danger

66: ring

ALTERNATIVE ENDING

Minjun kicked his sneakers off in the hallway, nudging them towards the shoe rack before racing off into the living room. It looked just as it did months ago, with a bone-dry, flower-patterned mug sitting on the coffee table and a disregarded book laying upside-down beside it. Minjun hurled himself onto the loveseat.

Hoseok and Taehyung entered the living room soon after. They noticed the boy, with his eyes closed and mouth ajar drowsily, humming faint snores. It was when Hoseok skipped over and sat on the boy's legs that Minjun's lips coiled into a smile and his act was shattered. He squealed and squirmed to throw the elder off, giggles and protests luring the attention of each of his boyfriends.

Although significantly smaller and more fragile, Minjun managed to squirm his way on top of Hoseok, pinning his hands to the sofa's back cushion.

"You're evil," sighed Hoseok with a defeated pout.

Namjoon rounded the coffee table and, with a courteous smile, scooped Minjun up by his armpits from Hoseok's lap. The youngest allowed himself to be manhandled, uncaring of where he ended up. Namjoon ultimately reattached the boy elsewhere, which happened to be on Yoongi's back.

"Oh, hi Yoon," Minjun babbled, resting his chin on the man's shoulder, "where are we going?"

Yoongi, fingers clasping around Minjun's thighs to keep him steady, began trotting away from the living room, "to make dinner, is that okay with you?"

"Hm," Minjun slumped his head around, his nose squashed against Yoongi's neck as he remarked, "quite."

Much to Minjun's disagreement, Yoongi sat Minjun down on one of the kitchen counters and left his vicinity to comb through the refrigerator. Foremost, he hauled out a tremendous bag of cylindrical rice cakes and slapped them onto the counter as Jin and Jimin jogged into the kitchen.

"What are we making?" Asked Jimin with a bright smile concealing his eyes. He sauntered over to Minjun and waited for Yoongi to respond while relaxing his body against the youngest's legs. Jin followed, standing protectively over the two.

Yoongi, now armed with a superabundance of ingredients, closed the fridge and smiled at his boys, "I was thinking we could have tteokguk and rice."

"I'll do the rice!" Jimin sprung over to the rice maker, immediately switching it on and hopping about to find the rice. He found it in Yoongi's stash, quick to measure out enough for the eight boys.

Yoongi chortled at the hacker, adding some water to a large bowl. He dumped in almost half of the rice cakes, water spewing in every direction as he did so. The bowl, see-through and fragile, was placed beside Minjun.

"Can you watch these for ten minutes?" Yoongi assigned the boy, "Then when they're all soft, you can come and chuck them in the stock!"

Minjun grinned up at the firebug, "got it."

Yoongi fondled the boy's hair and trekked back over to the stove, where he drained a jar of beef stock into a saucepan. It filled the room with a loamy, meaty stink that was half appetising and half putrid. It was the true definition of 'trusting the process'.

It took no less than five minutes for Jimin to get bored of his job at the rice cooker. He blinked around the room before dropping his shamoji and romping into Yoongi's space. He shrouded his arms around the motionless elder. 

Yoongi encouraged the younger by opening his arms, allowing Jimin to burrow himself in his chest. It escalated moments later as Jimin slyly pushed his face upwards and grabbed a handful of hair from the back of Yoongi's neck. He aimed Yoongi's face to his own and carefully pressed his puckered lips against the elder's mouth.