vớ vẩn 3

7: Musketeers

Taehyung wasn't saying anything, was barely moving, and Seokjin decided that he didn't like this one bit.

Seated at the kitchen counter with another mug of coffee in front of him, he could little more than observe him from across the open-plan room. But observation was a skill within itself, he had long learnt. If someone had a feeling that they were being watched then it was hard to catch them acting completely natural. There was always something forced or off about reactions: a smile for the sake of it for example. So Seokjin had long perfected the ability to discreetly watch a person without giving off the sensation that he was. He would spend a minute of close observation before finding something else for a few seconds, making a big show so that he gave off an air of being busy; moving cutlery around his plate to create a soft scraping noise and make it look like he was distracted with food, writing on a piece of paper when he was doing nothing more than scribbling over the surface. It always worked for the constant little movements out of the corner of the person he was observing's eyes never seemed to lock with his when they looked over the room. So right now Seokjin was miming with his spoon and just spreading rice around his bowl, the occasional clattering sound of the metal touching the porcelain, and he was watching Taehyung as keen as a hawk.

He had yet needed to look away for Taehyung's eyes had not shifted up from the floor once for the past three hours.

The house was slightly more empty than the early hours of the morning. That was because Hoseok and Jimin had work shifts to deal with, job shifts that they couldn't miss. Seokjin liked to think that by them showing up it made everything seem much more normal. It was just another day, nothing new. It was perfectly normal, nothing to worry about at all. They all knew that it wasn't but it was nice to pretend that it was. Hoseok's shift was from the lunch to dinner period and he had had to race back home to get changed into his uniform clothing, but also collect a bag that he had dropped back at the house. It was a bag full of clothing for Taehyung. Then he had jumped a bus to get there on time, looking haggard and jittery the entire time he had been in the house. He had a feeling that he had only gotten a few hours of sleep, three at most most likely, and that was why he looked so bad but he knew that it wasn't just the sleep. Alternatively Jimin had been so sleepy that he had had trouble waking, only upon Yoongi's insistence and pinching fingers had he finally crawled out from within the blanket cocoon.

Yoongi.

Seokjin allowed his gaze to shift across the room, still keeping up the cutlery charade as he did. Yoongi was sitting on the floor, hunkered forward with his lower back against the TV unit and his chin balanced on his knees. When he had woken up this morning he had not expected to have seen Jungkook missing in the space between him and Namjoon and Yoongi not lying on the floor with Jimin. He had climbed out of the bed having expected to find them in the bathroom perhaps, but it had been empty. Then downstairs to find that they weren't there either, just Hoseok and Taehyung lying on the settee together deeply asleep. He had eventually located them through the kitchen window, lying in the garden grass like a pair of children. The sight had been strangely sweet but also confusing. Why were they both out in the garden rather than inside? Had they gone out to talk at some point and had fallen asleep? But talk about what exactly? Seokjin didn't know but he wanted to.

Jungkook was on his usual spot up on the windowsill, legs folded up and bare feet curled softly over the edge of the ledge. When he had stepped into the house earlier they had been stained green just like his tee which was currently balled up in the washing machine. He was tapping his feet in an offbeat rhythm as he just stared into space, dreamy expression on his face. What was on the boy's mind exactly, and why had he taken to telling Yoongi? Had they both just been awake and it had been a convenient time to talk? Seokjin thought that that was likely the case. Jungkook told Jimin and Taehyung everything, but this morning they had both been incapacitated, so he had turned to the one friend usually awake. He trusted Yoongi to have given him good advice. He just hoped that it was a small matter that needed a rub on the back and some comforting words than something serious.