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“You’re supposed to be dead.”
Jung Hoseok flinches into the wall when a small angry looking man confronts him, barely five minutes after he’s survived a possible car crash.
“I’m sorry?”
The man sighs and checks his watch with a roll of his eyes, “I said you’re supposed to be dead, as of five minutes ago. Why are you still alive?”
“That’s not a very nice question to ask me,” he can feel the inside of his mouth drying up in fear, “especially when I’m not dead.”
“I’m not here to be nice, I’m here to collect Jung Hoseok, born February 18th 1994, favourite colour is green, has a mother, father and older sister all of which are alive. Time of death was 12:32 pm. It is now 12:39 pm and you are currently still alive,” the man checks his watch again, a frown creasing his face. He’s wearing a black trench coat and has a hat low on his head, almost completely covering his mint hair. It's stark against the black of his outfit.
“Are you a stalker?”
“Why are you still alive?” The man takes off his midnight black hat with another sigh, running his hand through his hair, “You sure you’re Jung Hoseok, currently a dance major at Seoul University and in your 2nd year. Your worst fear is either heights or that you’re wasting your time at university getting a useless degree. Are you Jung Hoseok?”
“Ye-yes?” he manages to stumble out, “Are you sure you’re not a stalker?”
“Yes I’m sure, okay if you’re Jung Hoseok you’re supposed to be dead, cause of death: car accident, the man was texting and didn’t see you crossing the road, he should’ve driven straight into you at 12:30 pm causing your almost immediate death two minutes later. He will then feel guilty for the rest of his short life and kill himself three days later in the bathroom of his flat at 1:58 am. Why am I even telling you this? Fuck, I need to make a call,” he storms out of the alleyway with his coat billowing around him.
“Are you Death?” Hoseok calls after him, following the small man even though his legs feel like they’ll collapse at any moment, “Are you going to kill me?”
“Kill you?” he pauses with a frown, his phone halfway to his face, “I’m a collector not a murderer, I was here to collect your soul, now excuse me. Namjoon, I have a problem-”
And with that he puts on his hat and disappears into a waft of grey smoke, leaving Hoseok reaching into thin air with his mouth hanging open in shock.
“Am I supposed to be dead?” he whispers into the stilling air. There is no reply.
The next time they meet was almost a year later. Hoseok is hung-over and pissed off as fuck, his professor gave him until next week to hand in a ten page essay on the way that modern dance influenced political development in 1970’s America. What the fuck right? Yixing must be out of his fucking mind, Hoseok thinks as he storms across campus. He almost doesn’t notice the small man that appears next to him – almost but not quite.
“Jung Hoseok?” he asks, his coat billowing behind him in the Seoul summer, hat still on his head. A small scream and a stream of curses answers him.
“Oh fuck, you scared me. Are you trying to kill me?” Hoseok gasps out with a hand on his chest, “Actually don’t answer that.”
“How are you still alive? You should’ve died three minutes ago when you were coming down the stairs from your meeting with your professor. I even moved the date back an entire year. You know how hard that is to do? I had to do so much paperwork you know?” the small man splutters, biting his lip, “Aish kid you give me so much work. The other guy didn’t die either. I had to wait an entire month, so much paperwork, I actually had to go to the office and talk to my boss, he was so angry. Two souls unaccounted for, Jesus Christ.”
“Sorry?” Hoseok says, remembering tripping as he ran down the stairs, eager to get out of the stuffy building and back to the dance studio, but he had grabbed the railing before he had fallen, hand almost slipping with sweat.
“Why can’t you die Jung Hoseok? This has never happened to me before, aish. I go from star reaper of the month to the guy who can’t collect one stubborn soul?” he rubs his hand over his eyes, “Why does this always happen to you Min Yoongi? Unlucky in life unlucky in death.”
“I’m sorry about that, I’ll make sure I die next time?” Hoseok pats him on the back, crushing down the questions that bubble up inside him, “Yoongi-ssi?”
“Hurry up and go, you’re friends are waiting for you at the dance studio. Park Jimin will admit his crush on your roommates in exactly ten minutes, don’t be late and don’t let them turn him down,” the small man smiles a little at the bewildered look on Hoseok’s face, “and next time? Please just die, this paperwork is really gonna be a hassle.”
He leaves Hoseok grasping thin air again, reaching out to something that’s already long gone.
“Your hair is pink,” Hoseok mutters to himself as he runs the rest of the way to the studio.
The next time they meet was much sooner, only five months after the last. The autumn has sunk its claws in and is thoroughly refusing to let go. Students rush from building to building with their breathes leaving smoke trails behind them, it’s still too warm for thick winter jackets and too cold for whatever Hoseok had been wearing when he walked to the club.
“Can I call you Hobi?” a voice emerges from beside him, arms steadying him as he stumbled his way back home, “because you don’t seem to understand the concept of dying.”
“I’m hopeful,” Hoseok slurs, wrapping an arm around the small man’s neck, “Yoongi-hyung are you gonna kill me now?”
“No I told you I don’t kill people, I collect them afterwards, think of me more like a caretaker. I clean up the mess that people leave after they die. What’s the point, you’re gonna forget this by tomorrow anyways,” Yoongi sighs and leads them towards Hoseok’s apartment, “apartment 5-b, the lift is always broken and you have to walk up the stairs. Your roommates, Jeon Jungkook and Kim Taehyung, are at Park Jimin’s house and won’t be home until tomorrow morning. You wish that you could afford a place of your own even though you love both of them.”
Yoongi clicks his fingers and the lift whirs back into life, opening with a hesitant ding. Hoseok leans on him heavily, head resting on Yoongi’s shoulder in that weird lolling way that drunks tend to do. He’s still beaming at him, smiling even though he’s not only drunk off his ass but being carried home by a grim reaper.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Yoongi whines as he pushes Hoseok into bed, pulling the blankets around his stilling form and trying not to blush at the way Hoseok tries to tug him into bed with him, “all I wanted was a nice easy way to spend my afterlife and this is what I get?”
Yoongi sighs again and calls Namjoon.
Hoseok feels like death has warmed over in his skull, or like the pounding bass is still throbbing in his bones. He lies in bed and groans for a while, hoping that one of his roommates take pity on him and bring coffee. After a few minutes of silence he struggles to his feet, the room swimming around him as he drags himself into the kitchen.
“How the fuck did I even get home last night?” he whispers to himself after he has a sip of coffee (tastes like shit).
“I carried you.”
Hoseok screams and almost drops his coffee, spinning around with shock and regretting it as both his scream and his sudden movement set that bass line off again. Yoongi sighs again and with a click of his fingers the hangover recedes to the back of Hoseok’s skull.
“You need to stop screaming whenever you see me, it’s getting old pretty quickly.”
“You’re in my house, how did you get in my house?” Hosoek demands, “And you cured my hangover, how did you do that?”
“I used your keys and magic. You were supposed to die again yesterday, at 3:27 am of hyperthermia after you collapsed at 1:03 am outside a bar. I arrived at 3:27 am on the dot and there you were still rambling and barely even cold. So after twenty more minutes of waiting for you to die I took you home. I’ve taken the liberty of eating your food since you’ve made life so hard for me over the last two years and we have a meeting with my boss and my co-worker in,” he checks his watch, “about ten minutes so make yourself presentable. We’re gonna sort out your dying problem.”
Hoseok is sitting in his favourite café (the one with the pinstriped awning and the cute barista who always gives him extra marshmallows in his hot chocolate) with Yoongi the grumpy reaper and two other men, sipping on an Americano and discussing why he isn’t dying.
“So you’ve tried three times now?” the pink haired man asks (Seokjin?) “And all three times he’s there completely unharmed.”
“Yup.”
“Maybe he has good karma?” the dimpled man suggests, almost knocking over his coffee when he waves an arm around, “Maybe god likes him and they won’t tell us. You know how they like to fuck with us sometimes.”
Yoongi rolls his eyes, as the grey haired man (Namjoon?) finally knocks over his coffee and the other man panics and flutters his hands. Yoongi fixes the spill with a bored click of his fingers. These idiots are my bosses, his roll of eyes seem to say, how the fuck did I even get here?
After a few more minutes of intense debate about whether Hoseok is either cursed or blessed or has been placed there to mess around with them, Seokjin finally puts up a hand to silence the two squabbling men.
“Well we’re not gonna figure out the answer now are we? So let’s stop wasting all of our time and think about this separately. We can meet in two weeks? At mine? I’ll make the nice kimchi spaghetti that Kyungsoo-yah taught me,” he waves his hand in farewell as both him and Namjoon stand, bowing to Hoseok, “nice meeting you Hoseok-ssi, I hope we sort out your dying problem soon.”
Namjoon turns to Yoongi with a small frown, staring intensely at him as if they’re having an internal debate.
“Yoongi-hyung, I think you should keep low until then. I’ll sort out your assignments, it’s just temporary, so that the higher ups don’t catch wind of this,” the frown returns to Yoongi’s face, “we’ll sort this out don’t worry.”
And with that the two men leave, their long coats flapping in the wind behind them. Neither of them are wearing black, Namjoon’s coat is a bright teal and Seokjin’s an alarming pink colour. Their hats are different bright colours as well, he glances over at the other man, still wearing his trademark all black.
“Where’s your hat?” he asks.
“Dry cleaners,” Yoongi shrugs, as if it’s everyday the dry cleaners wash a grim reaper’s hat, “It’s dry clean only.”
A silence falls over them, one that settles into the space between them like warmth. It’s broken by only by the ebb and flow of background noise from the rest of the café, a fluid sway of chatter and clinking cups. It’s soothing, the kind of thing you could find in a meditation tape with a woman’s comforting voice over the top.
Yoongi looks like he belonged in this café, slouched over in the worn chairs with the black of his coat bright against the faded red leather. His skin looks too soft in the light filtering through the windows, like Hoseok could lean over and bite through the soft white like an apple. He almost looks fragile, as if the coat is the only thing keeping his small body together, the coffee cup cradled in his too thin hands.
It’s the first time that Hoseok has seen Yoongi when he isn’t angry or annoyed or even confused, now he just seems to be. He sits there with his dark eyes staring across the room at nothing in particular and yet there’s something hawk like about him. Like he could flow from hawk to wolf to lamb to rabbit with a flick of his expressions and Hoseok wonders what he actually is.
“You’re staring,” a soft murmur from across the table. Yoongi has finished his coffee and was watching him with soft-eyed interest, not quite predatory but almost, “do I have something on my face?”
“Do you wanna come back to my flat?”
“Ok.”
“You know all about me,” Hoseok whines after he sips on a can of lychee juice, the ones that Taehyung hoards almost manically and never lets even Jungkook drink, “it’s not fair, tell me about yourself.”
“I just read your file, its not like I magically know everything about you,” Yoongi shrugs, drinking on an identical can.
(you know that’s like just sugar water right? And I’m on a diet, Hoseok had rolled his eyes and thrown a can at his head anyways. Come on hyung learn to live a little. Yoongi wishes it were as easy as that)
“File? D’you have like a magical database on everyone? Is my entire future written on there? Does everyone have a file? Can anyone read the file? Can I read it? What’s my future? Can’t you predict the future? Wouldn’t that be a cool power to have?” Yoongi just rolls his eyes again, waiting for the barrage of questions to stop.
“I can’t show you your file, it’s against the rules, plus its probably changed since the last time I’ve seen it. It changes after you’re supposed to die but somehow keep on living anyways.”
“Well then what about yourself? How did you become a reaper? Don’t people only become reapers after they commit a great sin? Did you do that hyung?” Hoseok has a dreamy expression, as if he’s imagining Yoongi as some sort of hero, an assassin something other than a stupid unlucky boy.
“I don’t remember,” a pang of longing hits Yoongi deep in his stomach, remembering those words that told him who he was and not feeling any stir of recollection, “I read my own file after I became a reaper, I’ll tell you about myself some day. But not today.”
He drains the can and throws it in a perfect arc into the bin, met with a congratulatory hoot from Hoseok who’s still perched on the kitchen counter.
“I should go now, your roommates are about to come back and I don’t think you want to explain to them why a grim reaper is here. Jeon Jungkook cannot see ghosts but he wants to, Kim Taehyung on the other hand – that boy is very sensitive – he will be disgruntled by my presence. Keep him warm and make sure he drinks enough water,” he picks up a random hat from the sofa (one of Hoseok’s floral bucket hats) as he wanders towards the door, “and I don’t want to be here when your roommate finds out you’ve been drinking his juice.”
He grins at Hoseok as he places the hat on his head and disappears in swirl of smoke, leaving him both full of questions and fear of Taehyung’s wrath as the door swings open with a loud shriek of ‘hyung is that my juice?’
Yoongi turns up at his flat several more times that week, most times with Hoseok’s hat covering his mischievous eyes. He’s wearing his black one today, the one that he wears when he works and ends up thrown it halfway across the flat five minutes in.
“You wanted to know who I was,” his eyes are cautious today, he looka like a wild cat almost backed into a corner, “so I thought I would show you, it’s not like I have my actual memories anyways.”
The file on the kitchen table is plain, a simple beige with Min Yoongi in block print at the top. It looks like the kind of thing that you could buy at any stationary shop or one of Taehyung’s printed out assignments that lie scattered around the apartment. It looks like something Hoseok would have tidied away without a second thought.
“This is it? Your entire life is just condensed into one paper file,” it’s slim, like it only has one or two pieces of paper inside, “and my one is just like this?”
Yoongi nods, tracing patterns in the spilt sugar on the table, the remnants of a breakfast that feels like days in the past, “everything is in there.”
The paper is smooth and crisp, the kind of expensive office paper that’s reserved for important forms and things that you probably shouldn’t loose. A small photo of Yoongi is paper clipped to the top, he has black hair and lost looking eyes, like he’s been searching for something that has never even existed.
“Min Yoongi, born March 9th 1293, the middle son of the Min family, in the place where Daegu stands today. Not rich enough for office but enough to give all four sons good educations,” Hoseok carries on reading, the neat black print making his eyes spin.
He reads about the moment when Yoongi discovers his attraction to men, his depression, his jealousy, “In 1306 Min Yoongi was found to be having an illicit relationship with a neighbour. March 7th 1306 Min Yoongi kills himself, using a knife to slit his wrists. Due to the nature of his death he is offered the opportunity to live his afterlife redeeming souls and takes the title of Death Reaper.”
Yoongi’s eyes are distant after Hoseok’s voice trails away, a different kind of softness curling its way around him, one that makes him look too young and too afraid. He’s bared his heart, Hoseok realises with a small jolt and he reaches out a hand, tentative and open.
“The scars have faded by now,” he takes Hoseok’s hand anyways, and lets him hold it between his larger ones anyway. They’re warm, is what he tells himself, and he feels safer with his fingers laced with Hoseok’s, “and I wouldn’t have remembered the pain even if they were still here.”
“You can’t remember anything?” Yoongi hates the softness in his voice, it would be easier to be angry if it were pity but there’s nothing but gentle gentle softness that lulls Yoongi into the warmth wrapped around his hands.
“No one does, except for ghosts. Death is easier when you don’t remember what it’s like to live.”
“What is it like to die? Does it hurt?”
“Dying hurts, it took me a long time to die I think,” Yoongi tenses and let his nervousness be soothed by the quiet smile from the man across from him, “I remember bits, tiny fragments of things. They say that you tend to after a couple hundred years. Dying is painful but death itself is just a moment, that very last second is peaceful at least, if it’s any condolence.”
Kissing a grim reaper is different to how Hoseok would have expected it to. Yoongi’s lips are warm and soft, softer than the tips of his fingers digging into the edges of his shoulders.
The kiss is short, more chaste than it could have been and Hoseok finds himself leaning in for more, the taste of Yoongi is addicting in a way that Hoseok can’t quite describe. It makes him want more as he kisses deeper, letting Yoongi pull him around the table and in between his legs to that their bodies are pressed together.
Kissing him makes Hoseok feel much more alive than it should have, feeling the velvet of his tongue and the soft moans that he coaxes out of him. Yoongi is warm and subtle and the way he traces patterns on Hoseok’s neck with his tongue makes him want to fucking melt into a puddle in his arms.
“Hobi,” Yoongi breaks them apart, the cold air jarring on his wet lips, “Hoseok I need to go right now – fuck I lost count of time.”
With that he disappears, leaving Hoseok almost falling into the chair where Yoongi was sitting before, hands pressing against the fading warmth he left behind. As if on cue the front door clicks open, letting Taehyung’s excitable chatter filter into the apartment.
“Hoseok-hyung?” he singsongs, waltzing his way into the living room and throwing his bag onto the floor, “Kookie’s gone to a coffee date with Jiminie and won’t let me go with him, I think they’re planning something evil.”
Hoseok laughs and ruffles his hair as he passes, plopping himself onto the sofa and snatching the remote from Taehyung before he can put on one of his ridiculous dramas that Hoseok insists he hates. He’s busy trying to check if he looks like he had just made out for half an hour when a quiet falls onto the boy beside him. His eyes focused on something on the floor beside the sofa.
“Hyung?” his voice is a scratchy whisper, “Is this your hat?”
The way that Taehyung picks it up showed the answer already, the black felt held in his fingertips, as far away from his body as possible.
“Hoseok-hyung? When did a grim reaper drop by?”
It takes Yoongi two days to come back to Hoseok’s flat, Taehyung’s blue snapback shoved onto his head with a scowl. Taehyung just sits there in stony silence, his arms crossed and his ass sat in the very centre of the sofa. He’s barely laughed or smiled the entire two days, and Hoseok and Jungkook have taken the precaution of creeping around the flat, occasionally tempting him out of his self imposed exile with food and lychee juice.
“Yoongi-” Hoseok starts, a smile blooming on his face at the sight of the small man in his all black outfit, but quickly withers at the harsh glare that Yoongi directs at his roommate.
“What do you want, Kim Taehyung?”
“I don’t know Yoongi? You’re the one who turned up at my flat uninvited and wearing my hat,” Taehyung snaps back, “maybe you should stop trying to scrape your way back into my life?”
“Maybe you should stop trying to mess with my job,” Yoongi snarls, throwing the hat onto the floor with a smirk of satisfaction at Taehyung’s muffled whine, “and get a life instead of living with college ki- wait, he doesn’t know?”
Yoongi lets out a loud shameless laugh, one that sends shivers down Hoseok’s spine, as Yoongi hunches over and laughs until he’s crouched on the ground, letting out little whispering giggles and wiping his eyes.
“This is too good Kim Taehyung,” he finally manages to splutter out, “too fucking good, wait ‘til I tell Joonie, he’ll fucking piss himself.”
“Why don’t yo-”
“Do-do you guys know each other?” Hoseok asks, silencing the snipping attacks with wide eyes.
“Taehyung,” Yoongi bites his lip, “you could say we have a shared history. He likes to mess with my work sometimes and piss me off.”
“That’s a good way of explaining it, I would’ve probably just blurted out something really random and tried to aegyo my way out of it,” Taehyung muses, rubbing his chin.
“That’s because you’re stupid,” Yoongi turns towards Hoseok with a small smile, “Do you wanna go out, I can’t stand being with this idiot any longer.”
“How do you think I feel, I have to live with him,” Hoseok ignores Taehyung’s spluttering with a small laugh and walks out the door. Yoongi’s hands are warm in the cold air.
“It’s cold Yoongi,” Hoseok whines, swinging their linked hands like a child, “can we go get some coffee or something?”
“I don’t have money, come back to my flat?”
Hoseok feels his breath catch in his throat, they’ve never even gone outside together before today and now he’s going to go to the flat of the guy who’s trying to collect his soul?
But he feels the warmth of Yoongi’s fingers, the gummy smile he has on his face, the expectant look in his eyes. They’re such a deep brown, almost molten in the way they stare from underneath his fringe. Yoongi is too human in the way he smiles to be a threat Hoseok decides. His lips are too gentle to be able to hurt him.
“Okay.”
“This is home sweet home,” Yoongi says as he types in the passcode to his flat, the door swinging open with a cheery beep.
The flat itself is simple, plain, it almost looks unlived in apart from the scuffmarks on the edge of the dining table and the jacket that lies draped over the sofa. It’s impersonal and clean, no photos or knickknacks, only a lone abstract painting on the wall and a bookshelf filled with files.
“I work a lot,” Yoongi shrugs, guiding Hoseok into the kitchen with a loose hand around his wrist, “there’s not a lot of time for interior design.”
“Those files,” Hoseok points at the bookshelf, “are they all people’s?”
Yoongi nods, boiling two mugs of water with a click of his fingers and grabbing tealeaves from the top shelf, “those are for the next two months, Namjoon was here taking some so he could deal with them. I’m having my first holiday in like seven hundred years.”
“And you’re spending it with me?” Yoongi leans forwards and kisses him, humming his agreement with a smile.
“I have all the time in the world, and I’d spend it all with you.”
“All the time in the world?” Hoseok laughs, pressing his lips back onto Yoongi’s “Sound’s good to me.”
Yoongi and Hoseok date as best as they can. They go out on coffee dates after Hoseok’s lectures and Yoongi carries his bag when Hoseok’s shoulders are too sore from dance. Hoseok gushes at Taehyung about that super romantic thing that Yoongi has done or the way his lips just taste like flowers Taetae? How is that even possible, wait don’t run away from me!
Yoongi is softer in bed than Hoseok thought he would be, his hands are warm and always manages to curl into that one spot inside Hoseok that turns his legs into jelly. He likes it slower than Hoseok does and always manages to slow it down to his pace, no matter how riled up Hoseok manages to get him.
(Slow down, he would always say, slow down we have all the time in the world)
Hoseok never imagined that he could fall in love with the way someone’s breath feels against his neck, or the feeling of someone’s sweaty face pressed against his own. Hoseok never imagined that he would wake up early just so he could watch the way the dawn light drips onto someone else’s face. Never imagined that someone could smell as much like home like Yoongi does. Never imagined he could fall as hard as he did into Yoongi’s arms.
“I love you,” he admits one day, it rolls off his tongue like honey, the thought that’s fluttered around his head for months, “I love you Min Yoongi.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Yoongi tilts his head back for a sweet kiss, “I was afraid that you’d say that since I kissed you for the first time because Hoseok, Hobi, sweetheart I have all the time in the world, to keep on living and reaping and hurting and one day you’re gonna disappear from me. One day you’re gonna leave me alone.”
Hoseok looks up at him through tear soaked lashes, his cheeks are so flushed, his lips so bitten and his chest heaving from the tears or the kisses Yoongi can’t quite tell.
“You know the normal response would be to say it back.”
“But we’re not exactly a normal couple are we Seokseok? We’re both living on borrowed time.”
“Is that your way of saying I love you?”
“Maybe.”
(Hoseok’s laugh is as ringing as it normally is yet Yoongi can still taste the edge of the end on his tongue
nothing lasts forever, but we have all the time in the world, he tries to convince himself
all the time in the world)
“You’re too late Goblin,” Yoongi is sitting on the roof of an apartment building, his coat billowing in the wind like he’s the heart broken protagonist of a Korean drama, “but then again being on time was never your forte was it?”
“I tried my best,” Yoongi laughs at that, the wind snatching at his hat with greedy fingers so that Taehyung can’t quite see his face as he sits next to him, “I’m pretty good at trying my best.”
“Sometimes your best isn’t good enough.”
“Neither of our bests was good enough this time.”
The only sound is the whistle of the wind in their ears and the gentle wailing of an ambulance siren down below. It’s too late, Yoongi thinks bitterly, but you’ll get to see him breathe on last time.
“Found your goblin’s bride yet?”
“I hope so.”
“Jeon Jungkook or Park Jimin?”
“Both? If you already knew it was one of them why did you still ask me?”
“It’s called keeping conversation you idiot.”
When did the cutting of car engines start to sound like lullabies to Yoongi? When did the uneven sound of the goblin’s breathing start sounding like a companion? How long has he been doing this job that the sounds of misery have become white noise to him?
“You know I really think this existence is a curse,” Taehyung flicks a lighter on and off next to him, “I’ve spent centuries begging for death, watching everyone I love grow old and die as I remain exactly the same,” the same rhythmical clicking of the lighter, the same burst of flame only to be put out only to be relit, “and now I finally have a chance to die I want to live, I really want to live for them.”
Tears don’t hurt Yoongi anymore, he’s seen enough of them for them to lose the sting in his heart and yet there’s something about the way the goblin cries that reminds him of his first job when he was still wide eyed and hopeful.
(the little boy had been seven and Yoongi had learnt that death didn’t care who it took.)
“I need to go do my job,” he murmurs as if it’s a condolence, “I’ll be back if you wanna cry together or something.”
He drops, all twenty-five stories and onto the bloodied pavement with a small clack of his shoes, immaculate black leather as always. The people rush out of his way without seeing him, the paramedics, the police, and the innocent bystanders, as they always tend to do.
There he is smile still tender on his face the way it always is when Yoongi comes home.
“Jung Hoseok,” the words hurt like he imagines dying would, “died 5:56pm, cause of death: broken spine,” the way Hoseok’s eyes close in acceptance hurts like he imagines dying would, “age 22, graduated from university of Seoul last year with a bachelors degree in dance, currently a professional dancer and part time dance assistant, is that you?” the way Hoseok’s lips tastes hurt like he imagines dying would.
“Could it be anyone else?” his smile is still as alluring as it was the first time, but this time the hand he holds out was cooling, souls don’t have warmth because they don’t have blood, only the slow amalgamation of lifetimes of memories cut off too soon.
“Let’s go on a walk, Hobi.”
They walk through the frozen streets of Seoul, hand in hand, watching the way the leaves are halfway stuck in free-fall and birds are still in the bridge between ground and flight.
“Do you do this with everyone? Stop time, hold hands and walk through Seoul together?”
“Not usually, there’s normally a lot more talking and a lot less handholding.”
“Why aren’t we talking then?”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
They settle on a bench together, in that one park they always wanted to go to together but never quite found the time. The quiet would be eerie if Hoseok’s lips hadn’t been pressed to Yoongi’s, all he can hear are the quiet sighs that float between the two of them.
“You have to drink this,” he presses a teacup into Hoseok’s hand, they’re so cold now, so unlike him, “it’ll make you forget everything.”
“What if I don’t want to forget?” the tears are unshed and shining in his eyes, his lips taste his desperation, “I don’t ever want to forget this life Min Yoongi.”
“You have to drink it Seokseok, or you stay here forever with all of your regrets hanging over you until it breaks you. Being a ghost breaks people Hobi, I don’t want to see you become that.”
“I don’t wanna forget you Yoongi, I can't.”
“You've got to Hoseok, for me?”
“Then let me stay here, just for a few more minutes.”
And so they sit there, with Hoseok’s head on Yoongi’s shoulder pretending that everything was alright, if just for a few more seconds. The sunset should have been beautiful, but Yoongi will see sunsets every day of his unending afterlife and he will never get to see the way Hoseok’s hair flops against his shoulder ever again.
Hoseok drinks in silence, his fingers still interlocked with Yoongi’s and his gaze softer than Yoongi thinks is ever possible. His eyes are every shade of brown in the dying sunset.
“I’ll never forget you Min Yoongi, I promise.”
Yoongi is left sitting alone on a damp park bench with an empty teacup, impossible promises and the sun setting where his heart should be.
(we have all the time in the world to find each other again, he promises to the empty park, and I will find you again Jung Hoseok)
Humans have changed so much in five hundred years, Yoongi muses, yet they’re still the curious beings they were a thousand years ago. Still looking for ways to do things better, still stumbling around in the dark and falling in love.
Death is no longer a necessity in this new world, yet here Min Yoongi still is, a ratted floral bucket hat pressed to his head in a style three hundred years out of date.
Kim Taehyung, the goblin died only a few months after Hoseok had. Namjoon and Seokjin have managed to keep him company most years since, yet the two of them have begun drifting in and out of consciousness lately. God is a cruel person, Yoongi had decided a long time ago, to give them eternal life to do his dirty work until they’re no longer needed and not even giving them the honour of an ending, just the slow fading out with time.
Seoul no longer exists. Korea no longer exists. He can’t quite remember if the humans have sorted out their shit and if the world is still peaceful. There were times when he had settled down to sleep and woke up several decades later in the crater of bomb blast, heart pounding with memories that might as well have been dreams.
Still, there are small pleasures in life. Most cafes use automatic servers, only that one café with the pinstriped awning down a small side road ten minutes walk from his flat has real waiters anymore.
A relic from the past, a tourist destination or the place for that grumbly looking man in the faded floral hat and the dark blue hair to drink black coffee.
“Your coffee sir?” a bright chirrupy voice, some new recruit that hasn’t realised that Yoongi is the only person to drink coffee in this century, “Sorry to be a bother but, do I know you from somewhere?”
Yoongi looks up.
His face has changed, his nose, his eyes, his cheeks, his hair is a faded pink that he’s pretty sure Jung Hoseok would’ve mocked with a grin and a roll of his eyes. Yet there’s something about his smile that makes Yoongi tremble against the leather seat. It’s still just as open and warm as it was the first time, when Hoseok had been a confused boy that had skipped his way out of death’s clutches.
His hands are warm again, fingers linked with his own and if Yoongi closes his eyes he’s back in Jung Hoseok’s flat with his file lying on the table and the love of his life watching him from across the table.
Kissing Jung Hoseok is different to how he remembers, his lips don’t taste like tears the way they did the last time. They taste like lifetimes of untold memories, like decades of stories that haven’t yet been written and just the barest hint of coffee.
When he opens his eyes the waiter is on the verge of tears, fingers trembling as his soul struggles to remind him of just who Min Yoongi is to him.
“Min Yoongi,” he whispers with a tiny triumphant smile, “I told you I wouldn’t forget.”
And Yoongi laughs for the first time in centuries.
(After all, they have all the time in the world to love each other again)