Work Text:
* * *
I'll take a chainsaw to the sofa
Where I held your body close for so long, so long
I'll burn everything that binds us
Take a lighter to the mattress and run, run
Seokjin steps over the threshold and stumbles out of his shoes on autopilot. Ambles through the foyer and into the living room, barely registering his surroundings. Stands vacantly in the middle of the dark room for who knows how long, until his attention is drawn to a faint vibration in his right hand, from his phone clutched in a white-knuckled grasp.
He doesn’t want to look at it. He’s honest to god scared to look at it.
He’s been getting updates all day and he’s barely made it this far as is. He can’t look.
He looks because he can’t not.
He opens the most recent messages and reads, then scrolls up and reads again, in order and then randomly, separate sentences and words, trying as hard as he can to scramble them up, smush them together, make them nonsensical to avoid comprehending the meaning behind them.
It doesn’t work.
“Hyung, I thought you have the right to know...”
“They’re still figuring out the details...”
“Hyung, there’s been an accident...”
“Please just don’t freak out...”
“Something happened...”
“It’s Yoongi…”
“Hyung…”
He reads and rereads until he can’t anymore. His arm drops to his side, phone slipping out of suddenly slack fingers and dropping with a dull thud, and just as suddenly he follows, crumbling gracelessly and curling up into a pile of rumpled fabric and mussed hair and the pained sounds of choking on air.
Seokjin lets out dry, tearless gasps as his fingernails scrape the floorboards, trying to expel the sharp pain constricting his insides, pressing down on his lungs and making his mind feel like a house burning down in slow motion.
At some point he exhausts himself and passes out right there, on the floor.
When he wakes up, his body is sore and there are more messages on his phone. The internal dam finally cracks and he cries, desperate and unrestrained.
After that, he breaks every single dish in his kitchen.
* * *
It seemed like a mutual agreement. It really did.
Yoongi was on the brink of his big break in the hip-hop scene, receiving multiple invitations to collaborate and tempting deals from everywhere, including some major labels in the States, which had always been his dream; Seokjin’s restaurant business was just starting to pick up at home in Korea.
They both agreed that they loved each other too much to expect one to make such an unfair sacrifice for the other.
They talked about it for hours, days and days worth of hours, weighing up the pros and cons, contemplating alternatives, trying to find a compromise, trying to give up as little as possible.
Of course, it could only last for so long.
As they both climbed the ladder to success in their respective fields, the harsh reality of life slowly left less and less spaces they could fit each other into. Months blended into years of rare messages and stunted conversations interspersed with rain checks and promises to make it up for all the missed calls sometime soon.
“Sometime soon” became a prayer, a mantra Seokjin repeated in his head as he dug his heels into the ground and worked harder, pushed forward towards a hopeful future. Just one more meeting. One more email. I’ll call him. Tomorrow.
As they grew farther and farther apart, he assured himself as much as he assured Yoongi that the separation was temporary, that things would get better if they could wait just a little longer.
Until everything came crashing down and there was no more future to work towards.
* * *
The first visit to the hospital is soul-shattering. Seokjin tries his best to prepare for the worst and still almost breaks down as soon as he steps into the room.
Thank god for Taehyung and Jungkook — standing on either side of him they pretty much hold his entire body weight, helping him remain upright when his legs give out.
Someone, possibly Jimin, sobs quietly behind them. A nurse shushes him gently, but she sounds sympathetic.
There he sits, on the hospital bed with his legs crossed, sunlit and lovely, Min Yoongi, their Yoongi, his Yoongi-chi.
His pose is comfortable and relaxed and his expression is serene as he stares blankly at the opposite wall. He reacts to nothing that happens around him.
They don’t stay long. There’s a brief hushed conversation that contains words like overdose and vegetative state and other words that make Seokjin want to clamp his hands over his ears and run away, screaming.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
Seokjin barely manages to keep it together for the sake of his friends. He lets them hug him and promises that they will all get through this and says he needs to be alone.
When he gets home later that night, he drinks nearly all the booze he can find in his apartment, throws a drunken fit and destroys the sofa, managing to rip open all the cushions and break off one of the armrests.
*
The following days are hell.
Jimin talks him out of taking time off work (hyung, you need to keep at least some parts of your life as they were, or else this thing is going to consume you), so Seokjin goes to work and comes home only to sleep.
The rest of his time is spent at the hospital.
The first days are the hardest. He calls out to Yoongi, tries talking to him, tries to catch his vacant stare and searches his blank features for any sign of recognition. There’s nothing.
It hurts.
When he cracks for the first time and starts crying the nurses kick him out for fear of distressing the patient, so he has to apologize profusely and promise he will do his best to control himself.
Days go by.
Seokjin keeps coming back, hoping against all hope that something will change, either in Yoongi or in him, that, with time, it will get better.
It doesn’t.
Well.
At some point, with the doctors’ permission, Seokjin starts bringing Yoongi little gifts from home. Small things from their past. Some are left unacknowledged, while others seem to trigger the faintest spark of interest. A few days after Seokjin brings Yoongi a tiny porcelain kitten — a souvenir they bought on their first ever vacation together, or, rather, Seokjin bought for Yoongi after teasing him that it looked like him — Seokjin finds Yoongi crouched in the corner of the room half-hidden behind the curtain, clutching the tiny figure in his long pale fingers close to his face and muttering to it conspiratorially in an unintelligible whisper.
The nurses call it baby steps. Slow progress.
They let Seokjin take Yoongi on walks in the little hospital garden. Yoongi follows him easily enough but gets distracted by anything and everything and sometimes tries to wander off. At some point Seokjin brings a length of red ribbon and ties it around their wrists as a safeguard to make sure Yoongi has some small amount of freedom to explore the garden without the risk of losing him.
The nurses smile and call it cute.
Things go relatively well until they don’t: one day, Seokjin brings Yoongi a small bouquet of purple flowers he used to buy him sometimes when they first got together. Much to his anguish, Yoongi throws a tantrum and nearly hurts himself until several nurses manage to hold him down and sedate him while Seokjin is too freaked out to offer any help.
After that, the doctors have a few words with Seokjin, insisting that experimenting with triggers carelessly can bring the patient more harm than good, and prohibit bringing Yoongi gifts until they allow it.
After that, Seokjin doesn’t know how much time passes, because days seem to merge into a single murky uneventful dreamscape.
The calm sense of security begins to slowly bleed into hopelessness and resignation.
Until, one day, Seokjin comes up with a plan.
*
If someone could ask him, Seokjin would say that kidnapping a person from a hospital is surprisingly easy.
It takes just a bit of planning. Gathering some supplies. Taking out money from your savings account in cash. Driving up to the hospital and parking near the garden wall.
Then you go inside, greet the nurses in your usual friendly manner. You take Yoongi for a walk in the garden, like you often do, except this time you inconspicuously steer him in the direction of a small gate in the fence you spotted a few weeks ago that was somehow always unlocked.
Then you get Yoongi and yourself inside the car, buckle your seatbelts, and drive away.
* * *
If someone could ask him, Seokjin would say that falling in love with Yoongi was like starting a new video game and slowly realizing that it was going to be your most favorite game in the world, forever.
It was like discovering an entire universe full of incredible stories and indescribable wonders, and brimming with the brightest spirit and most magnificent talent a mere mortal could be fortunate enough to witness.
Yoongi was a world Seokjin knew he could never grow tired of exploring and cherishing.
Now, it was a world he was determined to spend the rest of his life trying to save.
* * *
Time passes.
Jimin takes a seat on the summer terrace of a cozy little coffee shop and sets down his iced latte when he overhears a conversation between two college girls, who seem to be talking and tapping away at their phones at the same time.
“Have you heard? There’s this new trend on Instagram, couples are posting photos of them walking around with their hands tied together with a red ribbon.”
“Really? That sounds like such a cute idea!”
“I know right?? There’s a bit of an urban legend attached to it as well.”
“O-oh, cool, what is it?!”
“They say the trend was started by these two guys who keep showing up randomly in the backgrounds of other people’s photos here and there.”
“Oh wow, who are they??”
“Nobody really knows, they are just spotted sometimes. They don’t do much, just wander around, and there’s always a piece of red ribbon tying their wrists together.”
“That sounds so… romantic…”
“Right?? Anyways, nobody even knows if it’s the same two guys, especially now that everybody started doing it. Like I said, it’s more of an urban legend.”
“Still, I think it sounds sweet. Anyway, wanna go to the mall? I need new shoes, mine are literally falling apart…”
They get up and leave, quickly disappearing in the ever-bustling crowds of Seoul.
Jimin sips his drink and smiles to himself.