After years of burying complaints and fears alike, it's hard to break out of old habits, Jungkook finding that he wants to bite down on his tongue and file his thoughts away somewhere unseen. Perhaps, if Yoongi hadn't texted, leaving open the opportunity for the two of them to meet, Jungkook would have swallowed the encounter down. Let it fade into the past until it was a nonissue. But Yoongi poses the question directly, and Jungkook refuses to lie.

"He asked me if I thought dad knew," Jungkook says quietly, his lips tensing for a moment before he shakes his head. "It didn't really sound like much of a question though, you know? Sounded like kind of a threat."

He briefly considers letting Yoongi know what raised his brother's suspicions — the rings that both of them wear on their hands — but he can't bring himself to do so. Refuses to let something so precious become an object of fear or uncertainty. He'll keep wearing the ring, even if there comes a day when his brother does call their father's attention to it.

If it ever gets that bad, he'll run.

"I don't think he'll really do anything," Jungkook muses, brow furrowed in thought. "He probably prefers to have something he can hold over my head."