Chapter Text
The album had been finished for months before anyone heard it. That was always the strange part — carrying something completed and invisible, knowing exactly what it contained, watching people speculate about what it might be while you sat in interviews and said we're really proud of this one and meant it in ways you couldn't explain.
And then it was out. And then people heard it.
Jungkook had not been prepared for that part, not really, not even after doing this for over a decade.
The moment the music became theirs and everyone else's simultaneously. Fan accounts reacting within minutes, reaction videos, the particular kind of noise the internet made when it loved something — all of it reaching them in real time on six different phones in the green room, all of them crowded together reading comments in three languages while trying to eat the catering that was getting cold.
Jimin had cried, briefly, in the corner. He'd denied it immediately and comprehensively. No one had pressed him on it because they were all, in various ways, doing the same thing.
The days that followed had that specific texture of a promotion cycle — full and loud and structured down to the hour, everything scheduled, everything purposeful.
Stages and interviews and fan meetings and the specific exhausted joy of performing new songs for people who already knew every word. Jungkook loved this part even when it wore him down. Loved the way the energy of a crowd was a physical thing, something you could feel in your chest and your feet and the back of your throat. Loved watching his members become slightly more themselves under stage lights; the way performance did that drew something out.
Loved, specifically, watching Jimin.
Jimin had dyed his hair blond for the comeback. The kind of color that caught light from every direction and held it.
Jungkook had seen it for the first time weeks ago and had needed a moment — just a moment, brief and private — to rearrange his face into something that could be in the same room as it.
He had not entirely recovered.
It was becoming a problem in that Jungkook kept losing track of things. Conversations. Choreography counts.
The thread of his own sentences. He'd be standing in the wings and Jimin would walk past and the light would catch the blond and Jungkook's brain would simply — stop. Empty out.
He'd find himself staring at the back of Jimin's head during interviews, at his profile during fan meetings, at the way the color looked different in every light — warm and golden under stage lights, almost silver under fluorescents, soft and pale in the morning when they were half-asleep and sitting across from each other over coffee and Jungkook's heart was doing things that were frankly unreasonable for 7 AM.
Jimin was his.
He just kept getting caught off guard by the scale of it.
The late-night show in the USA was one of those sets that felt comfortable from the moment they walked in — warm lighting, the particular loose-and-yet-loud energy of an American studio audience, a host who'd had them on before and remembered things, asked real questions. Jungkook liked these. But he never liked interviews that much.
He settled in. Or tried to.
The question: What do you miss most about each other when you're apart?
They went around. Yoongi said something that made everyone laugh. Each person said something about the person beside them. The host turned to Jungkook.
His turn. Jimin, visible in his peripheral vision. The blond catches the studio light. The curve of his jaw. The way his hands were folded in his lap in the particular way he held himself when he was watching and listening.
What did you miss most about Jimin?
Jungkook thought about it. Genuinely. All of it rising up at once — the weight of him in Zermatt, the sound of his breathing in the dark, the way he looked in Jungkook's old gray shirt making breakfast, the way he hums while eating the pasta Jungkook cooks for him.
"There is something I miss RIGHT now," he said.
He wanted to collect his words.
"I miss Jimin's gochujang stew."
Laughter. The host turning to Jimin: Jimin, why didn't you cook for me?
Jimin laughed — surprised, genuine, the laugh that meant he hadn't seen it coming. And he had an expression Jungkook knew — the private memory surfacing, the stew with not enough salt, the specific disaster of it, the fact that Jungkook had eaten two bowls anyway and said he loved it. The fact that this was the thing Jungkook chose.
Jimin looked at him. Just a moment. Long enough.
"I'll cook it for you," he said.
Everything in Jungkook went very still.
He looked back. And something passed between them in the space the cameras couldn't find — in the half-second of eye contact, in the frequency they'd developed over many years of knowing each other's silences — warm and certain and quietly enormous.
"For me?" Jungkook said.
Jimin smiled. His eyes were completely calm, completely sure. "Just for you."
The host moved on. The segment continued. The audience was still warm with laughter.
No one in the room understood what had just happened.
But Jungkook did. And Jimin did.
I will cook for you meant: I love you. It meant: I love us together, our past and present — all of it, accumulated, deliberate, mine and yours.
Just for you meant: it was always you. It has only ever been you. My heart was waiting for you, and it found you, and here we are, saying it out loud in front of everyone, and no one can hear it but you.
They had said it. The whole thing. In public, in front of their members, their fans, in front of cameras and a studio audience, and however many people would later find the clip, watch it, and wonder vaguely why it made them feel something they couldn't name.
They had said everything. In their own language. And no one could touch it.
One year later, Jungkook stood in the kitchen of their cabin in Zermatt and made pasta.
It was late — nearly midnight. They were a few shows into their European concerts, Paris behind them, Munich ahead. They'd managed to carve out four days between. Jungkook had left first, taking the train from Paris while the others flew ahead. The cover story was simple: he needed to decompress alone, some space between shows.
No one mentioned that Jimin would be arriving twelve hours later.
Well. The members knew. Of course, they knew — they'd all known, Jungkook suspected, for much longer than a year. Yoongi had known before Jungkook had. Taehyung had known by instinct. Hoseok had figured it out through sheer proximity and chose, for a long time, to say nothing, and then one day said simply: I'm glad you two finally stopped being idiots about it. But when they finally told the team Seokjin had cried, which was unexpected, and then made three separate dad jokes about pasta, which was not. Namjoon had put his hand on Jungkook's shoulder and said, quietly: "Be careful. And be happy." As if those things were compatible and also mandatory.
Jungkook stirred the cream sauce and watched the snow on the peaks through the kitchen window, waiting.
His phone buzzed.
Landed. 20 minutes. Is there pasta?
The one you like.
Good. Don't start without me. I want to watch.
Jungkook set the pan to its lowest flame. He could wait.
He heard the car on the drive. Footsteps on the stairs — unhurried, Jimin had always taken stairs at his own pace; it drove tour managers insane. The door.
Jimin appeared in the kitchen doorway in his airport clothes, mask hanging from one ear, beanie pulled down low. He'd been traveling for four hours. He looked at Jungkook across the kitchen and smiled.
"Hi," Jimin said.
"Hi," Jungkook said.
They stood like that for a moment, just looking. There was always this — this particular quality of the first moment after time apart, when you got to remember all over again that the other person is real and solid and actually here.
Then Jimin crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Jungkook from behind, his chin finding its place on Jungkook's shoulder, and Jungkook leaned back into the weight of him without thinking about it.
"Missed you," Jimin murmured.
"It's been twelve hours."
"Twelve hours too long."
Jungkook put his hand over Jimin's hands, where they were clasped around his middle. "How was the flight?"
"Fine. Boring. I watched something bad on purpose because I was tired but didn’t want to fall asleep." He pressed his nose against the side of Jungkook's neck. "This is better."
"I haven't finished cooking yet."
"I meant you. Being here. Our place."
Their place. Registered under an LLC, a cabin Jungkook bought in Zermatt, explained away as a real estate investment. Covered for by their members, protected by a collective agreement that had never been spoken aloud but was absolutely binding.
A place where they could be Jimin and Jungkook, not idols, not anything with a public-facing component. Just themselves, in this kitchen, in this mountain, in the particular warmth of what they'd built.
"Go change," Jungkook said softly. "Ten minutes."
"Don't want to let go yet."
"Then don't."
So Jimin stayed, arms around him, while Jungkook finished the sauce one-handed. They swayed slightly together, no music, just the sound of the pan and the breeze outside, and the way their breathing had always synced without effort.
Eventually, Jimin released him and disappeared upstairs. He came back in Jungkook's hoodie —soft and unguarded and completely his own.
Jungkook set the plate in front of him. Then sat down beside him instead of across, close enough that their shoulders touched. Here, in this house, they didn't maintain distance.
"Thank you," Jimin said, like he always did.
"You don't have to."
"I know. I will anyway." He took a bite, hummed. "Still perfect. You could do this professionally."
"You've been saying that for years."
"Because it's true. Let's open a restaurant when we retire."
"You can be the taste tester."
"Lucky me."
"Lucky us," Jungkook said.
They ate with their shoulders touching, feet tangled under the counter. The snow on the peaks was blue-white in the dark outside.
Inside, the kitchen was warm and lit and smelled like garlic and cream and the specific combination of things that meant home now.
They still had to be careful. Still arrived separately, left separately. Still monitored what they said and how they moved in front of the cameras.
Still had to love each other in the spaces that were theirs — stolen and quiet and tucked away in Swiss mountains and late-night kitchens and the specific warmth of Jimin's arms around him at the end of a long day.
But they had this. They had them.
"The fans know, don't they," Jimin said, after a while.
"They've known for years. Probably before we did."
"Taehyung texted me earlier." Jimin's mouth curved.
"Said to enjoy my 'vacation.' Heavy air quotes. Very subtle."
"Yoongi-hyung told me to be happy."
"That's practically a love declaration from him."
They both laughed, and Jungkook felt the warmth of it settle in his chest alongside the other warmth that had been living there for a year now — the one that still surprised him sometimes, the one that felt like: oh, so this is what it's supposed to feel like.
"I love you," Jimin said, setting down his chopsticks.
Jungkook looked at him. "I love you too." He didn’t need to daydream about kissing those lips now.
"Baby—" Jimin through kisses. “I love this,” he gestured around the kitchen. The cabin. The life they'd built in the spaces that were theirs.
"I love this. Us. What we've become. It's not everything we want yet, I know that. But—"
"But it's enough," Jungkook said.
"Yeah." Jimin leaned his head against Jungkook's shoulder, unhurried, settling. "It really is."
Jungkook pressed his mouth against Jimin's hair and thought about all the distance between here and the practice room floor, where a seventeen-year-old version of himself had looked at Park Jimin and felt something enormous and nameless and had run from it for years. All the damage was done on the way. All the slow patient work of making it right.
"What are you thinking about?" Jimin asked.
"How far we've come."
"Pretty far."
"And how I'd do it again. Every mistake, every year of getting it wrong. If it ended here."
Jimin lifted his head. His eyes were bright. "You romantic."
"Only for you."
"Good." He looked at Jungkook for a moment — really looked, the way he did when he wasn't trying to hide what he saw. Then he turned back to his plate. "Finish your pasta before it gets cold."
The pasta. Always, in the end, the pasta.
Jungkook laughed and obeyed.
They ate together, shoulders touching. When the plates were empty, they did the dishes side by side, Jimin handling the washing and Jungkook the drying, moving around each other with the ease of long practice. It was not romantic.
It was better than romantic — it was ordinary, and they'd earned it.
Later, they would go outside and sit on the steps and look at stars that were sharper at this altitude than anywhere else Jungkook had ever been.
Later still, they'd go inside, and Jimin would fall asleep first, the way he always did, and Jungkook would lie awake for a little while just listening to him breathe and feeling something too large for its name.
But for now: the kitchen, the warm light, the smell of garlic and cream. Jimin's shoulder against his.
"Jungkook-ah," Jimin said, drying his hands.
"Hmm."
"We have four days. Just us."
"I know."
A smile in his voice. "Make it for me again tomorrow?"
"Pasta?"
"The one I like."
Jungkook turned to look at him — the oversized hoodie, the soft eyes, the specific warmth of a person who had been his in some form for fifteen years and had only recently been allowed to be that openly.
He pulled him close, briefly, Jimin coming easily, his face tilting up.
"Always," Jungkook said. "The one you like. Every time we come back here. And someday, when we don't have to hide anymore, every single day if you want."
"I want," Jimin said softly.
"Then you'll have it."
Outside, the valley hummed its quiet lullaby. Inside, everything was warm and still and theirs.
It wasn't everything. Not yet. But someday — maybe not so far away — they would have more.
They would have the ordinary life Jimin had described over the dinner table: this kitchen, every day, pasta and dishes, and falling asleep beside each other without having to plan for it.
For now, they had Zermatt. Four days and their own bed and the mountains keeping their snow and the members who covered for them and the fans who, in their way, already knew.
For now, they had each other.
That was everything.