Archive of Our Own

if a body meet a body
comin' thro the rye

❊ ❊

“Five more minuss’,” Jungkook mumbles, rolling over to Hoseok's side of the bed.

“You're gonna be late, come on,” Seokjin sighs, leaning forward to kneel a leg on the mattress. He worms his way under the leech of Jungkook’s limbs and peels him away from where he clings to Hoseok’s back, one leg thrown over his hipbone. “Food’s going cold.”

“Hyung,” he groans, eyes not even open. Seokjin successfully gets him out of bed, two arms looped behind his biceps to keep him from collapsing.

“Come on, baby,” he says, hoisting one of Jungkook’s arms over his shoulder.

“‘M not a baby,” he frowns.

“But you are,” Hoseok adds on unhelpfully, voice muffled where he’s face-planted into the pillows. “So cute, our little Jeonggukie- ow!”

Jungkook launches himself at Hoseok with unexpected speed, a knee to the crotch and a pillow in his possession, beating him over the head as he yells something incoherent. Hoseok fumbles to get his bearings as Jungkook smacks as much skin he can get his hands on, the noise loud enough to be audible in the kitchen. Namjoon pokes his head through the door. He looks at Seokjin. Seokjin looks at him. The two of them stand there for a while and watch the two tussle on the bed with no absence of clawing hands.

“How’s the coffee?” Seokjin murmurs over the noise, leaning over to kiss Namjoon’s cheek.

“Fine,” he says, face heating up. Seokjin grins. “How’s Jungkook?” he asks.

Seokjin turns to look back at where he perches triumphantly on top of Hoseok’s chest.

“The usual,” he repeats back at Namjoon, turning around enough to press cool fingers against his jaw and pull him into a kiss.

❊ ❊

“Hold on,” Seokjin says quietly, then, and Jungkook stills obediently in his chair. Seokjin folds his napkin lengthwise and holds Jungkook’s chin steady as he brushes food off the corner of his mouth and cheek, a line of oil smeared against his skin. “Did you pack your bag already?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Homework?”

“Namjoonie made me do it last night.”

“Do you have PE today?”

“My coach gave me shoes; I’m okay, hyung, I promise.”

“Whatever you say,” he says, tilting Jungkook’s head up so he can kiss his forehead. “You walking with Jimin?”

“Ya.”

“And when are you guys leaving?”

“Whenever he finishes doing his hair,” Jungkook complains. “You don't have to nag-”

“Make sure you come home right after school gets out,” Seokjin cuts off, undeterred, straightening out the front of Jungkook’s jacket before he gets his backpack on. “Run if you have to.”

“I know, I know.”

“Jungkook,” he says quietly, ducking to catch his eye. Seokjin’s hands are shaking. The neighborhood is bad, and the people are starving. Neither of them have eaten in two days. “Please,” he says, quiet enough so he can pretend his voice doesn’t break.

It’s not safe out there and it’s not safe here, but being home is better than being in the streets.

Jungkook's lip wobbles, "Okay," he says. He tips forward and lets Seokjin gather him up into a wordless hug, fisting both his hands in Seokjin’s shirt and presses his face into the other’s shoulder, his breath trembling. “We’ll come home, hyung. I promise.”

It’s not safe anywhere.

“Yeah?” Seokjin tries for a smile, “I'll see you later then.” 

“Later,” Jungkook agrees, shrugging on his bag.

Seokjin watches him walk out the front door wordlessly, shoulders bumping Taehyung's, and tries to stop the feeling that they won't return in one piece tonight. When Namjoon shuffles out of the study and stands by Seokjin's side, both of them are quieter than usual. He must feel it too. He must know, somehow.

Don’t take them, he begs at night, head pressed to the concrete flooring. Please, don’t take them.

It’s only four in the afternoon when the bombing passes overhead.

Their boys, they don’t come home.

❊ ❊

“I need to go,” Yoongi says, tightening the straps of his gear. He slings a rifle cross-body and flexes his gloved fingers as Seokjin looks up from his papers on the coffee table, expression impassive. He takes in the sight of Yoongi’s swollen eyes, his chapped lips to the point of peeling skin, but doesn't bother getting up from the couch. Neither of them say it aloud, but Seokjin knows he's going out to look for their bodies; he probably won't return alive.

“May the road be blessed,” Seokjin sighs. It's an old formality, but a wise one.

“And you,” he murmurs, ducking his head.

Yoongi pulls up a hood over his bleached hair and blue eyes, all byproducts of the chemicals shot like a drug beneath his skin, warfare, warfare.

The world is cruel to love; Seokjin knows this by heart.

❊ ❊

A long, long time ago, when he first started in the business of reincarnation, he was naive enough to believe in quiet endings, but it wasn't long before he learnt that the universe didn't have a definition for mercy. He'd watched them die: cars, horses, bombs, knives, dogs — Hoseok pounded to death beneath a bed of stones, screaming crushed to dust — and swore to himself, never again. Never again.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, voice shaking bad, “Darling, stay with me.” He cups a hand around his bloodied jaw, his burning skin, the pockmarks of rubber bullets tearing through flesh.

“Please,” he gasps, eyes are fever-bright as he clutches onto Seokjin's sleeve, teeth clenching through the pain.

“I’m here,” Seokjin says, soothing, “I’m here, I’m here.”

Yoongi chokes out a mouthful of blood and saliva, and it dribbles down the side of his cheek until Seokjin lifts his free arm to wipe it away. He’s careful about the wounds when shushing him, already knowing what’s about to be said. Seokjin figures it’s forgiven if he doesn't hear them spoken with the tongue. That it will be okay in the end.

“Did you find them?” Seokjin asks softly.

Yoongi nods, legs kicking out against the pavement of their porch. Seokjin had been watching the window, sleepless and nocturnal with his pulse thudding like a storm in his ears. He hadn't made it inside before he collapsed.

“I put them,” a hiccup, a rasp, “To rest, but- only their heads,” he says, tipping his head back like water in Seokjin’s arms. “Tae’s eyes open.”

“Best you could,” Seokjin shushes, smoothing a hand down his chest. “They walk easy to the next life.” Fear not. Fear not.

“Jinnie,” Yoongi gasps out, and the taste of his name is so full of fear, equal to the way he clutches onto him; Seokjin swears his bones are scarred with the touch. Yoongi brands him all over: the legs, the forearms, the chest.

“Shh, I’m here, I’m here,” he stutters, trying to stop his voice from wavering. His hands shake when he wipes the tears away from Yoongi’s cheeks, tilting his body into the crook of his arm, rocking softly.

“Even after?”

Oh, the irony.

“Always,” he whispers.

There’s the siren of screaming in the distance. Gunfire and fury. Carnage. Yoongi would’ve flinched at the noise, a very long time ago when they were still children huddling for warmth in a public bunker with nobody but each other in the dark, but he can’t hear it now, too busy focused on lifting his arm for Seokjin to take.

“I love,” he breathes, lids half-closed. Seokjin closes a touch around Yoongi’s scabbing fingers, smearing blood across his own skin and clothes. When he presses Yoongi’s palm to his cheek, the relief is visible — painted painfully across his face. “You.”

“I-,” he replies, and the words tighten like a vise around the column of his throat. “You too.”

May the road be blessed.

“Sleep well,” Seokjin says, barely a sound. Yoongi’s features softening, like he’s just drifted off with slumber.

And you.

It’s winter when Yoongi dies. Seokjin buries him beneath the big oak, hauling his thin body to rest beneath the ground.

❊ ❊

Seokjin hears the battle hymns long before the shadows of bodies — the killing song is always the same — and that night, he sleeps in Namjoon’s bed.

He wakes, alone.

❊ ❊

i have to catch everybody
if they start to go over the cliff—

❊ ❊

“Jimin,” he hisses, voice pitched low, “Jimin, we need to go.”

The night is dark and the blanket is studded with stars overhead, Seokjin shaking him awake in order to pull him out of bed. They haven’t got much longer. They’ll be dead before the morning moon rises.

Jimin is alert in seconds, and there’s no trace of slumber in his features as he slips out from under the covers. When his hands close around the strap of his bag, it’s quick work to slip into his boots before Seokjin manages to light the lantern.

“Are the guards coming?”

“Hoseok said they’d be here soon,” Seokjin says, fumbling around in the dark. He hands the flame for Jimin to carry as he straps himself into a sword, the metal unwieldy where it catches rough against his leg. Hoseok was a mistake. A gift, but a mistake.

“Where will we go?” Jimin asks, breathless. He’s first to crawl out into the dirt, knees stained with grass as he stands. “How will we live?”

“As always.”

“We make do,” Jimin says sadly, and reaches out to grab Seokjin’s hand.

❊ ❊

Seokjin used to be jealous of Jimin: his hair, his smile, the delicate way he laughed. The court loved him in equal parts as they loved Seokjin — said they made beautiful brothers, even if not through blood — and Seokjin had seen red for days on end.

They were both princes once, on either end of the guardrail, both haughty and cold and calculating, ready to tip the other out of the crown at a moment’s notice.

Then Seokjin started remembering.

❊ ❊

It’s really neither of their faults, he thinks, pounding through the forest with dogs on their heels.

Jimin’s on the horse because of his bad leg, and Seokjin’s clinging desperately to the reigns as he keeps on, both arms numb. He’s not sure if it’s because of the cold or because he’s about to be trampled by canines and hooves, but he doesn’t spare it much thought as he guides them through a sharp turn. Seokjin’s vision blurs dangerously as he struggles to clear a jump. The stumble of his landing doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Hyung, we need to stop,” Jimin gasps. His voice is scared, eyes big as he latches tight onto Seokjin’s forearm. “You can’t keep going like this.”

“Then leave without me,” he grits out, slipping the reigns out of his hands and into the other’s. The angle is awkward as he turns halfway, trusting their stallion to carry them through the trees, if for a moment. “You know she can't ride with two.”

Keep your hood up, keep your head down. Run away, Jimin, get out so far I never have to see you again. All these things, Seokjin doesn’t say because he doesn’t have the time.

“Jinnie,” he wobbles.

Seokjin slips a hand up to cup his cheek and wipe away the tears. Jimin’s skin is warm, unlike the rotting corpse his fingers still remember, and he drinks in the honey of his features: the soft hook of his monolids, his full lips, hair curling dark and heavy over the line of his browbone.

“I love you,” Seokjin says, and his heart is breaking to pieces. “Do this one thing for hyung, okay?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“You’ll be good, I know,” he says, “You’re gonna make me proud.”

“They’re going to kill you-”

“You better be happier than you ever were in the palace, do you hear me?”

“They’re going to kill you!”

“As long as you’re safe-”

“I don’t fucking care!” Jimin screams, and jerks away from Seokjin’s touch. “Have you ever spared a thought about what I want? Jinnie, I want you- I don’t care if they catch us; Father’s not going to kill us both. He can’t.”

Seokjin closes his eyes.

“He can kill me,” he says, “And I don’t want you to watch that.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching blindly for one of Jimin’s hands — his fingers small and scrambling.

“Please,” Jimin cries, and watches as Seokjin slips from the back of their stallion to the forest floor.

Even when the dogs come for him, tearing at his limbs, his skin, all he knows is that Jimin is sobbing.

God.

It’s all he can hear.

❊ ❊

The king sends his guards. His army. The navy.

They find nothing but the wind.

❊ ❊

Seokjin’s days are monotonous. He’s either used as a punching bag or a laughingstock or lies on the floor of his cell sleeping more than he’s ever awake. He dreams about Jimin most of the time — hoping that he’s found someone (Namjoon. Namjoon’s the only one left) to watch out for him, to keep his time.

Hoseok visits him when he can, sneaking through the palace watch, eyes dark with anger.

“I am going to kill him,” Hoseok says. 

“He’ll kill you first,” Seokjin rasps out, the whites of his eyes bloodshot, stained with exhaustion. Neither of them speak the King's name.

“I don’t care,” Hoseok hisses, and the anger is full of hurt now. There is sadness welling up in his chest. “I’ll make him pay, I swear.”

To this, Seokjin says nothing, because Hoseok may be young and may look naive, but he is still the King’s advisor and his position never came easy, even from the start. Call him sly, call him witch, call him devil; he could slip poison into the entire court’s drink and come out the other end alive.

❊ ❊

Hoseok tows Yoongi along to his cell, sometimes, and seeing him helps more than the medicine can.

“There’s not much I can do,” Yoongi always sighs, crouched on the floor by Seokjin’s chest. “We need to take him up to the infirmary so I can keep a closer eye on him.”

Still, when he is met with the sight of Taehyung, foreign and beautiful and breathing, he manages to draw himself to his feet.

“Kim Seokjin,” he says, voice a low murmur. There are no guards behind him; nothing but lamplight from the underground, and it breaks into a halo around his head like the sun trapped between both ears. “You are sentenced to public execution. Effective immediately and without trial, under terms of attempting escape with the crown prince, Park Jimin, and corruption of his beliefs.”

Seokjin’s breathing picks up. This is different.

His breathing picks up.

This is wrong.

❊ ❊

On the platform, Seokjin's strung up between Taehyung and Jungkook, delirious; shaking, and thinks, for a very small moment, that there are flashes of faces in the crowd he hasn’t seen for decades.

His vision blurs dangerously as the people part with a hushed noise, like the whole world’s been spun down into a glass jar. His hair is overgrown, parting awkwardly to one side, but Seokjin still sees through his fringe many things. First, the king in his robes, red from the toes up, and a pretty boy on his arm. Undoubtedly one of Jimin’s many cousins, next in line for the throne. He can’t find it in himself to care, however, fixated on the horses that ride up behind him.

Jung Hoseok is a beacon of royal in a train of gold. His hair has been plaited like a crown across his forehead, outlining the slope of his nose-bridge, a sharp; curving thing that Seokjin wishes he could run his fingers under again. He looks twenty-four and twelve years older than his bones, his job pulling the youth out from under him in a breath.

Third, the cut of a cape that Seokjin knows is his, down to the fabric of its seams.

“No,” he rasps out, voice cracking with disuse. Three figures, laid beneath the beaming sun: his past, his present, his future. “No,” he says again, but stronger this time. Where he gets the strength to fight against Jungkook’s steady grip, he doesn’t know, but Seokjin feels the hope he’d swallowed down into the pit of his ribs shatter like a windowpane.

It was supposed to be him, this time; he swears. He kept them safe — picked Hoseok off the street, cleaned him, clothed him. It was Jimin who Seokjin gave up his title for, and Yoongi who came in the dead of night with blood in his hair and his fingernails, trapped in the fine crevices of his pale knees.

Namjoon, who had not been seen for years. Taehyung and Jungkook, both unknowing. He protected them. He protected them. It was not enough.

The King’s stallion slows to a stop, and he holds a hand up to silence the crowd.

“Taehyung,” he says, and the crowd gasps as Hoseok nearly tumbles from his horse, slipping to one side as he struggles to stay upright. One arm wraps tight white through the loops of his reigns, the other presses against the shaft of an arrow.

Still: “Make way,” Hoseok coughs.

The figure behind him bursts past the guards as he tears off his hood. His hair, darker than ink, and skin unmarred. The crowd recoils from his presence like a hurt thing.

“Jimin,” the King breathes, stunned.

“Your Majesty,” he spits back, eyes burning. His hands are hot where one settles across Seokjin’s chest, the other beneath the underside of his head. His face is twisted with anger and loathing and Seokjin wants to smooth it away with his fingers, tell him that it’s not worth the pain, please, Jimin, just leave. “What is this?”

The people speak the Prince's name like something reverent.

“The execution of a criminal.”

“The execution of your son,” Jimin says, expression pinched at the edges, pulling into the center of his face.

“He is a traitor to the crown,” the King says.

“Your Majesty,” he spits. “I was the one who pushed him to run away. He did nothing I haven’t.”

The captains of his guards turn to look at each other, then the King. The fear in their eyes is palpable.

"Step away, Jimin,” the King says, like he is granting him a thousand years in gold. “And your life will be spared. The kingdom needs you, now more than ever. Your mother. Your cousins, they all need you.”

“But hyung needs me too,” Jimin says, and he doesn’t bother stopping the tears that spill over his eyes. Hoseok’s slumped over the neck of his horse, an arrow cut clean through his chest. Yoongi’s corpse stares up from the ground. His eyes are unseeing. “He’s all I have left.”

“Jimin,” Seokjin starts, struggling up onto his elbows. “Jimin, please just-”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“Taehyung,” the King says again. “Jungkook.”

“I can’t,” Jungkook says. He grips Taehyung's arm with wide eyes.

“That is an order, captain,” he says, spittle flying.

“Your Majesty,” he says, “I can’t.”

“Then so be it,” he sighs, pulling a revolver from beneath his cloak.

“No,” Seokjin gasps, the words tasting like a sob, as Jimin lurches forward to cover Seokjin’s body with his own. His hair, parting like a river of ebony, slight figure trying to hide the shape of his skeleton. He sees the way Jimin's mouth twists open like a promise, fingers hang awkwardly between Seokjin’s own, and the bullet digs between the folds of his bone and muscle and brain. It must hurt. God, how it must hurt.

Someone starts screaming, and then the whole crowd seizes up like a wave, singular and chaotic, stampeding the courtyard.

For sixteen hours afterwards, Jimin does nothing but breathe.

❊ ❊

if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going
i have to come out from somewhere and catch them

❊ ❊

It starts with Taehyung this time.

Seokjin sees the ocean, the mattress, the shirt hanging on the hook of a bedroom wall like a motion picture passing by. If his memories opened like photos, then it would've been the rooftop, the fire burning in the trashcan, the pictures he hadn’t yet thrown into the well instead, but there are many things he no longer remembers. Seokjin wonders if he was the one who made himself forget.

Taehyung had been splayed out on the mattress of the pool they frequent with his knee hitched up on one side while Seokjin stood in the brambles and watched, quietly.

Then: “Tae!” Namjoon hollered, practically tumbling down the pool ladder. “Get up, get up!”

Seokjin heard them screech, all in fast motion, and he heard the sound of Taehyung getting to his feet, watching it unfold behind the viewfinder of his camera. Yoongi screaming, hair everywhere, lips sticky. Half their eyes stuck shut in laughter, blue teeth in the sun.

“I wanna catch crabs,” Namjoon said suddenly, sitting up from where Taehyung was spray painting a silhouette of his shoulders into the pool wall. Four pairs of eyes turned to where Seokjin sits idly with Yoongi, both legs crossed at the ankles.

“Beach?” Jungkook said, eyes big.

“Beach?” Jimin said, eyes big.

“Beach?” Taehyung said, eyes big.

Seokjin pressed his lips together against a smile.

“Get in the truck,” he sighed.

❊ ❊

The whole sun is an overripe orange by the time their feet are dry.

Seokjin watches the light settle like dust through the clouds as he drives, one arm hanging out the window with the radio turned down low. The sky parts and washes over in sepia — into the curve of Jimin’s jawline, Namjoon’s thin forehead, the way Taehyung watches Seokjin when he thinks nobody is looking. The pictures that can’t be counted, even on both hands and feet — of how the burden has been carried, how watermelon splits open between six fingers.

“I wanna fly,” Taehyung murmurs, eyes stuttering across the skyline. Seokjin hears him the way he always does, breath shaking as he watches Taehyung jump the ladder. He’s been climbing things for as long as Seokjin’s known him. Trees, hearts, trucks, rooftops.

The sun is bursting. It’s skin peeling open to indigo and silver, and he’s the only one who sees the way he looks up instead of below.

Listen.

If he’s being honest, he knows for a fact it doesn’t start with Taehyung. It never even touched him in the first place.

It was in the loneliness that been festering for years, all underneath the skin. How things unspoken were read like an open book between each fingertip, lips moving as the framed photos settled back against dusty pianos. He sees his empty car, the bloodied carpet, the hastily opened packet of snacks on kitchen table. It’s when he stops cooking, too quiet in the kitchen by himself, like every step in the house will echo back at him until he goes mad. Seokjin can’t live like this. He can’t.

No, it doesn’t start with Taehyung, is all he’s trying to say. He’s not sure who to blame in this equation. The chicken or the egg? The people or the purpose? Seokjin keeps looking back over his shoulder and replaying the videos like something holy and sacred, baptized in the summer ocean.

The photo of lines in the sand, two gouges for the wheels. Seokjin stops, something ugly and awful rising up like bile in his throat.

He only sees its scar, buried so deep beneath his bruising lungs he can’t feel the pain anymore.

❊ ❊

Seokjin dreams, many times a night. Usually they’re the same nightmare: him, standing tall beneath the corn and wheat. Everything is a bruised yellow, and all he can hear is the tide coming in. The ground rocks beneath his feet like a boat on the current. He is up to the shoulders in shrubbery when he hears the laughing, a butterfly landing on his shoulder, running like the water is a field of rye — golden and glowing in the sunset.

“Hyung,” someone laughs, near his right. He thinks its Hoseok, but he can’t tell for sure. Jimin giggles, indecipherable, beside his ear; the ugly gnawing of boots in the dirt and the crack of a beer bottle shattering to pieces between his feet.

Seokjin looks up, suddenly, at the sound of someone crying.

Taehyung flies over the cliff, a bloodied fist clutched to his chest.

❊ ❊

Let them be happy, he begs. If nothing else, let them be happy.

❊ ❊

The rule is, and has always been, that Seokjin will never see them twice.

He wonders how it'll go after everyone’s departed from the house, stealing back their meager possessions until Seokjin’s left with nothing but silence in the shoe rack, the half-bathroom, the unmade beds.

He said before that universe always finds new ways to make it hurt, always catching him off guard, and it's the same this time. He hasn’t drawn breath since Taehyung fell. This must be his death, he thinks. This is how it ends.

❊ ❊

[UNKNOWN NUMBER calling]

“Jinnie,” Yoongi says over the line. It sounds like he’s in pain. “I can’t find them.”

❊ ❊

Summer is turning her searing underbelly to winter when Seokjin finds himself on the sand.

He wonders, for a moment, why now; instead of then. Why him first, eyeing Taehyung in the distance, half-baked by the sun. He's stuffed hands into his pockets, and his shoulders hung painfully across each other. Both shoes are missing and his hair is overgrown, but his bangs still hang over in his eyes, tinged green, and Seokjin's stomach lurch with the taste of copper. 

“Hyung,” he says, Seokjin’s knees twisting with the sound of his carried voice. He’d forgotten what it’d sounded like, sweet and low, harmonious even laced tight with grief.

Seokjin slows to a walk, crossing the dock with easy steps.

“Hey,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on Taehyung’s face. He doesn’t miss the way he flinches when Seokjin gets too close, flicking down to his shirt — dotted with blood along the collarbones. Taehyung stares at him for a while, motionless, lips pressed white against each other. Neither of them say anything for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually, breaking into the silence.

There’s a pause.

“Oh,” Seokjin manages, “Me too.”

Taehyung stares at him.

“I forget you exist sometimes.”

You’re a stranger to me, is what he doesn’t say after that. And it’s either: you’re a stranger to me sometimes or it’s you’re a stranger to me all the time, and Seokjin doesn’t know which one is worse. He doesn't know what to say, either.

Taehyung’s mouth opens, like he’s to say more, but doesn’t. He stares down at his hands like he wants to cut them off. The way he holds himself is tired, like the whole world's made of honey: up to his knees, his elbows, scraping them blue as he shuffles down the wood. The planks creak unhappily beneath his weight, but he crawls until his fingers hit the edge of the dock before sitting back on his heels like a child.

“I killed him.”

Seokjin comes to sit by his side, thighs barely touching.

“It wasn't your fault.”

He's looked at, sideways.

“I did it anyway.”

“Listen, it-”

Taehyung turns back around and tears his hands out of his pockets without warning. He turns back around and screams when he rushes towards the end of the pier, into the steaming, rolling ocean. He runs like a man being chased, running for the end of his life, running for the end of someone else’s.

It’s only when he hits the water when Seokjin remembers Taehyung can’t swim.

(if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going —)

He follows.

The sea is cold against his skin, and Seokjin forces his eyes open around the sting as he dives into the water.

“No,” he gasps, the noise bubbling out of his pearling teeth, the ocean swallowing both bodies whole. He doesn’t know how long they’ve both been under, only remembers when he feels hands grabbing for his. “Please,” Seokjin says, crawling over to his side. He cradles his face between two hands and scrambles for a pulse — anything. Hands to heart. Lips to mouth. The taste of saltwater and bile when Taehyung finally arches off the wood with a choking cough.

Someone tears him back with a hand on his shoulder.

“Sir,” a voice says. He realizes, belatedly, that there’s an ambulance parked by the street. “I’m going to need you to step away.”

“But-”

“Don’t touch me,” Taehyung snaps simultaneously, cheeks flushed as he fights off a paramedic. She’s attempting conversation, bag clutched in one hand, but he ignores her in favor of staring past her shoulder and says the words like something reverent. “He saved me- who is- what’s his name?”

His eyes are so blue in the dusk.

“Sir,” she tries again, “Sir, can you feel your fingers?”

“Who are you?”

Seokjin’s hands are shaking.

“Who are you?” Taehyung asks again, like a child who doesn’t recognize anything else, a record streaking across the floor. His shirt is soaked dark and the blood’s started to run a watercolor painting across the waxiness of his skin, and all Seokjin sees is the scar of a bottle neck on the skin of Taehyung’s palm. He traces the mottling like he’s trying to memorize a new language, bury it deep into his chest so he won’t forget.

Seokjin says nothing, even as he watches the paramedics haul Taehyung’s bruising body onto the stretcher, loading him up into the back of the car. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you forgot, and: I hate watching you leave. I hate that I can’t do anything about that either.

“Who are you?” Taehyung asks again. He doesn’t look scared, just confused. His neck stretches to look at him despite the awkward angle, reaching out a hand to grab for Seokjin’s wrist, thumbing at his pulse-point. “Who are you?”

“Sir,” one the of responders says. “I’m going to need you to step away for a moment.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Seokjin murmurs, reaching one hand to brush hair from Taehyung’s eyes. “I have to go,” he rasps, “Can you take care of yourself?”

“Yeah,” Taehyung says seriously, licking his lips. “Have we- have we met before?” he asks.

He peels himself away and watches as Taehyung’s carted up the ramp, straining to sit up. Seokjin turns on his heel, suddenly, abruptly, and pushes past the crowd of onlookers despite their curling hands, shoes soaked, jumping down into the water and swimming past the pier. He hears the syllable of his name. The sound of a body hitting the waves.

Who are you?

Even when he’s home, he sits in the shower and tries to stop shaking. His bones, an earthquake.

Who are you?

I’m nothing, Taehyung, he thinks, curling into himself.

Nothing but a ghost.

❊ ❊

Somewhere, it starts to rain. Somewhere, it starts to snow.

❊ ❊

He dreams of his photo albums going up in flames. He sees the mirage of Taehyung: his thin legs and small waist, the way he stampedes around the city in black boots until he strips down to the organs to wade into the water. A rock skips across the shimmer of his reflection and cuts a ripple across his narrow features.

Seokjin blinks. Then it’s just him and the sight of his footsteps in the sand, disappearing.

❊ ❊

Hoseok is high off his ass when Seokjin finds him by the side of the highway.

“I took everything,” he slurs when Seokjin helps him sit up against the fence. Abandoned is the first word that comes to his head, roadkill is the second, and when he cradles Hoseok’s bony wrist to his chest, even his thin fingers are unoccupied. “Was supposed to die.”

“I'm sorry,” Seokjin says, then stops. Hoseok doesn’t react. He figures it’s safe. Then: “I miss you,” he finally admits, looking up at the yellowing sky. He thinks about many things — the definition of last, about how Hoseok looks like its singular syllable when he curls into himself, the hollow of his gut, how his narrow legs flatten out against the concrete with the gulls crying overhead. “I didn’t think it’d get this bad.”

He doesn’t mean the drugs.

“It’s okay,” Hoseok slurs. “Hyung, I…”

“Yeah?”

“I wanna,” he mumbles, a heavy by Seokjin’s side. “Wanna go to sleep.”

His fingers tighten around Hoseok’s.

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

Because I don’t want you to leave me, Seokjin wants to say, but doesn’t. Because you might die in my arms, and I don’t want to be alone, or maybe because you don’t deserve this kind of grave.

“‘M tired,” Hoseok sighs. It sounds like he’s giving up. “Don’t wanna be awake.”

“Hoseokie,” he says, panic seeping into his skin. He tries to keep him conscious, but his hand slips out of Seokjin’s and hangs limp against the cement. “Hobi- Hobi please, not like this.”

Hoseok’s skin burns wherever he’s touched, like a funeral pyre. Seokjin can’t get him conscious in time to weight his options out, leaving him fumbling for his phone before he realizes it died in the water. The nearest booth is two miles south, and he won’t make it in time unless he goes alone.

[MIN YOONGI calling]

“Yoongi,” he says, like the words have been punched out of his chest. He has a car. He has a car. He has a car. He nearly tears Hoseok’s pocket out of his jeans when he scrambles to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Yoongi,” Seokjin gasps, “Yoongi, I’m at the bridge on 301 with Hoseok; you need to pick us up- I don’t know what he took, but we need to get him to the hospital, I don’t think he’s gonna last-”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Seokjin-”

“Who?” he asks, “How do you have Hoseok’s phone? Where is he?”

“With me. We-”

“Who the fuck are you?” Yoongi grits out, “What the hell?”

Hoseok slips further down Seokjin’s shoulders.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, almost hysterical. “Yoongi, it’s not the time to play games.”

“Listen- Seokjin,” he bites out, and there’s the sound of tires on the asphalt. “I honestly don’t know who the fuck you are, and if you don’t put Hoseok on the goddamn line, I’m calling the police.”

“How do I make you believe me?”

“You don’t.”

Then: “Holly," he gasps out, desperate.

“What?”

“Your dog’s name is Holly,” Seokjin says, “And your hair used to be blue but now it’s blonde; you hate beer but drink it anyway. You won’t remember who bought your phone because I did and your last birthday Namjoon drew a dick on your face and you didn’t go to work for three days because it wouldn’t wash off.”

There’s a pause in breathing on the other end of the line. Seokjin takes his chance.

“You hate being wrong, and your prescription is worse for your left eye than your right, you don’t sleep at night, you fought Jimin over who would pay for your birthday dinner even though we were all broke-”

“Stop.”

“I cut your bangs for you when we were sixteen and it looked awful, but you pretended it cost two hundred anyway.”

“Stop.”

“Jungkook did your first tattoo and it looks ugly as hell, but you think it’s beautiful even though it looks like a deformed asshole if the lighting is right, and I don’t think you remember me anymore, but-”

I love you now. I love you forever. The sound of a horn blaring as a car slows to a stop by the side of the highway. The paint job is awful and beat-up and the windows still have to be rolled down manually, but the phone slips out of Seokjin’s hands as Yoongi slinks out from the driver’s seat and ducks under the railing to stand on the sidewalk, shoulders up to his ears.

“I’m just here for him,” is all Yoongi says, voice rasping in the way that says he’s been chain smoking all week. He looks shaken, bending down to check Hoseok’s eyes.

“Let me come with you.”

“To the hospital?”

“I’ll pay the bills,” Seokjin says, pleading, “Whatever you want, Yoongi, just say it.”

“No,” he bites out, but his eyes are wavering. Yoongi knows he can’t deal with Hoseok alone. Not like this.

“Please.”

Silence, but not quite complete. A plane passes by overhead.

Yoongi shuffles across the pavement, like he’s unsure what to do — turning between the car and the bridge, the pale figure of Hoseok in the dirt.

“Fuck,” he says, dropping to a kneel so he can throw Hoseok’s arm over one shoulder. “Fine.”

Seokjin struggles to his feet, one arm curled around the other’s waist.

“I’m sorry,” he says, once and very sadly. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the night.

❊ ❊

Yoongi is sleeping by Hoseok’s bedside when Seokjin gets up to leave.

His head is pillowed by both arms, and his cheeks are tinted pink from the warmth of Seokjin’s jacket. All he sees is his fair skin and thin lips, pinched carefully at the corners as he splays fingers across the smooth skin of Hoseok’s wrist.

Seokjin stands by Yoongi’s side like a specter, mouth quiet. The peach wallpaper, the open breeze. Light glistens the whole room underwater as the courtyard trees ripple under the sunrise, and he worries about how there’s something tranquil about the morning light, faded through the curtains in squares above the bedsheets.

“Hey,” he murmurs, Yoongi making a small noise as Seokjin strokes a hand down the back of his neck. It usually takes more to wake him, but he’s blinking open his eyes already, expression surprisingly young, malleable and caught off guard. He looks hurt, too, and looks like he’s trying not to let it show.

“Why can’t I remember?” Yoongi murmurs, breath aching.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice weak, “I’m sorry.”

He bends down to kiss Yoongi’s forehead, the delicate curve of his cheekbone, his tired eyes.

“Take care of him,” Seokjin says, feeling fingers curl around his wrist. “Please-”

“Don’t leave,” Yoongi says, voice splitting down the seams.

“You’ll be fine; I promise.” His smile is watery and fluttering.

“No.”

“I have to.”

“Jinnie-”

“Be good while I’m gone,” he says.

Seokjin turns, one hand on the door, as if they’ve both been forgiven. Yoongi’s eyes — read like an open book.

I miss you, they say. I love you, they say. Then: I remember you, they say.

All of you

❊ ❊

Wednesday finds Seokjin coughing up flowers into the kitchen sink.

“Don’t be sorry,” he wants to say, chin dressed in red. “I’m forgetting you too.”

❊ ❊

Seokjin's learned how to read Namjoon’s fingerprints over time, how to search for the places he’s been. Seokjin watches the gas station and the bus stops, traces the rail-guards by the train station, touch skimming across their surfaces like a dream — like he’s afraid pressing too hard will make it disappear.

“Hello,” someone says, quiet at the mouth. Seokjin turns, eyes darting down to the child at the bus stop. She can’t be more than ten or twelve, and extends her palm up to his chest. “Are you looking for someone?”

“No?” he says, then looks away awkwardly. She tugs on the hem of his sweater, and he looks back, awkwardly. 

“Well, you should be,” she continues, undeterred.

“Me?”

“You,” she says, more forcefully this time. “You and the lost boy.”

Seokjin doesn’t know whether or humor her or believe her. He's trying to play it off, but the girl takes him by the hand to sit on the curb instead. She doesn't speak, but it's all very forceful. The whole city is dimmed low, in purples and pinks, faking a fluorescent sunset, and he tilts his chin up painfully to study the sky, already a sling of bruised blue.

“He rides the 1620,” she says. “I try to talk to him sometimes, but he usually ignores me.”

"Ah," Seokjin says, clearly confused.

The girl looks at him sideways, through her bangs.

“You don’t speak much do you?” she asks, though it’s less of a question than it’s intended to be.

He flushes. “No, sorry,” he says.

There’s something unnerving about the way she stares, as if she knows his whole heart by memory.

“Then how about this, Kim Seokjin,” she says suddenly, everything blazing apart.

His eyes shoot to up meet hers.

“What?”

“You help him find what he’s looking for,” she says, fingers translucent in the snow and rain. “And I'll let you go.”

“You'll what?” he blurts out. First thought best thought. (Then: she’s so young) “Who are you?”

“Does it matter?” she smiles, and for a creature of light and dust who’s spent millennia on making him suffer, her words are soft. “Half are saved, you know.”

Seokjin's throat closes up.

"Yeah, I. I tried."

The girl stands, dusting off the front of her pants with a feline grace. “Then perhaps we have toyed with you long enough,” she sighs, but her eyes are careful, “I’ll give you his new number, but the rest I’m sure you’re capable enough to figure out on your own.”

“Thank you, I-”

“There’s no need,” she says, waving him off as she tucks hair behind one ear. In this streetlight moment, she looks old, impossibly, and young, impossibly, and Seokjin wonders if he must be the same by now. Wonders how nobody’s noticed all lives trapped under his skin. “I hope whatever sleep after this is the one you need; but I don’t get to decide those things, unfortunately. That’s more on your watch than mine.”

“And if I fail?” he asks, hardly daring to breathe.

Her lunchbox swings against both legs and hits the front of her pinkening knees, the honey skin.

“You won’t,” she says, dipping the crown of her head before she starts to back up off the sidewalk. “Goodnight,” she calls, lifting one hand to a wave. “And good luck.”

“Wait!” he says, scrambling off the curb. She starts to mist, breaking apart beneath the lights.

“How will I know where to find you?” he asks.

She says something inaudible then, smiling, and turns her head to the left as a car comes speeding down the street. When she crumples quietly to the ground, Seokjin finds himself clutching a bouquet of purple, flowers already flaking apart at the seams. He holds onto the paper until it’s just paper, tugging it apart when there’s nothing left inside.

❊ ❊

The first thing Seokjin sees is Namjoon, asleep on the bus with his head leaning against the window. His breath puffs out against the glass: fog, clear, fog, clear.

It goes on like this for a while.

Neither of them say anything.

❊ ❊

He's having a panic attack, Seokjin notices. Namjoon's breathing is shallow, his lips barely parted in the reflection of the dirtied glass, and his leg bounces idly against the floor, toes tapping the inside of his sneakers. The white is worn gray at the edges, the seams peeling apart. Seokjin stands.

He owns a car now, after what happened with Hoseok. It’s parked the next stop down, and the bus is empty at this hour — save the driver and a student who’s passed out in the back. He shakes her awake by bumping the edge of her seat, as if by accident, and leans up to pull the string on the side of the door.

“Namjoon,” he says then, very quietly.

His eyes snap up to meet Seokjin’s before he finishes speaking. His pupils are uneven, and his skin looks patchy from too much stress and not enough sleep; Seokjin pinches his lips together before offering him a hand. It’s a gross ghost of the girl from a month past, but he doesn’t care.

“Who-?” Namjoon stutters, tongue tripping over the words.

Seokjin says little. His hair falls across his forehead, and the fading light from outside the windows makes both his ears and eyes glow; his full lips, his smooth skin and high cheekbones.

“My car’s this way,” he murmurs, and the words sound tired, over everything else.

By the time they leave the bus, the whole city has been drenched in light pollution. Namjoon follows after him, hands tucked up into Seokjin’s elbow, trying not to notice the way his sneakers look compared to his dress shoes, but he gets the distinct feeling neither of them care.

“Why do you take the bus if you can drive yourself?” Namjoon asks.

There’s a pause. Seokjin’s coat curls open in the air, the lack of an answer.

“I’ve,” he starts, slowly; eventually, like he’s fighting to give up the words. His eyes are fixed on the distance ahead, “I've been searching a very long time for you, I suppose,” Seokjin says, and the words bend the top of Namjoon’s head like a tree in the wind — whipping. “Long enough to realize you had to come to me first.”

Namjoon feels his heart crest, dug beneath the sinews of bone and tendon. Seokjin barely looks at him as he opens the passenger door to help Namjoon in, doesn’t turn away from the road as he grips the steering wheel with white-knuckled skin, but still;

He takes them home.

❊ ❊

“I see you everywhere,” Seokjin hiccups, mouthing the words into Namjoon’s throat.

In the houses, the trees, every cloud. It turns him ugly selfish, wanting him so bad his skin turns a searing orange under the daylight.

❊ ❊

Seokjin doesn’t quite know how to broach the topic of remembrance.

In his socks, sliding around the hardwood and tile, Namjoon acts half blind. He never asks why the dining table is enough to seat ten and barely fits into the kitchen, doesn’t ask why Seokjin sometimes forgets and makes enough for two families and stands by the counter afterwards, crying into the tile.

When Namjoon kissed him for the first time, Seokjin had frozen by the door, one hand still turning the knob even as he tugged carefully on Seokjin’s scarf to pull him close. A kiss into two, to three, their bodies shadowed in the setting sun as Seokjin all but dropped his bag to cup Namjoon’s face with both hands, still glove-warm.

They’d fucked slow and sinewy that night; Namjoon pressing their foreheads together with eyes squeezed shut. He’s so beautiful, is all Seokjin remembers thinking. The shape of a distinct memory: Namjoon’s silhouette as he pulled his shirt over his head, the stretch of his ribs, a chin tipped upwards. His skin was like marble to the touch. The shirt was followed by his sweatpants, and then he’d pressed close so he could kiss the turn of Seokjin’s jaw and nose again — the conch of his ear.

“Hyung,” Namjoon murmurs sleepily.

Seokjin makes an incoherent noise as Namjoon’s tightens his arms around his waist. The blanket slips off his side and Seokjin reaches out to tug it back up again, smoothing out the wrinkles.

“Hey,” he says, “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No,” Namjoon replies, burying his face in Seokjin’s stomach. The words are muffled after that, lips curling curiously against his skin. “Jus’ missed you.”

Seokjin’s heart jumps. It’s moments like these, caught between two words and the next, where he’s unsure how much Namjoon knows. What he remembers, if at all, past the haziness of deception. How much he’s been made to forget, and if all of this is being made: Namjoon too — painstakingly. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

“I had a nightmare.”

“Are you okay?” he asks softly, hands in his hair.

A pause.

Then: “You died.”

“What?”

“You died,” he repeats. Namjoon’s eyes are wet, and he knocks his head to the side so he can hide in the blankets instead, chin wrinkling together unpleasantly.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he rasps, fingers curling into fists against the bedsheets. “Hyung, don’t ever leave me again please.”

“Namjoon-”

“It’s always you in the grass and,” he says, “You’re so pretty in yellow, do you know?” His eyes close. “I always think it’s gonna be okay — I’m just allowed to admire and pretend I can touch you or- the glass around you— but the- crows.”

He shakes, like every star is falling.

Seokjin is quiet for a long time, and doesn’t breathe. He turns the universe over in his head again and again, sticking his fingers into the glass and the tunnels. He’s turning down a hallway of mirrors, but none of them bear his reflection, even with Namjoon tightening up into his legs.

There are many things he wants to ask, hovering on the tip of his tongue. (Do you know me, still? How much did we leave behind?)

“I’m just tired of running, Namjoonie,” he says eventually, licking his lips. They might not be wrong. He sighs, breathing visible and weighted in the air between them.

“Me too.”

No cliffs. No catchers.

❊ ❊

Seokjin writes love letters under the moon. The sand is made of words like: you are very beautiful and sometimes I dream about being robbed of two bodies and I stay awake so I can love you instead by the end of the night. Afterwards, he tucks his knees up to his chest so he can watch the water eat the rocks away.

Then Namjoon will come home in his denim jacket and his torn jeans and Seokjin will kiss the taste of something sweet out of his teeth under the morning light. His cheeks are burning hot some days and frozen on others, but beyond the exhaustion there is quiet grace in the way he moves like something has bloomed, already growing between the shape of his skeleton. They are both becoming something new, and Seokjin sees it all with his soft mouth.

Sometimes, if Namjoon’s awake, Seokjin takes them to dinner. They hold hands and eat until they can’t move, daring each other to see who can make it to the gas station the fastest. Seokjin will buy canned tea at the kiosk, slip into a smile when he pretends he doesn’t know who Namjoon is, like the whole universe is in on the joke, too.

I love you, Seokjin’s fingers say, when they brush. See you later; come home soon; stay safe; I miss you more than you know.

(Enough for a thousand lifetimes.)

❊ ❊

It starts like this, in the late season when the sky begins fading into the heavy clouds, dark and haunting and draped like silk above both brows.

When Seokjin wakes, he feels all the years making home against his back bones. He turns over to rest his head against Namjoon’s warming neck, and apologizes for everything he will do, first.

❊ ❊

He cries, the entire ocean pouring from his lips.

❊ ❊

“Seokjin,” Namjoon says suddenly, like he’s afraid of shattering the distance between them. He turns around halfway at the sound of his name with feet hanging over the edge of the pier. “Jin,” he mumbles, tangling his fingers in his lap.

Seokjin hums, encouragingly, without noise. Namjoon’s mouth shuts with a click, and he swings his legs instead of speaking, staring down at the ocean between his toes. He’s got one hand curled around the edge of the pier, and the wood must be biting, but he doesn’t seem to register the pain.

He is held, in the silence. It’s all Seokjin can do.

“What would you,” he warbles eventually, and Seokjin startles when he sees Namjoon’s eyes glassed with tears. “What would you do if I left?”

“Still love you,” he says, without hesitation. Always, always love you.

“Hyung,” Namjoon chokes out, the honey line of his throat working as he cuts into the stars. “I’m sorry.”

Seokjin sees the flash of a dying sun, up to his eye. The sky turns exhausted, the fine china of her bone-fingers cracking apart beneath the Earth. Namjoon sits by his side and cries into the sea, apology after apology, tasting heart-wrenching and awful, even when Seokjin kisses his temple.

“Joonie,” he says sweetly, lovingly, “Darling, come here.”

“They want me to go home.”

“I know,” he shushes him, settles fingers into his hair. “I know, I know.”

“I’m sorry- please. Seokjin-”

“Do you want to?”

Namjoon seizes up, the action stumbling, and his skin chafes against the shoulder of Seokjin’s jacket. His hands tighten into white knuckles, and he tries for more words, but none of them sound right, so he listens to the sound of Seokjin’s quiet voice against the shell of his ear instead.

He squeezes his eyes together. He nods.

Seokjin looks out then, and to his left he sees a boat headed for land — its lantern swinging behind the tattered windshield. For once, he watches its arrival. For once, he's allowed to see it coming.

❊ ❊

There is something to be said about a man digging his own grave.

There is something else to be said about a man carving his own headstone.

❊ ❊

(what if even my heart
doesn’t have a home)

❊ ❊

Finality, after living a thousand years in repetition, is not something Seokjin knows the name of.

He lets his hands drag heavy down the planes of Namjoon’s back, running his fingers like a blind man across his features. He follows softly with his lips, desperate to memorize the way he tastes: convenience store ramen, half-warmed leftovers from last night, the lollipop Namjoon’s taken a habit to rolling around his tongue and teeth when he works. The sunset’s coming in past the blinds.

Seokjin carries only his clothes and keys and wallet — empty of everything but his polaroids, his pictures. His boys. He bends over to comb hair off Namjoon’s face and kiss his forehead and both closed eyelids. The cheeks are next, his curving nose, his half-parted lips. Everything tastes like goodbye.

He doesn’t bother to leave anything but a pot of rice warming in the cooker, and he's even careful to take the side door, which locks behind him automatically.

Seokjin’s not sure where he’s going exactly, but he doesn’t care. Not really. He could be any other person on the street, bumming downtown and eating market food with a scarf tucked under his chin and smiling quietly to himself. He thinks he sees Taehyung for a fleeting, burning moment, but the line of his nose fades into the crowd as Seokjin turns his head in search for more.

He climbs the hill, then down to the docks. Gravel crunches underfoot, and he hears Jimin’s laugh in the distance; Hoseok’s voice over the calling of crows. Someone is playing the piano in a room very far away, but the hands are Yoongi’s hands and the shoes are Jungkook’s shoes and Seokjin knows this better than his own spine-bones, even with both eyes closed. A beer bottle shatters against the concrete. His shoulders are buried up to the neck in rye.

“I miss you,” he lets himself say once, standing backlit against the night-sea. The marina is busy at night, but the world fades into blue when he takes a step forward, wood creaking under his feet. The wind blows harsh against his ribs.

He goes back, back to the ocean of that summer, and like a lighthouse, all the birds fly in: thirty-thousand ships to the shore.

❊ ❊

How ironic it is, that he’s finally the one to leave them first, and how great the chasm of loneliness feels when he imposes it upon himself.

Seokjin curls up closer into the burrowing sand, and feels himself burn up from the inside out.

❊ ❊

He sees, in quick succession: the definition of happiness, a mattress in the pool, a figure beneath the sunset. The way Jungkook stops at the front door before Yoongi shoves at him from behind. Memories, like they’re starting to settle. Jimin crying turns into Namjoon crying turns into Taehyung’s smile. Jungkook’s spindly fingers before they grow into the shape of a rooftop and its vines, the girl from the bus stop tugging lightly on his earring.

Seokjin’s distantly aware of the water washing up against his limbs, and the cave of his falling heart.

Home, he thinks, up to the neck. Just take me home.

❊ ❊

if a body catch a body,
(coming thro’ the rye)

❊ ❊

When Seokjin dreams, he sees the sun and six shadows, bent across the ground.

“Hyung!” Hoseok startles, head thrown back as he chases his way through the fencing. His fine, marble features are blurred with the speed, and Seokjin turns on his heel to try and keep track. A flash of Jimin, his slight figure.

The whole sky opens up into pale blue and a ripening peach. He sees the clouds and the sand, caked in the heel of his boots, and the photos he’d taken are lined up against the cracking street.

“Come on,” Taehyung taunts, and his arms split wide. He jogs backwards, one hand outstretched for Seokjin to take as Yoongi appears by his elbow. He starts. The last time Seokjin had seen him was with a lighter in his hand and Hoseok cradled in the other.

“You aren’t dreaming,” Yoongi says, first, lips tipped up in quiet mirth. He laces their fingers together and tugs.

“I- what?”

“You aren't dreaming.”

Then: “Come on,” Taehyung whines, surging forward to grab Seokjin’s free arm.

The road stretches out in green and gray, impossible with the distance. He sees Namjoon’s dark slacks, Jimin’s striped shirt with its hole in the shoulder-seam, and his breathing picks up double time. He watches as Hoseok breaks out into a run, laughing as Jimin tackles him from behind. Jimin races Jungkook, then Hoseok, then Taehyung, the light breaking through six shoulders with shoes kicking up dirt. The chase down a flower road has lost what it used to be — closer to something like flying.

Leaves are falling, somewhere. It is crying, somewhere. Namjoon bumps Seokjin’s shoulder with a playful grin before he takes off into the pink-light, their fingers curved together.

Seokjin looks up to watch the clouds parting, then, watching for the dawn.

❊ ❊

home
hōm

noun
the place where the heart lies

❊ ❊

 end