SUNSHINE, jihope. [fin.]

4; my only

Hoseok comes home one day to the sight of Jimin perched on the floor between their beds, taking notes on a textbook, singing along to the radio. Absorbed in his work, he doesn't notice Hoseok enter. So he stands there, leaning his shoulder on the doorjamb with his arms crossed, and listens. Like last time, the song he's singing isn't sad, but Jimin's voice holds a particular loneliness that makes Hoseok's heart clench. It makes him think about Sejun.

When Jimin finally glances up, he drops his pen in surprise.

"You scared the shit out of me," he says, flinging a blank notecard at him.

"Sorry," Hoseok laughs. "You should be an idol. You can dance and sing."

Jimin snorts. "I can't sing."

"Are you kidding me? You're amazing." Hoseok slips off his coat and digs through his closet for his tightest pair of black jeans and a slender blazer.

"I used to think I was good but then I tried out for a musical in high school and I guess I got nervous because I really fucked up the vocal audition and when I got off stage all my friends said was you didn't practice did you and the judges looked so pained and all the other kids auditioning were there too and it was really bad. I didn't sing for a whole year after that. It was so embarrassing." The words fall from Jimin's mouth like a tidal wave, as if once he starts speaking he can't stop. It's rare for him to be so honest.

Hoseok turns back to look at him. He's fiddling with his pen, looking down at his hands. With his hair not styled, falling softly over his brow, swimming in an oversized sweater whose sleeves are tucked over his knuckles, he seems much younger than he is. "Not even on your own?"

"Nope."

Hoseok can imagine it, almost. Jimin afraid to sing along to the radio anymore, even when no one's listening, because the sound of his voice makes him cringe and think about standing there on stage, vulnerable to the eyes of people he will have to see every day for four years, makes him think about the hollowness of his voice compared to theirs and how they must have laughed at him when he left the room. Makes him think about you didn't practice. Because he must have practiced. If Hoseok knows anything about Jimin he knows Jimin must have practiced day and night for that audition.

"Must have just been stage fright," Hoseok says carefully as he shimmies into his jeans. "Because you sound really damn good to me."

"Thanks." Jimin smiles, and the anxious clicking of his pen stops. But Hoseok still isn't sure if Jimin believes him. "Are you going to the club?"

"Yeah, don't have class tomorrow." He swipes on eyeliner with practiced ease, using his phone as a mirror.

"Are you coming back tonight?"

There's an odd note in Jimin's voice. Hoseok glances at him. He's looking back, a slight downturn to the ends of his plush lips. "Depends on how lucky I get." Hoseok winks, but they both know the humor is fake.

"Does it make you feel better?" He doesn't explain himself, but Hoseok hears the end of the question anyway. Does it make you feel better about Sejun?

Hoseok laughs quietly. He slips into his boots and makes for the door. "Nothing makes me feel better."

He hits his usual spot, a club in Hongdae where he's on a first-name basis with the bartender. Yoongi pauses in wiping down glasses to roll his eyes when Hoseok enters.

"Fuck you, Jung Hoseok," Yoongi says as greeting, resuming his cleaning with a flick of irritation.

"What'd I do now?" Hoseok grins and sits down right in front of the small, blond bartender. "You look awfully pretty today." Yoongi always looks pretty, with his sweet mouth and delicate features. Too bad everything that comes out of that mouth is shit.

"It's Thursday, you asshole, go home and fucking sleep."

"It's never too early to start the weekend."

"It's literally too early to start the weekend because it's literally not the weekend."

"Every day is the weekend if you try hard enough."

"Don't you have a cute little roommate waiting for you at home? Go and cry to him about your miserable life instead of bothering me."

"How did you-"

"By now you should know how much you talk when you're drunk. Jiminie's got the cutest smile and his abs are-"

"Shut up, hyung." Hoseok reaches across the bar and smacks his arm to stop the horribly high-pitched impersonation.

Just as quickly, Yoongi's teasing turns to seriousness. "Go home, Hoseokie."

"Hit me up with the usual." Hoseok nods to the rows of alcohol behind Yoongi.

"It's not worth it."

"What isn't?" He looks away, fiddles with his phone moodily. He really needs to find another club to go to. One where the bartender acts like a bartender instead of a well-meaning older brother.

"All of this." Yoongi gestures from Hoseok's head to toe. "It's not going to make you feel better."

"How do you know?"

"Does it make you feel better now?" When Hoseok doesn't answer, he says, "It never will."

"Just gimme a drink, hyung."

For a silent moment Hoseok is sure Yoongi will refuse and he really will have to go somewhere else. But then Yoongi sighs, and before long plops a glass down in front of him. He doesn't stay after that, moving to the other side of the bar to help more customers. Even so, Hoseok can feel his judging gaze on him throughout the night.

He tosses back shot after shot and loses himself in the crowd of sweaty bodies. He's a choreography major so all he does is dance but there's something different about moving to the beat of a song so loud it thrums in your blood, something different about being just another face in the crowd. It's easy to lose himself. Easy to forget. And when someone's hands come to rest at his waist, the warmth of another body pressed into his back, he glances back and smirks.

He lets the guy push him against a wall and mouth at his neck, cold fingers slipping under his shirt to trace across his stomach. Hoseok's eyes drift shut. He gasps, and then suddenly he's thinking about Sejun and the way his lips felt and the way his voice sounded when his mouth was pressed to the shell of Hoseok's ear and the way he threw his head back when he laughed so hard tears came out. He hasn't had enough alcohol for Sejun's face to blur in his mind. It's not worth it, Yoongi said. Does it make you feel better? Jimin asked. And now suddenly he's thinking about Jimin and that note of loneliness when he sings and the awfully vulnerable way he had asked, are you coming back tonight?

"I gotta go." Hoseok pushes the stranger off and stumbles out of the club, dizzy from alcohol or fatigue or sadness, who knows.

Jimin is in the same position as when Hoseok left him, except now he's slumped over sideways, steady breaths coming from his open mouth. The textbook is still open in his lap and his glasses dig into the side of his head and he's probably going to strain a muscle sleeping like that, so Hoseok removes the glasses carefully and sets the textbook aside and lifts Jimin up, easily. Too easily considering how muscular Jimin is, but then, all he eats is salad and chicken breast. He sets his small form in bed and tucks the covers in around him. Jimin shifts slightly, mumbling something, but he's still asleep, cheeks puffing out from where they rest on the pillow.

Hoseok kicks off his clothes and climbs into his own bed. It's cold. He could have had a warm bed tonight. But all he ever really wanted was someone to stay. Someone to warm his bed for a whole night instead of a few hours. All he ever really wanted was Sejun's arms around him, his face buried in his hair and his chest rising slowly with sleeping breaths against Hoseok's back. It must have been too much to ask. It must have been more than Hoseok deserved.

He curls into himself and cries, but this time Jimin's asleep and there's no one to comfort him.