Work Text:
one time, of many
"I'm going to bed," Seokjin muttered, laying his hand on Yoongi's arm. For the half a second that his touch lingered, the younger boy cringed, letting himself slouch down into the sofa again when the bedroom door shut. Another few minutes, and the front door would open. He just had to give it some time, like anything else.
Hoseok still looked angry, even after all the time Yoongi had given him, standing in the doorway and casting a shadow both ways, like there was no part left of him to give light. Not that light was what they needed: darkness was much preferred, and with their streak of luck that had been going on for- how many months now? Five? Six?- it was a cloudy night. It wasn't the kind of night for sitting out on a blanket and being happy, no, it was for getting shit done and over with.
Inside Hoseok's car, it was even darker, all black leather and tinted windows like what they were doing was important. Neither of them wanted it to be important; important things, at least like this, only bit you in the ass later.
Yoongi felt like he was practically being bit in the ass sitting in the passenger seat waiting for Hoseok to get himself together, which wouldn't happen until tomorrow night, when he came back with quiet footsteps and an even quieter voice, treating Yoongi like porcelain, minus the fact that nobody leaves their finest china on the sidewalk to rot. The peachy haired boy turned his keys in the ignition like he was going to take them somewhere, but they'd never get to it. All Yoongi got was the time on the dashboard clock: 12:50 am.
"I'm surprised you're even up this late," Yoongi snapped. He was talking like Seokjin now, or maybe he was talking like he wanted Seokjin, who was still snoring away in his- not their (they hadn't shared it, or anything else, in a while)- bed. Both of those things were equally as nightmarish.
"Sinners never sleep, do they, baby?" There was the name drop, but it didn't really drop from Hoseok's lips. It came slow; Yoongi had to wait for it, like he hadn't waited long enough for this. He was already climbing into the backseat. "Patience, please," Hoseok mumbled, like he wasn't running out of his own. Hypocritical, the usual for both of them.
It wasn't any lighter outside when they were done, and Hoseok's tone wasn't any lighter when he placed his hand on Yoongi's arm and said, "Dont call." He didn't feel anything like Seokjin, who was too soft and too easy to manipulate. Hoseok felt warm and definite, like he meant business. Yoongi was just business. None of it was Seokjin's business. That was just how it worked.
Yoongi fit back into the empty space on the sofa like a puzzle piece, and for a moment, he wondered if he had left the same dent in Seokjin's bed (although it was more likely he had left a dent in Seokjin himself all those nights he slept on top of him), and he could climb back into it like he was catching up with an old friend. He was too tired to try. The sofa was closer to the house phone, anyway, the same one he had been told time and time again he shouldn't use to call Hoseok, because the only thing that boy liked hearing out of Yoongi's mouth was his own name, but he still knew his number like an ever-so-precious secret.
When the phone rang, it rang louder than any voice Yoongi would use for telling secrets. He was relieved to hear a quiet voice on the other end when he answered; he was less relieved to realize it was Hoseok.
Yoongi's lips were already forming the words "Why'd you call?" when his name tumbled from Hoseok's lips. It made him stop, and breathe, and come up with a million more questions to ask. Hoseok had one of his own.
"So... six months is coming up." Hoseok, the number one advocate for not being in a relationship with Yoongi, talked like they were dating. And Yoongi couldn't do anything about it, and if there had been something to do about it, he couldn't be bothered. He'd be forgetting about it to the sound of rain hitting car windows tomorrow night.
"Mhm," Yoongi muttered, just because there's no way to hear someone nod over the phone.
"I was wondering if you wanted to... do something, you know?" Like they weren't always doing something.
The same noise came from Yoongi again. "Mhm." The following silence left time for him to think about months and gifts and Hoseok. Three months had been something pretty, changing in the trunk of the car and losing pastel shades in the dark of night, but pretty nonetheless. Maybe six months would be something ugly.
"We could... go somewhere, maybe?" There was a world outside whited-out apartments and blacked-out cars that Yoongi knew very well, but he had a feeling Hoseok's world wasn't quite the same.
What was the same as always was the sound of bare feet on carpet, almost masked by the sound of socks on linoleum, but still there, underneath everything else, including Yoongi's skin.
And under his breath, he whispered, "You're coming to the back lot tomorrow." By the time he followed up with, "Don't call," there was no more sound.
Seokjin waited until Yoongi headed towards to sofa to follow him, and take up the space where he should have shoved his feet in between the cushions because they were always so cold. Seokjin was cold, too, but he couldn't be warmed up as easily.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked, staring at something that wasn't his boyfriend.
"Couldn't sleep," Yoongi repeated. Mumbling was reserved for talking to Hoseok.
"Me too."
"Oh, I hope I didn't keep you up," the younger boy rushed, almost reaching a hand out for Seokjin, but soon realizing that would wake him up more than necessary.
"No, of course not. You're quiet." Lucky for Seokjin, he didn't know why. He fell silent, too, as one of them waited for the other, whether it was to speak up, or step down, or collapse into themselves, or each other. The phone ringing would have been nice, but nobody called. Not after the countless pleas of "don't call."
Seokjin stood, revealing something Yoongi hadn't even noticed: a blanket. He kicked his legs up and waited for it to be pulled over him like he was a little kid. Seokjin complied, of course, a too-eager smile finally reaching his eyes as he brushed a piece of Yoongi's hair that didn't need fixing, and said, "Call if you need anything."
Yoongi nodded, only hearing the words "don't call" echo in his head.
"Promise?"
Yoongi promised, only hearing the sound of things breaking in his head.
six months worth of times
Hoseok didn't need promises, ever: both he and Yoongi knew he was in the back lot of the apartment building; that was just as certain as everything either of them had been before that. Yoongi still hadn't learned too much; he treaded carefully out the door with footsteps that didn't echo through his fuzzy socks and slippers, and headed not into the elevator that he would take with Seokjin, or even usually by himself, but into the one used for bringing up furniture, or rich people's luggage when they got home from a long trip. It was dirty, and smelled of harsh metal and harsher jetlag, but Yoongi didn't feel so out of place with the bags under his eyes and the raspiness in his voice as he talked to nothing.
"Seokjin would hate this." Seokjin would want this to be the last time, and if he just said that to Yoongi, said, "It would be nice if you stopped cheating on me with bright-eyed boys whose voices are so goddamn loud and it would be nice if you slept in our bed again, even if you take all the blankets and it would be nice if you stopped being such an asshole to me when I'm trying to make things right for both of us and you're not even waiting for me to finish", then it would be the last time. Yoongi would throw away his elevator key, and delete Hoseok's number out of his phone (even though they never called each other), and he'd donate the hoodie that he told Seokjin a friend had given him, and he'd get a new sofa without a dent in it from where he slept.
The elevator doors pulled open, and Yoongi found it far too easy to stop thinking about Seokjin, and start thinking about getting out of the bitter cold (which had given the untouched ground some amount of snow in the past few hours that he didn't expect, and definitely didn't hear about from Seokjin, who always got excited when it snowed) and getting into Hoseok's car, where it wasn't safe, but it was warm, and he never stepped away from dangerous things, anyway, no matter how hot or cold or public or secret or conventionally respectable. Hoseok could be all of those things or none of those things, but it didn't matter, because Yoongi was climbing straight into the backseat, hoping the other boy would ultimately give up on making small talk through the rearview mirror and give him what he wanted.
Hoseok was always two steps ahead.
And already in the backseat, looking up at Yoongi like he had been waiting forever to see him. That was ridiculous; 24 hours was nowhere close to forever, and Yoongi, who had felt a lot of forevers, would know.
"We're not going anywhere?" Yoongi asked, feigning disappointment as best he could when he was already unzipping his jacket and biting back a grin. Hoseok pushed his hair back over his forehead and shrugged, losing his answer somewhere in the lust that was filling up the air and suffocating both of them.
"That's okay. I don't think I want to go anywhere, anyway. I'd rather be right here." He laid his palms flat on the seat on either side of them and spread his fingers out, even though they'd never reach Hoseok. He was too busy ripping his car keys out of his pocket and flinging them into the front seat.
---
"Don't call." They were both broken records, from their breathing to their reaching out and pulling away.
"Mhm." Yoongi liked to think he had a few more scratches on him than Hoseok knew about; it would keep him just out of reach, but still close enough to be played, because that was all he had to be anymore. "Seokjin would hate that."
"He would." Hoseok knew about Seokjin, but throughout the dozens of times he had worked his way into their conversations like thread through a needle, Hoseok had never once said his name. It's not that he was scared; there was no reason to be scared of Seokjin when he already had the best part of him: Yoongi. He just didn't feel the need to. He didn't feel the need for Seokjin in the first place.
Yoongi felt the need for Seokjin as soon as his feet (now just in his slippers, because he had lost his socks, his only nice pair of fuzzy socks, somewhere in Hoseok's car) hit the pavement, which still had the same coating of snow, now with a one-way trail of footprints. He found himself wishing he didn't have to leave tracks going back into the building. No walk of shame, leaving pieces of Hoseok and even more pieces of himself behind, just leaving and not coming back, no matter how much snow got in his slippers and how many times someone called his name.
He started to follow his past footsteps without thinking, right back into the building and back into the elevator, which seemed both stuffier and quieter, like it had been filled up with so much hot air that there was no space left for noise. The maze of hallways leading back to his apartment was deafening, with sounds of people tossing and turning in their beds, in the arms of people they loved, while Yoongi was wide awake and so, so cold, the temperature only dropping as he opened the door, which he always left unlocked. He didn't need to wake Seokjin with a bunch of pointless jingling before he even got in and could try and cover himself.
Yoongi wasn't sure what made him hang up his jacket in the hall closet near what used to be his and Seokjin's shared bedroom, but now just belonged to the latter. It could have been the sound of his breathing that drew him in, a little closer, a few more steps, just beyond the threshold between Seokjin's territory and his own. He knew he wouldn't sleep with him: he was still in his clothes from that day, and still had to shower, or at least wash his hands to make him feel like he was clean, and standing so close to Seokjin when he felt so far from him made him feel all the dirtier.
Since the last time Yoongi had been in there, which must have been coming up on a year, Seokjin had changed the room almost as much as he had changed himself. The bed was pushed up against the farthest wall, with windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling, the ones he never let Yoongi put curtains over. He slept off to the side closer to the windows, like he wanted to fall out. The side where Yoongi should have been sleeping had no dents for him to fit into, and he definitely didn't fit into Seokjin, with his arms crossed over his chest and his face turned towards the sky (which had nothing to offer, but if Seokjin was awake, he would find something in it) so Yoongi couldn't even try to see how he felt, etched on his face like soft fingerprints in dust that hadn't been shifted.
Somewhere near Seokjin's left shoulder, a passing car's headlights cast the sort of glow Yoongi missed seeing on his skin, and in his smile, and on his lips when he asked to be kissed like there was nothing else Yoongi could do to him, and Seokjin let out the same kind of sigh that he always would after Yoongi did it, and nothing felt too different.
Until he realized he was still in his sweatshirt, which was starting to get hot, and his jeans, which were starting to stick to his thighs, and his slippers, because he had lost his socks in the backseat of a car, not because Seokjin had thrown them in the laundry and promised Yoongi his clothes would be warm tomorrow so he could wear them. Seokjin was too cold for that.
Yoongi headed back to the sofa; it'd be warmer.
six months and one more time
Yoongi didn't look at Seokjin the next morning, or the rest of the day, because Seokjin was going out with his friends, and when he said he'd be out for a while, that meant until at least midnight. He was never a person that used terms loosely, something Yoongi should have known back when he said "I love you."
The earlier Seokjin left, and the more traces of himself he took with him, the faster Yoongi could reach for the phone, which he had already moved to the coffee table when Seokjin went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Hoseok seemed to be the only thing he put in any preparation for, and he almost envied the boy he lived with, who had other things to get ready for. And be excited about. He must have been too excited to say goodbye, leaving Yoongi alone to deal with, not a mess, but a lack thereof. The only thing he had to do was call Hoseok.
The buzzing in his head and his heart and his ears was a hell of a lot louder than the buzzing on the other end of the line, so loud that he barely heard a voice he thought he knew so well, and barely recognized it the second time it sounded. "Yoongi?" He expected his name to be a statement coming from Hoseok's mouth, but he seemed more lenient today. Last night, and every night before that for six long months, had really gotten Yoongi on his good side.
"I know you told me not to call, but..."
"I knew you would anyway." His tone definitely wasn't cold like Seokjin, but it was far from what it usually was, all hot-enough-to-burn and dripping with something-or-other. It was... lighter. Yoongi imagined how different their situation would be if he sounded like that all the time, or at least most of it (and maybe he did. Maybe Yoongi wasn't getting Hoseok, he was getting someone else with the same face and smell and taste. Yoongi wouldn't be surprised, and he wouldn't be disappointed, either.) "I always told you not to call because I knew you would anyway."
Yoongi bit back a guilty smile on his end of the phone, wanting to cut to the chase, but if Hoseok was going to sweet talk him, he'd sit back and enjoy it without a second thought.
"So, Hoseok..." he started, filling up the silence, but not to the brim. "I can guess last night didn't really go how you wanted."
"It went fine, Yoongi." He wasn't trying to sound cold, he was just trying to calm Yoongi's nerves, which he knew got out of control sometimes, but there was definitely a bite behind his lips somewhere.
"I mean... we could've done a little better than the backseat of your car." Hoseok was a sucker for always getting the best out of everything, and Yoongi was a sucker for giving it to him.
"And what have you got to offer, sweetie?" He asked, his voice showing he was loosening up already.
"Seokjin isn't home." Yoongi only dared to breathe the sentence, like someone else could hear him, but it was just Hoseok, and he was as determined to keep this confidential as Yoongi was, even though he wasn't the one with secrets. He just liked to keep them.
"Really?" Hoseok's voice was even breathier, and Yoongi swore he heard his car keys jingle in his pocket.
"Mhm." They definitely jingled this time, and then bumped against Hoseok's phone, leaving Yoongi to listen to the white noise before he could pick a voice out of it, a voice that didn't ask questions, but instead stated, "I'll be there in 15."
"Doesn't it take you 20?"
"Not this time." He didn't tell him not to call, but there was a lot of unsaid things left in the click of the phone and the monotone beep that came after.
Yoongi knew the chances that things would ever settle between them were low, so low that feeling at ease when there was a knock at the door hadn't even been an option in his mind until that very moment. Hoseok's eyes (and his nose and his lips and the way he put his hand on Yoongi's arm and shoved the door shut with the other one like he owned the place) didn't leave any other options, except for Yoongi to back up so slowly Hoseok was stepping on his feet, down a hallway Yoongi wasn't even sure if he knew his way down anymore.
He barely felt his feet cross the threshold (because Hoseok was stepping all over him and making him all numb, so numb he couldn't even tell if it was hot or cold) and he barely looked out the floor to ceiling windows, and he definitely didn't look for Seokjin, or think about him (or how he looked last night, sleeping on the side of the bed that Yoongi didn't quite fit into, and neither did Hoseok).
The only thing he felt was the weight of the last six months on his back, and Hoseok pushing his hands up his shirt, more than willing to rid him of it.
---
Yoongi was rid of a lot of things, kicked to the side of the bed that was probably being slept on for the first time, and Hoseok, sleeping up next to the window like Seokjin did, one hand around Yoongi's slumped shoulders and the other one running over his own waist, and Yoongi wondered if he should reach out and take it. He decided against it, because he didn't want to have to drop it later.
"Hoseok," he mumbled, his voice clear as day, not affected in the slightest by sleep because truthfully, he hadn't had any, besides a few ten or fifteen minute cat naps in Hoseok's arms when he moved them enough to allow Yoongi to squeeze in. The only source of light in the room was Seokjin's alarm clock, discarded on the floor but still visible, and letting Yoongi know it was approaching 11:30pm. The city was getting ever dimmer, and so were his hopes of Hoseok wanting to let him into the backseat of his car again after unceremoniously waking him up with a couple pulls of his hair.
With a quiet snore, he shifted, but didn't sit up, just took his hand off of Yoongi's shoulder and propped himself up on one elbow. His other hand didn't leave his waist, where it kept pushing his sweatpants down and then pulling them back up, like he knew exactly what he was doing, and like he knew he and Yoongi never had a second round of anything.
"Hoseok, you should probably get going." He faked the sound of sleep in his voice, and turned his lips into a pout, entirely expecting Hoseok to copy him, which he did.
"Don't tell me to leave while I'm still dreaming." He tried to rub his eye against the fist that his cheek was propped up on. Yoongi, on some sort of instinct he hadn't had until tonight, wiped it for him, even though there was nothing there.
"Please, Hoseok, I hate kicking people out. Just go." He would have gestured to the door, but his thumb was still on Hoseok's cheek.
"We can stay right here and fall for each other while he's fast asleep," the other boy suggested, relentless in his desires, as always. Except this time, it seemed like he wanted more than sex. Yoongi faulted himself for that, for letting Hoseok inside his apartment, for letting him to be all vulnerable in a bed that he knew wasn't his. Something had taken its toll, whether it was tonight or the last six months worth of nights before that (or maybe Hoseok was just a different person when he was tired), but it made Yoongi wish he was sleeping on the other side of the bed.
He wouldn't have to see the backdrop Seokjin stared at all the time looming behind the boy he was trying to take in like he was going blind tomorrow, silhouetting him in something that was no part of him (or either of them, but Yoongi felt that it was more his than Hoseok's, because it was truly Seokjin's, and Hoseok had no right to things that were Seokjin's. They were as separate as people who weren't physically day and night or left and right could be.)
Yoongi reached for the covers, not to take them for himself, just to take them away, and wash them before Seokjin got home. He was too clean for this bed.
"This is his bed," He mumbled, standing up on the wooden floor (which had finally turned cold without Hoseok's presence) so he could pull the covers all the way off. They hit the floor with barely any noise, but he acted like it smothered Hoseok's voice as all he had to say was, "Oh." (which was one of Seokjin's favorite words, back when Yoongi gave him the opportunity to use it. When he did, he used it like it had a rhyme or reason. Hoseok used it like an excuse.)
He took his hand off his waist to search for his shirt somewhere underneath the remaining sheets, which Yoongi wasn't sure if he pushed towards him on purpose or because they were in the way, but he took them, dropping them as soon as Hoseok shifted to the edge of the bed and held his hands out so Yoongi could take them and pull him up, which Hoseok only wanted him to do because he could, and he would.
What neither of them wanted was to have to leave the apartment together, in their pajamas, and have to go down the back elevator, which was noisier today, with both of them pulling at stray threads on their clothes and ruffling their hair, looking their very mediocre-bests for a world that wasn't looking.
What Hoseok didn't want was to have to climb into his car without Yoongi following him.
What Yoongi didn't want was to watch him go, leaving just one set of footprints in the snow across the parking lot, which was starting to turn slushy. One set of footprints that left and never came back.
the "morning" after
Looking out the window to find stars in the sky was, to Yoongi, like finding sand in your hair days after you got home from the beach: an inconvenience. He'd much rather have the clouds, and Hoseok, and tinted windows and indecisiveness. Seokjin, on the other side of the threshold, had crystal clear eyes and a smile that didn't falter as he told Yoongi how much he wanted to dance in the starlight, even though only a patch of it was actually hitting the bedroom floor, and they'd be stepping all over each other if they tried to do anything more than breathe in it.
Yoongi took his hand anyway, and let Seokjin make the starlight fall in just the right places on him, and it felt just like his touch (cold, so cold, right through his sweater and onto his skin that was usually getting hot this time of night). They stepped all over each other, and barely breathed, except when the sun started to rise (Yoongi couldn't help but sigh when he looked out the windows and didn't see a thing out of place, and when he caught a glimpse of Seokjin spinning him in the mirror, there wasn't anything out of place about himself, although he could hear someone that wasn't him or Seokjin saying "Don't call," and before their hands were even off of each other, someone was calling the phone.)
Yoongi reached for it first, and with Seokjin at his back, he answered it. "Hello?"
He was waiting for some sort of false alarm, whether it was someone with the wrong number, or someone who had already hung up. But it was Hoseok, who didn't have the wrong number, and wasn't going to hang up.
"Hey, honey." He sounded tired, and like it had taken him a great amount of effort to call, but instead of feeling grateful, like Hoseok would want him to, Yoongi pulled the phone away from his ear so nobody on the other end would hear him ask, "Why, Hoseok?"
He held the phone back up just in time to hear the same tired voice say, "How are you doing after last night?" Of course he had to bring up last night; he'd probably never stop bringing it up. Not that Yoongi was an advocate for letting unforgettable moments go unacknowledged, but this was more of a secret than anything. And Hoseok was usually more than willing to keep Yoongi's secrets.
"I'm fine. What about you?" He was starting to fidget on the hardwood floor, while Hoseok was most likely in his own bed with clean sheets, his hand on his waist, fingertips just above the waistband of his sweatpants. He was comfortable. Yoongi wasn't.
"I'm good, I'm good. I called about... Seokjin, actually." Yoongi cringed at the mention of the boy who was only two or so feet behind him, looking at everything but seeing nothing. Hearing nothing. It reminded Yoongi of a time when Hoseok held his face, thumb and pointer finger sticking to his cheeks, and convinced him, "Secrets are best kept in plain sight." Yoongi came home in Hoseok's shirt that day (but changed out of it and doused himself in cologne before Seokjin could even lay his tired brown eyes on him).
"So, not about me?" There was more disappointment in his voice than he intended, but he found that the more he tugged Hoseok's heartstrings, the more he liked messing with him. It was an even trade, too: fuck someone else and get fucked over yourself.
"No, no, this is about you, too, honey. I promise." He had every reason to consider Yoongi's change of attitude happening at some point, but the crack in his voice and the way he tripped over his words so blatantly showed he never did. Yoongi would have laughed at anyone else, but Hoseok's next sentence came like a slap in the face.
"I hope he's not home." He giggled like he was drunk and must have pressed the phone up against his face a bit too hard, because the beep that sounded definitely wasn't someone else calling in.
"He's home." The word "sorry" hung just on the tip of his tongue, but Seokjin didn't need to hear that, and Yoongi didn't either.
"What a shame."
"Mhm." He kept his lips tight. Hoseok's were loose on the other end of the line, ready to spill his secrets to anyone who would listen (even his shower walls, even to himself).
"I want to see you again." That was obvious. "Tonight, right?" He stole Yoongi's words right out of his mouth, except for Yoongi, it was always a question, and for Hoseok, it was always a statement.
"Mhm." That was Yoongi's statement, and he rushed to find something else to say, something that wasn't about what they were probably still doing tonight, even though they were grown adults and should have been learning the difference between right and wrong faster than middle schoolers.
"You know, you're different when you call. When you break the rules," He started (or maybe finished), trying to snap Hoseok back to the reality of himself and who he was (and why he was calling Yoongi when he knew he was with Seokjin and when he had just gotten more than enough of him).
"What do you mean?" He asked, his playful tone diminishing into something more like what Yoongi was feeling. It made him want to stay on the line just a few seconds longer, but hanging up was the best answer to Hoseok's question.
Seokjin watched Yoongi put the phone down with an expression that wasn't anger or disappointment, but leaned closer to sympathy, and not the underhanded, caustic type that usually graced his face- it was genuine. And his voice sounded undeniably Seokjin-esque when he asked Yoongi, "Do you want to sleep with me tonight?"
Yoongi couldn't turn his face away into the couch cushions, or pull the neckline of his sweater up over his face. All he could do was sound nothing like himself (or, at least, the person he had been for the last six months, which was someone he only knew through reflections in dirty bathroom mirrors and even dirtier hookups) as he said, "Yes, Seokjin."
Seokjin got into bed like he always did, facing the undead part of the city, glowing with the energy of the people who had it. Yoongi sat at the foot of the bed for a few minutes, not wanting to come too close to Seokjin until he was asleep and didn't have to know how much Yoongi wanted to hold him, no matter how cold he was. Instead, he settled for the equally-as-icy outdoors, not expecting to find solace in the flashiness of downtown, but looking up the street proved itself worse. Not because of its lack of things to catch your eye, or because how slow things moved.
There were plenty of footsteps in the snow, revealing black pavement, and one black car (all black, down to the tinted windows and the silhouette of the driver) leaving the back lot faster than Yoongi could will himself not to see it.