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yoongi is dying. his mangled body lay on the floor, and his head lay in hoseok's hands, where it continues to grow heavier. the blood that seeps out is scarlet and stark against his pale skin, and the seconds stretch to minutes between every laboured breath.
hoseok's hands are trembling, and the world around him is blurring into a whirlwind of fast movements and loud noises but nothing is registering; it's like he's there but he's not and yoongi- yoongi's dying, he's choking, he's fading out like a pencil sketch that's slowly being rubbed off.
"i love you."
yoongi is dying and his words are slurred, are forced, are pained. hoseok watches as his tears mingle with yoongi's blood. he wants to look away, but he can't. yoongi is dying.
"i love you too."
yoongi is dead. the truth is heavy and it propels towards him at a bone-shattering velocity, but hoseok can't cry. he can't cry because yoongi hates it when he cries, despises it, so he stays put, because yoongi wouldn't like it.
but yoongi is dead, he thinks, and then almost does cry, because yoongi is really, truly gone, and the bullet had already gone through his head- they'd been to late to swerve, to warn. hoseok blames himself entirely.
it's a closed casket funeral, and hoseok knows full well why- the gaping wound, the pulverised bits of his skull on his hands- but he can't help but wish he could see yoongi again. the softness of his features, the curve of his neck to his shoulders, the arch of his nose- but it hit the side of his head, and now all he looks like is a mismatched disaster.
yoongi is a figment of his imagination. hoseok becomes more completely sure of the longer he sits in his now empty, draughty apartment, boring his eyes into the peeling walls in front of him as his body gives up on itself.
sometimes he'll walk past the closet, and yoongi will be there, hunched over, trying to decide which shade of black to wear. he'll turn on the air conditioning and yoongi will complain that he's cold, he'll run his hands across the vacant pillow next to his and yoongi will giggle because it tickles.
he'll have his limbs splayed out in all directions on the bed, staring straight ahead and mind drawn to a blank, when he'll feel yoongi's presence on his body- gentle and fleeting and like sugar spun light cream. and then he'll shift- and it's gone.
yoongi is a figment of my imagination, hoseok tells himself, when he sees yoongi's favourite coffee cup gather dust on it's spot on the kitchen counter.
he isn't real, he tells himself, when he puts on a pair of snuggly pajamas before realizing their yoongi's. the smell of yoongi and the entire apparentness of yoongi's existence comes attacking his senses, and hoseok is choking, dying, screaming, help, help me, please-
he's tearing the cloth off of his body, the loud rip of fabric being torn apart to threads echoing loudly in the room and grating against the edges of his teeth; he faintly registers the cut on his chest- shouldn't have scratched so hard, should've been careful- before collapsing on the bed again, naked and exposed and afraid.
yoongi is an apparition, and he's haunting him in his sleep and in his wakefulness, he's haunting him in his subconsciousness, and hoseok feels attacked, attacked because ghosts aren't real and what is happening to me and i can't breathe-
"what did you say your name was?"
"jung hoseok," it's the first words he utters after what feels like an infinity of silence; his throat feels like it's been stuffed to the brim with cotton and cardboard, and he's struggling to speak around it. it's a strange, foreign feeling, and hoseok's scared, i'm scared again-
the doctor is speaking to him again, and hoseok vaguely registers his question. "something's wrong with me," hoseok finds himself replying, and there it is again, his voice, it's too quiet, it's too closed-
just like yoongi's casket-
"-a bit more precise?"
yoongi's not real. "i feel really weak all the time. and unmotivated," hoseok almost spills out everything to the doctor, but something in the way the doctor stares back at him stops him. "i-i just know something's wrong with me. please," his voice is cracking now, oh God, how pathetic-
yoongi's a companion. he's a dark, strange sort of companion, that mostly resides in hoseok's head than in real life, but hoseok doesn't mind, because he's found someone who'll come along for the journey, yoongi and i together, we can overcome anything together-
hoseok's found himself in four walls, and it's depressing and somewhat funny that he doesn't find it much different from the life he'd been leading before that. everyday they'll come in twice to feed him some food that hoseok would mostly refuse, and occasionally they'd hand him some coloured markers and a sketchbook, and hoseok would draw and he would draw yoongi, wonderful, beautiful, amazing yoongi who's got a deep sultry voice and those adorable big eyes that would scrunch up when he smiled and he'd make his forehead green one day and yellow the other, but hoseok knew exactly who it was every time.
one day, the lady hands hoseok a red marker, and he's drawing again, the same absentminded scrawl, the practiced lines of his figure, the dips of his clavicles, the curve where his neck met his shoulders, the sides of his head, his bleeding, gaping head with bits of ground skill splashed against a canvas of red, on his hands, my hands, everyone's hands, yoongi's dying, he's dying, he's dying, he's dead-
hoseok hears screams.
"what do i do now?" the lady, the kind lady, the one who handed me the blood, the one who handed me the memory, she made it all happen again, i will kill her, i will eviscerate her- is yelling into a phone and shuffling through a file at the same time.
hoseok wants to reassure her. it's okay! he wants to say. i'm fine! he wants to calm her down. but he's lost control over his mouth and he's screaming, and the strain of it is bringing tears to his eyes and he can almost feel the veins protruding out of his neck.
yoongi is a film. he's a colour film with the edges burnt out and hoseok's directing it in his head and leading the way as well. there's no script, no plan, but he likes it that way, he likes repeating the same conversations with yoongi like a broken record in his head.
it's infinitely nicer in his head than it is having to deal with the weight of his own existence. the yoongi in his head is his, only his and he's smiling with all his teeth and makes hoseok's heart swell. the yoongi in his head doesn't care that hoseok looks strange- like a weed, he remembers the doctor saying- and he doesn't care that hoseok is unable to speak. he doesn't think he's fucking weird.
sometimes they give hoseok these medicines, these off-white spotless pills, the colour of clean, dazzling teeth in a toothpaste commercial. cavity-free, hoseok thinks as he downs his mandatory pill; it always feels heavy and unpleasant, like swallowing a hairball.
these pills are supposed to make hoseok calm; he knows, because his doctor told him, but it also distorts his version of yoongi, the yoongi in his head- when that happens, hoseok's got a little polaroid in his left back pocket to consult.
it's small, and wrinkled, and it's one of those things jimin brought over when he came to visit several many years ago- who are you? hoseok remembers asking the boy; he still remembers the somewhat affronted look in his face.
it's a photo of yoongi, saturated in a sepia filter; he's sat on a wicker chair in someone's balcony, and his unkept hair is fluffy on his head, before he got shot, before he got shot, and his plump perfect lips are parted in the beginnings of a smile.
there's a date at the bottom of it next to a ring from a coffee mug. FEBRUARY 18. he's seen that date before; it's next to the date of birth line in his files. right above diagnosis: MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME. ON PLACEBO.
yoongi is a colour. hoseok's holding splashes of yoongi in his hands- there's splashes of yoongi all over his walls, all over himself, yoongi yellow and yoongi blue seeping into and mingling in his bloodstream, making his veins feel thick, heavy, exhausting. hoseok wants to rip himself clear of being alive.
someone's screaming again; he's hyper-aware of everything around him, the way his nails linger too long on the plaster of the wall, the way the soles of his cotton shoes rub against the cotton floor, the way the light above is flickering every so slightly- but at the same time, hoseok's registering nothing at all.
he breathes, and the palette changes. there's no red, hoseok realizes belatedly. there's no yoongi red. there's no yoongi red.
euthanize me-
kill me, please, hoseok is sobbing, and he's afraid, he's so, so, terribly afraid. i'm so afraid. let me die. end me, please, i can't do this anymore- i'm weak, i can't stand here and watch myself do this, please, yoongi, please-
my existence, yoongi, it's a fallacy-
he's looking at yoongi imploringly, desperately, but yoongi's just smiling- his lips are slightly parted in the beginnings of a smile and his hair is a fluffy mess perched on his head and he's bleeding, he's bleeding so much, yoongi, please, stop-
he can see the night sky on yoongi's face. the constellations dot up across the expanse of his skin, his soft, wonderful skin, and the world is rushing around hoseok's ears; he feels like he's fallen through a rip in existence.
"i love you," yoongi's lips aren't moving, but hoseok can hear his voice anyway- he sounds urgent, panicked, worried. hoseok can imagine him furrowing his eyebrows and all he wants to do is smooth the lines away.
hoseok's eyes are rolling up and his consciousness is shutting down. from this angle everything looks tall, large, menacing. hoseok's seeking for some semblance in his mind to understand what's going on. hoseok is dying.
"i love you too."
hoseok is dead. but he's calm now; he's calm because it's over, he's calm because everything's shutting down the way he wanted to. it would be a lie to claim that anyone would miss him; he imagines his attendant print out a new piece of paper, stick it to his file, fill in the boxes. jung hoseok, it'd say. cause of death: SUICIDE. in hoseok's mind, her handwriting is loopy, big, voluptuous. she's writing with a black fountain pen. date of eviction: MARCH 9, 2016. the ink bleeds red.