bloomsbury's pride // bts ot7 // editing

-burning]

❛barely awake, i let precious time go by❜ - abba

it doesn't make sense how fast time seems to go. his birthday passes by inexplicably with a lame text message from his busy mother and a beautifully illustrious letter from his little sister, aejoon. somehow, october is already upon him with the burgeoning piles of golden leaves stacked around campus. taehyung and jungkook often find themselves being swallowed whole by the larger piles when they jump into them, their shared laughter heating namjoon's insides as the settling of an autumnal chill is ushered in.

jimin's birthday party comes just as rapidly. seokjin and yoongi open their minimalist, modernized dorm room to the five younger boys in a fascinating change of scenery from hoseok and namjoon's usually quite homey room. in place of normal wooden furniture, everything is metal or glass in the limited color scheme of black, white, gray or powder blue. luckily, jimin's birthday lands on a saturday and the boys can spend all day with each other, lazily cuddling on the comfortable shaggy rug on the floor while watching yoongi play some anime on his computer.

seokjin orders in for lunch, dragging a compliant jungkook along with him to the gate to pick up their large order of pizza from papa johns and uber eating some panda express for jimin who really craves it on this particular day. the group switches from the anime to the leonardo dicaprio version of the titanic that the birthday boy quotes through and through.

as cute as jimin is acting, it really is a just a facade when it comes to namjoon. when they all spread out to eat, the smaller pouts at yoongi to feed him. "it's my very very special day, gigi. i want to remember it only with special memories. please? pretty please?" and no one can resist a pretty please from the pretty-as-a-peach boy himself, so the boy sighs and begins to feed jimin pizza. namjoon giggles at the sight before yoongi glares at him with malice and restraint. goosebumps raise on his skin and he shuts his mouth, turning to watch taehyung play around with his slice of pizza.

he begins to mutter numbers, pulling off a stretch of melted cheese, ripping a slice of pepperoni in half and removing all the meat in general. "one forty, sixty, sixty, sixty, two hundred. five-twenty. no no no..." hoseok notices and eats the pepperoni off his plate. he whispers what namjoon can only recognize as an encouragement and watches taehyung take a shaky bite from his slice. he doesn't watch anymore and focuses on seokjin messing around with jungkook.

that's when jimin decides to strike, crawling his way over to namjoon's lap with the box of panda express. "open your mouth, hon." he complies out of fear, a long noodle slipping into his mouth. "babies need to eat a lot so they can finish growing." he pinches the older's cheek, feeding him more and more. "isn't that right, baby boy?" yoongi makes a disgruntled noise from the back of his throat at the comment, puffy cheeks ablaze with second-hand embarrassment.

"y-yah, jimin, d-don't play with me like that if you don't mean it." everyone seems to pause. the room goes quiet and the only sound is the air conditioner blowing through. jimin continues to twirl noodles onto his plastic fork for namjoon, shaking his head at the cynicism from the older. "i wouldn't have said it if i didn't mean it," he says quietly. "now open up or i'm gonna feed jinnie next."

"that's hyung to you!" the chaos is restored in less than a minute. they're back to watching cheesy movies on yoongi's laptop in no time as a distraction for seokjin's disappearance to the "bathroom". when he returns, the golden sun is casting a strange glow on the metallic room. "hey, i don't want to ruin the fun, but i found something really strange in the garden and i need your help." the garden was a reference to the rooftop teeming of plants all around. each year, a senior in the kymi dorm hall is chosen to run the garden on the roof to keep the dorm's tradition running.