Archive of Our Own

jimin can see his breath take shape in a faint mist in front of him, a reminder that he’s still alive.

and as much as he tries to sink his hands into his pockets, the cold remains, and it cuts bone deep.

this is harder than it should be.

he’s making it harder than it should be...old habits die hard, he supposes.

he stands beneath a building that’s not quite a building, maybe three stories at most but from the outside it seems it might have fewer, and it’s not quite new but not quite dilapidated either. he thinks the paint might have been white, originally, but it’s starting to yellow in some places around the faint cracks. it’s in better condition than most of the other structures in this side of town, though, but that’s not much of an achievement.

his gaze flits between the small piece of paper in his hand, crumpled because he had thrown it away more than once, and the buzzers labelled by the side of the door. jung hoseok 204. his finger wavers in front of it, as unsure as he always is.

he could walk back. his apartment’s only a fifteen minute walk away anyway, and though his therapist had previously considered the proximity a good thing -- “ the distance isn’t an excuse you can use anymore ” -- it’s starting to work against itself. he’s gotten good at that, making a good thing work against itself. he isn’t proud of it, but it is what it is.

fuck.

he’s already hit the 40 hour mark, and he still doesn’t feel faint at all. the upped dosage of the pills fucked his body over and then decided to stop working. that’s nothing new, though. he kind of knew it was coming, knew this kind of thing was in store for him, but that doesn’t mean he’s any more prepared for it. convincing himself to go see a shrink was one thing. a support group is something else entirely. he could still walk back.

it’s cold, though.

it’s really cold out, and he can hear the chattering of his teeth more than he can feel it, and he wonders if anyone else can feel it too. it seems like they don’t. the few people meandering along the street don’t seem bothered by it. it’s just october, after all. it should be chilly at most, but he learned to stop questioning things like that. there’s no point to it anymore. he and his therapist had talked about his feelings of loneliness just last week, and he makes it a point to remember this moment so he can explain it better, how it’s never been a feeling of isolation or abandonment, but more like...he’s the only one feeling the cold.

he presses the buzzer for apartment 204.

when you have insomnia, nothing feels real. you’re never really asleep and you’re never really awake. everything seems too far away and too near at the same time, and everything’s flickering. you sometimes see things that aren’t there and your eyes glaze over some things that are. who decides what, he doesn’t know, but his eyes see what they see and he doesn’t have any control over it. it’s this constant state of in-between, not quite unconscious but not quite here either.

there would be times when he’d slowly blink awake in the middle of night and he wouldn’t be sure if the dream he had really was a dream, or if it really happened.

there would also be times when he’s awake and he has to ask himself if he really is awake, or if this is all just an exceptionally lucid dream. that’s the thing he hates the most about insomnia. nothing’s ever really real. everything he sees is just his brain’s best guess at the truth. whenever he’s not quite awake in the middle of the night, waiting for a sleep he knows won’t come, it doesn’t really feel like he’s alive anymore. it’s more like he’s just killing time.

he wonders, emptily, if he’ll have to say these things out loud later on. he hopes, emptily, that he doesn’t.

when the door opens, he’s greeted by a man with red hair. his smile is big.

jimin hesitates, “uh, hi. I’m par--”

“park jimin?! welcome, welcome. come in!” the door cracks open, “I’m hoseok, by the way. you can call me hobi.”

jimin doesn’t take off his coat when he’s ushered inside.

“fuck, it’s cold.”

“is it?”

they make their way up the stairs.

for some reason, he expected a hall, bare and wide and gray, and he expected a number of cold steel chairs arranged in a circle...but apartment 204 is honesty just that, an apartment. the door opens up to a narrow but long living room and around four other people are already gathered there -- three on the large lumpy brown couch set against the wall and one on the sofa chair further into the apartment, close to the dining area on the other end. the other sofa chair, mismatched and near the front door, is unoccupied. jimin supposes that’s his spot from now on.

the place looks warm, shades of red and orange and earthy browns fill the place. even the fluorescent lights overhead somehow cast an orange-tinted hue and it’s...nice, for what that’s worth. even the people gathered around seem nice. they smile as they see him. there’s some light pop music crooning in the background too. none of it chip away at the fact that he really doesn’t want to be here.

hobi drags a chair away from the dining set and places it a few feet in front of the lumpy couch, so they do, in fact, end up in somewhat of a circle. he offers jimin a glass of orange juice and points to the platter of mini-sandwiches on the center coffee table. jimin gives a tight I’m-good smile as he settles down at his new spot.

hobi turns off the radio and claps once, too loud, making jimin jump. another side effect.

“everyone, this is park jimin.” hobi says, smiling, “please make him feel welcome.”

there’s a grumble of hi’s and hello’s and welcome’s around the circle. jimin forces a smile.

“we’re already three weeks into the session outline,” hobi says, turning to him, “but don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. the first week was just introductions and then last week, we shared our insomnia journeys with each other. we hope you can share yours with us too.” his smile gets bigger, if that’s possible. “BUT! before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s do a round of introductions first. let’s keep it short, okay? I’ll start.”

hobi clears his throat, like he’s about to belt out a high note. “my name is jung hoseok. my friends call me hobi. I’m 25. I’m a kindergarten teacher and my favorite movie is school of rock. hmmm, what else...”

jimin slowly tunes him out, which is not to say anything bad about hobi, but more about jimin and how out of place he feels around chirpy people who have a smile plastered onto their faces like wallpaper. eventually though, hobi’s smile dims somewhat as he veers into the subject matter that gathered them here in the first place.

“the insomnia started when I got into a car accident. I was driving, and I was--the ironic thing was, I was sleep-deprived that day, but I wasn’t an insomniac yet. I was just exhausted from too much dancing, and I had fallen asleep at the wheel. the accident killed my best friend in the passenger seat. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since then, seven years ago.”

jimin nods, silently, wondering about the kinds of thoughts that keep hobi company at night. he wonders, somewhat casually, how hobi hasn’t killed himself yet. and he wonders, somewhat selfishly, if hobi is qualified to facilitate this support group because how can someone recover from something like that, and recover enough as to help others recover too?

the woman to jimin’s left speaks when hobi’s done. eun-kyung. she’s 56. medication from breast cancer made it impossible for her to sleep, and even though the cancer left, the insomnia stayed.

next to her, dong-sun, 45, hasn’t been able to sleep peacefully since his childhood sweetheart and wife of 25 years died.

next to him, jeongguk, 21, an ambitious graphic artist who intentionally lost sleep for that rush of unhindered creativity that comes around the 36 hour mark. eventually his body just got used to it.

next to him, in the other sofa chair, heiryung, 37, molested throughout her teens. always slept with one eye open.

and then there’s him.

“um,” he starts, “park jimin. I just turned 23. I guess the insomnia started--”

“wait,” hobi says, bright smile back as if it never left. “start with yourself first before you talk about your insomnia story. who you are, what do you do, etcetera.”

“oh okay, um...I work at the security department of some art museum downtown. I’m not a security officer or anything. I just watch the monitors displaying live cctv footage and, you know, make sure nothing out of the ordinary happens.”

he hopes that that’s enough yourself-details to satisfy hobi. jimin doesn’t really know what else to say. there’s not much else to say anyway.

“...I don’t really remember when the insomnia started. I guess I was kind of in the middle of it before I knew that it was technically chronic insomnia. as for the cause, I’m not sure about that either...they say it’s the depression, but I think it’s the other way around. I don’t know, I can’t really tell them apart.”

“what’s your cycle like?” hobi asks, gently.

“usually at the 50 to 60 hour mark, and then it’s just 5 hours of restless sleep. that’s been going on for a while now.”

hobi nods.

they proceed to say things he suspects were supposed to be encouraging but isn’t, not for him anyway - things like this is a safe space, things like no one will judge you, things like we’ve been through it too, things like we understand, things like we can help each other heal. and it’s not so much their fault or for a lack of genuine, well-intentioned effort, but jimin has become so desensitized to sloganeering that he’s come to recoil from it now. even if that wasn’t what they were trying to do, he hears things like that as self-help soundbites precisely because they’ve been rehashed and recited to him one too many times, and he had forgotten what they really meant. he finds them repulsive now. he feels like he’s being made to buy something, to buy into something - something that chips away at his soul with words like healing and support and getting better, and somehow he’s supposed to say thank you with a candy smile. he distrusts therapy and doctors the same way he distrusts advertisements and salesmen. he finds it repulsive. everything here is repulsive.

...but he stays put, back flush against the lumpy sofa chair, because as much as he is hateful, he’s also the same amount of shy, never wanting to offend.

hobi follows the outline for this session, and jimin listens -- one ear, passive, the other, critical -- to him and the others talk about the phenomenon of anticipatory anxiety, how the more you anticipate and force sleep upon yourself, the more it eludes your grasp. jimin thinks it’s funny. it’s a good metaphor for what’s been the case for him all his life -  the more he tries, the more he fails.

they don’t make him talk much, and that’s one thing he’s grateful for.

that night, back at his small studio apartment, he doesn’t sleep any better or worse. he’s not sure if he sleeps at all and nothing feels real, still. he looks up, eyes glazed unblinking, at his bedroom ceiling while the glow of the television submerges the room in a static glitching haze, its noise the only sound he can hear for miles. the smattering of stains and cracks and paint bubbles in the yellowing ceiling is still there, each speck exactly where they were before he left for the support group, and he finds that comforting somehow.

“how’d it go?” yoongi asks, plopping down at jimin’s couch.

“think of the support group trope, it’s exactly that.”

 “...I’m not familiar with it.”

 “basically we jerked each other off with our sadness, but instead of cum, tears.”

 yoongi looks at him, “I think I missed that part in the pamphlet.”

 jimin smiles. “do you want some ramen?”

he doesn’t wait for an answer. he boils enough water for two cups.

“jimin.”

“hmm?”

“you promised me you’d try.”

“I know.”

“are you?” yoongi asks, from somewhere behind him. “trying?”

he thinks of anticipatory anxiety. less a metaphor, more a habit. “I am.”

yoongi helps him rearrange the furniture. it isn’t much work since the studio apartment’s barely bigger than a closet, and even though jimin’s lived here since he was 19, he’d kept it sparse. as he pushes the bed across the room, he remembers, vaguely, something that he’d read during one of the nights he spent researching about insomnia, back when there was still flicker of hope in him, before it was beaten out of him by more and more nights of television static haze and nothingness.

the state of one’s home is a manifestation of the state of one’s life, supposedly. he supposes that’s true to an extent. his apartment’s bare, save for a single bed, a garage sale couch, an ancient TV, still bulky, and a small table which has enough space for two but is only ever used for one. the walls are empty too, apart from water stains and the chipping of paint here and there. the floorboards gather dust between themselves.

but even then, yoongi insists on helping him rearrange everything at least once a month. it’s a trick jimin had been told of, and it’s worked somewhat. once the mind starts associating the look of the room with sleeplessness, he moves the furniture around so his mind can latch onto and feed off of something different. after that, it’s really just more of the same.

“I just think about new designs,” the guy shrugs. jeongguk, jimin recalls from last week.

“well usually,” hobi begins. his voice is sickly sweet. “insomniacs tend to keep going back to one thought. it may not be what you think about all of the time, but more often than not, your thoughts drift to it before you’re even aware of it. in most cases, it’s the traumatic experience that caused the insomnia in the first place.”

if he wasn’t looking at hobi directly, jimin would think the guy was reading it off the pamphlet. but he’s not. he must have memorized it, and jimin thinks that’s so much worse. the urge to be anywhere but here rises up in his throat like bile and he wants to say that he’s got better things to do and better places to be at, but that’s not true, so he swallows it down.

besides, he promised yoongi anyway.

they’re talking about the thoughts that keep them up at night. hobi, for course, thinks of the car crash. dong-sun thinks of his deceased wife. heiryung is haunted by her traumatic memories of abuse. and as sad as it is and as much as he feels bad for them, he can’t bring himself to truly, really listen because that would mean internalizing their sorrows, and jimin’s got enough of that as it is. so while eun-kyung talks about the time she was battling cancer, jimin thinks about what he’s going to say. much like jeongguk, there really wasn’t an impetus for his insomnia. no traumatic experience whatsoever. it kind of just happened as things do, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t one thought his mind always somehow, irresponsibly and irresistibly, drifted off to, as if it was a matter that had to be urgently addressed and not some futile pipe dream.

“jimin?”

he almost jumps.

hobi smiles, kindly. “what about you? can you share with us what keeps you up at night?

“I’m…nothing really keeps me up at night. I just honestly can’t sleep.”

“what do you usually think about then?”

it feels pathetic, really, to share this, to fish it out of the landfill inside his head and let it touch air. it feels pathetic to admit that, whenever he’s alone, he can only ever think about this. it feels pathetic to admit that, if he had it his way, this is the first thing he’d change about himself, but, as things are right now, this is what his festering mind has decided to color his television-static nights with. it feels pathetic to be confronted by the banality of his thoughts and it feels pathetic that he doesn’t want to change them anyway.

so he doesn’t. he doesn’t admit it. he decides to lie, somewhat, by giving a different answer.

“I think about how I was diagnosed with clinical depression.” jimin says. “few months ago, um, my friend found me unconscious on my bed. by some miracle, I had somehow turned to my side. if I laid on my back, I would have died. choking on my own puke.”

he doesn’t consider the memory traumatic, not really. if anything, it was more of a mystery. he didn’t think too much about it because he’s self-aware and being self-aware means that he knows he doesn’t make the smartest decisions 99% of the time. everybody else seemed to mind, though. he can’t say he blames yoongi. he was the one who found jimin.

“my doctor said I was trying to kill myself. I really wasn’t, though. I really don’t think I was. the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

“what did you do?” hobi asks.

“um,” jimin shifts, awkwardly, knowing how ridiculous it’s gonna sound. “chased a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. I swear I wasn’t trying to off myself. it’s not the method I would have chosen. I just...I had a really bad headache.”

the room stills, slowly, at his words, and the temperature in it is neither too hot nor too cold, almost like there’s nothing there.

“I know how it sounds, but I...you don’t have to believe me but I really don’t think I was suicidal. just stupid.”

the diversion worked, as far as he can see. they try to tell him it’s okay, that they believe him, that he knows himself best. jimin lets their sweet candy smiles and the offerings of sweet nothings roll off his skin. they continue to talk, the living room an echochamber of habitually revisited miserable memories and fleshed-out miserable sentiments and jimin wonders, miserably, if they’re all really under the illusion that it’ll get better. he happily lets it happen. he feeds them anecdotes and bullshit commentary about his own experiences every once in a while, because as they get off on being miserable, jimin doesn’t have to talk about the truth - the pathetic, banal, pedestrian truth.

he doesn’t tell them that his brain projects images of this one beautiful boy onto jimin’s water-stained ceiling as he stares up at it night after night after night. he doesn’t tell them that he’s been pining after the same boy for over six years now and every waking moment within those six years are submerged in television-static pipe dreams of him. he doesn’t tell them that, if he wanted to, he could stop all of this right now and try to forget about him, but he could never find a good enough reason to because jimin has insomnia, and with insomnia, nothing is real.

nothing except taehyung.  

december 4

six years ago

 

he’s engulfed in the warmth of kim seokjin’s basement. it’s a dry kind of warmth, not too stuffy, not too humid, the kind of warmth that gives a reprieve from the kind of winter cold that sticks to the skin even after you’ve gone inside. there’s a large carpet that spans the middle of the room, with an intricate pattern that jimin could vaguely classify as bohemian, and it’s ugly, but it somehow looks nice with everything else. he supposes it might be because of the strings of faint yellow LED lights hung overhead. it makes things look quaint.

it’s not a party, not really. it’s more like a haphazard gathering of people who aren’t really friends but aren’t really strangers either. it’s kim seokjin’s birthday, and around twenty people from his different groups of friends are here to commemorate it with good food, marijuana, and alcohol because seokjin is that kind of person and it’s his night.  

jimin’s usually hesitant to claim that he’s friends with someone. he doesn’t want to presume, doesn’t want to overstep. but he’s been around seokjin enough times that it was only somewhat of a surprise to him that he was invited. kim seokjin is yoongi’s roommate at their university dorm, and ever since jimin had casually mentioned to yoongi that he was his only friend, yoongi had made it a point to drag jimin around and introduce him to people. there was something about the easy, self-deprecating charisma of seokjin, though, that put jimin at ease. in the end, despite the number of people he was introduced to, only seokjin had managed to stick, even if only slightly.

right now, though, there are other people. jimin fights the itch to grab at and cling to yoongi’s sleeve. he had already promised that he wouldn’t leave jimin’s side but that was flimsy at best, if not an outright lie. he almost wishes it was a bigger party, maybe a house party, since there’s less of a chance of standing out. beneath everyone’s radar is a place that jimin’s always been comfortable in.

but as the night progresses, he tells himself that it isn’t that bad. he doesn’t talk much, but he says enough to be spared the are-you-okay and the you-seem-kind-of-quiet questions. they eat the food that seokjin himself had prepared (while lounging against the carpet and bean bags, of course, because an actual dining table didn’t seem right) and they drink beer and pass around joints and it’s, quite honestly...nice. jimin tells himself that he ought not feel so scared of people because sometimes people can be...nice.

the calm in him doesn’t last for much longer because pretty soon, the circle slowly disperses into smaller groups, and jimin squirms in his skin. everybody is friends with somebody, but jimin only knows yoongi, and yoongi is the little shit who drank too much too soon and who’s now practically fastened to seokjin’s side. he wonders if seokjin knows.

jimin stands up from his spot on the carpet and goes to mini-fridge to grab another beer, just to have something to do, and takes out the hot pink lighter from his back pocket and lights the roll snug between his fingers. he fills his lungs with it. he stays by a corner and hopes that everyone else is either too drunk or too high to notice him.

 

 

someone does, though.

 

“that some good shit?”

 

jimin looks up.

 

the guy points to his hands.

 

“this?” jimin asks.

 

“yeah,” the guy says. “that some good shit?”

 

jimin looks at him. “it’s a cigarette.”

 

“....oh.”

 

jimin smiles. it’s kim taehyung, seokjin’s cousin. he’s glad he remembers the guy’s name when they were introduced earlier. it would have been excruciating to ask again, and he’s not exactly equipped to handle situations like that.

 

“sorry.” taehyung says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not--I don’t know much about this stuff. I don’t...partake.”

jimin nods.

“not that there’s anything wrong with it!” taehyung follows up, quickly. “it’s just not my thing.”

jimin nods again, mostly because he doesn’t really know what to say to that. taehyung grabs a can of coke from the mini-fridge and leans against the foldable table to jimin’s right. jimin’s thankful that they’re sort of beside each other because even if the alcohol has muffled his anxieties to a considerable degree, jimin is still jimin, and jimin is still loathe to make eye contact.

 

“so,” taehyung says, “what school do you go to?”

 

“um, I don’t.”

 

“what?”

 

“I’m not enrolled in any.”

 

“are you some trust fund kid?"

 

“no,” jimin says, almost scoffing at the absurdity of it.

 

“why aren’t you in school then?”

 

for a second there, he almost tells taehyung about the thoughts that have caused him to spiral down into this rabbit hole of disdain for the way the world works. he almost tells taehyung that he doesn’t have the stomach to take part in the world’s grand conspiracy of bullshit. he almost tells taehyung that today’s educational systems and institutions are a big hoax that masquerades itself as something inherently good and inherently necessary, when in reality, that’s all it is - an institution - something that civilization has put up, which means that there was a time before it and therefore there can exist a time without it. he almost tells taehyung that, today, a college degree is really nothing more than a ticket that allows you to participate in this kingdom of consumerist bullshit, and to participate in it well. jimin doesn’t have any plans of doing that, so why should he bother with college where he’s going to be sedated with regurgitated, irrelevant information when he could do the same with something more fun, like LSD?

 

he almost tells taehyung these things but there’s something in the way taehyung’s eyes look, that stops him.

instead, jimin says, “it’s just not my thing.”

 

taehyung looks at him for a while, a crease between his brows, bottom lip in a kind of pout. and then, slowly, he smiles,  realization dawning on his face. “oh, I get it. I get it.”

 

“get what?” jimin asks.

 

“you’re a polygon type of person.”

 

“what?”

 

“you’re edgy.”

 

jimin just looks at him.

 

“I gotta keep my distance,” taehyung says, “I might cut myself on one of your edges...because you’re so edgy.”

 

“do you just say anything that pops into your head?”

 

“...yeah,” taehyung smiles. “sorry.”

 

jimn feels a kind of envy. there’s something to be said about having that kind of carefree liberty. jimin will never know what that’s like.

 

“you are edgy though.” taehyung says, “I see that pink floyd shirt.”

 

jimin looks up at him, surprised. “you recognize it?”

 

taehyung scoffs. “you’re not that special, man. pink floyd isn’t that obscure.”

 

“no, but this album is.” he says, referring to the art printed on his shirt.

 

“hardly. it’s their best one.”

 

and because jimin is the type of angsty seventeen year old who puts too much pride in the kinds of songs he listens to, he is, to put it mildly, floored.

 

“what’s your favorite song from the album?”

 

“if.” jimin answers. “it’s my favorite pink floyd song.”

 

taehyung smiles. “if I were a good man, I'd talk with you more often than I do.” he sings.

 

 

when the night winds down and the buzz of energy that hovered under the LED fairy lights muffles into to a contented lull, those who aren’t already passed out start to go home one by one. jimin feels a slight tingling in the tips of his fingers. the room before him seems too slow to catch up to his movements, like the world is lagging somehow, glitching, and it’s like he’s lost his tactile sensations, because he can’t exactly feel the cold beer in his hands. he feels transient, like he’s just floating, swaying, as if he can leave his own body any time he wants to.

it’s not a bad trip, all things considered, but he knows what LSD is supposed to do, and this isn’t it. he could have gotten this kind of trip off of just weed. he can’t bring himself to complain though, for once. instead he commits everything to memory, and even if his vision might be hazy around the edges, like there’s a vignette lens in front of him, he files away everything about seokjin’s basement and everything about this night. for safekeeping. for those nights when he feels a vacuum expanding in his insides and he needs something good to hold on to.

he finishes his beer and lies down, stretching his back flush against the bohemian carpet. it’s somewhat painful, his back cramping from a nasty habit of slouching. the carpet also smells too much like alcohol, like it’d been doused in it, and its fibers scratch at the exposed skin in the back of his neck and at his forearms, but it’s okay. jimin’s okay. this carpet makes him happier than his own bed ever did. seokjin’s basement is a safe place, somewhere he can keep going back to even if it’s only in his head.

he wonders, wistfully, how life must be like for someone like seokjin. he knows that seokjin isn’t without his own set of insecurities, but the man just seems so...unencumbered. but then again, in jimin’s eyes, everyone does. he supposes it’s because he doesn’t know them that well. for a moment, jimin considers whether it might be a good thing to actually reach out to people, to have friends, real friends, because even if the world has devolved into synthetic manufactured shit and the human condition has snorted a digitized sedation, the world will continue to turn whether jimin calls it out on its bullshit or not, and maybe, maybe, he’ll somehow get by better with friends, even if by just a little bit.

 

 

a shadow looms over his head.

 

“what are you thinking about?” taehyung asks.

 

jimin peers up at him through hooded, bloodshot eyes. “...that every creature on earth dies alone.”

 

“I love it. tell me something even more sad.”

 

“I feel homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.”

 

taehyung laughs. “you seriously need to lighten up. stop listening to pink floyd.”

 

he grabs a backpack from the floor and slings it over his shoulder. he walks towards the set of stairs that lead directly out of the basement. jimin watches him.

 

“keep wearing that shirt, though.” taehyung turns, walking backwards. “I like it.”

 

he likes it. taehyung likes it...and because there is such a thing as speaking too soon, jimin doesn’t respond to that with, yeah I’m probably going to fall in love with you.

instead, he says, “good night.”

 

he watches taehyung disappear as the vignette haze in his vision slowly morphs into a kaleidoscope burst of neon technicolor, and for a moment, he thinks that this what love feels like. for a moment, he thinks he understands why love stories and love songs are such big commodities. he begins to understand why being in love is often described as an addiction. at some point along the warm technicolor haze though, he realizes that it’s not love, just LSD.

 

everything’s quiet now, even his own mind, and jimin gladly loses himself to the psychedelic escape. he stares up at the fairy lights, they’re all kinds of different colors now, each bulb swirling into itself, and he feels his cheeks tug upward into a smile. he silently tells taehyung that he’s the most beautiful human being jimin’s ever seen and he silently wishes him a safe trip home, wherever that is. jimin feels happy, even if it’s a sedated kind of happy, even if it won’t stay with him til the morning, he’s happy.

 

here’s to tonight, he says to himself. and here’s to thinking that it all means so much more than it actually does.

“so what method would you have chosen?” jeongguk asks, setting down his glass of orange juice. the session had just ended.

“huh?” jimin asks.

“you said aspirin with vodka isn’t how you would go.”

jimin looks over his shoulder, wondering whether the others can hear their conversation. all of them are standing by hobi’s dining set, absentmindedly munching on dry cookies and sandwiches, chatting away about things not insomnia related. meanwhile, jimin’s putting on his coat, eager to leave.

“that’s how I’d do it. pills and stuff.” jeongguk says, following jimin outside, sliding into step with him. “seems the least abrasive.”

“can we...not.”

“sorry.” jeongguk says. “are you heading home?”

“yes.”

“wanna grab a drink?”

jimin stops abruptly, turning to face him. “I’m clinically depressed, do you really think it’s a good idea to ask me out to drink?”

they end up sitting by the bar of a desolate, dimly-lit pub, the only source of light coming from the neon signages hung haphazardly around the area. it’s muted by a layer of smoke suspended in the whole room. it’s almost like there’s a gossamer veil in front of jimin’s face. he brings the glass of bad whiskey to his lips, a drink to the things they have in common - insomnia and unrequited love.

jeongguk talks about a guy named namjoon, someone he’d known since he was a child. they weren’t childhood friends or anything, never even hung out together, but they lived close enough to each other to be classified as kind-of friends, were lumped together with the rest of the other kids from their street since it was a small town. in all that time, jeongguk had always been pining from afar. when namjoon moved to the city for university, jeongguk was left at home, pining from somewhere ever farther.

“I followed him. I fucking followed him.” jeongguk says. “I never wanted to be a graphic artist. drawing was just something I was kind of good at.”

“what?”

“I followed him. enrolled where he did.”

“jesus.”

jimin talks about taehyung. he talks about taehyung because there is a proper time and a proper place for such things and this decrepit shithole of a pub seems perfect. he tells jeongguk that this is what he really sees at night, with the noise of television static clinging to his paper-thin walls, and he tells him that half the time, he’s not really sure if he’s awake or asleep, but he does know that that what he feels is real, that it’s the only thing that clues him in on the fact that he’s still living. he tells jeongguk that insomnia has created in him the habit of second guessing himself - did I really see that? did I really hear that? did that really happen? am I really awake? am I still alive? - and that being in love with taehyung for the past six years is an act of subversion towards that, a big fuck you to insomnia, because no matter what happens, taehyung is real, and jimin being in love with him is real. that much he’s always going to be sure of.

“six years?”

“yeah.”

“and you only see him once every year?”

“yeah,” jimin says. “on seokjin’s birthday.”

“...jesus.”

later that night, under the galaxy of specks and stains in his ceiling, jeongguk’s mouth leaves a trail of burning kisses down his neck. the rest of jimin’s body feels freezing compared to it, the hairs on his arms standing on end. shallow breaths and desperate sounds travel between their mouths, and jimin hungrily swallows all of them, letting them reverberate all over his body. he presses down hard against jeongguk. the other boy half-moans-half-shudders, and for a moment, it quiets the voices in jimin’s head.

jeongguk pulls away from him and it’s too soon. he almost goes crazy from the sudden absence, but jeongguk roughly pins his shoulders against the bed’s headboard. he obeys and stays in his place. jeongguk stands a few feet away from him. “touch yourself,” he says, voice low and breathless. “watch me.”

jeongguk slowly, agonizingly undresses, taking his time with the buttons in his shirt, and jimin’s desperation grows with each button undone. he’s breathless as he needily pumps his own cock, taking in the sight of jeongguk’s burning eyes on him, and it’s almost enough to tip him over the edge. jeongguk unfastens his belt. jimin’s heart rate spikes.

it might be the bad whiskey, it might because he hasn’t slept in three days, or it might because he feels so unloveable, but jimin could swear that time stopped when jeongguk’s pants fell to the floor. everything goes radio silent. jimin is no longer anything but a mass of desperate, selfish needs.

jeongguk closes the distance between them and kisses him, desperately, sucking on his lower lip and making it swollen while clumsily undressing him. jeongguk’s calloused hands feel like a branding iron against every selfish inch of his skin. jimin flips them over until he’s straddling jeongguk’s hips, grinding against him. “what do you want?” he asks, more to jeongguk’s lips than to jeongguk himself.

the younger boy visibly falters, looking small and shy all of a sudden. “I…”

“what do you want, baby?” jimin asks, still grinding against him. “tell me.”

jeongguk shivers. “you inside me.” he’s breathless, breathless and perfect.

jimin makes quick work of it, rubbing the lube on his own throbbing cock and against jeongguk’s asshole. jimin’s fingers feel warm as they reach inside him. the room is awash in moans and pheromones and the lewd sinful sound of skin hitting skin, and jimin is in a daze. he hovers over jeongguk, pressing the tip of his cock inside, filling him. he pulls back, and then fills him, pulls back and fills him, again and again and again.

even if jeongguk is bigger in stature, he feels small under jimin as he curls into himself. when jimin looks down at him, into the boy’s big doe eyes, he isn’t sure if it had been a trick of the light but it seemed like jeongguk’s water lines were swollen, eyes glassy, tears threatening to fall over the edge. there’s something there that jimin understands. he understands it so well. better than anyone.

“can I call you his name?”

for once in his life, jimin decides not to be selfish.

“call me anything you want.”

it’s monday so dr. kim sejin should be wearing his navy blue polka dotted necktie, a cream dress shirt, and striped gray slacks. but he isn’t, and it irks jimin more than he knows it should. he starts to pick at his nails instead, his right leg mindlessly shaking as it dangles over his left knee. he bites the inside of his cheeks and forcibly tears his eyes away from the wrong army green tie (for tuesdays) and makes them look at the new painting sejin got for his office. just as ugly as the last one.

kim sejin isn’t someone who misses much, so he asks. “everything okay, jimin?”

“why aren’t you wearing the navy blue tie?”

“hmm?” sejin asks. “oh, this? well, my kid got some food on it so I had to change this morning.”

it calms jimin down, somewhat.

sejin retrieves his files from a drawer behind the large mahogany desk and walks over to the usual designated chair, a comfortable distance from where jimin is reclining in the couch. he makes it a point to lie down, if only to fulfill the trope he sees in the movies.

“what day do you think it is?” sejin asks, settling in his chair.

“what?” jimin turns his head to look at him, confused. “it’s november 28.”

“november 28? so you’ll be seeing taehyung soon, right?”

“yes...is that what we’re talking about today?"

“don’t you want to?”

he shrugs, “I just thought you’d ask me about the support group.”

“it’s alright. we can talk about taehyung, if you want.”

“you’re the doctor here. tell me what to talk about.”

sejin smiles. “you know I always wondered, why is it that you never reached out to him?”

“what?”

“you only see him on seokjin’s birthday, right? why don’t you ever reach out afterwards? initiate a friendship outside of seokjin?”

“...I don’t want to.”

“you say you’re in love with him.”

“I am.”

“so what’s stopping you?”

“everything.” jimin says, annoyed that he has to recount this again. it’s his fault, he supposes. sejin’s his third doctor this year alone. admittedly, sejin is somewhat better than the previous ones, so he might actually stick, if only for a little longer than the usual case.

“some people might have reached out,” sejin says, kindly. “taken the chance and see if things work out.”

“some people might call that a reality check.”

and it’s the last thing jimin wants.

“so you would rather believe in the taehyung you created in your head? rather than get to know who he really is?”

“I’d rather relate to an absent person than build relationships with those around me.” jimin says, looking away and staring at nothing in particular. his eyes hurt. “people are disappointing.”

“are you afraid taehyung might disappoint you?”

“I’m afraid that,” he stops himself and feels around for the right words, “...reality will catch up to me.”

“what do you mean?”

“I mean...” he sighs. “five years ago, when I saw him again on seokjin’s birthday, you know, a year after we first met...taehyung was helping seokjin clean up. he put away all the plastic cups and put them into this garbage bag. he also wiped the table, and he helped mop the floor where there were spills, but it’s not like he was the only one doing it, you know. the others helped too.”

“and?”

“and nothing, I just...he’s perfect. I found him perfect.”

sejin just looks at him, unsure.

jimin continues, “there was nothing inherently loveable about the way he does things. he didn’t even wipe the table right, there were still crumbs all over. it was me, you know? I decided to find perfection in everything he does.”

“why?”

“what do you mean why?” jimin looks at him, “that’s what people do.”

“that’s what people do?”

“yeah, when they’re desperate.”

“I don’t understand.”

jimin tries not to grit his teeth, “people embellish.” he says, and he doesn’t give sejin the chance to ask what? “people do that when they’re desperate. a man alone in the desert will see a small patch of dry trees, but his mind will make him see a fucking oasis. he’ll feel like there’s palm trees and clear glistening water because he’s desperate.”

the room is quiet for a while.

“jimin,” sejin eventually says, gently, “just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”

that night, back at his bed, he knows he can fall asleep now if he wanted to. he’s past his usual 50 hour mark and he can feel the exhaustion taking a toll on his body, just hairs away from shutting down. sometimes he entertains the idea of just staying up for as long as his body permits. what’s the worst that can happen, anyway. what will happen if he drinks a ton of pure black coffee and follows it up with those neon-colored energy drinks that taste like piss. will his heart burst? hasn’t it already?

he thinks about last year, thinks about the slight ringing in his ear when taehyung walked in. he thinks about how he always loses himself at the sight of him, and how, even though that’s nothing new, it always feels worse each year, a little bit more painful, a little bit more sweet, and how with taehyung, he can’t really tell those apart anymore. he thinks about the bohemian carpet, more worn down, the colors more faded, and he thinks about the cheap fairy lights that somehow still work.

december 4

one year ago

 

“oh thank fuck.” seokjin says, opening his front door.

 

“excited to see me?” yoongi says. jimin cringes behind him.

 

“I’ll humor your ego for once and admit to that.”

 

“um, where is everyone?” jimin asks, and by everyone he really doesn’t mean everyone.

 

“I texted everybody telling them to come an hour later.”

 

“we didn’t get a text.” yoongi says.

 

“well, yeah.” seokjin says, holding yoongi by the arm and leading them to the wide kitchen. “I need you guys to help me cook.”

 

for a fleeting moment, as he prepares the glazed lemon pork chops the way seokjin instructed him to, jimin lets himself admit that cooking is something he enjoys, but after stepping back from it and seeing the opulence of seokjin’s kitchen, his mind flashes before him the bareness of his own. it’s not the only reason he feels sad, he supposes. it’s more of the fact that he only ever enjoys cooking when it’s for other people and, well, he only ever gets to do that through seokjin.

 

“who did you invite this time?” yoongi asks, mixing the beef fried rice.

 

“the usual,” seokjin says, “plus some other people I met through work.”

 

“I swear we’re not gonna fit in your basement next year.”

 

“I’ll cut some people then.” seokjin quips, “looks like this is your last time here, yoongi.”

 

yoongi smiles to himself, amused, somewhat fond. jimin sees it and does the same. it’s a quiet kind of friendship that they have, a still-waters-run-deep kind, and it’s as if yoongi can hear jimin thinking when he once again proves how great of a friend he is by asking, for jimin, “is taehyung coming?”

 

“oh. I’m not sure actually.” seokjin says. “his girlfriend broke up with him like a week ago and he says he doesn’t feel like coming, but I was like ‘dumbass, that’s all the more reason to come.’”

 

“yeah.” yoongi says, as an afterthought. he glances at jimin. an offer of sympathy.

 

it’s not like he needs it, but he sends a smile back anyway. he isn’t that sad about it, he thinks. he isn’t that sad as much as one can control how one feels, and jimin’s gotten good at keeping a lid on it over the years. instead, he feels rather small, small as in I’ll manage, small as in I’ve gotten way more than I will ever deserve, small as in so it’s alright if it’s taken away from me.

the fourth of december was never supposed to mean more than anything but seokjin’s birthday, anyway. he just let himself get carried away. he doesn’t totally blame himself for it, though. he can’t bring himself to. not because he absolves himself of all responsibility but more like what else could he have done? taehyung was a force of nature and jimin has cultivated the habit of not exactly being self-destructive but not exactly being self-preserving either. he didn’t want this to happen but he didn’t really put up that much of a fight. does that mean he’s at fault? it’s all the same, anyway. whether he is or isn’t, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference

he can’t bring himself to feel happy or sad about the girlfriend either. that would mean he wants taehyung, and even though it’s a slippery slope, he’s always been careful not to let it go that far, to always reel in the wandering thoughts back into safer waters before he drowns. all that he’s ever wanted from taehyung, he will get within the space of seokjin’s basement on december 4s and within the confines of his mind all the days after that. as far as he’s concerned, he doesn’t exist to taehyung outside of those two realms, and he’s okay with that. and if taehyung doesn’t show up later, he’s okay with that too.

 

when taehyung does, though, there’s a slight ringing in the hollow space between jimin’s ears, right above the sound of oceans created by his heart thumping erratically.

 

and all of it is true, jimin is loathe to admit. the whole shebang happens. the heat creeping up his neck while simultaneously descending down his head, the flushed cheeks, the momentary lapse in vocabulary, the cripplingly heightened self-consciousness and the self-hatred that follows, the my eyes can’t bring themselves to look directly at you but they’ll follow you around the room anyway, the how can you possibly be real, and the my dreams can never be as good as the real thing. and it’s pathetic. it’s pathetic, and it’s the only thing that jimin looked forward to all year and now it’s here.

 

it’s a fix, is what it is. it’s a fix he gets once a year and he doesn’t come down from it until the few restless moments before taehyung walks in, and really, the biggest lie he ever told himself was that he’d be fine without it.

 

“hey jimin,” taehyung says, by way of greeting him.

 

“oh hey,” jimin says, as if hearing taehyung say his name didn’t do anything to him.

 

in the television static daydreams, taehyung says so much more. he’ll say something that means something and something good will happen. but in the here and now with taehyung, nothing happens, but jimin quite likes it better than what he sees in his head. nothing happens, but that nothing is real.

 

he only finds the courage to talk to taehyung well into the night - not really courage but more like what choice did you give me - and he does it with a considerable amount of alcohol and THC humming in his fingertips because he needs to be less of himself in taehyung’s presence, a sign of respect, an act of service.

 

“I thought you didn’t partake.” he says, noting the drink in taehyung’s hand. 

“I’m sad.”

even though he knows, jimin still asks, “what happened?”

“girlfriend broke up with me.”

“why?”

“she said we drifted apart.”

“did you?”

“yeah.” taehyung says, taking another sip. “we did.”

“why are you sad then?”

“a year and a half is a long time.”

 

jimin almost laughs.

 

“have you ever had your heart broken before?”

“not really,” jimin says, only somewhat truthfully. it sure feels like it, he thinks, but maybe it’s not exactly the same thing.

“it sucks.”

“don’t worry about it too much.” he says, casually, because begging seems out of place.

 

he knows, with as much certainty that anyone can ever have when it comes to these things, that taehyung will find happiness someday. taehyung will have the white picket fence, the lazy sunday afternoon hot chocolate, the furniture shopping, the domestic bliss, the kind of life where he no longer needs to look into mistakes made in the past but only to the flat screen TV in front of him, as the love of his life falls asleep off the heat of his body. because as much as no one wants to admit it, there are some people in this world whose lives are perfect, not in a nothing-ever-goes-wrong kind of way, but perfect as in they have the things that actually mean something. taehyung is one of those people, and because he is who he is, he’ll someday make someone happy too. he’ll someday complete someone’s life, and jimin quiets the voice in his head that asks: but why can’t it be mine?

“thanks, dad.”

“no problem, son.” yoongi says, setting down the bag of groceries.

yoongi always visits more often this time of year. neither of them say anything about it though, for some reason.

“you know you don’t have to buy me food, right? I’m not that poor.”

yoongi sniggers, “you are. plus I buy you food to make sure you eat actual food.” 

“I eat food.”

“cigarettes are not food and beer is not water.”

jimin smiles.

yoongi spends the day curled up in jimin’s couch. the sky outside bleeds from its midday blue and white to a sunset orange and pink. jimin feels that there are other colors hidden beneath the cascading folds, maybe even behind the large spill of the something not quite orange, but he can’t see any of them. he’s pretty sure they’re there though so he stares out the window for an amount of time that means he’s not exactly staring anymore but actually looking for something.

he gives up, after a while, and reminds himself: just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.

“yoongi?” he says, voice slightly hoarse from disuse.

“yeah?” he says, not opening his eyes so he can remain in the somewhat nap.

“how are you?”

his eyes blink open at that.

“how are things,” jimin says, “out there.”

yoongi doesn’t say anything.

“oh come on. don’t look at me like that.”

yoongi blinks again, erratically, as he collects himself.

“it’s good, um. good things are happening to me.”

“like what?”

“I get more producing gigs now. I’m building a network. a repertoire, and all that.”

“a reservoir?”

“a repertoire, dumbass.”

jimin smiles.

“there’s this one up and coming indie artist. she’s getting big. she really likes my stuff.”

“that’s good.”

“I meant to tell you about it actually, um.”

“...what’s up?”

“there’s gonna be a music festival. it’s a really big deal, and she wants me to tag along.”

“you should.”

“I am.” yoongi says, looking away. “I already have everything packed.”

“what’s wrong then?”

“I won’t be back until the 6th.”

the quiet room seems to grow even more quiet somehow. the ticking of the clock sounds like a time bomb.

“what?”

“jimin.”

“you can’t--yoongi, you can’t leave me alone. I can’t go to seokjin’s alone.”

yoongi just looks at him. jimin has sat up from the bed now.

“you can always decide not to go.” yoongi says, closing his eyes again and turning away.

“...what?”

“you can always decide not to go.”

“yoongi.”

“jesus. it’s been six years.”

“this is all I have.”

“what,” yoongi says, sitting up too, mirroring jimin. but where jimin is desperation, yoongi is arrogant blase. “what is it that you actually have, jimin? what is this non-thing that you’re holding onto? fucking grow up, it’s been six years.”

“I know.”

“you’ve been stuck in the same place for six years now.”

“I know!” he says, voice cracking. “but this is all I have.”

“you don’t have shit, jimin.”

“fuck you, they’re my friends too.”

“I’m your friend.” yoongi says, “look at me, I’m the only one here.”

“you’re leaving me alone.”

yoongi looks away. jimin can tell from the rise and fall of his chest that he’s trying not to think about anything in particular, that he’s just letting the accusation ricochet off the paper-thin walls, hollowly hoping it doesn’t hit him. the silence between them isn’t ominous in any way. there’s no tension either. it’s just quiet.

he stands up from the couch after a while. jimin doesn’t look his way but he hears the rustle of the plastic bags.

“there’s dinner here for you.” he says, and jimin hears the door latch shut.

he stares up at the ceiling as he lets the aftershocks of pleasure ripple through his limbs. it’s well past midnight, but there’s still the occasional faint laughter to be heard from outside, the occasional buzzing of an engine, the occasional clatter of something metal and sharp, and the occasional hiss of feral cats. this side of the city sleeps with one eye open. peaceful, two-eyed sleep is for those who can afford it.

“did you hear that?"

“yeah,” jeongguk says.

and it’s not at all unusual that they have to make sure.

jeongguk reaches for something on jimin’s bedside table. jimin doesn’t exactly register the movement until there’s something billowing in front of his eyes, and there’s a smell. he looks over at jeongguk, propped up against the headboard, and swats his hand with more force than necessary. it made a sound.

“what the fuck?” the other boy says, watching the cigarette fall to the floor.

“don’t smoke in my bed.”

“what the fuck is wrong with you?” he says, before picking it up and putting it out on the opaque green ashtray.

jimin looks straight ahead, at the television static, through it, towards nothing in particular. he can’t remember when he turned it on.

jeongguk looks at him, “seriously, what’s wrong?”

“oh are we friends now?”

“I mean my stomach is currently digesting what could have been your children--”

“gross.”

“--that counts for something, right?”

jimin sighs, the existential kind, the heavy kind. after a long silence, he says, “...I can’t sleep.”

there’s a pause.

“well yes, jimin, that’s what happens when people have insomnia.”

jimin punches him in the gut, not enough to incapacitate, just enough to hurt.

“ow, fuck.”

he kicks jimin in the shin. jimin ignores the pain.

“seokjin’s birthday is two days from now.”

“I don’t give a fu--”

“and I’m past my mark. way past it. it’s been 4 days.”

“shit, really?”

“...yeah.”

they stare ahead - lids heavy, eyes glazed, limbs still reeling - and things are quiet, as quiet as this neighborhood can get, anyway. there’s a chill in the air that caresses, that lulls, and somewhere, above the smog and bullshit, jimin is sure that the moon is suspended prettily against the dripping ink of the sky. if he were to look out his window, he’d see something as timeless and as detached and as self-contained as a painting. he shouldn’t be awake to a night like this. he should be asleep, unable to appreciate its magnanimity, because that’s what nights like these are supposed to be - an inside joke.

“I’m gonna see him again.” jimin says, after a while, barely cutting through the stillness.

and jeongguk doesn’t respond because they both know it wasn’t meant for him anyway. it was more for himself, a way to get used to that reality, that maybe if he’ll say it over and over again, and casually, as if it didn’t mean anything to him, he’ll forget what it means and then it’ll start to mean less. maybe if he puts it out there and lets it stick to normal, banal, everyday, ugly things, maybe it’ll start to look it and maybe it’ll stop scaring him as much. maybe, if he says it like that, like it’s just a general fact of life, which it is, he can pretend that he doesn’t say it like a prayer, or a death wish, or something equally as pointless, like famous last words.

cruel. life is cruel. and jimin feels like a cliche, but life truly is cruel. life is cruel because there’s no storm to sympathize with how he’s feeling. there’s no storm to tell him that the rest of the world is going through the same thing. if this were a play or a movie, there would be a delirious rain raging outside as seen through a conveniently placed window, and it, of course, reflects the emotional state of the character. as things are, though, there is no such thing. jimin is not the protagonist of anything. as things are, the skies are still and the night is quiet and the sheets feel as soft as they do whenever they’ve just been changed. they smell like lavender so the room smells like lavender too. the air feels cold, but it’s a nice kind of cold for once, the kind that jimin always liked.

and he hates it. he hates that it’s like this. all of these things laugh at him, they remind him that the world will spin on regardless of whether he sees taehyung or not and it’s a truth he’s always known but it puts a bitter taste on his mouth anyway. he knows that the  peace in tonight’s air has seen someone’s death, and someone’s marriage, and someone’s birth and has remained unaffected through it all. it doesn’t give a shit about any of that. it doesn’t give a shit about him. it doesn’t give a shit about taehyung, and jimin wants to not give a shit back, he just wants to sleep but he can’t, and as much as he wants to say that the night is keeping him up out of spite, he knows that it doesn’t give a shit about him enough to do that.

“jimin?”

“yeah?”

“are you happy to see him?”

“...I’m not sure.”

“that’s stupid.”

jimin smiles, or does something close to that anyway. he knows, from what feels like years of experience but has only been a few months, that his body will most likely shut down at seokjin’s. the rational part of him, the not-as-in-love part, the self-preserving, self-respecting part, considers not going at all. it recites to him over and over again the conversation he had with yoongi. he momentarily allows that part to tell him that it’d be crazy to show up at his current state - barely conscious, muscle spasms, slight hallucinations, palpitations - he momentarily allows it to tell him that what if taehyung's spell has a kind of expiry date to it, that it can only last a year and not a day over, that after this, jimin can be free.

if I were a good man, I’d talk with you more often than I do. taehyung sings to him.

jimin hasn’t quite listened to the song in the same way. it kind of sounds like a siren singing him to shipwreck now. and he can’t help but snigger because that’s exactly what it is. his only way out of this has sunk to the ocean floor and he’s trapped in an island in the middle of nowhere, only, this island is his own head and he hasn’t been able to break free from it for six years now. you’ve been stuck in the same place for six years , yoongi says to him. he’s right. jimin hates that yoongi’s right and jimin hates that neither of them can do anything about it. more than anything though, jimin hates the fact he’d take anything to remind him that there is something else apart from this, apart from his own thoughts, and nothing has ever provided as good an escape from himself as taehyung does. it’s a vicious cycle.

“jimin?”

“yeah?”

“how would you feel,” jeongguk says, “if the world ends before you see him?”

“...relieved.” jimin says, after a while.

of course, the world doesn’t end. it doesn’t care about him enough to do that.

when jimin sees taehyung again, it sends tremors to what the poets call his heart and he knows that it only ever meant one thing: he’s fallen in love again, for the sixth time.

“hey jimin,” taehyung says, walking towards him with an easy smile.

“hey.”

“where’s yoongi?”

“he’s at this music festival. out of town.”

“ah,” he says, nodding. “hey, you want a beer?”

“sure.”

as the tremors in his heart grow stronger though, even when taehyung has disappeared, jimin is forced to wonder whether it’s really love or just his body giving up on him.

jimin is sat beside seokjin on the carpet as they eat dinner. he smiles and laughs at the appropriate times. he gives a comment or two occasionally. he tries to avoid looking at the fairy lights overhead because it gives him the most concrete proof that his vision is glazing over, the bulbs blur into one, as if he’s in a car and is quickly driving past it. he keeps his gaze trained on the floor, in front of him, or at his food, or at seokjin’s shoes, anywhere, but none of it is enough to distract him from how insistent his pulse is at hammering against his wrists. there’s an ocean in his ears again. it’s too loud this time. louder than it ever was for taehyung.

“hey, you okay?” he hears seokjin say, from somewhere far.

when he opens his eyes though, he sees that seokjin’s right beside him.

“I’m good.” he tries to smile. as he looks up, he meets taehyung’s eyes from across the room. there’s a question in them.

he doesn’t feel breathless, not exactly. it just feels as if his chest is too small, that no matter how much air he inhales and even if he can feel it graze against the floor of his lungs, his body still doesn’t register it as breathing. the air feels cold and sharp as it hits his dry nostrils, like little pin pricks, but he tries to fill his lungs with them anyway. something inside his chest starts to contract and deflate and cave in, as if his attempts at filling his lungs with air made them burst, and he can recognize the warning signs of panic licking at his stomach. his head feels weightless, like it can detach from his body and float to the fairy lights if jimin moves too fast. when he tries to look down, he sees that his fingers are trembling, and he wonders why he had to look at it to notice.

it’s almost as if he isn’t here. he can’t feel the carpet beneath him and all sound comes to him muffled, like he’s on the other side of the room and merely pressing his ear against the wall. things flicker in and out his vision, and for the first time in six years, he has to wonder whether this is real. this, out of everything, makes him sick. this was supposed to be the only thing he was sure of, and suddenly it’s all too much.

it takes every ounce of willpower in him to only collapse once he’s out of their sight.

he throws his knees to the white tiles of the bathroom. it’ll leave a bruise in the morning, but he barely feels any pain as he lands. all of it is concentrated at his chest which feels as flimsy as paper, the pain spreading as if there was candle fire boring a hole from beneath it. his grip on the toilet, frail to begin with, gradually slips as he forces something, anything to come out, but nothing does. only dry air and spit. his throat feels raw, like he just swallowed gravel, but he was careful not to make too much noise.

when he lets himself fall back against the wall, it hits his head with a dull thud. he doesn’t know whether that had anything to do with it but after that, he vaguely senses his body fall to the floor like a discarded ragdoll. his instincts scream for him to get up, and he knows he should, but he doesn’t. the cold of the tiles bite at his exposed skin, and as his vision is swallowed by black, he silently sends an apology to seokjin and whoever it is that will find his body in the morning. 

the voice comes to him muffled, like he’s submerged in water.

“jimin?” the voice shouts, a world above him, “fuck, jimin. wake up.”

his body is a mass of steel on the ocean floor, rusting, when it should be floating. a shipwreck.

“jimin, hey, wake up.”

and he does, kind of. but the melodrama of gasping for breath doesn’t happen. instead, his eyes blink open slowly, tenderly, to break the surface. it smells like bleach and shampoo, not saltwater.

“fuck,” the voice says, still muffled.

jimin throws an arm over his eyes. the single fluorescent bulb overhead might as well have been the sun.

“fucking scared me there,” the voice finally comes into focus, and he recognizes it as taehyung’s.

jimin doesn’t remove his arm from his eyes, partly in shame, partly in denial. is this real? is the first thing he asks himself. are you real? is what he wants to say.

seconds pass, the sounds of their breaths the metronome.

jimin can feel the rise and fall of his chest, back flush against the white tiles, no longer as cold because of the heat off his body. he isn’t dead, after all. “I fell asleep.” he croaks.

“jesus,” there’s a laugh, short and jagged, but relieved.

“...how did you find me?”

“I saw you head out,” he says, leaning his back to the wall and sagging against it. “you took a while and I thought maybe you were just constipated or something.”

jimin smiles. it hurt because his lips are dry.

“but it’s been over an hour.” taehyung says. “wait here, let me get you some water.”

he disappears beyond the door, and jimin is left to himself again. he should stand up, he thinks, but the floor feels good, like it’s stretching his back. his lids are heavy, and he can sense the invitation of sleep lick at his limbs. taehyung is back before he can succumb to it.

“hey,” he says, lightly nudging jimin’s shoulder. “come on, sit up.”

there’s the warmth of a hand at the small of his back. it feels like the real thing.

“you should go home,” taehyung says, “get some sleep.”

not yet, he wants to say. let me stay for a while, but his body doesn’t allow him to.

“where do you live?” taehyung says. jimin can smell his breath, sickly sweet from coke. it’s new to him, and he hopes that, out of everything, it’s this that he remembers in the morning. “jimin?”

“hmm?”

“come on, let’s get you a cab.”

when the car comes to a stop in front of them, jimin turns around. he’s about to say goodbye, about to say thank you, about to say sorry, about to swallow down the million others things he’d rather say. taehyung just looks at him. and even if he’s somewhat sure that this isn’t a lucid dream, his habit of second guessing himself doesn’t go away as easily. he has to look twice, and twice as longer, because with taehyung and insomnia, you never really know.

“come on,” taehyung says, absentmindedly.

jimin just looks at him.

“I’m not gonna leave you alone like this.” he says, “let’s get you home.”

somewhere along the way, jimin gathers the courage to look over at taehyung. the glow of distant city lights and skyscrapers frame his silhouette. jimin can’t see his face, but that’s alright. he doesn’t need to. the lights blur in and out of focus, flickering in the distance, reduced to orbs as they drive past it. there’s a song playing softly through the radio. jimin doesn’t recognize it but he likes the way it shapes itself around the moment. it occurs to him that this is the first time he’s seen the other boy outside of seokjin’s basement. he isn’t sure yet if that’s a good thing. when taehyung looks over at him and smiles though, jimin smiles back. if jimin knew of a shortcut that would cut their travel time down by half an hour, he keeps it to himself.

“jimin, I’m gonna crash on your couch, okay?”

his own sheets have never felt as soft as they do now. they smell like lavender.

“mkay.” he mumbles.

for the first time, he doesn’t fall asleep to the sound of television static but to someone breathing, from across the room.

he’s not quite asleep and not quite awake. it’s the sweet lull period where there’s nothing but the gray shadow cast across everything in the room. lucidity comes slow and in small drips. it takes him a while to reach the threshold, but when he does, he leaves one foot behind. he just has to make sure.

jimin cranes his head. his neck is sore, but he can make out the silhouette all the same.

the couch is too small for him, he thinks. is he cold?

but before he can get up, he feels sleep twist around his ankles again, its touch feather soft.

he lets it drag him under.

the light that streams in through the cheap curtains is more white than yellow. early morning. 

jimin doesn’t turn. he hears the shuffle of feet all the same.

“good morning.”

“is it still morning?”

“yeah.” taehyung smiles, “until in about twenty minutes.”

jimin sits up, slowly. all of him feels heavy. he stays in that position for a while, hunched over himself.

“you okay?”

“is this real?” he asks. he can’t help it.

he doesn’t look up, afraid of aggravating the pain in his neck, but he can guess that taehyung’s probably smiling. he can guess it probably looks beautiful.

when he stands, the ground sways beneath him. there’s a blinding white at the edge of his vision, like a camera flash, only it happens slowly and in short bursts all over. he sits back down at the corner of the bed.

his head hurts right above the temples, and it’s not something a massage can soothe. the throb is inside, somewhere he can’t reach. his forehead feels dense too, like a cliff that’s about to topple over. there’s no point to it but he brings a hand up against it anyway. it’s warm.

he’s not sure how long he sits like that. any grasp of time vanishes when one lulls in and out of consciousness, but his hand falls numb when he brings it back down to his lap. he’s never been on a boat before so he has no way of knowing, but with the room swaying beneath him, maybe that’s the closest thing to it.

when he’s grounded enough, the pounding in his head small enough to ignore, he looks around to see something not quite orange streaming in from the window. it makes the room look red somehow, softer, obscuring the ugly details. there’s more shadow than light now. he sees what he suspects is the sun dipping behind colored clouds. he can actually see it moving, warping the things it comes into contact with.  

a shallow breath catches in his throat when he sees taehyung asleep, but he doesn’t know what for. he remembers enough to know that taehyung’s here, in his apartment, but maybe the sight of taehyung isn’t really something one gets used to so easily.

when jimin steps out of the bathroom, his black hair still dripping and the inside of his mouth slightly stinging from the toothpaste, taehyung is sitting by the makeshift dinner table pushed up against the wall, his back to him.

“hey,” jimin says, voice small.

taehyung’s eyes follow him as he sits down across the table.

“hey.”

“fuck.” jimin runs a hand down his face. he hates himself.

“you okay?”

“no.” he says. “are you wearing different clothes?”

taehyung looks down at himself and smiles.

“I went back to my dorm and took a shower while you were asleep.”

“...you didn’t need to come back here.”

the boy shrugs, “I didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

against the depressing interior of the small studio apartment, taehyung’s beauty shows up so starkly. it’s not that much of an achievement, all things considered, but it still floors jimin. it’s in this moment where he realizes that what he felt the past six years is slowly shifting somehow, changing but still the same, like an apple seed to an apple tree. this, having taehyung here in his apartment, is uncharted territory. jimin’s feelings are starting to manifest itself in different unfamiliar ways, but it’s all the same at the end of the day. jimin’s still in love, still with the same boy.

“you want dinner?” taehyung asks, “or, well, breakfast, I guess?”

“um yeah, there’s a small restaurant down the s--”

“I don’t think you should be walking around.”

“I’m okay,” jimin looks down at his hands, “I just needed to sleep.”

“and sleep, you did.” taehyung smiles, “and besides, I already ordered takeout.”

it’s quiet for a while. their smiles, small to begin with, continue to slip.

“thank you.” jimin manages, before the silence stretches on for too long.

“yoongi told us.”

“...what?”

“I mean,” taehyung shifts, “he told jin, and well.”

“I’m okay.” jimin says, asserting.

“you should tell people about it.”

“why?”

“so they can help you. I never would have noticed you were gone if...” he trails off.

jimin dismisses the slight sting he felt from that.

“when were you diagnosed?”

“few months ago.”

“are you getting better?”

“I’m trying.” jimin shrugs, feeling small as yoongi crosses his mind. “I’m attending therapy.”

“for the depression?”

“and the insomnia.” he tries to make it seem like the word doesn’t taste bitter on his tongue.

that’s the last of it, for now. they talk about what seems like nothing in particular, things that may seem casual and light to taehyung, but to jimin are a matter of urgency. he files it away, all of it, everything new he learns about taehyung - not just the things he says, but also how he says them, also the way his ears stick out from beneath his hair, also how his eyelashes fan over the white of his eyes, also how his jaw hangs open for a little longer than necessary when he finishes a sentence. he looks at taehyung like it’s both the first time he’s ever seen him and the last time, because it might be.

they eat in relative silence, the only sound coming from their chewing and the scrape of plastic utensils again the cardboard takeout box. every once in a while, he’d feel taehyung’s eyes on him and jimin would try his hardest not to say anything stupid. unnecessary truths aren’t worth ruining this night over, even if jimin knows it’s about to end soon. he wonders, somewhat guiltily, if he should try to think of way to make this night go on just a little bit longer, but jimin’s never been one to push his luck. he’s already thankful for this. thankful to whom, he is’t quite sure, but he’s thankful nonetheless. he’s never considered himself a lucky person, but tonight, from the moment he woke up to right now, across taehyung and the way he laughs, jimin feels like it.

so when taehyung says he needs to go, jimin tries not to be sad about it. he really does.

“thank you.” he says, once they reach the narrow lobby of his apartment building.

taehyung turns around to face him, “shut up about that already.”

“can you apologize to seokjin for me?”

“he was probably passed out when we left, probably didn’t even notice.”

jimin smiles.

“okay,” he says. “good night.” he says, because that’s really all there is to it.

when taehyung’s silhouette disappears around the corner of jimin’s street, he goes back inside the lobby, his nostrils slightly stinging from the cold. his chest feels heavy, physically, but not in a weighty kind of way, more like a what now? kind of way. he asks himself how he can go back up to his apartment, look at it and live in it the same way, when he now knows what it’s like to have taehyung there with him. it’s barely been a day since taehyung had existed within the space but now jimin doesn’t even remember how it looked like before. if the seat across his makeshift dining table had felt empty in the past, now, jimin imagines, it would feel as if he’d be able to hear just how hollow it is, like there’s a gaping, taehyung-sized void there, reminding him of what--

there’s a knock on the door.

he would have ignored it, would have continued on his way up the stairs, but he hears taehyung call out, “jimin!” and there’s really just something about the way he says it that gives jimin pause.

when the door cracks open, the first thing he sees is the tip of taehyung’s nose, pink from the cold, and then his eyes, wide as they look up at him. taehyung sniffles. “hi.”

“...what,” jimin just looks at him, “did you forget something?”

“what?”

“what?”

“can I come in for a sec?” taehyung asks. “it’s cold.”

jimin can’t tell if he’s breathless from the biting weather or if he had run back here. it was a long way off. he decides not to ask.

while taehyung looks at his feet, jimin says, “what’s up?”

“um,” the boy mumbles, “are you free tomorrow?”

“what?”

“tomorrow night?”

“...why?”

“...we could go somewhere?” taehyung says, not quite looking at him. “...if you want.”

jimin doesn’t know the proper thing to say. even if what he wants to say is ‘I’ve tried to ask you this in the daydreams I’ve had’, what comes out is, “why?”

the other boy blinks, “what do you mean why?”

“taehyung, I’m not--” jimin looks down, “it’s fine. you don’t have to do this.”

“do what?”

“I don’t need...charity.”

“charity?”

“pity.”

“oh.” taehyung’s face falls into a slight pout. after a while, he says, “I think maybe you think too highly of me.”

it makes jimin look up, only to see the mirth in taehyung’s eyes, mirth and slight beginnings of apprehension.

“um,”

“I’m shallow as fuck.” taehyung says. “I’m asking you out because you’re beautiful, not because I want to help you.”

“oh.”

taehyung cringes at himself, “...was that too much?”

“no, it’s--” jimin can’t quite find his words, “it’s okay.”

that night, jimin doesn’t sleep. and even though that’s nothing new, he didn’t mind this time.

the sounds of their footsteps echo through the wide open space, the polished warm wood floor reflecting their shadowed silhouettes back at them as they move across it. jimin didn’t turn on the lights overhead, partly as a precaution, partly because he’s helpless against how it makes it seem like they’re the only ones awake in this side of town. the only glow comes from the bulbs installed on the floor’s corner panelling, the radiance diffusing upwards over the dark wall. there’s also the soft spotlights on the paintings themselves, but apart from that, the museum is dipped in shadow. the lights are delicate but enough, enough for jimin to see the things that matter. and even though there’s practically no chance of them getting caught, they speak in hushed voices anyway. jimin feels like he’s in a daze.

“this is pretty cool.”

“you get sick of looking at it after a while.” jimin says, “even pretty things lose their charm when you look at them too long.”  

as he says that, though, it occurs to him that maybe there’s an exception.

“do you usually work the night shift?”

“no. I’m the day shift. I asked taemin to switch with me tonight though.”

“so there’s no one manning the security cameras right now?”

jimin smiles. “nope.”

“what if there’s a burglary tonight?”

“guess I’m fired.”

it’s still surreal, and it may be such an unoriginal thought but jimin thinks that, if this was a dream, he doesn’t want to wake up from it. he’s daydreamed about this for so long, and even if taehyung had looked as ethereal in jimin’s head as he does now, across from him, none of jimin’s daydreams had the ice-pick scar beneath the apple of taehyung’s cheek nor the asymmetry in his eyes. it’s the little things, the new things jimin learns - like the cadence of taehyung’s walk and how only the beginning of his laugh have sound - that clue jimin in on the fact that this, for better or worse, is real. it’s not a dream. jimin tries not to let that scare him too much.

taehyung’s voice is low, speaking lazily. it’s almost like he’s afraid the creatures in the paintings might turn to look at him if he speaks too loud. it’s almost like he’s in a daze too.

he stops in front of a painting, “interesting.”

“it’s signorelli.” jimin says, “he called it the sant'onofrio altarpiece."

taehyung looks over at him and quirks an eyebrow. “how cultured of you.”

“it’s written in the placard, taehyung.”

jimin follows a few paces behind, trying to look at the paintings, but only able to look at taehyung looking.

“do you understand all the symbolism?” jimin asks, coming to a stop beside him, pointing to the painting in front of them.

“no,” taehyung says, “I think that’s venus and cupid, though.”

“I didn’t even know that, and I’ve been working here for a while.”

“it’s alright not to know things sometimes,” taehyung glances at him, “you can get creative with your interpretation.”

there, in front of bronzino’s masterpiece, taehyung’s hand falls to his side. it grazes against jimin’s and stays there. more than anything tonight, it’s this that tells him that everything had been real, is real, and it makes jimin forget about bronzino altogether as he thinks about the symbolism of that instead. what was in it, desire or a tired muscle? things were much simpler in his daydreams.

they leave the early italians alone and walk deeper into the hall. they turn a left, rounding a white partition wall that doesn’t reach all the way up the ceiling, and find themselves in front of an abstract painting that spans almost the entire length of the wall. they take a seat on the bench across from it. the breadth of space between their bodies says something, jimin just doesn’t know what, and he tries not to look into it too deeply, afraid that he might find either too little or too much.

they’re silent for a while, content with watching the different shades of yellow fold and drip into each other within the long, expansive frame. he thinks that maybe it’s supposed to mimic a sunrise horizon, but he’s seen enough sunrises in a lifetime to know that they don’t give off as much peace as the painting tries to emit. jimin wishes he had technical knowledge when it comes to painting instead, if only to better appreciate the artist’s skill. he finds it a bit sad that, to him, the painting just looks...really yellow.

“I wonder about the amount of time it took him to finish this.” taehyung muses.

“why do we say that?” jimin says, not quite looking at anything, “‘amount of time?’”

“hmm?”

“we make it seem like it’s something we can count.”

“well, there’s seconds, minutes, hours, days…”

“do you feel it that way, though?”

“I mean it’s progressing,” taehyung says, “moving forward.”

“really?”

“you don’t think so?”

“I spend my days watching over this shit.” jimin smiles, “one of favorite guides here, she always mentions that paintings tell stories that are self-contained. you know how songs and books and movies tell stories that progress, like there’s a beginning, middle, and end? paintings aren’t like that. they’re not time-based art. no beginning and no end. doesn’t progress. it’s just itself, all at once.”

“you feel that way?” taehyung asks, no doubt thinking about jimin’s insomnia. “against time?”

“I feel like that’s how it should be.”

“I can feel time, though.”

jimin looks at the painting again, and says, mostly to himself, “just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”

they continue to meander along the gallery, the conversation meandering along with them. they wordlessly form a pattern after a while: coming to a stop in front of each painting, staring at it long enough to come up with a story about what it means, and then softly laughing about it when they try to build upon each other’s interpretation. taehyung tried to take it seriously at first but gave up after a while. jimin feels weightless, like this isn’t really happening - not in his habitual second guessing of reality kind of way but more like he’s watching it from somewhere detached as it’s happening, like he’s looking at a painting of this moment too. that doesn’t make any sense though, he realizes, because for them time does progress, and with it, comes an end.

taehyung follows close behind as jimin leads the way through the less atmospheric side of the museum, into a hallway with fluorescent lights overhead, empty brick walls - painted an ugly, shiny white - and textured linoleum tiling. they can faintly hear the traffic in the distance, telling them they’re not only ones awake. the daze jimin was in slowly draws away, and he wants to reach out for it but he doesn’t. taehyung needs to go home eventually. they come to a stop in front of the heavy door that leads out into reality, or more accurately, the back alley.

“this was really cool.” taehyung says. “the abstracts were my favorite.”

“I like the early italians the most.”

“you just like the naked bodies,” taehyung scoffs, “how shallow.”

“weren’t you the one who asked me out because you thought I was hot?”

they share a laugh, quick to fade, but jimin felt it all the same.

“sorry I can’t walk you home.”

“it’s okay, I have to take a cab anyway.”  taehyung says. he sinks his hands into his pockets and shifts on his feet. “hey jimin, um, my finals are coming up. I might be a bit busy.”

“oh.”

“I’d like to see you again, though, if that’s okay.”

“you can text whenever.” jimin smiles. “I’m never asleep anyway.”

he pushes the heavy door open, throwing his body against it, and he’s greeted by a cold gust of dry wind, the kind that creates icicles that don’t drip. he can barely make out the moon. there’s only the dull contrast of it amidst the opaque screen of what he supposes are clouds but what is more likely smog. the moon almost looks like a small circle drawn with chalk and thumbed over at the edges. the rest of the sky looks like the surface of a hastily erased chalkboard.

taehyung’s nose and cheeks are immediately pink. “good night.” he says.

“good night.” jimin says, not quite looking him in the eyes.

taehyung starts to walk down the alley, towards the street, and it’s a weird thing but jimin knows he’s smiling, the closed-lip kind, the kind you have to be looking for in order to see. taehyung turns around to catch him smiling the same way.

“hey jimin?

“yeah?”

“I didn’t say you were hot.” his smile grows bigger, slightly, but it’s still small. “I said you were beautiful.”

the sun is halfway up the sky when jimin’s finally in bed, the clouds looking like unravelled cotton balls. he doesn’t turn on the tv, pointless since he won’t be able to see the static reflected off the walls anyway, so he just lays there, helpless against the warm white-ish gold that he can actually see streaming in through the window, as if there’s a video projector outside. jimin holds his hand up, ending the travel of light before it goes any further. it’s warm where it hits his skin. he resists the urge to ask himself if this is real.

he should be happy, over the fucking moon type of ecstatic, and he is somewhat, but old habits die hard. he can’t help but think about how he never wanted any of this. unrequited love is painful, yes, but it is safely painful, the kind that only ever affects him. no collateral damage. with taehyung outside of seokjin’s basement though, beyond the fourth of december, things can happen - things that won’t shape themselves according to his wishes the way his daydreams do - and it scares jimin. it scares jimin more than it makes him happy. despite that though, he knows he’s not going to do anything about it. the choice is neither courageous nor cowardly. it’s not even a choice at all. he’s just seriously going to sit back and let it happen because jimin is a cliche and he’s a cliche in love. love was something he sensed throughout the night and at various points in the museum. of course, there’s always the rush of blood, the palpitations, or the lightheadedness, but he pays no mind to such banal physical sensations because insomnia does those to him too. no. love was something that made itself so utterly present when he realized:

• that he was ready to die laughing at every punchline taehyung missed
• that he’ll probably believe in taehyung in a way that he never believed in himself
• that beautiful might be too mild a word for taehyung
• that divine is something more like it.

it’s when these things crossed his mind in various points throughout the night that jimin finally admitted that this was a helpless case. he doesn’t know where this is going, or what this means, or what he means to taehyung, but it doesn’t matter. not for now, anyway.

it’s alright not to know things sometimes, taehyung said. and even if it ends before it ever really begins, jimin will remain the same way he’s been the past six years, in love. it’s the only thing he knows for sure, the one thing he doesn’t question, and it’s enough to go on, for now.

it’s a week before he sees taehyung again, and if time was, in fact, linear and goes forward in one way, then a week would occupy a significantly shorter length than six years. that’s not how this past week felt like though, not to jimin, who has significantly longer waking moments than the average person and whose cell phone has remained silent all throughout. this past week felt like it had been stretched taut, right before the point of snapping, by a cellphone that had become a torture device in the hands of the beloved who doesn’t text.

so he could only describe it as breathtaking when he pulls open the door to see taehyung.

“hi.” he smiles, all cheeks and laugh lines.

“um,” jimin says, and it truly does feel like every time he sees taehyung, it’s for the first time. he’s still floored, just as much, every time.

“I hope you haven’t eaten,” taehyung says, stepping inside without an invitation, “I brought you dinner.”

“I wish you texted.” jimin mumbles, almost as an afterthought. and if taehyung is led to think it’s more about dropping by unexpectedly than the past week of radio silence, jimin doesn’t bother correcting him.

they eat like that again, at the makeshift table pushed up against the wall, with cardboard boxes, plastic utensils, and stolen glances that jimin pockets, only there’s something more to it this time, something between them, hanging unsaid, too small and too soon to be spoken into existence, even if it’s just in the form of questions. so jimin leaves it alone, or keeps it at bay anyway. he’ll let it gnaw at his bones later when he’s by himself. for now, though, he’ll pretend that there’s nothing else on the table apart from the chinese takeout and two cans of coke. taehyung gladly plays along. he talks about school, about his classes and exams and projects and papers. taehyung talks about himself and his friends and his family and some other odd things in between, and jimin listens.

he listens as taehyung tells a childhood story he promised to be very long and very boring, but its dullness didn’t make itself known to jimin at all. he listens to it with an easy smile because he’s not at all concerned about finding insight or humor in it, as he would be if it was someone else. what mattered was not so much what taehyung said, but the fact that it was taehyung who was saying it and that he was saying it for jimin, and at this point, jimin was ready to be the historian of taehyung’s life, to catalogue every single anecdote, and to chase after every awkwardly-phrased reflection that lost its way before it ever got anywhere.

“you know what’s funny?” taehyung says, later on in the night, “I’ve never told anyone these things before.”

“why?” why me?

“I don’t know.” taehyung smiles, but it’s gone before jimin can figure out what it means.  

it’s well past three am before either of them notices, and jimin is reminded yet again of bland yellow paintings that don’t give a fuck about time. tonight feels like that, jimin thinks. even if the sun rises later, changes the colors inside the small apartment, and tells taehyung it’s time to leave, this - right now - is just itself, all at once, no beginning and no end. it’s just something that is, and it’s something as tangible to jimin as a keepsake, something as itself, as in its own world as a snowglobe.

so even as they lie beside each other in jimin’s bed, close enough to feel there’s someone else there, nothing happens. nothing happens because it’s not that kind of night, and it’s not that kind of thing, not yet. the thing between them, whatever it is, is far too fragile and jimin knows enough to handle it with care. he thinks about the sculptures in the second floor of the museum, the installation taehyung didn’t get to see, and how with each single sculpture raised on a white pedestal, there’s a placard that says “hands off.” it’s much the same, jimin supposes. he might not know what those sculptures mean or what they’re trying to say, but he knows enough to understand that he’s not supposed to touch it, even if he wants to. as he glances at taehyung who looks back at him, jimin realizes that this one doesn’t need a placard. he’s too beautiful to touch anyway, even if that’s what he’s supposed to do with him.

“can I tell you something?” jimin says, drowning in the proximity of their bodies and the intimacy that it brings. “there were a lot of times when...I wanted to be someone else so much I felt like I was gonna explode."

taehyung is dipped in shadow, the television static playing off the side of his face as if it’s projected onto it. he doesn’t say anything. he just looks at jimin

“I like where I’m at right now, though.” jimin smiles, the closed-lip kind. “with you.”

as sleep comes to get him, he know it’s not because of the warmth off taehyung’s body. he knows that it’s more or less been three days, and this is his usual mark, but as jimin falls asleep to the sight of him - ice-pick scar and all - he tells himself that it’s okay to forego the truth every once in a while.

it doesn’t take too long for nights like that to become a fixture in their lives. sometimes taehyung would come by with a laptop and books, and they wouldn’t really say much to each other. jimin would just steal glances, pocketing every single one, and pretend he doesn’t know that taehyung’s campus is on the other side of town. on some other nights, taehyung would come by with nothing but a slump in his back, something that he straightens out on jimin’s bed.

nothing happens, still. and jimin is quite happy with that. nothing has ever felt so real in such a long time. he tells taehyung as much.

“what do you mean?” taehyung asks, softly laughing.

“it’s stupid.”

“tell me.”

jimin turns his body to look at him, so they’re facing each other, mirroring each other. he doesn’t know what time it is, and he doesn’t care. the sheets feel soft. they smell of lavender and taehyung.

“I feel like so far, what I think is real has just been my brain’s best guess.” jimin says, half as much to the pillow beneath his cheek as to taehyung. “I’m never really awake with insomnia, you know? I’m never entirely sure if the dream I had when I was kind-of asleep really was a dream, or if it really happened. and when I’m awake, I have to ask myself whether I’m having just a really lucid dream. I’m in a constant state of hypnagogia.”

taehyung looks at him with a crease between his brows, jimin holding his gaze. it may be trite and pointless for jimin to still think it at this point but taehyung really is beautiful.

“I’m here.” the beautiful boy says, and his hand moves from beneath his cheek to hold jimin’s. their hands stay there, just like that, between their bodies, the first real contact they’ve had in six years. jimin’s brain doesn’t short circuit like he expected it to, and even if his pulse picks up double-time, it’s not anything overwhelming. the smile that lands on his face isn’t anything uncontrollable too, an easy-come-easy-go kind of smile. but as he watches taehyung’s lashes slowly flutter to a stop when he falls asleep, it’s in this moment where jimin realizes that what he felt the past six years might not have been love. this - right now - is something more like it.

“I thought it’d be prettier than this.” taehyung says, and then yawns, as if to drive home his point.

jimin smiles.

it’s somewhat pretty, jimin thinks, if you crane your head high enough that the jagged urban skyline stops being in your field of vision and all that’s left is the chalky sky. he’s gotten used to the look of sunrises by now. it stopped being beautiful to him a long time ago. this is a different view from what he sees from his window though, so he gives it another chance.

the river doesn’t look like a river in its stillness. it’s almost like its in a container, like the only movement that could ever disrupt the relative calmness of the surface can come from above, from them, if they decide to throw a shoe into it. in the darkness, the water looks like a truckload of velvety black ink had been spilled into it, and jimin is reminded yet again of why he thinks drowning is the worst way to go.

jimin hoists himself up on the large slab of rectangular cement that serves as the barrier. it extends as far as the eye can see, maybe taking up the whole riverside. the sun hasn’t risen so there aren’t that many joggers or cyclists yet, just the odd one or two who don’t bother sparing them a glance. above them, the sky looks like a chalkboard still. he tries to look for stars but there aren’t any. it’s like there’s a dusty gray blanket strewn over the city, and only the moon’s glow could be seen through the gaps in the fabric. even then, it’s faint. jimin could almost pretend it isn’t there. the air is cold, but not that cold, not as harsh as it had been the previous nights, but they bought hot chocolate anyway for good measure.

“I want the real thing.” taehyung says, walking on the ground.

jimin walks on the raised cement slab. “what real thing?”

“like, the beach. we should go to the beach sometime. there’s nothing to see here.”

they walk lazily, almost exaggeratedly so, slowly slinging one foot in front of the other to tread a straight line. their footsteps land lightly, barely scraping against the ground, even if the massive sky above seems to bear down upon their shoulders. jimin feels weightless, like a slight gust of wind can take him anywhere it wants.

“when I was like five or something,” taehyung begins, unprompted, “there was this one day where I ate a ton of candy so I wasn’t supposed to drink coke, but I wanted to, so I went to the fridge anyway.”

“uh-oh.”

taehyung smiles up at him, “when I opened the fridge, this glass bottle of coke fell to floor, right beside my foot. there was a lot of broken glass all around me, and my dad came running. I think he saw from my face that I was alright. that’s why he said, ‘good thing you weren’t hurt.’"

he pauses for a while, taking a sip from the styrofoam lidded hot chocolate.

“that made me look down at my feet, and there was just so much blood everywhere.” he says, as if he can still see it, “I didn’t feel anything though. it was only painful when they were stitching it up.”

they continue walking like that for a while, quiet, everything in sight either gray or blue...except in the distance, if jimin squints enough, he can see the faint beginnings of something orange between two skyscrapers. he slows to a stop, just staring at it gradually get less shy. taehyung follows his line of sight and stops too. he hoists himself up on the barrier and sits down at the edge, feet dangling over the small patch of rocks where the river begins. jimin sits down beside him.

“your turn.” taehyung says.

“my turn?”

“yeah, tell me a story. something interesting.”

“I don’t have interesting childhood stories like that.”

“it doesn’t have to be your story.”

jimin thinks for a while, looking over the water. the black ink seems to get more diluted as the something orange in the distances rises higher. it’s like someone’s pouring more water into the river container so that the black ink would get weaker.

“once upon a time,” jimin begins. he can feel taehyung grin beside him, “there were two fish swimming in a river.”

“oh come on.”

“just listen.”

“okay, okay. sorry.”

they stare at each other like that, smiling, for a little longer than necessary.  

“once upon a time, there were two fish swimming in a river.” jimin says again, trying to remember the story. he realizes that he couldn’t forget it even if he tried. “the two fish were just chilling, hanging out. the water’s warm and clear, so it’s nice, and they’re just swimming. they swim until they see this older fish, you know, going in their direction.”

“are they gonna get murdered?”

“no, shut up.”

taehyung laughs, softly.

“so this older fish sees them and he nods at them and goes, ‘morning, boys. how’s the water today ?’ and then he proceeds to swim to wherever it was that he was going. the two younger fish swim on for a while too, and they’re quiet as they swim, until finally one of them turns to the other and asks, ‘what the hell is water?’”

as if to mimic the story, both of them grow quiet for a while too. the sun rises in the distance. it’s above the horizon now, warping the sky and the silhouette of skyscrapers around it as if it was rippling in the river’s surface. for a second, jimin thinks the moment might have already passed, the story carried away by the light gust of wind that smelled faintly of chemical spill, but then taehyung breaks the quiet, cutting through it, as he asks, “what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

taehyung looks at him, “you can’t just tell me a story and not know what it means.”

“why not?”

taehyung draws his gaze away, looking at the river instead. “I don’t know.”

it’s a while before he speaks up again. the hot chocolate in their hands no longer hot. “jimin?”

“yeah?”

“you think we know what our water is?”

“...I doubt it.”

they just sit like that, taehyung leaning back, looking up at the sky, both hands on the concrete slab, jimin hunched over himself, staring at his feet dangling a few feet above the rocks but not really seeing them.

“do you find the sunrise pretty again?” taehyung asks.

“not really.”

“what about the river?”

jimin looks over the surface, a light gray now, rippling in a near constant pattern. “it kinda looks like...television static.”

taehyung hunches into himself too, as if he wants to get a good look at the static jimin’s speaking about. he sighs, not the heavy-exasperated kind, but not the fond-lovesick kind either. it’s just a sigh, but it makes jimin wants to reach out, hold taehyung’s hand in his own, and tell him that it’s still difficult to believe that he’s real, that maybe that’s partly why jimin manages to be calm around his presence is because a part of him still doesn’t believe that any of this is real. he thinks that he’ll wake up later on so he tells himself to enjoy this lucid dream as best as he can. he wants to hold taehyung’s hand again, feel the callouses and the warmth, to keep himself here, wherever here is, whether this is real or a dream, he doesn’t want to leave.

the sun is up though, and it’s not that cold. and despite everything, jimin still doesn’t know what this is, what they are, so his hands stay put. in his mind, he sees a placard say hands off, but as much as jimin would like to say that taehyung is the sculpture, he isn’t. this something between them is, and it’s far too precious, far too one-of-a-kind, and if jimin’s hand was to push it off its pedestal, he would spend the rest of his life paying for it.

“it’s an all-out ant war.” taehyung says, of the television static. “so many ants.”

he’s staring at it all glassy eyed as it plays itself out on the skin of his face. it’s the night before taehyung leaves, and jimin is taking in as much as he can before the long winter absence. he knows he should shift to his other side. his left hand is starting to fall numb under the weight of his body, the feeling of television static worming its way into his fingers. but he doesn’t move. he can’t seem to turn his eyes away from the boy next to him.

taehyung’s train ride home is scheduled first thing in the morning. he didn’t say anything about wanting jimin to see him off though, so jimin doesn’t say anything back. besides, he wouldn’t know what to do anyway. there’s a reason why the climax of so many romance stories takes place in train stations or airport terminals, so much so that it’s been cliched. it’s where things - obscure, unspoken things - get settled, in the face of the impending separation or distance. and even if their situation is nowhere as dramatic or as trite as a romance film, it’s still kind of the same. a hug, or lack thereof, or its length, or how close their bodies press against each other, would have told jimin a lot of things. he isn’t sure if he’s ready for that, so it’s okay that taehyung didn’t ask him. if he did, though, jimin would have said yes. in a heartbeat.

“are you excited to see your family again?” jimin asks, gently breaking the quiet.

“my siblings, yeah.”

“what about your parents?”

“I guess.”

“you guess?”

“I don’t know.” taehyung says, sliding his back down from the headboard. he rests his head on the pillow next to jimin’s and turns to face him, finally level with each other. “hi,” he says, smiling, the closed-lip kind where the smile is more in the corner of his eyes than his lips.

“stop.” jimin says, trying not to get flustered. as delicately as he can, he asks, “why aren’t you happy to see your parents?”

taehyung sighs a long one, and then: “it’s not that I’m not happy to see them. it’s just, you know.”

“what?”

“every time I come home, I remember why I was so happy to move to the city.”

“why’s that?”

“they’re just playing house.” he says, deadpan, as if he didn’t care. “I love them. I do. I just wish they’d separate already.”

“why?”

“I think they’ll be happier that way.”

jimin just looks at him for a while, unsure, almost wishing he didn’t steer the conversation to a place where taehyung’s eyes are dimmed.

“I’m sure they loved each other at one point.” jimin finally says.  

“...yeah.”

and then it’s quiet again, and where it’s quiet, jimin thoughts are deafening. these days, though, they only ever say one thing: hold his hand. jimin doesn’t listen to it. he knows better.

“tae?”

“hmm?”

“you okay?”

“yeahhh.” taehyung says, his voice betrays him though. “I just...how can what you feel just slowly stop being real?”

“...I wouldn’t know.”

“you really think they loved each other at one point?”

“I’m sure they did.”

“how can it just stop then, if it was real?” taehyung says, no longer looking at him. “maybe it was never real, you know? maybe they just felt like it was...what was it you said one time? something your doctor told you?”

“...just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”

taehyung’s face falls at that, almost as if he was hoping jimin wouldn’t remember.

“yeah,” he finally says. “that.”

the pub is just as dimly lit as it had been the first time they were here. there’s still the gossamer veil of smoke suspended in the air. the whiskey’s just as cheap. only, there’s something about tonight that makes it worse somehow, more miserable. it might be the knowledge that it’s christmas eve and they’re spending it here.

“did he say when he’s coming back?” jeongguk asks.

“after new year’s, I think.”

jeongguk takes a rather large gulp from his glass and slams it down against the bar’s countertop. he scowls at the burn snaking its way down his throat. “you think I should pass out in front of namjoon too?”

“that’s not funny.” jimin says, but he smiles despite himself.

“why did it have to come true for you, of all people?” he sniggers.

jimin laughs, low in his chest, as he tries to shove the other boy off the high bar stool. when the words echo around him though, he feels himself sober up despite the alcohol-induced warmth in his head. his smile slips and drops to the floor. “let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

the other boy looks at him, “what does that mean?”

“it means, I don’t know what we are...shit’s weird.”

“doesn’t he like you too?”

“I don’t know.”

“hasn’t he said anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“can you stop saying ‘I don’t know.’”

“well, I don’t fucking know anything, okay. what would you do if it was namjoon?”

jeongguk falls silent at that. he looks at the glass in his hands, half-full-half-empty, with what could have been apple juice in another life, one where they don’t spend christmas choking on smoke from other people’s cigarettes.

“I’ve always found love easier to give than to receive.” he finally says.

“me too.” jimin says. he can hear carols and a child’s laughter from outside.

“hi.”

“what-”

“let’s go.”

taehyung steps inside and heads straight for jimin’s cabinet.

“what, taehyung--” jimin struggles to catch up, “what are you doing here?”

the other boy ignores him and starts to rummage for something.

"taehyung.”

he finally looks up at that, “what?”

“shouldn’t you be with your family?”

he shrugs, and continues with his search. “I didn’t want to spend my birthday there.”

“your birthday?”

“yeah,” he says, breaking into a smile once he found jimin’s backpack from the bottom drawer. “I wanted to go to the beach so let’s go.”

“what, now?”

“if we leave now we can make it there by midnight.” he says, hastily shoving some clothes into the bag, “in time for my birthday.”

jimin didn’t even know. “it’s freezing.”

“wear lots of layers then.”

“taehyung.”

“jimin.”

they stare at each other. jimin’s always been weak.

“fuck, fine.”

it isn’t until they’re at the outskirts of the city, where the traffic has thinned out and the foliage has grown thicker by the side of the road, that it hits jimin just how much he missed taehyung. the winter absence wasn't as terrible as he thought - taehyung’s presence affects him so much that it always leaves residues - but to have him back, here, next to jimin, with him, there’s nothing quite like the real thing. jimin suddenly becomes aware that they’ve been mostly quiet for the past hour, driving in near absolute silence since there’s barely any cars around and there’s no music playing. he quite likes it, he thinks, because music that someone else had written might cheapen the moment that jimin’s having, but it gets him thinking nonetheless.

“do you remember pink floyd?”

“hmm?”

“our first conversation ever. it was about pink floyd.”

“pink…” taehyung keeps his eyes on the road before him, but jimin can see him thinking. “oh! pink floyd, yeah I remember.”

it’s quiet again before taehyung glances at him, “…can I confess something?” he says.

“what?”

“I’m afraid you’ll stop liking me though, if i say it.”

jimin almost laughs. “no, I won’t.”

taehyung takes a deep breath, “I didn’t really listen to pink floyd.” he says,  “at the time I think I was taking a class called photography and culture. the album cover was just used as an example so much that I gave it a listen.”

jimin smiles, looking out the window. “did you like it?”

“I did, yeah.”

“we’re good then.”

“I don’t really understand it though.”

“it’s alright not to know things sometimes.” jimin says, “room for interpretation and all that.”

they share a smile, the closed-lip kind that jimin likes so much.

it’s another hour before the drive comes to an end. they park at a small gravel clearing midway down the hill. there’s a railing that’s coated in chipped red paint, overlooking the beach. in the dark, near midnight, it’s difficult to make out where the shore meets the water and where the water meets the horizon.

“come on,” taehyung says, his earlier bristling excitement now morphing into something quieter, deeper, something closer to apprehension.

“you okay?” jimin asks.

“yeah, just happy.” he says, smiling. jimin decides not to prod any further.

the beach isn’t anything spectacular. it isn’t anything like the ones jimin sees in brochures, though maybe that’s just because it’s dark. the beach looks like it’s barely anything more than a shoreline with patches of rocks haphazardly lining where the water closes in on the sand. there’s also a number of chunky drying branches strewn throughout the strip of gray-ish sand. jimin gets the feeling that they didn’t come here for this though - not the water, nor the sand, not even the feeling of being alone together - so jimin looks up, wanting to see the thing that they drove nearly three hours for. his breath catches in his throat.

“well?” taehyung asks, smirking.

“it’s...nice.”

“nice?”

“isn’t it?

“yeah but “nice”?”

jimin shrugs, “I wanted to offend it.”

“why?”

“for not caring.”

taehyung rolls his eyes, “what makes you think it’ll be offended then.”

jimin smiles, letting the saltwater wind tug at his clothes. he bends down and takes the blanket clumsily folded at the base of his backpack and sets it out on the dark sand.

“what would you call it then?” he asks taehyung.

“hmm,” the other boy hums, still looking up. “an interstellar spill.”

“that’s a good band name.” jimin says, “interstellar spill.”

they lie down beside each other, much in the same way they do in jimin’s bed. only, the ceiling above their heads is bigger now, endless, and they can kind of see the curve of the earth from it. from the square of his window, the night sky is nothing but a mass of black cloth strewn over the city to suffocate it, with a layer of chalk dust to give it a sense of dimension. here, though, jimin can see violets and blues and even faint reds in some places. he can see stars. they look like little pin pricks, a hint to humanity that there’s something beyond the black cloth, something good, something better. it makes jimin feel small. it makes him think about things he doesn’t want to think about.

“tae,” he says, “do you believe in soulmates?”

“not really.”

“me neither.”

“I think like, once people believe that they’ve found their soulmate, they forget to put the work in.”

“yeah.” jimin says, their words barely cutting through the sound of the wind. “it’s also kinda weird to think that you didn’t really choose that person, you know? that they were chosen for you.” he looks up at the sky, “why would anyone want that?”

“yeah,” taehyung says, like he’s in a daze. “I think maybe our destiny isn’t to love one particular person, but just like, to love in general.”

jimin is quiet for a while, and then finally, he whistles, “that’s deep, bro.”

“fuck off.” taehyung chuckles, softly, “why are you thinking about soulmates anyway?”

“just thought about the expression ‘written in the stars,'” he says, knowing taehyung’s looking at him. “the stars are so small and so far away. why should anyone give a fuck about what’s written in them?”

“you’re so angsty,” taehyung says, turning to his body to face him, an arm tucked beneath his head like a pillow.

jimin smiles, “I never grew up from the seventeen year old you met.”

they fall silent again, content with hearing the wind waft through and tug and pull at the things around them. the air smells of saltwater and faintly of jimin’s lavender-scented fabric softener from the blanket beneath them. he feels small, but from what specifically, he isn’t too sure. it’s either because of the endless night sky that seems to close in on him or from the way taehyung’s looking at him. he supposes that maybe it’s the latter. he can look the night sky in the eye for an extended amount of time. he hasn’t been able to do the same with taehyung.

jimin doesn’t know if he falls asleep at some point. maybe he does, because there’s no way time passed by that quickly. when he checks his phone, he sees that it’s already past midnight. he doesn’t know why he’s nervous about the thing he’s about to say.

“tae?”

“...yeah?”

“happy birthday.”

he can feel taehyung’s gaze on the side of his face just as much as he can feel the cold saltwater breeze on his skin.

“jimin.”

“hm?”

“I’m in love with you.”

for a second, for a long infinite second, all he can hear is his blood creating oceans in his ears. he realizes though, later on, that what he’s hearing comes from a few feet away from him. it isn’t in his head, after all.

“tae.” he finally says, “you don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

jimin sits up, abruptly, and his body struggles to catch up. he sees looming black spots in the corners of his vision. there’s not enough blood in his head, and his heart pumps faster to compensate. the ground sways beneath him and it really feels like the gust of wind just tried to take him away from here.

“jimin? I’m sorry, I-” taehyung sits up too, his outstretched hand wavering between them. “shit. I spoke too soon, I’m sorry. I-I know it’s too soon for that, I just…”

no, jimin wants to say. I’ve been pining after you for six years. it’s not too soon.

the words are on his lips, but the wind carries them away, proving just how empty they are.

“this isn’t real.” is what he says instead, heavy enough to land on the ground between them with a thud, heavy enough that the wind can’t take it away.

“what?” taehyung blinks.

“this can’t be real.” he says, breathlessly, and then, as a realization: “this isn’t real.” he mutters it to himself over and over again as he gets up and walks toward the shore, slowly at first, and then he practically runs to the water. the cold bites at his skin whenever it swallows up his ankles, but he barely feels it. he tries not to double over and heave, mostly to avoid the melodrama of it all, but his body gives him no choice.

he spent his entire adult life being stupidly in love with a boy he only ever saw once a year that he completely overlooked the possibility that the boy might turn around one day and love him back.

it was impossible. things like that don’t happen. not to him.

jimin fell in love because he wanted to escape himself with someone as beautiful as he was ugly, and taehyung...taehyung was not only beautiful, he was divine.

I’m in love with you, divinity had said.

but how can taehyung be divine when he has the bad taste of loving jimin back?

it’s in this moment that jimin realizes none of it had been real.

saltwater starts to prickle at his eyes, cutting through his sore waterlines and falling down his cheeks, only to meet saltwater again. there’s an ocean in his eyes and in his ears. he’s drowning in it, inside himself. what the hell is water? a fish asks him.

“jimin.” taehyung stands a few feet away, safe from the water.

“you’re not real.” he looks at him, sadly.

“jimin, please. whatever you’re thinking, please stop. please.”

“six years.” he says, throat utterly constricted. “I never once wanted you to love me back. not once.”

“jimin.” the other boy says. “please don’t do this.”

jimin looks at him for a while, his chest still hurting. he wipes at his eyes if only to give himself a semblance of strength since saltwater won’t stop streaming down from them.

he stares at taehyung for what he knows is the final time. the canvas of the night sky above him slowly lifts up like a stage curtain at the end of the show. behind it, the yellow painting is revealed, stretching across the expanse of the horizon. and then, all of a sudden, a line of ants starts to trickle in from the corner. they slowly come in droves, swarming until the entire painting is covered in them, so much so that jimin can no longer see a trace of yellow. only then does jimin realize it’s not ants, but television static.

he looks at taehyung again. “I curated this fantasy around you so I can escape.”

“jimin.”

“when you say you love me, you return me back to myself. I don’t want to go back. please. not yet.”  

he looks up at his own half of the sky, calling out to anyone up there, but his vision is obscured by tears. the stars glitch until the pin prick holes look like they were punched through, and then a swarm of ants trickle out of them. jimin looks away, knowing how it’s gonna end. in the distance, he hears a siren singing him to shipwreck.

if I were a good man, I’d talk with you more often than I do.

If I were to sleep, I could dream.

If I were afraid, I could hide.

If I go insane, please don’t put your wires in my brain.

“call doctor sejin!”

a voice shouts, a world above him. yoongi?

“fuck, jimin. are you--”

“...where am I?”

he looks around and sees his own studio apartment. the only thing out of place is the elderly nurse behind yoongi. “who are you?” he asks her, voice hoarse. “why are you in my apartment?”

“shit.” yoongi sighs, looking away.

just then, doctor sejin barges in, looking breathless and disheveled. “is he out of it?”

“no.” yoongi says, finally moving away from jimin to pace around the room.

jimin feels a foreboding weight settle on his stomach. dread. “what’s going on?” he says, the look in their eyes chipping away at his composure. “why are you here, sejin?”

sejin looks over at yoongi, who understands what the look means. he nods, once, mouth in a hard line.

silently, he grabs a nearby chair and sets it beside the bed, near enough to be able to reach out for jimin’s hand if he wanted to. he doesn’t, though. yoongi’s spine grows even more rigid as he braces himself.

“jimin.” he says, “this is going to be hard for you to believe, but...do you trust me?”

jimin looks into his eyes, searches for an answer, but finds none. he looks at sejin and the nurse, who only return his gaze with worry etched in their faces. he turns his eyes back to yoongi and nods, hesitantly.

“jimin.” he says, voice breaking. “this is a psychiatric hospital. you’ve been here for six years now.”

it’s as if the everyone in the world stops breathing then. the clock on the wall continues to tick.

“what?”

“you’re in here for schizophrenia.”

a laugh escapes his throat. “what?”

“jimin--”

“no, I’m--what? sejin,” he says, looking up at him. “no. sejin’s treating me for depression and insomnia.”

none of them say anything.

“where’s taehyung?” he finally says, “yoongi, where’s taehyung?”

yoongi’s body crumples at that, as if his chest was as flimsy and disposable as paper. he clenches his jaw. “the taehyung in your head isn’t real.”

“what?”

“you met him once. six years ago. on seokjin’s birthday. you tripped on acid that night and seokjin’s parents found out. you were never invited again.”

his heart continues to thump erratically at his chest, like it wants to break loose.  

“I lost contact with them after college.” yoongi continues, “the people in your head, they’re all seokjin’s friends. jeongguk, hobi, namjoon, everyone.”

“how,” jimin starts, looking at yoongi warily, “how do you know so much about what I see in my head? if it’s just in my head...”

“it’s been the same shit for six years now.” yoongi says, sadly, but with venom and exhaustion and other things in between. “you snap out of it every fourth of december, when seokjin’s birthday ends.”

“but this year, you didn’t.” doctor sejin finally speaks up, “we think it was triggered by the fact that yoongi wasn’t here.”

“what happened in your head, jimin?” yoongi says, not bothering to mask the guilt in his voice, “while I was gone?”

“what made you wake up?” sejin asks.

“I...taehyung, h-he and I, we...I need to find him.” jimin moves to get off the bed, but three figures suddenly loom over him, stopping him. all of them grow still.

“you made it all up in your head, jimin. you never spoke to taehyung again.” yoongi says, gently, like his heart is breaking too. “after that night, you chased a bottle of aspirin with vodka and then you spiraled and then you were admitted here.”

“that’s not--that can’t...this isn’t real.”

“jimin, this is real. look at me, this is real.”

it makes jimin look up, even if only slightly, to see in sharpened detail everything in the room. pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place with an audible, damning click. jimin feels saltwater in his eyes.

“I don’t want to go back to this. please. not yet.”

“jimin.” yoongi says, “please it’s been six years. you’ve been stuck in the same place for six years now.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ve been stuck too,” yoongi says, his eyes are dry but there’s something else there that’s infinitely more miserable, empty. “I’ve been here every weekend for the past six years. let me move on with my life. I don’t know how much longer I can…” he looks away and then looks at jimin again, hollow steel in in his gaze, “jimin, please. let this go.”

jimin’s eyes wander over behind yoongi’s shoulder, towards a piece of plastic glinting against the fluorescent lights. it’s a dvd, the case is open and the disc isn’t there. even from his bed, jimin can make out the words, printed across in bold letters, ‘the national gallery, with a showcase of the early italians.’

“please.” yoongi says, bringing him back. “let him go. let taehyung go.”

beside the dvd, jimin sees something, and he finally understands where the buzzing is coming from. not ants, but television static.

jimin can see his breath take shape in a faint mist in front of him, a reminder that he’s still alive.

and as much as he tries to sink his hands into the pockets of his pants, the cold remains, and it cuts bone deep.

this is harder than it should be.

he’s making it harder than it should be...old habits die hard, he supposes.

his gaze flits between the small piece of paper in his hand and the buzzers labelled by the side of the door. jung hoseok 204. his finger wavers in front of it, as unsure as he always is. he could still walk back. his apartment’s only a fifteen minute walk away anyway...

it’s cold, though.

he can hear the chattering of his teeth more than he can feel it, and he wonders if anyone else can feel it too. it seems like they don’t. the few people meandering along the street don’t seem bothered by it. it’s just october, after all.

he presses the buzzer for apartment 204.

when the door opens, he’s greeted by a man with red hair. his smile is big. “park jimin?! welcome, welcome. come in!”

jimin doesn’t take off his coat he’s ushered inside.

“fuck, it’s cold.”

“is it?”

just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.