Ho Yay / BTS Universe

In BTS's music video series, the story focuses more in certain relationships. Due to the way they're presented, the scarcity of other significant characters, and the general Lonely Together themes, they could easily be interpreted as Implied Love Interests.

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Jungkook and Yoongi

• There's a lot of material to interpret Yoongi and Jungkook's relationship as romantic:
  • Yoongi fornlornly runs a hand through the empty side of the bed he's laying on in a motel room in "I NEED U". As we learn in SAVE ME, Jungkook was with him in a different hotel not that long earlier.
    • From the behind the scenes material in Memories 2015, Suga says that this scene is meant to show him heartbroken after a break-up... but we never learn in any official BU material about any other character being in Yoongi's proximity during that period (let alone in a relationship with him) other than Jungkook.
  • There's a scene in "Prologue" where both sit together alone looking at the sea (while the others are still asleep in Seokjin's car), with a moment where the camera focuses on a Longing Look from Jungkook that Yoongi is not shown to notice.
  • They're generally very close in "I NEED U", "Prologue" and "RUN", with the two gravitating towards each other and Yoongi having a tendency to put his arm around Jungkook's shoulders to pull him close (and specifically Jungkook).
  • The fight in "RUN" can be read as a dysfunctional couple fighting, including Jungkook desperately attempting a Cooldown Hug on a drunk and self-destructive Yoongi.
  • They're shown in the Highlight Reels, The Notes and SAVE ME to frequently hang out alone in flashbacks, with Yoongi playing the piano while Jungkook listens. The WINGS Tour VCR shows Yoongi teaching Jungkook how to play.
  • In "Euphoria", there are two scenes with Ho Yay: in one, Jungkook saves a passed-out Yoongi from the fire; in the other, while the group is generally goofing around together, there's a moment where they're shown simply sitting close, side by side. For comparison, Hoseok is seen making goofy dances in front of Jimin, while Tae (sitting) and Namjoon (standing behind him) look at the landscape - both pairings that have a ton of Ho Yay of their own.
  • If previous albums and concepts really are connected to the BU, there's also these concept images from Skool Luv Affair.
• In SAVE ME, Jungkook is revealed to have seen Yoongi earlier in one of the motels the latter uses to spend the night (since Yoongi is homeless). It's not clear what the circumstances are, but while it's very unlikely anything happened there... why was Jungkook there in the first place?
  • It's not given much attention, but Jungkook is the one who receives a call after Yoongi is taken to the hospital, meaning he's Yoongi's emergency number - though this is also likely because Yoongi has been kicked out of home with no one else to contact.
  • Jungkook is the one who reacts more strongly to Yoongi's death in one of the loops, falling fully into a Heroic BSoD.
• In The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes(as well as SAVE ME), we get a moment of Jungkook and Yoongi hanging out alone, with the former listening to the latter play piano and feeling he's about to cry from the music. Then when the teacher suddenly bursts into the room to hit and berate Jungkook, Yoongi shelters him and silently pushes and threatens the teacher away, getting expelled as a result.
  • We also get their reunion years after Yoongi left school, days before the events of the main plot. A lot of focus is given to their reaction to seeing each other, with Yoongi finding him due to the melody Jungkook was playing on a piano.
  • Seokjin's reasoning for having Jungkook rescue Yoongi from the latter's suicide attempts is that he notices a Commonality Connection between the two, describing both as having the same look in their eyes and thus being the only one to really understand each other. He first noticed this in the first trip to the beach, when Jungkook approached Yoongi despite the latter's seemingly less approachable nature and tried to ask him if he wanted to give up on the world, too.
  • Yoongi reacts pretty badly to Jungkook getting into a car accident and being left in a coma. The fact that he cries because of it is described as uncharacteristic of him.
  • We also get a scene of Jungkook having a fever dream of Yoongi standing on his bed while it goes in flames, to which Jungkook reacts crying and screaming "We said we’d all go to the sea together" while running towards him.
  • The girl that appears with Yoongi in the Highlight Reels also appears in the book, and she's given several qualities (assertive, stern, difficult to impress) that make her a direct Foil to Jungkook in her interactions with Yoongi. Several of the other girls in the book and short film have various degrees of romantic undertones with some of the boys (Seokjin, Namjoon and Jungkook in particular), so these parallels really stand out.
  • In one of the later Notes in the book, Yoongi gets lost in the woods in the middle of the rain and has an epiphany. This epiphany involves a memory of Jungkook listening to him play the piano and saying it's "really nice" - highlighting the importance Jungkook has to him, and once again highlighting the contrast between Jungkook and the girl above.
• In MAP OF THE SOUL: 7, we get this Note from Yoongi (from papercrowns' translation):
  I thought of Jungkook's words.
  
  "It's because I like your music, hyung. It's because listening to your piano makes me cry. Me, I wanted to die several times a day. But when I hear hyung's piano I want to live. That's why. I want to tell you, that's why. What I mean is, hyung's music is like my heart."
  
  Drunk and sprawled out on the floor, I thought of Jungkook's expression as he repeated himself.

Jimin and Hoseok

• Like Jungkook and Yoongi, they have scenes where they have No Sense of Personal Space in "I NEED U" and "RUN", including ticklying each other and lying together on the ground with their arms around each other.
• Jimin seems desperate to prove himself as a dancer worthy of Hoseok, as he explicitly states in the Notes.
  • Some have also read Jimin's scenes in the Highlight Reels as him feeling jealousy after Hoseok becomes close with the girl, and practicing even harder in order to get Hoseok's attention back.
• In "Prologue", there's a moment (which camera and editing focus on) where Hoseok sees that Jimin is asleep and puts a blanket over him.
• In the Notes, Jimin notices that Hoseok always walks with him after school despite living in the opposite side of town, often taking deviations and turns while taking the lead to make the walk longer. Jimin also mentions not wanting those walks to end.
  • After Jimin's mother stops him from following Jimin after the younger's seizure, Hoseok reacts pretty badly.
• After Jimin escapes from the hospital, Hoseok takes him into his apartment.

Namjoon and Taehyung

• They're shown to be frequently getting in trouble and running off from authority together, constantly looking at each other complicitly and laughing together. The whole thing with engaging in delinquent behavior seems to only be a thing between the two, as they're shown to hide it from the others in the Notes.
  • This moment.
• Like with the previous two pairings, they're also very close in "I NEED U" and "RUN". Like Jimin and Hoseok, they lie together on the ground with their arms around each other (which V and RM described behind the scenes as "a date" and "very romantic", respectively).
• Taehyung clearly looks up to Namjoon, and is shown reminiscing about him (and specifically him) in the Highlight Reels.
  • We get two flashbacks to the "Prologue" short film, both to scenes of Taehyung with Namjoon. One of them is the shot of Namjoon standing over Tae from the latter's point of view in the floor, the sun behind him, and taking him by the hand to help him stand up. Right when we get this flashback, Tae is shown reminiscing in the present, looking up with a wistful expression.
  • He even replicates his behavior with the girl in the Highlight Reels, with him now taking on Namjoon's role, up to playing golf with random objects. The fact that Taehyung picks his cellphone (which is associated with both Tae and Namjoon) as a golf ball, though, can be read as resentment towards the older boy, who seems to have failed to help Taehyung (by not answering his calls?) when he needed it most.
  • Related to the above, Namjoon is shown to regret and be deeply tormented by his lack of action regarding Taehyung, as seen in the "Reflection" teaser.
• One of the Notes for Answer mentions that Namjoon knows that Taehyung has been having frequent, horribly realistic nightmares, of Yoongi dying, Jungkook getting into an accident and Namjoon himself getting into a fight. He desperately pleads Namjoon to not go anywhere out of fear.
• The end of Episode 7 of SAVE ME, with Taehyung smiling and asking Namjoon if he could stay for the night, was found by some to be oddly suggestive.

Jin and Taehyung

• Jin and Taehyung also have their moments in WINGS.
  • In "Blood, Sweat and Tears", Taehyung is shown as a fallen angel (also interpreted as Judas, Icarus and/or Abraxas), and he goes behind Jin at one point to cover his eyes; in the climax, Jin walks up to a winged statue and kisses it on the lips, with the statue then being revealed to represent Taehyung.
  • In the second part of BTS' performance in the 2016 MAMAs, both scenes are mixed into one... with Taehyung kneeling right behind a sitting Jin, and grabbing him from his face and chest. It helps that the lyrics of "Blood, Sweat and Tears" talk about a forbidden kind of love, and can be interpreted as referring to a person of either gender.