Chapter Text
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Two months pass and it's longer than he expected himself to last. It's a morning like any other they've shared, hot tea and misty meadows, Namjoon stuck in a book and waiting for Yoongi to snuggle up next to him and break his concentration. Their routine, quiet in varying shades of fog and lamplight.
Yoongi doesn't do well with routine, has never had routine, not once in his life.
He'd been thinking about it for a few days, longer, if he's honest: how long could he shove the restlessness down before it soured into resentment or anger? He doesn't want it to come to that, wants to remain a wholly good memory in Namjoon's vast mind, wants to keep Namjoon like an untainted gem in his.
Memories of his parents, never married but once very much in love. And then it soured, rotted in stagnation because his mother stayed when she was never the type to stay. Yoongi is a lot like his mother, and determined to never end up like her, bitter and resentful toward love, towards others, towards staying or leaving, most of all toward herself. Like most maternal figures, it's an old fear, it's a primal motivator.
Deep restlessness in his gut as he watches Namjoon from where he fidgets in front of the fireplace. He's beautiful, serene. Yoongi can predict it: in a few minutes Namjoon will look up at him and smile, so in love, and Yoongi, so in love, will shove the restlessness down, trot over and kiss his face all over just to make the smile bigger.
If I stay, it'll rot.
“Namjoon. I'm gonna fly out to the next sector. There's a trading station there, huge, always good deals. I'm just gonna go pick up some things and come back.”
He almost had himself convinced until he saw the flicker of sadness on Namjoon's face, a heartbreak so deep and thorough it barely shows on the surface.
Quiet ticks on. Namjoon smiles, but his nostrils flare and betray him. “Okay.”
Just one word, too hushed to only be as ambivalent as it sounds. One word binding sacrifice to love.
“Okay,” he answers, and breaks his own heart.
A tear trickles down Namjoon's nose. He's still smiling, eyes blown wide as if he could etch every last lovely detail of Yoongi into his retinas. “Come sit with me for a while, before you leave?”
He sits, of course he sits. Takes the book delicately out of Namjoon's hands and fits himself into his lap and kisses him with every emotion in his heart, coarse and untended like little ditch weeds though they may be. It's what he has, and so he gives them to Namjoon.
His trusty little ship vibrates with the effort of rocketing through atmosphere and air, hot and bright here above the mists before it all broke away to black and stars. Slumped over the control panel, Yoongi sobs into his hands. Loud and pitiful like a child, though he had never been that kind of child.
“I'll be back,” he had assured Namjoon again, a heavy slip of guilt weighing on his spine as he kicked absently at the metal hull of his ship.
Namjoon just nodded, like he felt sorry for him for needing the farce. “I'll be okay here,” he answered, and cupped Yoongi's face in those hands, warm and terrible in power. He leaned in, nuzzled his nose and lips to Yoongi's cheek and forehead. “I'm so glad to have known you, and felt you. I love you infinitely. Everything I do, it'll all be different now, now that I have known you, and love you.”
“Movements of the infinite,” he'd mumbled, remembering what Namjoon had rambled about that night before.
A smile broke like sunlight on Namjoon's tear-damp face, so pleased that Yoongi had listened, and remembered.
“Yes.”
The word vibrated through him like a mallet to a bell, so violent in clarity he could taste it on his tongue, the air blurring around them as Yoongi stared into his steady eyes.
He can taste it still now, mixing with the salt of his tears. The words to explain it weren't there; his decision to leave was the purest act of love he's ever performed. Namjoon knew, he tells himself but it doesn't ease how much he misses him already and loathes himself for leaving, for needing to leave. He allows himself the excuses: two months is twice as long as he's ever stayed anywhere in his life, and Namjoon isn't upset, had expected it, even.
But he's hurt. The most precious being he's ever met, the only one who has ever seen anything more in him than a tired, wily trader, he hurt him. Namjoon is down there right now, crying and alone after years of struggling for peace in solitude, and he doesn't even regret it.
That pierces sharp; in an existential sense, Namjoon is glad for the pain, a finite expression of the infinite. He loves him, even now, even forever. Worst of all, Yoongi loves him too; worst of all, love can't change who he is.
Hiccup and shudder, he calms his sobs just long enough to set course for Jackson Post and collapses against the cool metal wall of his little ship.
Beep beep, beep beep.
“Destination approaching.”
Beep beep, beep beep.
He wakes shivering against cold metal, salt sticky on his cheeks. His head aches with too much crying and the awful angle of his neck.
“Alright, alright,” he groans, and as always, his ship ignores him.
Jackson Post is a shithole outpost, but that's to be expected. Yoongi doesn't frequent the nice places, too many dirty dealings and underhanded deals there, people scheming to improve their ranks and living spaces. Places like this though, raucous and dingy, they're much easier to understand. Got a problem? There's two fists right there on the ends of your arms. Need something cheap? Need it cheaper? Give them a laugh and a “fuck you” and there's always someone calling you back with a better price. Simple. Where Yoongi thrives.
After two months of Namjoon though, everyone seems so horribly loud, so boring, so... finite. It jars his aching head. Hawkers hawk their goods and he spits insults back as he weaves through the night market, rows and rows of vintage ship parts, handmade trinkets and clothes, fragrant spices and teas and freeze dried foods from every sector of space within ten jumps. Too many colors, too many voices, too many things and not enough of anything to make him flicker to life.
Not that it's all bad. He feels a little zing of familiarity from it all, a bit of confidence and ability. He has years of experience blending into these places and working them to his advantage. Maybe it's not his self anymore but at least it's a self to step back into.
He spends a few days here like this. Sleeping most of the day away, waking to wander the markets and drink at the bars, too fucked up and lost to sweet-talk his way into any jobs. He can't even look the bartender in the eye when he orders, like it might break him to see the utter dimness in the man and know anew that no one will ever be bright again after Kim Namjoon.
Another evening waking up with swollen eyes and a grumbling belly. He wanders the cool metal walls that lead down to the garden level. A sad joke of a name; the only thing that would grow in here was a fuzzy green algae that coated the walls and smells like lemon.
“Massive sale on bulk proteins! Today only! Stock up your rig or you'll regret it! Talkin' to you, scrawny!”
“Fuck you,” Yoongi spits back at the big man who chuckles in reply before turning his booming voice toward another target.
Bowls of spices get wafted under his nose, synthetic silks dragged across his arms, metal piping banged on with a wrench to prove their reliability. Voices, so many voices, none of them saying a god damn thing. He tells himself he's gotta stop coming here, but he doesn't know where else to go.
A book stand on the quiet end of things catches his attention. He wanders between the precarious stacks, dusty and towering. At the touch of old paper he can smell Namjoon beside him, kisses on his cheeks, handful of giant clover he'd picked just for him, hums of sleepy breath in the blue hush of pre-dawn mist...
His eyes sting with tears. He grabs the first book he touches to distract himself and opens it in the middle, blinking until the words un-blur.
"What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
The exhausted old man behind the counter doesn't even spare a curious glance to Yoongi's choked cries and sniffles. Just takes his money and flips his VR glass back down.
Five nights spent in his ship. He can't remember what he's been doing in there, asleep and restless and drowning in grief and indecision. He wakes up with the book in his hands more often than not, groggy from dreams of a single rose so giant and alone that the whole planet seems miniature beneath its leaves.
Yoongi stares up at the flat glitter of stars, comforted a little by the fact that, if Namjoon wanted to, he could open up the pattern in concentric circles, all the way out here. Tree to mountain to planet to moons to asteroid, outward, outward until he could find Yoongi, small in his small ship, and Namjoon could open him up and know. Know that he loves him. Know that every bit of him hates to leave Namjoon but he's never learned how to stay.
His head aches. Too much sleep and crying and not enough food. “If I'm gonna leave, I should leave.”
The words sink into the walls of the ship and he gets to his feet, heaves a heavy sigh as he shuffles over to get dressed enough to go to the bar. It's the routine he knows; when it's time to leave, you gotta have somewhere to leave to, gotta find work or at least a lead.
It's loud and smoky as always, raucous laughter and clinking of glass, metal stools scraping across metal floors. Yoongi grits his teeth and takes a seat at the bar, orders a glass of something strong and clear in two muttered words and a nod to the bartender. Downs it and orders another. Figures he'll need at least three more of those before he's ready for conversation or negotiating any job leads.
Someone always has something, knows something or someone who needs something or needs to know something. It was here that he wheedled the last bit of information about Namjoon out of a hulking Trinaeran.
He can hear his wheezing laughter behind him now, stomach turning at the sound. For a second, he feels like a ghost inhabiting his past self who had sat there at that table months before, laughing along with the Trinaeran's horrible stories and feeding him a steady stream of drinks. He had been so greedy to find this mysterious mass murderer and kill him, to get that wave of satisfaction at finishing his years old wild goose chase of a mission already. And to get that massive commission.
It makes him ill. His Namjoon, how could he have ever been any less than everything? Just a task, just a commission, not the soft breaths of laughter, the smiling tears when overwhelmed by the beauty of a dragonfly, the utter warmth of his body cuddled close on the couch.
“Well, I'll tell you the same thing I told the other guy who came looking, we see him heading in and out from section 5.88. There's only one planet over there that's livable, but it's hard as hell to get into. Not many of us who'd recognize him here, and those of us who do try to make ourselves as uninteresting as possible when he walks by.”
A knot rises up in his throat like a hunk of coal; it's exactly the same thing the Trinaeran told Yoongi when he came looking. Panic almost has him jumping up out of his seat, but he has to be careful.
No no no no no I should've known! I should've known they commissioned more than one person to kill Namjoon I should've known-
Vivid as iris petals brushing against cheeks, the memory of meeting Namjoon fills him. His acceptance of death, the willingness to step into it rather than fight it.
He's just gonna let this fucker kill him.
With as much dull disinterest as he can manage, he casts a look over the bar behind him, sparing only a quick glance at the person sitting beside the massive Trinaeran. Human, desperate, bored. If not for the variation of hair color and scars and gender it could be a copy of Yoongi three months before.
His skin prickles hot, his hands go clammy. Without a coherent thought, he stumbles out of the bar and makes for his ship.
Joy rolls through him when Namjoon's little planet comes into sight, gathers between his shoulders, buoyant as wings. A distant white dot still, but all the things it contains bloom to life, weird and lovely things. Fog that holds little frog lanterns, trees that fold themselves shut like umbrellas when touched, sea-bleached driftwood that stands up and walks away to nest in the sand dunes that line the eastern shore, bright orange nectar cakes and bitter blue tea. And Namjoon who knows them all from the inside out, and out, and out, Namjoon who follows the molecule of one mouse ever outwards until he sees it existing in a star eight galaxies away. Namjoon who smiles and makes life look like something he never knew it to be. Something weird, and lovely.
Anxiety breaks like clouds and he smiles alone in his rumbling little ship. He wonders if Namjoon can sense him coming back, if his own pattern interlocks all the way through empty space and meteor and moon and cloud and raindrop, if he is now present in the giant orange tiger lily held in Namjoon's gentle hands.
A tiny blip of silver shoots past Yoongi's ship and the lovely daydream crashes down around him. The ship is headed toward the same white dot. The ship is faster. It's simply faster.
Yoongi has lost.
Breath shallow and harried, Yoongi stumbles out of his ship and lands hands and knees in the dewy grass. It's an exceptionally foggy day, vines reaching like slow ghost hands out of the thick grey.
“Don't touch my ship,” he mutters and the vines pull away, hovering like they can't decide if they want to misbehave anyway or not.
He doesn't care. Both guns he owns slung over his shoulders, he's off into the mists, careening on the desperate prayer that he's not too late.
There across the meadow, the little house that he loves for the man that it holds, warm firelight glowing in the window. He scans desperately for the other mercenary, sure that they've found it by now. They had a better ship, faster, sleeker, sure to hold better equipment for detecting lifeforms.
A burst of blue wings to the right at the edge of the lake, footfalls crashing through the dense shrubs, muffled by the misty winds. He aims his gun and waits.
But before the footsteps arrive, a voice from behind- “Min Yoongi.”
Daybreak crashes through his body a thousand times at the sound, golden and sweet. Soft voice rounded in a contagious smile. Time stops and expands the moment of sound ever outwards. Utterly sublime. His name is a spell when said in that voice, an incantation to make him feel so utterly alive.
The footsteps are getting closer but Yoongi turns away to bask in the sight of Namjoon. His fingers click against the air, dreamy eyes scanning him from head to toe.
“You're happy to see me too.”
Yoongi can't look away; he'd never want to. He sees it when the silent thwip of a bullet hits Namjoon square in the chest.
Instead of ripping him apart, it falls in a trickle of silvery dust. Yoongi, a mere human, can't help the desperate scream that rips out of him anyway.
The mercenary from Jackson Post steps into the clearing, and Yoongi recognizes the fear in their eyes. The fear of Kim Namjoon, the man who wiped out a solar system in a second. He'd held the same fear himself before knowing him, his gentle care of tiny creatures, his quiet moans in the night, airy coughs in the chill of the morning, the sharp slope of his eyes, the clumsiness of his giggles, a thousand things. Things worth dying for, or living.
It's a tense moment, no longer than a heart beat. The mercenary has one rifle set on Namjoon, the other set on Yoongi. Yoongi has both of his pointed at the mercenary. Namjoon stands beside him, clicking, clicking.
“You see what he's doing there? With his hands? It's how he did it, you know. Picked apart an entire system until it collapsed. So easy. So much easier, to decimate just one person, I would think.”
Namjoon turns to him, hurt in his eyes.
The mercenary curses under their breath, eyes darting wildly from Yoongi to Namjoon's twitching hands. Yoongi has a plan, a plan to convince the mercenary to-
Several shots fire at Namjoon, several more at Yoongi when he panics and lunges at them.
Pain sears through his body, so consuming that he can't tell where it's coming from. He doesn't care: the mercenary lies motionless in the grass and Namjoon's voice still calls his name behind him, soft and alive, daisies in the wind.
He wakes to warmth of various kinds. Fireplace, blankets, pain. The familiar weight of Meatball sleeping on his legs, the soft press of lips to his forehead. The gentle tapping of the handmade barometer on the desk across the room.
A contented sigh before he blinks his eyes open. “Kim Namjoon.”
“Yes,” he whispers into his hair. Namjoon's smile stretches through Yoongi's entire body, sunlight on the crest of a wave.
“Are you okay? Am I okay?” He shifts around to pat at Namjoon's body, scanning for any wounds.
“We're okay. The sonic blast when I disseminated their blaster gun knocked you unconscious. They... you shot them. I couldn't have unpatterned their death.”
A chill cuts in. It was self defense but it was death. It wasn't the plan. Yoongi nods and curls a little closer against Namjoon's chest. Warm arms hold him close, comfort he never considered needing before.
“I know it'll only be for a little while, but it's so nice to feel you like this again.”
An ache in his chest that he knows he's putting there himself. He tries to feel guilt but he only feels sorrow.
A morning like any other they spent together. Mists traveling across the meadow, bitter tea and roasted vegetables, cold toes digging beneath thighs. Yoongi back from rescuing his ship from the stinging vines, Namjoon gleaming at the edges with firelight.
“I got you something.” His voice gets gruff with shyness, as it always does.
Namjoon looks up from the book he's reading and gasps in delight at the sight of another book.
“I read it.” Six times. “The prince reminded me of you,” he shrugs, unable to put words to how deeply the book affected him, drowning in his own tears in a trading station so very far away.
Rustle of paper as Namjoon flips fondly through the pages, stopping to trace his fingers over a sketch of a little stone well in the desert, and warped, invisible circles where Yoongi's teardrops have dried.
He smiles at Yoongi. “Does that make you my rose or my fox? You are as pretty as the one, as transient as the other.”
The words he wants to say stick formless or jagged in his throat. He wrings his hands, finally sits on the lumpy couch. “Namjoon, come with me.”
Genuine surprise registers on Namjoon's face, and worry. Yoongi gets it, the fear, the self-distrust that Namjoon has so carefully reined in on this planet. Living slow, and therefore harmlessly. The only peace an accidental mass murderer could find.
“More people will come to kill you. If they sent two who failed to complete the mission, they'll send more. It'll get easier and easier for them to hop the trails of information me and the other one dug up to get here, you know. I can't- can't- live not knowing if you-” he shakes his head, wishing the words would come out right.
“I could stop any of them from killing me,” Namjoon offers to ease Yoongi's worry. To help him feel free, because Namjoon loves him and knows he'll need to leave again.
“But I don't know that you would. And anyway I, I love you. In the infinite way sure, yeah, I'd love you no matter how far away and that's all very fucking nice but I love you finitely too and I want you in all the little moments and I want to kiss you every day and there's no reason for you not to come with me. Meatball can come too.”
Lips parted in shock at the sudden decision, Namjoon's fingers twitch frantically where they lay against the open book.
“Namjoon please,” he whispers, sliding his hands into his. “Come with me. There's no reason to be afraid of yourself, or punish yourself. Please, please be a little selfish and come with me.”
After a moment, “I would be so sad to leave this earth.” The only argument he could come up with.
“But... I think you're right, that staying here would just be punishing myself, and that serves no purpose. If I was truly afraid that I might... lose control again, that would be one thing, but. I have learned to lock the doors before opening another.”
Yoongi squeezes his hands and grins in excitement. “So you'll come with me?”
For a long moment, they stare into each other's eyes, pleading, deciding, patterning. When Yoongi blinks again, the sun is high in the sky, bright in a rare cloud break, Meatball pawing at the door to go outside and play.
They follow Meatball out into the sunlight that glistens on every puddle and drop of water, blinding on the lake across the meadow and trees. Namjoon too seems to glimmer, warmth and brightness, elemental.
He takes a deep inhale of sun and moss and weaves his fingers through Yoongi's, pulling his hands up to his lips to press two firm, lingering kisses. “Yes, I'll come with you, and kiss you every day. Though I admit, I am a bit... afraid. You might have to kiss me more. For reassurance.”
“I can do that,” Yoongi grins, and kisses his cheek twice for good measure.
“It almost feels nice... to be afraid.” Namjoon watches the sun glint off the electric blue flutter of bird wings across the lake. His eyes crinkle in a smile. “Afraid, and with you.”