"Oh, leather!" you said walking up to Hobi who had just changed to go out at last.

You'd got carried away and ended up getting ready to go out late in the afternoon.

"You look hot, baby" you said standing on the tips of your toes and pecking him as you held the lapels of his jacket.

With a playful smirk he looked down at you and grabbed your jaw.

"I knew you'd like it" he cocked an eyebrow staring smugly and your heart skipped a beat when he bit on his bottom lip.

"Are you trying to seduce me?"

"Always" he said letting go of your face with a wide smile laughing cockily.

He was no baby, but you liked to tease him. You knew what kind of pet name he was aiming for, yet playing with it and making it sound like anything but babe was something you couldn't pass up.

You were used to being the one caring for the other person, so saying things like that was almost customary to you. Hoseok wasn't willing to accept it either way, he wasn't into it.

You wore tight fitting leather pants, mid-calf boots and one of your many windbreakers. As you were approaching your bike in the garage, you put up your hair in a ponytail and slid on your leather gloves.

Hobi grabbed your swaying hips and held you close when you stood by your motorcycle and bent down to grab both your helmets.

"Hobi" you said straightening yourself and glancing over your shoulder at him with a tilted head and a questioning look.

"What? My girlfriend's too sexy" his smirk was sinful and you couldn't help but blush like a school girl. You found it conflicting, you hated it but loved it because it was him.

"You can hug me from behind all you want, baby. Just let me get on my bike and you can jump right behind me" you said shoving one of the helmets in his hands with an amused smirk of your own.

Even when you blushed, you didn't seem to budge when Hobi tried to make you more nervous. Between the being treated like a baby and you standing your ground pretty strongly, his ego was a little wounded.

He wouldn't admit to it, specially when he couldn't help but find it attractive. With you having been gone for so long, he seemed to hardly be able to keep his cool.

Once you hopped on your bike, he climbed behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist, holding you close to him in between his legs. You were comparatively smaller than him and it looked cute.

"This feels cuddly, like spooning, wouldn't it be better if I sat at the front?" he continued to tease you and you rolled your eyes.

"Get a license and I might let you, but you don't strike me as the type that rides. You seem to be way too happy back there, baby" Hobi blushed and distanced his hips from your bottom a little bit more. What happened to your 'this is normal'?*

"Shut up and ride*¹" his tone was low and his patience was running thin, so you decided to stop messing with him when he paired his words with a tight and brief squeeze of your sides as a warning.

Regardless, you side-smiled and kicked your Daystar to life starting off a little too violently just to mess with him when he was jerked back by the speed. He wrapped his arms around your waist tightly once more cursing under his breath and you held back a little laugh.

When the roads became a little less crowded, you decided to have fun with it and started zooming in-between the spaced out cars. Despite his best attempts, Hoseok occassionally let out a few little helpless cries. You could tell you'd scared the life out of him when he pressed his whole body back against you.

On the last bit of the ride up to Namsandong, when you went in one of the tunnels*², the coast was clear and you couldn't help but speed through it. At this point Hobi just gave up pretending and you both screamed your heads off. For different reasons and inspired by different emotions, mind you.

The fun ended when you decided to try a few tricks and he uttered the most colorful string of words*³ you'd ever heard coming from his mouth. By the time you were parking at the bottom of Mount Namsan, he was breathing heavily and looked overly pale.

"Are you okay, Hobi?" you didn't dare call him baby when he looked like he might choke you when he handed you back his helmet. You'd never seen him looking so mad.

"I'll be taking the bus back" he announced with a low growl, "I think I might hurl."

"Aw no, I promise I'll behave on the way back" you hurried to clarify in a kind of whiny tone and he side-glanced at you suspiciously. It, finally, looked like you had given up on taking the piss out of him.

"You pretend to be all tough, but you want to go up to Namsan Tower*⁴ to get us a love lock*⁵" his face contorted in feigned disgust and you laughed, "ogeulgeolida*⁶."

You shoved his arm playfully, blushing thinking about it. About how you'd actually find that cute, but he found it cheesy. This sight made him laugh harder.

"That's not what we are here for, smartass" you said in a low voice, but it didn't sound very convincing even if it was the truth.

"You do want to do it though, don't you?" his laugh was contagious and the more he joked as you made your way to the cable cars that would take you up Mount Namsan, the more you smiled.

"And if I did then what?" you stopped dead in your tracks and looked up at him with the cutest angry face he had ever seen. Your lips were pressed together in a tiny involuntarily pout that made your bright red cheeks puff out and your eyebrows were so tightly knit your nose was scrunched.

He went silent and his expression softened. With a sweet smile, his hands gently reached for your face and you felt his cold fingers wrap around your cheeks tenderly. His bright gaze fixed on yours as he squeezed you and your pouty lips parted making him giggle. They looked so kissable.

"If you did, I'd make sure to get the flashiest, most over-the-top padlock for us to embarrass you" he murmured trying to contain his laughter as you frowned confused, "and if that wasn't enough, I would make sure to place it on the most visible part of the bridge I could find."

"Hob-ah" you mumbled looking down feeling inadequate, it almost sounded cruel, "is that really what you think?*⁷"

Sure it was cliché, but it was romantic, a promise of everlasting love you'd seen on countless dramas growing up. Those were always too cute, too innocent, too idealistic to be reality. You felt like you were going to tear up for some stupid reason.

"Naekkeo" he called you in a mellow voice and you didn't want to look up. You looked so heartbroken having taken it to heart and he felt bad.

"Baby, look at me" at his words you looked up with wide eyes and he smiled proudly when you responded. Gotcha.

"I'm going to slap that pretty heart-shaped grin out of your face" you growled and he giggled looking at you with wide surprised eyes. Ouch.

"I was just playing with you, you know me. I would do all that solely so you know how much..." he felt a lump form in his throat knowing what he wanted to say, but not feeling capable of doing it.

What Hobi truly wanted was to tell you he'd do it so everyone would know how much he loved you and kiss your lips right after like he craved the moment he saw them just now.

That was the level of cheesy he'd shamelessly go for just for you, no matter what it looked like. No matter how much his members would surely make fun of him for it. But he was scared of telling you he loved you.

He was scared of the strong feelings he had slowly developed for you, of loving you too much and then being left high and dry. Not only his cool was out of control, he had no power over his feelings for you and nothing was more terrifying.

How could he tell you when you had never been close to telling him anything of the sort? What if he was the only one who was so hung up on you? What if you weren't saying it because you didn't feel that for him? He didn't want to say it to see you leave him because you didn't.

He was not ready for the warmth in his chest to burn, for the fluttering in his stomach to make him queasy as the butterflies died and decayed. For his daydreams filled with you to turn into sinister nightmares that mocked his hopes and dreams of finding the love he yearned for.

It sounded insensible to you to say it, because one of these days it could all go down the drain, because your life was just incompatible with everyone else's. There was nothing you hated more than false promises and you simply refused to let your heart speak. To let your heart tell him lies so that life ran its course and ended up destroying what you had.

Yet as you looked into Hoseok's sparkling gaze that was filled with nothing but hope, ironically, all you wanted was for him to say he'd get you that dumb lock because he loved you.

And you were mad at yourself for that; And he was mad at himself for choking. But you were both paralyzed by fear.

"...so you know how much I care about you. I'd do that for you," Hobi repeated himself sounding croaky as he finished his sentence.

What came out of him was incredibly underwhelming in comparison to what he truly wanted to say, even if it was still the subdued truth. You smiled at him softly moved by his words nevertheless and he smiled back at you, it didn't reach his eyes.

As you both looked away, he dropped his arms to his sides and you continued to walk, you could both feel something was off even when nothing of what had been said was bad in any way.

Your heart should have felt full because he cared about you enough to do that for you; and he should be satisfied you were happy when he told you he was only playing and he would do it for you.

For some reason that you both ignored of one another, neither of you did.

-

This puppy-eyed Hobi and his big bright eyes is my favorite gif of him ever. This man is wrecking me so bad, someone save me ^

I was thinking of this vlive for Hobi's look (exhibit a), but it doesn't look like leather on the gif, so let's pretend because exhibit b:

You all say my titles are misleading, but let Min Shooga jjang jjang man boong boong explain this genius thought process. They all often have a double or triple (in this case) meaning.

1) "I'm Thirsty" at first glance tells us about Hobi's intensified feelings of lust towards our girl because we know his drive is high and she's been gone and he's all over the place at the moment.

2) "I'm Thirsty" is also a nod to Hobi's solo debut single MORE. Go listen to it, of course he's thirsty for more because, as I've noted here in the story as well, his dream is his life and he is thirsty for more not for the fame, but because it makes him whole.

3) BTS' song Run linked above has lyrics that make me think of Hobi here. In particular, going back to the title of this chapter, Namjoon's verse goes like:
You're my sun, the one and only in this world
I bloom for you, but you make me thirsty
It's too late, too late
I can't live without you
Even if I'm drying out, I try harder to reach you

Namjoon uses a metaphor labelling himself as a flower with the person as the sun. While the sun is extremely important for plants to thrive, when he says "I can't live without you" he expresses how too much sun can dry him out, therefore making him thirsty. With too much intensity and light, rather than helping him prosper in his environment, his sun deprives him of his necessities, causing a metaphorical drought.

He highlights the importance of this person to him, as he uses the phrase "one and only in this world" to convey his feelings. He feels strongly towards them, and even while he is "drying out", from his sun, he still tries to get to them despite his own suffering.

Source of the lyrics analysis: https://genius.com/22133478

* Have a TMI for science: "Reflex erections - or erections that happen due to non-sexual stimuli - can occur when you experience any strong emotion, like anger, stress, or fear. You can also get an uninvited boner if something makes you think about sex or turns you on, whether it's the sight of your crush or that sandwich you just had for lunch (hey, the body's a mysterious place!)."

Source: https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/bamboozled-reflex-boners

*¹ Riding in Seoul just for fun:

Plus my mind went to Shut Up and Drive by Rhianna and Feel Good Time by P!nk (look up the MV if you wanna know why). Adding these to my OTW playlist.

*² A reminder that dong means neighbourhood in Korean, so it's the neighbourhood by the name of Namsan.

I imagined a sort of tunnel like the one on Run's MV, but unfortunately the shooting place for that one is a different one
https://www.koreaetour.com/bts-shooting-places/

*³

*⁴
https://dailytravelpill.com/how-to-get-to-namsan-seoul-tower-all-transport-options-prices/

*⁵ https://daebak.co/blogs/magazine/the-namsan-love-locks-%E2%9D%A4

*⁶ 오글거리다 is cringey, childish or cheesy, though there's no exact word. For instance, 노잼이다, the one that sounds like 'no jams' that Namjoon's used in the past, basically could be translated as lame or corny in certain contexts.

https://koreangrammardoctor.tumblr.com/post/183355973379/todays-korean-expression-%EC%98%A4%EA%B8%80%EA%B1%B0%EB%A6%AC%EB%8B%A4

*⁷ https://twitter.com/btsarmy2018x/status/1216008803851866112?s=20&t=pamG2Wm7u7f63kjjsZudUQ