Louder than Bombs | KNJ

The Service

~4 years ago~

As the girls dealt with Ginny Jeon M.D., and Jimin, Taeyhyung and Jungkook at university, the guys headed off to begin their initial military service.

Jin, Joon, Yoongi and Hoseok had arrived at the basic training processing center, had been screamed, shouted and shoved at until they had finished processing, been assigned a bunk house and at the end of the first night, had each given silent thanks that they were all still together.

The next day, after a morning wakeup while it was still dark out, something Yoongi bitched about under his breath the entire run, they gathered together at the chow hall. Since no one had told them they couldn't talk, they waited for the low hum of the other recruits' conversations to cover their own.

Then Joon, Yoongi and Hoseok all gave thanks to Jin for getting them assigned together. Jin had laughed.

"Like I was going to leave that to our illustrious government to figure out themselves. I also have it set up to allow the magnae to join with us when they arrive. Though, I think we also need to thank Mr. Powell for allowing me to do that as well," he said musingly and made Namjoon smile a little.

Laughing out loud in the quiet of the hall would call attention to themselves, and Namjoon wanted to avoid that for as long as he could.

The next six weeks were hell weeks for all the guys and made Namjoon glad that he still had access to his phone. And through his phone to Lara.

He made sure that every text and every email was very bland and contained no details. He'd decided on this tactic a while ago, mostly figuring that if he bored himself writing the emails, then he'd never be tempted to let his real words fly out.

Those three little words that so wanted to bubble up to the surface and make themselves known to Lara.

And it was hard. And sometimes he went to bed simply aching to be with her, hear her voice or hold her in his arms one more time.

Some nights he was so angry with Jin and the choice he'd forced on all eight of them that it carried over to the morning.

Yoongi recognized and shared his moods. Namjoon thought he missed Blair even more, since neither of them were big fans of texting each other anyways. Namjoon knew Hoseok still had a pretty strong relationship with Paige, which helped as the Korean Army was no place for someone like Hoseok. Joon and Yoongi had worked with Hoseok for ages to get him to tone down his natural friendliness, specifically for the time they were going to be in service.

But when Namjoon had those bad nights, his Seokjinhyung was more than willing to stand up next to him. Jin knew that no one understood his choice. Half the time, he didn't understand his own decision that day. But in the end, especially whenever he saw his bank account light up with a new deposit from the jobs he did for Brian Powell, he was resigned at least internally, that he'd made the right choice. And he was willing to face his friends and little brothers and take their anger head on.

As their time in the service continued, each of the boys was assigned to a separate training team. Jin wanted to complain, but Joon thought this order came from Brian Powell.

"He just wants to see that we can act on our own. He'll wait a while before we all get assigned to the same team again. Then he'll wait for the magnae to join, and we'll do it all again," said Joon and made Yoongi's eyebrow wing up.

"They have me doing running and moving things," Yoongi pouted, and Hoseok turned to him in disgust.

"They have me doing shooting things," he whined in return and made Namjoon chuckle again.