Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

interlude: the week before

A week before they left, he rattled around the old apartment alone. He’d had his fill of drinking and smoking and paging through the endless vidstreams, everything unappetizing and endless and grey. Even sleep had grown pale and thin, wrung of all its color and curiosity. When Kihyun let himself in, Yoongi was lying with his head tipped backwards over the arm of the couch, staring blindly at the wall. The click of the keypad barely stirred him.

Kihyun did, though. Kihyun had a job. A big one. He had Changkyun in tow and they were excited about it, both of them, grinning and pleased with themselves. He had this way of being excited, Kihyun, that made you excited too, even before you knew what you were being excited about. Even Yoongi in his knockabout apartment felt it, stirring low and eager through the pall. He sat up.

“It’s a past-jump,” Changkyun said once Kihyun had finished laying out the rest of it, the usual blend of subterfuge and half-legal salvage. “I know you like that shit.”

“I like how it pays,” Yoongi said, which was only a little false. It was good money, going pre-jumptech—hazard pay, Hyunwoo called it—but there was more to it than that. Kihyun’s mouth twisted wry and smiling, and Yoongi’s tipped down in answer. “Why are you bugging me about it?”

“Hoseok is out.” Kihyun’s gaze swung around the apartment, slow. Yoongi wasn’t embarrassed by the mess, but Kihyun’s attention made him newly aware of it, the sprawling litter of boredom and dissatisfaction. “We need another guy. Come with.”

“Didn’t you hear?” The bitterness sat thick on his tongue, coating his words on the way out. “My license is suspended.”

“Never knew Min Yoongi to play by the rules,” said Kihyun, which was cheap of him. As if he hadn’t gone out without Yoongi just the other week and come back flushed and freshly alive, like rubbing it in. “Do this and we’ll get you your commission back. You know Hyunwoo’s good for it.”

Hyunwoo was good for it, but that wasn’t what swayed him. The truth was this: It was never going to be a hard sell. Yoongi wanted, and Kihyun was offering, and there was no better pairing than that. When he went, he went easy.

“Shit,” he sighed, peeling himself away from the couch. “Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Jungkook is angry at Jimin.

“Don’t be,” says Yoongi, laid back against the pillows. It’s a little strange to be in their bed again. Last time he hadn’t been awake enough to process it, not really, too caught up in the haze of fever and time sickness. Now he’s left with the trailing end of his cold, throat scratchy and limbs heavy, his leg carefully re-bandaged after he fucked it up pushing himself too hard too soon. It leaves him too much time to be aware of the oddity of existing in their space, the ease of it. He has a harder time convincing himself he’s a washed-up, accidental houseguest when he’s lying in their bed, sky shrouded with endless off-again on-again rain, everything so soft it’s nearly insubstantial.

“Why not,” Jungkook returns, mulish. He’s too far away for Yoongi to touch, but the distance does nothing to blunt the impulse to reach out, to take his hand. Jungkook, buried in his phone, doesn’t notice when Yoongi’s arm drops down onto the bed halfway to him.

“I started it.”

“No you didn’t.” Jungkook still doesn’t look up from his phone. “Hyung said so. He pushed.”

“I pushed back. I wanted to get him mad.”

The admission slips out without his meaning to say it, heavy and awkward and honest between them. Jungkook looks up, finally.

“Why?” he says, quiet, but his face is all understanding. It makes Yoongi feel small. He shrugs.

He’s trying not to lie to them, he really is. Some habits are harder to break than others.

The silence sits between them, then Jungkook sighs and twists himself around, legs folded. Yoongi watches out of the corner of his eye as he tucks his phone under his thigh.

“You know how I used to box?”

“Yeah.” He’s said it before, a past-tense thing. A part of his life that isn’t any longer. “Underground.”

Jungkook nods, thumbing at the seam of the quilt, fingers long and fidgety.

“For a couple years. Got really into it. I always said it was ‘cause of the money, but it wasn’t. I mean, it was decent money, don’t get me wrong, but…”

“But?”

Jungkook shrugs. “It’s not like I set out to do it. It was just for fun at first, and then I met this guy at the gym, and he asked if I wanted to make some cash, and I was like, seventeen. What did I know?”

Jungkook’s not seventeen now, but a wild, rootless protectiveness surges in Yoongi’s chest to imagine him then, younger and softer and stepping into a world that wasn’t kind to youth or softness. “Kinda fucked.”

Jungkook shrugs. “I mean, it was okay for a bit. It wasn’t so much different from what I was doing already, except there was money in it. And I liked the control, y’know? Like I could put everything outside of me, make it all physical. Real, I guess.”

Yoongi hums again. Jungkook picks at his thumb, then laces his fingers together in his lap, brow furrowed as he aligns his knuckles precisely. Stalling. Yoongi lets him stall.

“But it started getting… I don’t know. I get competitive about stuff. Really competitive. I had to win. And it was around then that I met Jiminie-hyung, and it was like— Everything got mixed up. I’d go out and I’d fight, and when I won, I was winning for both of us. He was in nursing school working his ass off, and I was just this dumb fucking kid, but I was proving I could do something for him, y’know? I could make things easier for him.”

Yoongi nods. He’s heard this sort of story before. Jungkook stares down at his fingers, tattooed knuckles tucked between the bare ones.

“So I started taking the harder fights. Riskier, but higher reward. Got hurt more. It made hyung worry at first, and then it made him angry when I didn’t stop, and that was— I mean, that part didn’t help anyone.”

Yoongi can imagine that, Jimin spitting mad at Jungkook for tearing himself to pieces. He feels it too. Just a flicker. “So you quit.”

“No.” Jungkook laughs, a hollow thing. “I should have, but I didn’t. I just felt like shit about it and tried to hide it from hyung. Didn’t stop me going out and getting fucked up, though. I just couldn’t let it go. There was nothing that could make me quit, not even hyung. Not til they asked me to throw a fight, which— I mean.” He shakes himself, sharp, and glances at Yoongi. His face has gone all wry, twisted up and bitter. “Not the greatest look, I know. That pride got me out.”

“But you got out.”

“Hyung says that too.” The shadow of a smile passes over his face, and then he shrugs, a big all-over thing. “I dunno. I wish I could have quit earlier, but I couldn’t do it just cause Jimin wanted me to. You know what I mean?”

Of course he does, and of course Jungkook knows that he knows. Yoongi hums and wonders if he should resent being so easily seen. “You miss it?”

“Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. But it wasn’t any good for me.”

“Sure.” Yoongi gets that. It should rankle more than it does that Jungkook has his number so completely. Mostly he’s caught up in his tidal protectiveness, and something small and wry and immeasurably fond beneath. “What do you do now?”

“Run with hyung. Go to a different gym. We’ve got this friend, Namjoon—he’s got a ring, but he doesn’t do any of that after-hours shit. We spar sometimes. He’s been good for me.”

“That’s good,” Yoongi says, and he means it wholly. “That’s good that you have someone.”

“Yeah.” Jungkook looks up at him again, unsubtle. “Yeah, it’s good. You ever boxed, hyung?”

“Once or twice.” Kihyun’d gone through a phase, and Yoongi had liked it, but hadn’t liked going alone when Kihyun moved on—and that was Kihyun, always moving on. “Probably not any good.”

“That’s alright. If you wanna get back to it…”

“This your way of saying I should pick on someone my own size?”

“Dunno, hyung, you’re both pretty small.”

Yoongi huffs and kicks out a leg under the blankets. Jungkook scrunches his nose in a smile and rests a broad, warm palm over the curve of his ankle. It’s a nice feeling. Yoongi breathes through the impulse to flinch away and lets himself enjoy it.

“Don’t know if I’d want to get in a ring with Jimin,” he returns, not sure if that’s cowardice or self preservation. Jungkook nods sagely, so he’s inclined to pick the latter.

“Good choice.”

Yoongi digs his toes into Jungkook’s hip until the hand on his ankle stills him, reminds him that he hadn’t truly meant to pick on anyone of any size except himself. Always getting in his own way. He eases back against the pillows.

“It wasn’t like that,” he tells him. “Really.”

“Okay,” Jungkook accepts, easy and open. Yoongi doesn’t know how he does that. “You should come anyway.”

He can’t help it; he laughs. What a stubborn little thing. “Trying to make me some friends?”

“Nothing wrong with having friends, hyung. You can meet Joonie-hyung. He’ll like you.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“We like you.” Like it’s the most obvious thing. The urge to reach out and touch him surges again, sweet and swelling in Yoongi’s chest.

“Might give Jimin a heart attack. Getting in another fight.”

“I don’t mean now,” Jungkook protests. “Just— When you’re ready.”

“Might not be for a while.” He holds Jungkook’s gaze and refuses to think too hard about the implication there—that he’ll be here for a while, waiting to be ready.

“That’s alright. It’s just something to think about. For later.”

Yoongi breathes, slow. “Sure,” he says. It isn’t a promise, but it feels like one, a little. “And you’ll talk to Jimin?”

The gleam in his eye dims, but Jungkook nods. “Yeah, hyung. I’ll talk to Jimin.”

On days when the weather clears a bit—only ever in drips and drabs, a surfacing breath before the next bout of rainfall—Yoongi likes to loiter out on the balcony. Really he’d love a smoke, but Jimin had made a face when he’d asked if they had any and Yoongi’s not looking to pick a new battle right after the last one. 

They’re still… awkward. Not angry, but guilt nips at Yoongi when he catches Jimin watching him with that look on his face, like he’s bracing himself. Yoongi should say something, he knows, but he doesn’t know what to say.

In the end, of course, Jimin’s the brave one.

“Mind if I join you?”

Yoongi twists around. Jimin hovers in the doorway, like he’s not sure he’s allowed out on the narrow breezeway, which is ridiculous. It’s his apartment. Yoongi hums and shrugs and shifts against the railing. It’s mostly dry, so long as he stays in the sun. They’re turned the wrong way to see the ocean, but he’s aware of it in other ways—the intermittent screech of the gulls, the smell of brine, the damp weight of the air. Everything is so clean after the rain, clear. He takes a breath, but Jimin beats him to it.

“I’m sorry.”

Yoongi makes a face. “Me too.”

Jimin’s mouth twitches, a smile that’s too tight around the eyes, and steps outside. The door clicks shut behind him, faded and windworn, and he joins Yoongi at the railing. Below, the street is quiet, sun bright off scattered puddles. The humidity is already starting to creep back in, the weight of the rain and the ocean and the clouds rolling in from the coast. But the breeze is nice, and so is the warmth, and Yoongi’s cold has faded to a faint cough, an intermittent ache in his chest. The century doesn’t hang off him so awkwardly.

“Ggukie apologized too,” Jimin says. “You talked to him.”

“Yeah,” says Yoongi, even though it isn’t a question. Jimin hums.

“Thanks.”

Yoongi’s pretty sure there’s nothing in that worth thanking him for, but Jimin seems pretty determined to surprise him at every turn. He shrugs. “Not your fault.”

“It was a bit,” Jimin says, and then he shakes his head like he’s shrugging something off. “Anyway. I have something for you. Well. We have something for you.”

Yoongi gives up staring down at the potted plants pouring over the porch of the apartment below and looks at Jimin, who holds out a small, rectangular object, something vaguely reminiscent of—

Oh. A phone.

“Before you say anything,” Jimin forestalls, “it’s not, like. Fancy. But if you want to go out, or if you have people to talk to, or— We’re not trying to keep you or anything. Okay?”

Yoongi takes it gingerly. It’s sleek and simple between his fingers, bulkier than the designs he’s used to and somehow still fragile. When the screen lights up, the picture is the ocean through their window.

“We can call you,” Jimin says, smaller. “Or you can call us. When you need to take a walk. Just— So you’re not out there alone.”

He doesn’t deserve this, Yoongi thinks with something a little like despair, only more grateful. He doesn’t deserve what they’re doing for him.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“We’d miss you if you went away,” Jimin says, a little awkward, like it isn’t what he wants to say. Yoongi’s fingers tighten around the phone.

“Okay.”

“Really.”

“I believe you.” He’s trying not to lie to them.

Jimin frowns at him for a moment, searching, and then he says, “You think pretty loudly, huh.”

“Excuse you,” Yoongi says, but there’s a laugh around the edge of it, surprised, not displeased.

“I know what it’s like.” Jimin leans a little heavier against the railing, not minding the damp against his bare forearms. His elbow touches against Yoongi’s, but he doesn’t make mention of it or move, so Yoongi doesn’t either. He’s a warm, sparking touch.

“Do you?” Yoongi asks, thin and doubtful. Jimin hums.

“I was— I mean, back when I first met Jungkookie, I wasn’t in such a good place, and I’d get stuck inside my head.” He taps his fingers against his temple, making a point or just thinking. “My hyung—Namjoon-hyung, actually—he took me on these long walks and— I mean, honestly I hated it, but he was right.” He purses his mouth, expression pleasantly chagrined, and shrugs. “It helped.”

“Do you still do that?” Yoongi asks despite himself. Jimin’s pursed mouth tilts further up, smile blooming. He does it so easily. Yoongi can’t imagine living in that sort of ease.

“Mostly I run,” he says, “but I’d recommend taking it easy right now. You shouldn’t be running on that leg.”

“Thanks, Doctor Park,” says Yoongi, stretching out the leg in question, ignoring the stiffness.

“Just nurse,” he says, like that’s enough. Maybe it is. He rolls his neck out and stretches a little, pushing off the railing. “Our numbers are programmed in,” he says, nodding at the phone. “You don’t have to pay us back or anything.”

“I want to,” Yoongi says, and Jimin pauses.

“How about— How about you talk to us, then. We’d like that. If you talked to us.”

“I do talk to you.” He only ever talks to them, he wants to say, but he understands what Jimin means too well to offer more than a token protest. Jimin gives him a look, knowing and unimpressed, and Yoongi slides the phone in his pocket. It’s heavy against his thigh.

“Yeah,” he relents. “Okay.”

“Hyung—”

“Okay, Jiminah.”

Jimin stares at him a moment longer. The sun dips behind a cloud, and the breeze picks up, and the first drops of rain plink against the railing. Jimin’s expression softens.

“Okay,” he agrees.

He’s just no good at staying in one place. It’s a different sort of unmooring from the one he’s used to, more adrift than abroad—he’s used to being the one deciding when he is, what he is. He doesn’t know what to do with himself stuck on this slow path and doesn't know what to do with the not-knowing. Everything reminds him of elsewhen, of what he’s missing, of the mess he’s making of Jimin and Jungkook’s home just by being in it, out of place and out of time and so horribly firmly stuck inside himself that he wants to scream.

“Well,” says Jimin, when Yoongi makes good on his promise to talk and drags an admission of boredom—though he’s not sure if it’s boredom or if boredom is only the closest comparison he can make without his chest caving in—out into the light of day. “I don’t know. What do you like?”

“Like.”

“Yeah. What makes you happy? What do you enjoy doing?”

Yoongi blinks at him.

“Okay,” says Jimin. “Well.”

“No,” Yoongi protests, weak, ugly with the way his silence feels like a bigger admission than the one he’d meant to make. Like not saying makes the not-knowing that much bigger, that much worse. He presses his fingers against his wrists and tries to find the right words to make it better. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay,” Jimin says again. The way he says it is different, but Yoongi doesn’t like it any more for the difference.

“I’m taking a walk,” he decides, because it’s the only way he knows how to move. Jimin watches him leave, mouth tucked down, not arguing.

He doesn’t go far—just to the edge of the hill where the land disp down to the ocean, just far enough to see the sea, just far enough to remember how to breathe. He stops at a convenience store on his way back, tracking in water over the off-white linoleum, and the lights buzz, and the cashier watches him from behind the register, phone playing a video at her elbow. He’s the only one there. 

Yoongi stares at the displays, colors and flavors he half recognizes, and is halfway through the impulse to pick up something for dinner—Jimin likes the kimbap; Jungkook will eat anything—before he remembers he can’t swipe his card, he hasn’t got any money, he doesn’t even exist. The feeling rising up from his gut isn’t one he knows how to name, but it’s thick and clogged and sour, and he has to go outside to sit on a rain-damp bench under the dripping eaves and breathe through his teeth to keep from being sick all over the sidewalk.

He’s still there when a pair of familiar black shoes step into view, and Jungkook blinks down at him, a daisy yellow umbrella clutched in one hand.

“You’re gonna get sick again,” he says, reproachful, hand outstretched. Yoongi takes it like a lifeline, and Jungkook laces their fingers together without comment. When they get back, Jimin makes them both tea, piping hot with a dollop of honey, and Yoongi presses the mug against his sternum and imagines the warmth and the steam filling him, making him real, making him more than a ghost.

“It’s okay if you don’t know,” Jimin tells him later, when Yoongi isn’t quite so prickly and Jungkook is snoring and the television is turned down low. “I mean, it’s not a bad thing to not know.”

“I think I used to,” Yoongi says. It’s a little easier to admit while staring at the TV screen, when he can feel Jimin’s eyes but doesn’t have to see the kindness of his face. “Not sure when I forgot.”

“Maybe not forgot. Maybe just changed.”

“Sure,” says Yoongi, and he doesn’t jump when a hand catches his and turns it over but it’s a near thing. Jimin’s fingers slot loosely between his own, surprisingly well-fit. His palm is a little clammy, but Yoongi doesn’t mind. He’s always enjoyed holding hands.

“You can figure it out again.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey.” His hand gives a squeeze, and Yoongi twists to halfway look at him. He’s washed out in the staticky television light, and his mouth makes a contemplative purse, and his eyes are tired and kind. He leaves it there, an invitation, and Yoongi swallows and shrugs.

“Not sure where to start, I guess.”

“That’s okay. You can start here. I mean— Not, like—” He pauses, clearly gathering himself, and Yoongi has a flash of fondness like a lightning strike. He doesn’t know if he’s ever met someone so careful about making suggestions, not demands. “I just meant, if you want. We could give you some suggestions.”

“Yeah?”

“We do sometimes have good ideas, you know.”

“What,” says Yoongi, and his mouth goes dry, knowing he shouldn’t push—knowing he’s setting himself up for some kind of hurt, or wishing, or failure. But he can’t help himself. “Like keeping me?”

For a moment, there’s only silence. Then Jimin’s hand squeezes around his.

“Not keeping,” he says softly. “But— Yeah. Like you.”

Yoongi’s every kind of idiot, probably, but he’s tired, and this is nice. He lets his fingers curl a little, keeping loose hold of Jimin’s hand, and wonders what it would be like if it were the other way around—if he were the one keeping them.

“We should get him to bed,” he says after a minute, head tipped towards Jungkook’s snoring form. Jimin makes a noise, the edge of a laugh or a sigh, and pushes himself to his feet. He doesn’t let go of Yoongi’s hand, though, not til Yoongi joins him—not til Yoongi stands stock-still while Jimin wraps an arm around him, cheek against his shoulder.

Yoongi breathes out slow and silent, eyes closed against the sudden stinging of his nose and the lump at the back of his throat. It would be excruciating, an awkward half-hug in the dim quiet of their living room, except that Yoongi is still holding his hand.

“The kid,” he says after a minute, when he’s either going to cry or pick a fight, and Jimin laughs and untangles himself.

“He’s not a kid,” he says, but his face is soft and sweet, and he brushes Jungkook’s hair back with a tenderness that catches under Yoongi’s breastbone and tugs. Jungkook stirs, mumbling.

“Hyung?” His eyes slip from Jimin to Yoongi, and his shoulders ease. “Wassit?”

“Bed time,” says Yoongi. Jungkook’s mouth turns down in a pout, and it takes both Yoongi and Jimin to coax him up off the couch and down the hall.

Later, when their room is dark, Yoongi turns off the television and lies on the couch, still warm with the afterthought of them.

It’s Jimin, in the end, who convinces him to go—though convince is maybe the wrong word for the stubborn, fixed-frown order to get out of the house and not come back til dinner. He needs a hobby, Jimin says, and it doesn’t have to be this one, doesn’t have to be walking or running or any of the things they do—and he doesn’t say when things get bad but something about how he says it makes Yoongi think of the offhand mention of demons and used to box and all the things he doesn’t know about them yet but wants to, a deep and terrible want—

Well. He doesn’t have to pick this, Jimin tells him, hands on his hips, hair sticking up in a porcupine fan behind a soft headband. But Jimin needs some private time, so Yoongi’s going with Jungkook if he likes it or not.

Jimin, as he is in all things, is startlingly difficult to say no to.

“Do you want to get rid of me so badly?” Yoongi asks, more endeared than annoyed, and Jimin’s frown redoubles.

“No,” he says with what might be a flash of genuine hurt. But then he says, “Well, yes, but only for the afternoon. You wanted suggestion, hyung.”

And Yoongi of a week ago, of three weeks ago, would have said something about his home, or not being so precious with Yoongi’s feelings, or any other small barbed bitternesses. But today, he says, “Enjoy your spa day, Jiminah.”

“It’s not a spa day,” Jimin protests, and Jungkook laughs and smacks a kiss against his unprotected forehead and tugs Yoongi out of the house.

“He needs his me-time,” Jungkook tells him as they meander through half-familiar streets, tucked together under their daisy-bright umbrella. “You wouldn’t think so with how much he likes company. But he needs quiet too, sometimes.”

“I’d think so,” says Yoongi, who sees how hard Jimin works and how bright he is and how much light he shines and gets it if he needs to turn it off sometimes. Yoongi’s the last person to argue against needing quiet. It’s a little funny, really, that he hasn’t needed his yet.

He recalls storming out on Jimin and into the rain and winces. He hasn’t needed it much, anyway.

Kim Namjoon’s gym, when they reach it, is an unassuming hole in the wall, squat and easy to miss where it crouches between a run-down optometrist and a narrow Mediterranean restaurant. It really isn’t that far from their apartment at all; as far as the water, maybe, but in the other direction. Inside, the walls are plastered with unfamiliar prints from unfamiliar artists, and there’s a concrete-and-wood sculpture just inside the front window. Yoongi might have mistaken it for an artist’s gallery were it not for the sandbags hanging from the ceiling at the back of the room and the raised ring in the middle.

Kim Namjoon himself is a tall, sturdy man, and he carries himself comfortably, except when he’d clipped his shoulder on the doorframe in his rush out of the office to come greet them. Jungkook looks at him with starry-eyed admiration, and Namjoon looks back with easy fondness, and Yoongi’s estimation of him goes up a little.

He also, apparently, knows of Yoongi.

“The famous Min Yoongi,” he says halfway through Jungkook’s introduction, hand held out. His grip is firm, hands callused. “Nice to finally meet you.”

“You too,” says Yoongi, vaguely embarrassed, and he sits in one of the chairs lining the wall and thinks that will be it.

But Namjoon is an attentive sort, and once he gets Jungkook set up with a sandbag in the back corner, he loops back around to drop into the chair next to Yoongi.

“You need anything?” he asks. “Water? Something to read? He’s gonna be at that for a while.”

“I’m fine,” Yoongi says, trying not to feel awkward beneath Namjoon’s broad, steady attention. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“Well I won’t do that,” Namjoon says with a tick of amusement tucked into the corner of his mouth. “It really is nice to finally meet you. They talk about you a lot.”

Yoongi looks at Jungkook in the corner, fists smacking into the bag in a steady rhythm. There’s a spot of damp already forming between his shoulder blades, even though the gym is a little cold with the water and the weather.

“Good things,” Namjoon assures him when he stays quiet.

“Can’t imagine there’s much to say.”

Namjoon laughs. “You’d be surprised.

 Yoongi hums and wonders if any of it’s true or if it’s just their endless generosity. “They’re good people.”

“Yeah.” He’s got a nice smile, Namjoon, genuine and dimpling. Reminds him of Jungkook, a little. “They really like having you.”

Yoongi wonders if this is the moment to ask if Namjoon knows Jungkook found him out behind a dumpster with a knife in his leg. Something of his disbelief must read on his face, because Namjoon grins.

“Really. And they’re picky as hell, take it from me. They like you a lot.”

Yoongi hesitates. If he didn’t know better, he’d think this sounded like… well. It reminds him of meeting Kihyun’s old partners, a little. He presses his tongue against his teeth. “This the part where you get out a shovel, Namjoon-ssi?”

Namjoon stares at him for a moment, frowning, and then his confusion clears and he laughs. It’s enough to draw Jungkook’s attention, head whipping around. Yoongi waves a hand, reassuring, and he goes back to warming up.

“I’d probably do more harm to me than you,” says Namjoon, almost rueful. “But no. Just a… I don’t know. A sort of biased third party, maybe. Doing my duty as a hyung trying to help them out.” He pauses to consider. “And embarrass them, maybe. They’ve been pretty cute about it.”

Yoongi’s mouth pinches down. He’s not sure how he feels about that, both of them talking about him to this friend they both clearly respect. “Don’t know what I did to deserve that.”

Namjoon shrugs. “It’s more them than you, don’t you think?”

“That’s what worries me.”

Namjoon laughs again, infectious. Yoongi feels his own mouth tilt up in response.

Still, he’s grateful for the change in subject when Namjoon sits forward a little and says, “Jungkook says you’ve boxed?”

“Used to.” Not the same way Jungkook used to but… not unlike that either, maybe. Namjoon nods, slow, the same way Jungkook had when Yoongi had told him about it. Maybe Jungkook picked the mannerism up from him, or the other way around. Yoongi wonders who he wears without thinking about it, who he’s brought back here with him. Who he’ll carry forward now. He doesn’t let his eyes drift to Jungkook.

“You looking to get back into it?”

Yoongi opens his mouth to refuse, instinctive, and— pauses. Presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Not really looking,” he says, slow. Across the room, Jungkook catches the swinging bag, stops it. His bangs hang lank in his face when he turns to look at them, but his smile is fresh as anything. “But— maybe.”

Maybe Jimin is right. Maybe he does need a hobby.

“Yeah?” Namjoon says it like a question, but he’s got a gleam in his eye. He’s as strange as his gym, Yoongi thinks, but it’s a nice sort of strangeness. “Come by sometime. Never too late to get back to it.”

Why offer, Yoongi wants to say. You don’t even know me. But it’s a kind offer. And Jimin and Jungkook like him. They’ve learned from him. Are better people, maybe, for him. Yoongi takes a breath and lets the knee-jerk impulse to say no pass.

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” says Namjoon. His dimples are back, and he makes an abortive motion, like maybe he wanted to clasp Yoongi’s shoulder but thought better of it. Yoongi appreciates that. “And let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure,” echoes Yoongi.

“Hyung!” Jungkook calls across the gym, and both Yoongi and Namjoon look up. Jungkook laughs at them. “Namjoon-hyung. Are we gonna fight or what?”

“This kid,” mutters Namjoon, though he can’t be more than a couple years older than Jungkook.

“Annoying,” Yoongi agrees, and this time he’s the first to smile. Namjoon laughs.

“Stop making fun of me,” says Jungkook, ducking into the ring. “I’ll beat you up. Not you, Yoongi-hyung. Namjoon-hyung, c’mon. You can talk to Yoongi-hyung later. He’s not going anywhere.”

For a moment, that hurts—a bright flash of it, searing—and then the ache fades. In its wake lies a welling fondness.

“Go ahead,” he says to Namjoon, loud enough to carry. “I’ll be here.”

Yoongi doesn’t look at Jungkook as he says it, but even with his eyes on Namjoon, he catches the flash of his grin and the way he stands taller for the assurance. Yoongi leans back in his seat and settles in to watch them spar.

There’s one morning—soggy but unexpectedly bright, the sun poking through scudding clouds, glinting off the puddles that pool in the potholes—that he mulls over the possibility of tracking down old jumptech. He could, probably. There must be some lying around, mistaken for old, dead, broken bits of junk that nobody here would understand, fragments for him to collect and piece together again. He’s hardly the first to be caught on the wrong end of a jump, and the break-bury-hide protocol means shit without anyone to enforce it. 

He considers it for a long time, standing out on their balcony all alone. Even if everyone else stuck in the eddies of the past has done their due diligence—the thought alone makes Yoongi snort—there’ll be flotsam. Bits and pieces. He could put something together, surely. He wouldn’t even have to aim well, just throw himself forward, and hope he doesn’t explode on the trip. That far out, it would be easy to hitch a ride home again.

And then—

And then, what?

The what-if stalls out there, as he’s leaning on the railing, watching the light change on the street below. Then he just— leaves? Spends a few weeks hiding his illegal science project in their living room and then tells Jimin and Jungkook thank you and sorry and disappears with as few answers as he’d appeared with, a ghost so briefly in and out of their lives? What about the silly romance Jimin has been watching, which Yoongi has been drawn into despite his best efforts—would that be one more unfinished story? And what about Namjoon’s gym? And the endless shelf of manga in their living room that he’s slowly been working through, and what about the fresh vegetables, and what about the slice of blue ocean through the living room window, unbounded and lapping at the rocky beach?

And what about Jungkook and Jimin?

It shouldn’t be that much. It’s barely a handful of small sweetnesses in exchange for the possibility of being back in his time, back in his life. But he’d miss them, and their home, and the way sometimes they clouds part and the rain clears and the world looks clean and fresh.

Down below, Jimin comes around the bend, yellow umbrella hanging loose at his side, cardigan shrugged on over his scrubs. He pauses at the corner, face turned up to the sun, and Yoongi’s heart lurches. Behind him, the door opens.

“Is hyung home?” Jungkook asks, hooking his chin over Yoongi’s shoulder. The closeness makes his chest go tight before he shifts to better take Jungkook’s weight. He nods silently to the street below, and out of the corner of his eye Jungkook’s arm stretches out to wave wildly. He’s already dressed for work, collared shirt open, smelling clean and nice. When he moves, his hair brushes Yoongi’s.

Jimin turns toward the apartment, pausing when he catches sight of them, and then his face splits into a grin so big Yoongi can make it out from the balcony. His heart clenches small and hot in his chest, aching. He draws in a breath, startled by the force of it, and Jungkook makes a soft noise.

“You okay?” he asks. Yoongi breathes out, heel of his palm pressed into his sternum.

“I’m okay,” he says. “Just—” This is the kind of thing he’d miss in his hollow of an apartment a hundred years from now. These small sweetnesses.

“‘S okay,” says Jungkook. Yoongi is freshly aware of him as his voice vibrates between them—the strength of him, the warmth, the comfort. His hand has fallen to Yoongi’s hip, thoughtless, and Yoongi is half afraid that if he moves, he’ll notice. “Me too.”

Yoongi’s brow furrows. “What?”

Jungkook shrugs, a rustle of cloth, and tucks himself somehow closer.

“Sometimes I get afraid I’ll get, I don’t know, used to it I guess. Like it’ll be normal and boring and we’ll just put up with each other cause it’s easy and familiar, and that’ll be it, forever.”

Yoongi doesn’t believe that for a heartbeat. His mouth is open to disagree before he can find the right words for his protest, but Jungkook is already speaking again.

“Then I see him and it’s like—” He makes a noise, vague, like looking for the right words. “I don’t know. The fear goes away, and it’s just him.”

Yoongi lets out a breath. “That’s good,” he manages, surprised by how choked he sounds. “I’m glad you have that.”

Jungkook shifts, attention sliding away from Jimin to land on him. “Hyung,” he says.

Yoongi makes the mistake of glancing at him. The sunlight catches in his hair and the curve of his cheekbones. He’s so close, barely a breath away, and he’s beautiful. 

“Yoongi-hyung,” Jungkook says again, gentle. His hand is still on Yoongi’s hip, and Yoongi’s heart trips in his chest. Stupid, clumsy thing. “You do too. You know that, right?”

Then Jimin is there, clattering up the stairs, and Jungkook pulls back just as he launches into a story about his shift and Jungkook’s open arms, toppling forward without a care. There’s exhaustion around his eyes and in the way he hangs off Jungkook, but it pales in comparison to his joy—to both their joy, really, a light reflected. It’s such a tiny blip in the immense stretch of forever, but they wear it as though it’s the only thing that matters.

Yoongi takes another breath, stifling the urge to shake himself. He can feel his pulse in his throat and his fingertips, his body betraying him. Not his, he reminds himself. Fuck. He needs a smoke.

In the doorway, Jimin pauses halfway through complaining about a coworker to turn back to him, squinting a little as the sun cuts down to catch in the gold of his hair. He’s beautiful too. They both are, even in the rain and the gloom and the grey, and especially in the sun. 

“Hyung,” he says. “Are you gonna stay out here forever?” He smiles, and his voice is teasing-bright, and beneath it is a flickering shadow of uncertainty. It freezes Yoongi in his tracks.

“Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin says again. He holds a hand out, small and seeking. “Come inside?”

It would take a stronger man than him to deny them. Yoongi takes his hand and lets himself be pulled into the house.

Jungkook takes him to Namjoon’s gym again, and Namjoon talks to him about a lot of musicians the future has forgotten and a few it remembers. Jimin takes him on a slow walk by the water in the misty half-clear of an afternoon and stops on the way home to buy him second-hand sweatpants and t-shirts and a soft checkered flannel the color of autumn. The rain falls and clears and falls again. He sleeps on their couch and cooks them dinner. He takes his finders-keepers knife and puts it high on one of their shelves, next to a plant in a spotted green pot that Jimin painted and a lopsided clay figurine Jungkook made. Jungkook says it’s Jimin; can’t Yoongi tell? Jimin hits his shoulder and beams.

The days drip past, each a little more solid, a little more certain, than the one before.

“Yoongi-hyung,” says Jimin on a slow, seeping evening when he and Jungkook are both home, one of the rare windows when their schedules sync and nobody needs to be anywhere but safely ensconced in their apartment. Jimin sits on the counter, heels kicking against the cabinets, head tilted as he speaks. “Where’d you learn to cook?”

Yoongi keeps his attention on the onions, mindful as he slices them into even discs. He’d gone overboard the first few times he’d cooked for them, too used to the bland and tasteless produce back home. Here, now, the onions are sharp and sweet and sting the nose if he’s not careful.

“Friend taught me,” he says. It comes with the familiar twinge of grief, but it’s not so sharp in the warm cloy of their faded shoebox kitchen. Outside, the rain rattles against the roof and the window panes, but inside everything is soft around the edges. If his nose stings, that’s just the bite of the onion.

“A friend?” Jimin smacks Jungkook’s hand away from the pile of chopped carrots only to grab one and feed Jungkook himself. They wear the same smile. “Or a friend ?”

The twinge comes again. “Just a friend,” he says, but he must say it badly—too thick or too sharp, some misjudged measurement like his first time at their stove—because they both turn to him, interest bright on their faces.

“Oh?”

Yoongi shouldn’t encourage this. He’s not sure he wants to talk about it. But also it’s— nice, maybe. To talk around Kihyun and the boys; to feel the empty space without stumbling into it.

“Why are you so surprised?” he grumbles. Jimin grins the way he always does when Yoongi takes his bait.

“I didn’t know you had friends.”

“I have friends. What do you call Namjoon?”

“We introduced you!”

“So?”

“So he doesn’t count, obviously.”

“Ouch, Jiminah.”

“What about us?” interjects Jungkook. Yoongi hums in mock consideration, sliding the onions aside to grab the garlic.

“I guess you could count.”

“You guess!”

“Ask Jimin. He’s making the rules.”

“Tell us more about your cooking friend,” Jimin grouses, forestalling Jungkook’s mischief-bright look and what will no doubt be another circular, meandering argument. “Why have you been hiding them from us? Can we meet them?”

Yoongi flinches. He should have predicted this. “No.”

“If it’s because you don’t want to share us, I understand—”

“Maybe he doesn’t want you to scare them off,” Jungkook suggests, and Jimin turns on him.

“What’s that supposed to mean? If anyone’s going to scare someone off it’s you, Jeon Jungkook—”

“No,” Yoongi says, breaking through their good-natured indignation. The lightness has gone out of him. “No, he’s just— He’s gone.”

“Oh.” Jimin deflates. “Sorry, hyung.”

Jungkook, mouth pursed, says, “Was it Kihyun?”

Yoongi’s stomach lurches. “What?”

Jungkook frowns from where he’s leaned back against Jimin, tucked in the cradle of his legs. His expression is faintly sheepish. “You said that name a lot when you were sick. I thought maybe you were— Um. If that’s who you’re talking about?”

“Yes,” says Yoongi, too surprised to hide it. Had he been calling for Kihyun in his sleep? Embarrassment creeps hot up the back of his neck.

“You must be close,” says Jimin, softer. Yoongi’s knuckles go white around the hilt of the knife.

“Yeah.” And then, because both of them perk up again, he adds, “Not like that. It wasn’t— We weren’t anything.”

“It would be alright if you were,” Jimin says, like that’s the problem here, like he hasn’t been living in their house for weeks and doesn’t know what they are to each other. It’s so ridiculous that it pierces his swelling grief, and he puts his knife down to look at them. 

Jimin has slipped off the counter, wary and attentive in equal measure, as though he’s ready to move just as soon as he knows what Yoongi needs from him. Yoongi thinks of hands gentle with his stitches and brushing through his hair and feeding him when he was aching and adrift with timesick fever and marvels that someone so attentive could be so oblivious. Like they haven’t been slowly, carefully feeding him these morsels of sweetness as though he might fill up the empty places inside him.

“Jiminah,” he says shortly, tucking all that wryness and irony and self-evidence into the look he gives. Jimin flushes.

“Well I don’t know,” he says, hunching behind Jungkook. “Some people have, y’know. Hang-ups.”

The admittance says far more about Jimin than it does about Yoongi. Jungkook’s hand snaking around him for an awkward backwards hug says more. Yoongi softens.

“I know,” he says. He wishes he could explain it to them—how things will change, the slow shift of rights and laws, the different benchmarks for what’s normal and what’s good. He wants to tell them how things now are different from what they will be, and in a few cases that difference will be for the better.

And isn’t that a surprise, to realize he wants to explain it to them, to unravel the looping truth of what isn’t yet but will be. It catches him off guard, leaves him standing at the counter for a blank heartbeat, staring down at half-diced garlic.

“Don’t worry,” Jungkook says cheerfully into his stretching silence. “Hyung’s got other hang-ups.”

It’s not exactly untrue. Yoongi snorts in spite of himself and shakes the thought away.

“I’m holding a knife,” he says, voice mild. Jungkook doesn’t seem worried.

“Like liking knives,” he agrees, as though Yoongi’s proven his point. Yoongi wonders if he’s truly been so blasé about being stabbed that Jungkook can joke about it, and then he wonders if he should be so amused about Jungkook joking about him being stabbed. Probably not.

“It’s okay, hyung,” says Jimin. “We don’t mind your hang-ups.”

They should, Yoongi wants to say. They should mind everything about him. But he also wants to believe them. Or, he wants them to know he’s willing to believe them, and maybe those can be the same thing, at least for tonight. He huffs, annoyed or touched or both, and goes back to the cutting board. A flicker of something twists in his chest, like amusement but softer.

“We really were just friends,” he says after a moment, offering truth like an olive branch. “Kihyun, I mean. He’s— He was my best friend, but it wasn’t anything like—” Like this, like them. Like the way he feels when he’s with them. He stares at the cutting board and the blurry reflection of the overhead light off the blade of the knife and wants to laugh, sort of. “We were friends, and he left.”

“I’m sorry, hyung.” Jungkook shifts in his periphery, and then there’s a hand on his back, solid and warm. It smooths up to his neck, rubbing for a moment before settling on his shoulder, grounding.

“It’s alright,” he says. “Wasn’t his fault. Just— bad luck.”

He keeps his focus on the garlic, waiting for it to hurt, but it doesn’t. Or, it does, but not the same. It doesn’t slice, doesn’t sting. It aches, low and constant and nearly patient. He’d said it for their sake, to soothe the pinch of Jimin’s brow and Jungkook’s heavy grip, but he finds he isn’t lying. The realization is something of a surprise. Tonight seems to be full of them.

“I’m sorry,” Jimin says, and for a brief moment there’s another hand on him, fingers curled near his elbow. “We shouldn’t have pushed.” 

Yoongi shakes his head. “It’s alright.” Or, maybe it’s not alright, but— “Can’t change it.”

“You can tell us about him if you want,” says Jimin. “Or not tell us about him.”

“Thank you,” says Yoongi, and Jimin’s hand squeezes before he backs away, making space for Yoongi to breathe. Guilt pricks at him—guilt for his gratitude and the awkwardness of it, for his unwieldy desire, for the ease with which they reach out to soothe him, undemanding. Jungkook pats his shoulder and gives it a squeeze, and then tucks himself in against the counter next to Yoongi.

“Will you teach me how to do that?”

For a swift, wild moment Yoongi thinks he means guilt and the weathering of it, which is hardly something he knows how to teach and is certainly not something he ever wants to teach Jungkook. Then he realizes Jungkook is pointing at the neat rounds he’s made of the onions and the half-finished garlic and the staggered bowls of diced vegetables arrayed around him.

“You’re a really good cook, hyung,” he adds. Yoongi tries to be a little less grateful for the change in topic and fails.

“You are too,” he returns, partly because he’s enjoyed Jungkook’s cooking on more than one occasion and mostly because the compliment is true. But he lets himself be coaxed—gently bullied, really, as it so often goes when Jungkook is determined to get his way—into talking through the steps as the stew comes together. Jimin holds court from his perch on the counter, half attending the lesson and half poking fun at the pair of them. He makes a sweet nuisance of himself, drawing Yoongi out of his old and ossified grief until his smile doesn’t stick nearly so much.

He goes with Jimin to do laundry at the laundromat, weighing coins cold and clammy in his palm before feeding them into the machine, helping to carry the linens back down the block afterwards. He tells Jungkook that Kihyun was his best friend. He tells Jimin that Kihyun was a pain in his ass, and Jimin laughs, and the grief gets a little smaller. He goes down to the water and looks at the skyscrapers shining silver around the bay. Namjoon gives him a notebook and he writes in it, sometimes—writes about the water and the skyscrapers, writes about the rain. 

Jimin says it’s the longest rainy season they’ve had in ages. Jungkook says they’ll all be wrinkled prunes by the time the sun comes back. Yoongi wonders who he’ll be without the waterweight to hold him down.

“I wouldn’t be able to pay you,” he says the third or fourth time Namjoon extends the offer of lessons. Across the room, Jungkook warms up at his usual bag, and there’s a duo working out by the weights who Jungkook seems to know well enough to greet and not well enough to join. “I don’t have—” He stalls out for a moment. There are so many things he doesn’t have. Money. A bank account. Finances. Proof he’s real. “I don’t have a job.”

“That’s fine,” says Namjoon, shrugging. “Space is here to be used either way. Just if you’re interested.”

“I don’t want charity.”

Namjoon, to his credit, doesn’t bat an eye. “You can help me sort the office if you want to make it up to me. Fair warning, it’s a mess in there. But honestly, it’s fine. You’re still welcome.”

Yoongi looks at him for a long minute, then ducks his head.

“Okay,” he says, wincing at his own gracelessness. “Then, uh, yeah.” He rubs at the back of his neck where his hair is getting long. “Thank you.”

“What I’m here for,” Namjoon says with an ease Yoongi envies. “I’ve got wraps you can use.”

Yoongi wets his lips. Across the room, Jungkook keeps moving, oblivious to this conversation. “I’m, um, probably pretty rusty.”

“Not a problem.”

“And I have some… bad habits.”

Namjoon gives him a longer look, assessing. Yoongi wonders what he sees, if the weeks slowly stewing in the rain have softened his edges.

Jimin’s going to give him hell for boxing on his bad leg. 

“That’s fine,” says Namjoon after a moment. “Jungkook did too, when he started. We take everyone, Yoongi-ssi.”

“Right,” says Yoongi. “Okay.”

So Namjoon brings him wraps and walks him through everything—the right way to wrap his hands, the right part of his fist to hit with, the right way to put power behind a punch. Some of it Yoongi knows already, but he lets himself be talked through it. At one point, catching his breath, he twists and catches Jungkook beaming at him, even after Namjoon has left Yoongi to his own devices and gone off to spar. Yoongi hides a smile when Namjoon reaches out to gently cuff the back of his head while he isn’t paying attention. The ensuing complaint echoes through the gym.

It’s nice, though. His leg aches, and his arms too—he’s out of shape after weeks of illness and injury—but it’s good to move. To use his body. The meat and muscle of him remember the feeling of a fight and the give of the bag beneath a well-thrown punch. By the time he works up a sweat, he can almost forget the kite strings and anchor ropes tugging him in so many different directions. 

“Keep them,” says Namjoon as they leave, when Yoongi tries to return the wraps. “I’ve got more. Come back anytime.”

“Quit trying to steal him,” says Jungkook, tucking himself into Yoongi’s side. It takes Yoongi a moment to realize he’s making himself a crutch to take the weight off his bad leg. What a pair they must make, both of them sweat-streaked, Yoongi lopsided as he leans into Jungkook, grateful for the support. Namjoon only laughs.

“As if I could. I’m not fighting Jiminie.”

“He’s not that bad,” says Yoongi. Namjoon gives him a look he can’t parse and Jungkook wrinkles his nose.

“We’re leaving now. Goodbye, hyung.”

“Bye, Gguk,” grins Namjoon. “Bye, Yoongi-ssi. See you this weekend?”

“Maybe next week,” says Jungkook, and then he says something else—about work schedules, maybe a dinner. Yoongi misses it beneath the sudden rushing in his ears.

Next week. What’s next week to a time traveler? 

But he’s not a time traveler.

It settles over him like a shroud, a heavy grey haze hiding the world. He thinks he says goodbye to Namjoon, though he can’t remember what he says afterwards. The ache in his leg is muted, though he can feel the uneven stumble of his limp, leaning too far into Jungkook every other step. Even the rain pattering against their yellow umbrella is quiet, an underwater muffle. He goes unprotesting when Jungkook steers them home, and he waits for the swelling wave of nothing to ebb like the tide.

But it lingers. It lingers when Jungkook rushes to wash up before work, and it lingers when Jungkook tells him not to stay up too late and not to let Jimin stay up too late either, and it lingers when he stands alone in their kitchen, leg a low ache, going through the automatic steps of making a dinner he isn’t in the mood to eat. It isn’t the first time he’s been alone in their home, but tonight it’s strange without them. He feels ill-fit, insubstantial.

Unhungry, he leaves the food covered on the stove for Jimin, who won’t cook for himself after a long shift but will descend on anything they make like a man starved. The streetlights smear hazy through the slats of the blinds, bleeding in the rain.

He takes a slow breath, feeling it muddy in his lungs, and thinks— Nothing. He thinks a big blankness, a hazy smear like static, like indistinct streetlights through the window in the rain.

In the shower, he lets the water run, running the pads of his fingers over the smooth pucker of his healing scar. The skin is new and pink, a little red around the edges from pushing too hard and from the heat of the water. When he turns the shower off and steps out onto the tiny bath mat, his hair drips cold down the nape of his neck. He should cut it.

His reflection makes a face above the sink, indistinct in the steam-clouded mirror. His mouth opens for a moment, a red smear, and he doesn’t know what he wants to say. He closes it again.

Mechanical, he pulls on a shirt Jimin bought him and ties the drawstrings of a pair of baggy sweatpants that used to be Jungkook’s and goes to sit on the couch. 

He sits there for a long time—for whatever measure of long, for whatever meaning of time—adrift.

He’s still there when Jimin gets home, sitting in the dark with his head buzzing like static, like the headache after a bad jump. The night has gone dark around him, but it’s too much work to find a light. He doesn’t flinch when Jimin palms the switch, but Jimin swears when he spots him sitting silently on the couch.

“Hyung,” he says, all reproach. “What are you doing up?”

Nothing. He’s not doing anything. Time is unstuck. It’s almost like the jump, except he doesn’t go anywhere and nothing changes.

Movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. Yoongi blinks, and the world takes a big step forward, catching up with him. He sucks in a breath and coughs on it, lungs tight. The clock beneath the television says it’s past midnight, and when he turns towards the movement his back and knees creak, stiff from sitting still so long. His leg aches. His shirt is wet where his hair has soaked through the cotton, and he’s cold. When did it get so cold?

“Hyung?” Jimin comes closer. The back of his hand presses against Yoongi’s forehead, a sudden and searing heat, but Yoongi’s not sick. Not that sort of sick, anyway. After a moment, Jimin’s hand smooths his hair back. Up close, his dark eyes are a warm brown.

“Hey,” he says, quieter, perching next to him on the couch, hands hovering a heartbeat before they settle on his shoulder, his forearm. “You okay?”

Yeah, Yoongi means to say, but the lie gets stuck in his throat and the truth is unbearable.

“Sweetheart,” murmurs Jimin, everything about him gone soft and gentle. His fingers draw Yoongi’s hair behind his ear again, even though it’s already pushed back. His touch is so sure, so precise. Nobody has ever touched him with such precision, not even Kihyun. Yoongi’s eyes shut all on their own.

“Come on,” says Jimin in the same voice he uses to talk Jungkook up off the couch. Yoongi shivers. “C’mon, hyung, up you get.” His hand hooks under Yoongi’s elbow, insistent, and Yoongi doesn’t have it in him to fight as Jimin draws him up and across the room, guiding him down the hall to their bedroom, to their bed. He moves with startling efficiency, pulling back blankets and sitting Yoongi down, vanishing for a heartbeat and returning with a towel. He’s gentle as he wrings the damp from Yoongi’s hair and dries the back of his neck.

“It’s getting long,” Jimin says, almost to himself. And then, “It suits you.”

Yoongi thinks he hums. He’s not sure if he speaks. The towel disappears, and Jimin coaxes him to lie down. Yoongi goes unprotesting, shivering. He’s horribly cold, he realizes, trembling under layers of blankets, a damp chill deep in his bones. Jimin’s shadow moves over him, and then the lights dim, and then Jimin slides into bed beside him, arm wrapped against his middle. He’s warm, especially where his chest presses to Yoongi’s back and his knees tuck against the backs of his thighs.

“There you go,” says Jimin. His hand presses up against Yoongi’s sternum, a steady pressure. Yoongi takes a deep breath, and it shudders through him on the exhale, knocking about all the loose and misshapen things inside his chest. He draws his good leg up, tucking himself as small as he can as his breathing hitches. Jimin hums behind him, breath warm against the crown of his head.

“There you go,” he says again. Yoongi flinches up small and splintered. “Ah, hyung, it’s okay.”

He doesn’t cry. He’s not sure he can—there’s only space and static inside him. But he lies there with his eyes closed and lets Jimin hold him, breath rattling in and out, in and out.

“Hyung,” Jimin says. He makes it sound so sweet. “What is it, hm?”

Yoongi tucks his nose into the pillow. It smells like them. 

He’s trying not to lie to them. He closes his eyes and picks the words out, one by one. Tries them out, silently. Sets them in the right order. It takes him an eon to find his voice. Takes him longer to admit what is true, even though he wishes it wasn’t.

“I’m not supposed to be here.” 

Jimin’s breathing stutters for a moment, then settles again. “Here isn’t such a bad place to be,” he says lightly. When Yoongi doesn’t stir, he adds, much quieter, “If there’s somewhere else you want to go…”

It hangs in the air for a long moment, dangling. Nausea rises in Yoongi.

“No,” he rasps. That’s the entire fucking problem. He’s not supposed to be here and he doesn’t want to leave.

“Yoongiyah,” says Jimin, a tiny, shocking intimacy. It knocks something loose inside him. Yoongi sucks in another breath.

“Sorry,” he manages. “Sorry, Jiminah.”

Not just for this. For everything. He’s made such a mess of everything. Side effect of the jump—splintering time and space and everything else into tiny pieces, forcing himself into a time and place not meant for him. He should have fought them harder. He shouldn’t have let Jungkook bring him home.

Jimin hushes him. “It’s okay, hyung.”

“Jiminah.”

“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”

So they don’t. Yoongi lies there, small and held, and doesn’t say anything. He tries not to think anything either, though his thoughts aren’t such hazy static now that Jimin is here to give him shape and form again. He’d be embarrassed if he could find the strength for it, but mostly he only feels small, and held, and safe. 

He must fall asleep at some point, because the next thing he’s aware of is waking, startled by a shifting weight in the bed and Jimin’s voice hissing something above him. Yoongi squints, confused. He vaguely recognizes the shape slipping under the covers.

“Gguk?”

“Shh,” says Jungkook, a gentle shadow folding in next to him. “Go t’sleep, Yoongi-hyung.”

Yoongi goes to sleep.

In the morning, he wakes slow and unaching to the image of Jungkook nosed into the pillow next to him and wonders if it isn’t a cruel cosmic joke. But he blinks, hard, and flexes his toes and fingers—warm beneath soft blankets—and no, it’s real. Real, and far too early for this sort of assault. Jungkook is lovely enough in his waking hours, when Yoongi is braced for it. To blinks awake to the reminder of his sleep-soft beauty feels like, if not a cruel cosmic joke, at least the machinations of an inconsiderate universe.

He’d swear if he weren’t afraid of waking him.

Instead, he holds himself frozen as he blinks at the boy next to him, slack-jawed and sweet, lashes fanned over his cheeks. Sunlight streams unfamiliar through the open window, and Yoongi breathes silently through his nose and stares at Jungkook and knows he can’t stay. 

Last night’s sweeping, hollow panic has cleared with the dawn, and in its place is a calm, clear-eyed understanding that he can’t keep going like this. He can’t linger in their in-betweens—home but not, anchored but not, theirs but not. He won’t be able to weather finding himself adrift a second time and he can’t keep stealing these pieces of them to make himself whole. He can’t do it to them and he can’t do it to himself. It’s not fair to any of them.

Still, though. He takes a long minute to watch Jungkook sleep before he starts the slow process of extracting himself from their bed, and their relationship, and their home.

A quiet huff behind him freezes him, and he twists to look over his shoulder—careful, still, not to wake Jungkook—to find Jimin perched at the edge of the bed, the corner of his mouth tilted up. The windows have been opened slightly, and the smell of sea brine and clean air threads through the room. The clock beside the bed says it’s half past noon.

“Good morning,” Jimin says, voice soft and eyes mischief bright.

Yoongi allows himself a moment of sharp, bright embarrassment at being caught, then he goes back to easing his way out of the bed. It’s easier with Jimin’s half empty.

“Coffee?” Jimin asks, and Yoongi only hesitates a heartbeat before he nods. As if he’d say no to coffee.

Jimin smiles, face still puffy with sleep—and his side of the bed is warm when Yoongi slides across it, so he can’t have been up long—and goes to make them coffee. 

Jungkook rises while the water is boiling, slouching out of the bedroom with a truly impressive mess of bedhead and a frown, grumbling about being left alone. Jimin coos and presses a kiss to his pout, and Yoongi watches it with a feeling like moving under deep water. He wants to memorize this: his foot drawn up beneath his thigh, pinned against the seat of the chair; Jimin and Jungkook in the matching pair of too-large shirts they sleep in; the midday sun through the window, strange after so much grey but just as lovely as everything else. The wear at the corners of the cabinets in their worn shoebox of a kitchen. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee.

Jimin pours for all of them—coffee for himself and Yoongi, tea for Jungkook. Jungkook presses a kiss to his shoulder in thanks and drifts closer to Yoongi, hand settling warm on the back of Yoongi’s neck. He tugs a bit at his hair where it’s gotten long, and a shiver rolls down Yoongi’s back. 

“Are you feeling better?” Jimin asks, passing him a mug. Yoongi takes it, fingers curling tight around stinging hot porcelain.

“Yes,” he says, which is true. He takes a breath.

“Hyung and I want to ask you something,” Jungkook says first. Yoongi frowns and unhooks his fingers from his coffee cup. He spreads a hand flat across the table instead. Grounding.

“Okay.”

“We want to ask,” says Jungkook, and he looks at Jimin. Jimin looks at Yoongi. Yoongi looks at the shape the sunlight makes against the counter behind him.

“We want to ask you to stay,” says Jimin.

The square of light on the counter is bright and clear, except where it’s cut through with the faint patterning of leaves. A sliver of it cuts across Jimin’s shoulder, catching motes of dust. Yoongi’s fingers find a divot in the table and rub it, a prickling imperfection beneath his fingertips.

“Not because of last night,” Jimin hurries to add, as though Yoongi’s worried that his obvious distress has pushed them into making an unthinking offer. Maybe they know him better than he thinks. “Well, we were gonna ask you this weekend— We had this whole dinner thing planned—”

“Hyung,” says Jungkook, like Jimin is giving away a secret. Jimin ignores him.

“But that’s just dressing. We want you to stay here. To stay with us. Right, Gguk?”

“We like having you here,” Jungkook agrees, letting the dinner thing go. “We wanted to ask before, but we weren’t really sure how to bring it up. This hasn’t really been, y’know.”

“Easy,” Jimin fills in for him.

“Yeah. And we know you’ve been, um, maybe not totally sure about that. Or maybe not sure about us? So we wanted to tell you that we want you to stay here. Not just because you have to, or until the rain clears. We want you to stay, properly. With us.”

The way he says it, with . Yoongi’s fingers still against the table. 

“We think it could be good,” says Jimin, and he moves out of the sun, stepping light-footed across the linoleum to sit at the kitchen table next to Yoongi. The dust motes dance in the space he leaves behind. “We think we could be really good. We think it’s worth trying. If you want.” And then, after a beat, he adds, “Please.”

Yoongi wets his lips. No, he should say. He should say no—that he doesn’t like them, that he doesn’t want to stay, that it isn’t worth it. That it can’t be good. He should make this easy. 

But he’s trying not to lie to them. So what he manages is—

“You can’t keep me.”

“We’re not trying to keep you,” says Jungkook, face hollow with hurt. “We’re just— We just want—” He bites his lip and looks to Jimin, who takes his hand, and then—and then—puts his hand over Yoongi’s. Yoongi holds still, like something will strike him if he moves, snakebite fast. 

“We want you to stay,” Jimin says, a little thick. “We want you to stay with us. With us, like— Like me, and Gguk, and you.” 

“You don’t even know me.” 

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“It isn’t. We know you—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know—” When, he nearly says, and catches himself just in time. “—where I’m from, or what I’ve done or who I am —” 

“Maybe we don’t,” interrupts Jungkook, and Yoongi pauses. He’s never seen that look on Jungkook’s face before, dark and stormy, jaw clenched. “And maybe we don’t know what you were doing before, even if we could guess. But we know what you’re doing now, and we know where you are now, and we know who you are. We like who you are. We like you.”

“Liking isn’t—”

“You aren’t listening to us,” says Jimin. “We want you to stay. Do you hear me? We want you.”

“You can’t,” says Yoongi. He doesn’t know how to make them understand. He doesn’t know how to explain this right. “I’m not— I’m not anything. I’m not here, Jiminah. I’m a, a ghost. I’m not real.”

The hand over his presses down, hard, and Yoongi yanks his hand away so fast he nearly knocks over his coffee. It’s not fast enough.

“You feel real to me,” says Jimin. For a minute, no one says anything. This isn’t going how Yoongi thought it would.

“If you don’t want this then say so,” Jungkook finally says. “Because we do, but if you don’t then— You have to say it, hyung. You have to mean it. You can’t just— You have to tell the truth.”

Yoongi stares at him, helpless. “Jungkook—”

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Jimin cuts in, jaw tight. “But if it’s just that you feel, I don’t know, like a burden or dangerous or whatever— If you’re just pushing us away because you feel bad, fuck that. We said we’d help and we meant it. We want you and we mean that. Everything else is— We can figure it out. But we want you to stay and we’re asking you to stay and it matters to us. So don’t fucking lie.”

“Hyung,” says Jungkook, and Jimin takes a breath and stares at the ceiling for a long minute, and Yoongi is— He’s—

He doesn’t know what he is.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He’s trying not to lie to them, but to tell the truth would mean knowing it and the only thing he knows is that all of this is wrong and he shouldn’t be here and he doesn’t want to leave. The last thing he wants is to leave but he’s never been any good at staying. He sucks in a sea-storm breath. “I—”

The doorbell buzzes.

Nobody moves. Jimin looks at Jungkook who looks at Yoongi who looks towards the door. Jungkook stands, uncertain.

“Are we expecting someone?”

“No,” says Jimin. The bell buzzes again, longer. Jungkook looks at them, then towards the door, and then he slips out to answer it. The faint sound of conversation drifts from the entrance, and then the door clicks shut.

“A neighbor?” asks Yoongi. Jimin shrugs.

A moment later, Jungkook returns, standing in the entrance to the kitchen with a small, square package in his hands. He looks a little lost. Jimin’s brow furrows.

“Gguk? Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” says Jungkook, and then he turns to Yoongi. “It’s for you.”

Yoongi rises from the table and takes the package wordlessly.

It’s no bigger than a shoebox, wrapped in brown packing paper and tied with brown twine. There’s no return address or shipping label, no indication of who or where it came from. The only thing marring its neat wrapping is a message penned in faded black marker. 

For Min Yoongi, it says. Open privately.

Yoongi looks down at the box, then up at them. Jimin stands up from the table but doesn’t come closer.

“You can use the bedroom,” says Jungkook, close enough to touch, his hands pressed close to his sides. The paper wrapping crinkles under the force of Yoongi’s grip.

“Thank you,” he says.

He sits on their bed. Jungkook has made it up in their absence, their quilt folded at the foot the way he likes it. The sheets are cool beneath him. Yoongi folds his legs and holds the package in his lap. It isn’t very heavy.

What it is,clearly, is old—the paper smells musty, the twine is brittle, the ink of the message has faded. The tape holding the paper closed is yellowed and tacky. His hand shakes as he tugs the string loose, then peels the paper away. He sets it on the ground next to the bed, familiar handwriting staring up at him. 

The box beneath the wrapping is a faded shoebox, a simple cardboard thing with a narrow lid. He stares at it a long, long minute before opening it.

It’s not very full. It looks like the only thing in it is paperwork, all folded neatly and tucked into a protective sleeve that Yoongi knows isn’t from this century, nor the one before it. On top, starting to yellow with time, is a letter.

Read me, says the envelope. When Yoongi flips it over, it’s unsealed. The paper slips out silently, folded in uneven thirds. Yoongi sets the box aside. He opens the letter.

Yoongi—

This was the closest I could jump. Sorry. We blew a hole in the timeline decades wide in either direction getting out of there, and I figured you might not be too interested in seeing me twenty years down the line. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m just afraid. You always were the brave one.

You’re missed, of course. Hyunwoo is kicking himself. I’m kicking myself. I fucked this up. Sorry, Yoongi-yah. This one’s on me.

If it helps, I looked you up. I know, I know, no details. Honestly, this letter might fuck it all up again (you know how fiddly this shit is—I’m breaking a hundred regulations just being here) so I won’t say much, but I think you’re gonna be alright. In fact, I think you’re gonna be happy. You and I both know that things back here aren’t what you want and they haven’t been for a long time. I hope you know that’s okay. I hope you aren’t hanging on too tight. But even if you are, I think it’s gonna get better.

Sorry, this is kind of a shit apology. I don’t want you to think you’re forgotten, or that you will be forgotten. You’re with us, y’know? You’re with me. Always will be. It’s like the ocean, right? You and me, we’re standing at the edge of the same sea.

Okay, enough of the maudlin shit. I’m sure you’re wondering what’s up with the box and the stranger I paid to drop it off. Mysterious, right? Turns out it’s kinda hard to schedule mail a couple decades in advance, but this should be reaching you about a month or two since I saw you. Sorry about that—needed enough buffer to make sure it actually gets to you. Assuming the records are correct and you’re still there with your boys. If not, I figure they know where to find you.

But the point is, I don’t want you to think you’re forgotten, and I don’t want you to think you’re alone, so here: I’m leaving you a life. Min Yoongi, born 1993. Here’s your paper trail. Family, birth certificate, school records, degree. Tossed in a delivery job—figured it’s easier to keep the facts straight if they’re true-ish. And I took the liberty of leaving you a nest egg—payment from the last job. Not sure what the interest rate is in the early 21st century, but hopefully it’s enough to get you started. 

Don’t spend too long missing me, yeah? I mean, don’t not miss me, but— Here or there, you’ve got a life to live, and you’ve got to live it. Anyway, we’re time travelers. Not like anything’s ever over for us. Really, if you think about it, we haven’t even met yet. And who knows? Maybe we’ll cross paths again someday. 

Miss you, Yoongi. Love you. Live well.

Yoo Kihyun
June 1999

Yoongi reads it twice, then sets it aside.

The seal of the protective sleeve peels away with a quiet hiss, and Yoongi tips out the contents of the folder across the bedspread. It’s everything Kihyun has promised: a birth certificate for one Min Yoongi, born in Daegu. School records, government records, a degree from university. Paperwork from jobs he never had. A bank statement under his name with a number on it that makes him boggle. It’s as generous an apology as Kihyun—as all of them, probably; this stinks of a group effort, and Kihyun for all his skills is shit at forgery—could give him. And as kind a farewell.

Yoongi takes a breath and carefully sets everything back in order—the paperwork in its sleeve, the sleeve in the box. He skims the letter again and hears Kihyun’s voice in it, every teasing, generous, annoying, beloved word. Then he puts it back in its envelope and the envelope in the box and stares down at everything. A life.

His life.

“Fuck, Ki,” he says, and then he laughs, and it comes out wet and choking and nothing at all like a laugh. “Fuck,” he says again, pressing his face into his hands, his breath tangled in his chest, cheeks hot and nose stinging. 

He doesn’t mean to cry. He means to pick himself up, to go back out there before they worry. But he can’t seem to help himself; the tears are there, weeks of them filling him up like so much rain, and in the sunny silence of their bedroom the cloud breaks. He tips forward, chest aching, and presses into the bedspread—which smells like them, which is warm and soft and familiar—and lets his shoulders shake and shake and shake.

He misses them. He will never go back. He has a life here now. He’s so grateful and guilty for it that he’s sick. He doesn’t know how to stay in one place, but he thinks he could stay here.

He half expects the knock on the door, so it isn’t a surprise when it comes with a faint, muffled “Hyung?” He sucks in a breath and then another and then sits up, wiping his face even though there’s no hiding that he’s been crying—even though he’s still crying a bit, a slow leak of hot tears and a lingering ache in his chest. He presses down against it and feels it ease a little.

“Hyung?” comes again—Jimin’s voice, a hitch of concern.

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, an invitation. The door creaks open, matching sets of dark eyes and worried faces staring at him. Yoongi sighs and wipes his face again.

They’ve left him a life, he thinks, hand on the box next to him. The last of his old life and the first of his new.

Only— Not the first. Not really.

“Hyung,” says Jimin when he sees Yoongi’s face, his expression collapsing on itself. Jungkook is on his heels, a hand on his waist, wearing the same worry. “Hyung, I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” says Yoongi, and he means it. “It’s not you, it—” He huffs and takes a deep breath, bracing.

“Sit down,” he says, patting the bed next to him, pulling the box into his lap. It’s as good a way to tell them the truth as any. “I have to show you something.”

“That’s so cool,” says Jungkook later, once the sun has begun to turn down towards the horizon again, the open window cutting the light into a sharp orange square against the far wall. Almost immediately, he claps a hand over his mouth. “No, I mean— Fuck. Sorry.”

Jimin laughs, chiming, but his hand is gentle at the back of Yoongi’s neck. “Are you okay, hyung?”

Yoongi’s breath rattles in his chest, but it blows out gently. “It is cool,” he agrees, and there’s the familiar ache of missing it, of wanting it. But it’s a dull thing, blunted. I think you’re gonna be happy.

“What can we do?” Jungkook asks. “What do you need?”

Yoongi takes his hand. On his other side, Jimin presses a kiss against his temple, and when Yoongi closes his eyes he doesn’t see Kihyun or the jump or the sea or any of the things he’s missing. It’s just them.

“I don’t know,” he says, honest. “I just— I don’t know.”

“Will you let us help?” asks Jimin.

Yoongi wets his lips. “I don’t know if I'll be very good at that.”

“Will you try?”

Yoongi swallows. “Yeah.” He can do that much.

“And we’ll try too. Right, Gguk?”

“Of course,” says Jungkook. “It’s— We can figure it out together. Right?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi says thickly. “Yeah, I’d— I think that would be okay.”

For a moment, it’s quiet. It’s a little strange to be in their home without the rattle of the rain, but the silence doesn’t itch as much as Yoongi feared. It doesn’t stifle, or sour, or sulk. It leaves room for breathing. For holding onto them.

“Thank you for telling us,” says Jungkook after a minute.

Yoongi can’t help but laugh. “Thanks for believing me,” he says. Jimin snorts.

“Well,” he says. “It explains a lot. You didn’t know who BigBang were.”

Yoongi shrugs. “Not my fault they aren’t that popular.”

“Not that popular—!”

Yoongi laughs. It’s a little rough around the edges, maybe, but it’s a laugh. He thinks: This could be okay. He thinks: This could be good. The thought buoys him, gives him courage enough to ask—

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” asks Jimin, at the same time Jungkook says, “Yes.”

“Yes?” echoes Yoongi, and Jungkook’s ears go pink.

“Well,” he says, mostly down towards his knees. “Whatever we said. We probably meant it, if we were talking about you.”

“That’s true,” Jimin agrees, and Yoongi has the same impulse to look down at his knees instead of facing them. He pushes through it.

“What you were asking,” he says. “Earlier.” He can’t get the words out properly. He doesn’t want to say them, in case they didn’t really mean it. Or maybe they won’t mean it now that they know the truth—that he isn’t from here, that he isn’t like them. That he’s lost in a bigger, much more awful way than anything they could imagine.

Jimin meets his eyes, gaze steady, and says it for him. “If you’d stay?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Jimin says. Yoongi swallows.

“Will you— Can you ask me again?”

For a moment, there’s silence. No rain, no tears, nothing but the three-part sound of their breathing.

“Hyung,” says Jungkook. His hand is tight around Yoongi’s, like he’s afraid to let go, and his eyes are wide and dark, and he stares resolutely at Yoongi. “Will you stay with us?”

Yoongi holds them both. First part of his new life. He can be brave, for their sake.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d really like to. If you’ll have me.”

“Okay,” says Jimin while Jungkook blows out a breath next to him, all gleaming relief. “We’d like that too.”

They’ll work out the rest later. This, now, is the important thing.

He stays.