He wasn’t the leader.  That, that was the most important thing.  He was a kind of leader, sort of, technically.  He took care of things. Got done.  He took care of finances and repaired broken furniture and got food for the younger members when Jin wasn’t around to cook it, and he supposed that in some way that could vaguely be misconstrued to mean that he had authority over them all when Namjoon wasn’t around to control them (because he did, technically), but that didn’t make Yoongi their leader.  Of course not. Not a chance in hell.

It just meant that those idiots outside his door, the ones slamming cabinet doors and shouting like their lives ing depended upon it - Namjoon’s idiots - were at least partly his idiots, too.  And even if he intensely didn’t want to, even if he was finally, finally getting some of his own work done, Yoongi pushed away from his desk, standing resolutely with every intention of figuring out what in the hell the noise was about.

That was his first mistake.  The second, was ever even trusting that grown adults could be trusted to go about their business without supervision for a period longer than twenty minutes.  His bad, really. He should have known better. Nothing could ever just be that simple.

“Can you explain to me,” he seethed lowly, stepping over the threshold of the kitchen, “why there’s chocolate syrup on the ceiling?  Or maybe, why the Kim Taehyung is sprawled on the living room floor, shouting that he’s a starfish.”

Jimin gulped.  Hoseok coughed.  Jungkook tightened his grip around a canister of spray whipped cream.  

Seriously, his life.

Ever since Min Yoongi had made the monumentally life altering decision to sign with Big Hit Entertainment, and consequently, the group, his life had been nothing but one obstacle after another.  Not that his life before had been any better, or that the obstacles weren’t sometimes enjoyable or at least tolerable, or that he didn’t love his bandmates, however begrudgingly, but still. It wasn’t always easy.  Spending half of his time on tour or in airplanes and the other half in cramped studios and practice rooms and really all of it with the same six people wasn’t always the picture that they had portrayed it to be.  Even if he loved it, and them, there were any number of occasions in which Yoongi could clearly recall questioning the validity of his life choices.

This day was just one of those days.

They had all had time off for the holidays.  Maybe less than some idols, maybe more than others, but they were all given a couple weeks off to spend with their families back home.  Now that the break was almost over (they had celebrated together and exchanged gifts the night before), the final few days before album recording picked back up were dedicated to relaxing in the dorm, visiting friends in the city, and, in Yoongi’s case, enjoying the peace and solitude of his room to work on new music.  

At some point during this particular day, he had ended up as one of the only two people left at home.  Hoseok was in the living room, of course. Yoongi could hear the drama he was watching if he paused what he was making adjustments to and maybe tilted his head in the right way.  Namjoon was visiting his sister and Jin was trying out a new noodle restaurant with Ken and the maknae line was at Jo Kwon’s apartment for some low-key after-after-Christmas party, whatever in the hell that meant.  So he tried to enjoy it while he could.

Only, he couldn’t.  Not when he could hear the exact moment that the younger members entered even the general vicinity of their apartment building.  Yoongi tried. He sincerely tried, because he wasn’t the leader and it wasn’t his job to control them and they had to live there with him, too, but the more time he spent staring at the same four second piece of the song trying to remember why it was that he had selected it to begin with, that’s when the hit the fan.

Maybe not a fan.  They didn’t have a ceiling fan in the kitchen.  And it definitely wasn’t , but like that disgusting syrup that came in a bottle that you put on ice cream (he honestly forgot it was even in the cabinet), and when he entered the kitchen, pissed from the assault to his concentration and maybe a little wired from coffee, all the others could do was stare at him.  All he could do, really, was stare at them and the profoundly absurd and frankly unbelievable mess that they had made. He could hear Taehyung yelling in the living room still, and he had to wonder when exactly it was that Hoseok had migrated from there to here, and with what logic. Although this was certainly a pressing issue, chocolate and all, he couldn’t say Taehyung’s was any better.

“What happened?” he growled, swiping the canister from Jungkook’s hands before that, too, could be added to the dripping mess.  

Jimin held his hands up in surrender.  “It’s, uh, a funny story, hyung.” He tried to smile, but to anyone else watching, it looked a hell of a lot more like a grimace.

“Am I going to think it’s funny?”

Jungkook cringed, glanced through the doorway in the direction of the living room.  “No, hyung. Definitely, definitely not.”

Jimin dropped his head in defeat.  “I tried.”

Hoseok was watching them with a wide and, Yoongi suspected, knowing gaze.  Alright then.

“What happened?”

Hoseok shook his head, holding his hands up like Jimin had a second ago.  “Not my story to tell. I only understood part anyways.”

Jimin looked up, rather guilty.  “We went to a party.”

Yoongi pursed his lips.  “I’m aware of that.”

They did tell him, of course.  Even if he wasn’t the leader and wasn’t in charge, he was still their hyung.  He did worry. But however much concern he’d had about his younger members uttering the word party, even if it was a low-key after-after-Christmas party, it wasn’t enough to actually make him stop them from going.  Or tell Namjoon where they were going. Whatever the this was, he was willing to accept up to forty percent of the blame, maybe.

“Yeah, well, we were just going for an hour or two, ‘cause Jo Kwon hyung invited us personally.  But there were a lot of people there and they were drinking and playing party games and we weren’t going to, you know?  Because Namjoon hyung didn’t even know we were going, and we didn’t want people to see us drunk and record it or something-”

“Jimin,” Yoongi warned.

“Right.  Sorry. But we didn’t drink.  We hung out in the kitchen for a while with the food.”

He stopped talking.  At some point though (Yoongi couldn’t pinpoint when), he had started fidgeting with the sleeves of his too-long sweater.  He only ever did that when he was nervous or scared, and since there was obviously something very clearly wrong with the situation, Yoongi attempted to soften his harsh expressions and tone when he tried to get his attention again.

“Jimin,” he said, maybe not soft, per se, but distinctly more approachable.  “What happened?”

Jimin, instead, looked at Jungkook.  Whatever it was, they both seemed to think it required some sugar-coating.  Or maybe preparing. If they were trying to prepare him, he thought, all it was actually accomplishing was to annoy him even further.  All he wanted was an explanation for the chocolate. And the . And possibly assurance that their company wouldn’t need to play damage control.

“Just tell him, one of you.”  Hoseok was shaking his head, moving towards the sink to retrieve a damp washcloth.  Like that was really going to help, Yoongi thought with a snort. He wasn’t even sure the mop would help, and also wasn’t sure a mop could be taken to the ceiling without repercussions anyway.

Jungkook sighed.  “There were,” he made some gesture with his hands, “these brownies.”

“Brownies?”

Jimin nodded.  “They were, they weren’t normal, hyung.”

“What are you-” Yoongi’s jaw dropped open.  Seriously, leave it to them. “Jesus , you two!”

“We didn’t know!” Jimin whined, his head drooped low, his shoulders hunched in shame.  “We didn’t. Someone brought them and left them in the kitchen and they were good but weird, hyung.”

He tried to ignore the implications of that statement - the fact that there could have been any number of people at that party who saw them eating pot brownies, or saw them leave stoned out of their goddamn minds - at least Taehyung, it seemed - or that their company could technically piss test them, even if they hadn't actually done that since they debuted - because now was not the time for that.

“How many did you eat?”

“Not even a whole one?  It was mostly Taehyung.”  Again, Jungkook looked out at the living room, a little helplessly.  Yoongi turned this time, too. Taehyung had calmed down, somewhat. He wasn’t screaming like he had been, more like muttering now.  He was still , to Yoongi’s dismay, though he was at least facing down. Thank god for small miracles, even if god hadn’t really been all that merciful in the circumstances overall.

“And how many did he eat?”

Jimin tilted his head.  His cheeks were kind of red.  His eyes were kind of wet, but he didn’t look that much worse for wear.  “A few?”

“A couple,” Jungkook corrected ersely.

“Maybe half a pan, tops.”

Yoongi gaped.

“They were on the counter!  No one told us, and hyung and I are watching our diets.  We only had a few bites. But Taehyung said that it's break anyways and there aren’t promotions-”

Hoseok stopped wiping down the counter.  Even though he had finished, it had been a rather fruitless endeavor.  It would have made much more sense to clean the ceiling first, but Yoongi recognized it as Hoseok simply wanting to stay out of the way.  Whether it was in concern for his dongsaengs, or in fear of Yoongi’s potential wrath, he didn’t know.

He dropped the washcloth back into the sink.  “Kook, you guys aren't in trouble here.”

“Like they aren't!” Yoongi snapped.  “This party was reckless.”

“Not now, hyung.”

Yoongi’s jaw clicked shut.  He was right. It was a stupid move.  A really ing stupid move, but interrogating them at this point wasn’t helpful.  He shook his head.

“Alright.  Clean up. I’m checking on Taehyung.”

He didn’t look back as he turned away, moving first to the couch to grab a loose blanket, then to the bare human being in the middle of the floor and, very generously, threw the blanket over his prone form.  

“Hey kid.”

Taehyung rolled over.  He didn’t seem to notice the blanket much, but Yoongi was rather happy for it at the moment.  He grinned.

“Hyung!  You’ve returned from the sullen obscurity of your cave!  You’ve seen the light and have blessed us with your presence!”

Yoongi rolled his eyes.  “And you’ve come back stoned as ,” he stated blandly, kneeling beside Taehyung’s head.

“Stoned?”  He frowned.  “Am I?”

“Oh yeah.”  Now that he knew what he was looking at, Yoongi recognized it.  He’d never smoked, mind you. Yoongi had always been pretty responsible in that regard.  Even before joining the company, he had worked, and studied. He didn’t party and didn’t really hang around with people that did, but he’d met enough partakers, so to speak, on the underground rap scene.  It was illegal, yeah, but not unheard of.

“Wow,” Taehyung mumbled.  “It’s better than I thought.”

Yoongi snorted, though he probably shouldn’t have.  Taehyung was staring up at him blearily, eyes unfocused, but he was giggling, because apparently it was funny.

He stopped.  “Hyung, I’m kind of hungry.”  His mouth was open, like he was shocked by the sudden revelation.  Yoongi was no longer surprised.

“That’s what we were trying to do,” Jimin said anxiously from the doorway, wringing his hands.  “He was hungry when we got back. He started going through the cabinets and saw that we had the stuff from our last Sundaes on Sunday night and, well.”

Taehyung laughed.  He hummed some vague tune to himself for a moment before belting out the lyrics to Friday, replacing the word instead with Sunday.  At some point it turned into My Heart Will Go On.

“We watched Titanic on Sunday,” Jimin added thoughtfully.  Taehyung was muddling the words. Not because he was high, but because he didn’t know English.  They got the gist.

“And that’s how you guys got chocolate on the ceiling?”

Jimin blushed, scuffing one of his sock clad feet against the wood floor.  “Jungkook tried to grab the bottle from him. It was open.”

Yoongi grunted.  Still didn’t really explain the height of the spray, though maybe with some incredible amount of sheer force, he could see it.

“That was at first,” Jimin said after a beat of silence.  “Then he thought it was funny and kind of like how pigs roll around in puddles of mud.  But pigs don’t wear clothes, you know. They do that .”

“And that’s why he has no clothes on?”

“Originally?”  Taehyung was watching his bare feet like they were the most interesting thing in the world.  “I don’t know what his reason is now, though.”

Taehyung shook his foot.  “Isn’t it big?” he asked, snickering.  “Know what else is big?”

Jimin choked.  Yoongi rolled his eyes again.

“My hands!” he cackled, rolling back over to his stomach.  He continued laughing, and Yoongi briefly contemplated how much it had to hurt to 1. be laughing so hard that he couldn’t actually breathe (because he couldn’t, Yoongi heard him wheezing) and 2. be rolling around on the ground bare without, like, a yoga mat or something.  If Taehyung wasn’t so ing high, he’d definitely be feeling it about now.

“Oh,” he swiped at the hysterical tears that fell from his eyes.  “You totally thought-”

“Tae!”

Taehyung cackled some more.

“We need to get him off the floor,” Yoongi said, standing up.

“What are we doing with him?” Jimin asked.

Yoongi threw his hands in the air.  “Not leaving him on the floor.” Jimin pouted, and Yoongi tried to remember that it wasn’t his fault, really.  Although his capacity for self-blame was quickly diminishing from around forty percent to a solid twenty or so.  

“I’m hungry, hyung.”

“For ’s sake.  We’ll grab you a breakfast bar on the way.  You get a breakfast bar. Now stand up.”

He did.  Gravity didn’t allow the blanket to come with him, unfortunately.

Yoongi checked his temper very quietly.  Hoseok appeared in the doorway, Jungkook in tow.

“Hyung, what are we doing with- whoa, Tae.  Still , I see. Good for you.”

Taehyung laughed, and the effort made him stumble, just a little unsteady on his feet.

“We kind of need a gameplan,” Jungkook said from behind Hoseok.  “The kitchen’s gonna take some time, and hyung is kind of,” he stopped, looking over at Taehyung.  Any number of words might have worked well in such a situation, but he got it.

“Whatever,” Yoongi exhaled.  “It’s getting late. We divide and conquer.  Jungkook and Hoseok can finish cleaning the kitchen before Jin gets home and freaks the out.  You and I,” he glanced at Jimin, “will get Tae dressed and in bed before he does something stupid-”

“Again.”

He scowled over at Jungkook imploringly.  “What do you mean again?”

“It’s not important,” Jimin dismissed.  Though they would be revisiting that particular topic at a later time.  “Are we telling Namjoon hyung when he gets home?”

Yoongi stared at Jimin like he’d grown a second head.  “Yes we’re telling Namjoon about this . This seems decidedly like his territory.  Something he should know. Totally his business.” Which reminded Yoongi that he didn’t actually know how he, himself, was intending to deal with this.  All he knew was that the kitchen needed to be cleaned, and Taehyung needed to put them all out of their misery by going the to sleep, not necessarily in that order, but before anything else could happen.

“Alright,” Hoseok surmised.  “Clean, dress, sleep. We can do this.  No biggie.”

The eternal optimist.

Yoongi, the eternal realist, not pessimist, knew that it would not be so easy.  For one, Taehyung was still hungry, even after three breakfast bars and one of Jimin’s banana milks, which he so heroically gave up for the cause.  Taehyung still didn’t want to wear clothes. Not because he was being a pig or a starfish or whatever the else, but because he simply did not wish to wear them.  Since Yoongi wasn’t willing to leave him alone in such a state, and because that really only left Taehyung to sleep in his bed for the night, the dress code was most certainly not clothing optional.  And the kitchen ceiling, Hoseok and Jungkook seemed to think, was not entirely salvageable.  It wasn’t noticeable, they were quick to point out, unless you were really looking. Yoongi accepted it for what it was simply because he didn’t have the energy to care much more than he already had.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Taehyung groaned.  It was a lie, he could tell. His eyes were already growing heavy as he stood in the middle of Yoongi’s room, finally clothed.  He’d fought Jimin on it like a ing tiger, but had settled to wear a pair of basketball shorts and a really loose graphic t-shirt and probably nothing under that.  Yoongi didn’t really want to think about it.

“You do,” he said mildly.  Taehyung frowned.

Jimin sat on the edge of the bed, frankly looking a little lost now that his task of getting Taehyung into clothes was taken care of.  Yoongi ran his hands through his hair. His own exhaustion was palpable.

“Okay.  How about this?  You lie down, with clothes, under the covers, and make a serious effort to stay still, and I’ll play one of the new instrumental tracks for you.”

Taehyung’s eyes widened.  “Really?”

He nodded.

Taehyung climbed into the bed like someone had lit a fire under his , while Jimin glanced between them with a slightly shell shocked expression.  Yoongi never shared his music beforehand, not unless it was with the person he was actually working with it on, of course, and even then, he was still rather protective.  He couldn’t remember how many times he’d waited to show Namjoon or Hoseok the finished product of his efforts, even when they’d worked on the lyrics and the beats together collectively.  He didn’t like to do anything halfway, and he definitely didn’t like showing other people incomplete projects. Music was a process, but his younger members only really ever saw the final steps.

He tried not to think about it just then.  He’d probably do just about anything for this hellish night to finally be over.

Yoongi turned back to the monitors on his desk.  He still had the last song he’d been working on running on a tab in the background.  But since that one wasn’t even close to being a full track yet, he settled for another somewhere in his files.  It was one intended for the vocal line, which was supposed to be this huge, powerful piece on loving someone even as you’re watching them love someone else with a huge escalation of strings after the bridge.  But since he hadn’t worked with any of the instrumentalists yet, it was really just piano with some basic percussion filling in the gaps. It was still pretty, he knew, even if it wasn’t what he wanted just yet.  He played it, but kept his back turned to the both of them, imagining it was just him listening, thinking about what it would at some point become.

When he did turn around, a few solid seconds after the final notes were left hanging in the air, Taehyung was asleep, and Jimin was staring at him with tears on his face.

“Why are you crying?”

Jimin laughed softly.  “Just because.”

Before he could complain that it wasn’t a real answer, an intelligible one, at least, Jimin was standing up and walking very purposefully to where Yoongi sat at his desk.  He leaned down, wrapped his arms tightly around Yoongi’s back and buried his nose in his neck.

“Thank you,” he murmured.  “You’re a good hyung.”

He pulled back a moment later.  Yoongi nodded his head, and Jimin, smiling, crawled carefully under the blankets on Yoongi’s bed to join Taehyung.  A few minutes later, Hoseok was waving goodnight to him from the hallway, and Jungkook was coming in after his shower to join them wordlessly in their heap of warmth and limbs.  Yoongi turned off the lamp on his desk when he heard someone enter the apartment and quietly, very quietly, shut the door behind him.

He did end up telling Namjoon what had happened, leaving out some of the more unfavorable or unexplainable portions of the story.  He still didn’t know what the stupid thing Taehyung had done that Jimin and Jungkook were hiding from him, and he really didn’t want to explain the leftover chocolate on the ceiling when Jin had come in literally right behind Namjoon (he’ll let him figure it out on his own).  But he did think that he had done a pretty decent job at getting under control, despite the hardships. Namjoon must have thought so, too, since all he really did was pat him on the shoulder and mutter a slow, exasperated, “Tomorrow, we’ll deal with it tomorrow.” That was good enough for him.

When he crashed onto Jin’s bed a few minutes later (because he had been kind enough to share his side of the room for the night), he couldn’t really help but stare over at Namjoon’s bundle of idiots and think that maybe, even if they were a pain in his , even if they did stupid and weren’t technically his responsibility, he didn’t really mind that they were also his idiots.  Because yeah, they were kind of okay.