Work Text:
His bones ache.
The subway station is dark, musty, and almost empty. Nothing but miles of dirty tile. His entire body groans in protest as he steps onto the empty platform. Dim, flickering lights dot the walls every so often. Down this deep, the sky is an eternity away: convoluted destinies, expensive universities, broken windows, and locked up doors don’t exist here.
He wonders how far away the stars are.
He picks up his suitcase and shuffles forward. Starlight doesn’t matter when there’s nothing to guide him to. Fate doesn’t matter. The past doesn’t matter. Only the present, with its dreary grey pallor, matters. Min Yoongi grabs his suitcase and walks forward, but he’s moving in place.
Min Yoongi is stuck.
He can feel Seokjin’s eyes on him.
They burn into his back, observing, fiery, accusatory. Yoongi gulps down his glass of water, praying silently that his shaking hands won’t send the cup flying. He sets it down. Seokjin’s presence makes him feel tiny—and Yoongi hates feeling tiny. The vulnerability and the helplessness make him sick; he feels seven again.
“You never told me you were about to be homeless,” says the older man.
“You never asked,” replies Yoongi. Quiet, subdued.
“It’s not something I thought you’d have to deal with! I’m your friend-- you could’ve trusted me to help you.”
Yoongi says nothing. He doesn’t want to feel like what he is: a college kid stuck in bankruptcy with no energy to find a way out. But he shuffles around, and pins Seokjin with a look, trying so hard to convey that he’s tired, that he just wants a break .
Something in Seokjin’s inferno eyes softens. “You could have asked me for help whenever.”
“No, I couldn’t have.”
“Well, now you’re suspended and about to get evicted so your plans obviously worked out fine,” spits Seokjin.
Yoongi winces. Screaming red signs flash across his vision. Can he just pound it into his fucking thick skull that he has nowhere to go?! You’re pathetic, you--just beg, beg because it’s all you’re good for and all you can do and nothing is ever going to--
A heavy hand rests on Yoongi’s shoulder. “You know what?” Seokjin sighs, anger slowly bleeding out of him. “It doesn’t matter. I can help you out.”
“How?” Yoongi breathes. He doesn’t quite have the optimism to have hope.
Seokjin winks, and for a brief moment the mood lightens a bit. “Don’t worry about it--I know just the thing.”
And because he never was very good at learning from the consequences of his actions, Yoongi heaves a shuddering sigh into Seokjin’s chest. If he were just to close his eyes, everything would cease to exist. He lets himself melt, melt back into that illusion of everything will be okay. Everything will be okay.
Everything is...fine. Stagnant, monotonous, dull, but fine, and that’s all that Yoongi ever wanted. It’s all he convinces himself he needs.
He has a job ringing up customers at a convenience store. He has a temporary spot on Seokjin’s couch. He’s so close to graduating (and, consequently, so close to having to actually think about student loans, but at least he’ll have accomplished something .) He can feed himself and clothe himself--
--because of all of these things, Min Yoongi should be happy. Should be, but he can’t find it in him. He doesn’t know how to remember being happy.
It’s dark. It’s quiet. The silence reverberates out like the dying peal of a melancholic chord.
It’s lonely here, sitting on Seokjin’s windowsill, wearing Seokjin’s slippers, and staring out at Seokjin’s view of the Seoul skyline. There are no stars in the sky. It looks like the gaping maw of some beast, lunging towards the gentle streetlights like it’s moments away from swallowing it whole. Half of Yoongi wants the night sky to engulf him until he’s gone; the other half is too empty to care.
Yoongi wants the stars back, the stars he never had: Yoongi just wants an ocean of light to drown in. He wants to swim in the cosmos, even if it burns him. He just wants to feel like he can belong somewhere.
He’s lost.
The apartment is so silent that even the sound of his heart is like thunder, but Yoongi is smart enough to barely breathe as he rummages through his backpack and pulls out a half-empty Ziploc bag.
Not for the first time, Yoongi thinks that cocaine splattered against the back of his hand looks just like a swathe of stars.
Not for the first time, his starlight only brings darkness.
Darkness is still lonely.
It had been entirely unintentional.
“Can’t you be any fucking quieter about this?”
“It’s not like anybody’s going to be out here. We’re alone.”
“Just...be quiet, okay? I hand you the money, and you hand me the goods. That’s all you have to do, every single time.”
“ I should probably advise against someone as young as you doing drugs, but then I’d be out of business.”
He traces his fingers over the Ziploc bag, idly messing with the opening. He had stumbled into illegal activity and instead of escaping while he could, he’d come out of it with a bag of cocaine. He can still hear the throaty voice of the old man—the dealer—singling him out, accusatory.
“I don’t want people to think I’m here for charity work, but you look like you need some fun.”
He purses his lips and stuffs it in a drawer. No, no, no, no, no, he thinks . I’m not going to get hooked on coke. Never, never, never, never, never.
His shoulders scream with tension. His throat is dry; his eyes are heavy. Ears numb, knees aching, mind buzzing—he wants so desperately to let go. To fall asleep and wake up without dismal grades or a crappy home stuffed with eviction notices. He wants to be happy again, have a good time again.
(I don’t want people to think here I’m for charity work, but you look like you need some fun.)
The heater chooses this exact moment to fail, forcing the apartment into a silent, chilly cement block. He groans and burrows deeper into his too-thin jacket, wishing with a painful sense of hopelessness that the sun will be warmer tomorrow.
Liberation from the confines of Seokjin’s couch is not freedom. Not yet. There is still work to be done and tests to study for and bills to pay, but at least he’s off his crutch for now.
Yoongi shrugs his backpack off and rushes to his apartment’s tiny-ass kitchen. He needs a cup of coffee to distract himself; no, he needs cold water to chase away the tremors in his hands; no, he definitely needs a swig of beer to bury the pounding of his heart six feet under.
He decides on the beer.
Halfway through his second sip, the world starts spinning and Yoongi slides to the floor, feet sinking out from underneath him. Bills to pay; money to be earned, his brain says.
She’d been so young. And now Yoongi can’t drink away the look in her wide, naive eyes as the coke hit her brain and her pupils shrunk. He can’t escape the way she stumbled away until she was only a speck of ash on the horizon.
Crumpled paper bills weigh heavy in his back pocket. The half-empty pouch looked so awkward in her tiny palms; disinterested words had rolled so easily from his tongue; the money would look better in his wallet. Bills to pay; money to be earned.
He knows it’s not a justification. But when is selfishness ever justified?
Grinding, twisting, leering, laughing, gorgeous bodies sway on the dance floor. The garish music chases Yoongi all the way out the door, where he stumbles into the cool night air. He digs for a pack of cigarettes and frantically lights one, needing to see a little brightness in the emptiness of midnight. Needing a little calm.
He thought he needed different. But now he wants nothing more than for things to go back to normal; he wants nothing more than the agitated monster in his gut to stop rearing its head. The bitter smoke in his lungs feels like his only tether to reality.
In the corner of his eye, a shadow flickers.
“I hope I wasn’t the only one desperate enough to go clubbing alone,” a voice calls.
It’s enough to make Yoongi’s head stop spinning. The voice is clear, sweet, promising. He lets his fingers go limp and the cigarette flutters to the ground.
Echoing footsteps.
“I think there’s something fun in the desperation,” Yoongi says, turning around--only to be blinded by sunshine bathed in moonlight.
The man is beautiful, with eyes that illuminate the night sky and a radiant half-smile. He’s beautiful and Yoongi is here; the corners of the back alley draw in closer until the only thing keeping Yoongi standing is the feeling of this stranger’s hand in his hair. It’s a dizzying feeling.
He closes his eyes and lets himself drown in more stars than heaven could ever give him.
His name is Jung Hoseok.
His name is Jung Hoseok, and Yoongi has never seen a human being wear sunshine on their sleeve the way Hoseok does. He makes Yoongi laugh, makes Yoongi smile, makes things okay again--if only for a little while.
Of course, he leaves, and Yoongi walks away. Hoseok doesn’t look back. That’s what they were meant to be. Nothing really changes. There are still bills to pay and money to be made. Lives to ruin, he thinks, but by now it’s second nature to just ignore it all.
But Yoongi can’t ignore the sight of Jung Hoseok as he walks by the bustling coffee shop. Bells clatter, cinnamon floods his nose, warmth seeps into his veins: he hasn’t even blinked and now he’s seconds away from Hoseok. He shivers.
It’s funny how quickly life spins around. Steaming cups of too-expensive coffee, gooey brownies, a yearning heart that strains at his chest: of course it makes sense for Yoongi to finally take a chance. He pauses to scribble his name and number on a napkin before rushing out, practically skipping. He’d write a novel for Hoseok if only he asked.
That night, when Yoongi’s phone buzzes in his back pocket, the world stops. Night falls, but Yoongi’s laughing and smiling, entranced by the glowing starlight of his tiny phone screen. For now, it’s like the nucleus of everything that matters; it’s the sun; Yoongi is happy.
Red sweaters that scratch at his cheek when he leans against Hoseok’s chest. Yellow flowers clutched in tight fists as he pops in to see Hoseok at work. Orange peels and citrus scents and tangy juice that spills down their chins and sticks to their fingers. Green comforter draped over them; the warmth of each other, the warmth of their home. Blue skies--crystal heavens--overhead like pristine, clear windows draped with gossamer curtains and flooded with light. Purple lavender perfuming their living room because Hoseok swears up and down that aromatherapy makes the world go round.
Hoseok paints Yoongi’s world with a rainbow of colors. It’s breathtaking, glorious, beautiful.
For once, Yoongi lets himself believe that he can have good things.
Yoongi is not a good person.
He’s got thick wads of paper bills stuffed into his back pocket and it feels like something dirty is caking his skin, flooding his lungs, suffocating him. He’s not sure if it’s the guilt, the coke, or the way his wallet strains at the seams yet looks uglier than ever. But he can’t stop. He knows he can’t stop. Yoongi must be addicted to feeling helpless; yet his mind croons at him that he’s finally taking control over his life.
Panic digs its ugly claws into his stomach and he wants to retch. He jumps off his bed and paces back and forth between the narrow walls of his bedroom, feeling nervousness slosh around in his veins. He’s drowning from the inside out. A raspy moan spills out of his lips, scratched-up and raw; the walls crush him and spit him out onto the floor; his heart slows down, speeds up, does the fucking macarena and gives out.
His phone buzzes in his back pocket.
It’s Hoseok. Hoseok--Hoseok, what is he going to do about the date, what about--
“Hobi,” he whispers, holding the phone up to his ear like a lifeline. “Hobi, I’m--I’m sorry, I’ll be there in a sec.”
“Babe, are you okay? You sound kind of shaken up. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Yoongi says, and even in this drug-addled haze he can hear the frantic octave of his voice. “Nothing Hoseok, I’m totally fine.”
“Yoongles, no, honey, you’re not. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay, Yoongi, I’m coming over right now.”
No! he wants to scream, but even his thoughts give out.
Instead, he drops the phone and traces invisible patterns into the worn carpet of his bedroom. His fingers shake: he succumbs to his mind, letting it pinball all over the place; he succumbs to his heart, stuttering and stumbling in his ribcage.
The door creaks open. He barely hears Hoseok’s alarmed gasp.
Suddenly, a wave of fear crashes over him. He’s so aware of the wrinkles in his stained shirt, the irregular pattern of his breaths, the dirty bills burning in his back pocket, the way his eyes must be dilated to pricks; Hoseok will smell how he reeks of guilt and Hoseok will spit on his pathetic body.
A gentle hand reaches up to cradle Yoongi’s face. Yoongi holds his breath, too scared to even think.
Hoseok strokes his hair and pulls him in close, surrounding him with warmth and safety and home . He doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t accuse him of anything. He just sits and stays and that is more than Yoongi has ever had. It doesn’t matter that Yoongi isn’t a good person: Hoseok still...loves him.
If love feels like this—this gentle flame; this steadfast star; this moment on the floor of Yoongi’s bedroom, shivering, hoping—then Yoongi must be dreaming. If love is this fantasy, fizzing like gold oozing through his veins; if love is finding his place, then it is a treasure. A utopia. A daydream.
And if is is, he never wants to wake up.
Slap.
Two-and-a-half breath’s later, his mother starts crying right on cue. It happens every night and the routine’s never changed.
Hide in his room after dinner; wait for the sound of his mom’s humming to stop and the television to start blasting. Pretend to do his homework, even though no seven-year-old kid has any real homework to do; wait again.
Once his mom starts crying, he has only a few minutes before the screaming starts. He doesn’t know what his parents fight about every night, but he knows that his mother told him to stay out of the way.
He knows that, even when he hears glass shattering and the darkness threatens to overwhelm him, he needs to stay put. No crying. As a first grader, Yoongi already knows better than to think that everything is okay, but he’s smart enough to understand that no one can find out it isn’t. The world tells him that to be a family is to love; the sound of splintering glass tells him that to love is to fuel a demon.
Seven-year-old Min Yoongi always falls asleep to the soft cries of his mother and wakes up right before the monsters in his nightmares kill him. He dreams of freedom.
Twenty-six-year-old Min Yoongi never wants to wake up.
The flowers are like miniature galaxies blooming in his grasp. Bright flowers, only the brightest for Hoseok: sunshine marigolds, velvety roses, weeping sprigs of lavender. The flowers are blinding, the sunshine is cold in the February afternoon, the wallet in his back pocket is--for once--full.
(Full of what, he doesn’t like to say. Filthy money, pure white cocaine, human souls thrown carelessly into his pocket like the baggage of Death.)
He’s walking, counting down the steps until he reaches Hoseok’s apartment. He’s walking, growing dizzier as the roaring, chaotic sounds of a nearby casino loom over him, peppy, enticing, loud. He’s walking when he hears the growl and, suddenly, feels the solid slam of a fist into his cheek.
Blood wells up in his mouth. A stranger with dark, feral eyes and claw-like nails shoves him to the ground and the both of them go tumbling into a narrow alley next to the casino. Arms, legs, teeth, fingers overwhelm Yoongi’s senses when the stranger suddenly goes limp.
“Please,” he croaks, collapsing onto the grime. “I just...wanted some more.”
Yoongi goes cold. The stranger’s eyes gaze at him, broken, dim. The eyes of someone desperate beyond humanity. The eyes of a corpse.
An echo of Yoongi’s past.
(Or maybe this is the only future he has ahead of him, some immovable destiny. Money exchanges hands, poison fed to innocents: there are bills to be paid.)
Yoongi blinks and suddenly the stranger wheezes madly, scrambling off the ground and running off--Yoongi blinks and his pocket is empty and his wallet is already out of sight. He can’t move for five minutes, then, like a popped bubble, his knees buckle. He looks down.
The flowers are worse than wilted. They’re desecrated smears.
Silently, he pulls out his phone and sends a text to Hoseok. There can’t be Hoseok’s birthday dinner if there’s no money to pay for it.
To: hobi bub~~~
I’m going to be a little late! Dw everything’s fine, something came up. See you soon <3
Lies. The weight of them suffocates him, sloshes around in his stomach like something disgusting--but still, still , he steps into the cool dark interior of the casino.
Min Yoongi walks out with a pocket even fuller than before and a soul that’s slowly draining empty.
On the way to Hoseok’s apartment, he stops to buy a bouquet of flowers. This time, they only have roses--crimson, like love, anger, hatred, and blood.
It happens again. And again and again and again, to the point where mistakes become his new normal: Yoongi is a broken record slamming into Hoseok’s life and he hates it. But how else can he help pay rent? How else can he pay off his debt? How else is he supposed to stay afloat in a world determined to drown him?
(Or shoot him dead. He’s seen it happen to people far more important. Maybe losing his sanity is the only way to keep his life.)
For too long, risk was his only security. He risked his life, risked his money, risked his love, and in return he got a fat stack of money. Stability.
He was so blind. Every time he bent down to kiss away Hoseok’s questions, every time he crashed into their bed at midnight, every time he wandered home with cocaine dusting his face like freckles, every time he came back with blood--not stars--swathed over his knuckles.
Hoseok is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He moves like a flower and laughs like rain and smiles like a goddamn angel. Yoongi wants nothing more than to be with him, stay with him, love him.
But Min Yoongi is not a good person.
It’s like a bomb detonating.
Everything implodes on itself. The world bends. Risk is not security: it’s a fucking dumb mistake and now Yoongi has nothing, nothing as time bends and reality warps and he tries his hand again, so fucking arrogant (doesn’t Min Yoongi know better than to believe that everything will be okay? ) when he throws down stack after stack and comes up with nothing.
It’s been a year. A year of pure bliss; a year of pure hell; a year of everything in between.
Drinking himself blackout drunk. Living in denial. Falling into blown-wide eyes and drug-colored fogs. Slapping bags of destruction into needy hands and tucking bills into his back pocket. Vices: and yet, maybe love is his only vice--love is like staring at the sun for too long; it’s blinding. Or maybe he was just blind to begin with.
But now, for once, his eyes are open. He can see perfectly.
It’s like walking through wreckage in slow motion, seeing every dusty particle of debris crash down around him. The twist of Hoseok’s lips as he spits, “Pay me back with what?” The glossy splatter of tears staining the tile beneath him. The distant shadow of the moon, like it’s watching and even it’s heart is breaking.
Even the moon is screaming with him in silent, steady pain.
Time stretches on, dragging its nails across Yoongi’s skin, ripping into his back. The moon is screaming; and Hoseok--Hoseok the star, Hoseok the sun, Hoseok the galaxy--is completely, unrecognizably silent.
Yoongi’s world has been eclipsed.
Yoongi only seems to get beaten to a pulp during broad daylight.
A guttural moan claws its way out of his throat, pain smarting in every atom of his body. Blood dribbles down his chin and he spits, barely managing to roll out of the way before his attacker lunges at him. He doesn’t even manage to get a breath in when his back is slammed up against the ground, his head colliding with the pavement with a heavy slap. Hot, sour breath fans into his face and Yoongi doesn’t see his life flash before his eyes, doesn’t cry, doesn’t scream, doesn’t even think--
Three, ringing gunshots snap through the empty air.
Bang
Bang
Bang
The sound is like thunder rolling across an empty sky.
The body above him collapses, crushing him like a heavy weight. Limp. Suffocating. All Yoongi can hear is static, nothing but static as his body moves like a robot, shucking the corpse aside, shakily standing up.
Five minutes later, a boy with wide, wet eyes is shaking his hand awkwardly and introducing himself as Jeongguk. Jeongguk’s palms are sweaty when they grasp Yoongi’s, but his hands don’t even shake when they tuck a sleek gun into his waistband. The collar of his shirt is deep enough to frame the dark tattoo on his chest. Jeongguk smiles, sweet and boyish, when he turns the corner and vanishes from sight.
An hour later, Yoongi goes home to an empty apartment, empties his stomach and falls into his side of the bed. He’s sticky with sweat, but still out cold long before Hoseok comes home.
Two days later, Jeongguk whistles when he meets Yoongi in an empty park, long after Hoseok’s fallen asleep. Yoongi doesn’t even have to mutter transparent lies as he slips out of the house. Jeongguk’s eyes are bright in the mute darkness, slick like oil, slick with something irreparable. Incomprehensible words tumble out of his mouth, but all Yoongi has to do is take one glance at Jeongguk’s glinting Rolex and immaculate nails--and remember, Pay me back with what? --before he makes his decision.
A week later: Hoseok no longer seems to care when Yoongi doesn’t come home at night. The burn of alcohol slipping down his throat almost seems to mask the burn of a needle dancing across his ribs.
Two weeks later, and Jeongguk’s head rests heavy on his shoulder as some nameless cab driver shuttles them home. Yoongi pulls out his phone to check the time, wincing when a picture of him and Hoseok at Hoseok’s old barista job flashes on his lockscreen. Jeongguk stiffens.
“Boyfriend?”
Yes. No. Maybe. Not quite. “Something like that.”
He doesn’t know what, but there’s something wary in Jeongguk’s eyes now. “Get rid of it.”
Yoongi doesn’t argue with Jeongguk’s tone of voice. “Okay,” he says simply, and goes back to shuffling through the bills in his wallet.
Yet, for some painfully stupid reason, he doesn’t get rid of it.
Maybe he should have.
But who could ever find the strength to give up the sun?
(Get. Out. Of. My. House.)
He takes one long, sober look at Hoseok before he leaves. His eyes are shining with glassy tears; his chest is heaving, shuddering with fury; his face is splintering in a million different ways. Hoseok is fracturing. And Yoongi is why.
(You lied to me. You lied to me , Yoongi, so get out of my house.)
He shuffles out clutching his stomach, digging his elbows into his sides like he is a wounded man slowly turning to ash. He soul screams, guttural, primal; and not a sound makes it past his gritted teeth. It’s like his blood has been replaced by hot, seething tears that pummel him, eat him, destroy him from the inside out. The sun, the sun: it burns, you fool , it burns when you are an Icarus skimming across burning glory. It burns, and you crash like a broken bird.
Even the future is a ghost of his past.
(He moves like a flower and laughs like rain and smiles like a goddamn angel. Yoongi wants nothing more than to be with him, stay with him. )
Nothing more than to love him.
If this is what love needs, then Yoongi will leave.
Hoseok was his tether, his addiction, his downfall, his savior. His sun, his starlight, his cosmic line-up of fate and destiny. Without him, Yoongi is anchored by only by the nauseating feeling of money in his back pocket. Nothing but the grounding reality of his fist colliding with bone.
It’s sickening how numb he is to the drug-crazed eyes of zombies rushing towards him.
Blood splatters over his shirt. His ears ring. An exhausted groan climbs out of his mouth. How many punches can he get in--one, two, three, four--before Jeongguk comes racing around the corner and hauls him away?
How many more days can he drift before he drowns?
Going back is like walking through a cloud of dust. It’s a desert, sandy and hot. He chokes on the memories, coughs on the smothering scent of loss.
Books, mugs, headphones, pictures, clothes, chargers, shoes: Yoongi crashes through their apartment and sweeps everything he ever shared with Hoseok into a weathered cardboard box. It’s fine, he tells himself. It’s fine, you’re fine, it doesn’t even matter. He draws every word close to him, like they’re his armour against an invisible enemy.
What’s one more lie?
He found himself with Hoseok; he will lose himself without Hoseok. But what does it even matter? Min Yoongi is stuck in this nightmare.
The days fly by. The sun sets and the moon rises--and yet, even on cloudless, clear nights, the stars never shine. At night, Yoongi stands outside with smoke spiralling down his lungs. He stands for hours, the world blissfully, painfully quiet and tries to look for constellations. He can’t find any. Hoseok took them with him when he left.
Yoongi can’t find himself anymore.
Over a year later, and he’s still locked in a cage: exactly where he’s been his entire life.
And he wants out. For real, this time.
The moon is full when he and Jeongguk run headfirst into a gunfight.
The sky is almost perfectly clear. Wispy clouds drift overhead, like thin strands of silk. The light of midnight bathes the sleeping city, blue and peaceful.
Panicked shouts break the silence. Down on some obscure street, bullets ricochet off walls, sparks fly, and the deafening chorus of guns going off matches the pounding tempo of Yoongi’s heart.
A cloud of dust swallows everything in the darkness. Two loud thuds echo throughout the street; the moon looks on, wise and serene; the dust clears. A pile of vaguely humanoid shadows are limp on the ground. If you were to blink again, they’d be gone.
No one cares to note that Jeon Jeongguk and Min Yoongi mysteriously died during the night.
But perhaps faking one's death is the only way to start living a real life.
The moon is full and bright as two boys, breathless with excitement, sprint through the streets of Seoul, freedom coursing through their veins, diamonds glinting in their eyes. Gasping with every step, they throw their heads back and laugh up at the sky: the big, glowing, star-littered sky.
It’s beautiful.
His hands tremble when he scrolls down to click on Hoseok’s contact.
To: hobi bub~~~
Hey Hoseok, this is Yoongi.
I miss you
I’m done working what I did now, btw. Forever.
Address: 1209 Xia Seung St.
Later that day, three tentative knocks fall on Yoongi’s door. His body moves before his brain can: his heart is in his mouth, his palms are shaking, his hair is wildly unruly, and some panicked part of his brain almost tells him to stop, to run away, to hide--but he’s done hiding.
The sun is blinding when he throws open the door.
“Hi, Yoongi,” he says, like nothing’s changed and his voice is still music, still beautiful, still Hoseok .
“Hey,” chokes out Yoongi. Hoseok smiles.
Somewhere in the far-off distance, he can almost hear the sound of a lock clicking open.