Defining Kim Seokjin “beautiful” is an understatement at best, Namjoon is smart enough to acknowledge it: all one needs to do the same is a pair of eyes and a sound mind. He thought he was the most beautiful boy he ever landed his eyes upon the moment he saw him for the first time, lost and stiff in the middle of the living room's chaos. He never perceived his feelings as weird, or out of place, because he's at peace with his life choices and he knows objective beauty should be appreciated regardless of one's preferences.

The problem is that since then that thought has become sort of an obsession – a ticking bomb exploding once and for all the day Seokjin vents out insulting his ex girlfriend with the heat of a lover defending his boyfriend, whose honour was stained; the problem is, since then, Namjoon can't help but look at Seokjin with different eyes – overlapping to what he's currently watching the memories of the violent red on his cheeks, of lips trembling and chest raising at the rythm of his quick, harsh breathing. And his reaction must have been a coincidence, there's no other explanation. Maybe he lived a similar situation, even if Namjoon can hardly picture somebody discouraging Seokjin from becoming an idol by calling him ugly, or maybe it was just a gentle act, but that's all for the explanations he can give himself. Fantasies, however, go beyond his self-imposed limit: they overtake him, sometimes, and Namjoon starts wondering what it'd be like to rest his forehead against Seokin's to calm him down with slow kisses one time too much to deny to himself that the feelings he has towards the older member are limited to appreciation of objective, undeniable beauty.

He never asked himself what attracts him. The only relationship he ever hard was a complete disaster, leaving him burnt – but before Hyunmi he had always thought that, under the right circumstances, he might even catch feelings for a guy. He never even tried to prove that theory and never felt the need to, until Seokjin came into the picture to completely ruin his certainties.

And it's a problem; an enormous, gigantic, horrible problem. Because Seokjin isn't one of his classmates, nor a friend, and clearly he's not a particularly attractive stranger he met while walking around: Seokjin is a member of BTS. Just thinking about him that way ruins the perfect, blissed harmony between the seven of them – he'd unbalance everything by placing a problem on one of those so carefully aligned plates, making them drown into chaos. And if his feeble hopes were revealed wrong – and Namjoon is certain that's the case – then it'd be like cutting the chain keeping that plate in place with his own idiocy. It'd be an unforgivable mistake

BTS needs Seokjin. He needs Seokjin.

(and, maybe, Seokjin needs them too)

So he's fine by watching him from behind, silently, from a safe distance; yet he ends up always falling into the same mistakes – he gets a little bit too close, he looks at him a little bit too much, he searches and treasure every chance he has to be with him. Sometimes he asks if he isn't being too obvious with his crush – if Seokjin is way too educated to address it, or too naive to realize. He's grateful anyway, because giving up on Seokjin would mean giving up on a precious friend and an even better confidant: it'd mean giving up on the first shoulder Namjoon rests his head upon when life gets too difficult, on jokes that don't deserve his laughters, yet make him laugh anyway – and he never told anyone, but most of the times he's actually laughing at Seokjin's shameless pride for his own jokes. He should give up on the boy telling him to get out of the kitchen – “Don't you dare touch anything, Joonie, I swear...” – and asking him to pass some weird seasoning Nam