Jaebum isn’t quite sure what he’s done to deserve this.

He’s been good (mostly), he calls his parents at least once a week and brushes his teeth and doesn’t shirk his chores (on the contrary, he’s usually the one being cornered into doing more) and if you’re going to bring up his short temper and stubborn pride, well, he’s been living with the amount of discipline and self-denial typically associated with mountain temple monks for the past two years or so, so someone should cut him some slack, at least, right?

Somewhere in the murky, sleep-muddled recesses of his mind, he can still somehow see the Universe wearing a troll face and doing the cancan to one of their promotional songs. It’s so disturbing that he has to stir from his sleep this time and mumble out a cuss about how bright it is and how the Earth should be banished to eternal darkness (eternal in this case referring to how long he’d like to sleep).

“…ung, hyung, hyung! You gotta see this, hyung!”

There is nothing in this world Jaebum could possibly gotta see more than the inside of his eyelids right now, he thinks, but he turns over anyway, grumbling as he blinks sleep out of his eyes. He wonders vaguely if they’re late for something (before remembering that it’s their first off day in almost three weeks) then if something has happened to another one of the members, like if Jackson’s finally slipped on his own grease and twisted his ankle or something (before remembering that Jackson would probably drag one of the maknaes over in record time to break his fall (probably Yugyeom)). It’s then that he realises that all the bright light is coming from the fluorescent orb fixed to the ceiling, not the through the window from the sky outside, which is still dark holy crap-…

“Crap, Jae,” Jaebum croaks, throwing an arm over his face, worming further back into his blanket. “What time is it?”

“Six-thirty,” a sheepish voice admits, muffled by a thick comforter, and Jaebum groans angrily. It’s a trademark JB thing, the Angry Groan, which Jackson occasionally comments makes him sound like a PMSing old man (which in turn usually cues someone to shove him violently).

“But c’mon, hyung,” Youngjae whines, and though Jaebum can’t see it, he knows that the younger boy is pulling a rather spectacular pout at him. 

(Therefore he makes it his new goal for the next five minutes not to come out of his blanket, therefore maintaining immunity). 

"But it's snowing, hyung!" Youngjae protests, as if that fact changes everything. Jaebum mutters dissent as Youngjae starts rolling him relentlessly back and forth on the mattress under the blanket, letting loose a seemingly never-ending flow of "pleasepleasepleasehyunnnnnnggg" which sink mini hammers in Jaebum's already wounded sanity.

(If Jackson or Bambam were here, they'd protest about how unfair it was that only Youngjae (and Jinyoung, but that was by default) got to treat their fearless, intimidating leader like this without immediately getting socked in the side of the head or put on wash-up duty for the next two years or so.)

"Go ask Bambam or Gyeom," Jaebum mumbles, turning his body slightly so he pushes Youngjae off, and he can hear the resounding thump as the other boy falls on his bottom on their shared mattress. 

When no scuffles or whines or bargains follow after that for almost a full five seconds, Jaebum starts to get worried, and reluctantly nudges out blindly with his knee from under the blanket, to feel if Youngjae’s still there.

“But h-hyung…”

Youngjae has this wondrous and extremely useful ability to make his voice sound like it’s on the verge of tears. His vocal chords tremble and the words seem to tilt upwards the end, faint and uncertain and full of raw emotion, and it’s in the exact decibel and tone of what one would typically associate with kitten mewls and puppy whimpers. It’s the kind of voice that tugs at your heart strings in the most violent and crushing kind of ways, the kind that kdrama producers would pay millions to force into the throats of their star actors.

Jaebum had only found out about it the time Youngjae had used it on Jackson one night after filming, after he’d been particularly cruel to the younger boy (successfully reducing the supposedly confident, Wild and y boy into a profusely apologizing flustered hyung begging for forgiveness, by the way), and the leader had entered their shared room cautiously later, expecting to find Youngjae in a sniffing mess of tears and tissues, only to see him happily playing Candy Crush on his phone, as though everything was suddenly good and right with the world. As of now, the mental image is Jaebum’s main source of strength to say what he does next.

“Jae, I know you’re faking it,” he retorts from somewhere under the comforter. “Bam or Gyeommie would probably make a much better playmate than me, okay, why can’t you just ask them?”

There’s a disappointed huff, and the shifting of fabric on their mattress.

“I didn’t want it to come down to this, hyung,” Youngjae finally says in a grave tone that kind of makes Jaebum want to laugh, because the words Youngjae and seriously rarely go together in the same sentence, unless they’re said consecutively in an extremely exasperated tone at the sound of something breaking or feet stumbling over flat ground. “But you leave me with no choice.”  

Jaebum waits in slight apprehension, slight exasperation, but mostly fatigue, as Youngjae draws a deep breath.

“DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN-…”

Jaebum jerks up, struggling violently out from under the covers, before sending a death glare powered with the fury of a thousand suns at the younger boy at that song, but all too late he realizes his folly because now he’s looking at the bright, genuine smile that’s overtaken Youngjae’s face, feels the excited tug of soft hands around his, the effervescent chatter that’s bubbling up around him like pillows of cotton candy, and he knows he’s past the point of no return.

“C’mon, hyung, let’s go!”

*

Jaebum tries to look as grumpy as possible as Youngjae bounds enthusiastically down the stairs to the lobby, orange scarf flapping obnoxiously behind him, but it’s hard to make someone understand how displeased you are when they look so joyful about life and everything it entails. By the time his own feet hit the lobby floor, Youngjae’s skipped out past the tired security guard (who looks just about as done with life as Jaebum possibly feels) and is traipsing about in the pristine sprinkles of white outside their dorm.

It’s early enough so the blanket of white on the floor is still spotless, disregarding the several tired greying trails of footprints and tire tracks leading out from the lobby and the buildings around it from poor souls on their way to work, and the street is quiet, silence forming a clarity that Jaebum’s starting to appreciate after almost four years of being in this career. Soft beams of sunlight are starting to spill over the buildings into their street, splashes of orange illuminating the grey concrete even through the last wisps of dark blue that still cling to the air from the previous night.

The world’s just waking up, and here the two of them are, frozen in the fraction of the moment, and it’s almost sad, Jaebum thinks, how Youngjae’s forced to discover that at six-thirty in the morning in their company’s outdoor carpark.

(But then again, the words sad and Youngjae rarely ever go together outside of Jaebum’s thoughts.)

Youngjae turns to Jaebum suddenly, smiling so radiantly Jaebum swears he’s about to be blinded. There’s a small pile of the crumbly white crystals in his cupped hands, dotting the scruffy blue material of his mittens, and Jaebum barely has time to react before the pile is flung rather haphazardly in his direction.

“Yah, you brat!” Jaebum forgets to keep quiet for a moment- he’s too busy trying not to smile as he digs a hand into a pile of snow, grabbing a handful of the stuff and tossing it back. Youngjae’s laughter echoes brazenly around the buildings as he ducks behind one of the company vans, knowing full well Jaebum won’t dare to throw it when it’s near.

Jaebum rolls his eyes- most of the time, Bambam and Jackson are so radical that people often forget Jaebum’s the one next most tempted to blatantly break all the rules. He discards the snow in his hand, walking easily to where Youngjae’s hiding, and shoots the other a grin as he rounds the corner of the car.

Youngjae can’t scramble up and away in time (he did always have difficulty with learning the more aggressive tricking routines for their dances), and Jaebum’s fast, so in moments, Youngjae’s flat on his back in the snow, laughing uncontrollably as Jaebum pins him down with his knees and starts to heap snow onto him.

When the middle half of Youngjae is buried under a small mountain of white, Jaebum lets up, chuckling as the younger boy wriggles out of the snow, complaining about how the snow’s starting to melt in his ears as he dusts his jacket free of white powder. Jaebum takes the moment to look at him- properly, this time, lets his eyes trail over the tiny beauty spots under his eyes which had always fascinated him, the red that’s dusting his cheeks from the cold, and the crystalline specks clinging to his eyelashes that seem to sparkle when he faces the beams of sunlight that are increasing in number and intensity. 

“What are you looking at?” Youngjae suddenly asks, jolting Jaebum out of reverie, eyes darting from the leader to the company building shyly, and Jaebum grins.

“You,” he replies simply, shrugging and Youngjae scoffs, tossing up a handful of snow in Jaebum’s direction.

(They don’t say anything after that, not anything that isn’t communicated outside of the entwinement of their gloved hands on the way back up or the way Jaebum presses a kiss against Youngjae’s forehead after they dust themselves free of snow outside the dorm)

Jackson lets out a cry of outrage that people actually had the gall to go out and have fun in the snow without him about three hours later when he wakes up, and in the midst of his loud bargaining with Mark and Bambam to go down and build a snowman with him, Youngjae sends Jaebum a bashful smile over the edge of his mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows.

The words Jaebum and content rarely ever go together nowadays, not with the recent introductions of binding contracts and leadership and fussy stylists and dance routines, but add the word Youngjae, and Jaebum thinks that perhaps, one day, they just might.

________

a/n: omg welp so this was more rushed than i would've liked T.T I will work harder in the future i promise