wants to argue with him. Because he didn’t do that, and he doesn’t want to have to carry someone else’s burdens just because he has the same name or face or, what the hell, even if he has the same reincarnated soul. He twitches in his chair.

Jeongguk sighs. “You can argue.”

“I’m fine,” Namjoon says. Even to himself, he doesn’t sound fine.

“Go for it. Let’s get it all out,” Jeongguk says. He looks away, into the greenhouse. The artificial sun has set, and and the trees are huge silent outlines in the dark. It makes the greenhouse look deeper than it is, like it goes on forever. It unsettles Namjoon, but Jeongguk smiles around his eyes, seeing something else. A happy memory, maybe.

Everyone else in the room left when the greenhouse got dark. They’re alone, and this phase of the project is almost over, and, well.

Well.

“Well. Obviously, I want you,” Namjoon says.

Jeongguk’s face snaps back, eyes so wide.

“Look at you. You’re incredible. I love talking to you. You’re—” Namjoon stops. Funny, sweet, thoughtful, brave. So beautiful it hurts to look at him. The point of this conversation probably isn’t to tell him all the good things he is.

Namjoon feels like he’s said this over and over again, but Jeongguk still doesn’t understand, so the point is, Namjoon has to make it as clear as he can. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you don’t want me. You’re talking about someone else. But if that guy could have had you for real and he wanted you this much and he talked himself out of it, then he was some kind of self-sacrificing idiot, I don't know. I don’t want to take responsibility for that. I wouldn’t have done that.”

Jeongguk is gaping at him. “You’re doing that right now.”

“I am not.”

“You are.” Jeongguk leans forward. It feels like they’re arguing but it also feels a little like Jeongguk is begging. Those shining eyes. “I said I want you and you said you want me but blah, blah, blah some bullshit about philosophy—”

“It’s not—wow, Jeongguk.” Namjoon puts his hand over his chest. That one hurt. “It’s not just some bullshit. You look at me and you see someone else. That person is the one you want. What’s going to happen when you realize I’m not really him?”

Jeongguk huffs at him and turns back to the trees. He stares and stares. Namjoon counts his breaths, calming himself down.

They’ve been here a while and there’s nothing to stay for, but Namjoon gave Jeongguk these trees and it’s the only thing that’s gone right. He’s not going to take them away. He can sit here all night, if Jeongguk doesn’t want to leave.

“People here don’t shave as much as we did on Earth,” Jeongguk says quietly.

“Huh?”

“People aren’t as clean-shaven,” he says, louder. “I bet nobody’s getting laser hair treatments in space, right?”

Namjoon shakes his head.

“Right,” Jeongguk says again. “And I think you all try to use less water, too, so nobody shaves every day. Everybody’s got a little more stubble than I’m used to seeing. But you, you shave even less than Yoongi-ssi does. I think you probably tell yourself it’s to save water, but I think you just forget. You don’t spend a lot of time in the mirror. It’s just not very important to you.”

Namjoon scratches his chin. It’s definitely been a few days longer than his mom would prefer he go between shaves. He hasn’t thought about it once.

Jeongguk grins, a little smug. “I don’t think I would like your job very much. You spend so much time just—there, ready to help us if we needed, even though whole days were going by when you had to sit around while we were just practicing and then other times we were making you translate three conversations at once. But you never got bored, or overwhelmed. I think you just kept finding things to be interested in. You were typing so much even when we were talking about nothing.”

“I didn’t, uh. I didn’t mean to violate any privacy,” Namjoon says. He didn’t realize anyone noticed.

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I was just wondering. What were you working on?”

“I think I might write a paper about the ancient-modern patois you all developed. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the music, but linguistically, it’s very fascinating.”

“‘Linguistically, it’s very fascinating,’” Jeongguk repeats, smiling so much it makes his whole face glow. Namjoon doesn’t get why, but it feels liquid-warm to make him smile like that.

“I think that’s what you do, you find every little detail.” Jeongguk looks directly in Namjoon’s eyes, looks like he can see through him. “You figure it all the way out, and once you think you have it you start looking for what you might have missed. That's what happens when you train yourself to be a historian, I guess.”

“I guess,” Namjoon says weakly.

“You don’t pay attention to your food when you’re eating it,” Jeongguk says. “But you really savor your beers. I don’t think it’s about the way they taste, I think it’s about control. Because you don’t control what you eat but you decide when you get to have a beer.”

Maybe that’s right. Namjoon has never noticed that, or thought about it. When he thinks about food, he thinks about the politics of it, or what was lost on Earth, not his own meals. His pulse is hot in his throat.

“I think a lot of stuff is about control with you,” Jeongguk continues. His voice is light, thoughtful. He’s left Namjoon’s eyes to look at the trees. Like he isn’t digging around in Namjoon’s heart. “You don’t seem like a control freak, and maybe you call it something else. Maybe you say ‘understanding.’ But when you say you understand me better than I do, it doesn’t really feel to me like you’re right. That was hard to figure out, because I trust you so much. I always have. I don’t have any choice except to trust you, really. But that’s not the same for you. You think you have the responsibility. You think you have to be trustworthy for both of us.”

And that—that is right. Namjoon has never thought of it that way, he’d never have said it just so, but he knows it’s true as soon as he hears it. He leans over the table to put his head in his hands. His heart pounds like he’s running.

He can’t answer, but Jeongguk isn’t done anyway. “That’s hard for me to think about, you not trusting me the same way. I like to think if you really thought about it, you’d realize I’m not actually being reckless with you, or still some kid who doesn’t know myself. I don’t think it’s even about me, really. But even if not, that’s okay. I think I am a trustworthy person. I can show that side to you. Even if we disagree about the past forever, I can work harder in the future.”

Jeongguk nods to himself, like, Yes, well said, Jeongguk. It’s terrible to think Namjoon made him feel like that, but Namjoon understands why he would.

With his face ducked into his hands, Namjoon’s stubble prickles in his palms. It’s honestly too much—it’s been such a busy week, he hasn’t thought about shaving. He didn’t notice. But Jeongguk did.

Maybe Jeongguk is right. Maybe he sees better than Namjoon does. Maybe’s no one’s wrong, maybe they just see things differently and that’s fine. Or maybe this is a bad idea, a huge disaster in the making, but that’s always true, when you think about making yourself vulnerable to someone.

Maybe there’s only so long you can argue when the single most beautiful person who has ever existed in the fullness of human history, and you know because you’ve fucking checked, is telling you they want you.

This, this is how long Namjoon can argue. Not one second more. It’s impossible that it’s only been a month. It feels like he’s been fighting this forever, and he doesn’t remember why.

“Can I have another try at that kiss?” Namjoon asks.

“Oh my god, please.”

Chapter Text

“You’re going to do fine,” Jimin says. “Maybe Jeongguk was right, maybe it’s time to stop practicing.” He smiles up into Taehyung’s nervous face. “We can just relax tonight, and you’ll be able to see how it all comes together at the rehearsal tomorrow.”

Taehyung nods and plops down on the floor. He doesn’t really want to stop practicing, but he can tell that this desperate drive to keep dancing is not actually making him better tonight. He’s getting worse, sloppy with nerves as he thinks about actually performing. “How are you so confident?” he whines.

Jimin laughs as he sits down, too. “I learned it. I learned it the hard way. I used to cry during every rehearsal, I was so nervous and afraid I’d make a mistake. And still… part of being confident is just acting like you’re confident.”

Taehyung puffs up his chest and twists his mouth into one of the faces that will make Jimin laugh. His heart lifts when it works. It doesn’t feel unlike confidence. “How did you learn?”

“Practice.” Jimin shrugs. “A lot of practice. I talked to the hyungs. Jeonggukkie helped me with my vocals.” Jimin melts down to the floor, lying back and smiling up at Taehyung again. “You helped me with everything.”

Taehyung catches his eye. Jimin looks so happy, it's a shame to see him realize what he said and wince. “I mean, you know. My Taehyung did.”

The first thing Taehyung feels is a spark of quick, sure jealousy. That’s silly, he knows it is, but it pops before he can stop it. My Taehyung.

The second thing is curiosity. Jimin dropped this reincarnation thing because it was making Taehyung uncomfortable. But not, Taehyung would guess, because he ever stopped believing it.

Taehyung was scared because he was trying not to mess up, and the standard of actually being someone else seemed arbitrary and impossible. But he’s no longer worried that Jimin is here to use him or likely to hurt him if he can't. Now, Taehyung is just curious.

“I think you mean your Taehyung and me,” he says. “Because you still think we’re the same.”

Jimin chews on his pretty lips and doesn’t deny it. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about this if it bothers you.”

“It doesn’t. I really want to know what you think.” Taehyung’s heartbeat rushes bright, not fear but anticipation. This has been a wall between them, maybe. He’d like to bring it down.

“I think that… you have been through so much,” Jimin says. “So many things that were not right and not fair. I don’t want to put any more burdens on you.”

Taehyung wants to say something reassuring, but he has to swallow down the lump in his throat.

“And I think,” Jimin says, “that it is amazing that none of that has changed your wonderful soul. I still recognize it, and you’re still my Taehyung.”

Taehyung tries a smile—it wobbles—and then it comes back on its own, real. “As long as you’re my Jimin.”

Jimin rests one loose fist on the floor between them. Taehyung puts his own hand over it. "You can tell me stuff. I want to know what you think."

“I spent my whole life feeling like I was behind,” Jimin says. “Every time I stopped to look back I was just humiliated with myself. We made it so far, and people would say, everything must have been worth it. It must have been right if it got you here. I’d say, sure, because I knew it was the answer people wanted, but I honestly never felt like that. If I had it back I’d change a lot.”

Jimin turns his hand in Taehyung’s to lace their fingers together. Taehyung gives him a squeeze.

“Jeonggukkie was so sad after we watched that video of you and Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin says. “But I’ve been thinking about it, and I really think you were exactly where you wanted to be. You had your family and Yoongi-hyung and you were performing and helping people with your actual last breaths, and you knew we’d see each other again. You said that.”

Taehyung nods, because he saw that too, in the video, when the Taehyung from the past said he was going to see his old friends again. He doesn’t remember being the person who did those brave things, but it makes him feel braver to know Jimin does. He’ll believe anything Jimin tells him, and he’ll try to deserve it.

Jimin wipes his eyes with his free hand and holds tight with the one in Taehyung’s. “And I think maybe that feeling I always had, that I was behind, that I couldn’t keep up, that it was easier for everyone else—maybe that was me being right on time to be here for you.”

That hits Taehyung right in his chest. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Shut up.” Jimin lets go of Taehyung’s hand to cover his face, like he’s the only one who’s allowed to say sweet things.

Taehyung shrugs.

“I’m—” Jimin starts, still behind his hands, and chokes on a word. He starts over. “Taehyungie, I’m so sorry you were alone. I got—I got here as fast as I could—”

“Hey,” Taehyung interrupts, pulling gently on Jimin’s elbows to try to get one of his hands back. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not that it’s your job to take care of me, it’s just—I’m just happier when you’re here.”

Jimin takes a deep breath and blows it out, and doesn’t uncover his face until he’s calmer. Taehyung waits for him.

“One of the times Namjoon-ssi was lecturing us about how he’s not really Namjoon, or whatever,” Jimin says, rolling his teary eyes with the joke, “he said it would be like someone from the Joseon era living in my time. I keep thinking, that probably is what happened. What if we lived back then, too?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Taehyung says. “But if you were there, I liked it.”

Jimin grins. “I bet you had a really good life. I bet you were a prince or something.”

“Maybe that time, I saved you.” Taehyung would like to believe that what he owes Jimin is balanced out on some cosmic scale.

“Of course you did. I think you save me in all our lives. You’d probably be sick of it if you could remember.” Jimin is being too light now, fake-casual. “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here.”

“I’ll be here,” Taehyung says. “Yoongi says even if it goes bad at the concert, I’m stuck with him forever now. I think that’s his way of being nice.”

“It’s going to go awesome. And even if I did lose you somehow, I’d find you again. I know I would, now.”

Taehyung has to shut his eyes to hold all the warmth welling inside him. He believes they’ve known each other forever, over and over again, because that’s the only possible way to explain why this feels so powerful. He never even imagined he could feel like this—so safe, so seen. So loved.

Jimin did all the work, took all the risk, reached out when Taehyung didn’t recognize him and moved gently when Taehyung wasn’t sure. He loved Taehyung before Taehyung gave him one single reason to, just because he saw something Taehyung wasn’t even looking for, and he knew. Most impossibly, Jimin is grateful in return.

Taehyung opens his eyes and Jimin is watching him patiently. Waiting for whenever he’s ready to come back.

“Come here.” Taehyung pouts, grabbing for Jimin’s hand again. “Why are you so far away?”

Jimin wiggles closer, giggling, but he’s still too far, this isn’t what Taehyung meant. He takes Jimin by the waist to haul him up— “Come here.”

“Okay, okay.” Jimin puts his arms around Taehyung’s shoulders and drops his head to settle in. Taehyung is still getting used to hugging, but he knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, just sitting and holding each other. It makes him feel so much calmer and happier, though, to have Jimin to hold onto.

“Jimin,” he says, suddenly urgent, “I really, really don’t want to let you go.”

“So don’t,” Jimin says.

In the face of all this, a kiss feels like too small a thing. But it’s the only thing he knows Jimin wants. The only thing he knows for sure he has to give.

“Jimin,” he says again, whispering since it’s a secret. “I’ve been thinking some more about kissing.”

Jimin lifts his head, all pretty surprise. “You really don’t have to.”

There’s a weird ache in the palms of Taehyung’s hands that he can only soothe by pressing them into the hard line of Jimin’s back. He feels like there’s too much space inside his chest, like he’s missing something. His lips feel tender, bare. His whole body hurts with wanting.

“What if I want to? Is that okay?”

Jimin swallows—his throat clicks—Taehyung feels it. “That’s okay,” Jimin says.

###

So Namjoon-ssi said “Can I kiss you?” and Jeongguk said “Please” and somehow Jeongguk didn’t understand that meant Namjoon was actually about to lean across the little metal table and kiss him. They’re alone now, but they’re technically in public. Anyone could walk in. The idea that Namjoon doesn’t care is almost as electric as the feeling of Namjoon’s hand cupping his neck and his mouth pressing against Jeongguk’s. His chin rasps Jeongguk’s skin, a tiny thrill.

Namjoon starts to part his lips and Jeongguk lets his own follow, turns his head, gives way for a too-small, teasing flick of Namjoon’s tongue. His spine shivers; Namjoon makes a noise in his chest, tight and frustrated.

It stops and after another long second of waiting, ready for more, Jeongguk opens his eyes to find Namjoon almost glaring at him, studying his face. Jeongguk blinks and—very late—closes his mouth.

Namjoon stands abruptly. “So we’re going to do this?”

It sounds like it might be a rhetorical question, but Jeongguk nods. Yep, that would be his vote.

And Namjoon changes. He doesn’t move, or say anything, but his hunched shoulders relax and the frown falls out of his forehead and his eyes narrow, burning, and he looks like a new person. A more powerful person. Confident.

“Let’s go somewhere more private,” he says.

Jeongguk imagines the walk back to their rooms, but Namjoon leads him to the monorail. And Jeongguk just hates the monorail.

Each car is a tiny glass bubble hurtling around the outside of the spaceship, and it doesn’t feel like enough to protect him from the dark void on all sides. He’s only had to ride it a few times and never without Jimin to hang onto like a security blanket. He squeezes his eyes closed.

Namjoon puts an arm around him, rubbing his neck and shoulder. Jeongguk leans into his side.

“Are you okay?” Namjoon asks.

“Vertigo. I just need something to hold onto." Jeongguk snakes his arm around Namjoon's waist and feels a warm pressure—lips, breath—in his hair.

Namjoon touches underneath his chin to turn his face, and his kiss returns, maybe not enough to distract Jeongguk from the fearful feeling of space around him but enough to wrap it all into one thrill. This is Namjoon, for real, kissing him, on purpose, overwhelming and teasing at once. Jeongguk gives him room to take it deeper, letting his jaw go slack, but Namjoon pulls back, nips his lip, and says, “Relax,” in a low rumble that doesn’t seemed to designed to help Jeongguk relax.

He doesn’t have to open his eyes again until they’re out of the monorail, back in the relative stability of the ship. He doesn’t recognize the place they’ve come to, a narrow gray hall of identical doors. Jeongguk feels a little off-kilter, overpowered, but Namjoon keeps a hand on his lower back as they walk, even in the hall where anyone could see.

The rules are different here, and no one cares that they’re both men or that Jeongguk is supposed to be an idol. That’s why Namjoon-ssi isn’t worried about anyone who might see. But it still feels shocking, impossible, so good.

Namjoon enters a code and opens a door, and Jeongguk actually gasps at the room he sees.

Namjoon’s room isn’t as big as the suite they all share but it’s plenty of space to live in. Jeongguk’s had worse. There’s a bed near the door, pulled all the way out from the wall and messily made, and a desk under a window with a view not of the stars but of mechanical workings in the belly of the ship, heaving gray steel and flashes of orange light.

And Namjoon has a whole wall of little terrariums, each with their own light catching leaves and making the room glow green. There’s an almost earthy smell under the usual metallic coolness, dirt and water and grass. The plants are different grasses and clovers and ivies, things that grow easily, and Jeongguk walks along and stares hungrily in each one. “This is so beautiful.”

Namjoon doesn’t turn on any more lights, so the room stays dimly green-tinted. “Thank you. They’re really important to me.”

“It smells so good in here.” Jeongguk turns back, expecting to see Namjoon has sat down on his bed or leaned against the wall, made himself big and confident—he moves with such easy power, now that he’s decided not to be tentative, and he must be comfortable here if it’s where he picked—but he’s still hovering near the door. “This is your actual place?”

Namjoon nods. “I used to live in a family suite with my parents and older brother, but his wife moved in when he got married, and now my nieces have my old room.  I like having my own space.”

“It’s so great. Are you sad you don’t get to stay here?”

“Of course not. It’s the highlight of my career, helping you and Jimin. It’s an honor.” Namjoon looks nervous, crossing his arms. He’s reminding himself of the things that made him hesitate, and Jeongguk can’t have that.

He comes closer, slow but not scared. “Gonna kiss you again, is that okay?”

Namjoon nods and—heart spinning, just triumphant—Jeongguk steps into his space, puts his hands in Namjoon’s thick, soft hair, and brings him back.

It's different, standing face-to-face. Jeongguk can feel him everywhere. He’s bigger than Jeongguk all over, not a lot but enough that it shapes all the gestures of kissing him. Jeongguk turns his face up and rests his arms over Namjoon’s shoulders and rocks closer inside the circle of Namjoon’s strong arms. Namjoon is so solid, it feels like Jeongguk can play.

He gives into that honeyed feeling and tries opening up again, makes himself tempting. This time, Namjoon takes his mouth, rolling his tongue slowly against Jeongguk’s. His hands slip under Jeongguk’s layered shirts to smooth over the skin of his lower back. He dips only his fingertips past the waistband of Jeongguk’s jeans, even when Jeongguk twists into him to try to get him to move lower.

Instead, Namjoon traces up Jeongguk’s sides under his shirt, and Jeongguk is lost under a wave of shivery pleasure.

When he blinks back to himself, Namjoon is staring at him in something like awe. “Oh, Jeongguk,” he says, like he’s testing how it feels to say it.

Jeongguk wants to try it, too, but he gets as far as an awkard nn and realizes he doesn’t know how he ought to say Namjoon’s name. He swallows into a hum and ducks into Namjoon’s neck. It’s too weird to say Namjoon-ssi to someone he’s kissing, even if they’re using it differently here. He doesn’t want that distance. But maybe hyung would be wrong, too, would bring too much history into the new thing he wants to find.

Namjoon’s fingers curl protectively or possessively around the back of Jeongguk’s neck. “Maybe you could just call me Namjoon?”

He probably doesn’t mean it how it feels to Jeongguk—almost startling, more intimate than the kisses. But it feels that way, a buzz in the back of Jeongguk’s teeth, when he says, “Namjoon.”

Namjoon hums and Jeongguk leaps up and takes control of the next kiss, sending Namjoon reeling back against the door. He makes it open, makes it hungry, and Namjoon is right there to meet him. He thrusts his tongue into Namjoon’s mouth until Namjoon gets the idea and sucks on it, humming low to answer the high noises Jeongguk makes in his throat.

“Hey,” Namjoon says as soon as he can get a breath. “Hey. What do you want?”

It’s a question so perfect Jeongguk can’t answer it, rolling his forehead into Namjoon’s chest and whining while he tries to remember how words work. “Everything. I want everything.”

Namjoon’s chest jumps with a laughing breath. “Of course you do.”

Jeongguk lifts his head. “I want to do everything, eventually.” He adjusts Namjoon’s shirt—somebody mauled him like a horny animal and got it all twisted up—and then meets Namjoon’s gaze. “So I guess right now I want to do whatever you want.”

The hot weight of Namjoon’s stare doesn’t soften when his eyebrows rise. “Whatever I want, huh?”

Jeongguk nods, something like a real challenge thrilling through him. Namjoon looks a little distant, still in control, and he’s holding himself tense. It’s in the steel of his shoulders, in the way his fingers grip and flex around Jeongguk’s hips. “I really, really don’t want to hurt you.”

Jeongguk presses his lips together to hold back a sigh. His voice is smaller than he planned when he speaks. “Then don’t make me leave.”

Namjoon smiles around his eyes. He’s so handsome and good and his hands are hot when he puts them under Jeongguk’s clothes, and if he doesn’t want to—if he needs more time or something else he hasn’t gotten yet—Jeongguk will wait without whining at him. Jeongguk’s been waiting for this forever, it feels like, but of course Namjoon only just discovered it. Jeongguk would understand.

But if it’s some idea about Jeongguk needing more time or space, if Namjoon has let outside standards draw lines in his head or he still doesn’t believe Jeongguk means what he says when he speaks for himself—well, then, Jeongguk is going to scream.

Namjoon takes his hands out from underneath Jeongguk’s shirt to cup Jeongguk’s face. He comes back with a quieter kiss that feels like it’s about to get Jeongguk sent to bed, but he steps back and says, low but not unsure, “You want to get out of some of these clothes?”

Something in Jeongguk’s chest turns molten-hot, sliding through him and changing his gravity. He answers by reaching back and yanking his sweatshirt over his head. Namjoon sits on the bed and now he makes himself big, legs wide and elbows resting easy on his knees. Jeongguk strips down to his underwear as Namjoon watches, his eyes moving, his fingers coming to cover his open mouth. Jeongguk’s heart is pounding so hard. Namjoon lifts a hand and reaches for him.

Jeongguk kneels over Namjoon’s lap and holds his face to take over small, exploring kisses while Namjoon finds all the places he likes to be touched. Which is maybe everywhere, when it’s Namjoon’s hands moving so tenderly across his skin. He messes with the hem of Namjoon’s pullover until Namjoon sits back and takes it off.

Jeongguk nudges Namjoon’s shoulders until he lies back and shifts up the bed, and then Jeongguk starts figuring out where he wants to be touched—not so much his stomach, but his chest and shoulders, his sides and the creases of his hips. And his hands, he likes when Jeongguk kisses his palm and sucks his fingers almost as much as Jeongguk likes doing it.

Jeongguk traces his thumbs underneath Namjoon’s waistband until Namjoon lifts his hips and Jeongguk can get his pants off. He takes it slow, he takes his time with this, all the way down Namjoon’s long legs and then back up again. He kisses inside Namjoon’s ankle and then his knee, palms the thickness of his calf, and drops tiny sharp bites and long licks up the inside of his thigh.

Jeongguk is just getting started, but he glances up and sees Namjoon stroking himself lazily over the front of his dark boxer-briefs, dick filling them out, and his drying mouth fills with saliva. He gently bites the side of Namjoon’s hand and growls as he uses his head to take it away, almost playful and a little genuinely outraged.

“Mm, sorr—” Namjoon cuts off, choked, as Jeongguk drags down his underwear to grab his cock. It’s hot in his palm, swelling hard under Namjoon’s velvety skin, and Jeongguk nuzzles in, rubs his nose in Namjoon’s curls and his cheek up the side of Namjoon’s dick until he can use his tongue to tease the head past his lips.

Namjoon’s stomach twitches as he groans and catches Jeongguk’s attention. He leaves off, humming in curious delight, so he can graze his teeth over the sensitive spot he found on Namjoon’s ribcage. Namjoon makes a horrified noise and squirms his hips, so Jeongguk gives him a few more strokes with his hand, but Namjoon kicks him and he gets distracted by his legs again, ducking down to bite inside the thigh he hasn’t gotten to yet.

Namjoon groans again, rough with a grace note of shocked whining at the top, and Jeongguk gives the dick he’s holding loosely in his still hand a reassuring squeeze. “Relax,” he intones, so Namjoon can know how that feels.

“Oh, god.” Namjoon’s glasses are knocked sideways over his forehead, his hair a wreck. He looks beautiful. “I’m going to pass out.”

“I’ll let you come before you faint.” Jeongguk pumps a few times in a show of good faith, and Namjoon gasps. His chest heaves when Jeongguk brushes his palm over the head. Jeongguk giggles in pure joy—he’d clap his hands if he wouldn’t have to let go of Namjoon’s dick to do it.

“I thought,” Namjoon says, breathless now, “we were doing whatever I wanted.”

“I was never a motivated student,” Jeongguk says. “I need strong direction.”

Namjoon takes a second with that, and when he speaks again his voice has pitched back down, smooth. “Come here.”

Jeongguk grins and lets go of his cock, crawling over Namjoon’s body to cage him in and smile down at his gorgeous, messed up face. He feels playful and powerful, just giddy with the thrill. He’s about to have mercy, to ask him how he wants it and then deliver at a level of such excellence it’ll blow his mind (The Jeon Jeongguk Guarantee), but he hesitates. He’s really just getting started.

He said he wanted more, and Namjoon told him to take off his clothes, and Jeongguk is definitely not complaining about that, but still… “You’re not going to change your mind?”

Namjoon’s eyes open and connect. It’s hard to hold his gaze, too exposed, but Jeongguk juts his chin out and manages it.

In Namjoon’s place, even if the answer was yes, Jeongguk would make a joke out of it. But Namjoon, painfully sincere, touches Jeongguk’s face and says, “Never.”

Jeongguk ducks down and kisses him because he’s too shy to hold eye contact any longer. Namjoon’s mouth is open, sloppy, hot. “How do you want it?” Jeongguk murmurs into it.

Namjoon drags him down to roll their hips together, grinding his erection against Jeongguk’s, still trapped in his underwear. “Like this?” he says, messy in a kiss. “Next time I want you really, really slow. But I don't want to wait any more.”

And yeah, Jeongguk can relate to that. He pulls away far enough to get them both naked while Namjoon rolls to the side and drops his glasses in the drawer by his bed, digging around in there. Jeongguk kneels back to watch, gripping his thighs to keep away from his dick, aching now that it’s free. At least it’s sort of comforting, that no matter how many centuries humanity survives into the future, getting the lube is always going to be the same awkward struggle.

Namjoon finally rolls back, hand newly wet, and gives a devastatingly cheerful smile as he reclines and drops his legs open. He beckons and Jeongguk crawls to him, hypnotized. His heart slams. As soon as he’s close enough, Namjoon grabs his head with his clean hand and pulls him into a kiss like diving underwater, and reaches down to get his slick hand around both of their dicks—

And oh, oh, maybe the lube is better, or maybe Namjoon is just better, his hand as hot and wet as his kiss, gripping his hard length against Jeongguk’s. Jeongguk rolls into the tight squeeze and the smooth slip of it in a quick, sharp thrust, a shuddering whine tearing out of him. Namjoon answers by stroking his hand to match him and saying, “That’s perfect, yes, just like that,” his voice so low and warm Jeongguk can feel it like a flame.

Jeongguk answers with another whine and moves again, hikes one knee up under them both so he can thrust harder. Namjoon hooks one of those strong, heavy legs around Jeongguk’s hip and Jeongguk’s whole mind just vaporizes. He lets his body climb into rhythm, chasing his own pleasure and the pleasure he feels in the flick of Namjoon’s hand and hips, in Namjoon murmuring good and baby and yes in his ear.

That last part feels best, feels too good, cuts to the core of him where he just wants to do a good job (just wants Namjoon to see him doing a good job). Namjoon’s voice is so deep and smooth, like coffee, like chocolate, the last luxury left and all for Jeongguk.

“I like,” Jeongguk gasps. “Like… how you talk.”

“Yeah?” Namjoon says, chest rumbling. “I like how you fuck, baby, feel so strong—”

Jeongguk almost sobs, tension clutching him as his toes curl and Namjoon exhales something both pained and amused. It takes all Jeongguk’s self-restraint to stop chasing so hard, to slow his rhythm and back away from the edge, to make it last. But he gets it under control, finds an even rhythm and sucks kisses into Namjoon’s neck and shoulders and whines when Namjoon whispers something especially sweet. He doesn’t let himself speed back up again until he’s got Namjoon shaking underneath him.

He’s caught the pleasure like a wave he can ride, now, and he can watch the tendons move in Namjoon’s straining neck, the sweat standing on his skin. Jeongguk smells soap and grass and the thick scent of their bodies moving together.

He hangs onto himself through sheer stubbornness until Namjoon says, “Ready, I’m ready—” and bites his own lip. Jeongguk lifts his head to watch as Namjoon’s face breaks in something very near agony, something secret and beautiful. Jeongguk’s body is quaking, his vision tunneling, but he waits for every second of this.

Namjoon is still panting when he grips Jeongguk’s cock in his come-sticky hand. Jeongguk buries his face in Namjoon’s solid chest and lets his twisted tension finally, finally snap free. There was more coiled inside him than he’s noticed, maybe, and it breaks and breaks like waves, like a riptide, dragging him under, lungs frozen and world gone still.

He finds his way back through Namjoon’s fingertips massaging circles into his scalp. He thinks he should say something but hi seems stupid and I love you is too much and a joke isn’t enough, and then he has it. “Namjoon,” he says.

###

Taehyung lies on the floor of the music room with Jimin in his arms, whispering promises and stories and jokes peppered with little kisses like secrets, until the timer puts the lights out and won’t let them turn them back on again. It’s later than Taehyung realized—he came through any tiredness and out the other side into a weird higher consciousness, and he floats back to the suite with Jimin at his side.

He’s sort of expecting to find Namjoon and Jeongguk in the living space—Namjoon usually makes sure everyone else is settled in for the night before he goes to bed, and Jeongguk’s been sharing a room with Jimin—but he isn’t really surprised not to see them. It’s so late, they all ought to be sleeping.

It is surprising that Jeongguk is neither in his room nor Jimin’s, and that Namjoon also doesn’t answer his door when they knock.

Jimin narrows his eyes. “Suspicious.”

Taehyung messages Namjoon to make sure everything’s okay. He sits down on the couch and opens his arms, and suddenly has a lapful of Jimin again. It’s very nice. “Oh, hi.”

Jimin drapes his arms around Taehyung’s neck and looks down at him from his higher angle, his eyes lidded heavily. It takes Taehyung a moment to place this look, because it feels very familiar but he can’t remember when Jimin has acted like this before. And then he gets it—Jimin has never stared him down like this in real life, but it’s all over the old videos Taehyung has been studying. “Is this you being sexy?” Taehyung asks brightly.

Jimin makes an appalled noise and then laughs at himself, ducking down to lean into Taehyung’s chest. His fingers press against Taehyung’s stomach and the back of his neck starts to glow pink. And that—is pretty sexy.

Namjoon answers: We’re on the other side of the ship, was showing Jeongguk some plants in my place. Think we might sleep here if you and Jimin are okay?

Taehyung shows Jimin the message. “Suspicious,” Jimin says again, but he looks delighted, and he shrugs. “I’m okay if you are.”

Taehyung tells Namjoon they’ll see him tomorrow and puts his phone away. “Are you okay to sleep alone?” It seems like a crisis that Jimin might have to be scared all night. “You can sleep in my bed if you want. Just sleep, I mean, for now. If that’s okay.”

“That’s perfect,” Jimin says.

Taehyung takes a breath and grins. “I usually hold a pillow when I sleep. But I could hold a Jimin instead.” He fits his forearms around Jimin’s waist. Yes, that would work very well.

Jimin is giving him a tender look he really can’t begin to analyze. “I am okay to sleep alone. But if you would like to share, I would love to.”

His lips are so nice, a slice of some rare fruit Taehyung would never have hoped to taste. He presses his own against them again—because he wants to, because he wants Jimin to feel good, too—and Jimin melts into him. He sucks Jimin’s lower lip in, just enough to feel the plush give of it and win the tiny sound Jimin makes for him. And that’s all, or one more press of their lips together and then that’s all. Taehyung sits back and watches Jimin’s eyes blink open like Taehyung did something really dazzling.

He didn’t—he knows he didn’t, that there’s a lot more to kissing than this and then a whole lot more left after that—but he’s still trying to deal with the reality of Jimin’s beautiful lips and Jimin isn’t asking for more, is smiling like whatever Taehyung has for him is enough.

They separate long enough to brush their teeth and wash their faces and change into pajamas. No longer than that, because Taehyung still doesn’t want to let go.

###

Namjoon holds Jeongguk until he dozes off and then eases out from under his weight to clean up, put on some boxers, and answer Taehyung’s message without technically lying. When he turns back to the bed, Jeongguk is looking at him, heavy eyes half-awake—it’s both startling and cute.

“You want to stay here tonight?” Namjoon asks. He does. Maybe he did miss his own space and stuff more than he realized, and Jeongguk there against Namjoon’s own soft-worn sheets is a sight he’s not done with yet.

“Yeah.” Jeongguk just sounds like he doesn’t want to move, voice muffled. “Come back to bed.”

Namjoon couldn’t resist that. He doesn’t even try. He slips back into bed and opens his arm as Jeongguk crawls in. “You’re warm,” Namjoon says.

“You’re much more comfortable than the bed.” Jeongguk arranges himself all the way on top of Namjoon, trying to balance his limbs over Namjoon’s without slipping onto the mattress. Namjoon moves a little when he gets it, unbalancing him so he has to find it again.

“Oof,” Namjoon says amiably. Jeongguk is adorable, laughing as he plays this game with himself, but he’s also still naked, body hard in Namjoon’s hands.

He slips off sideways and huffs like he’s lost. He crawls up on his elbows and looks gravely at Namjoon’s face.

“What?” Namjoon asks.

Jeongguk leans down and gives him a firm kiss, like a question or a threat or—Namjoon knows. He’s checking, again, to make sure Namjoon isn’t about to ditch him now. As if he could, ever. Namjoon slides a hand through Jeongguk’s hair to keep him close and gives him a much gentler, more thorough kiss, tasting his sweet mouth. Namjoon told him, but Jeongguk will need to feel it. Namjoon gives it his best.

Jeongguk, satisfied, settles back down with his head on Namjoon’s shoulder. Namjoon’s heart is going to explode, it’s too much, he can’t take it, but he’s not going to stop it. He plays with Jeongguk’s hair, sweaty from how hard he was working. Namjoon’s into that.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jeongguk asks, mumbling because he’s half-asleep and his face is squished into Namjoon’s chest.

“‘Course.” Namjoon closes his eyes, mumbling too.

“Can the Earth, like, heal?” Jeongguk asks. “I think I used to hear that. That people would mess it up but now there’s no more people, right? So is it getting better?”

Namjoon’s eyes pop open again, straining for something to look at on his dark ceiling. He wasn’t imagining such a question. “Ah.”

“Sorry,” Jeongguk says. “We can talk later.”

“No, it’s fine. Let me get in story mode.”

“Ooh, story.” Jeongguk does a snuggly little wiggle that makes Namjoon sort of hurt.

“So, the timing is confusing, because the records are messed up between the last transmissions from Earth and when we got the calendars synced up right in space. But sometime, fifty to a hundred years after the last ships left, Russia sent an exploratory crew to Earth and gathered up everybody who was left to repopulate some ships where everyone had starved. It was sort of controversial at the time because maybe those people could have started rebuilding, right? But life was pretty hellish for them.”

Jeongguk is frowning. Namjoon uses his thumb to massage the crease away from his forehead.

“After the controversy settled, the big governments signed a treaty, that everyone was going to leave the Earth alone for the next century to let the climate recover. That line has passed, but they renew the treaty every twenty-five years, because negotiations for going back keep breaking down. The United Nations has sent some probes, and things are really different from what you knew. A lot of what’s left is more barren, because important parts of the ecosystems went extinct.”

“The bees?” Jeongguk asks.

“For example.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. The science isn’t my area of expertise but I guess there’s new stuff starting to evolve. More ocean animals, a lot of insects. And new predators that go after insects, like carnivorous plants and mammoth frogs and bugs.”

Jeongguk lifts his head. “Mammoth bugs?”

Namjoon smiles even though he feels sad. “Yeah. It’s healing but it’s coming back different. The idea that evolution could go back to the Earth you used to have… it would take an eon. Probably before that, they’ll get another treaty written and the scientists will figure out how to grow some staple crops with what’s there. They’ll make a resort for rich people somewhere nice and build a bunch of barracks for the farm workers where the mammoth bugs live. That’s usually how things go.”

Jeongguk has his chin on the center of Namjoon’s chest, watching him while he talks. “And no other planets?”

“Not yet,” Namjoon says. “There are settlements on a few moons, but they’re really just space stations built into the rock. But if you talk to other people about looking for other livable planets, you should say ‘not yet.’ It’s bad manners to imply they’re not out there.”

Jeongguk’s eyebrows jump, but he says, “Okay,” and drops his cheek to Namjoon’s chest again. Namjoon pets his hair and gives him time to think. Or that’s what he means to do, but he falls into his own thoughts, about Earth and what Jeongguk knew of it, about the end.

“I don’t mean to sound cynical,” Namjoon says. “‘Humans, we always just fuck up.’ I’m not cynical, that’s bad praxis for a historian.”

“Bad praxis.” Jeongguk snickers.

“It is! It’s just easier to see when you look back, what the consequences were. But people weren’t dumber or crueler or whatever in the past. I do know that.”

Jeongguk nods, but after a second, he says, “Some people are cruel on purpose.”

“Yeah,” Namjoon says. “Some of them.”

There’s one more thing on Namjoon’s mind, but he’s not sure if it’s right to say it. Here, now, ever. Jeongguk looks up again, though, chin on Namjoon’s chest and a sparkle in his eyes. “You’re thinking really loud.”

Namjoon covers Jeongguk’s steady gaze with his hand, laughing when Jeongguk bats him away.

“I was just thinking,” Namjoon says, “I’m sorry I said your Namjoon-hyung was an idiot.”

Jeongguk’s smile twists. He rolls over onto his side so he can prop himself up and make real eye contact. “I bet you are. Why is that?”

“I’m just trying to imagine. How I would feel if I was letting you go into cryogenesis. Letting you go. Knowing I had to stay to take care of my family and probably watch my life and theirs get worse, and that I’d never see you again.”

A muscle in Jeongguk’s jaw twitches. He looks down, away.

“Feels pretty horrible,” Namjoon says. “And I’ve only known you a month. I’d have to… I’d have to really believe in you. I’d have to believe humanity was going to need you, and that you deserved a better future than the one Earth got. I think… he must have really loved you, to hope for that much for you.”

It’s not his place to say, really, to speak for some long-gone man just because Jeongguk thinks they’re the same. But he knows Jeongguk gave him this power, and he wasn’t responsible with it, speaking too quickly earlier. He should have been more thoughtful. And now that he thinks about it, he feels like he knows, and it feels necessary that Jeongguk should know, too.

Jeongguk sighs and brings his gaze back, calmer than Namjoon expected. Watching. He touches Namjoon’s face, scratching gently into the stubble on Namjoon’s chin. “You think maybe Namjoon-hyung imagined this?”

“You tell me,” Namjoon says. “But no, I don’t think anybody imagined this. I think people were just desperate, and they were hoping really, really hard.”

Jeongguk shakes his head—not like he’s disagreeing, like he’s thinking—and lies back down with another sigh. Namjoon strokes his hair until his breath grows full and even, and then rolls over to find a comfortable spot for his own sleep. His hand falls across the bed, curling against the beat in Jeongguk’s chest, and he leaves it there.

If he wants to be morbid, he can imagine some nightmare scenarios where he has to send Jeongguk away—one escape pod on a failing ship, a panicked cacophony of sirens and swirling lights. He’d hate it, but he’d do it, every time.

It’s just luck that he doesn’t have to compromise right now, that the toppling bricks of random chance that people call fate have stacked safely around them. That all he has to do is treat this sweet, improbable person the best he can. As Namjoon shuts his eyes, he promises—in honor of everybody who couldn’t because fate put them in one of the terrible crumbling times, in the memory of everything that’s been lost, and maybe just because he wants to so, so much—that’s what he’ll do.

Chapter Text

They fall together into the dressing room, seven people in one screaming, crying, whooping huddle. They’re so loud the theatre folks who were helping with the makeup skitter away, leaving them alone to yell together.

“I can’t believe they knew the fanchants!” Jimin shouts. He grabs Yoongi’s face and yells into it. “You didn’t tell me they were going to know the fanchants!”

“I didn’t know,” Yoongi says through his squished lips. “I didn’t realize people were paying so much attention, this is more than I even hoped—”

Seokjin hangs back a little, just watching and trying to keep his sentimental heart from whizzing out of control, so he catches the sneaky look on Taehyung’s face first. “Someone’s got a secret,” he says, pointing.

Taehyung gets even slyer, grinning almost wickedly, and Jimin separates from the general hug to launch himself more firmly into Taehyung’s arms. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t really do anything, but I asked Eunmi if she could organize it. She got everyone to learn.” Taehyung looks down at Jimin in his arms and asks, almost tentatively, like he bought a gift he’s not sure about, “Did you like it?”

Jimin just screams.

There was a lifetime, really early on, when Seokjin could read minds. It sounds cool, but there’s a reason natural selection took it away from human bodies—it was basically a curse. Seokjin had to spend the better part of a century listening to the people currently known as Jimin and Taehyung thinking in ceaseless circles about how wonderful each other were, how beautiful and kind and how they could live up to such loving care…. It was unbearable.

When they look at each other like this, two smiles almost trembling with history and presence and potential, it’s like Seokjin can still hear them. Even worse, sometimes he forgets he’s supposed to be annoyed.

There’s a knock on the door, and Seokjin goes to sign for the treats he ordered from the commissary to make this a real party. He looks back and forth between the order form and the cart a few times, and arranges a handsome smile for the young woman doing the delivery. “This is more than what I ordered.”

“On the house,” the woman—her name tag says Kyunghwa—says. She pitches her voice lower. “Thank you for everything, Dr. Kim.”

Seokjin drops his voice, too. “You promise you won’t get in trouble?” 

“It’s fine,” she says. “Technically they’re expired.”

He should send it back, anyway. It’s not worth it, for her to get in trouble to give him some extra candy. But she’s brought the pork-flavored salt licks, the ones so expensive even Hoseok only gets them on rare occasions, and, honestly, Seokjin just wants them.

He misses food. Jeongguk and Jimin have been so sensible about the rations, which is very good of them, but since Seokjin can’t reveal he remembers the food on Earth, he was almost excited about getting to live vicariously through their temper tantrums. Instead, he has to keep being gracious to match the example of his brave little dongsaengs.

The pork chips, though. He’s not strong enough to say no, but he adds check on Kyunghwa to his mental list as he signs for the delivery. She grins, so pleased to have given him a gift, and he’s glad he didn’t refuse it, after all.

It’s like Taehyung said—Dr. Kim is a hero. Seokjin likes some of it, he’ll admit it—there’s a part of him that loves the feeling of attention from humans, their adoration and their offerings and, well, maybe on a self-aggrandizing day he’d call it their worship.

But he doesn’t want to be worshiped for this, intervening in the kind of cruelty they ought to figure out themselves. If he didn’t love humans so much, he might hate them, the way they won’t stop hurting each other. Hurting themselves and everything around them. Seokjin’s still pretty angry about how they killed all the birds.

He wheels the cart the rest of the way into the room and nods magnanimously for cheers. Jeongguk and Jimin go right for the treats, and Hoseok looks like he won’t be getting up from the chair he’s thrown himself into until someone makes him, but he tugs Jeongguk’s shirt on the way by and asks him to bring back a beer. Namjoon and Yoongi aren’t interested yet, quietly discussing something on Yoongi’s phone.

Taehyung watches, but he doesn’t step forward himself. Seokjin pours two beers and takes them over to his couch, along with some of the candy and the bag of pork chips. Taehyung takes the beer and toasts Seokjin’s politely, and closes his eyes to savor when he drinks.

Seokjin is watching too carefully, and he doesn’t want to freak Taehyung out. He scans the room again to check on the rest and asks, “How was your first concert?”

“Oh, amazing,” Taehyung says, awe in his voice. “Just amazing. All those people… I could really feel them. I could feel every single one of them.”

“You did a good job with the high fives along the front,” Jeongguk says. “I couldn’t even tell if you’d forgotten the choreo or if you were really excited.”

“I forgot the choreo,” Taehyung admits, blushing, “and then I really got excited.”

Jeongguk is bouncing around, unable to sit still yet—he mimics Taehyung reaching out over an adoring crowd, the hands stretching back. Jimin comes to sit with Taehyung, first next to him and then unsubtly wiggling under his arm, halfway into his lap. Taehyung is still too shy about it, in Seokjin’s opinion. His faith is a new thing, only starting to grow. 

But at least it isn’t as painful to watch as it was at first. There’s a charming modesty to Taehyung’s hesitance that Seokjin has never associated with—well, any of them, to be honest—and Jimin answers it with a patient strength that’s good practice for him, too.

Seokjin has lost a lot, lost everything, over and over, in a way none of the others can remember because they get to start fresh each time, and he doesn’t trust much except himself. But he trusts this. They’ll figure it out.

Well. He gulps down some beer and a deep breath. He is getting sentimental in his old age. It better not stick.

It’s just that there’s something galling about these lives—not the hardest ones, necessarily, but the times when one of them has to suffer differently or more than the others. It festers like a wound that won’t heal until Seokjin can get them all back together again. Together and safe is nice, when he can swing it, or even together and happy. But at least they have to be together.

Hoseok meets Seokjin’s eye across the room and gives him a little questioning glance, which means these humiliating soft thoughts must be starting to show on Seokjin’s face. That won’t stand. He shakes it off and gets up to refill his beer. As he has been telling himself for—well, for a long time—he can always ruminate later. He can enjoy tonight.

Jeongguk is still bouncing around behind the snack cart, defenses down. To discard this sappy mood, Seokjin gleefully karate chops him in the neck.

Which is a mistake.

That’s this Jeongguk but it’s not this Seokjin—professional, caring psychologist Dr. Kim does not karate chop anyone.

Uh, oops.

But Jeongguk’s affronted surprise fades into nothing but a knowing smile, smug on his face. So, okay, he’s figured it all out, whatever. 

It might be Seokjin’s fault it was so easy for him and Jimin to see. He doesn’t know—there’s no handbook for demigods, okay, no secret social network full of immortal memes and advice about these things. But he thinks he might have wanted too much to keep going the last time things ended, when the whole world ended with them. He wasn’t ready to let go. He thought about it all the time. Seokjin has been known to tug on the strings of fate that way, creating the future on purpose and accident.

And then they’d all come back so close to the same, all the small details Seokjin hadn’t wanted to lose. So maybe, another oops.

But maybe just a little one. Maybe Seokjin will tell Jeongguk more, sometime. It’s kind of nice to have a lifetime where he’s not the only one who remembers too much.

“Hoseok and Namjoon are talking about ancient dance forms,” Seokjin says. “You’re going to miss it.”

Jeongguk whips his head around, mouth in an O, and scurries over to plop on the floor at their feet. He leans an elbow in Namjoon’s lap to insert himself into the conversation—Namjoon shuts down like a computer, wide-eyed, and slowly reboots.

“Do you know how to waltz?” Hoseok asks.

Jeongguk looks insulted. “Of course I know how to waltz.” 

“The challenge with classical music is the instruments,” Yoongi says. “I don’t think you can get the same effect of an orchestra with computer-generated music. And manufacturing musical instruments on a large scale…” He trails off, which is interesting, because that sentence ends “is impossible,” but Yoongi has a thoughtful face on.

“You don’t need a whole orchestra to waltz, though,” Jimin says. “Technically all you need is somebody counting to three.”

“Here, hyung.” Jeongguk jumps up again and offers Jimin an elegant hand. 

Jimin doesn’t take it, standing on his own and taking Jeongguk’s waist instead. “I should lead, I’m better at it.”

“Yeah, but you’re sho—uh—” Jeongguk cuts off as Jimin glares at him. “So much prettier,” he recovers. To Namjoon, he says seriously, “The leader’s job is to show off the beauty of the one following.”

A transparent play but an effective one; Taehyung nods like that’s a good point and Jimin concedes, hand moving to Jeongguk’s shoulder. 

Jeongguk counts, one-two-three one-two-three, and that really is all they need to start gliding around the room, turning two human bodies into mesmerizing art. It only takes a few rounds before Hoseok hops up with a shout. Jimin pushes Jeongguk into his arms and gets Taehyung off his spot on the couch. Namjoon sits back, gawking, as the lesson begins. 

They work separately in a small chaos, and then dance instructor Jimin pulls Hoseok and Taehyung into place in front of him and starts critiquing their box steps. 

Jeongguk lures Namjoon up and, though learning the steps is certainly the way to start, he starts teaching the hold, scamming his way into Namjoon’s arms. He’s not fooling anyone, but he looks very pleased with himself, and Namjoon is fully stunned as Jeongguk’s head finds a rest on his shoulder.

Namjoon was the last one Seokjin held onto, at Earth’s end. He was there, watching, as Namjoon sacrificed his own happiness in honor of a future no one else—not even Seokjin, at the time—could imagine. Namjoon sent Jeongguk and Jimin into space, dealing himself a loss Seokjin could only guess at, and then he sent the others back to their safer hometowns, and he tried to get Seokjin to move out of the city, too. Seokjin made him the same deal they’d always had—Namjoon could work as hard as he wanted in service of everyone else, as long as he let Seokjin take care of him.

Seokjin stayed close as Namjoon threw himself into producing the peace rallies with total, focused dedication. Seoul was one of the last major cities to maintain order, and Namjoon didn’t do that by himself but it wouldn’t have happened without him, either. It has been the honor of Seokjin’s many, many lives to know him.

And then they showed up here, mostly safe and able to make their own choices, and Namjoon almost let his own happiness slip away again in honor of the past, and Seokjin was seriously about to wring his scrawny neck.

He seems to have figured something out, though. Finally.

It might seem that living forever would make Seokjin copacetic about loss and gain, about how everything disappears in its time and cycles back new. But that’s not it, not at all. What Seokjin has learned is that tomorrow’s happiness is not a promise. You fight for it. You hang on.

Seokjin watches over them, hanging on.

Jimin, Taehyung, and Hoseok swirl in box steps and Namjoon closes his eyes and puts his cheek on Jeongguk’s hair. Yoongi is still sitting with his hand over his mouth and a sharp, narrow stare. Thinking, thinking, thinking, little Yoongichi. This Seokjin doesn’t call him that, either, but maybe he’ll bring it back. He goes to sit next to him. “How’d the concert go over?”

Yoongi turns his phone—he has 97 new messages. “Better than I even hoped. I’ll present my biggest plan tomorrow, but I might throw out some more ideas. I think they might be ready to hear it all.”

“Like instruments?” Seokjin asks.

Yoongi nods. “We couldn’t use wood, but there’s probably a synthetic that would work. Or they’d invest in developing one, if we could claim other applications…” He disappears into his thoughts. Seokjin lets him go, watching affectionately as the gears get to turning in that head of his.

“I pitched the project saying we’d bring music education back,” Yoongi says eventually, like there wasn’t a break. “I thought I was the only weird freak working so hard by myself. But Hoseok—”

“Is very weird,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi grins. “I was going to say he’s talented. He and Taehyung learned so fast. Maybe there’s a lot more people out there who remember more than we think. Maybe we could scout some out, and start something bigger. We could make something like a…”

Yoongi stops, hesitating, like the next words he’s going to say are too big to hope for. Seokjin’s heart picks up; he holds his breath.

“Record… label?” Yoongi says.

And would you believe? There’s a second where Seokjin thinks about not getting it for him. Yoongi’s a smart, functional person, he’s going to be fine if Seokjin doesn’t get him one thing he wants in one lifetime. Seokjin has already done all that work to get Taehyung home and safe with them. He tried to get Kim Namjoon to trust something he couldn’t reason through, which surely has earned him a break.

But Yoongi’s eyes have gone wide, almost startled by his own ambition, and he’s too cute to resist. “How would that work?” Seokjin asks.

“Well… yeah, I was thinking we’d start with talent scouting…” As Yoongi lays out his plan, Seokjin plucks at the strings of fate around him, peering down possible misty futures for one that looks both likely and lovely.

He sees a group of five girls on a stage. They’re somewhere with a hazy sky—maybe Earth but maybe not, maybe there’s something strange about that sky and they’re on another planet or a moon or something. The group looks new, young and a little wobbly, and the crowd around them is more curious than passionate, but the sense of possibility is rich.

From the side of the stage, Yoongi—much older, silver hair earned the hard way—watches critically but proudly, smiling. These girls have that ineffable it, they’re going to go far.

One of the girls screams and her bandmates stop to check on her, the backing track cutting to an awkward stop. They hug her while she cries, but they’re all laughing, she’s not hurt, it’s fine—she’s just startled, because a bird has flown into her hair.

A bird.

Seokjin’s heart stops cold. He loses the vision, blinking back to Yoongi’s face. Yoongi is talking about the problem of travel between other spaceships scattered around the solar system, almost interrupting himself with solutions about how much can be done online.

So it’s decided. Yoongi’s going to have to work really hard, but that’s no problem, that goes without saying. And Seokjin will tug the web of fate around him with the power of his own imagination, and he’ll get Yoongi a record label, and then, somehow, Yoongi will get him a bird.

And he’ll smile, his beautiful, silly smile. Seokjin has seen everything—made a lot—exercised powers beyond what even he can fully understand. But his favorite thing to create is that smile Yoongi wears, and that’s so easy, he can do it whenever he wants. Why would he do anything else?