The worst thing about being friends with your ex is that they will always feel something about your breakup, so they will always insert themselves into your love life at the worst possible moment, sometimes with disastrous results.

Or at least, this is what Min Yoongi has found to be true.

He's still friends with Kim Taehyung, even five years after the fact. Taehyung has some kind of horrible guilt complex over the fact that their relationship fizzled down into embers before being put out all together, but Yoongi had always kind of known they wouldn't work out. Taehyung was all sparklers and bright lights, nights out and laughter and Yoongi, well. He wasn't. Never had been, and it didn't seem like it was going to change any time soon.

He supposes that what hurt the most about their breakup was that Taehyung didn't even want to try to make it work anymore. But Yoongi couldn't blame him for not wanting to try, because he... He hadn't tried, either. Taehyung had come in to Yoongi's room at the tattoo parlor he worked at and said quite simply, hyung, this isn't working anymore, right.

Yoongi couldn't lie to him so he'd quietly agreed and it was over, just like that. Taehyung brought back his things and Yoongi gave him back his things, and the two of them drifted apart, barely talked, for almost a year. Then Taehyung found out about Namjoon and when that relationship went all to hell—because he and Yoongi argued, because they had different ideas about what should and shouldn't be, and it was rare that someone got Yoongi so riled up as to get genuinely angry but Namjoon managed it, got under his skin and stayed there and really, what they'd had was more like a ten month hatesex marathon than anything else—he'd been there to make sure Yoongi's physical bruises healed, even though he couldn't do anything about the emotional ones.

Yoongi knew enough about himself to know that he bruised like a peach, on the inside. A grip too tight, he'd be crushed to a pulp. A grip too light, he'd fall.

He avoided relationships after that, despite Taehyung's misguided but well meaning attempts to set him up with people. People with normal day jobs, people with unmarked skin, people who didn't understand why it was that Yoongi was... The way he was and weren't particularly interested in finding out. He did it because he thought it was what Yoongi needed, maybe. Wanted.

But at the end of the day the real reason Taehyung did it was because he had Park Jimin, and he'd left Yoongi with nobody. Nothing.

Yoongi's over it. He's so unbelievably far over it that he's out in space or something. He can't be angry with Kim Taehyung for wanting what was best for himself at the time and is clearly still the best for him, as five years on he and Jimin are practically married, living in the same small house with their dogs and their jobs and their... Their lives.

Yoongi is twenty-eight years old and lives in a one bedroom apartment with no pets and no shelves and no bed frame for his mattress. He doesn't really have his shit together, and frankly the idea of putting forth the effort is too much.

He patched up his relationship with Namjoon sometime in the past two years. Neither of them said they were sorry, but they'd come to an understanding of some kind. Namjoon, like Taehyung, wanted what was best for Yoongi. The only fucking problem is that no one knows what was best for Yoongi, not even Yoongi himself, which is fucking ridiculous. There's some part of himself that had once been convinced he'd've had his life together by now: he'd have gotten a partner, he'd have a place to live that wasn't the same shitty one-room place he's been living in since before the beginning of his and Taehyung's relationship, but somehow.

Somehow.

Yoongi wakes up to the sound of his alarm—gropes out and pushes the snooze button before sitting up. His room is lit with milky streams of sun coming through the blinds and he groans, pushing himself off the mattress and rolling onto the floor on all fours before sitting up to kneel, squinting out into the bedroom. He's not going to be able to go back to sleep with that much sun streaming in. Besides, his floor is cleared off, his closet door is open, and the shower is calling his name. He struggles up and pushes the off button on his alarm clock before it can start beeping again, staggering into the bathroom with his eyes mostly closed to take a shower.

When he gets out, he hears someone in his kitchen and groans. It's Sunday. It's Sunday and that means Taehyung is in his kitchen because he's heard about Yoongi's most recent relationship failure with a guy named Hongbin or rather—two guys, one named Hongbin and the other named Wonsik. And it wasn't so much as a relationship as it was a month or two of some really mindblowing sex before they all got bored of one another and went their separate ways but still, Taehyung treats every break-up like it's the end of the world and Park Jimin knows everyone and everything so of course he knew, and told Taehyung, and now Taehyung is in his kitchen at 10:25 on a Sunday morning, because he knows Yoongi gets up at ten and takes a twenty-minute shower. His routine is nearly infallible.

"Hey, hyung," he says, smiling over at Yoongi, who squints and hitches his towel up his chest before going to his bedroom and closing the door. He doesn't like being nude, or even half-nude, in front of other people, unless they're having sex. He dries off, uses his favored moisturizer all over his skin and pulls on a t-shirt and lounge pants. He ruffles his towel over his hair until the dark strands are fluffy and damp instead of soaking wet, and goes out into the living room.

He can smell that Taehyung is making grilled cheese.

Grilled cheese and tomato soup as breakfast on a Sunday probably sounds weird to everyone but the two of them, because for a long time it was all Yoongi ate, aside from ramen and water. It's his comfort food. It's his, I need to be taken care of right now food.

"I'm fine," he says, moving to hang up his towel while Taehyung chirps out 'I know' and continues making food like he didn't hear. "Why are you here, anyway." He might as well go through the niceties. Taehyung might not know what happened but he'll want to know the details, so he'll know how to talk to Hongbin and Wonsik if the opportunity comes up.

"I heard you got dumped," he says.

"It was a mutual decision."

"You have a new tattoo."

"I give myself tattoos all the time, Taehyung."

"It's on your pinky."

It's true. Yoongi had been sitting at his table on a slow night and he'd drawn the floral design over his pinky and he'd tattooed it in pastel blue and green. It'd hurt so bad that Sunggyu had to come in and finish it for him, because his right hand wouldn't stay steady enough to do the shading without slipping.

"So?"

"You only hurt yourself when it's bad, hyung," Taehyung replies, and offers out a plate with a bowl and two grilled cheese sandwiches on it. "Go eat."

It will always feel weird, being mother-henned by Taehyung, but Yoongi supposes that it's better than the way he used to try and make Yoongi feel better, which was just being obnoxiously cute until Yoongi snapped in annoyance and made Taehyung feel even more guilty.

He goes to his couch and pulls the coffee table close. Drapes a blanket over his legs and carefully tears apart the sandwiches to dip them in his soup. Taehyung joins him a minute later, crossing his legs. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, and Yoongi shrugs.

"What's there to talk about?" he asks, chewing and swallowing the bite in his mouth before speaking again. "It was a sex thing, we broke it off because it wasn't fun anymore." Yeah, maybe Yoongi had been a bit enamoured with the way Hongbin's bright teeth and dimples showed when he smiled and maybe he'd thought Wonsik's jaw and clavicles and hands were comfortable to hold but that's all it was. Cute, comfortable. He knew from the beginning it wouldn't last. That sort of thing never does, for him.

"You don't do sex things, hyung."

"Don't tell me what I do and don't do like you know better than me, Kim Taehyung." It's as much of a warning as Taehyung will get, and it's as much of a warning as Yoongi is capable of giving. He doesn't want to talk about it, to examine his feelings too closely. The idea of seeing the fraying ends of his emotional capabilities is too much.

There is some part of himself that hates how he'd never really achieved his goal of having his life together. Not really, not like... Everyone else. He's a high-school dropout, a tattoo and piercing artist at a really reputable parlor, he makes good money, pays his bills on time, but still he feels the hole in his life getting bigger and bigger with every passing day. He's missing something, there's something he's not achieving with his life, he's not...

Not good enough.

The thought makes him put his plate down, his appetite gone. Taehyung looks over at him in confusion and concern and while Yoongi would love to lie to him and say it's all right, that everything is fine, he doesn't want to lie. Nothing is fine, not really. And maybe it has less to do with Hongbin and Wonsik and more to do with the fact that he'd been trying to fill that empty place with sex and instead found the shreds of emotional connection to cling to and... And he was hurt, that it had been taken away by Hongbin's attempted apathetic talk, by Wonsik's honestly apologetic smile.

He pushes the coffee table away. He pulls the blanket off and makes his way back to his room. The parlor isn't open on Sundays or Mondays, so if he goes to sleep now, and sleeps until Tuesday morning, maybe he'll feel better.

He'd never thought this would happen. Honestly never thought about the idea that he might end up alone, with a job he loves but a life he hates, and an ex-lover who can't help himself from trying to make it better and only succeeding in making it worse.

Taehyung's attempts are better than nothing at all, he supposes.

Taehyung doesn't come into the bedroom until Yoongi is already comfortable back beneath his sheets in a tank top and briefs. He doesn't come in until he's cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and when he does get into the bed with Yoongi he spoons up tight to his back and hugs him. Yoongi hates that it used to mean something. Hates how much it fucking hurts.

"They're stupid, selfish assholes for not wanting you," Taehyung says, and something in Yoongi's chest rips in half.

"Yeah, well. You didn't want me, either."

It's a cheap shot. Yoongi knows it's a cheap shot but it hurts and it makes Taehyung sit up and pull away, creates that cold space against his back that he's used to, now.

"Min Yoongi," Taehyung says with indignation, and Yoongi keeps himself still, keeps his eyes closed. Taehyung gives him a moment and when Yoongi doesn't respond he gets up and makes his way to the door. "I'll come back next week," he says, and Yoongi feels something close to relief when Taehyung doesn't sound like it hurts anymore. Taehyung is aware by now that Yoongi is just trying to protect himself in the only way he knows how—by lashing out, by baring his metaphorical teeth in threats he'll never carry out. He knows Yoongi is hard on the outside, like stone; he knows that inside, where it matters, he bruises and he's bruised now. Just a little.

Taehyung'll come back next week and maybe he'll make pancakes for breakfast. No more grilled cheeses.

Not until Yoongi's heart breaks again, anyway.

~

"There's someone I want you to meet," Taehyung says, three months later while sitting in the booth across from Yoongi, who blinks at him over his milkshake and fries. It's midnight on a Friday and they're waiting for Jimin to get out of practice.

"No," he says, after pretending to give the idea a bit of consideration.

"Hyung," Taehyung whines, kicking his legs.

"No," he says again. "Stop it. You know I hate it."

"You'll like him!"

"That's what you said about the last time I let you do this to me."

(the last time had been right after Namjoon. Taehyung would feel bad about it, but he knows that Yoongi and Daehwan were good for one another in some ways: after all, they've figured out another thing that doesn't work for Yoongi, and that's a step in the right direction. Eventually they'll run out of things to cross out and all that will be left is the things that will work! ...hopefully.)

"You'll like him," Taehyung promises again, almost pouting. Yoongi gives him a deadpan look at the childish expression and Taehyung sighs in resignation. "It was worth a shot. But seriously, I think you should at least meet him. We're gonna have a get-together—"

"No."

"—next week and—"

"No."

"Hyung!" Park Jimin's voice rings out across the diner and Yoongi is saved from having to say no to Taehyung for the fifth time. Jimin slides into the booth, freshly showered and smiling like he has every reason in the world to be happy and to be fair, Yoongi supposes he does. He's got a good career, a great hobby, a partner who would do anything for him, whom he would do anything for. He's got a house, and a dog, and a car, and...

"What?" Yoongi asks, drawn back into the conversation by Jimin saying his name in a tone of alarm he usually reserves for when Taehyung is doing something spectacularly stupid.

"You're coming, right? To the party next week?"

"Party?" Yoongi says, doing his best to play dumb.

"Yoongi," he whines. He whines more than Taehyung. If there is anyone on the planet who is a better whiner than Park Jimin when he wants something, Yoongi will make out with a polar bear.

(it's as viable a romance option as any.)

"Please?" Jimin asks. "It's just a bunch of people I know from school and the dance studio, we were gonna get together and hang out—"

"Like a reunion?"

"No," Jimin shakes his head. "We still get together at practice, you know? Some of us. But, you should come, hyung. My friends don't even think you exist."

Yoongi doesn't know why it would matter to Jimin's friends if he existed or not—it wasn't as though any of them know him personally, or are likely to. Shouldn't they be caring more about the existence of Kim Taehyung, Park Jimin's Forever +1?

"I'll think about it," he says, knowing that he won't, knowing that on the day of the event Taehyung will probably show up two hours before the event and have to drag him bodily from his house after squeezing him into those stupid leather pants he still has in the back of his closet and some loose white shirt that exposes his collarbones (they're one of your best features hyung, show them off!) and he'll be forced to socialize with a bunch of strangers and when he's had too much to drink he'll do something stupid like call Hongbin or Wonsik or just start crying for no reason—

He halts his train of thought, struggles to breathe. He's going too fast. Everything else is going too slow. His heart usually hurts when he looks at Jimin and Taehyung and it feels worse now than it ever has, because now they're ganging up on him. The, get Yoongi laid caravan, previously made up of a metaphorical mustard-yellow microbus driven by Taehyung, has turned into a little metaphorical convoy, because now Park Jimin is riding alongside on one of those stupid motorcycles with the little passenger car on the side, and their stupid dog is probably in it, wearing goggles with his ears and tongue flapping in the wind.

Yoongi knows they're trying to help, he knows. He knows they're worried, because his birthday is coming up soon, he'll be twenty-nine and single and alone in his apartment he knows they're concerned but god, god he just doesn't want them to hover over him like rainclouds, like parents, like a pair of vultures.

Even as he thinks it he knows it's inaccurate. Jimin and Taehyung aren't waiting there to pick him apart to the bones, they're there trying to lift him up and he can't—he just can't understand why they would bother to make the effort when Yoongi himself can't find the energy.

"I," he starts, remembering that he'd promised to stay up and watch a movie with them, if he was feeling up to it. His word has caused them to stop talking and they're both looking at him intently and Yoongi feels his heart start racing. "I'm gonna, you know I'm just gonna go."

"Hyung?" Taehyung asks, but Yoongi is already out the door into the cold late January air, hugging his jacket more tightly around his body, pulling his hood up over his head. It's not that far to his apartment, he can walk it. "Hyung!"

Taehyung's voice echoes from the diner door and Yoongi starts to run.

~

By the time he gets to his apartment complex, Yoongi's fingers are so cold he can't hold the key steady. It takes three tries to get through the main door, but only one to get into his apartment, where the silence and darkness greet him. His phone has stopped buzzing in his pocket but he pushes his jacket off his shoulders and kicks off his boots once he pulls the zippers down. He's so cold. So tired. His lungs are burning like he swallowed liquid nitrogen but all he does is stagger to his bedroom and drop to his knees on the mattress, then to his chest. He turns onto his back to wiggle out of his clothes and under the blankets, pulling them up over his head.

Yoongi is twenty-eight years old and he deals with his problems by ignoring them until they go away. Or running away from them. He's not a fighter, not really. For all of his bravado and swag, for all that he's covered in tattoos and has eleven piercings, he's not... He's not a fighter. He never has been. He didn't fight to stay in school, he didn't fight to keep Taehyung, or to work things out with Namjoon. He doesn't fight for higher wages at his job or even at the grocery store, where the sign said strawberries were four dollars a box, but they were ringing up at seven. He always just pays seven.

Yoongi used to be a fighter. Back when he was young and stupid and reckless, back when he stayed out too late and didn't go home or to school, back when he smoked at the trainyard and watched the stars come out because you could see them, where he used to live.

Sometimes Yoongi wonders when he stopped being brave, but he knows.

He knows when.

But like all of Yoongi's problems he's ignored it, and ignored it, and ignored it—and eventually, the problem went away forever. And he took a piece of Yoongi with him.

~

Sunggyu doesn't ask if he's alright on Tuesday, when he shows up a half hour late looking like he hasn't slept in three days. He just offers out Yoongi's usual Americano from the place next door and cocks his head to one side.

Yoongi shakes his head and walks back to his cube—where he does all of his work. He has three appointments for the day, luckily none of which are scheduled for less than an hour away, but he likes to have the time to get ready. To prepare the artwork, to ready it for flesh.

He took up tattooing when it became clear he was never going to graduate. His parents had been... Less than understanding. Less than ready to accept that their younger son (who, until high school, had flourished in the academic environment despite his tendency to doodle and daydream) was going to attempt a career in art—in body art no less, something that many older people still found quite distasteful. They hadn't disowned him, but they had proven to be less than enthused, and not very supportive. Even now they sent him cooly worded Christmas cards with pictures of his older brother and his beautiful, beautiful wife and two children, as though to spite him further than they already had by saying that art wasn't worth his time. Look at all these things you should have, they seemed to mock. But you've gone and fucked it up, haven't you? Like everything else.

Yoongi likes tattooing. It's visceral, it's contact with another human being that doesn't involve complex emotional entanglement. It's small talk and learning about why someone wants to permanently dig ink into their skin, it's forging an emotional connection when they cry when they see it, when they talk about how much they miss their parents, or their friend, or sometimes when they're just so happy that his floral work is so beautiful.

Yoongi decorates his arms in flowers.

From his wrist to his shoulder, his left arm is covered in thin-lined, soft-colored flowers. Sunggyu tattooed the first few drawings when Yoongi started to apprentice under him and Yoongi works to continue it. He chooses his flowers and colors carefully. He works, when he can, from actual flowers—presses them to the skin covered in light purple paint and traces their shapes. Sunggyu is proud of the superior artistry and creativity of his protege, says so often, but Yoongi still isn't sure that he believes him. It's just... nice to hear. It doesn't make him blush anymore. He just bobs his head and offers a smile he's so sure everyone can see through, .

He moves through his appointments with professional ease. Nothing intense today: a mandala, a freehand swallow, and a set of four aces set in an artistic pattern and a banner reading, ALL IN. When his last appointment leaves he looks at his hand, and then at the little blue flowers he'd tattooed over his pinky, the knuckle and side of his hand.

"Hyung," he says, and Sunggyu pokes his head in, his gauges clear with pretty little mayflowers and copper spirals set into the glass.

"Yeah?"

"Wanna help me with this?" he offers his hand out and Sunggyu, after a moment of consideration, nods.

"Sure," he slides down onto the stool while Yoongi gets up into the chair and lays his hand on the armrest. "What do you want?"

Yoongi swallows hard.

"French willow," he says, already offering his phone to Sunggyu, who squints down at the screen.

"Okay," his boss nods and grabs for one of the violet pencils to freehand three of the small flowers and a couple of leaves, making sure to align it with the work Yoongi has already done. The star of a blossom brushes up over his knuckle to come to a point at the middle the first part of his ring finger. "S'gonna hurt," he warns, once Yoongi has given his approval.

"I know," Yoongi says. He closes his eyes after Sunggyu's prepared the gun, and takes a slow breath when the first punch of the needle hits his skin.

Bravery always hurts.

~

Just as he suspected, Kim Taehyung shows up (admittedly quite early) the following Saturday, determined to drag Yoongi out of the house and make him socialize. Yoongi is still laying in bed. It's four in the afternoon and he hasn't gotten up yet, except to use the bathroom. His clothes are strewn everywhere, the legless coffee table he uses as a nightstand forcefully cleared of anything on it, leaving only the cheap particle board and a mess of lamp, books, pill bottles and other little things on the carpet. Taehyung stands in the doorway to the bedroom before turning and speaking quietly to someone else and Yoongi curls in tighter on himself. Great. He's brought Jimin with him. Just what he wants right now.

"C'mon, hyung," Taehyung says, pulling back Yoongi's blankets. Yoongi hasn't eaten in two days and he doesn't want to be forced into it, he doesn't want to go to a party, he wants to be left alone but Taehyung isn't really listening. Or rather, he listens but knows what to ignore as he hauls Yoongi up from the floor (we've really gotta get you a bed frame hyung) and out into the hallway. Yoongi can hear Jimin in the kitchen and wonders if Taehyung brought supplies, because there's nothing in his kitchen to eat. He'd thrown it all out in a fit yesterday, even his seven dollar strawberries.

"Go on," Taehyung says, nudging him into the bathroom. "Take a shower, shave. I'll clean up a bit, yeah?" He doesn't give Yoongi the chance to protest or say no—he just closes the door and Yoongi is left standing on the white tile, looking at himself in the mirror and wondering when he'd gotten so thin, when his hair had grown out so long.

Sometimes he hates that he's still friends with Taehyung. He hates that he tries so much, hates that he still cares enough about Yoongi to try at all because if he didn't, Yoongi could probably just kill himself and no one would notice or or give it too much thought. But the only things stopping him are Kim Taehyung—knowing he would cry, knowing he would feel guilty and responsible, more than he already does for Yoongi's disgusting failings as a human being—and one other thing he doesn't talk about. One other person he doesn't think about, promised himself years ago he wouldn't think about anymore because he'd slipped through Yoongi's fingers when Yoongi forgot how to be brave, forgot how to care and love and live. Sunshine and light had slipped out of his grasp and it was Yoongi's own fault.

The diagnosis hadn't been the end of the world. His faulty brain chemistry isn't the end of the world. He knows that now of course but at the time it had felt like there was no way to continue on with his life the way it was. He'd just been effectively kicked out of his parents house, he had nowhere to go but the bedroom of someone who cared enough about him to pin him down in the middle of a violent, self-hating rage and make him promise. Promise, promise, promise.

You have to take care of yourself, you can't kill yourself, promise me. Promise me.

So he'd promised. Hugged tight to a warm chest he'd promised and cried and let himself be weak and just like every other promise he's ever made he broke it.

He thinks about that moment as he turns on the water for the shower, peels away his three-day-old clothes. He thinks about the smell of sunflower shampoo and warm skin, he thinks about the hands in the back of his shirt and he thinks about how he still wonders if anyone will love him like that again. If anyone can. He doubts it. Years of medication and self-governing isolation, years of mistreating the people who call themselves his friends or lovers, years of numbness that have rendered him incapable of...

You're just not trying, are you. You don't even want to try.

He shakes his head violently and gets into the shower. He scrubs at his skin and rakes his fingers over his scalp. He wraps himself in a towel from chest to knees and tip-toes to his room to avoid Taehyung or Jimin seeing him. He closes the door to his room and sees that Taehyung has made the bed, righted his 'nightstand.' He's laid out some clothes (ripped jeans, instead of the leather pants, but he'd been right about the white shirt) and Yoongi's favorite boots, the white Doc Martens with the black stitching and laces.

Taehyung was Yoongi's lover for almost two years. He tried so hard. He tried so hard and all Yoongi ever did was push him away and he deserves the way it ended, he knows he does. He knows he deserved for Taehyung to have found physical and emotional solace in Park Jimin for the last five months they'd been 'together,' he knows he deserved for Jimin to be waiting for Taehyung outside of the parlor just in case he needed to intervene on Taehyung's behalf. Jimin had asked once, only once, while tipsy and soft, why Yoongi had let Taehyung go. Why he'd let go of someone so tender, someone who obviously cared about him and trusted him, someone who had held onto him even when he wanted to let go.

It was the right thing to do, Yoongi replied. He didn't want to stay. I wasn't going to make him. And they've never mentioned it again. It was the right thing to do then, and Yoongi wouldn't go back and reverse the decision. It was the right thing to do because now Taehyung is happy, he nearly glows with it, and Yoongi is... Is mostly content to sit in the shadows and watch him shine.

He wishes Taehyung wouldn't try to shine that light on him so often. Some people just aren't... Made for sunlight. Yoongi certainly isn't, if his track record is anything to go by.

"Hyung," Taehyung says through the door, and Yoongi yanks on a pair of underwear and the t-shirt, pulling on his tall socks and wiggling into the jeans before Taehyung cautiously opens the door.

"What," he asks, turning to look at him through the damp, somewhat frizzy fall of his hair. Taehyung offers him a beaming smile.

"C'mon, Jiminie made pancakes. You don't want to go to a party on an empty stomach, do you?"

"Who said I'm going," Yoongi sulks, walking to his closet to find a sweater—an unfashionable but comfortable black cardigan that has sleeves long enough to cover most of his fingers. Taehyung grabs his left hand and pushes the sleeve up, forever ignorant of the idea of personal space, and looks curiously at the new ink covering Yoongi's fingers and the top of his hand.

"What's it mean, hyung?" he asks, looking at Yoongi through his dark brown hair.

Yoongi once made the mistake of telling Taehyung that every tattoo he had has a meaning. Has something important about it that makes him want it. He's not the type to get frivolous tattoos, despite the fact that he tattoos people like that nearly every day. In a moment of rare complete sanity and tenderness he'd murmured the story of the flowers to Taehyung, who listened with rapt attention and affection. Taehyung had kissed every bloom that had been present, then. Kissed to the inside of Yoongi's elbow and they'd made love, that was the only word for it. It was one of the few times Yoongi was completely exposed, vulnerable and Taehyung had never dropped him, never squeezed too tight. Yoongi hadn't deserved him then, and he doesn't deserve him now.

Tears threaten his eyes and Taehyung watches him as his breathing picks up and his stomach tightens. If he'd eaten anything in the last twelve hours, he'd be running to the bathroom to vomit but instead he just stands there with Taehyung holding his hand in both of his, waiting for a response with the patience of a saint. "It's french willow," he says, and Taehyung strokes his fingers over the pink flowers. "It's," he's starting to hyperventilate, to choke. Taehyung just waits, like he's always waited. Even when Yoongi doesn't deserve it, especially when he doesn't deserve it.

"What's it for, Yoongi?" Taehyung asks, and Yoongi wants to get angry at him for dropping the honorific but all he can do is stammer out words, his brain turning off amid all of the stimulation.

"Bravery," he whispers, and he finds himself pressed to Taehyung's chest in a tight hug, feels hands up and down his back when he brings his hands up over his face to cry.

~

When Yoongi's done having his stupid little fit, he pats down his face with a cool towel and moves out to the kitchen. Jimin is giving him a cautious, worried look and Yoongi brushes it off as he takes the plate Taehyung offers him and sits on the worn-out couch that had come with the apartment. He can feel their worried gazes on the back of his head and he wants to hate them for it, but can't.

"Would you two stop staring like I'm gonna turn into a pumpkin or something," he says, and he can almost feel the tension drop off and away; he knows that Jimin has loosened his shoulders and Taehyung is smiling.

"How do we know you won't, hyung," Taehyung asks with a laugh. "We're gonna be out late, will you turn into a pumpkin if we keep you out past your bedtime?"

"It's already past my bedtime," he lies, with a sulky pout audible in the words. Jimin snorts a laugh and lifts his mug from the counter, takes a sip.

"Well, we made coffee, so no excuses hyung," he says, and Yoongi feels a flash of something warm for Jimin, something like brotherhood. Jimin will never tolerate his bullshit the way Taehyung does and Yoongi's glad—someone else has to be there when Taehyung falls back from Yoongi's pull away. "You're gonna come."

"I'm gonna come," Yoongi sighs, holding his plate under his mouth to make sure he doesn't get any maple syrup or grease on his shirt.

~

He rides in the back seat of Jimin's responsible and respectable car all the way to... Wherever they're going. He has earbuds in, listens to the soundtracks of games he used to play, films he used to like. When they pull to a stop Yoongi looks out the window and actually sees where they are. It's a nondescript building, like the place where Jimin has dance practice on Fridays, and Jimin parks the car, climbs out. Yoongi does the same, feeling like the worst third wheel in the history of the world when Taehyung comes around to grab his wrist like a wayward child. He realizes, with more than a little relief, that there's a train stop not far down the road, so he can escape if he needs to. Wants to. He wonders if someone had suggested the place on purpose for that exact reason. Seems like something Taehyung would do.

But he lets himself get dragged in by one hand, the other pulling his headphones out of his ears to tuck them into the bag he wears slung across his body, the one that fits his phone, ipod and wallet and not much else. The hallways all look the same and after a few minutes of walking, they come to a door with the word PARTY written on it. He tries to skid to a halt but Taehyung already has too much momentum for him to stop, and he staggers into the room, hopefully hidden by Taehyung's slightly larger body.

The music isn't too loud, but there are a lot of people milling around, talking, laughing. It looks like a more intimate get-together than Yoongi had been anticipating and he feels discomfort crawling over his skin like beetles. Taehyung tugs him along until he reaches a good place to stop—near a wall, a bit away from the clusters of people standing and talking, on the opposite end of the room from the speakers. "I'll get you something to drink, hyung," Taehyung says, and Yoongi looks over at him, sharp. "No alcohol, I know," he replies, and Yoongi drops his hand, leaning into the wall. Jimin has already gone off in search of his friends and Yoongi feels distinctly out of place. Parties have never really been his thing, not even when he was young and reckless. He doesn't like crowds or loud noises.

He fiddles with the hems of his sweater, looking down at the floor and taking deep, slow breaths. Taehyung comes back with a can of soda and grins. "Lemme find'em," he says, and disappears again. Yoongi concentrates on his drink instead of the overwhelming noise. Tries to think of the comforting sound of a tattoo gun, the broken whir of the air conditioner, the squeak of his leather chair. He's almost completely lost in his re-creation of his studio that when Taehyung comes back, he's so startled he almost spills his drink.

"Hyung," Taehyung says, and Yoongi can see that he's got someone tall behind him. Someone tall and somewhat broad, with dark hair and large eyes. "Hyung, this is Jeon Jeongguk, he went to school with me'n Jimin!" Yoongi looks up at Jeon Jeongguk and sees him smile, his eyes curve and his teeth are a bit large for his mouth. His nose is wide and there's a peppering of acne scarring across his cheeks but somehow it adds to the humanity, it makes him seem less like a statue and more like a person.

"Hi," Jeon Jeongguk says, giving a wave, and Yoongi wants to glare at Taehyung but he can't risk his expression being misread by someone who doesn't know him very well. Instead he manages a smile (or... hopefully it's a smile) and nods his head in greeting.

"Jeonggukie is looking for a tattoo artist," Taehyung explains. "I thought you might want to, you know, show off or something?"

"It's hard to show off tattooing skills outside the parlor, Taehyung," Yoongi says, annoyed with what Taehyung is doing.

"Show him your sleeve!"

Shit. Taehyung has already told the kid (he's automatically the kid to Yoongi, because he's obviously younger despite his greater height) and if he doesn't do it Taehyung is going to make that face at him for the rest of the night. So he carefully pulls his left arm out of his cardigan and offers it out. To his credit the kid doesn't grab him, doesn't forcefully turn his arm over or pull at his elbow. Instead his eyes get wide and bright and he smiles, showing off those teeth.

"You did this all yourself?" he asks, and Yoongi shrugs.

"Most of them."

"He did draw all of them though," Taehyung says, and Jeongguk looks beyond impressed. He reminds Yoongi of a small child, so excited for everything, bright and beaming.

"That's so cool," he says, and Taehyung laughs as Yoongi pulls his cardigan back on. "Do you have a card I can...?"

"Yeah," Yoongi reaches into the side pocket of his bag and offers out the little piece of paper to Jeongguk, who tucks it into his own wallet.

"That's seriously awesome," he says, and Yoongi doesn't know what to say so he shrugs. "I've got no artistic talent at all, wow," Jeongguk is still looking at his arm, even though Yoongi has pulled his sweater up over his arm. "Did you—are those on your hand, too? May I?"

Yoongi offers up his hand and tries to ignore the little warm feeling in his chest when Jeongguk holds his fingers, gently turning his hand over to squint at them.

"Violets?" Jeongguk guesses, and Yoongi blinks. "And french willow, right? I think,"

"...Yeah," Yoongi replies, suddenly very suspicious. Jeongguk smiles.

"I got a minor in botany in college," Jeongguk says. "Plants are kinda my thing."

"Oh," Yoongi replies, feeling completely out of his depth.

"They're mostly my hobby now," he says, carefully letting go of Yoongi's hand. "Since I work with Jimin, but. That's really cool, that you used real flowers as references instead of just... Drawing whatever, you know?" Yoongi nods, and Jeongguk keeps talking, although now it seems like he's doing it out of nerves rather than interest. "I mean, it's gotta be hard to maintain the shape over skin right? Since you can't just like, draw a flat picture and have it come out right, there's all the bones and stretch of skin and stuff."

"Yeah," Yoongi nods, and he feels a little flush of something, because he's always enjoyed being complimented on his work, because he knows his work is good. He may be a terrible example of a functioning human member of society but his art is beautiful and he knows that. "Yeah, it. It's kind of a precise art."

"It's awesome," Jeongguk says, and Yoongi is on the cusp of saying something when he hears it. He hears a laugh. He hears a laugh and everything in his body turns to stone. He can't even move his head, just stares at Jeongguk's chest and barely hears him speak. He drops his nearly-full can of soda and pushes his weight back against the wall. Oh god, he's going to throw up, he's going to start screaming, he's going to have a fit right here at this party Taehyung and Jimin brought him to because they wanted him to have a good time they wanted him to have fun they wanted to introduce him to Jeon Jeongguk who has a minor in botany and is looking for a tattoo artist but the world is moving so slowly and his heart is going too fast because that laugh, that laugh, that laugh.

Yoongi knows that laugh. Knows it so intimately that it hurts. He's felt that laugh in the skin of his throat, against the back of his neck, in his hair. He knows that laugh when it's brittle and anxious, he knows that laugh when it's big and booming, like it is now. He knows the shape of that mouth, that face, knows the fall of that hair. He knows the sound of defeat in that laugh, sad and resigned, you don't even want to try.

Something is keeping him from falling. Something, someone, is holding him up, is taking him by the waist and hand, is pulling him out towards the door and into the hallway. Yoongi's eyes are open but he can't see anything aside from the blurry shape of Jeon Jeongguk kneeling in front of him as he sinks to the floor and pushes his head against his knees to breathe, breathe, breathe.

"Hyung," Jeongguk is saying, and Yoongi looks at him, looks up at him and wonders how it is he can be so concerned. Haven't they just met? He's calling Yoongi hyung as he pushes back his hair to feel his temperature, as he grabs his hand to put fingers to his wrist and feel his pulse. "Hyung, can you hear me?"

Yoongi nods, the motion jerking like whiplash. "Do you want me to get Taehyung?" Yoongi shakes his head violently. Taehyung is in there, having a good time, having a good time with Jimin and—and with him and Yoongi doesn't want Taehyung to come out here, doesn't want him to see.

"Are you sure?" Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi keeps shaking his head. "Do you want me to stay here with you?" he nods, one hand already fisted up so tight in Jeongguk's shirt that he's probably tearing the fabric. He can't help but notice, distantly, that Jeongguk is only asking him yes or no questions.

"Okay, hyung," Jeongguk says, shifting Yoongi's hand to his hand, unflinching when Yoongi squeezes so hard his fingers turn white. "It's okay, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. It's okay. You're safe."

~

That laugh has haunted Yoongi's worst moments for the last nine years of his life. That laugh, the smell of sunflowers, the glow of gold skin in dying sunlight. A relationship killed by neglect, one of Yoongi's regrets. His greatest regret. People are always preaching that you couldn't live with regret all your life but Yoongi's regrets hang around his neck like stones. Tea roses and zinnias for a love he'd lost, he'd let go of, he hadn't even tried to hold on to. Sunggyu had been confused by his choice of flowers but had dutifully traced Yoongi's design, colored them in across the top of Yoongi's shoulder and shoulder blade, the front curve leading down to the heather on his collarbone, for solitude. It dropped down into the wisteria on his chest.

He finds himself telling Jeongguk what all of the flowers mean as he sits there in the grey hallway outside a door marked PARTY. He doesn't tell them why they mean what they mean but he tells him what they are, what they symbolize. Temperance, truth, courage. Wisdom, strength, grace. Things Yoongi wishes he had, things he wishes he could force to be a part of himself but can't. Violets for watchfulness, french willow for bravery, jonquil for wanting his affection returned because it never left, not really. Just because he'd never been able to say it didn't mean it wasn't true and he's not crying, but Jeongguk hasn't let go of his hand and god, god, he can't believe he's doing this, saying this, to someone he literally just met, all because of the sound of a laugh. It might not have even been his laugh, how could it be? How could he be here, out of all the places in the world he could possibly be, how could he still be here?

"Sorry," he whispers, staring at the grey wall. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come, I should. Should've told him no." He hadn't known this would happen, but he'd known something would go wrong. Something always goes wrong. Jeongguk just shakes his head. Yoongi can see it in his peripheral vision.

"Can you stand up now, hyung?" Jeongguk asks and Yoongi nods, pushing himself against the wall and using the leverage to force himself up, leaning heavily into the painted plaster. "Can you wait here for a second? I'm gonna tell Taehyung that I'm going to take you home."

"Okay," Yoongi whispers.

"I'll be right back," Jeongguk promises, offering out his jacket. "Here, hold on to this for me." Yoongi nods and Jeongguk opens the door. There's a blast of noise and it closes again and Yoongi is left in the hallway with a soft jacket made of buttery smooth leather. He runs his fingers over it, feels the texture, feels himself coming back down. He sometimes did this with his favorite pillow, just stroked it, because the pillowcase was made of egyptian cotton or something like that, and it just felt so soothing under his fingertips when he felt like he was being pricked with pins on all sides.

He's coming back down when the door opens again and Jimin comes out and behind him is Yoongi's most agonizing nightmare, his sweetest and fondest dream, his biggest regret and all of his panic triples and falls back onto him like a mountain coming down.

Behind Park Jimin is Jung Hoseok, looking down at him with a blank expression on his face like that day nine years ago and oh god, oh god no please no. Yoongi's prayers go unanswered as Jimin moves closer to him and reaches to touch him and he almost starts screaming, presses Jeongguk's jacket to his mouth as he flinches away and stares at him, stares because he cannot speak. Jimin jerks back in surprise and Hoseok's hand touches Jimin's shoulder. "Go back in," Hoseok says, and his voice sounds the same, spoken from the back of his throat and the middle of his nose, his accent just as clear as it had always been, just as strong. Jimin looks at him in confusion but nods, okay hyung, and he goes back in through the door, looking back at Yoongi like he's some kind of circus freak escaped from his cage.

Yoongi wants to scream for him to come back, come back, don't leave me with him but the door closes and it's just Yoongi. Just Yoongi and Jung Hoseok, looking down at him sadly like he'd always known this would happen, like he'd always known they'd come back to this.

"You okay?" he asks, and Yoongi wants to sink into the floor, wants to die. Wants to slit his wrists and bleed out all over the grey carpet in the grey hallway. "Yoongi, hey. Answer me."

What can he do but obey, what can he do but shake his head and hold Jeongguk's jacket to his face to block out the smell of sunflowers he's always associated with Hoseok's skin, with his bedsheets and hair and the memories that went with them of warm summers out in the woods, the sound of cicadas and singing blackbirds, the press of sweaty bodies under green-tinted sunlight, soft laughter and promises Yoongi breaks over and over and over. He shakes his head and Hoseok doesn't reach to touch him. Hoseok knows better than to touch him when he's in the middle of a fit like this. He's not like Taehyung, who means well but doesn't really understand. Hoseok was there from the beginning, he watched Yoongi fall. It's a lot different than just finding him at the bottom of the ditch and trying to pull him out.

"Is someone going to take you home?"

Yoongi nods and prays that Jeongguk comes back soon.

"Okay." Hoseok goes back into the room. Hoseok goes back into the room marked PARTY and Yoongi can hear him talking like he hadn't come out into the hallway at all, asking where his drink is and laughing at whatever response he was given. Yoongi slides back down the wall and pushes his face into Jeongguk's jacket, which smells like a light, cool cologne, and barely holds back a violent sob.

It doesn't surprise him, that Hoseok did that. It's been nine years, after all. It's been nine years and Hoseok has had time to get over Yoongi like he wasn't probably halfway over him when they broke up in the first place. Yoongi has spent the last nine years trying to forget Jung Hoseok, only to be violently reminded every time the sun is too bright, every time he passes the floral shop in the way to the parlor. Every time he thinks about hands on his skin. Every time Taehyung touched him, kissed him, tucked him in close and smoothed down his hair there was the echo of Jung Hoseok's hands, his lips, his warm chest and the reassuring thump of his heartbeat.

"Hyung?" Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi doesn't look up. "Come on, hyung, let me take you home? You can hold onto my jacket, okay?" Yoongi nods and struggles up. He feels Jeongguk's arm around his waist and hides his face in his coat when he's eased into a passenger seat, when he's buckled into the seat belt. "Taehyung told me where you live, so I'll drive you straight there, all right?" Yoongi nods and it isn't until they've been driving for a few minutes, isn't until he realizes that Jeongguk's radio is playing soft, classical spanish guitar that he's been removed from the situation. He's been plucked up from the stress and taken away from it and he's flooded with gratitude, with helpless relief.

He lets the jacket down from his face, his arms shaking with the strain of holding it there for so long. "Welcome back," Jeongguk says, his voice sweet. "We're about halfway to your place."

"Okay," Yoongi says, his voice raspy and aching in his throat. He's still reeling, still spinning in circles but at least he can see the scenery passing by now, can see solid shapes instead of just explosions of color and light. He can hear the painstaking fingerwork of the spanish guitar and he focuses on slowing his breathing. By the time Jeongguk pulls up and parks in front of his building, Yoongi feels... Less like he's going to fly apart. He's still terrified. Still reeling, but he's going to be inside his apartment, safe and sound, very soon.

"Do you want me to walk you upstairs?" Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi considers it. He takes a deep breath and nods, still holding Jeongguk's jacket in his hands as he climbs out of the car and fumbles at his hip for his keys. He gets them into the building, walks to the elevator and they ride up to the fifth floor. The ugly carpet greets them and Jeongguk is just behind Yoongi, his presence solid and warm as Yoongi unlocks his apartment door.

It's still clean from earlier. Jimin has a tendency to neaten things when he's anxious, and Taehyung knows that Yoongi hates coming back to a messy house, so between the two of them, it isn't a disaster area. Jimin left the light over the stove on, so it isn't completely black, either. Yoongi steps inside and turns to look back at Jeongguk, who stands in the doorway.

"Do," Yoongi starts, but Jeongguk shakes his head.

"Maybe next time, hyung," he says, smiling. "I think you need some time alone right now, right?"

"...I don't know," Yoongi replies honestly, and Jeongguk hums, thoughtful.

"Well. My jacket has some of my cards in it, so if you need anything, just call me."

Yoongi realizes that he's still holding on to Jeongguk's jacket and steps forward to give it back.

"It's okay," Jeongguk says. "I've got two of them, so you can keep that one. I'll see you later hyung, all right?" Yoongi nods and Jeon Jeongguk smiles, leans in to put his fingers in Yoongi's hair and kiss the top of his head. "Call me if you need anything. Promise?"

Yoongi's back to reeling in confusion and he grabs on to that word like a lifeline.

"Promise," he says, and Jeongguk is gone, leaving Yoongi in his foyer, holding a buttery leather jacket, alone in the dim light.

~

Yoongi goes to work on Tuesday and pretends like nothing happened over the weekend. He goes through his appointments in his usual way, takes a few walk-ins, and doesn't tattoo anything else on his hand. He just rubs his thumb over the skin when he's not really thinking about it, and it doesn't escape Sunggyu's notice.

By Thursday, when they're alone just before closing the parlor up, Sunggyu glances over at him. He's known Yoongi a long time. A really long time. He knew Yoongi when Hoseok knew Yoongi, and he saw the downward spiral, saw Yoongi struggling to crawl out of it and had been the one to offer his hand in the form of something more than apprenticeship and mentoring. He cares very much about Yoongi, and Yoongi knows it.

"What happened," he asks, and he's not looking at Yoongi when he asks it, leaning over the appointment book, checking over who showed up and who didn't. Yoongi swallows hard and pulls Jeongguk's jacket tighter around his body.

"...I saw Hoseok," he says, quietly. Sunggyu looks at him. Yoongi looks away. "He was, um. At a party, I went to with Taehyung. I didn't know."

"Did Taehyung?"

"I don't think so."

"Better not have," Sunggyu mutters under his breath, and Yoongi can't help but smile a little. Sunggyu is protective, fiercely so, and he hadn't liked Taehyung from the get-go. Then again, he'd seen the fallout of Yoongi's relationship with Hoseok firsthand, so who could blame him?

"I don't think he did." Yoongi tucks his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket and thumbs over the card he's been holding onto. He'd texted Jeongguk a thank you on Monday morning, and had been pleasantly surprised with a text back reading, Glad you're okay, Hyung.

It made something in his chest flip a little, and Yoongi still isn't sure how he feels about the whole thing, but he figures it can wait until Jeongguk comes in for his tattoo. If he ever comes in for his tattoo, now that he knows what a fucking psychotic mess Yoongi is.

"Do you want a ride home? Sunggyu asks, like he does every day and the conversation is over, closed. Understanding settles between them and Yoongi nods this time, to the offer. It's not far, twelve blocks, but he doesn't want to be alone if he doesn't have to be. Not now. Not when there are sleeping pills in his cabinet and they're calling his name like sirens and the only things keeping him alive are the tenuous threads keeping him tied to his loved ones.

~

Taehyung shows up on Saturday, alone. He stands in the kitchen and makes grilled cheese with bacon and soup and brings it to Yoongi in bed, sitting on the floor beside him to eat in silence. Yoongi doesn't say anything to him, not for a long time. They just sit and eat and once the meal is over, Taehyung finally speaks.

"What... Was that about, hyung?" he asks, because Taehyung doesn't know about Hoseok, because Yoongi had always been so careful to keep Hoseok out of his life because whatever they shared, it's over. It's over or at least he'd been trying to convince himself it was.

"How do you know him," Yoongi says, looking down at his legs under the blanket. "Jung Hoseok."

"I don't," Taehyung replies. "He's friends with Jimin, they do dance stuff together sometimes."

Yoongi nods and leans back against the wall that acts as his headboard. Taehyung looks at him worriedly and Yoongi tries to smile for him, tries so hard because he owes Taehyung that much. Taehyung is trying and Yoongi should at least attempt... He's fucked up a lot of relationships but he's twenty-eight years old and Taehyung is the only friend he really has. Sunggyu doesn't count and neither does Namjoon, who only shows up when the wind blows south-south-west and who leaves as quickly and unexpectedly as he came. Taehyung wants what's best for Yoongi and he's worried. He's scared.

"We, um. Hoseok and I, we..."

"Were you a couple, hyung?" Yoongi nods slowly.

"Before I met you," he says, feeling his throat tighten even thinking about it. Thinking about being young and foolish and those three years with Hoseok, from when his parents kicked him out at seventeen till the two of them finally broke down three years later, a year into his apprenticeship with Sunggyu. "We were... Pretty serious. Serious as you can get as teenager, I guess."

"Were you in love, hyung?" Taehyung asks, and Yoongi looks down at his hands, clenching in the blanket. Watches the flowers on his left hand flex with the motion.

"...yeah," Yoongi whispers. "Yeah, I was. I was in love with him."

They've had the conversation before—that the problem with their relationship in the first place was that the two of them loved one another, but they weren't in love. Neither of them had been willing to fight for it, not really, which is probably why they're still friends. Because they love one another. Taehyung was in love with Park Jimin, which is—fucking wonderful, as far as Yoongi's concerned. Because the hurt he associated with their break-up is all his own fault and he just wants Taehyung to be happy.

"What happened?" Taehyung asks, and Yoongi considers not telling him. He thinks about staying silent about the aching wound in his chest he's been ignoring for so long and wonders if it's better to let it fester and rot until it kills him, or to let it air and hope that the smell of infection doesn't finally drive Taehyung away for good.

Yoongi can't lose him. He can't lose him, too.

"We..." Yoongi swallowed. "We broke up," he can't help but end it with a laugh, with a broken kind of smile. "We were... I was sick. Young and stupid and he wanted to fight and I just..."

"You didn't fight, did you, hyung."

"No."

Taehyung licks his lips and Yoongi can't stand to look at him. Because the exact same thing happened with Taehyung. He didn't fight for him, because he knew he deserved better, knew he'd found better, despite how he tried to hide it from Yoongi. Yoongi wasn't stupid. But he'd done what he thought was right and when Taehyung confronted him, he let go.

"You never fight for anything, hyung," Taehyung says, and it's an observation more than anything else. Yoongi hates that it's true.

"No," he says, miserable and feeling his eyes start to well. He hates crying in front of Taehyung because it makes him feel weak and stupid and selfish but he can't help it, sometimes he just can't make it stop. "I don't." His voice breaks and Taehyung climbs onto the bed, under the covers. He pulls Yoongi into his chest and strokes his hair, murmurs soft nothings into his hair and kisses his forehead and rubs his back and Yoongi doesn't deserve it, he doesn't. He doesn't deserve Taehyung's friendship. He doesn't deserve his love, he never has but he's sick and he's lonely and he's so, so sad.

"I'm sorry," he hiccups, hands tight in Taehyung's shirt. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"It's okay, hyung," Taehyung whispers, and Yoongi knows he's crying too. He's always been too empathetic. Too quick to feel other people's pain as much as his own. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

~

Yoongi knows he's still in love with Jung Hoseok because when Jimin carefully asks if he's all right, and Yoongi asks if he wants to know, or if Hoseok wants to know, Jimin flinches. It causes a bright flare of hope to jump in his chest and Yoongi slams it back down by saying he's fine in as dead a voice as he can manage. He doesn't want Hoseok to know what's going on in his life, he doesn't want Hoseok to know that he's still the same useless, worthless piece of shit he'd been when he was eighteen and the two of them were happy just being together, when nothing else really mattered. He knows Park Jimin well enough by now to know that he's going to tell Hoseok if he asks, and Yoongi doesn't want to give Hoseok an excuse to... To show up again. To see what a failure he is and... And gloat or feel pity for him or... Or anything like that.

He just doesn't want Hoseok to see him like this.

He doesn't want Jeongguk to see him like this, either, so when he agrees to meet him for lunch he does his best to look unaffected, wears his gold piercings in his ears and nose instead of the usual steel and he wears nice jeans and a loose black shirt that shows off his collarbones and Jeongguk's leather jacket. It fits pretty well, all things considered. A little big, but it just means that Yoongi can wear a sweatshirt beneath it, so that's fine. It's getting into February now and the cold is starting to subside, a little bit.

Jeongguk waves to him from the door of a little cafe and Yoongi waves back, feeling shy. Jeongguk has already seen him at his worst, albeit unintentionally—so he should try to make a better impression this time, something a little less... Crazy.

"What do you want, hyung," Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi shakes his head.

"Don't you dare try to pay," he says, looking up at the menu as they walk up to the counter. "I'm your hyung, I'm paying."

"But I asked you out," Jeongguk replies, and Yoongi looks over at him. He's beaming that silly boyish grin and nudging at his shoulder. "We're wearing couple jackets and everything, hyung."

...They are. They're wearing identical leather jackets and Yoongi is so stunned for a moment that he forgets what he was going to order and the hostess behind the register has to ask him twice. He stammers out his order and Jeongguk pays.

~

It's all very casual, really. Jeongguk buys lunch sometimes, Yoongi buys it other times. They meet up to see movies or just hang out in places where they can people-watch, uninterrupted. Valentines day passes without a word from either of them, and sometime in late February Jeongguk finally comes into the parlor and offers up the tattoo he wants for Yoongi's approval. It's an oak tree, with a movement of wind carrying the leaves closer in perspective, and a few scattered ferns at the roots of it. It will fit beautifully across his right arm, moving up from the elbow to curl around his shoulder and Yoongi realizes why it is that Taehyung recommended him to Jeongguk in the first place: flora is kind of his specialty, so maybe Taehyung's intentions hadn't been completely out of line.

"It's gonna take a couple sessions, more if you want color," he says, and Jeongguk shrugs, offering that boyish smile. Yoongi can't believe that he's twenty-four, sometimes. He seems so much younger.

"More time with you, hyung," he says, and Yoongi feels himself start to blush, pink at the tips of his ears. He shoves him, a playful push that makes Sunggyu quirk an eyebrow at him after Jeongguk leaves with a kiss to the cheek and a promise to get dinner with him after the parlor closes.

"What was that," Sunggyu asks, and Yoongi just touches his cheek and smiles, looking down at the drawing of the oak tree and thinking about Jeon Jeongguk's lips.

~

Yoongi's been... A little cold to Jimin over the last few months. He knows that. He knows it's mean and petty but he can't help feeling that the risk is too much. Jimin is a talker, he doesn't mean to say things but he does and Yoongi wonders how much of his current situation Hoseok already knows because Jimin can't really keep himself from talking.

Still. He feels bad. There was a time when Yoongi wanted Hoseok to know just how much it still hurt him, there was a time when he vindictively hoped that Hoseok was in just as much pain as him, like that Adele song only... Worse. Now that... Now that he knows he's not, he selfishly wants to keep everything about himself to himself, especially his budding relationship with Jeongguk. They've finally started holding hands in public, and Yoongi's heart leaps into his throat every time Jeongguk gives him a kiss on the lips. Jeon Jeongguk gives Min Yoongi a reason to wake up in the morning that isn't obligation, isn't anything like it. It's a little terrifying. Even Taehyung has noticed a difference, has asked about them and Yoongi just shakes his head every time, biting back his smile.

Taehyung, at least, seems happy for him. Even though he's a bit hurt about Jimin.

"You're being mean, hyung," he says, sitting on Yoongi's couch late one Saturday morning. Yoongi's got work later, but Taehyung had seen fit to come and visit for a little while. "Jimin didn't do anything wrong, and you're being mean."

"I know," Yoongi sighs, holding his coffee mug in both hands. He looks at the jonquil he'd finally had the courage to tattoo over the bone of his wrist the year before last and almost regrets it. It holds the meaning of wanting your affection returned and Yoongi can't help but remember that he'd gotten it for Hoseok. He'd been thinking of Jung Hoseok when he'd drawn the yellow blossoms, after what felt like the tail end of an opium binge where his hallucinations felt more real than his life did. When the image of Hoseok's smile turned into more than that. It's symbolistic of his memories with Hoseok, memories he still isn't ready to let go of in the same way he can't let go of Taehyung, or Namjoon. Yoongi clings to things, to people, long after they've left him. He can't help it.

He can't forget.

"You should apologize," Taehyung sulks. "He's been upset about it, really upset."

"I'm really upset he tried to introduce me to Jung Hoseok."

"He didn't know," Taehyung snaps, and Yoongi feels a familiar lance of self-directed disgust and disappointment. He'd known that would cause Taehyung to lose his temper and he'd done it anyway. "He didn't know, hyung, you can't—you can't punish him for being friends with someone! He's friends with you too, how do you think Hoseok hyung feels?"

"So you're close enough with him to call him hyung," Yoongi says, hisses really. He holds his mug tighter in front of himself, as though it's going to protect him from this realization. That Taehyung knows Hoseok, too, that he's probably been talking to him, that he's probably—

The room is shrinking around him. The walls are pressing in and Yoongi can't put his mug down fast enough, can't get up fast enough to avoid Taehyung's inevitable physical reaction. He always gets physical when he's angry, and Yoongi remembers the last time he got angry. He'd deserved it then, too. Yoongi always deserves everything he's given.

Yoongi is trying to get up from the couch when Taehyung shoves him back down. There's coffee spilled down his shirt and jeans, hot on his skin but not hot enough to badly burn him. The mug drops from his hands, crashes down onto the coffee table to break with that distinct sound and Yoongi just fucking sits there, he just sits there as Taehyung raises a hand and jerks forward. Yoongi closes his eyes and waits for the inevitable crack of pain across his head.

It doesn't come.

It doesn't come, and he opens his eyes, surprised to find himself crying, surprised to find that Taehyung is crying too, his arms loose at his sides.

"God, hyung," he says, his voice thick. "God, I hate who you turn me into, sometimes."

Taehyung has told Yoongi about his abusive father. He's told Yoongi about long nights when he was too afraid to go to sleep, eyes wide as he waited for the violence downstairs to be turned onto him. Yoongi knows about his occasional snaps of rage and hates that he's the cause of it, he's always been the cause of it. Even when they were still together Yoongi pushed his buttons hard enough to make Taehyung turn into someone else and even though he remembers their relationship through rose-colored glasses, sometimes there's no pretending that Taehyung doesn't have flaws, too. No pretending that Yoongi isn't the one to expose his sharp sides and heavy hands.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and Taehyung backs away, grabbing for his coat.

"If you were really sorry you'd stop doing it, hyung," he says, pulling the jacket on like a protective layer of armor. "If you were really fuckin' sorry you'd stop tattooing your problems and fucking deal with them like the rest of us."

After the rattle of Taehyung's keys being picked up, his door closes quietly. Yoongi sits bare-footed on his couch and feels the coffee sticking to his skin, feels the broken chunks of ceramic sitting on his pajama bottoms. He feels a breath yank in, shudder out, and he forces himself to stand. To move to the bathroom, where he pulls off his clothes in a way that feels mechanical, stiff in the shoulders with tension and fear. There are splashes of inflamed skin on his chest and belly. They hurt. He touches them and hisses in pain, drawing his hand away. God. God.

~

Yoongi never fights for anything.

He never fights for anything and he rarely fights against anything so when he and Jeongguk get out of their movie he lets Jeongguk pull him in close. Lets him slip his tongue against his mouth, inside his mouth, against his own tongue and teeth. Yoongi's body remembers this dance and when Jeongguk carefully presses him against the side of his car, one hand at the small of his back, he pushes into the touch. Jeongguk is patient and experienced, nothing like Hoseok, all enthusiasm and no skill or Taehyung, eager to please and eager to learn. Not like Namjoon, who pinned him to surfaces with a hand tight on his wrists or around his neck to keep Yoongi from biting into his skin, from wrestling his fists loose to rake nails over Namjoon's arms.

Jeongguk's mouth against his is comfortable and Yoongi feels a bit like a teenager when his lips move down to press at his neck, just below his ear. The mid-spring air is cool but Jeongguk's chest is warm and Yoongi might not be one hundred percent sure about this but his body certainly is. Years of self-imposed celibacy (with the occasional foray into sex with other people) have left him aching, already half-hard, gasping when Jeongguk leaves a small bite on his throat.

"Hyung," he breathes, and Yoongi's hands tighten on his biceps. "Come home with me?"

They've been dating for almost five months. They've been dating for five months and Jeongguk has never asked anything of him, never demanded that they move faster, that Yoongi consent to his speed instead keeping things slow and easy and careful as the two of them got closer, closer, closer. Taehyung hasn't come to see Yoongi in almost a month and a half. The burns have long since faded but every time he thinks about his friend they flare up in memory of a relationship he's ruined by refusing to compromise, by refusing to see things from someone else's point of view.

"Yeah," Yoongi replies, pushing up against Jeongguk's taller body to be rewarded with a muffled groan. "Yeah, okay, Jeongguk."

When they get to Jeongguk's apartment, when Jeongguk strips away his clothes, when Jeongguk kisses down his chest and bites his thighs, when Jeongguk slides into him chest-to-chest and face-to-face Yoongi can't stop saying his name like a mantra. It keeps away the memories of being loved like this in times before, it keeps away the memories of Kim Namjoon's furious fucking, with the back of Yoongi's neck pressed down by his hand. It keeps away the memories of Kim Taehyung, young and inexperienced and eager as he tries to hold back his orgasm.

It keeps away the memories of Jung Hoseok, who used to love him like this, chest-to-chest, face-to-face, lips on his lips, Yoongi, Yoongiyah, I love you.

Jeon Jeongguk is none of those people, and when he cums he groans out Yoongi's name, the syllables breaking into Yoongi's neck and cheek, lips catching his in a kiss as he keeps moving and reaches a hand down to give a stroke, two, three until warmth spills out and Yoongi, god, Yoongi arches up and gasps out his name like a prayer to anyone who is listening.

Help me, please, I just want to love him.

~

Nothing really changes about their relationship, which makes Yoongi happy. Jeongguk does suggest, though, that Yoongi talk to Taehyung and Jimin. "You seem really sad without them, hyung," he says, cautiously. "Lonely."

"I'm not lonely," Yoongi lies, and Jeongguk gives him a look like he knows he's lying. "I'm not!"

"I still think you should talk to them," he says, and Yoongi sulks a little, sinking back into Jeongguk's chest and pouting like a small child at the idea that Jeongguk is telling him what to do with his life.

He knows he's right, but that's beside the point.

Still.

Not wanting to risk Jeongguk's disappointment, he calls Jimin and Taehyung. He leaves a voicemail for them and starts to attempt cleaning up his apartment. He spends very little time there now, most of his free hours spent at Jeongguk's place, which is a lot nicer than his own, and has a proper bed frame. He doesn't want to bring Jeongguk here. Doesn't want him to see the squalor he lives in, despite the money he makes. It's not Yoongi's fault that he's sick in the head and it makes it hard to... Do anything. Even just hauling out the vacuum from the closet seems like an overwhelming task but he manages. For Jeongguk.

Taehyung and Jimin show up just as Yoongi is trying to find his bedroom floor under the scattered clothes. He swallows hard and goes out to greet them after Taehyung lets them in with his spare key, knowing that he's acting very uncharacteristically formal. He goes so far as to offer them coffee or tea before Jimin manages to say,

"I'm not mad, hyung." Yoongi stills at the sink where he's filling the carafe with water, just listening to the sound of an empty thing becoming full. "I'm not, I'm not mad at you. I'm sorry about what happened."

"Don't be," Yoongi replies, feeling hollowed out. "You didn't know."

"Still," Jimin says, and Yoongi pours the water into his coffee maker, counts out tablespoons of grounds. "I should have—when he said your name sounded familiar I should have—"

"You can't do anything about it now," Yoongi says, his heart squeezing that Hoseok would have said his name was familiar instead of I know someone by that name. "It happened, it's over."

"Hyung," Jimin says, and he's too close to Yoongi but Yoongi knows Jimin needs physicality, needs visceral proof that Yoongi isn't angry at him, doesn't hate him. He needs reassurance and Yoongi turns around to give it, accepting Jimin's too tight hug, accepting his I'm sorry, hyung I'm so sorry with a murmur that it was all right, and he was sorry, too.

The rest of their night goes smoothly, as though nothing had ever been wrong, but Yoongi can't help lingering on the thought that Hoseok had said his name sounded familiar.

~

It's another two weeks before Yoongi's worst nightmare comes to life.

It's what he gets for not moving after he and Hoseok broke up, it's what he gets for not changing the locks on the doors, assuming that Hoseok would have thrown the key away by now. He hears a piece of metal slip into the lock and doesn't think twice about it—it's probably Taehyung, wanting to check in on him since last Saturday Yoongi had been having an off-day and asked him to leave as kindly as he could before going to work and then spending his night with Jeongguk, hiding in his chest while they watched movies at his apartment and kissed their way through early morning.

It's what he gets.

He turns around in the kitchen and there is Jung Hoseok, standing in the foyer. He's leaner now, seems taller, even though he stopped growing when they were both still in high school. He's golden tan, his hair a bright ginger and Yoongi drops his empty mug to the floor, distantly glad for his slippers when the apartment starts to collapse on him.

He can't move, when Hoseok clicks his tongue and moves closer to pick up the pieces of ceramic. He moves around Yoongi like water, slow and flowing and Yoongi feels like his heart is going to explode out of his chest it's pounding so hard.

"You're so clumsy," Hoseok says, and his voice is coming from very far away.

"What are you doing here," Yoongi asks, unable to think of anything else to say.

"Checking on you," Hoseok replies, shrugging his bare shoulders and tilting his head. "Jiminie doesn't talk about you anymore, so I wanted to see how you were."

"What does it matter to you," Yoongi says, his head aching, his fingertips going cold. Not out of fear, but out of panic. Jung Hoseok is standing in his kitchen, standing too close, touching his face and Yoongi jerks away, slamming his back into the counter with so much force the rational part of his mind is sure it's going to bruise. "Don't," he says. "Don't touch me."

"You're not okay, are you," Hoseok asks, and Yoongi wants to shake his head, wants to cry, wants to hide. "How bad is it? Is it worse, now?"

His anxiety, Hoseok means. His panics, his fits of rage and depression. The uncontrollable monster in his brain that Yoongi keeps at bay with medication and self-temperance, all of which is forgotten in the face of Jung Hoseok's warm skin so close to his own. Hoseok used to be the cure. Now he's the source of all the symptoms.

"Go away," Yoongi whispers, even though he doesn't mean it. He doesn't. This might be his worst nightmare but it's also his most treasured dream and when Hoseok crowds into his personal space, when Hoseok cups his face in his hands, his thumbs on Yoongi's cheeks all Yoongi wants is to fall into how much Hoseok used to love him.

Used to.

It's a spear of ice through his belly and he tries to pull away. He thinks of Jeongguk, of Jeongguk's hands where Hoseok's are and he thinks of Jeongguk's lips on his lips but then Hoseok's mouth is on his and it's like no time has passed at all, like the last nine years have evaporated and Yoongi is nineteen again. Yoongi is nineteen and they're in this exact position, with Hoseok lifting him up onto the counter, standing between his spread legs. Hoseok's hands rest on his ribs and his thumbs smooth over Yoongi's nipples, down the rise and fall of his bones.

"No," Yoongi shakes his head, pulls away. Hoseok doesn't follow. "No, stop it," he whispers, unsure if he means it. Hoseok waits. "Jeongguk," Yoongi almost sobs.

"Is that his name?" Hoseok asks, his hands on Yoongi's waist tight and unyielding. Yoongi's chest is heaving with panic, his breath is too short, he can't breathe, he can't breathe. "Slow, Yoongiyah," Hoseok murmurs. "Slow down. Breathe with me."

The coping mechanism works as well as it always has. Yoongi slows down until he's going the same pace as the rest of the world and Hoseok gives him a sad, soft smile. "Just as bad as it's ever been, huh? You've been taking your meds?" Yoongi nods silently and Hoseok nods in return. "Good," he says, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to Yoongi's forehead. "That's really good, hyung."

"Hoseok," Yoongi whispers, and Hoseok's lips trace over his cheek. Across the bridge of his nose, against his lips but do not press. "Hoseok," he tries again, and Hoseok kisses him, kisses him and Yoongi feels everything in his body turn electric, feels himself sparking and yanking Hoseok closer to him, hands tangling up in his hair while Hoseok grabs at his hips and pulls him to the edge of the counter.

God, they're kissing and it's perfect, it's all Yoongi's wanted for the last nine years—

(But Yoongi turned twenty-nine in March, and he'd celebrated with Jeon Jeongguk, his boyfriend, who'd bought him a cake and sung happy birthday and kissed him to sleep without asking for anything in return, who'd just smiled and hugged him and brought him to bed.)

"No," Yoongi pulls away, panting, still holding on to Hoseok's hair to keep him from pulling away. "No, I—I can't—Jeongguk—"

"Jeongguk doesn't have to know," Hoseok says, and Yoongi's belly clenches up tight because god, oh god he wants this, craves it, needs it. Hoseok lifts him from the counter and Yoongi's legs wrap around his waist and he lets himself get carried to the bedroom where he and Jeongguk have never been but he and Hoseok always were. Hoseok settles him to the mattress and pulls away his clothes and kisses down his belly, bites at his thighs. Hoseok slides into him chest-to-chest, face-to-face and fucks down against him, sucks his nipples, claws lightly at his belly.

Yoongi cums without being touched, with Hoseok's belly rubbing against him and when he does he wails, opening his thighs as wide as he can. Hoseok silences him with a kiss and Yoongi's hips jerk up and down in afterglow, riding against Hoseok's hips until he grunts and pins Yoongi down, teeth at his ear but not biting, leaving not a single mark on his skin.

Jeongguk doesn't have to know, Hoseok's words echo in his head as Yoongi starts to come down and realizes what he's done—what he's put in jeopardy by allowing Hoseok to do this, by allowing himself to do this.

Oh god.

Oh, god.

~

Yoongi manages to hide it. He manages to hide it for almost four months, but it's a crisp autumn afternoon when Jeongguk turns to face him in the park where they like to walk. He looks beautiful in his grey peacoat, his eyes dark and serious. Yoongi blinks up at him.

"Hyung," he says, and something goes cold in the pit of Yoongi's stomach. "If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?"

"Of course," Yoongi replies.

"Promise?"

oh, god.

"Promise."

Yoongi can already feel the world getting smaller, getting slower. Already feels himself like the rabbit in a trap, caught as the fox creeps closer, teeth bared into a grin at the thought of slaughter.

"Have you been having sex with Jung Hoseok?"

Everything shatters. Yoongi promised. Yoongi made a promise and he has to keep it, because this is Jeongguk, Jeongguk who quietly said I love you five months ago while they watched the stars from the hilltop, his hand in Yoongi's own. Yoongi's hand is abandoned now and he has to tell the truth, though he's sure his hesitation is enough. Jeongguk is already tightening his jaw.

"Yes." It's a whisper. It's not a lie. He promised.

"For how long."

"A few months."

"How often."

"Every few weeks."

"Why?"

Yoongi can't look at Jeongguk. He can't look at Jeongguk the same way he couldn't look at Taehyung five years ago, the same way he can barely look in a mirror without hating himself, without wishing he would just kill himself already and get it over with.

"I don't know," he says, his voice weak and small. Jeongguk's jaw tightens further.

"Do you love him?"

"I don't know."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes," Yoongi says it almost desperately, because he knows what he stands to lose, he knows what's about to slip through his fingers and he wants to fight for it, he needs to at least try, because he'll never forgive himself if he doesn't at least try. Maybe a few months ago he'd been unsure but then Jeongguk had kissed his fingers out under the stars and it was all Yoongi can do not to fall to pieces beside him because oh, god, he has so much to lose. "I do."

"You don't," Jeongguk says, and his voice is low. "If you did, you wouldn't have done this."

"Jeongguk—"

"I don't think I want to see you again, Min Yoongi-ssi," Jeongguk says, and Yoongi falters. Jeongguk falters too, and his face twists like he's swallowed a cup of vinegar when he speaks again: "I'm not interested in sleeping with a—"

"Wait—"

"—a whore. So please delete my number."

"Jeongguk please—"

But Jeongguk is already walking away. He's already turned away from Yoongi and his outstretched hand, desperate to grab onto Jeongguk's peacoat but unable to reach. He can't reach. All he can do is stand there in the leather jacket Jeongguk gave him that first night they met, almost a year ago. All he can do is hug himself, fingers tight in the smooth leather, and cry.

~

When Hoseok and Yoongi finally broke apart. When the two of them had fought their way to shreds, it was Sunggyu who gave Yoongi somewhere to go. He said something, somewhat gruffly, about wanting to take on an apprentice anyway, and no one lived in the studio upstairs so where was the harm? Just meant Yoongi could be earlier for work.

Yoongi can't ever overstate how important that first year had been for him.

Sunggyu might have seemed like a slave driver to most, but Yoongi knows he was just trying to help Yoongi in the only way he knew how—to keep his mind and body so busy he didn't have a chance to let it hurt anymore. He'd been the one to go and collect Yoongi's things from Hoseok's house, bringing them over in boxes and entertaining Yoongi's need to cry over it. He'd been five years older and a good deal more worldly, and he'd said he didn't see why Yoongi needed to be ripping himself to pieces. Shit like this happens, Yoongi. People get their hearts broken.

He even, once in a quiet voice, told Yoongi about Woohyun. He left, Sunggyu said. And he took our daughter with him. He still to this day isn't sure what drove Woohyun away, whether it was his long work hours, unsteady income, the tattoos that started to cover his skin. Maybe it was just Sunggyu himself, who was hard and brash and uncompromising. The more Yoongi thinks about it, the more he thinks that's probably the reason, after all. There are a lot of things Sunggyu doesn't like to tolerate.

But if there's one thing Sunggyu won't (and will never) stand for, it's wallowing. Yoongi misses three days of appointments before Sunggyu goes to his apartment and nearly kicks his door down. His mentor takes one look at the mess, smells the rotten food in the trash can, and drags Yoongi physically from the space after packing a bag for him. He brings Yoongi back to the little studio over the parlor and tells him to stay there, tells him not to move or argue and Yoongi can't move, can't argue. He won't let go of Jeongguk's jacket and Sunggyu doesn't try to make him. He does force him to go downstairs for his appointments, and if Yoongi drapes Jeongguk's jacket over his legs, or he doesn't talk as much as he normally does, no one says anything about it.

No one says anything to him, at all.

Not until Kim Taehyung comes into the parlor a week later and shouts his name. Sunggyu gets between Taehyung and the path back to the cubes and snarls something under his breath. Taehyung's tone is demanding, but Yoongi can't really hear him. He's living in a fog like snowfall, everything is muffled and slow but he gets up from his leather chair, holding on to Jeongguk's jacket as he walks out into the front of the parlor. Taehyung is flushed, pink in the face and furious, teeth bared. Sunggyu doesn't move from where he stands.

"Where have you fucking been," Taehyung says, his voice loud and aggressive. "Where the fuck have you been, Min Yoongi?"

"...right here," Yoongi replies, looking at Taehyung the way some men look at the gravestones of their loved ones. "I've been right here."

"Why didn't you tell me," Taehyung's voice breaks a little. "Why didn't you tell me, hyung, I had to—I had to find out from someone else, someone else told me what happened, why didn't you tell me."

"...why's it matter," Yoongi asks, holding the jacket in his hands. "M'fine."

"You're a fucking liar," Taehyung says. "You're a fucking coward and a liar, Min Yoongi, and you deserve everything you get. Or don't get. Or don't fucking have anymore."

The pain hasn't passed. It's just turned to the dull kind of ache that settles into bones and joints, the kind of pain that never really goes away. It's not like a cut. No stitches will fix it.

He lost Jeongguk. He lost Jeongguk because he couldn't let go of Hoseok, and now he doesn't even have Hoseok because the thought of letting Hoseok touch him makes Yoongi sick to his stomach. The thought of being touched at all makes him want to vomit.

"Yeah," he says, bottom lip giving a small tremble. "Yeah, I. I know."

There's a moment of silence. Taehyung is looking at Yoongi and Yoongi is looking past Sunggyu at the wall and Sunggyu is glancing at both of them before squaring in his shoulders in a way Yoongi recognizes as the get your ass out of the way position. "Get the fuck out of my parlor," Sunggyu snarls, putting his hands on Taehyung and shoving him towards the door. "Get the fuck away from my employee and if I catch your ass in here again I'll fucking kill you."

Taehyung leaves. Taehyung leaves and Yoongi is nineteen again, and it's all Sunggyu can do to catch him before he falls, holding him close and tight, clutching him like a father, like a mentor, like a friend.

"I've got you," he says into Yoongi's hair, just like he did when Hoseok took away that piece of Yoongi that he still hasn't been able to find. "I've got you, kid, it's gonna be okay."

~

Yoongi gives up his apartment. He doesn't go back for anything. He tries to rebuild his life in the small studio over the parlor, tries to hold himself together. The jacket is never very far away but neither is the memory of Hoseok kissing his temple. Min Yoongi doesn't fight for anything, especially not himself, and he tattoos and tattoos and draws and pierces and loses himself in his work because what else is there that he can do, what else can he do.

He's lost them all. He's lost them all and he's alone. He's twenty-nine and living in a studio apartment over his boss's tattoo parlor, he sleeps on an unfolded futon and has no shelves, he's alone and he's a failure and he's too bruised to recover. He's been splattered on the ground and he tries to drag the remnants of himself back together but he can't. He can't. He's not even sure he wants to. It's not something he can fix, not like broken glass. It's all just pulp, pit raw and exposed.

One afternoon in December, Kim Namjoon comes into the parlor.

Sunggyu has finally decided that it's okay to leave Yoongi at the parlor by himself once the threat of Taehyung coming back passed, so Yoongi is alone when Namjoon comes in with a tall, broad-shouldered man who looks like some kind of supermodel and Yoongi feels like a hideous, deformed gremlin as he looks up from the counter where he's cleaning his second tattoo gun.

"What can I do for you," he asks, and Namjoon smiles.

"Sup, man?"

Yoongi stares at him before turning to his companion. "What can I do for you," he asks again, and the tall man smiles beatifically.

"I'd like to get a tattoo, if you have time?"

"Sure," Yoongi says. "What'd you like?"

"Sakura," the man says. "A sort of... Ribbon of them."

"Go ahead and have a seat," Yoongi says. "I'll draw something up for you."

Namjoon and his friend sit down. Yoongi notices the focused look of concern on Namjoon's face but ignores it in favor of drawing. He holds the paper with his left hand and he stops to stare at the petunia and marigold he'd tattooed across the top of his hand. Jealousy and resentment. Grief and anger. He looks away to the drawing, a gentle flow of cherry blossoms in a shape like curled ribbon, and waves Namjoon's friend over with as much of a smile as he can summon. "Something like that?"

"Mm," Namjoon's friend nods and touches the design. "Can you put a couple of really small ones on the ends?"

"They won't be as detailed," Yoongi says.

"That's all right," he replies, and Yoongi waves him back to the cube where he works, where the drawing of Jeongguk's oak tree still hangs, framed on the wall.

Namjoon's friend is named Seokjin, and he's actually Namjoon's boyfriend. He's a bit of a chatterbox, perhaps sensing the tension between Namjoon and Yoongi as they sit in the same room. Yoongi does the tattoo across the back of Seokjin's neck, curves it to his body and when he's done he covers it up, tapes down the saran wrap over the hot skin and gives him a free bottle of aquaphor once he's paid for the work—along with a heftier tip than Yoongi usually expects.

"I'll be next door, Joonah," he says, waving to Yoongi before leaving through the front door. Namjoon and Yoongi are left to look at one another over the counter.

"...How've you been," Namjoon asks, and Yoongi knows that he knows everything. Taehyung will have told him everything. About Jeongguk, about Hoseok, about how Yoongi's managed to fuck up literally every good thing he's ever had in his life and he's been reduced to hiding above the tattoo parlor, afraid of seeing either of them out and about.

"Okay," Yoongi says, and it's not really a lie. The ache still thumps. He doesn't think it's ever going to go away. It's in his blood, in his bones and nerve endings. Namjoon looks at him with his deep, thoughtful gaze and Yoongi looks away first. He always does.

Yoongi doesn't fight for anything.

"Everyone's asking if you're all right," Namjoon says, and Yoongi barks out a laugh. It's bitter and brittle.

"You can tell everyone, whoever the shit they are, that I'm just fuckin' spectacular," he says, shoving away from the counter. "Get the fuck out."

Namjoon is nothing if not the equal and opposing force to Yoongi's anger, so he doesn't let him run away. Namjoon never lets Yoongi run away, no matter how hard he tries. It's part of what destroyed them. Patience alone cannot build a house, and passion alone will tear down its walls. "When's the last time you left this building?"

"The fuck's it matter to you," Yoongi says, trying to run, trying to flee but Namjoon grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around, slams him back into the wall and holds him there at arms distance with the same ferocity they used to fuck with. Yoongi's lips draw back into a sneer. "What, Joonie, you want a piece, too? Everybody come and get a fuckin' piece of Min Fucking Yoongi, the whore who won't say no to anyone who gets between his legs?"

"What the fuck, Yoongi—"

"Isn't that what they're saying?" Yoongi asks, and his voice breaks. It's what he'd be saying, if he were in their positions. It's what he'd think about someone like himself. "Isn't that what they have the fuckin' right to say? Shit Namjoon, what do you want from me," he wants to fall to the ground, he wants to sob wretchedly into his knees. "What do you fucking want me to give you," he gives a miserable little hiccup and even Kim Namjoon takes pause. "There's nothing else to take away." Namjoon lets go of him and Yoongi collapses like a puppet with cut strings. Namjoon pushes away and leaves the parlor with a few long stretches of his legs, the bell at the door chiming sweetly.

Yoongi folds in on himself, and knows that he is empty.

~

The weeks pass, unnoticed. Yoongi works. He takes his medication. His fits are reserved for his studio room where he closes his eyes against the shrinking of the space and pretends that everything is okay. Pretends that he's all right when he's going to fucking fly to pieces any moment now and there's nothing anyone can to do stop it. He doesn't want to stop it. Maybe once the pit of the peach is destroyed, it'll all be over.

February comes, the time of couple tattoos and he does as he's told to do with a soft expression, trying not to be jealous of the couples that come in and get matching swallows or self-designed promises to one another. He knows most of them won't stay together. Soon those tattoos will be a reminder of things they regret, like Yoongi's left hand. What's funny is that people compliment his work. They think his flowers are really beautiful and he nods, and smiles, and says nothing at all.

February comes and one Saturday night, when Yoongi is alone in the studio and watching a movie on the laptop, two people walk in. Two people walk in and Yoongi looks up to give the customary greeting but the words choke him. The lock on the front door clicks closed. For a moment he can't move. They're taking steps closer. Move move move run run run he jerks back from the counter and he races for the back staircase, yanks out the cord of his laptop and stumbles, and one of those people has long legs and the other has speed on his side and Yoongi doesn't make it. He doesn't make it.

He falls when one of them grabs his sweater, cries out in pain when he hits the floor and the other hauls him up. He fights the grips, struggles, shaking his head, "No, no get off me, get off me, leave me alone! Let go!" he's nearly shrieking, gasping in panic and the words won't come out anymore, not when Jung Hoseok is holding him around the waist and Jeon Jeongguk has him by the front of his sweater. He wants to be screaming but he can't find the breath, instead twisting, flailing, trying to get a grip on Jeongguk's shoulders to push him away but all that does is force him back against Hoseok.

"No, no let go, let go I'm sorry I'm sorry let go of me please let go," the words are thready and thin and he hears Hoseok behind him, Slow down, breathe with me, breathe with me. It's comforting and familiar and despite all of his fear Yoongi does as he's told—breathes with Hoseok, his back to Hoseok's chest, every heave of his torso pressing him into Jeongguk.

"Shhh," Hoseok says, his face in the back of Yoongi's hair. "Shhh, it's okay. We're not gonna hurt you, okay? We're not gonna hurt you, Yoongi."

"Let go," Yoongi makes a wretched noise but doesn't try to get away or let go because god, god he's missed them so much, Hoseok's sunflower smell and Jeongguk's sharp jaw, his sweet lips. "Please, please I'm sorry, please."

"Don't run," Hoseok says, and he loosens his arms from around Yoongi's body. "Promise me you won't run, Yoongi, and I'll let go." Yoongi nods, because it's all he can do, and Hoseok's arms drop down. His hands are still on Yoongi's hips, but he's not caging him in anymore. Jeongguk stands in front of him, holding Yoongi's biceps instead of his sweater. For a few long minutes there is silence aside from Yoongi's labored breathing. His eyes are squeezed closed.

"We're not here to hurt you," Hoseok says. "We just want to talk."

"That's all," Jeongguk murmurs, and Yoongi shakes his head.

"No," he insists. "No, no no."

Jeongguk slips Yoongi's keys off his beltloop and uses one hand to get the door to the back stairs open. Hoseok maneuvers to get Yoongi up the narrow steps without knocking anyone down, and Jeongguk hits the light switch for the shop. Yoongi wonders, only somewhat irrationally, if he's going to die. His heart is pounding so fast and so hard.

"Come on," Hoseok says, his voice low. "Come sit down." He walks Yoongi to the bed and sets him down. He's sitting between Jeongguk's thighs, and he tries to jerk up. Hoseok kneels in front of him, pinning him in place.

"What do you want," Yoongi manages to grind out, his throat tight. "Wh. Why are you here."

"We need to talk to you," Jeongguk says, and his voice vibrates against Yoongi's back.

"No," Yoongi moans, shaking his head and pushing against Hoseok, who twists his grip to hold his hands. Yoongi shakes his head. "No, stop. Stop it, please."

"Sorry, sweetheart," Hoseok says, getting up a little further. "Can't." Then his lips are on Yoongi's lips and Yoongi makes a soft sound before reeling back and shaking his head, bumping into Jeongguk's chest and feeling a hand on his belly move up to his collarbone.

"Hyung," Jeongguk chides. "You can't surprise him like that, you know better."

"Yeah," Hoseok smiles. "I guess I do. Sorry, Yoongiyah." He moves his lips to kiss Yoongi's hands instead. Yoongi can't think. Can't breathe, can't... He just can't, and Jeongguk sighs against the top of his shoulder.

"I told you we shouldn't have surprised him like this," he says, a bit sulkily.

"Do you think we were gonna get to talk to him any other way?"

"...I guess not."

"What," Yoongi manages to choke out, unable to comprehend what the fuck is going on. Hoseok is in front of him and Jeongguk is behind him and it's like all of his regrets are wrapped around his neck, a noose choking him. "What," he whispers, and Hoseok reaches to push fingers through his hair, while Jeongguk stretches around to kiss his shoulder. "Wh."

"Y'know, hyung," Hoseok says, pursing his lips for a moment. "It... It's been a really long time for us, hasn't it. Ten years." Yoongi nods weakly, but Hoseok continues speaking, and Jeongguk continues kissing Yoongi's shoulder. "But it's... It's never changed, you know. That I love you. I just. It's so hard, hyung, when you were sick and you didn't want to get better, and I couldn't fix it."

"I'm sorry," Yoongi manages.

"Don't be," Hoseok replies. "I shouldn't... I shouldn't have tried to fix you, hyung, you can't fix people. You can't... You're not a car, right? Or a bike, or a computer, you're a person. People are complicated and you can't fix them, and I shouldn't have..." he trails off, takes a deep breath. "I shouldn't have done that. Given you an ultimatum, it wasn't... It wasn't fair. I'm sorry."

The ultimatum. Yoongi thinks about it daily: Hoseok's red eyes and tired expression, the way his arms fell to his side. You have to at least try, hyung, you have to get help. You're gonna kill yourself like this and I'm not gonna stay here and watch it. Looking back at it, Hoseok had only wanted Yoongi to do what any normal person wanted to do anyway—figure out how to live in the way that wouldn't hurt him quite so much but more than that Yoongi remembers Hoseok's soft, exhausted observation: you don't even want to try, do you?

Yoongi stares at Hoseok and Hoseok stares back and for a few moments the world has stopped turning and Yoongi, for once, has stopped with it. Then Jeongguk's hands pull him back into his chest and Yoongi tries to turn his head, is met with a soft, soft kiss. Yoongi is so confused. So confused.

"I'm sorry I said... You didn't love me, hyung," Jeongguk says, and Yoongi's head is spinning. "I knew it wasn't true. I knew it wasn't, and I said it... I said it on purpose, 'cos it, it hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you. I was wrong."

Yoongi can't comprehend what the fuck is going on. He can't even begin to understand what's going on and he's not sure he wants to because a part of himself is very convinced that he's about to have the rug pulled out from underneath him and another part of himself doesn't dare to hope that this is what it sounds like. Shit like this doesn't happen in real life, it just doesn't. Especially not to people like him, people who deserve everything they get but only the bad things. Only the bad things they've earned by being afraid, by being petty and hateful and weak and soft.

"I don't," Yoongi says, and Hoseok get up. Kisses him soft and sweet before pulling away and moving over to his shoulder, and Yoongi hears the sound of a kiss, gentle and wet near his ear before lips are on his ear and he's halfway between panic and unbearable arousal. Oh god, he's hallucinating. This is finally it, he's losing his mind, he's finally lost it and he's hallucinating.

"Hyung," Jeongguk chides in his ear. "You never told me how good Hoseok tastes." His voice is low and raw and Yoongi shivers instinctively because that's his bedroom voice. That's the voice he uses when he wants to pin Yoongi down and take him. "His lips, his skin," Jeongguk says, and reaches around, down, slips his fingers into the front of Hoseok's jeans. "His cock."

"Wh," Yoongi squeaks out as Hoseok gives a groan against his jaw, his hips bucking forward against Jeongguk's hand and the inside of Yoongi's thigh. "What?"

"Don't you want to, hyung," Jeongguk asks, pushing their bodies forward so he can cup more of the bulge in Hoseok's jeans while Hoseok pushes up into the touch with a groan. "Help me," he whispers, and Yoongi finds his hand snapping open Hoseok's fly, pulling down the zipper to the tune of Hoseok's moan of relief. He pulls down the denim and his hand joins Jeongguks, both of them inside of Hoseok's stylish, tight boxer-briefs and feeling his erection, hot and so, so hard. "God," Jeongguk groans, and Yoongi feels hardness against the small of his back. "He's so fucking hot, hyung."

Jeongguk's hand moves to yank down Hoseok's underwear and grip his cock and Yoongi shivers, shudders violently at the sight of Jeongguk's pale fingers on Hoseok's length. Hoseok is pushing into his grip, his hands on Jeongguk's knees as he grinds up, rubbing into Yoongi's thigh and Jeongguk's hand, Yoongi's anxious fingertips.

"Fuck," Hoseok hisses, and Jeongguk laughs.

"Get up," he says, and Hoseok moves to do just that. "Let me get my mouth on that cock." Jeongguk's filthy language is a surprise to Yoongi—it's Hoseok who has a dirty mouth, not Jeongguk, but Hoseok gets up and braces his leg over Yoongi and Jeongguk's thighs and Jeongguk pushes Yoongi forward to get his lips around Hoseok's tip, to give wet, vulgar suck before moving back. "Shit, yeah," he sighs, moving back. Yoongi looks over his shoulder. "You want a taste, hyung?" he asks, and Yoongi, unable to do much more than... Do whatever he's told, at the moment, because he's fairly sure he's still hallucinating, nods. "Do it," Jeongguk's hand guides his jaw, turns his head to an angle. "I want to watch."

Yoongi looks up at Hoseok and Hoseok looks down at him and pushes his tip between his lips, against the inside of his cheek before moving towards his throat. Yoongi has a fairly weak gag reflex, but it's been a long time and the second Hoseok bumps it he chokes, pulling back to cough. "Aw, come on, hyung," Jeongguk chides, his hand sliding down the front of Yoongi's pants to rub at his erection through his underwear. "You can take more than that, right?"

"Yes," Yoongi affirms, though he would probably say anything Jeongguk wanted to hear at the moment, with his hands on his cock, fingertips pressed to his balls. Hoseok moves back in and Yoongi takes a deep breath and, once Hoseok is close enough, swallows. He takes his cock all the way up to his pubic hair, pulling back to gasp for air and doing it again, choking when Jeongguk squeezes his dick.

"That's so fucking hot," he whispers, kissing Yoongi's neck as Hoseok holds the back of Yoongi's head and thrusts slow, deep into his mouth and throat. "God, Hoseok lemme," he leans over Yoongi's shoulder and Hoseok shifts his hips to fuck into Jeongguk's mouth instead, moving harder and a bit faster. There's a gross wet sound on every pull out but Jeongguk doesn't seem to care as he lets Hoseok fuck his throat and Yoongi just stares.

Hoseok pulls back with a sound of disappointment. "As much as I love your mouth," he says, getting back onto his knees between Yoongi's legs. "We're neglecting hyung."

"Aah, we did come here for you, hyung," Jeongguk assures, helping Hoseok to peel Yoongi out of his tight jeans and his converse high-tops. Hoseok kisses the insides of Yoongi's knees and Jeongguk moves up the bed, lifts Yoongi's legs to drape them over his own. Yoongi is panting, alarmed, fingers in the bedsheets as Hoseok licks a line up the inside of his thigh before mouthing at his ballsac while Jeongguk's hand grips his cock and strokes. He doesn't understand what's happening but his biology certainly doesn't care and his heart is just about ready to pound right out of his chest and Hoseok moves up, kisses Jeongguk's fingers, and then wraps around the tip of his cock, just the way that makes him squirm, rolling his hips in a circle.

"Hyung," Jeongguk whines, and Yoongi realizes that the movement puts extra pressure on Jeongguk's groin. He tries to steady himself and does it again, panting with Hoseok's mouth sucking so softly. Jeongguk groans into his neck and squeezes his cock.

"Don't tease the baby," Hoseok says as he pulls away with a laugh, leaning up to kiss Yoongi's lips. There's a bitterness in his mouth and Yoongi licks in to taste it, one hand coming up into Hoseok's hair while the other reaches back to hold on to Jeongguk's ribs.

Jeongguk is wearing their leather jacket.

Something in Yoongi's chest aches and he pulls away from Hoseok to turn his head, frantic for a kiss from Jeongguk, who obliges. Hoseok eases Yoongi down onto the floor, on his knees, back to chest with him and, once Yoongi's rushed kiss has gentled, guides his hands to Jeongguk's pants. Yoongi all but rips open the snap and yanks at the zipper—his brain isn't sure what's going on, but that's all right, it's all right because Jeongguk is wearing their leather jacket and Hoseok is kissing the back of his neck while Yoongi pulls down Jeongguk's underwear and leans down to suck in his cock, eager to taste him again, to touch him again, to love him again.

"Hyung," Jeongguk chokes out, and Yoongi feels his head being drawn up, up, up into a kiss. It's slow, and deep, and it means something important that Yoongi can't put his finger on right at this moment, not when he's strung between his two biggest regrets and holding on to both of them so desperately. Hoseok is mouthing the back of his neck, fingers running up his chest to smooth over his nipples and Yoongi just wants to drown because it's perfect.

It's perfect.

Yoongi wakes with an erection, and cries wretchedly until he falls back asleep.

~

It's getting close to Yoongi's birthday. He'll be thirty. It's funny... He lost Hoseok on his twentieth birthday, and Jeongguk just after his twenty-ninth. Now Yoongi is thirty and there's no one to celebrate with, no one to hold when the night turns dark. On the day, Sunggyu gifts him a set of ink and a cupcake, but he can't stay late, not when he's got night school to go to. So Yoongi spends his thirtieth birthday in the parlor, staring at the cupcake, unwilling to eat it because the frosting is colored in a red to yellow ombre, with a tiny chocolate card propped up on it: hyung loves you.

It's almost funny, Yoongi thinks as his eyes water. At least Sunggyu is still here. Probably because he won't fuck Yoongi so there's no possible way for him to mess it up. The cupcake's sticker declares that it's a black forest cupcake, with a layer of cherry in the middle. It's his favorite. He doesn't think anyone else in the world knows it's his favorite.

He updates his lonely instagram with a picture of it and looks back to his sketchbook. Flowers, always flowers. Flowers and faces and hands that he misses. Absently he rubs at his inner arm, just above his elbow. Iris and garlic flower, for strength and valor. Yoongi needs those things right now. He needs them.

He's already decided that killing himself is the best option, really. He'd always kind of... Planned to die before he got to be thirty five, so as he sees it he's just expediting the process. He should have died the first time, right after he got his diagnoses when he tried to jump off a bridge and Hoseok yanked him back by the collar, choked him, gave him a ring of bruise that lasted a week.

When he'd made Yoongi promise not to kill himself, though that promise isn't worth much now, is it. Not without Hoseok to make sure he follows through.

It's just one in a string of promises Yoongi's broken and as he pushes away from the counter, he pauses to update his instagram with one more picture: the drawing on the counter in front of him. It's himself, legs crossed, trees growing out of his back, face buried in his hands and on either side is an angel holding his shoulder. And if they happen to look like people that he used to know, well.

Goodnight forever, he types, and sends the picture out into the world, where no one will see it at all.

~

Yoongi hopes that Sunggyu isn't the one to find him. He really hopes it's not him. He's ready to do it, though. The bathtub is full of hot water to stimulate bloodflow. The boxcutter has a new blade in it. The pills he occasionally takes for insomnia are sitting on the counter, waiting to be swallowed with the tall glass of whiskey sour he's made himself. It's all there, it's all ready, he just has to do it.

Sunggyu will mourn him, Yoongi realizes. At least, for a while. Sunggyu might attend to his funeral since his parents won't. Sunggyu might stand over his grave in the one dark suit he owns and he might put down white roses, because he insists that they fit Yoongi best, even though they really, really don't. Maybe Taehyung will come, eventually. If he ever forgives Yoongi for what he did to Jeongguk. Jeongguk will never come, Yoongi is sure of this. Why would he? Yoongi cheated on him, cheated on him with an ex he hadn't seen in ten years, someone he carried a torch for, someone...

Yoongi swallows and reaches out for the pills. Pills, alcohol, get in the bath and... Run the boxcutter up the street. It sounds so easy. It all sounds so simple.

He reaches for his phone. He never deleted Jeongguk's number and it's that number he calls now. It's two in the morning on March tenth and he's calling Jeon Jeongguk and he almost hopes he doesn't answer, hopes he sees the caller ID and turns over and closes his eyes and ignores it.

Hello?His sleepy voice makes Yoongi's belly pull tight.

"Jeongguk," he says, his accent thick with distress. The phone doesn't hang up.

What do you want?

"Just," Yoongi swallows. "To say I'm sorry. I mean it. I'm sorry."

...That doesn't matter now, Jeongguk says and Yoongi nods, looks at the bathtub.

"Guess it doesn't," he whispers. "Sorry. For waking you. For... Everything." His voice catches and he wants to scream when Jeongguk's voice shifts to something... Concerned. Something warm and familiar and it makes his blood curdle.

..Yoongi? he asks, and Yoongi hangs up the phone. Jeongguk calls back but Yoongi turns the ringer down to silent and puts it on the counter. He doesn't have Hoseok's number, so he can't call him. He's already left a message on Jimin and Taehyung's answering machine—he knows they keep it on silent, so they'll get it in the morning. He's even left a brief voicemail for Namjoon. Sunggyu...

Yoongi had scrawled a letter. Pathetic and messy and he'd left it on the pinboard in Sunggyu's cube, the first place he goes in the morning. He hadn't known what to write except the truth—

Hyung,

I can't really explain how much you mean to me, not really. You're the only father I have, and I never really said thank you properly, not for helping me, not for letting me apprentice, not for letting me work here and live here and just exist in your space. You never told me what happened with Woohyun and Hyemi but I think, hyung, if you just told Woohyun the truth—that you were wrong, that you love him and your daughter, that you want to be a part of their lives again, if he'll let you—I think he'll at least take it into consideration. After all you've done for me, this advice is the least I can give you, right? Even though I'm not really in any position to be advising anyone else. But that's never stopped me before.

I hope you talk to Woohyun. I hope you get to pick Hyemi up from school and scare all the teachers with your tattoos and scary blue hair and big gauges. I hope you get every good thing you've ever wanted and more. And, just one more thing, hyung. I love you.

I love you. Thank you. I'm sorry.

His father figure deserves better. Don't they all? Better than what he has to offer, what little he'd had to give in the first place. It had all been worthless, hadn't it? His parents are right, they've always been right. He's a failure.

These black thoughts swirl around his head for a long time. Yoongi reaches for the handful of gel-coated pills and puts them in his mouth. He's always wondered why they coat sleeping pills. It just makes it easier for people like him to kill themselves with them.

He swallows them down with two gulps of water and uses the tall cup of whiskey as a chaser. He's notoriously lightweight, and it goes to his head almost immediately. He sways on the edge of the tub and looks at his phone. It's still ringing. Or maybe it's ringing again, he's not sure.

He reaches for the boxcutter, but can't manage to keep a grip on it. It slips in his hand and gauges a mess into his right arm, where no flowers have been tattooed into the pale, pale skin. Yoongi stares for a moment at the blood welling up. He's never thought about it that way. Never thought of making a million little wounds that end up as one huge wound at the end of the experience. It could be something beautiful, instead of a horrible, open line down his arm. It could be something amazing.

With this thought in his head, Yoongi takes the boxcutter in his unsteady left hand and goes to work.

~

Jeon Jeongguk can't breathe.

When Yoongi doesn't pick up his phone—god, he'd sounded so strange, so lost and small—Jeongguk turns to his social media accounts. He follows them discreetly, checks up on Yoongi every once in a while though he never interacts with him, just to... To make sure he's still alive. Is okay. The picture on his latest instagram post, the caption, makes panic well up in his throat and he calls 911, gives the address to the parlor and manages to choke out that he thinks his friend is trying to kill himself before begging them to call Sunggyu, whose cell phone number was still on the card from the shop Jeongguk has pinned to his corkboard.

Jeongguk pulls up, his car screeching to a halt as he yanks the e-brake and throws himself out of the vehicle just as they're wheeling Yoongi out on a gurney. His right arm is dangling limply over the side and all Jeongguk can see is blood, blood everywhere, dark and furious. It takes him a moment to get his bearings. One of the EMTs is talking to Sunggyu, who looks like an anxious hound straining at a rope.

"—so we'll have to take him into custody, regardless. Given his personal history it's probably safer for him, and for you."

"So you're just—" Sunggyu swallows and Jeongguk's heart is up in his throat. "You're just gonna lock him up? That's it? He's gonna wake up in a hospital n'you're gonna, gonna throw him in a fucking padded room and—"

"Hyung," Jeongguk says, trying to halt Sunggyu before he can get really upset. "Hyung, c'mon, lets go to the hospital, okay?" Sunggyu's eyes meet his and for a moment they burn with so much fury that Jeongguk almost flinches. God, he deserves that, he knows. "Please, hyung," he says.

Jeongguk lets Sunggyu drive. It's uncomfortably silent for a while, until Sunggyu says, "I knew it was just a matter of time." The words jerk Jeongguk out of the self-loathing and fear he's drowning in, and he turns his head to look at the older man.

"What?" Jeongguk asks, and Sunggyu shakes his head.

"It was just a matter of time," he repeats, staring out over the hood of the car past the windshield. "Before he tried it again. The EMTs, they, they said it's not as bad as it could have been. Mostly they're worried about the drugs, not the cuts."

"He took drugs?" Jeongguk asks, feeling tiny and stupid and so very, very young.

"Sleeping pills," Sunggyu says, and Jeongguk's stomach drops. "The rest of the bottle. And about six shots of whiskey on top of it, from the looks of the glass."

"I didn't," Jeongguk says, feeling like he's out of his own body. "I didn't know he had sleeping pills."

"He hasn't needed them in a while, well. Not before, anyway." Sunggyu pulls into a parking space and turns to look at Jeongguk. "I'm not sure you should be here."

"He called me," Jeongguk says.

"I don't care," Sunggyu replies, the snap of a whip at the end of his tongue. "I don't care about you, or Hoseok, or Taehyung or Namjoon or any of you assholes he's wasted so much of his fucking time crying about," he says, getting progressively more upset as he speaks. "I care about Yoongi," he says, his voice strained, and Jeongguk realizes with startling clarity that he's not the only person who cares about Min Yoongi. For all of his flaws, for as much as Jeongguk hates him for lying to him, for cheating on him, he doesn't want him to be in pain. He doesn't want him to hurt, doesn't want him to hurt himself or anyone else. Before he'd confronted Yoongi he'd hoped that they could at least be friends but the hurt that welled up was too much and there was no tempering his venomous tongue, by the time he'd even wanted to he'd already been walking away and something in him wouldn't let go of his pride to turn around.

God, Jeongguk wishes he'd just turned around.

But there is Kim Sunggyu, sitting there with one hand over his mouth as he breathes slowly and deeply through his nose, and Jeon Jeongguk is reminded that there are other people who love Yoongi, too.

~

There is a peach tree carved into the skin of Yoongi's right forearm. The blossoms are large, the cuts that form them are deep. There is a stylized peach at the thin skin of his wrist. Yoongi had managed to cut away actual slices of skin to create depth and despite the obvious weakness of his left hand the scarring will be... Incredible. Jeongguk looks at it again and reaches to put his fingers in Yoongis, to hold his hand tightly and squeeze. Once they had him stabilized, Sunggyu'd been brought in to talk to a doctor, since he's listed as next of kin, and Jeongguk has a few minutes alone with the silent form of a man he'd assisted in breaking.

"Wake up, hyung," he whispers, desperately. "Wake up, please."

Yoongi lays still in the bed and Jeongguk wishes, suddenly and with much self loathing, that he could take it all back. Take back the words he'd said in anger, take back his pride that had kept him from talking to Yoongi again, take back all of the misdirected hatred he'd allowed to swallow him whole when he found out that Yoongi was fucking around with Hoseok behind his back. Though he supposes he can't... He can't be mad at Yoongi for that, not really. Yoongi had just been trying to work out his issues in the only way he knew how and Jeongguk left him without a safety net, without anything to stop him from falling and splattering on the ground. Namjoon had said, a few months ago, that he was worried for Yoongi's mental state. Something's really wrong, he'd said, and Jeongguk had shaken it off, not particularly interested in what Namjoon had to say about the situation as they sat in Taehyung's living room. He'd mostly just been pissed off that he had to be in the same room as Jung Hoseok while they, and Taehyung, all talked about their ex-lover like he was some kind of experimental treatment patient instead of something all of them should want to forget.

Now, Jeongguk holds his phone in one hand and dials a number Namjoon had insisted in programming in, just in case. He listens to it ring, listens to it ring and ring and ring until someone picks up.

Hello?

"Jung Hoseok," he says. "It's Jeon Jeongguk."

What can I do for you, he asks.

"I'm at, at the hospital right now," he says. His voice cracks and there's a beat of silence.

I'll be right there.

Hoseok hangs up and Jeongguk drops his head to the blankets. Holds Yoongi's hand and wishes he could take it all back.

~

Hoseok has always known this day would come.

He's known, somewhere deep in his gut, that one day Yoongi wouldn't be able to take it anymore—that he'd fall apart and try to kill himself again and he'd get it right this time. No jumping off a bridge, no, it would be more intimate than that. More personal. Hoseok had been there to stop him last time—this time it seems he isn't so lucky.

He walks into the hospital room and sees Yoongi with tubes coming out of his nose and needles in his hands. He walks into the hospital room and sees Jeon Jeongguk sitting there, cupping Yoongi's hand to his cheek and whispering soft pleading, begging. Hoseok doesn't have to hear it to know what it is.

Don't leave me, please don't go, please.

It's not the first time Yoongi's broken a promise.

"Hey," he croaks out, and Jeongguk turns to look at him, his eyes wild. "The, uh. The doctor said he's stable?"

"Yeah," Jeongguk replies. "Stable as he can get, I guess."

There's a moment of incredibly awkward silence, and Hoseok swallows. "Listen," he says. "Listen. I don't... I don't know what Yoongi wants," he says, determined to make his stand here and now, when it matters the most. "I don't know what he wants, but I'm not leaving him. Not again."

"Me neither," Jeongguk says, and it does't sound like a challenge, or a confrontation waiting to happen. It just sounds like a fact, and Hoseok pulls over a chair to sit in it, side-by-side with Jeon Jeongguk. Hoseok doesn't feel bad for being with Yoongi, for sneaking around behind Jeongguk's back. He feels terrible that it hurt Yoongi so badly, that Yoongi felt like he couldn't reach out to Hoseok for help or support, not that Sunggyu would have allowed it, anyway. He's more protective than a pit bull. Hoseok is rightfully afraid of him.

"What did he see in you," Jeongguk asks, though the question is hollow. "What did he see that I couldn't... Couldn't give him?"

"I don't know," Hoseok admits, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Familiarity, maybe."

"Taehyung said you only dated for a few years."

"Almost four," Hoseok says. "And we were friends for a long time before that."

"What happened?" Jeongguk asks, and Hoseok looks down at Yoongi's arm, watches the rise and fall of his chest. "When you two broke up. What happened."

"I," Hoseok starts. "I told him I wasn't... Gonna watch him circle the drain," he says, clearly embarrassed. "I basically told him to get it together, to shit or get off the pot and he... I didn't give him time to think it over. I wanted my answer right there, at that exact minute, and he... He panicked, and it just fell apart, I guess."

They sit in silence, and Hoseok looks over at Jeongguk.

"You?"

"I found out he'd been... Seeing you," Jeongguk says, eyes half-open. "I was just so angry. I said... I said horrible things I didn't mean." He looks down at their hands. "...I called him a whore."

Hoseok flinches and bites his lip. Jeongguk laughs, dull and dead.

"I don't know why I said that. I guess it just. It hurt so much. What did you have that I don't? What did you give him that I couldn't? But I didn't ask those things, I just... Spat out what was in my head and look," he loses his breath for a moment and Hoseok reaches out to steady him. "And look where it got me. Got us. I miss him so much, god," Jeongguk presses one hand to his eye and Hoseok nods in understanding. "What if he never wakes up, Hoseok?" Jeongguk whispers. "What if he never comes back, what if I never get to tell him I'm sorry?"

Hoseok reaches out and pulls Jeongguk's head against his chest. He rubs his back and listens to him cry, watches the way his hand still clutches Yoongi's on the bed. He should never have come back. He should never have asked Jimin about his boyfriend's friend min yoongi or followed him after he'd had that fit at the party but he'd wanted to make sure Yoongi was okay and he hadn't been but Hoseok had forgotten what to do. He couldn't remember what he was supposed to say or how he was supposed to say it and in his clumsy attempts to make things better, he made them worse.

He does that a lot.

"He'll wake up," he promises Jeongguk, hoping that he isn't lying as the kid cries into his shirt. "He'll wake up, it's gonna be okay."

"Hyung," Jeongguk weeps, and Hoseok closes his eyes.

Hyung.

~

Yoongi wakes up in a white room, on a white bed. He sits up and looks down at his white nightgown, clenching his hands in the sheets as he realizes he doesn't know where he is.

There is a window and, after much debate, Yoongi gets out of the bed and walks to it to look outside.

It's white out there, too. Nothing but whiteness as clear as he can see, without even shadows to consider or give it shape. Yoongi shudders and backs away from it, trips over himself in his rush and lands hard on his backside, catching himself with his arms. They hurt.

They hurt a lot and Yoongi looks down at them, pulls them in front of himself and watches with detached horror as the tattoos on his left arm start to burst out of his skin. Then the skin of his right arm starts to bleed, but it smells like peach blossoms, the soft coral juice running down into his palm and over his fingers. All he can do is watch as his left arm gives birth to a garden and the peach tree on the right is the centerpiece, pulling Yoongi up and he dangles there, attached to the ground by the vines from his left forearm. Both sides yank at his body and then the branches and vines are hands and the hands are connected to voices, voices that creep into his nightmares and daydreams, all of his hopes and fears. He is suspended between them, unable to get free.

You don't even want to try, do you?

Whore.

No, Yoongi gasps out, kicking at the air, hanging helplessly in front of the peach tree. Beneath him are clusters of moss and fern and sharp, sharp thorns. Unforgiving clusters of thistle and blackberry bushes, things he used to think were beautiful until he hurt himself trying to hold them in his hands. No, stop, please get it off me get it off me help help me please—

Yoongi hears beeping. He hears frantic beeping and shouting and he jerks up, screaming, reaching to tear away the vines and branches attached to his arms, clawing at the wounds they come out of, smearing liquid everywhere. The beeping is faster, like the countdown of a bomb and Yoongi fumbles around in the dark, unseeing, until something... Something pokes him, and he starts to fall. He smells something... Floral, but also something cool and watery as he collapses back down to the white bed in the white room, like he'd never moved at all.

~

Jeongguk has never seen anything so terrifying in his life.

Yoongi is screaming, he's screaming and striking out and thrashing and Hoseok is dragging Jeongguk away from the bed and out into the hallway, hitting the red button for emergency assistance. Nurses come in, and it takes four of them to pin Yoongi's shrieking form down to the bed, a fifth to pierce him with a short needle. It takes a minute but the drug has powerful effect: his ex-lover collapses down to the bed and quietly, the nurses wipe off the blood where he'd yanked out the needles keeping him somewhat sedated. They re-insert them. They tuck Yoongi back down and, after a moment of quiet conversation, they buckle him to the bed.

"Why," Jeongguk starts, but Hoseok holds on to his shoulder and shakes his head. They stand quietly until the nurses leave and they are allowed back in and Jeongguk feels his eyes getting itchy to see Yoongi, god, Yoongi, limp and small and tied down to the bed at the wrist and ankle. "Hyung," he hiccups out, and Hoseok stands behind him, holds him tightly. Jeongguk isn't sure he wants comfort from Hoseok but it's better than no comfort at all, it's as close to Yoongi as he's going to be able to get so he turns around and hugs Hoseok, buries his face in his shoulder and just... Holds on.

Jeongguk holds on, Hoseok holds on, and Yoongi lays motionless and white behind them.

~

Namjoon shows up first thing the next morning. He's breathless, pink-cheeked and stubbled and Seokjin is right behind him, eyes wide with fear. Hoseok is sitting on the bench outside Yoongi's room, and Jeongguk is laying beside him, head pillowed on his thighs.

"They're cleaning him up right now," he says and Namjoon nods, collapsing into a chair.

"Jesus," he says, pressing his face to his hand. "Jesus Christ, he left me a voicemail, I thought—"

"Yeah," Hoseok nods and Namjoon's hand slides down the bridge of his nose to cover his mouth and air shudders out of his lungs. "He's, he's okay. For now. They think.. He might have finally just lost it." At least, that's what they'd told Hoseok, though he personally thinks that's a bunch of bullshit. It's all too well planned. Yoongi waited until Tuesday night, his birthday, because he knew he'd be alone, because Sunggyu was out and wouldn't be back till Wednesday afternoon at the earliest. He'd made phone calls, left messages, said goodbye. When Jeongguk had tearily offered Hoseok his phone earlier that morning to see the picture Yoongi had put on his untagged instagram, he'd nearly choked.

Goodnight forever.

"Bullshit," Namjoon spits it out like a spray of machine gun bullets and Seokjin, sitting beside him, runs a hand up through his hair. "Fuck. God, I knew something was wrong, I couldn't put my finger on it, I knew something wa—"

"It's not the time, Joonah," Seokjin says quietly. "Yoongi's alive. He's going to be okay. That's enough for now, all right?"

Hoseok watches Namjoon bite into his lips and go where Seokjin's fingers guide him—to rest his head on Seokjin's broad, pale-pink clad shoulder and struggle to keep his breathing under control. He knows Namjoon only vaguely, through Taehyung, and suddenly something inside of himself has to laugh because here they are—the three of them, exes to one Min Yoongi, all freaking out over a suicide attempt when none of them (save Namjoon) could be bothered to check up on him in the past year or so. Too busy nursing their own hurt pride, their own egos, too busy with their own bullshit to care about Yoongi's wellbeing. True, they had reasons not to, but Hoseok preferred to think that he wasn't a completely heartless bastard.

The ten years between then and now seem pretty fucking bastardly, a part of his brain murmurs, and Hoseok looks down at his lap, where Jeongguk has twisted, his brow delicately furrowed. He looks real young, Jeongguk. Soft at the edges still, and Hoseok can definitely see what Yoongi saw in him. A spark of youth, strength and vivaciousness he'd lost before he was even a late teenager. Something ethereal and eternal. And he'd fucking cheated on him to get with Jung Hoseok? Some piece of shit who thought Yoongi's mental breakdown was something that could be fixed like a piece of fucking cabinetry. Jesus.

Taehyung walks in the door, holding Jimin's hand and looking subdued. He doesn't say anything—just makes his way to a chair and sits, shifts his body so Jimin can squeeze in beside him and all six of them sit in silence, listening to the sound of a sponge being wrung, listening to Taehyung's tiny sniffles become fiercely muffled crying.

~

Yoongi is dreaming.

He knows he's dreaming because they're all there. Hoseok, Taehyung, Namjoon and Jeongguk. Park Jimin, and Namjoon's boyfriend Seokjin. They're all standing, wearing white. They're not wearing shoes, and there are flowers in crowns around their heads. Yoongi knows enough about what flowers represent to know what he's looking at when he looks at them. But they're white, too, so Yoongi picks up his tattoo gun and moves to a stepladder, climbs up to color in the petals. He colors in Seokjin's first: cherry blossoms, like his tattoo, and the small sprigs of tinkerbell lilac. Pale pink and lavender in color, with rich green leaves. Flowers for beauty, and confidence. He climbs down when he's satisfied, and goes to Namjoon.

Namjoon also has lilac in his crown, but it's made up mostly of tuberose, which Yoongi finds startlingly appropriate. Dangerous pleasures. He shades in the white petals with a gentle crown of pink. He glances back and forth between Namjoon and Seokjin and smiles a little, climbing down to go to Jimin.

Park Jimin wears a crown of holly flowers and honeysuckle and Taehyung, standing motionless beside him wears holly flowers and sweetpea. He finds it... Tender, just like he'd always known they would be.Domestic happiness, generous and devoted affection. They're sweet, well-matched for one another. It's one of the good things he feels whenever he sees them together, that he helped them find one another. Granted, he'd done it by being terrible for Taehyung, but...

It leaves just Jeongguk and Hoseok. The two of them stand side by side and their crowns are half-colored. Yellow roses and hazel blossoms for forgiveness and reconsiliation, but Jeongguk's crown bears flowering almond for hope, and Hoseok's has plum blossoms for keeping promises. Yoongi rubs at his itchy eyes, gets on his stool to color them in.

The hum of the tattoo gun is loud in the endless space but it fades into silence, eventually. With color in their crowns, the images of his friends seem to have more life in them, and he's satisfied with that. He moves to climb down from his stool but hesitates when he looks up at the marble-smooth skin of the men he's standing between. He could reach both of them from where he'd positioned the step stool but it appears to him now that maybe he shouldn't have done that. He's not meant to reach two things at once. It's greedy, it's unfair.

He looks at their crowns and at their sleeping eyes. He reaches out and cups their jaws, feeling the differences in the build of their faces before he leans to kiss Jeongguk, then Hoseok, softly on the cheek. They feel warm despite the way they stand like statues and Yoongi climbs down. He climbs down with every intention to take his step stool and tattoo bag and go.

Instead he finds his things clattering to the ground when two hands wrap around his wrists, grip tighter than should be humanly possible. He gasps in pain, feels his wrists pop and the bones in them grind. Jeongguk and Hoseok are moving like chess pieces, eyes closed, each holding on to one of his hands. "Wait," he says, twisting his arms, flexing his shoulders but they're still holding on, moving to face one another. He's going to be crushed between them. "Wait, no, please—"

They move closer. Trapped between their chests, Yoongi's ribcage is locked in a vise.

"Wa-wait—

Hoseok—

Jeongguk—

please—"

Everything stops moving. Jeongguk, Hoseok, Yoongi's heartbeat pounding between them. He slumps and doesn't fight the stone grips on his wrists. Just presses his face down to Hoseok's chest, then back onto Jeongguk's shoulder and remembers a dream like this, a dream.

Where everything is perfect, and nothing...

Nothing hurts anymore.

~

"How did you know you loved him?" Jeongguk asks, and Hoseok looks over at him like he's grown a third eye. "Yoongi. How did... I mean, why."

"I don't know," Hoseok replies, shrugging. "I just... Did. It was really easy, I think. He just... kind of wormed his way in. Little bastard. He's slippery like that."

"Is he?" Jeongguk asks. Hoseok looks over at him. "I feel like... I had to draw him in. Like if I just stayed still long enough he'd come to me."

"Well he did, didn't he?"

"I guess."

They're sitting in a little restaurant by the hospital because it's after official visiting hours and they're not allowed to stay, since they're not legal next of kin. They decided to get something to eat and why not go together, since neither of them want to be alone with their conscience at the moment. Hoseok takes a large slurp of his noodles and Jeongguk takes a sip of his tea. They exist in silence for a moment.

"At the party, how did... How did you know it was him?" Jeongguk asks.

"Oh, I," Hoseok laughs weakly. "I can spot him a mile away when he's like that. It's like this aura he gives off, all that panic. He responds to everything like that—or he used to. Back before he decided he wasn't scared to get help."

"Help for what," Jeongguk asks, and Hoseok chews his lip, wonders if it's his place to say. It's not, but Yoongi isn't here now to fix it, and Jeongguk is asking.

"His disorder," Hoseok says. "It's... I mean I don't really understand everything, but the papers said something about a type of PTSD, his flight response being way out of whack for someone whose never been in like, an actual combat zone or something. A panic disorder of some kind, I guess. There was this list of things they didn't want him exposed to, there was all this medication they wanted him to take n'it was all so expensive and his parents—I mean they weren't helpin'em, he was living with me by then."

"Why?" Jeongguk asks. "Did they kick him out?"

"...Basically, yeah," Hoseok shifts uncomfortably in the chair. "They, uh. Made it clear he wasn't welcome at home. Not when he wanted to become a tattoo artist, not when..." he pursed his lips. "Not as long as he was with me. We lived in a different borough then, but we used to come around here all the time to see the tattoo shops and the street art and stuff, stuff he really liked to take pictures of, get inspired by. We used to go out all the time."

"Then he got diagnosed," Jeongguk says, and Hoseok nods.

"It was too much," Hoseok admits, face flushed with shame at the memory of the argument that ruined everything he and Yoongi had, everything they should have been. "It was too much for him, all that exposure. By the time I figured out what was goin' on he was halfway to packed and I wasn't gonna try n'make him stay." He pauses. "But I was gonna make him feel like shit for leaving."

Jeongguk looks down at his ramen. Nods. He'd done the same thing.

"I didn't give'em the chance to say anything, like I said, I just... Demanded a fucking answer and when he couldn't give me one I decided that was it, right? That was it. He went to Sunggyu's place and I stopped comin'round here and... That's that."

"Did you miss him?"

"Every day."

"Do you still?"

Hoseok looks across the table at Jeongguk and for a second they share something so deep and heavy he nearly crumbles under the pressure. Instead he reaches out for Jeongguk's hand and takes in a gulp of air that Jeongguk holds on—he doesn't leave Hoseok to drown.

"Yes," Hoseok gasps, hating that it's true. Knowing it's always been true.

"Me too," Jeongguk says, eyes bright through his dark bangs.

~

Sunggyu goes to the hospital every night for an hour after he closes up the shop. They let him in, because he's begged them to, and he spends an hour with Yoongi, still sleeping. Just sleeping, he's convinced himself. Not in a coma, not in pain, not dead. Just sleeping.

He knows the overdose on medication is what caused it. He knows Yoongi must have felt... Must have felt so lost and what had he done to help? What had he done, aside from what he'd always done—picked him up by the lapels and tried to walk him in the right direction. He's four years older than Yoongi but sometimes it feels like ten, for all that Yoongi could cope with what's been happening around him as he became an adult.

Hoseok and Yoongi used to come around all the time, especially after Yoongi moved in to Hoseok's house. Then Sunggyu had taken Yoongi in when Hoseok snapped him into pieces and god, he tried so hard. He'd just lost Woohyun and Hyemi, he'd been so confused, and taking Yoongi in had seemed like the only thing to do. He'd given him the apartment over the parlor since he and Woohyun had moved into their house two years before, and taken him as an apprentice.

His art has always been beautiful.

So many delicate lines in his paper art, some of the detail lost in translation to tattooing but Yoongi's hand is steady and his work is intricate, regardless. Sunggyu is proud of him, has always been. He wonders if he told him enough. By the time Yoongi finished his apprenticeship he'd tentatively started seeing Taehyung, whom Sunggyu regarded with suspicion and dislike, but only because he'd watched Yoongi struggle to recover from Hoseok—struggle back into something like normalcy even though there seemed to be a pane of glass between him and the world at all times.

Taehyung, at least, seemed willing to work with Yoongi. They argued sometimes, yes. Since Yoongi had an apartment of his own it seemed they'd gotten physical more than once, but at least both of them came in bruised up, instead of just one of them. It wasn't excusable, but at least Yoongi wasn't laying down and taking it, like Sunggyu was so afraid he would be.

But then Taehyung met Park Jimin, and all of that had flown right out the window.

Yoongi seemed resigned to it, then. Sunggyu remembers sitting with him in the tattoo parlor after hours, sipping from a water bottle and almost choking when Yoongi asked, do you think it's better to break up with someone if you know you're making each other unhappy? Or is it better to... to try and make it work, hyung.

Sunggyu could only think of Woohyun, then.

You should always give it the most effort you can,he'd said, leading to another four months of misery before Taehyung came in one evening, stoic, and left in something close to tears while Yoongi sat in his cube and stared at the wall.

He worked on himself, for a while. He got better at his art, did commissions for paintings and drawings, made more on his tattoos. Sunggyu watched from behind him, waiting for him to fall and he never did. He fought his way through whatever he was dealing with and came out on the other end to meet Kim Namjoon, who in Sunggyu's opinion is still one of the biggest fuckwads in the world.

But then again, where does he have any right to say anything?

That relationship ended as fast and furiously as it had begun. Yoongi had a couple of casual flings and then... And then Jeon Jeongguk. Sunggyu had been so, so sure.

Shows what the fuck I know, he thinks to himself as he sits in the chair and watches Yoongi breathe. He's wasting away, thinner than Sunggyu can ever remember seeing him and paler, his dark hair dry and brittle with the harsh shampoo. As best Sunggyu understands it, Hoseok came back, Yoongi started fucking around with him, and Jeongguk broke it off. He doesn't know the details, doesn't want to or need to. He doesn't care about the details, he cares about Yoongi, and it's with a deep, hard breath that he stands, leaning over the bed to press a kiss to his forehead. He might have done the same for Hyemi, if she was still here. But as it is she's not, so Sunggyu focuses all of his fatherly love and compassion on Yoongi.

"Wake up soon, kid," he says, standing up straight. "Feels like drowning, without you."

~

Hoseok isn't sure how it happens.

For two weeks, he's been visiting Yoongi in his room at the hospital with Jeongguk. They've been talking quietly, listening to Yoongi's heart monitor. He hasn't had any more episodes, at least, not while they're there, and it...

It just happens. Like it happened with Yoongi.

They've both kissed him goodnight, and they walk outside. They hesitate at their cars (Hoseok's truck, and Jeongguk's coupe) which are parked one beside the other, and look at one another in the warm, late spring air. Hoseok isn't sure what happens. Just that one moment they're looking at one another and the next they're pressed together, chest to chest, Jeongguk's hands in Hoseok's hair and Hoseok's hands on Jeongguk's back. They're kissing, it's hot and hard and hateful. They blame one another, blame themselves, and in the dark of the parking lot Jeon Jeongguk shoves Jung Hoseok against the door of his truck and pulls his hair hard enough to rip their mouths apart so his teeth can find Hoseok's throat instead.

"Fuck," Hoseok pants, and Jeongguk bites down, licks the skin he bruises. "Fuck, w—wait—" he says but he's clawing at Jeongguk's shoulders, biting his ear and trying to drag him in closer. Hoseok's truck is outfitted for summer, so the cap is on the back and the mattress covers the bed, his camping gear locked in a box in the backseat of the cab. Since Hoseok works remotely, he can live in his truck all summer if he wants to—something he's always wanted to share with... With somebody. Yoongi, probably. But Jeongguk is here, and holding him, and Hoseok just wants. "Get—in the truck, Jeongguk, in the truck," he hisses and Jeongguk pushes him against the door, lifts him up. Hoseok jerks in surprise at being manhandled so roughly and directs Jeongguk's steps by grabbing onto the windows of the cap and pulling their bodies down towards the back. He fumbles for his keys while Jeongguk bites at his throat and he manages to get the cap window up, pull the tailgate down, and get up onto the mattress. Six inches of memory foam, soft blankets and a veritable herd of pillows at the top. He opens the cap windows just a little while Jeongguk climbs in behind him, kicks off his shoes as the tailgate goes up and the big back window comes down and then it's just the two of them in the quiet dark of an unlit section of the hospital parking lot and Jeon Jeongguk is staring at Jung Hoseok like he wants to eat him alive.

Maybe he does. Maybe Hoseok wants him to.

Hoseok lays back as Jeongguk crawls over him. There isn't room for him to do much else. He grabs at Hoseok's clothes and yanks at them, tries to force them off, and Hoseok moves to wiggle free of them, leaving himself exposed and vulnerable on the clean sheets. Jeongguk is still in an overlarge flannel, his t-shirt and jeans but when Hoseok cautiously reaches for his belt buckle, Jeongguk doesn't stop him. He doesn't tell him to stop.

"Jesus," Hoseok breathes when Jeongguk pushes his jeans down off his hips, rips his shirt up over his head. Jeongguk is tall and muscled where Hoseok is shorter and much less toned. Jeongguk has no doubts about his dominance in the situation and Hoseok doesn't feeling like questioning him, not when he's leaning down and pressing his groin between Hoseok's spread thighs. Not when he leans forward to lick his neck and reaches between their bodies to grip their cocks in his hand. "Fuck," Hoseok gasps.

"You wanna?" Jeongguk asks, and something in the sharp bite of his tone makes Hoseok see white with rage and frustration. He bucks his body and Jeongguk uses that musculature to hold him down, to force him down, until his anger has cooled enough for him to relax. "I want to," Jeongguk says, almost whispers. The parking lot is quiet save for the sounds of insects in the treeline. "I really, really want to, hyung."

"I'm not Yoongi, Jeongguk," Hoseok says, and for a moment all is stillness. Then Jeongguk leans down and slips his lips against Hoseoks. He sucks gently at his bottom lip and tongues the corner of his mouth.

"Neither am I, Hoseok," he says, and Hoseok—what else can he do?

Hoseok lays back, opens his thighs a little wider, and reaches under the pillow. He offers the lubricant to Jeongguk and tries to keep his voice down when the younger man pushes fingers inside of him, when Jeongguk sucks softly at the tip of his dick. He rolls his hips with the motions and when Jeongguk gets up, lips pink and shining, he drags him in for a kiss, reaches down to stroke his length with one slick hand. He guides Jeongguk, groans when he pushes in and slaps a hand over his mouth when Jeongguk bottoms out, leaning over him in the back of the truck, sweat all over their skin, the open windows not quite fogged.

"Hyung," Jeongguk pants, rocking his hips. "Hyung, Hoseok hyung,"

"Hoseok," he chokes out, shaking his head. "Just—just Hoseok, I—" Yoongi is hyung, he wants to say but can't, not when Jeongguk is leaning down closer and sliding into him slow and deep and painfully good. So good. Traitorously good. Jeongguk doesn't have sex like Yoongi but Hoseok hadn't expected him to and it's good.

"Jeongguk," he breathes when Jeongguk stills for breath, the wet slap of skin in the small area loud and vulgar. Jeongguk pants for air and Hoseok smooths his hands down his sides, squeezes his hips, pulls him in and rubs his fingers over his chest, delighted with the sensitivity of his nipples. Jeongguk shivers like an inexperienced teenager. "On your back, Jeonggukie," he says, and Jeongguk glares up at him. "C'mon, it'll be fun, I promise."

It takes a moment, and Jeongguk hits his head on the top of the cap. Hoseok dissolves into helpless laughter and Jeongguk does too, once he's on his back and safe from the metal hovering only a few inches above Hoseok's head. "You okay," Hoseok asks through his laughing tears, cupping Jeongguk's head and bending down to kiss it.

"Yeah," Jeongguk promises, smiling stupidly. "I'm okay, Hoseok. You can show me the fun thing, now." Oh, Hoseok had almost forgotten but Jeongguk has not, and he pushes up and pulls Hoseok down and Hoseok groans so loudly that Jeongguk reaches up and slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes glancing toward the window. There are still security trucks out and about and the last thing they need is to get caught.

Hoseok braces his hands and knees on the mattress, spreads his thighs as wide as he can. He eases back and down and, after a moment, wraps his arms around Jeongguk's legs, his elbows under Jeongguk's knees, and drops forward.

The position—basically a bastardized Amazon, their bodies chest to chest—has them tightly pressed together. There's little to no room to move, and Hoseok just rolls his hips and squeezes, rocking his cock against Jeongguk's belly and grunting into his shoulder. One of Jeongguk's hands is in Hoseok's hair and the other is clawing at his back while he struggles to move and can't find the leverage. Hoseok has all the control. He likes it like this. Jeongguk is bigger, and stronger, but Hoseok is the one making him mewl like a kitten while still being the one taking his cock.

It's a good position to be in.

"Hoseok," Jeongguk pants, squirming, struggling to move and Hoseok moans into his neck, kisses the skin, digs his fingernails into Jeongguk's thighs. "H, Hoseok, shit, please?"

"Please what," he asks, his voice low and thick. Jeongguk whines. Hoseok loves it. "Please what, Jeonggukie?"

"Please," Jeongguk gasps for air when Hoseok tightens around him, gently bounces his weight back. "Oh shit hyung, Hoseok hyung please do that again—"

"What," Hoseok asks, grinning despite his own lack of breath. "This?"

"Yes," Jeongguk throws his head back and jerks his hips up and Hoseok laughs, and laughs and laughs until Jeongguk reaches down and grabs his ass, pulls his cheeks apart and rubs fingers over where his dick is buried, rubbing Hoseok's cock to his stomach.

Then he cums, choking on Jeongguk's name and watching with fascinated distractedness as Jeongguk runs his fingers over his own belly and slides those digits into his mouth to suck up the mess from his skin. He hears Jeongguk moan, feels his hips kick and distantly registers the gross wetness sliding between his cheeks as Jeongguk grabs his body and yanks him down onto his chest, holding his breath as hospital security drives by, the green lights on top of the SUV constant but not stopping as they pass.

Then, then they start laughing, and in the safety of the darkness they kiss quietly until morning comes. Jeongguk calls out of work, and Hoseok shoots off necessary emails using the hospital cafeteria wifi and they don't get out of the truck until visiting hours.

They walk into the room quietly, holding hands like letting go might kill them.

~

Taehyung tucks himself in beside Jimin and closes his eyes. It's been two weeks since... Since Yoongi... He shudders, unable to even think about what happened. His brain can't wrap around it. Yoongi was talented, and smart, and had most of his shit together, so how could he have even thought about... About it, much less actually tried it?

I don't think he had it together as much as you think he did, Tae, Jimin had said when they first got back from the hospital, from Hoseok and Jeongguk's tense, bent backs and Namjoon's twisted fingers. Jimin pushed play on the answering machine and Taehyung doesn't think he'll ever be able to forget what he'd heard through the speaker, not for a hundred million years. Not for forever.

Jiminah, Taehyungah. I, ah... Aish. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. For fucking up all the time, you know? Take care of each other. Knowing you're together makes me really happy and... I'm just really, really glad. Be good, okay? Hyung loves you, no matter what he says, sometimes. Or does. I'll talk to you later.

What hurts the most is that Yoongi had known he was lying, or he'd wanted to be lying. What hurt the most is that Yoongi had attempted to—to kill himself and he'd had the fucking nerve to say talk to you later. There wouldn't have been a 'later' if Yoongi'd had his way.

Taehyung whines and pushes his hands over his face. Jimin turns to kiss his forehead, his temple and hair.

"What's wrong," he asks, one arm over Taehyung's shoulders. "You okay, baby?"

"No," Taehyung said, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. "I. I still don't. Why." He's been stuck on it since they first saw Yoongi in the hospital bed. He'd looked so small and pale and the bandage around his right forearm was white and thick as a cast. He'd been covered in bruises from being grabbed: pulled out of the tub, lifted onto a gurney. "Is it, is it my fault, Jiminie? Did I—I made it worse, right? After what ha-happened with Jeonggukkie, I told hyung off, I told him he—he deserved it—"

Jimin reaches and Taehyung finds himself pressed into Jimin's warm chest. He pushes his face into his arm and holds on tight to his t-shirt while Jimin coos and smooths his hair like he's a kid in need of reassurance. Which isn't necessarily untrue.

But he'd said that. He had. You're a fucking coward and a liar, Min Yoongi, and you deserve everything you get. Or don't get. Or don't fucking have anymore. He'd regretted it as soon as Yoongi's shoulders dropped from their only barely defensive position. I know, he'd said, and Taehyung flinches to remember the expression on his face. The not-expression. Yoongi had looked like a doll, stiff but somehow limp as he stood there, his dark hair hiding his eyes while Sunggyu shoved Taehyung out of the parlor.

Taehyung knows he was wrong. But shame and pride are powerful forces, and he'd been so busy trying to mend Jeongguk's broken heart that he'd forgotten about Yoongi. Thought maybe Hoseok was taking care of it, until Jimin admitted that he hadn't seen Hoseok in a few months, since he'd stopped coming to their dance events.

Taehyung had an inkling, then, but hadn't acted on it.

Then Namjoon had come to them, asking. Told Taehyung what happened, demanded that the four of them get together because they owed that to themselves, to know where they stood. He called himself a whore, Namoon had said, and Taehyung had watched Jeongguk flinch, almost imperceptible. Something's fucking wrong.

But none of them had done anything about it, had they. They hadn't even tried. Always someone else's problem, Yoongi was someone else's responsibility.

Then that message. The text from Jeongguk, hyung's in the hospital, come as soon as you can. Namjoon's dark expression, Hoseok's hunched shoulders and Taehyung...

Taehyung cries into Jimin's shoulder. He's already lost one loved one to the heartless pull of suicide. How could he have been so callous, so careless, as to let another friend slip through his fingers like so much sand?

Jimin rocks him back and forth, and Taehyung wishes he'd never gone to the tattoo parlor. Wishes he'd never insisted Yoongi go to that party because if he hadn't—if he hadn't, none of this would have happened. Yoongi would still be with them, and they would still have time.

~

"I'm not Yoongi," Hoseok says, and Jeongguk nods.

"I know that."

Something passes between them as they lay in the back of Hoseok's truck that Sunday night. It's a holiday the next day, so Jeongguk doesn't have work, and the breeze is enough to keep the small space cool as it runs through the windows. They've been avoiding the topic. A week ago they had sex in the hospital parking lot and now they're in the back of Hoseok's truck in the place he likes to park, out by the woods. It's quiet and comfortable and Jeongguk feels like his skin is on fire.

Hoseok isn't Yoongi, not at all. He's different, and Jeongguk can see why Yoongi liked him. Can see why Yoongi stayed with him, why it hurt him so much when they broke apart. But it hurt Hoseok, too, and knowing both sides of the story makes it... Almost worse. Especially since Yoongi is still asleep in that hospital bed, and Hoseok is here in the back of his truck with Jeongguk, nude and warm.

"What are we gonna do when he wakes up?" Hoseok asks, and Jeongguk has to stop himself from saying, if. The doctors keep saying if. As far as they can tell, Yoongi's not waking up because something in his brain doesn't want to wake up, something in his head doesn't want to exist in this world, in this place, right now. Jeongguk doesn't want to think about that. Doesn't want to think about how wrong he was to snap, to speak with the intention of hurting Yoongi. He'd been wrong. He knew he was wrong even as he'd said it, and he's already cried into Hoseok's shoulder about it.

He'd been wrong.

"Apologize," Jeongguk says, and Hoseok sighs, nodding, pressing his cheek into Jeongguk's hair. Jeongguk can almost see his brow furrowing, can almost see the twist of a frown on his mouth.

"How are we going to explain this?" Hoseok says, and Jeongguk sits up to look down at him. Propped on one elbow he can see Hoseok's face, his chest and shoulders. His ginger-brown hair is sweaty and hanging in his face, and his expression is somber. He's beautiful, and Jeongguk feels something in his chest twist and squeeze.

"...I don't know," Jeongguk admits. "It... I mean, I."

"Don't worry too much about it," Hoseok says. "We'll figure it out when we get there." It's comforting, the way he says that. Like he believes it'll be okay. Jeongguk wishes he shared his confidence, as he settles back down, tucking his face into Hoseok's chest and closing his eyes. Hoseok's fingers card through his hair and Jeongguk... Jeongguk hopes.

~

It's two in the morning on April fifteenth. Min Yoongi has been in what doctors have been calling a coma for five weeks. He's lost fifteen pounds, is about three shades paler than he was when he came in, and at two in the morning on April fifteenth, Min Yoongi opens his eyes and stares out into the room with a tube down his throat and an oxygen cap on his face. With needles in the tops of his hands and buckles around his ankles and wrists, Min Yoongi opens his eyes and cries.

~

Sunggyu arrives just as visiting hours open. It's eight am and Yoongi is laying in the bed, devoid of intravenous tube and wrist and ankle restraints. He's sitting up and staring out over the room like he can't see it, and Sunggyu knocks on the doorframe to get his attention.

"Hey, kid. Welcome back," he says, and Yoongi turns to look at him. His eyes are bright and watery and as Sunggyu walks closer Yoongi starts crying—weeping, great gasping breaths as Sunggyu sits on the bed and pulls him into a warm, encompassing hug. Yoongi shakes and Sunggyu holds on, rubs his back, soothes him with gentle words until his hysterics have melted into soft hiccuping, his face hidden in Sunggyu's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he chokes out, voice thick and dense with tears, with the baring of his teeth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry hyung, I'm so sorry."

"I know," Sunggyu assures, kissing his head, rocking their bodies slowly. "I know, baby, I know." Sunggyu comforts Yoongi like he once comforted Hyemi, humming nonsense under his breath until Yoongi manages to calm himself to silence, letting him sit back against the pillows, though his hands won't let go of Sunggyu's shirt. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," Yoongi says, his voice hoarse. "Like fucking shit."

"I bet you do," Sunggyu says, a soft and tolerant smile on his face. He feels soft and tolerant. Like Yoongi just messed up at school, instead of tried to kill himself. "That's what sleeping for five weeks does to you."

"Five weeks?" Yoongi asks. "I was asleep for, for five weeks?"

"Mm," Sunggyu nods, rubbing his thumbs over Yoongi's wrists. "Guess you were catching up, huh? Taking care of that deficit." Sunggyu is afraid that if doesn't treat this like something normal, if he doesn't treat this casually and gently, Yoongi will spiral right back down into the kind of depression that makes him think suicide is the answer to the problems he's scared to face.

It's a relief when Yoongi nods, though he starts crying again. Sunggyu reaches to wipe away his tears. "Are you hungry?" Yoongi shakes his head. "Thirsty?" The shaking continues. "You'll tell me if you need something, right? Promise?"

Yoongi nods, and Sunggyu takes a breath in relief. Just that little nod, that little promise—Yoongi's going to be okay. It'll take a long time, but he's going to be okay.

"Do you want me to call anyone?" he asks, after a few minutes of silence broken only by the radio at the bedside. "They've been worried." Yoongi looks over at him and Sunggyu nods. "They have. The only reason they're not here right now is because I'm listed as next of kin, and they're not."

Sunggyu knows they means Hoseok and Jeongguk. While Yoongi has deep affection for Namjoon and Taehyung, it's Hoseok and Jeongguk who have dug their claws into him and he can't seem to get the barbs out. Sunggyu isn't sure he should. He doesn't know much about these things, but he knows that lately Hoseok and Jeongguk have been coming in together, holding one another's hands, their other hands wrapped around one of Yoongi's like they're sharing the responsibility of watching over him, caring for him. It's better than what was happening before, so Sunggyu hadn't said anything. It wasn't his place, besides. It was for them to sort out, not him.

"I don't," Yoongi starts, and takes a deep breath. "I want my sketchbook," he manages, licking his lips. "Can I have it?"

"I've got it right here," Sunggyu says, reaching down into the tote bag he's been carrying back and forth to the hospital for the last two weeks, pulling out the pencil case and sketchbook and setting them on Yoongi's lap.

"I don't want to see them," Yoongi says as he flips open the book to a blank page and rummages for a pencil. "I don't... I'm not ready." Sunggyu appreciates his honesty, and nods.

"We'll wait 'til you are."

~

Yoongi draws.

With his pencil in hand he sketches his dreams, the vivid memories of his coma hallucinations. The flower crowns on peaceful heads, the dark house with red curtains and an air raid siren, Hoseok's body broken over the front of his truck, Jeongguk hanging from a noose in the bathroom. The psychedelic visions of dancing, the rainbow of laughter that echoed through his brain sounding half like mocking, half like weeping. He draws until his pencil runs out of lead, and he picks up another.

Yoongi hasn't drawn like this in years. Not these horrifying, surreal things. With his concentration in flora he'd almost forgotten about the fearful things that used to fill his sketchbooks: the black rooms and shadowy figures, the frightening monsters and pathetic creatures more deserving of pity than anything else. There was a time when his art was full of these things; mostly in high school, in his first year with Sunggyu, but the focus on tattooing had dragged his style away from this and now, as he combines it with his delicate lines and natural curves he finds it to be something... Something almost beautiful. Hoseok and Jeongguk, a pair of trees growing around one another while Yoongi finds comfort in their shade, holding what looks like the infant spawn of a H.R.Geiger monster in his arms. Hoseok's bright smile stretched in the curve of a daisy petal, Jeongguk's dark eyes set into the bud of a rose.

Sunggyu comes every day until Yoongi is told he's all right to leave. Sunggyu is tense through the entire procedure, speaking quietly to a doctor, seeming to argue. He must eventually win the argument, because he takes Yoongi back to his house and Yoongi is grateful, because he doesn't think he could handle being in the studio just yet.

His home is bright and large and lovely, and he gives Yoongi a bedroom on the second floor. It's pale yellow and the bed is huge, the dresser and closet already packed with his clothes and things, what little he has. "I figure you'll be staying a while," Sunggyu says, and Yoongi looks back at him from where he stands in the center of the room. "N'I want you to feel at home."

"Hyung," Yoongi whispers, and Sunggyu opens his arms for him. Yoongi has been hyung to everyone else for so long that sometimes he forgets that Sunggyu is his hyung, that he's there to help him and take care of him, that's what he's always been trying to do. That's what he's always doing behind Yoongi's back: supporting him, holding him up. It felt terrible to fall, but the result is Yoongi being sure that Sunggyu is braced behind him, both hands ready.

He goes to Sunggyu. Hugs him tightly and holds on to his shoulders and breathes.

"I got you, kiddo," Sunggyu promises. "You're gonna be okay."

For the first time in a very long time, Yoongi almost believes that. He almost thinks it's possible, he can almost taste it on his tongue: he's going to be okay. He's not okay right now, but he will be. He will be.

~

He doesn't want to see you yet, Sunggyu had said. He's not ready. Respect his wishes.

Hoseok had nearly crumbled to pieces when he heard those words. Jeongguk's stoic silence, his somber nod, had been the only thing holding him up as they made their way out to Jeongguk's car. Hoseok waited until he was buckled into the passenger seat to bend over himself and start crying, and it feels like he hasn't stopped since.

Hoseok works from home, but Jeongguk has to go to the office every day. Seeing Jimin is something close to torture, because he always asks how Yoongi is and Jeongguk has to say fine even though what he wants to say is, he woke up and he doesn't want to see me and I don't think he'll ever want to see me again and I don't know what to do and I'm scared.

But he doesn't say that.

Not until Jimin confronts him in his cubicle one Tuesday afternoon while most of their floor is on lunch break. He pulls over a chair from across the path and sits in it, leaning forward onto his elbows and Jeongguk braces himself for a tirade: why didn't you tell me, how could you not tell me, I had to find out from someone else. But Jimin doesn't say that. He just sits and looks at Jeongguk and that's almost worse, because Jeongguk has to keep breathing.

He breathes until his breaths turn fast and heavy, until he has to put his hands over his face and Jimin rolls closer, tugs Jeongguk against himself and doesn't say anything while he cries—just rubs his back in silence. Jeongguk feels so stupid. He feels so stupid and small and terrified beyond reason. It's true that Hoseok has been staying at his apartment more often than not. It's true that the two of them fall asleep together, tangled up un Jeongguk's bedsheets, but there is a Yoongi-shaped wound in Jeongguk that will never heal, will never go away. It isn't fair, how someone can be in your life for a year and be ripped away so quickly, even though it's his own fault. It's his own fault and he knows it and he shouldn't be allowed to cry about it. He made his bed: now he has to sleep in it.

He'd told Jimin, right after he'd broken it off with Yoongi. He'd told Jimin the truth about what he'd said, how he hated himself for saying it, wasn't even sure why he'd said it, except that he'd known it would hurt Yoongi and he'd wanted to hurt him oh god, he'd wanted to truly hurt him in that instant that he'd stood there in the cold wind in the park, feeling more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Or at least, he hadn't thought he'd be able to feel more alone.

But he goes to bed feeling alone. He wakes feeling alone, he goes to work alone and showers alone and stares aimlessly out into his living room alone. Even when Hoseok is at his apartment their company is barely a comfort to one another. There's a piece missing between them, a properly aligned magnet that will allow them to snap together as they should, instead of struggling to press together.

"Hyung," Jeongguk hiccups, and Jimin squeezes him. He doesn't say anything, and Jeongguk doesn't want him to. He's not sure he can handle any words. He wants to go home. He wants to go home and call Hoseok and hide in his bed and pretend that Yoongi is still sleeping because if he's still sleeping it means that all hope isn't lost. It means that there's still a chance that he'll wake up and everything will be all right. His left hand grips at his right bicep, at the oak tree Yoongi had so lovingly tattooed there, had kissed, had smoothed his thumb over and said, you know, it looks really good on you, Jeonggukie.

In the cold, merciless light of day on that Tuesday afternoon, Jeongguk can't help but feel that everything is over, and nothing will ever really be all right again.

~

It's been two weeks.

Two weeks since Yoongi woke up and he's at the parlor with Sunggyu, working on a young man's forearm tattoo, a memorial to his mother. Yoongi had done the other arm the day before, a memorial to his father, and he smiles as he wipes away the last of the ink and the little dots of blood. "There," he says, setting his gun aside to clean it, grabbing the saran wrap and medical tape. "All done."

"Thanks," the kid says, smiling handsomely. "I really appreciate you doing this on such short notice, man, thank you so much."

"No problem," Yoongi replies, and he moves through the motions of getting the kid checked out. He gives Yoongi a hefty tip and a promise to recommend his work to anyone who asks and Yoongi is at least a little bit flattered. It's good to know he still has the touch, even though he's been out for a little while. Two months, give or take. It sometimes feels like a lot longer, although other times it feels like no time has passed at all. He hasn't gone upstairs yet, but he will, soon. Sunggyu had promised that the place had been professionally cleaned, and the bathroom remodeled into something more modern, with clean grout and white tile and a fancy marble countertop. A new bathtub.

It's been two weeks and Sunggyu has left Yoongi for an hour by himself when Jung Hoseok walks through the door. His hair is dark brown, his eyes are a bit sunken. He doesn't say anything and even if he had, Yoongi wouldn't know what to say in return. In silence, Hoseok offers out a piece of text on paper, and Yoongi looks down at it before motioning him toward his cube.

The calligraphy goes onto Hoseok's right forearm. It's easy for Yoongi to follow, because Hoseok's handwriting has always been easy to follow even though it's messy, and when he's done Hoseok just reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet and seven twenties, and puts them on the counter. Yoongi is going to protest that it's more than necessary, but Hoseok leaves without a word exchanged between the two of them. His shoulders are tense, and his hands are tucked down into his pockets in a position of self-defense that Yoongi could recognize anywhere.

Yoongi looks down at the money on the counter and reaches to put it in the till. There's a note tucked into the bills, and he hesitates before he unfolds it.

We've made a lot of mistakes. But leaving you was the worst of all.

It's signed with their initials, the two of them. Yoongi doesn't dare hope, not yet, but he tucks the note into his pocket and thinks about Hoseok's tattoo. Thinks about the somewhat haphazard calligraphy and bites into his lip.

The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.

~

All Taehyung has ever wanted is for Yoongi to be happy.

Yoongi's never been happy, not really. Not for the two years they were together. Not for the year he spent with Namjoon. Yoongi's smile has never really reached his eyes, not even when he was with Jeongguk. He always went around with an expression on his face like he knew Jeongguk was too good for him and he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Then it had, and Taehyung had watched Jeongguk fall apart and he'd blamed Yoongi, he had. Blamed Yoongi for not loving him enough, for not caring enough to let down his high walls and welcome Jeongguk in. He blamed Yoongi for not caring enough to fight for him.

But Jimin reminds him, once in a while, that Yoongi has baggage of his own and Taehyung needs to keep his nose out of it. That's why he hasn't said anything to Jeongguk. He only knows him through the margin anyway—it's Jimin who is friends with him, who gives Taehyung little updates every then and again. Jimin doesn't say anything about their breakup, only that Jeongguk had been as much to blame as Yoongi and it wasn't only his fault that things had cracked apart. Taehyung isn't sure what he meant by that, because his only experience in breaking up with Yoongi had been that conversation in the parlor, Yoongi's listless and apathetic responses to his words. In Taehyung's mind, Yoongi is the heartbreaker. Yoongi is the one who needs someone to... To crawl over his walls and cradle the small globe of light that still shines inside of him.

Taehyung has only ever wanted Yoongi to be happy. When they'd been together, the realization that he couldn't make Yoongi happy was what drove him into Jimin's arms in the first place. Jimin glowed like a star on a cloudless night. It's easy for the two of them to make one another happy. They'd fallen together as naturally as spring fading into summer and Taehyung hates that Yoongi is resigned to always live in winter, to always exist in a cold space where he is alone in the silence.

So when Yoongi calls him. When Yoongi takes the initiative to pick up the phone and call him, Taehyung gets up from his desk to close his office door and takes the call, uncaring of the fact that he's on the clock, that he'll get in trouble if his supervisor walks by.

"Yoongi," he says, and Yoongi gives a croaking little laugh.

Taehyungah. What's up?

"Nothing," he replies, breathless. "What's up with you?"

Are you free tonight?

"Yeah," Taehyung says. He's not—he has a meeting with his department head but it can wait, it can be rescheduled, this is more important. There is nothing more important than this.

Can you come over?

"Where?" he asks.

To the studio, Yoongi says. I moved back in a couple of days ago. There's a table. And even a chair.

Taehyung can't help but laugh, and nods even though Yoongi can't see him. "I'll be there," he promises. "What time?"

Whenever you get out is okay.

"Around seven?"

I should be done with my appointments by then, yeah.

"I'll be there around seven, then."

All right, Taehyungah. I'll see you then.

"See you." Yoongi hangs up and Taehyung can barely hear anything over the pounding of his heart, the ringing in his ears. He's going to see Yoongi tonight. He's going to see Yoongi tonight, and he sends out a text to Jimin, gets on the phone to his department head and begs him to reschedule their meeting. It's a family emergency, he insists, and it's not a lie. Not really.

~

Taehyung walks into the parlor at seven oh nine, looking like he's been swept up in a whirlwind before being dropped on the doorstep. It's rare to see him in such a state—hastily yanked on skinny jeans and a hoodie over the white v-necks he wears under his work shirts. Yoongi gives him a wave and Taehyung waves back, clearly unsure of what to do with himself. It's all right, Yoongi doesn't know what to do with himself either.

"Lock the door and flip the sign?" he says, and Taehyung does just that. He follows Yoongi up the stairs and Yoongi takes a few deep breaths as he walks into the little studio apartment where he tried to kill himself only three months before. The entire places smells like barbecue and it makes him feel a little less like he should be worried about what's about to happen.

It's been repainted to a soft lavender-cream, almost white. The bed is situated under the two windows, the round table in the corner near the kitchenette. Yoongi has shelves for the first time since he met Taehyung and his few books, his few trinkets, are set up on them in a manner he finds pleasing.

He motions for Taehyung to sit down. He does. Yoongi isn't sure he's ready to have this conversation but if he doesn't have it soon he's going to explode and he's afraid to talk to Sunggyu about it because he knows what Sunggyu will say and it's not the response he wants.

Maybe it's childish, but Taehyung will understand. He'll... He'll know what to do, because he always has an idea of what to do, anyway, which is more than Yoongi has at the moment.

He puts together a plate for both of them—barbecue ribs from the crockpot on the counter, rice from the rice cooker, a bowl of salad for each. Taehyung doesn't say anything but he's fidgeting like mad and Yoongi brings the food over to the table and sits down, taking a deep breath. "How are you," he asks, and Taehyung shrugs.

"Okay," he replies. Yoongi knows he has to go through the formalities before he has this conversation. "You?"

"Better," Yoongi says, sure of himself on that point anyway. He's definitely better than he was the last time Taehyung saw him. "I um, I need to talk to you about something."

"Shoot," Taehyung says, his attention completely fixed onto Yoongi which is a bit terrifying if he's honest. Having anyone's complete attention on him is terrifying lately.

"It's," he says, taking a deep breath. "It's about... Jeongguk and Hoseok," he says, pursing his lips and feeling foolish, like a child with two best friends who has been told he can only have one sleep over. "They're... They're together, aren't they. Sunggyu said they were."

"...That's what Jimin said," Taehyung replies, carefully. "But he also said they were both kind of... Messed up, so maybe they're not really together? Maybe they're just..." he trails off and Yoongi nods.

"Yeah," he says, rubbing at the back of his neck and wishing he had an appetite. "Yeah that's... That's kind of the impression I got from hyung." Yoongi takes a deep, deep breath. "Do you think I should... Try to talk to them?"

Taehyung looks at him and Yoongi feels very, very young. Taehyung looks at him and Yoongi feels like all of his emotions are exposed, like every raw nerve is being sparked with electricity. "I think," he says. "I think you should do what's going to make you happy, Yoongi," he says with finality. "If you want to talk to them, you should. If you want closure, or you want... Something else, from them, you should talk to them."

"That's the thing," Yoongi says. He rubs at the flower-shaped scar on his right arm, smooths his fingertips over the somewhat puckered skin. "Something more. Is it... It's too much, right? It's asking too much."

"Says who," Taehyung asks.

"Says everyone," Yoongi replies, and Taehyung shakes his head.

"Yoongi," he says. "When have you ever. Ever even once. Given a shit about what everyone thinks?"

"...It's kind of a new development," Yoongi admits.

"It's a shitty development," Taehyung says, and Yoongi laughs a little because there he is, there's his Kim Taehyung, his friend.

His friend.

God, Yoongi's missed him so, so much.

Taehyung picks up a rib and starts to peel the meat from the bone with his fingers. "You should never let anyone else dictate what makes you happy," he says, and Yoongi's heart feels lighter already. "You should be happy, hyung. If that means moving to Tibet to live in a cave and raise goats, that's fine. If it means you quit tattooing to become an tax accountant, that's fine too." Then Taehyung looks at him and Yoongi feels something rising up, bright and shining in his throat.

"If you want to be with Hoseok, and with Jeongguk," he says. "Then there's no reason you can't. You should definitely talk to them hyung," Taehyung says. "I think they're probably more... Open to the idea than you might think."

Yoongi blinks fast and looks down at his plate, picking the meat from his ribs and smiling because that, that's what he wanted to hear. That's what he needed to hear. To hear that there's a chance, that there's that sliver of something bright and shining wrapping around his heart and squeezing, dancing into his fingertips and shivering up his spine.

There's hope.

That's all Yoongi wants.

~

The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.

Hoseok rubs his tattoo idly while Jeongguk stretches out on the bed. He's practically living with Jeongguk these days, isn't sure why he still insists on paying for his apartment across the city in another borough. Probably because if the rug is pulled out from under him, he wants somewhere to go.

It's hard to think about that kind of thing while Jeongguk is kissing his ribs. It's hard to think about that kind of thing when Jeongguk tongues at his nipple and climbs over him, one hand coming up to cup the back of Hoseok's head and fist up in his hair. Jeongguk kisses up this neck and Hoseok sighs, tipping his head back and rolling his hips, slow and calculated. It feels good, with Jeongguk. It feels good and Hoseok kind of resents that, because what business does it have feeling so good when the two of them are so raw? When Jeongguk still cries in the bathroom and Hoseok lets his coffee go cold in his hands in the morning while he stares out into the living room and thinks about all of the what ifs that rake through his head? When the two of them have sex in this bed and then curl together afterwards and kiss and try not to talk about the space they sometimes intentionally leave between their bodies where Yoongi might have fit, if he was there?

"Jeongguk," he sighs, feeling Jeongguk part his legs a little wider, settle his weight a little more completely. They're both nude already, fresh out of the shower. Jeongguk leans forward and groans when they rub together, when the insides of his thighs clamp against Hoseok's hips and his fingers tighten then loosen, holding the back of Hoseok's head and neck while his mouth leaves desperate kisses on Hoseok's exposed throat. Jeongguk is feeling needy, Hoseok knows. It's only been a few months, but Jeongguk is as easy to read as a book and he carefully rolls them over, getting g up on his elbows to look down at the younger man.

Jeongguk is so beautiful. Wide-eyed, with a large nose and soft mouth and the delicate mess of acne scarring that makes him look less like a marble statue and more like a human. Hoseok bends to kiss those scars, to kiss the corner of his mouth and reach for the bottle of lubricant on the bedside table. Jeongguk opens his legs and cocks his hips and Hoseok's fingers easily slip inside him. They have sex nearly every day, and Jeongguk is relaxed, comfortable and aroused as he always is, his hand wrapped around his cock to stroke while Hoseok readies him. It's a gorgeous sight, if he's honest. Jeongguk's other arm is bent up, gripping the pillow just under his head while his back strains up and his thighs stretch open, the muscles trembling ever so carefully. "Ah Hoseok," he whines, when Hoseok takes too long in preparing, when it becomes too much of a tease. "C'mon, please?"

Hoseok relents, easing his fingers away. Jeongguk wiggles, gets up and reaches under himself. He stretches and his hands cup his cheeks to pull them open while Hoseok slicks his cock and gets up between those beautiful legs to pullback his foreskin as he pushes in, in, in. Jeongguk groans, whines, and Hoseok doesn't stop until he's completely inside of him, until he's shivering, squirming, grabbing at the blankets and panting for air. Hoseok bends to kiss his mouth and gives a slow, easy thrust. His younger lover gives a soft ahand Hoseok lowers himself onto one elbow, the other hand coming up to push two fingers into that beautiful mouth. Jeongguk gasps, then closes his mouth around them. It's permission. If he didn't want Hoseok to talk the way he's about to, he would have refused to suck, refused to acknowledge this filthy little part of their coupling, the secret they can't acknowledge outside of sex.

"Imagine Yoongi's cock," he breathes, kissing Jeongguk's ear as he rocks his hips. "Imagine sucking his dick, Jeongguk, all the way in," he bites Jeongguk's throat and is rewarded with a broken kind of moan. "Fucking your throat till you choke, Jeonggukkie, balls to chin," he pushes his two fingers in and presses his palm to Jeongguk's chin, rather relishing the little heave of his body. His lips are still closed tight, even as Hoseok moves his wet fingers in and out, rubbing across Jeongguk's tongue, pressing down against it. Jeongguk moans brokenly and Hoseok moves faster, both his hips and his hand. "He'd fuck your face, Jeonggukkie, hold the sides of your head," Hoseok moves his free hand to push down against Jeongguk's ear and hair, pinning his head to the pillow and thrusting his hand, his hips, as Jeongguk tightens up and jerks up and down. "Deep in your throat like I'm deep in your ass, fuck you till he cums all over your pretty mouth," Hoseok pulls out his fingers, wet with the thick saliva from the back of Jeongguk's throat and traces them over Jeongguk's lips and face, feeling him tighten up, feeling him cum, hearing his choking gasp of hyungand unsure which of them he's calling out for, or if it even matters.

Hoseok pulls back, sits up. He grips Jeongguk's hips and lifts his body, fucking into him hard for a moment, a few thrusts, and moaning as he buries himself deep and stays there, rolling his hips, feeling Jeongguk tense up and wriggle under his weight, around his dick.

God, he loves fucking Jeongguk. He's tight and lithe and responsive and eager. And he fucks like a demon when he has the chance, pinning Hoseok to the wall or the counter or the floor with one hand pulling his hair and the other wrapped around his dick.

But mostly what he loves about fucking Jeongguk is that Jeongguk always reaches for him after. Jeongguk always wraps his arms around his shoulders and whimpers hyung and holds on tight because both of them, both of them are thinking about someone else as well as one another and it's frightening. It's scary, and Hoseok doesn't know what to do, so he bends down and brackets Jeongguk's head with his forearms and kisses him until his tears and anxiety turn to quiet, until his embrace becomes less desperate and more affectionate.

"Hoseok," Jeongguk whispers and his voice very, very small. "Hyung, I think."
"Yeah," Hoseok replies, easing down onto his side while slipping out of Jeongguk with a wince. "Yeah, I. Me too." He doesn't say what it is that Jeongguk thinks, what he also thinks.

He's not sure he needs to.

~

Namjoon offers his place as neutral ground for Yoongi to talk to Hoseok and Jeongguk. "It's the least I can do," he says, looking at Yoongi over the table of the cafe where they met to talk, sucking up some of his iced white chocolate cappuccino while Yoongi swirls the ice in his americano with a straw. "Seokjin and I can get lost for a while, and you'll have... Time to sort it out."

"I," Yoongi starts, and Namjoon waits for him to finish. It's not the kind of thing he could have done, four or five years ago. He couldn't have waited. He'd have demanded and answer and when Yoongi got defensive they'd fight, and it would end in bruises and bites and sex what was just as much pain as it was pleasure. But time—and being with Seokjin—has mellowed him considerably. He knows it has. His volatile moods have been stabilized by Seokjin's ability to neutralize them with a look, a cocked eyebrow or a pursed, disappointed mouth. Namjoon had never recognized that he was looking for someone who could metaphorically hold him by the reins but now that he has it, he's not sure he'll ever be willing to give it up.

"I don't know," Yoongi finishes lamely, leaning back with a slouch Namjoon had once hated. Now it just makes Yoongi look small and sad instead of sullen and resentful. "I'm not even sure I should talk to them at all. Tae said I should, but."

"But what," Namjoon asks, re-crossing his legs. "Yoongi, can I tell you something."

"I guess," Yoongi says.

"The longer you think about it, the less likely you are to do it. You're always like that, you know? You think and think and think and when you're done thinking you've lost whatever you needed to do whatever you were thinking about. The courage, the will, the time." Yoongi stares at Namjoon and Namjoon sighs. "I'm just saying that you're sabotaging yourself. I know you're scared, god, I would be too, but," he twists his drink thoughtfully. "Is the risk worth the reward? Is it worth having a functional relationship with them?"

"...I don't know," Yoongi whispers. God, it's terrible. Namjoon knows he's scared. Can't blame him at all. Bad enough if he only wanted to talk to one of them but now he has to talk to both of them regardless. "I mean I guess if it works out it's twice the sex, right?" Namjoon thinks about Wonsik and Hongbin.

"If it works out, hyung," he says, giving Yoongi a level look over the table. "It'll be twice the love."

Yoongi blushes and flaps his hands in a motion Namjoon recognizes as being flustered embarrassment, and says nothing more about it. They finish their lunch and Yoongi pushes away from the table, getting ready to take up his dishes. Namjoon reaches out to hold his shoulder.

"Hyung, seriously," he says, and Yoongi looks up at him. "You've got absolutely nothing to lose. You've got me, and Tae and Jin and Sunggyu hyung. We're not gonna let you fall, okay? We're gonna take care of you if something bad happens."

Yoongi nods and Namjoon pretends he doesn't see the reddening of his eyes. Yoongi won't cry in public, but he does hug Namjoon tightly before heading back to the parlor, his hands tucked into his pockets. Namjoon breathes a slow sigh of relief, and lets his shoulders roll back.

Yoongi's gonna be okay. He's almost positive and if he's not... If he's not, well. They're all here. They're all here and Yoongi won't have a chance to splatter on the ground, because they'll catch him.

They'll catch him.

~

On the inside, where it matters, Yoongi bruises like a peach.

He feels... Overripe. Full to bursting with emotions he doesn't want to acknowledge as he sits on Namjoon's couch and waits. It's Saturday night and he's waiting, hands holding his own arms as he rocks without really thinking about it, anxious as all hell. The grapevine that is his circle of friends had communicated the time and place to Jeongguk and Hoseok, and now he's waiting.

It's almost worse than anything else.

He reaches to rub at the back of his neck when the knock comes on the front door. He feels his heart start to race as it opens, as two people walk in and take off their shoes. His eyes are locked onto the carpet as Seokjin's cat, a Siamese called Baby mewls at his side, butting her head into his thigh.

"...hyung?" Comes Jeongguk's voice and Yoongi knows he has to respond, he has to—to say something. Anything, god, he just has to speak so they know he's there, so they know to walk into the living room.

"Yeah," he manages to croak out, and then the two of them are walking in from the foyer, standing too close together. Yoongi doesn't look up but the two of them sit down beside one another on the couch across from where he's seated, cross-legged in a large chair. Hoseok's legs are clad in dark skinnies and Jeongguk is wearing worn out joggers. Jeongguk is bare-footed, and Hoseok's socks are mismatched. He's never been able to match socks to save his life, Yoongi used to try but he always ended up making a mess of them. They're all the same type of sock, he'd complain. So what does it matter if they match? No one's gonna see them 'cept me, hyung!

"Hyung?"

He doesn't bother correcting the familiar word. It feels wrong to be addressed as anything else. He tries to look up but can't quite make himself. Baby slides into his lap like she's made of mercury, purring madly as his hands move to cradle her head, rub at her belly. It's comforting, and he has an errant thought that cats are good for people with high blood pressure and anxiety. He doesn't have high blood pressure, but his anxiety is through the roof, that's for sure.

"I, um," he starts, or tries to. He stammers over his words and the two of them wait. He knows he's being stared at, he can feel it. "Stop looking at me," he says, more than a little desperately. Even their gaze is too much, it's too much and it hurts and it's frightening and he's not sure he can speak while they're looking at him.

"Sorry," Jeongguk whispers, and Yoongi can see him turning around, sitting backwards on the couch. Hoseok turns to face sideways, one of his feet on the ground, the other bent up. Yoongi knows that none of them are sure of how to start this conversation, he knows that it's something more important than anything he's ever discussed before and it's like he's in a vise being squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter.

"I'm glad you're okay," Hoseok blurts out, his voice strangled. Yoongi remembers Hoseok grabbing at his collar, remembers Hoseok yanking him back onto the ground and how the bruises had lasted for a week, maybe more. He isn't sure what was more humiliating—the fact that he had a ring of bruises around his neck in the shape of a dog collar, or that Hoseok had kept him from killing himself. "I was—when Jeongguk told me I—"

"How's your tattoo healing," Yoongi asks, and Hoseok stops. His hand goes to rub at the ink under his shirt. "Has Jeongguk seen it?"

"Yeah," Hoseok replies. "Yeah, he's seen it."

"Looks good, right?"

"Yeah," Jeongguk replies. "Looks real good, hyung."

"Good to know emotional trauma hasn't caused me to lose my touch." His voice is bitter and he knows it. God, he hadn't wanted it to start like this, he hadn't wanted to be accusatory but it hurts, it hurts so fucking much, and he can't help but wonder if Jeongguk's lips have kissed that tattoo, have sucked at it, have raised hickies and bruises into the inked skin.

There is silence.

Baby keeps purring.

"I deserved that," Hoseok says, and Yoongi can hear that his throat is tight, that his face is pinched. "I deserved that. I was..." he trails off. Yoongi can feel something in himself getting ready to snap, getting ready to whip back in retaliation to whatever it is Hoseok's going to say.

"...I was wrong," Hoseok says. Yoongi's mind goes a bit blank. "I was wrong, hyung, To... To treat you like that, to not, not talk to you about what we were doing, to not ask if you were really okay, I... I should have, and I didn't, and I messed up, I know that."

Yoongi hasn't heard Hoseok apologize in a long time. He's never been apologetic, not really, even if the words cross his lips he's never really sorry for any of the damage he causes. He doesn't mean to be cruel, but he doesn't know how to be anyone but himself, and he's never sorry. All things shall pass, time heals all wounds, all that bullshit.

"...me too," Jeongguk replies, though his voice is muffled by the way he's facing, strained by the way he has his arms twisted up behind his back, hands holding his own elbows like punishment. "I was. I was so wrong, hyung, I—I never should have said those things, I never should have just, just accused you and not talked to you, I was hurt but it was wrong, I fucked up, I fucked up and when you called me I, I knew something was wrong and then you were in the hospital and I didn't, I didn't know what to do, I." His words get faster the more upset he gets. The harder his heart pounds the less comprehensible his words are. "I never should have said those things," Yoongi hears that Jeongguk is crying a little. "I never should have told you I never wanted to see you again 'cos it was a lie, hyung, I lied, I," he drops his head forward and Yoongi hears him hiccup, hears him struggle to get his breathing under control. He knows that Hoseok is probably crying, too. Emotional, both of them. Always doing things out of passion instead of sense.

Says the man who has tried to kill himself, twice, a part of his brain reminds. He snaps back to attention when Jeongguk continues speaking.

"Even if we couldn't, couldn't be together anymore, I didn't mean to—"

"To call me a whore?" Yoongi asks, hearing his own voice as though it were coming from very far away. "You mean you didn't call me a whore just to hurt me, Jeon Jeongguk? How stupid do you think I am?"

"I wanted to hurt you," Jeongguk says, and Yoongi finally looks up at him, at his tense and trembling back. "God I wanted to hurt you. I hated you so much, hyung, why... I didn't understand why but it was still, I was a fucking bastard, I was being selfish and cruel and I didn't—I wasn't thinking but that's not an excuse—" Jeongguk's voice dissolves and Yoongi watches Hoseok lean backward, his face buried in his arms, braced on his knee. He's offering comfort to Jeongguk in a wordless way, and Yoongi can't blame him. He wants to comfort Jeongguk, too, but it hurts. It still hurts. Words cut like glass cuts.

"What's your excuse," Yoongi asks, and his voice sounds cold.

"I don't have one," Hoseok says, looking up and straight out. His profile is as lovely as it's always been. He's so beautiful. He's always been so fucking beautiful. "I don't have anything to say for myself, hyung. I'm not sorry for being with you."

"You never are," Yoongi reminds.

"I never am," he affirms. "But let me tell you something, hyung."

Hoseok turns his head to look at him and Yoongi stares. They look at one another and Yoongi wants to flinch away when Hoseok speaks but he can't.

"I am truly. Honestly, so sorry I hurt you this much. So much that you tried to leave, again. I didn't get to stop you this time, hyung. I should have been there for you and I wasn't. I'm sorry about that." He swallows. "I'll always be sorry for that."

They stare at one another and Yoongi feels the room closing in on him. He feels everything starting to shrink into darkness, into horror like his coma-dreams where Hoseok and Jeongguk only existed as statues wearing beautiful crowns and nothing more. Never anything more. Certainly not Jeongguk's hands holding one of his, surely not Hoseok pushing his body up so he's not crunching his lungs in half by being bent over.

"Breathe, Yoongi," Hoseok murmurs. "Breathe with me, in, out."

Yoongi does as Hoseok tells him: he breathes, follows the movements of Hoseok's chest against his side. Feels Jeongguk's hands rubbing at his wrist and palms, Baby leaping off his lap with a mew of complaint at how crowded things had suddenly become.

"I hate you," Yoongi hiccups when he has the breath to speak. Jeongguk doesn't let go of his hand. Hoseok doesn't move away. "God, I fucking hate you so much," Jeongguk moves close, and Yoongi lifts his hand to make a fist and hit his shoulder as hard as he can. "I hate you, I hate you for hurting me, I hate—hate me for giving, giving you the power to fucking do that to me—" he hits Jeongguk again, again, as hard as he can but it doesn't amount to much, because Jeongguk unfolds his legs and kneels between them. Jeongguk reaches up to hold his waist and Yoongi beats his fist against his back and side until he can't reach properly anymore, as Jeongguk hugs him tight and close.

"I'm sorry, hyung," he says, and Yoongi drops his head onto Jeongguk's wonderfully broad, wonderfully warm shoulder. God, he's missed this shoulder. Missed this scent, this light, cool cologne. "I'm sorry I abused it I'm sorry I," he rubs his hands up Yoongi's back. "I'm sorry I used that power to hurt you, I was so fucking wrong. So wrong."

Yoongi finds himself suddenly sobbing, miserably. That's all he really wanted, an apology. For Jeongguk to know he was fucking wrong, to know how much it hurt, to understand how fucking out of line he'd been to take Yoongi's insecurities and fears and throw them back in his face. "I hate you," he gasps, and Jeongguk nods as Hoseok, it must be Hoseok, slides into the chair behind him, thighs parted around his, warm chest pressed to Yoongi's narrow back.

"I'm sorry," Jeongguk whispers, and his hands are on Yoongi's sides as Hoseok hugs him from the back, rests his cheek on the nape of Yoongi's neck.

"I'll never be sorry for loving you, hyung," Hoseok says, and Yoongi's breath catches. "I'll never be sorry for that. Even if you hate me forever, I'll never be sorry. The only thing I'm sorry for is this," his arm reaches down to trace his fingers over the scars Yoongi knows are there, beneath the sleeve of his shirt. They're raised and puckered and pinched with the memory of stitches. "I'm sorry for this. For not being there when I should have been, I left... I left you alone. That was wrong."

It's overwhelming. To have Jeongguk at his front and Hoseok at his back makes Yoongi feel clouded and confused because he'd been so anxious and lost and sad, and then so furious and vindictive, and now it's all just... It's all melting away because god, he's so tired. He's so fucking tired, and Hoseok is warm, and Jeongguk is warm and he just wants to rest. He just. He just wants to sleep for as long as it takes for all the bad feelings to go away. He doesn't want them. He never wanted them but he especially doesn't want them anymore. He's exhausted, and Jeongguk is getting up to kiss his cheek, soft as rain.

"Hyung," he says gently. "Do you want us to take you home?"

"Yes," Yoongi replies, though Jeongguk doesn't move away just yet. When he does Yoongi chases after his warmth, the soft thump of his heartbeat and pulls him back, their weight falling back into Hoseok, who makes a soft sound as the wind is knocked out of him but holds on anyway. "I want to go home."

"Lets go, then," Hoseok murmurs. "The parlor will be closed up by now, won't it?"

"Yeah," Yoongi says, and he turns his head just enough to be able to see Hoseok behind him. "But I don't want to go there."

"But you said—"

"I want to go home," he repeats, and Hoseok hesitates. He takes a breath.

"Okay, hyung," he says. "Okay."

~

Yoongi is exhausted.

Hoseok is fairly sure that he's beyond exhausted, as they get to Jeongguk's apartment. Jeongguk hurries to his bedroom to change the sheets, to turn on the electric blanket. It's good for my muscles, he told Hoseok once. Told Yoongi once, too, he's sure.

It leaves Hoseok standing with Yoongi in the place between the kitchen and the living room, and Yoongi doesn't resist when Hoseok pulls him in close to hug him, one arm around his waist and the other around his shoulders. Yoongi is as narrow as he's always been, pale and small but somehow he seems even smaller. Maybe it's because Hoseok knows how much he's fucked up. How much of Yoongi he's used up and stolen away.

"M'tired," Yoongi murmurs into his chest, his hands fisted in the side of Hoseok's shirt.

"Jeonggukie's making the bed," Hoseok says, and Yoongi gives a little snort of something that might have been considered amusement. "What?"

"Jeonggukie?" he asks, and Hoseok tenses up. "Don't," Yoongi says. "I know. It's... It's fine, Hoseokah."

Hoseok couldn't be more surprised if someone slapped him with a fish. "What?"

"What's the point in getting angry about it?" Yoongi asks, and Hoseok takes a breath. "It's... I mean it's weird, it's... But it's not like I haven't... Done this kind of thing before."

"With Wonsik and Hongbin," Hoseok says.

"That was... Mostly sex," he replies. "It's different, right? Because... Feelings," Yoongi finishes lamely. Hoseok almost wants to laugh.

"Yeah," Hoseok says. "Feelings. We've all got'em, right? We just... Gotta talk about it."

"Later," Yoongi says into Hoseok's chest. "Not now. M'too tired."

"Yeah," Hoseok chuckles a little, kissing Yoongi's hair. Yoongi leans into him and takes a deep, slow breath like he's taking in the smell of Hoseok's t-shirt and skin. "Later."

"Guys?" Jeongguk's voice comes through the hallway. "Bed's made."

"Lets go sleep," Hoseok says, carefully easing away. Yoongi follows him and Hoseok's heart leaps into his throat when Yoongi takes his hand and holds it, lets their fingers rest together. It's so... It's so nice. And when they walk into the bedroom Yoongi reaches for Jeongguk's hand, makes sure he has a grip on it before he lets go of Hoseok, as though he's on the ocean and he can't swim. Hoseok watches Jeongguk wrap his arms around Yoongi's waist, tug him in and hold him, rocking their bodies gently back and forth. Yoongi says something, and Jeongguk nods, easing away. He's the first of them to get undressed, pulling his long sleeved shirt up over his head and pulling off his joggers. He usually sleeps in a t-shirt and his boxers, and Hoseok moves to do the same. Yoongi just stands there and stares for a moment, until Jeongguk reaches to start unbuttoning his shirt. Then Yoongi undoes the fly on his jeans and wiggles out of them, wearing a pair of dark blue briefs beneath. They—and his black t-shirt—make his skin look even more pale. Jeongguk takes Yoongi by the arm and carefully leads him to the bed. Yoongi follows him like he's a small child, climbing up under the sheets and sighing under his breath as he lays down, curled up in the fetal position, one hand between his thighs, the other curled up near his face.

Jeongguk climbs in to his front, so Hoseok gets into the bed behind him. He leaves a respectable distance between their bodies, despite how much he wants to spoon—though it seems that Jeongguk has no such reservations, and has taken Yoongi's hand out from between his thighs to hold it, tucked between his own. For a few minutes there is silence broken only by the soft sound of rain coming from an app on Jeongguk's phone, but then Yoongi turns his head and Hoseok makes a soft noise.

"Mm?"

"My back's cold," Yoongi whispers, and Hoseok sidles closer. Closer until their bodies are touching, his knees tucked up behind Yoongis, his hand resting delicately on his waist. "Mm."

"Better?" Hoseok asks.

"Yes," Yoongi replies, his voice low and drifting off.

Hoseok knows when Yoongi falls asleep because his heartbeat is slow and his breathing is even. Hoseok knows because they've fallen asleep like this so many times before. So many wonderful times.

He rests his cheek in Yoongi's hair and closes his eyes.

They'll talk tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

~

Jeongguk wakes to a bed that's too warm. He grunts, reaches out to fumble with the control on the blanket and turns it off, stuffing his face back into his pillow. He's painfully aware of Yoongi in the bed between himself and Hoseok. He's painfully aware of the fact that the situation is beyond delicate. It's glass thread filigree, it's spun sugar lace, and it would be so easy for it all to come crashing down around them.

The arm that isn't tucked under his pillow reaches out to push back Yoongi's hair. God, he looks so... Worn out. Jeongguk feels a lance of self-hatred, knowing it's his fault. It's his fault that Yoongi looks stretched so thin. Him and Hoseok. Mostly him.

He cups Yoongi's face as gently as he can, and isn't surprised when Yoongi opens his eyes. He's easy to rouse, Jeongguk knows. He looks back at him, the two of them lost in their own quiet place for a while. Yoongi speaks first.

"I'm still mad at you," he whispers. Jeongguk's heart falls down into his stomach.

"Hyung," he says, pleads, implores. Yoongi looks at him with an even expression and Jeongguk has to close his eyes, because they're stinging. A tear works it's way down his nose to itch and Yoongi's finger wipes it away. Jeongguk doesn't dare open his eyes.

"I'm still mad at you, Jeon Jeongguk," Yoongi whispers, and Jeongguk swallows hard. "But. Maybe not for too much longer. It hurts, right?" Jeongguk nods miserably, sucking in a breath through his teeth and trying not to do anything embarrassing like truly bursting into tears. He deserves Yoongi being furious at him, he really does.

"I don't want it to hurt. I don't want to hurt you, Jeonggukie."

"Hyung," Jeongguk hiccups, squirming closer, pressing his face into Yoongi's chest and hugging his torso, trying to hide the sound of his sniffling and childish crying. His body tenses and contracts with the effort of being quiet and Yoongi's hands, god his hands are smooth and cool on his back and shoulders, pressing him in tight and rubbing over Jeongguk's over-warm skin. His fingers dance over Jeongguk's tattoo and his lips press a kiss into Jeongguk's sweaty hair.

Yoongi doesn't say anything else. Jeongguk just holds on and hates himself. He'd been so afraid. He tries to be quiet when his voice scrapes over Yoongi's chest and neck and arm, facing into the pillow instead of out towards the air. "I th-thought you were gone, hyung I thought, you weren't gonna wake up and I just wanted you to wake up, I'm sorry, I was wrong and I messed up, I messed up so bad and I know you hate me but hyung please, please." He's not asking for forgiveness. He can't imagine ever asking for that because he doesn't think Yoongi should grant it to him. He doesn't think Yoongi should forgive him that particular trespass.

"Jeonggukie," Yoongi whispers. "If I really hated you I wouldn't be here." There is a breath-held, quiet silence. "I'm just mad at you. I don't hate you. You'd... You'd really have to do something bad to make me hate you. Murder someone, or something."

Jeongguk sits up and he knows he can't be a pretty sight, red-eyed and probably snot-nosed and puffy-faced but Yoongi is looking at him with tender affection, and one of his hands is holding Jeongguk's face, thumb rubbing over his cheek. "I don't hate you."

"Why," Jeongguk asks. "I'd hate me."

"It's a good thing I'm not you then, isn't it?" Yoongi sits up too, carefully pulling himself free of Hoseok's arm. Hoseok sleeps like the dead, and Yoongi easily wiggles closer to Jeongguk. "Come on," he says, flapping his hand a little in a motion to get out of the bed. "Lets go take a shower. You're all sweaty."

"M'hot," Jeongguk mumbles, but he obediently gets up out of the bed. His t-shirt is unpleasantly damp and he peels it off while Hoseok groans and turns over, flipping his pillow over to the other side without so much as opening his eyes. "...He sleeps like the dead."

"I know," Yoongi replies, walking towards the bathroom. "C'mon, Jeongguk."

Jeongguk follows, because what else is there to do? Yoongi leads him. He turns on the water, he turns on the fan and closes the door. He pulls his t-shirt over his head and Jeongguk looks at the floor, blushing with shame.

"Jeongguk?" Yoongi asks, and his hand catches him under the chin. "Look at me."

"I can't," he whispers, thinking that he's not... Not worthy of Yoongi's easy breathing, his relaxed shoulders. Undeserving of the hands sliding down his biceps to his forearms to his hands, which Yoongi holds tightly.

"Please," Yoongi says, and Jeongguk squeezes his eyes tightly closed, then opens them.

He's so beautiful.

He's so beautiful and tired and he's smiling tolerantly, the expression growing warmer as Jeongguk looks at him. His dark hair hangs in his eyes, soft and smooth. His cheeks are pink and his eyes are bright. Jeongguk can't bare to look at him, and so turns his head back down.

Yoongi grabs him, one hand on the side of his neck, the other working up into his hair, and Yoongi kisses him. God, he kisses him, drags him in, tongues at his lips until Jeongguk is gasping for air and all he gets is a tongue against his own, against his teeth. Yoongi yanks him forward and they stumble into the counter, one of Jeongguk's hands coming up desperately to keep Yoongi's back from slamming into the porcelain, the other holding his chest, fingers braced on his ribs. Yoongi's chest is heaving when he pulls back. His lips are swollen and pink, his eyes are heavy-lidded and he puts one hand beside himself to get up onto the counter, opening his thighs and pulling Jeongguk between them. The shower is starting to steam.

"I don't hate you," Yoongi promises, his hands on Jeongguk's lower back, rubbing at the tension, slipping under the waist of his boxers. "I don't hate you, Jeonggukie. I thought I did, but I don't think I can," his hands move to cup Jeongguk's backside and squeeze, pulling him closer. "I don't want to."

Jeongguk feels something in his chest give way, finally collapsing under the pressure of those hands, those lips, that heartbeat under his fingertips. "I love you," he whispers. "Hyung, I love you. I'm sorry."

"I know you are," Yoongi says, one hand sliding back up, pushing back Jeongguk's hair. "I know you are, baby. I'm sorry, too." He doesn't say what for, but he doesn't have to. Jeongguk knows.

Jeongguk gives a dry little sob and hugs him tight. Yoongi hugs him too and god, god Jeongguk has missed this embrace, missed these strong, skinny arms and the bridge of Yoongi's nose in his neck. He's missed everything Yoongi is, everything they have, he's missed everything they have the potential to be and when he pulls back, Yoongi is still smiling up at him.

"Lets get in the shower before we run all the hot water," Yoongi suggests, and Jeongguk nods, carefully lifting Yoongi off the counter and peeling down his briefs. The mood is distinctly not-sexual as Yoongi does the same for him, and they climb under the hot water. It's just the rubbing of shoulders, the kissing of lips, the murmurs of reassurance as hair and skin are clean with Jeongguk's shampoo, his body wash. Jeongguk can't stop kissing Yoongi, doesn't ever want to stop kissing Yoongi and if he does stop, its only because he wants to kiss Hoseok.

It's like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

"Hyung," his voice trembles only slightly. "Hyung what about..."

"Don't worry," Yoongi replies, wrapping himself in a towel up to his chest before looking thoughtful and slinging it down around his hips. Jeongguk remembers whispered insecurities, I don't like being naked in front of people, but there he is, effectively undressed, having just showered with Jeongguk and it hadn't been a prelude to sex at all.

Something about that makes Jeongguk feel all warm, and he follows Yoongi back into the bedroom, glances at the clock. It's a good thing it's Sunday, because it's nearly ten and if it was Monday, Jeongguk would have been at work two hours ago.

"Look at him," Yoongi says, stopping in the doorway so suddenly that Jeongguk bumps into him, reaching to brace a hand on Yoongi's belly. "Look."

Hoseok is still asleep, one arm reached out over the bed and a delicate frown on his handsome face. Jeongguk feels a well of affection rising. How typically Hoseok: trying to reach out to hold on to people even though he's off in dreamland, himself.

"He's beautiful, isn't he?" Yoongi asks, and Jeongguk nods slowly, unsure of what to say but not wanting to lie. "He's always been like that. All... Gold and shining. You've seen it, right?" Yoongi says, looking back and up at Jeongguk. "When he smiles down at you, when he... When he holds your neck and kisses you so deep."

"Hyung," Jeongguk whispers.

"It's not the same as you, of course," Yoongi continues. "You're different than he is. But I guess... That's good, right? That you're not the same. Otherwise it would be just like... Loving one person, instead of two."

"...Two?" Jeongguk asks, his voice a high and nervous waver.

"Two," Yoongi replies, walking towards the bed and, after toweling his hair, crawling back into it. "C'mon, Jeonggukie," he says, motioning him over. "M'not ready to be up yet." Jeongguk goes, drops his towel on the floor and sliding into the sheets, which are dry. Yoongi has settled with his face to Hoseok so he wiggles up close and braces one arm under his head, the other on Yoongi's narrow waist.

They lay like that for a long time until Jeongguk drifts off, and Yoongi's fingers catch his, gentle as can be.

~

Hoseok wakes to the sound of kissing. The soft, wet slip of lips and the odd, gentle sigh that Yoongi gives when something is particularly pleasing to him. He opens his eyes to see that Yoongi is beside him, facing him, and Jeongguk is right behind him, lips moving from Yoongi's mouth to his throat, his eyes open and staring at Hoseok.

"Hoseok," Yoongi murmurs, his eyes half-lidded. He looks sleepy, blushed with pleasure, and Hoseok feels his mouth go dry because that's a sight he remembers, that's a sight he loves. He pushes himself forward and kisses Yoongi, catches his mouth and kisses him hard, deep, terrified. He moves his lips down and finds Jeongguk, kisses him too, kisses him while biting at Yoongi's throat and listening to his small moans, feeling the small cock of his hips. It's the kissing that incenses him, Hoseok thinks. Yoongi's always loved kissing, the wet press of mouths together. Listening to Hoseok and Jeongguk kiss at his neck, feeling their lips on his jaw and under his ear must make his blood rush. Hoseok reaches to hold Yoongi's hip and he feels Jeongguk lift Yoongi's thigh from the warm inside, hiking it up to the sound of a sensually resigned groan. Hoseok's eyes roll a bit at that sound, that sound.

"Hyung," he breathes, and Yoongi's hand fists up in his hair, drags him up. Hoseok's mouth is open and Yoongi kisses him, moans soft into his lips, against his tongue. Hoseok knows he should be asking questions, knows he should be—concerned, or afraid, or anxious, but all he can think about is those lips, that narrow waist, knowing that Jeongguk is directly behind him and rocking his hips forward against Yoongi. God. God.

It's so sexy, it's so arousing but more important than that it's... It's important. They must have talked. Jeongguk always needs words but Hoseok doesn't. Not with Yoongi. Not when the hand in his hair is gentling, cupping his head. Not when the kiss is turning tender and soft and Yoongi's thigh rests over his hip, knee bent to bring him in closer.

Hoseok wiggles up as close as he can, pulling Yoongi's thigh up higher and listening to him groan into his ear. He pushes their hips together, moans to feel that Yoongi is already hard, that Jeongguk has one hand wrapped around his cock and is stroking in time with the gentle kick of his hips. His fingers move to grasp Hoseok, to stroke him up and down while Hoseok mouths at Yoongi's neck, biting his shoulder, reaching to fist his hand in Jeongguk's dark hair. Jeongguk makes that funny little moan, the helpless one, and his hips buck forward hard.

"Is he fucking you," Hoseok asks into Yoongi's throat, teeth against his ear. "Is pretty baby Jeongguk fucking his hyung?"

"God," Yoongi gasps, back arching. Hoseok grins, reaches down to grasp Yoongi's backside and pull his cheek up, feeling where Jeongguk's cock is thrusting.

"He is," Hoseok grins. "Our pretty little baby is fucking you, shit," his fingertips reach down further to touch the slick, somewhat raw skin. Yoongi is stretched open if the easy rocks of Jeongguk's hip are any indication. "You couldn't even wait for me."

"You, ah—" Yoongi's head drops and Hoseok rubs further over the sensitive skin, shifting his hand to wiggle under Yoongi's thigh so he can cup his ballsac and squeeze oh-so-gently. "You, you're so hard to wake up," he complains, and Hoseok grins.

"Other things are hard, too," he says, and Yoongi groans. Jeongguk groans too, pushing his hips forward and holding still.

"Hyung," he complains, audibly trying not to laugh. "That's terrible."

"But it's true," Hoseok promises, pushing his hips into Yoongi, against Jeongguk's fingers. "See? Or. I guess, feel?"

Hoseok knows Jeongguk can't help it, so he enjoys the way the youngest man bursts into giggles, hiding his face in Yoongi's hair while the older man rolls his eyes and reaches to pull Hoseok in for a kiss. "I promise to fix that for you," he says, breathless.

"How," Hoseok asks, wrapping one hand in Yoongi's hair, pulling carefully. He pulls up until Yoongi's neck is stretched, his back arched, chest heaving. "Hyung, tell me how you're gonna fix it, huh? With your mouth?" Hoseok's free hand offers two fingers to rub over his lips, slip into his mouth and against his tongue. "Are you gonna suck me off, let me cum on this pretty tongue?"

"Hyung," Jeongguk groans, his hips jerking hard against Yoongi. "God, d, don't talk like that, I—"

"Is Jeonggukie gonna cum?" Hoseok asks, rather relishing how in control of the situation he feels. "Pretty baby gonna cum in hyung's soft, tight ass," Hoseok's fingers slide out of Yoongi's mouth and down to one nipple, rubbing it gently. "Gonna fill him up, so he's nice and wet for me?"

"Hoseok," Yoongi protests, his voice breaking on the second syllable. Hoseok leans in to kiss him, to press his erection against his hip and suck his bottom lip. "Yes," he mewls, there's no other word for it, when Jeongguk grabs his thigh and yanks his leg up, holds under the knee and thrusts so hard that Yoongi's neck jerks, lolls loosely. Jeongguk groans when he cums, pressing in tight and staying close, panting into Yoongi's throat and moaning when Hoseok finds his lips. "Hyung," he pants, lips soft. "Hyung, hyung."

"So good," Hoseok murmurs. "Such a good, pretty baby, getting hyung ready for me. C'mon," he murmurs. "Give hyung to me." Jeongguk carefully pulls out. He pulls out and Hoseok grabs Yoongi, yanks him on top of his hips and grabs his cock, holds it while Yoongi frantically scrambles to guide him in, groaning loudly when he drops down and Hoseok hisses at the hot, wet squeeze of his body.

"Shit," he sighs, closing his eyes. Yoongi lays down on top of him and rests his head on his chest and for a moment they just lay there, with Jeongguk pressed in close. "Jeonggukie," he hums, turning his head to pull Jeongguk in for a kiss, to slide their tongues together. "Gimme your cock," Hoseok whispers, head head relaxed back onto the pillows. "Lemme suck it."

"But," Jeongguk breathes, and Hoseok grabs at his hair, because it's what he does. He tugs gently.

"Lemme clean you up," he says, and Jeongguk pushes up onto his knees—the blankets fall away from their bodies and Yoongi tenses up involuntarily, drawing his limbs in closer for warmth. Hoseok bends his knees up and wraps his arm around Jeongguk's thigh to bring him close, closer, close enough that he can suck softly at his length, still half-hard against the curls of his pubic hair. He licks, kisses almost tenderly as Jeongguk grabs the headboard and hisses, brow furrowed in pleasure and overstimulation.

"Hyung," he gasps, touching Yoongi's cheek. Yoongi is holding his thigh, Hoseok notices. "Please, put—I mean I,"

"Give me the, the lube," Yoongi breathes, and Jeongguk stretches his arm to grab it, offer it out to him. Hoseok watches Jeongguk squeeze the slick substance out onto Yoongi's fingers. Watches Yoongi's hand move up between Jeongguk's legs and groans when Jeongguk's cock gives a defiant twitch in his mouth.

"That's so hot," Hoseok sighs, giving a lazy roll of his hips. "Jesus."

"M'Jeongguk," Jeongguk laughs, tightening his grip on the headboard when Hoseok gives him a particularly hard suck. "Shit, hyung!"

"Stop being a brat," Hoseok replies. He reaches with his free hand to hold Yoongi's back, realizes that he's just rocking slowly on top of him, rubbing his cock down against his belly, pushing back against Hoseok's groin as much as he can. "Hyung," he says, and Yoongi hums, his fingers still inside Jeongguk. "I can't get deep enough like this."

Yoongi makes a strangled noise, and sits up a little. Jeongguk groans at the loss of his hand, but Hoseok takes care of that. He swipes his fingers around Yoongi's and takes care of it himself, pulling Jeongguk to straddle his arm and shoulder while Yoongi straddles his hips. "Spread your ass for me," Hoseok says, tonguing at Jeongguk's cock. "Take it up to the balls, Hyung, and stay there."

Hoseok hisses as Yoongi does what he's told, reaching back to hold his cheeks and settle down, down as far as he can until he whines and has to stop, because he can't get any further down. Hoseok licks his lips and relishes the control. "Jeongguk," he says, and Jeongguk looks down at him, helpless. "Get hyung off. Give me your ass."

He moves to pull Jeongguk over his body, straddling his shoulders and pressing his chest to Hoseok's belly. Jeongguk seems to get the point, getting up onto his elbows and sucking softly at Yoongi's thighs. Hoseok can't see what's happening, but he can feel what's going on—Jeongguk's chin on his belly, the squeeze of Yoongi's ass around his cock. He uses his palms to spread Jeongguk open and lifts his head to tongue at his rim, to suck at his ballsac. Jeongguk yelps and jerks forward—Hoseok pulls him back onto his fingers and mouth. He gets lost in the sensation of eating Jeongguk out, feeling his cock begrudgingly get hard against his chest, listens to him whimper and moan while Yoongi pants and whines and holds perfectly still, jeonggukie, oh god—hoseok fuck fuck yes.

He feels Yoongi tense up. Hears Jeongguk moan and feels the warm spill of cum on his lower belly. Feels Jeongguk licking it off his skin and pushes his hips up hard, takes a deep breath when he cums, hard and deep and god, it's perfect, because Jeongguk is stroking himself off and pushing back on his mouth and fuck, fuck. God, he loves this. Loves it.

Loves them.

"Baby," he groans, and Jeongguk climbs off him, dropping down to the bed with a hand cupped over his groin, his brow furrowed. "Shit. You okay?"

"You're t, trying to kill me," Jeongguk complains weakly, and Yoongi laughs, staying right where he is, his back pressed to Hoseok's bent legs.

"He, he does that a lot. Tries to kill you. Me. Us, I guess."

Hoseok jerks his hips up and Yoongi yelps, before he reaches down and slaps his belly, hard. "Stop that," he demands, and Hoseok chuckles, reaching his arms back behind his head, sighing.

"Okay, boss," he says, and it's so familiar. The feeling, the words are so familiar and Jeongguk laughs, sitting up and crossing his legs.

"I like that," Jeongguk says. "Boss. Boss hyung, and hyung."

"Why can't I be boss," Hoseok complains.

"Because you call him boss, so you can't be my boss."

"That doesn't seem reasonable," Hoseok says, and Yoongi cuts him off with a wave of his hand.

"I'm the boss, that's the end of it. Come on, I want a shower." He leans forward, slides off Hoseok's cock with a wet, obscene sound. Hoseok groans—then makes a sound of disgust when cum spills down over his cock and into his pubic hair.

"Hyung," he complains. "Jesus."

"You wanted it," Yoongi says, wincing as he gets up and off the bed on his wobbly legs. He looks so cute that Hoseok laughs, sitting up himself. "Shut up."

"Will we even fit in the shower," Hoseok asks, and Jeongguk shrugs.

"Maybe. We could try it?"

"Yeah," Hoseok nods, feeling his smile spread over his features. Yoongi is giving him a tired, happy little crook of his lips, and Jeongguk is offering him a hand to get off the bed and something in Hoseok's chest, something that's been tight and suffocating, finally lets go of his lungs.

"Sounds good."