Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After a while, even the falling is gentle.

Catherynne M. Valente, The Labyrinth

*

Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?

Mary Oliver, Moments

When Yoongi got his first sewing machine, he was afraid it would fall apart in his hands.

It had a motor that wasn’t supposed to work, Yoongi’s sure of it now. It whirred to life with a viciousness of something that desperately doesn’t want to die, so loud he couldn’t even dream of using it at night, even when his older brother wasn’t sleeping on the bunk bed beside his, so loud he would’ve woken up his parents sleeping on the other side of the hallway.

It was supposed to be his mother’s. He means, his mother got it and it stood in the center of the dining table and she looked at it like at a bad apple.

She said, “Soohee’s mad in the head, what am I supposed to do with this?”

Yoongi looked at the sewing machine and his hands clenched into fists out of want. The tips of his fingers hurt from the sheer number of times he stabbed himself with a needle.

Here’s the thing:

Yoongi had to mend his clothes out of necessity first. His mom had two left hands when it came to needle and thread. Yoongi mended her clothes, too. They ripped easy and, anyway, apple picking is dirty work.

Most of his clothes were hand-me-downs which he would carefully pick apart at the seams, Yoongi was always very careful and very thoughtful and jabbed the tips of his fingers when he miscalculated the thickness of fabrics or something drew his attention away — his hyung barging into the room with a camera slung over his shoulder and babbling about photographs Yoongi must see now or his mom calling for dinner or Taehyung throwing himself on his bed or his dad informing him Jimin’s calling on the landline. Yoongi had to tear them apart, especially trousers because on Yoongi’s narrow hips and scrawny legs every pair was too big.

Pants, overall, seem a hard thing to find that fits perfectly. Taehyung’s skinny jeans would have to be resized around the hips and whatever Jimin deemed basic enough around his thighs. 

Here’s the thing:

Yoongi would sit on the mattress in his parents’ bedroom as his mom unpacked those hand-me-downs because clothes seemed to flow easily between people in their town, he would see that kid, Seunghoon, two years younger and a face somehow always smudged with dirt, wearing Yoongi’s old graphic tees as he played marbles with other kids on their street. Yoongi would be around six or seven when he did, as he grew older his mom would drop the clothes by his bedroom door and say, see if there’s anything you like, and Yoongi would sit there, six or seven, and she would pick the clothes up and he would get the blurry understanding of her sadness as she realized, piece by piece, those clothes were not made for her size.

Yoongi’s mother could pick him up as if it was nothing when other moms complained about their child’s weight. She complained but did it with a smile on her face. She could stack crates full of apples onto delivery plates and the second half of summer and early autumn were spent high in tree branches. When you have the strength for that, your body is built differently. 

Yoongi would tug on her shirts, say, “Mom, mom, when I grow up, I'm gonna make many clothes for you.”

His mom looked at him as if she didn’t believe him but loved him nevertheless. “Alright, Yoongi-yah, mom will wear them always.”

So, Yoongi’s twelve years old and it’s summer and the sliding doors at the back of their house are closed and the air is slow even as it circulates through a fan and Yoongi says, “So give it to me.”

Yoongi hides his fists behind his back when his mom looks at him, not in surprise but quick calculation. She shrugs. Says, “Why not.”

Says, “You’ll make more use of it, anyway.”

Says, “There, it’s yours.”

It’s summer and Yoongi’s twelve years old and he rips the jeans open, which he starts taking even if he doesn’t like them for the simple fact that sewing them back together will take less time after a while and he figures the more practice he gets the faster he learns and the season wilts into autumn and Yoongi stops doing it out of necessity, Yoongi starts sewing shapes onto Taehyung’s jeans (Taehyung cuts out cat heads and stars and clouds out of felt and Yoongi shows him the running stitch, and the back stitch, and the split stitch for good measure and they sit in Yoongi’s room and Yoongi’s hyung spreads photographs on his bedsheets and they eat watermelons on the floor) and tries to reconstruct Jimin’s shirts so they hug him better (Jimin took to running in the morning and taking taekwondo classes on Saturdays) and takes the clothes he likes the feel of and changes dresses into T-shirts and shorts into skirts because he can, a single pair of clothing can be so many different things and even then doesn’t have to be just one, skirts can have three pairs of pockets for no apparent reason and jeans don’t have to be flared at the cuffs only. Autumn hardens into winter and he doesn’t have to change his clothes so often, wearing himself out with the number of times the spool in the machine tangles and whirrs so loud his heart stops and he’s afraid it won’t spring alive again but it does, and the spool demands almost the same amount of care the sewing does but it works. 

But then it’s summer again and Yoongi cleans the classroom with his classmates and they change into their outdoor shoes and Yoongi has the first button of his shirt undone and someone would inevitably say nice shoes and Yoongi started growing fond of returning home from cram school and checking out shop vitrines and he knew that sometimes nice doesn’t mean nice at all. But he was thirteen and autumn and it didn’t matter. He would say thank you, i know and leave with Kihyun and Suran and it didn’t matter. And it was winter and his mother wore a dress he made, long sleeves and no embellishments and it was his fourteenth birthday and his mom got him Jordans even if his father wished he asked for something that didn’t have to do with clothes.

(Yoongi figured, there are small forms of rebellions and acts of bravery but small towns require the big ones, the loud ones, or they eat you alive.)

(Yoongi figured, i’m fourteen and after high school i’m out of here.)

(Yoongi figured, this is what i want to do.)

It was winter

and winter

and winter once again and

(here’s the thing)

spring exams were coming up. Yoongi took the last train from his cram school around midnight and even Jimin didn’t have the strength to talk. Yoongi would say, my brain is fried and Jimin would be falling asleep with his head banging against the wall of the car and Taehyung’s face would shift from dark to light to dark again as they drove past lamppost and he knew Taehyung heard him loud and clear and he nodded, said, i know, hyung but didn’t look tired at all. Most of the studying sessions he spent drawing and Yoongi would lean back so he could see behind the divider between their desks and Taehyung would shift the paper just so. It looked pretty and clean but there was always something off in the shape of someone’s face, and not in a way that Yoongi thought was bad — in a way that Taehyung’s style hid in the distortions. 

On their way home Taehyung would play a game on his phone, this chunky silver thing with grating electronic sounds, and would try to direct Jimin’s head onto his shoulders. Jimin would wake up but allow for his head to be guided back down and fall asleep.

Yoongi wanted to study fashion and knew he would have to leave but he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them behind. He rubbed his face, knowing the light shifted on his face the same way it did on theirs. The exact same way.

It was autumn and Yoongi had enough money from helping his mom around the orchard and doing deliveries before school and helping out at Mrs Jang’s tent bar that he got a sewing machine which was a white, shiny Singer, still loud but Yoongi could work nights on it.

It was autumn and the old machine stood in the corner of his room and sometimes he felt guilty for not using it anymore, worked on the Singer with suspicion because the spool didn’t tangle and it had a light that would switch on above the needle and exchangeable feet and he could sew buttons and add up to eight different threads and (here’s the thing) his mom refused to buy him the new machine for his birthday and instead got him a new Samsung, clunky but with a touch screen, and Yoongi didn’t think too much about it because he could get it himself, and he did, and the new phone was nice and he was grateful and the pictures it took were of such high quality he couldn’t understand how he ever got by on the previous one but it was no Singer. It was autumn and he learned how to make coats and sew warmer lining into jackets and he would show up while his mom was getting ready for work, clothes folded neatly in his arms, and she would rub her calves and look at him with such a tired smile that Yoongi realized with a start being into fashion wasn’t the welcome thing in their family. He laid down the clothes on the bedsheet and his mom wore the soft minky coat he made, anyway.

(Yoongi figured, brave and out of here and want.)

It was winter and the windows were frost and Yoongi wouldn’t leave the house without every inch of his skin carefully covered and his father turned his face the other way when Yoongi said that he got into a fashion school in Seoul. He waited until February and was sure that he got in and told his hyung first thing over the phone and even though Beijing was noisy he could hear the happiness in his voice alright and the phone company billed him an enormous amount but he was glad for telling him. Yoongi then told Taehyung, and Jimin and they hugged and told him not to get lost in Seoul and if he did, they’d come and find him. Yoongi was so happy he wanted to cry.

He laid his palms flat on his thighs and tried not to cry when his mom glanced at his father and put down the chopsticks and it was winter winter winter and she said, “what about being a doctor, Yoongi-yah? Jiminnie’s mother says he’d like to become a surgeon. How about that? Think about how you’ll live. I want you to be happy.”

Late at night, curled up in his bed under a cover and an additional blanket and shivering he started to wonder whether there’s an end to love and this love ending when you become something else, something true to you but perhaps not truthful to someone else. It was winter and he fell asleep crying. Some things come and go and return in constant, never-ending waves.

/

It was spring and he left and did the fashion thing anyway.

/

When Yoongi visits for Chuseok he leaves with lavender honey Seunghoon’s mom makes and apples so full it takes one bite for the juice to dribble right out. Yoongi makes sure not to eat them on the train back. Saves the apples (and the honey) for Taehyung, so they can carve crescent-shaped pieces out of them and Yoongi can place one on his tongue and talk about how apples regain their special flavour after you don’t eat them for a while.

(It’s not Chuseok and a different city but Yoongi longs for it all the same.)

Yoongi’s mom was adamant on adding apples to every autumn dish. Yoongi would have to eat apple samgyeopsal and fruit water kimchi for dinner. On the weekends, she’d make tarts and the whole house would smell of apples and cinnamon. She’d cut and arrange them on plates with hand-painted folktales — Sun and Moon hiding on a tree as the tiger tried to scale it, a rabbit facing the Dragon King under the sea, Simcheong on a sailing away ship. Local work picked up from a market one festival or another. She’d wrap it in tinfoil and tell him to be home for dinner and Yoongi would nod and put it in the basket of a bike with only front brakes working and slowly drive to Taehyung’s house so he’d have a sorry excuse for using a bike for such a short distance. Taehyung would open the door and sound would stream out, his sister arguing with his mom over some comically unnecessary thing which they’d end up hugging out in the end and piano music speeding up and down, dependent on Taehyung’s dad whims, not following any particular tune.

Taehyung has this way of smiling as if he’s not sure a person will show up. Had it then, too. Grinned at Yoongi in this sort of relieved way that made Yoongi want to knock and be on the other side of the door over and over and over again.

They’d wait for Jimin because of course they did, Jimin didn’t just appear at the right time and the right place unless being late to every time and place is considered doing the right thing. The three of them would lie on their backs in front of a rotating fan. The sunlight on the ceiling would be gold. Yoongi would say, let’s go get ice cream but there’d be no movement aside from Taehyung tilting his head to the side, saying, and catch frogs. And he would grin and tug on Yoongi’s dangling earring, don’t you wanna catch frogs, hyung? and Yoongi’s would rather not. what ‘bout you, Jimin-ah? and Jimin’s Busan equivalent of you’re full of shit that Yoongi couldn’t wrap his head around the logistics of for the next five minutes. 

They’d stay on Taehyung’s bedroom floor and Taehyung’s mom would bring them homemade omija tea and Yoongi would watch water droplets slide down the curve of the jug. It would be hot and sweat clinging to bodies and bodies, in turn, clinging to other bodies and

(it was easy back then, or easier, and the way Taehyung’s body curled around Yoongi and he, in turn, curled into it was a curiosity, something wounding itself at the bottom of his stomach. The curiosity of holding and being held. Different curiosity. Differently bodies holding other bodies.)

The room would paint itself gold and the sky would be pink and purple and piano music would stream even through the closed door until it was time for Taehyung’s dad to leave for that jazz bar next to the grooming salon, with a neon sign that didn’t properly light up at night and they’d talk quietly about whatever was important to them at the time, for Jimin it would be upcoming exams and stress he had to talk himself out of, for Yoongi the hoodie he was nearly finished redoing and for Taehyung a film he got from a rental and watched with his sister in her room and my mom says if I get Howl one more time she’ll stop lending me money, can you believe that?

Summer tends to cling to skin like that, friendship-heavy, pink-warm and watermelon juice-sticky. True and real like no other season.

Yoongi misses how it feels because it’s a cold night.

It’s a cold night and his body feels snowflake-stiff, snow tugging on his lashes, his eyes feeling heavier than they are. Yoongi blinks rapidly to try and get rid of the weight but sees less clear by the second. He nearly walks into a departing the bus crowd, the old machinery of the vehicle tilting to one side, huffing. Nebulas of breath linger above the crowd. Yoongi is tired and annoyed and sidesteps that quiet human buzz with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

Songpa is a nightmare to live in, rarely any pause to it, not like there is any pause to Seoul but Songpa has its own special, devilish charm, tens-of-stories-high buildings in various shades of sand and stone jagging into the night sky like teeth. Songpa feels like a mouth, an enormous, wide-open, yelling mouth — buses rushing down the wide streets and constant noise in the background and walking through clouds of steam during summer, the invading smell of food, and Yoongi never quite knowing whether he’s going in the right direction, even if it’s somewhere he’s visited a hundred times.

Yoongi wipes at his eyes with dry knuckles, water sinking into the cracked skin of his hands. He wants to get home already or any sort of inside, wants to soothe his hands with hand cream and lean his head really far back and watch the stagnant light on his ceiling for a moment that never lasts too long because he starts his sewing machine and the moment’s gone. The inside of his arms ache with the way he misses it, home, the warmth of it.

(Home, mainly, means tea and blankets and a sewing machine and Taehyung. Warmth, mainly, means tea and blankets and Taehyung. Ache, mainly, means—)

Summer tends to cling but winter hits different.

Yoongi walks under lights that change colours every few steps, those artificial hues that hurt his eyes, and calculates the time, wonders if he can get home and start on a dress before Taehyung comes back and they can eat dinner together. It’s a dress for Jennie and he figured it out last night, the pattern he would use and the fabric, and he knows where he’s going and he knows what he needs but he thinks about the afterwards, home and sewing and—

An ambulance rushes past with a shrill noise and pulsing lights. Yoongi winces. 

(winter is always wishing for something else.)

He arrives at the fabric store which resides in a patch of dark, the spot where the street lamps don’t reach and shadows get extra tall. A group of people who talk loud and explode with laughter leaves the restaurant next door, spilling the beer yellow light on the whitened concrete. Yoongi pushes the store door open with his shoulder before they have a chance to pass him by, the hinges creaking but opening easily.

Yoongi steps inside and the door closes behind him and the world cuts off.

Songpa is a mouth and walking into this fabric store always feels like being swallowed whole. The dark wood of the shelves and lights partially hidden with stacks of fabric, brushing against the ceiling and making the alleyways narrow and crowded. It presses down on his chest, the lack of space, presses so hard until something cleaner emerges, something clear and aglow and belonging.

After so much noise Yoongi’s ears ring with silence, that sort of halfway stepping into a dream, not quite asleep but not awake, either. Yoongi breathes in, wants to fill his lungs with something other than wind and his nose itches all familiar, dust, so much dust, and he hasn’t seen natural light in this place in ages, and he sneezes before he can stop himself, hunches his back slightly, covers his face with the back of his forearm.

“Bless you!” Jinsoul’s voice is disembodied, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Yoongi doesn’t look for her when he first comes in anymore. Doesn’t try.

“Thanks,” he mutters under his breath, knowing she can’t hear him. (but then, he’s not quite sure about the unspeakable rules of this place. perhaps she can and she smiles to herself and waits until they find each other or, rather, until she finds him.) He wipes his nose with a crumpled tissue paper he retrieves from his coat pocket and walks into the shop properly. 

(There’s no real explanation as to why he comes back to a place so small and dust-filled and a mess. If he were younger and back home perhaps he’d have a name for it but for now it’s a sleeping under his left shoulder blade nostalgia.)

He squeezes through the rolls of plain weave and smooth plaid on his way to the right alley. There’s a dress he’d like to make and a dress that’s made of gauzy, tulle-like material but softer. Chiffon. Purple. A stack of differently coloured oxford threatens to tip over at one of the crossroads, and the shop has many of them. He accidentally brushes his hand against corduroy and quickly draws it away, rubbing the pads of his fingers. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, the nerves at the tips of his fingers sending shock-waves to the tip of his tongue. 

He came for the chiffon but fabrics like to reveal themselves to him. He stops in front of a water-like satin, glowing pearl-white in the weak light. Thinks of Jimin. Thinks of the way Jimin’s body moves like the sea.

Yoongi taps the fabric with his index finger and moves away, thinks about it still as he finds the aisle with chiffon, brushes his knuckles against the purple one, the perfect purple one. Finds himself going back to the satin.

Jinsoul appears out of nowhere. “You should take it.”

Yoongi tilts his head to the side to catch the shape of her in the corner of his eye — the blonde of her hair, blue of her clothes. Myriads of stripes of, by the looks of it, denim, making a dress, strewn together by the sheer power of will, or seafoam. Yoongi tilts his head an extra centimeter, trying to work through the construction, the impossibility of it. He wants to reach out and touch it and make it real.

“You’re gonna give someone a heart attack one day.”

“You seem to be taking it well,” she says with wide eyes, glimmering, not unlike the pearls stuck to her brow. 

Yoongi shrugs and looks to the hardwood floor. He left wet marks on the wooden floor. He disturbs the tiny pools with the heel of his boot. “‘Cos I’m from Daegu.”

“Yeah, and I’m from fucking New York. Try me.”

Yoongi lifts his head sharply, frowns. “You’re not.”

Jinsoul juts out her chin. “I was an exchange student. Now—”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Take the satin.”

Yoongi opens his mouth and closes it and, “I was gonna do that.”

“I’m only validating your decision.”

“I don’t need—”

She steps past him, smelling of cherries or rose petals or an otherwise awfully sweet scent, hoisting the roll of the satin up and off the rack. Skillfully, as to not disrupt the mountain. It doesn’t even move.

“Also—”

Jinsoul enters the aisle with chiffon before Yoongi even has the chance to finish. Yoongi follows her with petty things scratching the tip of his tongue but she has a feel for this space, an easiness that he doesn’t, and that always made her quite unreal, and Yoongi quite fond of her. He doesn’t mean any of the pettiness and instead says, “Thanks.” And, “You did great on the construction of… the dress.”

She throws him a glance over her shoulder. “Why the hesitation?”

“Words can’t contain the magnitude of it,” Yoongi bullshits, but only halfway.

“You like it?”

“I do.” And doesn’t bullshit this time.

Jinsoul takes him to the register and the cutting board. She ties her long hair on top of her head and it holds poorly and almost everything escapes the hair tie but she doesn’t seem to notice. She lies the fabrics down on the cutting board. Her hands are easy around scissors. Yoongi, not for the first time wonders, why she never went to a fashion school. Once in awhile joins Yoongi as he strolls around the store and picks out a fabric, usually something that glitters. Says, “ So I have something to look forward to. Outside of, you know.” Makes an elaborate gesture with her hands. Yoongi knows her hands mean Yerim. His own hands mean Taehyung, most of the time. 

Yoongi leans against the counter, pretends he’s checking out the buttons sewn onto a fabric board on the wall. “Are you thinking of going back? To university, switch the major.”

Jinsoul cuts out the fabrics and doesn’t look at him but something in her face shifts. “I’d suffocate in there, properly this time.”

“What about the fish, Jinsoul-ah?”

She shakes her head and more hair falls out. “They look better in water and I don’t have the focus. Textbooks are whack.”

She used to hang around the store with every book on marine biology imaginable. Would stream National Geographic on her phone as Yoongi piled the fabrics on the counter. Was gone for half a year, Yoongi remembers, for that New York City of hers. Came back and said people back there get on the elevator and wanna talk to you and you are supposed to tip and it’s the not tipping that’s rude and they put way too much salt in everything. Quit university a semester later.

“The entire education system is whack.”

She points at him with the scissors says, you’re right, and Yoongi tells her to mind sharp objects. 

“You know what’s the dream?” she asks and the chiffon looks pretty under her hands. She doesn’t have bags under her eyes like she used to.

“Swimming with the whales and singing their whale song.”

“That, too,” she laughs and knuckles her hair behind her ears. “A sea town, for sure. I’d know the names of all my neighbours and give out hotteok and there’d be lots of space, lots of space to breathe.”

“Sea towns smell like fish, Jinsoul-ah. Dead fish.”

She levels him with a look. “I’m saying that’s the dream.”

“Doesn’t smell like dead fish in your dream?”

“Smells like you leaving.” 

She slides the folded fabrics across the counter and smiles at him all coy and Yoongi knows she’s not mad.

Yoongi hides the stack behind the lapel of his coat, wraps it snug around his body. Pays with his phone. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Come back too soon,” she says as he leaves.

Yoongi smiles into his scarf and enters winter.

(He hopes she does find herself at the shore one day, filled with the setting sun and the sea, holding the hand of the purple-haired girl she loves. Yoongi hopes for something similar for himself. Something bright and honest.)

Yoongi walks to the apartment complex and snow crunches under his feet. It falls more languidly now, falls through the air as tea spreads through hot water. The street by the park is empty of vendors at this hour but full of people crowding in from the subway and rubbing their hands together on a nearby bus stop, hiding their cheeks from the cutting wind. It’s all the same, Yoongi can’t help but notice. A mould of people wearing coats that look pretty but don’t have buttons, or those big disgusting puffed out jackets. Everything is black and grey and muted, generic, the mainstream stuff. Most of these people probably shop around Lotte World Mall which spikes into the air in the distance like a big glowing thumb. It makes him feel self-conscious, for a reason, and sad. He doesn’t want to blend in with them. Fears blending in with the crowd.

The building he lives in looks the same as ten others surrounding it. He takes an elevator to the eighth floor and shakes the snowflakes out of his hair on the way up. He keeps his back to the mirror. Doesn’t feel like seeing how tired he is. He fumbles with his keys in front of the apartment door, the ginormous stuffed cat-shaped keychain, a Hoseok gift, finding the space between his fingers and lodging there. The keychain is the most inconvenient thing about his keys, which he only owns two of, the one to his and Taehyung’s apartment and one to Jimin’s, but he can’t make himself take it off. Eventually, he opens the door, flicks the switch in the hallway, muscle memory, but the entrance stays dark. The lightbulb burnt out two weeks ago. Neither he nor Taehyung had the time or the memory to buy a new one.

Yoongi thoroughly wipes his shoes on the doormat and steps into the apartment, smelling of something so homelike he doesn’t even have a name for it, like rice or his favourite sweater. He knows Taehyung isn’t home yet because the door was locked and the remaining of the apartment isn’t lit up like the sky during Tanabata. His hyung spent the summer in Japan last year, sent Yoongi the photographs.

Yoongi takes off his shoes, lines them against the wall. Fixes the footwear Taehyung disrupted in the morning, places them side to side in a neat line which takes up the entire width of the small entrance. Their collection of shoes looks like they have ten people living here instead of two. 

Yoongi changes into clothes that don’t smell of the snow. He drowns in them, sleeves falling beyond his fingertips and pant legs that could house another limb. Feeling returns to his body in waves. As he waits for the water in the kettle to boil, he puts a heavy dose of pistachio hand cream on the back of his hand and rubs it in, smoothing over the terrible roughness. He looks out the window, at the illuminated buildings. An enormous body of a plane rotates towards a nearby airport in Gangnam. He finds himself transfixed by it, the dark shadow of it swimming through the air like a blue whale. So close and unreal and the way things bigger than yourself fill you with a different kind of quiet.

Yoongi makes himself black tea and connects his phone to a wireless speaker. Plays a playlist which is half what he likes and half what reminds him of other people, like Queen or Bryan Ferry or Suran. Yoongi likes how disjointed it is, and not his alone.

Queen belongs to laughing at his and Seokjin’s first suit attempts, near rolling down to the floor with the horrendity of them, Seokjin hyperventilating and holding his tummy as if trying to hold everything in, Yoongi saying i knew we were bad but not this bad and Seokjin following it up with a suddenly straight face, don’t drag me into this, Yoongi staring at him in disbelief. Hyojin would say they’re like Team Rocket. (Yoongi ended up being Jesse because Seokjin had a penchant for roses and for an entire year embroidered them on everything while belting out It’s A Beautiful Day.) (And with this song it was, indeed, always a beautiful day.) Bryan Ferry is Taehyung’s and Taehyung’s alone and him dancing on their small balcony in summer, half of the space occupied by fruit laid down on a cloth, peaches and apples and cherries drying in the sun, just like his grandmother taught him, the sun glazing his skin honey and looking at Yoongi with pomegranates in his eyes and Yoongi squeezing and losing his hold on the wine glass, and reminding himself to hold it steady, and his heart in the apples of his cheeks, and Taehyung, backlit by the sun— 

(rather dangerous, rather dangerous territory)

Suran is climbing rooftops and drinking wine and naming stars with Western names they picked up from books, like Alice and Lavender and Harry; a perspective encompassing the whole world, piercing ears with a safety-pin, social activism; her newest album arriving in the mail, listening to it lying on the bed with his hands folded on his stomach, Taehyung next to him shoulder to shoulder, Suran’s wine-like voice the only sound in the room. 

(“Hyung?”

“Mmm?”

“Her voice sounds like stretching after waking up.”

Yoongi looks at Taehyung in the dark, Taehyung’s hooded eyes on him. Something inside Yoongi is drawn taut. He’s glad Taehyung can’t see him well because he’d be able to pin him down accurately, the bow in him, and the arrow at the same time.

He manages to say, “That’s very specific.”

At the same time, finds he cannot deny him. Bows, arrows, pinning down. Taehyung’s careful eyes are like that.)

Yoongi rubs the side of his neck and when he takes away his hand, the ghost of touch remains behind. Freddie sings thank your lucky stars just savour every mouthful.

Taehyung comes back home around ten. Yoongi sits cross-legged among cut-outs of purple fabric and looks up and wishes he didn’t and swallows whatever lights itself aglow in him.

Taehyung stands in the doorway of the bedroom, looking properly windswept, hair in little sprouts looking like it’s held up by tiny butterflies with glowing wings. There’s a certain air to him, charged as if he carries thunderstorm clouds on his shoulders for a living. The room is dark and Taehyung is a painting in shadows and partial light.

(Ache, mostly, means—) 

Taehyung drags his pants up because they tend to fall off his hips. Pulls on the front of his T-shirt. Makes his way towards Yoongi on tiptoes but the spaces between the cutout fabric are narrow. They curl around his ankle socks. Something in Yoongi’s chest lets loose and Yoongi feels like a dandelion in the wind. He wants to rub his skin to get rid of the feeling. How there seems to be so much wind in this chest, and so much spring. 

Yoongi leans forward, lines his scissors against the slippery fabric for an underskirt. He mutters towards the floor, “You’re gonna freeze your ankles off.”

Taehyung walks in place, wanting to find that sweet spot where he can settle down. He sits down next to Yoongi. Their knees overlap. Yoongi doesn’t move or even protest. The sweet spot.

Taehyung props his chin on his fist, looks at the arrangement of the fabric on the floor. His voice tries at being playful but there’s a tired edge to it, the whole day at work and coming home and letting himself sound like it tired. “I can’t wear long socks with these trousers.”

“It’s snowing, Taehyung-ah.”

“It’s fashion, hyung. You should understand.” 

“I don’t,” Yoongi lies. He puts the scissors down and reaches for a centimeter, trying to hold the notebook open on the page with Jennie’s measurements. It’s bulbous under the palm of his hand, wanting to force itself closed, unable to stay in place because of the sheer number of fabric samples and photographs and taped sketches inside.

Taehyung leans forward. Yoongi only smells winter on him. His hand, cold and impossibly smooth, brushes atop Yoongi’s, holds the page open. Yoongi’s pinky twitches against Taehyung’s. Taehyung stays still. Yoongi withdraws hesitantly and lines the centimeter against the stretch of the fabric. 

“Hyung’s almost done,” he says, feeling a little sorry, not knowing what he’s sorry for. It’s not like they’d be getting ready for bed. He leans forward on his knees to reach further. He used an old pattern from the box under the desk, the paper brown and crumpled and pieces of the design filed in folders. 

“This early?” Taehyung’s disbelief is a steady thing.

“Cutting out, I mean.”

Taehyung sighs. Yoongi can feel his gaze, heavy like winter. “Hyung…”

Yoongi wants to wrap himself in a scarf and hide in it. He sits back down, this time his knee on top of Taehyung’s, sets the cut-out piece aside. “Said I’ll try.”

Taehyung tilts his head, opens his mouth, his eyelashes flickering like startled snowflakes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Yoongi mumbles, holds the scissors loosely between his fingertips. He adds, quiet, hoping Taehyung doesn’t catch it. “Hyung’s gotta keep you company.”

Taehyung withdraws his hand and the notebook flutters closed, page by turning page. “Hyung.”

Almost pained, (ache, mainly—), “Taehyung-ah.”

Taehyung taps Yoongi under his chin. Shuffles forward which is a feat in itself, with how close they are. Grabs Yoongi above his knees, gently but surely, like one would hold a watermelon, and rotates him to the side. Yoongi lets go of the scissors. Knows how to mind sharp objects.

They face each other. Yoongi wishes they didn’t. 

Yoongi taught himself how to look at Taehyung, chin tipped up to see him right, Taehyung being unwavering eyes and cut cheekbones and a full mouth and a mole right there, Yoongi has to drag his eyes up, right there at the tip of his nose, and at the very edge of his eyelid.

(Doesn’t make it easier, doesn’t make any of it easier.)

There’s a different curiosity in Taehyung’s face, the kind tilt of his head, the lovely parting of his mouth. Yoongi’s hands tangle in Taehyung’s slacks, thrifted, scruffy from use. Some fabrics only grow rougher while others turn softer.

(Yoongi’s a soft sort of fabric.)

“Let’s make a deal,” Taehyung says, his voice deep, deeper than the night.

“Don’t wanna.”

“I wear proper socks—”

Yoongi gives him a pointed look. “With these pants?”

Taehyung looks proper bewildered. “Hyung!”

Yoongi feels safer in humour. Humour is easier to navigate. “You said it yourself.”

“I can say all sorts of things, doesn’t mean you should.” 

Yoongi’s mouth twitches, lightness seeping into his voice. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I’m high fashion. You are…”

Taehyung considers Yoongi through his lashes. Yoongi feels terribly exposed, and seen. The only way to end this sentence is in malice but Taehyung smiles like a sudden thought, leans forward, Yoongi wanting to move away but being unable to. He grips the fabric of Taehyung’s pants, readies himself for the blow.

“You’re my genius hyung.” 

Yoongi falls to his back with a groan, hands thrown to the sides.

Taehyung props his elbows on Yoongi’s knees, puts his entire weight there, looks down at him, satisfied. Different curiosity, again. Something in Taehyung that is hard to name.

Yoongi wants to tug him down so he can hold him to his chest and be weighted down and content but instead says something closer to reality which is a dark room and sharp objects and rougher fabrics to fall on. “Watch out for the—”

“I sure am, hyung. Sure doing the watching out.” Taehyung’s eyes are full of fireworks and summer fruit. 

Yoongi rolls to his side. Looking at him like a stone in his chest, never easier to swallow. Taehyung’s hands fall away. Yoongi isn’t glad, isn’t glad at all.

“Taehyung-ah, hyung needs to—”

finish the project, get away, get some air, it doesn’t feel like winter at all, doesn’t

Taehyung slips into the space between Yoongi’s back and the desk, too big for such a small cavity. Yoongi feels like there’s a lightbulb lit up at the bottom of his stomach.

“What, hyung, what?” Taehyung’s mouth at the nape of his neck, splitting closeness. 

A tremor runs through Yoongi’s hands and he curls them around Taehyung’s across his stomach. Words seem hard to get out. “I need to get this done.”

(He doesn’t. Not tonight, by any means, but Yoongi will say anything to get himself out of the fire and want, want that scorches.)

Taehyung doesn’t answer at first, his breath moving the fine hairs at the base of Yoongi’s skull. 

“You’re warm, hyung,” he whispers so close to his skin Yoongi isn’t sure he got it right. Words pressed into skin imprint themselves differently.

“Hm?”

“Warm, I said, you’re—”

“First time for everything,” Yoongi jokes even though he’s not in the mood for joking.

Taehyung nuzzles his nose in the space between the shifting muscles on the back of Yoongi’s neck. “Always warm, hyung, you’re always warm.”

(Ache, ached, aching,)

Yoongi could stay like this for a while, floating

(mainly,)

which isn’t to say some touch isn’t more intimate than others. Chest to spine, tailbone to hip. Such touch unravels. Such touch enters the body and rearranges the heart and the lungs and the nerve endings. Such touch makes itself known more profoundly, the same way people do

(Taehyung,)

which isn’t to say Yoongi knows what to make of it. Touch says things which the mouth has no language for.

(is all.)

Yoongi wants to lift Taehyung’s hand to his mouth and kiss his knuckles and fall asleep. Instead, he asks, “Taehyung-ah, have you eaten?”

Taehyung’s forehead rubs against the back of Yoongi’s neck as he shakes his head.

“We still have your grandma’s winter kimchi.”

Taehyung moves behind him, puts his chin on Yoongi’s arm. Yoongi looks up. Taehyung’s eyes are dreams and a pleasant surprise. Yoongi wants to cradle his face, touch his cheek.

(Things are easier in dreams and the sun.)

“And, hm, the soybean paste stew.” Language feels uncomfortable in his mouth. He doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to speak at all. Wants to lie here and linger and imagine impossibilities, such as—

Taehyung has such kind eyes. Looks at Yoongi softly, the lines around his eyes run over by water, smoothed out. Water carries truth.

(such as cheek to hand and mouth to cheek and mouth to mouth and what of a human body isn’t made of the longing, a kind of craving to reach out, to feel the world against one’s palm, to feel, be felt, yoongi wishes and lingers and yearns until he’s stretched so thin he fears he’s see-through, fears taehyung looks at him the way one would look at a body of water and sees and surely taehyung sees him and surely yoongi was born of an impossible ocean.)

“And sujeonggwa?”

Yoongi almost gets carried with the momentum, almost says, yes yes of course for you, of course, everything but he remembers and says, “Didn’t you drink the last of it yesterday?”

There’s a moment of stillness that Yoongi can feel departing even before it does. He squeezes Taehyung’s hand as he straightens up and then his hands are empty and holding onto nothing.

“Oh. Oh, hyung, no.” Endearing bewilderment, betrayal. Yoongi hides the loveliness of it behind his ear where it glows cherry-red. “No, that’s impossible.”

Taehyung gets up and rushes out, in a distressed hurry, like the wind in the mountains. The ghost of his touch clings to Yoongi’s skin, all the growing cold places. He doesn’t think he’s going to move. It’s always been for the better, Taehyung leaving, always for the better but Yoongi’s cold and he misses and the insides of his wrists ache and winter gets so difficult, hits different, and wanting something.

Yoongi hears the prolonged screech of a fridge opened, the sound of plastic against plastic, rearranged produce, mostly leftover Seollal food, as if the cinnamon punch wouldn’t be in the container in the door pocket. 

He doesn’t think he’s going to move. It would be easier to stay.

He hears, “I’m sure it was—” cut off, the incessant shuffling. Yoongi doesn’t want to move—

He sits up and walks towards the kitchen before he has the chance to decide on what he’s doing, his body following Taehyung’s, heart memory. He’s sure they don’t have the sujeonggwa but he might as well get up and make proper dinner and ask Taehyung about his day on set and tell him to drink strawberry soda instead, he bought an entire pack the other day and it’s right there on the counter.

Suran sings I’m drunk with you and her words throb against Yoongi’s palm and he knows what she means.

/

(An ache is not really an ache but something you won’t allow yourself to say out loud on a cold night.)

/

The elevator stops and its doors open on the seventh floor. The woollen hat on Jimin’s head barely sticks to the top of his head and under the unzipped coat there’s a sliver of his hospital clothes. His eyes are puffy but sleep doesn’t cling to him the same way it would if he’d just woken up.

“Good day to you, hyung,” Jimin says all chipper and Yoongi glances down at his phone, 20:02 glowing between the Tanabata lampions on his lockscreen.

“Morning, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin leans back on the railing, presses his shoulder into Yoongi’s. “I think I took Charmie out for a walk today.”

The elevator doors close and Yoongi walks over the fact that it goes up instead of the way Jimin wants it to go. “You think.”

“‘M telling you, hyung, he was just hanging out around my apartment, as he does, and I had to get some necessities, you understand, and he followed me all the way to the convenience store and waited for me all patient and we walked back in peace, semi-peace though, it was blowing like a motherfucker.”

The elevator box lurches and stops. Yoongi frowns, “You sure cats can walk in the snow?”

The doors open. “It was just around the corner and he followed me, I didn’t tell him to do it. Shouldn’t have?”

Yoongi shrugs and the doors start to close and he pushes them open with a button. “Don’t know. Never had a cat.”

Jimin smiles at him all sweet. “We sorta do now.”

“He's not ours.”

The doors threaten to close again but Jimin reaches across the small space and the doors back down. “It’s collective custody. Cats don’t belong to nobody.”

“Pretty sure he’s under Mrs Lee’s care.”

Jimin smiles something cunning. “For now.”

Yoongi chuckles in amusement, steps past Jimin’s extended arm, pauses in the entryway, holds the doors. “Sounds ominous.”

He looks back and Jimin plays innocent. “Does it?”

Yoongi steps back. “Don’t do anything mischievous till Wednesday.”

Jimin frowns. “What’s on Wednesday?”

The doors start to close and, “Family dinner.”

Yoongi catches the sight of Jimin’s content grin before he loses him and walks to his apartment with a smile on his face.

The door is ajar, jazz music pooling in the hallway, languid, lazy, summer morning-like but not loud enough to worry any of their neighbours. With Taehyung, they figured out the perfect volume by trial and error, meaning on a scale of quiet to Mrs Lee coming knocking on their door.

Yoongi undresses in the hallway and shivers. He closes the door but it flings opens, a draft created somewhere further inside. Yoongi smells snow and the faintest acrid scent of paint, nearly untraceable. Something throbs in his temples, a neglected headache.

Taehyung sticks out his head from the bathroom, arms around a laundry-filled basket, says something Yoongi doesn’t catch.

“Mmm?”

“Jimin did the laundry.”

“Oh,” Yoongi says, looks down at his hands. “He didn’t say anything.”

Taehyung breathes out and then smiles, his lollipop-like cheeks pushing up the huge round glasses on his face. “Same old. You met him?”

“On the elevator. Can cats walk in the snow?”

Taehyung stares at him over the rim of his glasses. “Do I look like I know?”

Yoongi rubs his hands together. “You sorta do.”

Taehyung grins and disappears back inside the bathroom.

“Did you two eat?”

“At Rose’s.”

Yoongi picks up the sweet almonds scented hand cream standing on the low table in the living room. He peers into the bedroom, all the cold air gathered there, an open window ruffling the undergarment he finished yesterday and left on the desk. The floor is covered in old newspapers, two paintings drying on the floor. Yoongi steps inside, takes a closer look. The bigger one is entirely covered in thick slabs of pink and yellow paint in varying shades, yet there’s an order to it, a lovely blend, easy coexistence. Easy like a sunrise. The second one, the size of two regularly sized books lined together — a teacup with the liquid flowing upwards, in swirling strokes of blue and red and beige. Yoongi crouches down and touches his pinky to the edge of the canvas. His fingertip stays dry.

“Taehyung-ah?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I close the window?”

“Sure, yeah!”

Yoongi goes back to the bathroom. Stands in the threshold. Taehyung squeezed himself between the metal laundry rack and the sink. There are smears of dried paint on his knuckles, on his throat. He wears an old T-shirt which isn’t ironed, a bizarre sight.

Yoongi starts to help, fingers wrapping in the damp garments. 

“Last day of filming?” Yoongi asks.

Taehyung lifts a shirt with a ruffled collar and drapes it carefully on the rack. “Not until tomorrow. Why?”

Yoongi smooths his hands over a pair of jeans. The smell of jasmine detergent lingers in the air. “Dunno. You were painting.”

Taehyung glances up, a little surprised, says with a spaced-out voice, “Yeah. Was.”

Yoongi looks at his own hands and takes extra care of a cardigan with a yellow flower blooming out of the chest pocket. “Wanna hang them, the paintings?”

“Sure. Was thinking actually, how about we put them in the living room?”

Yoongi pretends he’s thinking about it but he has a good idea already, knows all the empty spaces by heart. “The bookcase wall looks awful bare.”

They finish the laundry. Before they leave, Taehyung turns around, leans towards the mirror, the sink pressing into the soft of his tummy. He gets this serious look on his face, all harsh planes, contemplating. He smoothes the beret over the back of his head, angles his head left and right, wets his bottom lip, looks satisfied. He looks good and he knows it. Yoongi’s skin itches.

Yoongi boils water for tea. Taehyung fetches a pair of nails and a hammer from the drawer next to the window. He leans down and puts his face in the plants on the windowsill, closes his eyes, lingers for a second, two.

“They don’t have a smell,” Yoongi says, all sorts of washed out of the way it undoes him, so softly, like waking up from a good dream and tangled in bedsheets and morning.

“I know,” Taehyung says after another pause. “I always hope they do.”

Taehyung leaves and takes some of the green scents with him. By no smell, Yoongi means no flower smell. They still smell like leaves drowning in rainwater.

Yoongi pops a painkiller. He leaves one of the cups on a bookshelf, with the tea bag intact. Taehyung hums in thanks. Yoongi lowers down the volume on the speaker and shuffles to the bedroom, towards his sewing machine and Jennie’s unfinished dress. It lies there so sadly, so prettily wanting to be finished. Yoongi wants to finish it even though he’s tired and has that awful sleep-deprived headache but he’d like to get it done. He steps in front of his desk chair, nearly sits down but

“Hey, hyung?”

Yoongi stills with his hands on the armrest and holds himself there for a second, the purple of the undergarment like silky moonlight.

And Taehyung in another room, in the next room, right there, waiting.

“Coming,” Yoongi says as if any of this was ever a question.

He stops in the bedroom’s threshold. Taehyung’s back is to him and he’s holding up the sunrise-like painting on one side of the bookshelf, lined up perfectly or, almost—

“A little higher,” Yoongi says. Taehyung moves up the painting. It isn’t lined up with the topmost edge of the bookcase and looks wrongs. “Yeah, no, lower.”

Taehyung follows Yoongi’s instruction and tilts his head a little. “‘S good?”

“Right there, it’s good.”

The steam rises from Taehyung’s mug and curls up towards the ceiling. Jazz gets tangled around Taehyung’s ankles, his foot moving to the rhythm.

Yoongi should move. Should but his legs are lead and he leans against the doorframe and there’s something incredibly heartwarming about the softness of Taehyung’s unironed t-shirt, his beret which holds all of the hair away from his face, leaves his forehead exposed, wide, bold, his expressive eyebrows. Looking at Taehyung is like looking at an expressionist painting — you have to look and look and look to understand how you feel and yet you’ll never be able to call this feeling for what it is. It’ll exist where your heart strains from too little room and it’ll be filled with colours and you’ll open your mouth, many times, to call out its name, but all that ever comes out will be you make me feel like the night sky all lit up or you make me so loudly quiet . 

Yoongi should go back to Jennie’s dress and, perhaps, start on Jimin’s shirt while he’s at it but he doesn’t move. He watches as Taehyung hammers the painting to the wall, the curve of his back gentle underneath the cotton fabric, the warm planes of his skin as the sleeves slide down and pool at his shoulders. Yoongi wants to tangle his hands in this cloth, wants to press his face to the center of Taehyung’s back, wants to breathe him in, the night of him, the silence of him, wants to hold onto his waist and kiss the bumps of his spine and wants to be held so tight he disappears. His stomach curls all weird and ugly from the want of it. 

“Guide me here, hyung, hm?”

Taehyung is now holding up the teacup canvas beneath the sunrise. Somehow, it looks as if the liquid flows upwards into the sky and turns into the sea during sunset. Yoongi isn’t sure anymore he gets what the paintings mean.

“Left.” His voice comes out scratchy. He clears his throat.

Taehyung tilts the canvas accordingly. He puts a nail in his mouth as he reaches for the hammer and nails the painting to the wall, slow and precise. How everything about Taehyung seems to be calculated, not a thing out of place.

Yoongi comes closer and Taehyung steps back, their bodies drawn to each other as if connected by the moon. Taehyung bumps into Yoongi, his spine to Yoongi’s shoulder, stays. He puts his hands on his hips, bites his bottom lip, stares at the wall. 

Yoongi looks at the paintings. They’re like Taehyung, a swirl of inexplicable feelings enclosed in paint but lovely, incredibly lovely, filling the space with so much light and soul, the way homesickness feels like.

“What do you think?” Taehyung asks. Yoongi looks up and he spots the dried paint again, at the base of his throat, how he’d like to press his mouth there, just above the smudge. How he’d like to kiss his skin.

Yoongi manages to say, “I think they’re great. You have a good eye, for colours.” 

Taehyung hums. His eyes are big and kind. “Can I tell you something, hyung?”

“Of course.” of course you can, of course i’m curious about you, i like the way you speak, i like listening to you.

(Yoongi’s a language which you’d have to crawl inside him to hear.)

“Namjoon used to ask what my paintings mean but he doesn’t, anymore, because I don’t know what to say. I never know how to say things right.”

“Bullshit.” Yoongi’s angry and he doesn’t know why. Not at Namjoon but not at Taehyung, either.

Taehyung shakes his head, his bent elbow pressing to the dip in Yoongi’s waist. “What I mean— I paint ‘cos there are no words for— that.”

He gestures around, means every painting in the house, means the watercolours on wrinkled paper in the kitchen and framed canvas above the bed and Polaroid-like snapshots of the sea he painted when he was sixteen and in Busan and summer at Jimin’s grandmother's house. “The sun makes me feel like that. Sometimes, the world feels upside down. I can say it but it’s not the same thing. Do you understand?”

Yoongi nods, hooks his index finger on the edge of Taehyung’s T-shirt, tugs lightly. “Like clothes.”

There are many things Yoongi doesn’t know how to say and fashion is a good way to say them. He feels like he can encompass all his love for a person in a garment. All his love for a piece of fabric in a garment. All his love.

Taehyung nods. “Yeah, exactly like that.”

Yoongi looks up again but Taehyung isn’t looking at him. He untangles his finger and hooks it in the belt loop of Taehyung’s pants instead, tugs him closer, come, come, I want to let you in on a secret , Taehyung budges a little but only a little they’re already very close too close but really, what is too close when Yoongi, on most days, would like to melt into him? When, on most days, a simple touch lowers him to the ground?

“You don’t have to have words for that. Conventional words, I mean. However you choose to speak or express yourself, it’s saying something. You speak volumes, you know that?”

Yoongi lets the words sit there, in the hardened air. Repeats, “You speak volumes.”

Taehyung exhales, shifts his body slightly so they’re hip to hip, encircling each other in their safe space, a bubble or a tent, a safe space where you lit up a bonfire and wish on shooting stars. Yoongi stares at his wrist disappearing under the pool of Taehyung’s T-shirt, the sudden fragility of it.

“We have this book,” Taehyung says suddenly, nods towards their bookshelf, the topmost shelves where the tomes with the highest spines are. “The gold one.”

Yoongi narrows his eyes, finds a glimmer of gold, nods.

“It’s a good book, by the way, if you can deal with some of the jargon.”

Yoongi grimaces. “Academia and I? Bold, Taehyung-ah, bold.”

Taehyung laughs and tugs on the hair at the nape of Yoongi’s neck and Yoongi knows he’ll read it because he deals with academia alright if it’s interesting to him, when he wants to know, and he does. “I promise it’s good, hyung. Took me a month to read but so, so worth it. It says, which is what stuck with me, it says there’s a thing called the beholder’s share. Art is— Art has at least two meanings, always. It means something to the creator and it means something to the receiver, the beholder. It’s ambiguous.”

“What if they mean two entirely different things? Kinda sucks when you intend it to mean one thing, and comes out meaning another.”

“Not sure, hyung, not sure if it sucks. I think it’s comforting, in a sense. It’s like, you’ve created a piece of art and this piece can be seen and received by many people and everyone sees it differently.”

“This ambiguity doesn’t guarantee the meaning a person takes with them is good. Just that it means something different but doesn’t mean it’s good. Their understanding is no understanding at all. Doesn’t that hurt to think about?”

Taehyung shrugs. “Sure, it’s— I mean, it always hurts a little, when someone doesn’t get you. But I don’t think it matters whether someone understands it or not, you get me?”

Yoongi looks at him with eyes wide open. “Tell me why.”

“This beholder’s share, it assumes the work means something. That’s all. I hope my work means something. The rest doesn’t matter. It’s the case of being known and understood.”

Known and understood. It’s like a knee-jerk reaction to something that you know is going to hurt. 

Yoongi images sometimes, what it would be like to not be known at all. To exist alone and float through the world without a body. Not to be perceived. Living somewhere far away, cut off. Unattached.

It seems more terrifying somehow, not being seen. The idea that all of him amounts to nothing, and that his interpersonal relationships don’t matter, and that no matter who he talks to, nobody knows him. 

Yoongi pulls on the belt loop again and puts his mouth to Taehyung’s arm which is as high as he can reach with his feet planted on the ground. Closes his eyes. His mouth moves against the cotton. “I get it, Taehyung-ah. I get it.”

He feels the lightest of touches in the dip of his waist, fingertips.

“You do?” Gentle, calm. Yoongi could fall asleep in the tranquillity of him.

I know you, Yoongi thinks surely. I feel you and I know you.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Perhaps being understood is not what everything’s about, really. Perhaps it’s about being seen, allowing yourself to be seen and putting yourself out there and hoping someone has their own understanding of what you do and that understanding being valuable, its own experience. Being perceived within this world and having an echo, an echo that lingers. A voice that is heard. 

“It’s comforting, actually,” Yoongi says, not moving away. The touch on his waist gains the inside of a palm and the heel of a hand. “Knowing that you can let go of your work like that, and it gains on a different meaning.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung sighs against his hair. The quality of his voice changes and it changes in a way that makes Yoongi squeeze his eyes shut. “It’s like— You’re putting it out there, and it doesn’t belong to you alone.”

“I think withholding control is what everyone’s scared of. But it’s the most crucial.” Everything inside Yoongi strains within its lines, mindful of them, stopped at the border but walking past it and into the burning forest.

“Stillness scares me more than change,” Taehyung near-whispers.

“I know,” Yoongi breathes out and it warms Taehyung’s skin under his mouth. 

“I’m afraid that if I stopped moving I’d disappear.”

(Something in the room holds its breath.)

“You wouldn’t,” Yoongi says forcefully, leans back to take Taehyung in, there’s no way. “You can stand very still and be here anyway. Exist on this earth the same way everybody else does. Very still. Here.”

The silence that stretches is the silence of a spring morning, something waking up and carefully unfolding and reaching its leaves towards the sky.

Taehyung looks at Yoongi with infinite love(liness) in his eyes.

“Hyung?”

Yoongi waits. Thinks, seen seen seen.

“I know you, too.”

And Yoongi knows he does.

And it’s an encouraging thing, and alive.

/

In the morning, sleep clinging to the inner corners of Yoongi’s eyes which he rubbed and rubbed at but couldn’t get the sleep out of, how sleep seems to cling to him lately, like cotton candy, too sweet and sticky, not at all lovely and soft, he folds the clothes he made for his mom and places them neatly in a cardboard box. They’re mostly thicker shirts and cotton blouses and simple dresses in earth tones. No embellishments, no ruffles but lots of necessary pockets so his mom can store the keys to the house and the car and the bike lock and the orchard and slip in her notepad in which she writes down groceries, and loose change, who even has loose change anymore? His mom’s pockets always ring metallic whenever she tucks her phone back inside. His dad’s pockets never ring with anything, he only ever carries his phone and wallet with him. None of it Yoongi-made pockets but they’re getting there.

Yoongi sips on his coffee and folds the clothes and Taehyung walks into the room quietly almost imperceptibly, hair tousled and a little damp. He buttons up his shirt, only the first two done, and wrong. His eyes aren’t fully open yet. Yoongi wants to press the heel of his palm into the softness of his tummy. 

Taehyung peers into the box. Yoongi pulls at Taehyung’s pinky finger. His hands still on the third button. “You gotta do it again.”

Taehyung looks down, notices he missed a button and sighs, starts to undo the shirt. Yoongi takes a swing of coffee, the remains of it, closes the box.

“Post office day?” Taehyung asks as he redoes the shirt.

Yoongi nods, takes the scotch tape, scrapes the smooth surface until he finds the end of the roll.

“Can you—” Taehyung cuts himself off and leaves the room, hands falling away from his shirt, only halfway done. Yoongi hears the rustle of papers, all their mail kept and stacked behind Taehyung’s strawberry soda on the kitchen counter.

“Hyung, what time is it?”

Yoongi retrieves the phone from his sweatpants. He’s got unread messages in a group chat. He unrolls them, reads briefly through Jimin’s 3 am texts sent during his break at the hospital, moaning about wanting to go home and stupid fucking people with their stupid fucking middle of the night injuries and how do you even get a lightbulb stuck up your ass? and pictures of instant ramen and his exhausted face. Taehyung managed to reply, in real-time. Yoongi’s thumb hovers over the screen, gut twisted with useless worry. He thought they fell asleep at the same time.

“Hyung?” Taehyung’s in the doorway, shirt still undone, occupying the space untouched by the grey morning light, the dark figure of him, darker than the air around him.

“Seven forty. You didn’t fall asleep last night?”

A small sheet of paper rustles in Taehyung’s hand. The slope of his shoulders look tired but his face has no tells. “On the dot?”

Yoongi’s mouth twitches. “Thirty-eight.”

Taehyung nods and walks closer. “That’s better. See, that’s two whole minutes better.”

Taehyung stops in front of Yoongi. The spaces unaffected by their bodies have never been big, big enough to breathe. Yoongi always feels like he has to tip his chin unreasonably back to be able to see Taehyung clearly. He forgets to feel flustered by it. Forgot a long time ago, whatever there was to be flustered about. They have been friends for so long comfort and something far more difficult seem like one and the same.

Taehyung peers down at him. There are things he doesn’t say but they’re not heavy. “Hyung, can you—”

Yoongi extends his hand, brushed the inside of Taehyung’s palm, dry and smooth like an apricot, as he takes the sheet of paper from him. It feels thin and brittle. Yoongi bets it’s an aviso. Taehyung shops online for accessories criminally often, criminally in the middle of the night. He hums, “Mhm.”

Taehyung lingers. His fingers tangle around Yoongi’s wrist but don’t really hold down. “I can’t fall asleep lately.”

Yoongi nods. Knows what it’s like to toss in bed and sleep through the alarm clocks in the morning. With Taehyung, it’s a perpetual thing. 

“It’s okay,” Yoongi says. “At least you have more time to watch films.”

Taehyung smiles something small and relieved and wanting to be still. “Last night I watched The Shape of Water .”

Yoongi starts to button up his shirt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He has to stop. His nails are too short to thread the buttons properly. 

Taehyung’s gentle hands wrap around his, replace them. He has such pretty fingers, long, nails taken care of. Yoongi likes the feel of them. They never crack during winter, like Yoongi’s. Yoongi tends to walk around with the backs of his hands bitten red, rough, ugly. Taehyung’s are never like that. 

“It’s about a mute woman who falls in love with a monster without language.”

They used to have the same hands when they were little, and Taehyung climbed trees and his skin caught on branches. Yoongi used to like climbing trees, too. It felt like he could see the entire world like that, the sea of leaves. His mother would always shout for him to get down and Yoongi did. 

“How do they communicate?”

Taehyung stayed behind and hid before Yoongi’s mom. Jimin would wait for them on the ground, looking up, impeccable clothes, no dirt on them. When he first moved in he would climb the trees with them but he was always slow, hesitant. Yoongi told him he doesn’t have to climb if he doesn’t want to. Jimin looked away and stayed on the ground. Taehyung hovered among the backdrop of the clear, blue sky. The city sky isn’t like that. It’s grey and polluted. Yoongi misses the blue. 

“I won’t say, you must watch.”

Taehyung always looked free on top of the world.

Yoongi quirks up an eyebrow. “Must I?”

“Yes,” Taehyung says solemnly, tries to fix the cuffs of his sleeves but it’s hard, not impossible, but hard to do on his own. “You’ve seen his, Del Toro’s, Pacific Rim .”

“That was a great film.” He reaches towards Taehyung’s sleeves, fights through the unpleasantness of buttons on his fingertips.

Taehyung tilts his wrist so Yoongi reaches easier. “This one has monsters, well, a monster, too. And the ocean.”

“Would you look at that, it checks all my boxes.”

Two buttons fall into place. Taehyung drops his arm, lifts the other one. 

“There’s a poem, at the end—”

Yoongi’s mouth feels funny and he smiles. “Wasn’t I supposed to watch it?”

He can feel Taehyung’s eyes on his mouth. There, a language. 

“Oh, yeah, right, okay. Yeah. Yeah, watch it. It’s okay to cry too much.”

Yoongi finishes the sleeves. Pats Taehyung’s wrist, mouths good to go. Says, “Too much, as if that’s a thing.”

“You’re right, it’s not.”

Taehyung shakes out his arms, tucks the shirt into his pants. Yoongi notices a glimmer of an earring, a single pearl. He wants to reach out and feel its smoothness under his thumb. He would like, also, to press his mouth to the strained juncture of Taehyung’s neck, where the collar falls away and exposes aurous skin.

“Hyung?” Taehyung’s voice. Heavy, lovely. Blue. 

Yoongi feels too big too small too caught up in the middle of growth or shrinking his skin forgets which way to stretch.

“Yes?” 

Taehyung looks like he stepped down from a tree. Yoongi thinks, nurturing, earth-like, grounding.  “I’ll be late today.”

Yoongi says, “Okay.”

Taehyung wraps his arm around Yoongi, and Yoongi steps into his embrace thoughtlessly, a little dazed by the good of it, the casual sweetness. His hands find Taehyung’s waist, sturdy, like tree bark. Taehyung hugs him to his chest, says into his hair, “Don’t wait up.”

Yoongi laughs in a way that isn’t really a laugh but more of an exhale of breath. He feels the stiff oxford cotton of Taehyung’s shirt under his mouth. He smells raspberry and gold. “You know me, in bed at ten.”

Taehyung huffs out a breath. It ruffles Yoongi’s hair.

(This is what Yoongi knows of serenity: touch and genuineness. This is what he knows: cotton, raspberry and gold. This is what he knows—)

“Have a lovely day, hyung.”

Taehyung presses his mouth to the side of Yoongi’s head. Yoongi closes his eyes, acutely feeling the lashes grazing his cheeks, Taehyung’s splayed hand on his back, Taehyung’s hipbone digging into his tummy in a way that isn’t unpleasant but that the entirety of Yoongi’s body knows and recognizes Taehyung’s, the planes of it from touch alone. How Yoongi’s skin is a palimpsest, skin touched and retouched by Taehyung, new piling on top of the old, the old never really going away.

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, feeling worn out but the good kind, the way you wear out a sweater, wear it in. A feeling safe to exist in, to breathe in. “Yeah, you too. Go safely.”

(This is what he knows:

being next to Taehyung is simple but there are things pressed flat to the roof of his mouth which he has to hold in place with the tip of his tongue because they feel too impossible to say.)

/

Yoongi watches twenty minutes of the film on his phone on his way to work. He’s glad to occupy his eyes and avoid eye contact, squeezed in between seven different bodies on the subway. He walks to work in a haze as if he dreamt the whole way but it’s what coming out of a film feels like. The concrete world feels unreal.

The people he passes as he enters the building all bow their heads and Yoongi nods and answers their good mornings. He meets Heeyeon on the elevator and she tells him they have cupcakes in their department and he’s free to come anytime. Yoongi stores the information in his brain, to carry forward.

The inside of the workroom reveals itself through the glass walls. Seokjin is standing next to a pinboard, switching foot left to right as Seulgi points at the designs with her pinky finger. The board is spilling over with sketches and early samples. Soonyoung opens the door with his back to Yoongi and Seulgi’s melodic voice has a hard edge to it. Seokjin looks like he’s ready to argue.

“I’m with Seulgi-noona on this!” Soonyoung calls out and turns around. He grins, wide and fox-like when he sees Yoongi. “Hi, hyung.”

The door behind him closes without a sound.

“Hi, Soonyoung-ah. Early start?”

Soonyoung salutes him. “I had to break in the coffee machine for you.”

Yoongi clicks his tongue. Soonyoung laughs like he means it, always laughs like that, Yoongi doesn’t know what his fake laugh sounds like. He smoothes over the papers he carries even though they’re perfectly lined up.

“I have to take these—”

“Sure, sure, go ahead. Want coffee?”

“Not the greatest idea,” says Minghao who appears out of nowhere, he walks so quietly, languidly, never in a hurry, even his clothes laid-back, loose, comfortable but Yoongi sees lots of fashion-sensitive Seoul kids dressing the way he does. He pushes the golden glasses up his nose and tugs on Soonyoung’s shirt collar. “He’s had three already.”

Soonyoung smiles at him something quiet, unlike him. “Need them to feel like a functioning human being.”

“You’re beyond human,” Minghao points out flatly like it’s another earthly fact.

“I can still make that coffee for you,” Yoongi says, unbothered. 

Soonyoung tears his gaze away from Minghao. “No, hyung, ‘s fine. I can do without.”

And then he’s off. Minghao follows him with his eyes until he disappears behind the corner. “He’s going to buy an energy drink and gulp it down at Heeyeon noona’s desk.”

Yoongi shrugs and pushes the door open with his shoulder. “They do have cupcakes today.”

Truth is, with the new line launch a couple of months away he’s worried about everyone in this department but they can’t really slow down. He’s guilty of the same thing Soonyoung is. They’re made from the same cloth. 

Minghao sighs and says nothing. He’s the kind to openly worry for other people. He stays behind at work and comes in early just so Soonyoung has company. He massages Seulgi’s shoulders when she complains about a cramp. The cupboard in the kitchen with hot beverage accessories is dedicated in half to Minghao’s healing teas — chamomile, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric. Says his grandma runs a tea shop in Shenyang and he’s been raised around spices. He smells like a spice himself, like liquorice and lemongrass. Yoongi’s glad they have him around. Reminds Yoongi to go slower.

Seokjin shouts, “Yoongi-chi, good morning!”

“I can hear you,” Yoongi grunts.

Seulgi greets him with a morning, oppa and Yoongi nods towards her, says, morning, seulgi-yah. She smiles like a sunflower.

The sleeve of Seokjin’s pink sweatshirts slides down and he rolls it back up, to the bend of his elbow. “We’ll wait for Soonyoung and have a meeting, huh?”

“Where’s Hyojin?” Yoongi asks, looking around, messy tables with scraps of fabrics that have been coming in from the textiles department for a week now and ginormous papers with designs pressed down with scissors and empty coffee mugs. He starts to unpack his bag, stuffed with designs he took from work to fix. They’re all crumpled as he drops them on the table.

Seokjin rolls his eyes and extends his arm towards the adjacent kitchen with the flourish of an archer about to make his shot. “In there you go.”

Yoongi stalks to the kitchen. Hyojin is leaning against the counter scrolling on her phone, an electric kettle behind her steaming and shaking with the force of bubbles. She lifts up her eyes and they nod towards each other. She lingers for a second too long on his face, a curious glint of carefully applied eyeshadow on her eyelids, a dangerously sharpened wing of an eyeliner.

“Coffee?” she asks.

Yoongi rubs his knuckles under his eyes. “That bad?”

Hyojin shrugs and takes out a mug. “The usual.”

“Ouch.”

She sighs and puts down her phone. The embellished case clatters on the counter. Yoongi leans against the opposite counter.

“What was it this time?” she asks, crossing her arms across her chest, looking almost bored but Yoongi has spent too much time with her in this kitchen and in the workroom and in stuffed bar tents to know bored on her and this is not it.

“A dress,” he says and the kettle clicks quietly, the water boiled. Hyojin’s eyebrows shoot up for a millisecond and then she turns around, takes two mugs out of the cupboard. Yoongi withdraws his hands into his sweater, cold and embarrassed because Hyojin can tell when he doesn’t sleep and it’s obvious on him when he doesn’t sleep even though he wouldn’t say he looks especially different in the mirror, granted he avoids looking, Taehyung usually keeps this sort of thing to himself but not Hyojin and, also, not Jimin.

He held the door open for him when they bumped into each other in the morning, Jimin barely standing upright, wrinkled shirt, unzipped coat, puffy eyes, still finding it in himself to stop in the doorway, say, ah, hyung, you’ll send me to my early grave and Yoongi letting go of the handle, the door bumping into Jimin, swaying him slightly, said, you’re the one to talk, park jimin and jimin’s go to sleep hyung and yoongi’s you first which Jimin most likely very gracefully did right after, falling face-first into the unmade bed, lucky if he took off his jeans, but such luck is hard to come by these days, especially when on some days, not even shoes seem convenient enough to be taken off.

“I’m almost done,” Yoongi adds, plays with the frayed ends of his knitted sweater. “I’m using that project from last season, the one which was supposed to have ruffles. I’m adding the ruffles. It’s more interesting this way.”

Hyojin has this sorry look in her eyes which mostly makes Yoongi uncomfortable. “The production on a larger scale would’ve been—”

“A motherfucker, yeah,” Yoongi says, trying to hit a higher, lighter note, hitting it, the note falling miserably fake. He resigned himself to the fact that clothes have to be tailored, many times, most of them hardly resembling the original sketch, knows this is how the industry works, it values creativity but at the same time not too much creativity, lest you don’t cater to the general public. Which would’ve been fine if they were doing an haute couture kind of deal but they weren’t.

Yoongi doesn’t want haute couture. He used to watch runway shows religiously, streaming the liveshows on the fashion house websites, used to stay up late to catch the European timezones — London, Paris, Milan; used to watch Tokyo fashion week straight after dinner; used to dream of working for Prada and Miu Miu and Chanel. Used to run a fashion review blog when he was still in university, Taehyung texting him in the middle of the night, hyung have you seen the newest tom ford or hyung have you seen anna sui i love her i love her have you seen the patterns i’d like a dress like that and Yoongi, being Yoongi, didn’t care much for Tom Ford but cared for Anna Sui as much as Taehyung cared for her, meaning — she wasn’t his taste but when he came back home for Seollal and Chuseok he’d bring Taehyung clothes made out of thrifted or discounted fabric, flared, skirt-like shirts mostly because Taehyung wasn’t fond of wide-legged pants yet, he very much enjoyed his jeans tight. They’d go thrifting, the three of them, Taehyung walking out of the fitting room and Jimin leaning against the nearest rack with his burnt-orange hair and a leather jacket and Yoongi looking at Taehyung’s legs in this sort of disbelief as Jimin said look at you, look at you, look at you and Yoongi had to admit he looked nice, pretty , he looked very pretty but he’s only realizing now, realized some time ago if he saw Taehyung wear skinny jeans again he’d walk face-first into the nearest rack of clothes and pray to the god of patience because Taehyung has such long legs, and he’s so pretty and the jeans would fit him just right and legs are a neat part of a human body, they must be, Taehyung’s are, neat of course, neat and

pretty, pretty, pretty.

Which is to say Taehyung belongs in an art gallery but Yoongi’s clothes don’t. Yoongi doesn’t want haute couture because Yoongi doesn’t want his clothes to be a one time wonder. He wants them to be worn and felt and touched by other hands and admired and threadbare and washed one too many times and all because the garment is so admired and fitting and very much that person they never want to take it off.

This is Yoongi’s policy. Fashion doesn’t work quite like that but he likes to dream. Likes to dream that one day it will and he’ll make the clothes he wants and he’ll be glad to make them.

For now, he’s making clothes. Mostly glad to make them. Not always. 

Not always.

“Something’s gotta give.” Hyojin shrugs. Hands Yoongi his coffee. Her voice, it seems, doesn’t have the quality to waver but it’s tinged something sad. As if she, too, minds. As if she, too, doesn’t really believe it.

“I’ll send you pics,” Yoongi says, sips on his coffee, scalds the tip of his tongue, grimaces, laps his tongue to get rid of the sensation.

Hyojin tilts her head. “I won’t accept anything past midnight.”

Yoongi stops lapping his tongue. “Two am.”

Hyojin narrows her eyes. “One.”

Yoongi narrows his eyes back. “One thirty.”

Hyojin’s eyes are nearly closed. She looks like an angry cat. Yoongi knows he won before she leans back, relaxes her face, says, “Okay, little one. Okay.”

Yoongi smiles into his mug, the steam warming his mouth, a delicious heat.

/

Yoongi stops by a convenience store on his way home. Buys lovely round tangerines, a bag of rice, a package of red chilli flakes and a bottle of a more expensive red wine. He adds a strange peach flavoured yoghurt as the cashier checks him out and drinks it through a straw in the winter air. He throws it out, not even halfway done, getting sick from too much sweetness.

His hands are icy cold and he puts them under scalding hot tap water in the bathroom until he regains feeling. He puts a hand cream on, lightly cherry-scented. He doesn’t like heavily perfumed things for the night, they make his nose itchy.

He pours himself a glass of wine and sits by the desk. Jennie’s dress only needs long, sheer sleeves and he’s done. He thumbs at the fabric, its glittery scratchiness. The desk lamp creates a circular light shape on the ceiling. He drinks his wine, the acrid turning sweet taste lingering on his tongue as he leans his head back, and he’s tired and there’s not much he wants to do at the moment but he tells himself it’s a good thing, to make a dress for a friend, it’s a good thing, he’d be very glad for it on any other day and it’s what he likes to do, it is, he’s tired but it is.

Yoongi starts his sewing machine. He’d like a good night’s sleep one of these days. He’d like that. His grandpa always told him sleep is the key to a good life. Yoongi never found this statement to be wrong.

Taehyung comes back home around one. Everything he does is louder than usual — pressing the light on with a slap, manoeuvring out of his coat and bumping limbs with the rickety hallway wardrobe, misjudging the force with which he needs to open the bathroom door, sauntering to the kitchen and gulping two consecutive glasses of tap water.

Yoongi knows every single sound this home makes, they’re carved into him like a love letter in a tree.

“Slow down, little guy,” he calls out, quietly, hopes Taehyung hears him, hopes he doesn’t. He swivels in his chair and his head swims. He’s had more than one glass, definitely had more, faintly recalls refilling without looking.

Yoongi checks his phone. The group chat on Kakao is spammed with messages, mostly blurry photos of Taehyung walking, backlit by street lamps, a few taken on the subway, one taken up close, his entire face filling the screen (Yoongi saves it on reflex) and a video, accidental two seconds of Taehyung pressing play, his eyes going wide as he realized it’s a recording, an abrupt end. There’s Jimin’s concerned be careful and text me when you get home, most recent ones, unread. Yoongi types out taehyungie’s home and gets an instantaneous reply, a Kakao Friends character with their arms full of hearts. Yoongi smiles at his phone.

Taehyung thumps against the doorframe, worn out, frowning as he tries to focus on Yoongi. “‘M not little anymore.”

Yoongi wants to say something clever but nothing comes to mind. He sees Taehyung now, the way he fills the space with his broad shoulders, the sure line of his waist, the way he never seems misplaced, confident of his place. Remembers him earlier earlier earlier, orange hair, pink hair, purple hair, frail built, smaller than Yoongi which seems impossible now but he was, was smaller than him, didn’t occupy space quite the same way or perhaps he did but Yoongi never noticed, Yoongi never noticed until Taehyung started piling boxes on boxes in Yoongi’s apartment and it was the first time in forever they spent so many consecutive days with each other and Taehyung would sleep in his bed, permanently stayed there as it turns out, never quite left, they had a luke-warm discussion, should I get my own bed and it’s a tiny apartment and you’re right hyung you’re right and no force appeared behind any of their words as if they resigned themselves to something without knowing what that something was.

(The thing Yoongi resigned himself to almost felt like an inevitability. He would look at Taehyung and think how well he’s grown and he was always good-looking, objectively, but suddenly he looked as if his bones rearranged themselves into something that has struck Yoongi, struck him unlike any point in which he looked at Taehyung through all those years, suddenly all he could think of was pretty pretty pretty suddenly all he could see was the fullness of his mouth and the way his face was always too close and when did he get so tall and it wasn’t the case, finally, that Taehyung was taller or older but something inside Yoongi shifted, as if he gained a different quality of looking at Taehyung and, since then, he couldn’t quite look at him in a way that didn’t include a staggering, a stuttering.)

“But you are my little guy,” Yoongi whines and a dulled panic spikes up in his chest, how easily such truths spill out of him.

(It used to feel like a kick to the gut. Now it pours into him easy like water, drips to the bottom of his stomach sweet like honey and settles there, earth-heavy.)

Taehyung slumps against the doorframe, his face like something falling and then not. He breathes out, “hyung,” and then walks slowly towards Yoongi, slowly as only he can, as if he has all the time in the world and Yoongi is tipsy on wine and fond and when Taehyung sits on the edge of the desk in front of him Yoongi only wants to wrap his arms around Taehyung’s waist and breathe him in. He thinks, too close, too tall, too pretty, I’d like to hold you, I’d like to be held, tightly, unlike a peach, want to feel you holding me, want to—

“Your last day,” Yoongi says, rearranges his knees to they bump against Taehyung’s, to distract himself from the uncomfortable expansion of his heart. “How was it?”

Taehyung tilts his head, delicate like a morning bird, leans forward, thumbs at Yoongi’s cheek, does so with fond eyes, eyes fonder than the sun on skin during summer. 

“We went to this makgeolli place,” Taehyung starts and Yoongi nods, glad to be rid of the silence. His hand slips lower, down the column of Yoongi’s throat, settles at the nape of his neck. Too close, too close, too close. “What was it?”

“Where?”

“Gangnam.”

“The one next to the Ho Ho karaoke bar?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that one.”

Yoongi tries to remember, has its name on the tip of his tongue but the only tangible thing in his mouth is the wine.

“I don’t remember its name,” Yoongi says and chuckles and closes his eyes and tugs on the loose fabric of Taehyung’s pants. He suddenly finds it rather funny that he doesn’t remember the name. “Taehyung-ah, what was it? I don’t remember.”

Taehyung laughs and rubs his eye and laughs some more and Yoongi whines, Taehyung-ah, Taehyung-ah, what was it? Leans forward, wants to look into Taehyung’s laughing face, loving the shape of his loud mouth, loving the ocean-darkness of it, they’re underwater, none of this is real, Taehyung’s heavy body sliding down and stopping, tipping forward, his forehead suddenly on Yoongi’s shoulder, Yoongi’s hands suddenly around the arch of his back, Yoongi doesn’t have enough hands to cover the enormity of it, he keeps whispering Taehyung-ah, Taehyung-ah , the skin of Taehyung’s neck is so smooth, the way he breathes into Yoongi’s ear tickles, there’s so much of his body Yoongi doesn’t reach wants to reach Taehyung’s hand cup the back of his head their bodies touch in the smallest, most impossible ways Yoongi feels like stretching there’s this feeling of not being properly stretched wants to expand the shape of his body whispers Taehyung-ah quietly tenderly wine-drunk the love slips off his tongue like liquid Taehyung rubs his forehead against Yoongi’s shoulder it’s skin against skin a body is a body and a body always feels too much Yoongi’s overwhelmed wants to, he’s whispering, but wants to turn this whisper into mouth on skin and another language and ( hyung hyung hyung spilling on Yoongi’s neck) which is another way of saying he wants to kiss the base of Taehyung’s throat perhaps he does it, perhaps he’s not aware of the way he does it, Taehyung’s hand tightening in his hair, Yoongi dizzy, Yoongi dizzy and leaning back, their faces close and mouth lake sea ocean hungry, bodies of water, thirst.

“Hyung,” Taehyung whispers, how can a word be so heavy, how can a word scorch like that, his eyes have the slowly-dripping quality of honey, peach confiture, molten gold, “hyung.”

Yoongi cups his face. Feels unreal in his body. Wants to kiss Taehyung’s mouth, it seems like such an obvious thing to do, such a thing, with Taehyung’s eyes, universe-dark, starlike, such a likely thing to happen. “Taehyung-ah,” he says, tries to break through the heaviness of night. “Taehyung-ah, tell me more.”

Taehyung presses a thumb to the dip between Yoongi’s collarbones, holds it down. Yoongi feels a tightening. Feels his own pulse. Taehyung lets go. It leaves Yoongi feeling hollowed out.

“Tell you what, hyung?” he asks, voice scratchy as if from unuse, as if in the morning, as if woken up and allowed, only, to speak softly. “Tell you what?”

Yoongi shakes his head. Doesn’t know.

He suddenly wishes he drank mulled wine. Suddenly wishes he thought, earlier, of cloves and spices and the stove turned on. Taehyung reminds him of mulled wine, of a flavour that settles rich and slow and heavy on his tongue.

Taehyung smiles at him, tugs Yoongi forward, hand heavy at the nape of his neck, mouth against Yoongi’s forehead. Yoongi breathes out through his mouth, closes his eyes.

“‘M tired, hyung,” Taehyung says, a whisper. “Last days are always sad. I’ll never see these people again like that. Dahye noona cried when she toasted. I think I’m just tears sad. Like, after you cry and you’re just tired.”

Yoongi rubs his back. Feels like Taehyung’s ribcage might open any second and he’ll just slip inside, make himself very small, and slip inside and lie his head down on his folded hands. “It’s okay to let go, Taehyung-ah. It’s okay to hold onto things and then let them go.”

Taehyung leans back slightly peers at him attentive eyes. Time seems to slow down.

“What if I don’t want to?” He brushes his hand through Yoongi’s hair drags it across his scalp the warm press of his palm. It feels dangerous, it feels daring. “What if I don’t wanna let go?”

Yoongi’s eyelids droop as if someone laid lavender petals atop them. He noses at Taehyung’s cheek, his breath stuck in his throat. He keeps a record of the times he did not let go. Bodies are the hardest to let go of, especially after you have felt them against you. The ghost of touch lingers long after the body is gone.

“Depends,” Yoongi says, mouth ghosting over the rounded softness of Taehyung’s cheek. He’s not sure whether they’re talking about the same things. “Depends on what you need to let go of.”

Taehyung presses closer as if he wants to hear better or maybe likes the skin friction as much as Yoongi. It’s hard to say at this hour.

“I don’t wanna,” Taehyung whispers and it sends a tremor down Yoongi’s spine. He’s wearing a knitted sweater, oversized, supposed to keep him good and warm, but a tremor still runs down his spine. He knows there are things Taehyung isn’t saying and doesn’t prod.

“‘M not gonna tell you what to do,” Yoongi says, holds onto Taehyung’s waist, to feel something against his palms. “Things I hold onto hurt. Some of them I can let go. Some of them I can’t.”

“Do you ever feel like…” Taehyung starts, stops, smacks his lips, swallows. “Do you ever like the way it hurts? Like it’s a good hurt. Sometimes, in movies, things hurt so delicious and you’re kind of glad they do. Do you feel like that?”

“In films?” Yoongi asks, knowing what Taehyung means but not wanting him to know that he does.

“In real life, too,” Taehyung says, quiet. “In real life, too.”

Yoongi wants to ask are you hurt taehyung-ah? where does it hurt? do i hurt? if i do, in what ways? do i hurt something vile or do i hurt something delicious? how can you tell the difference there’s so much ambiguity in the word hurt when all it ever meant was a woundedness how can a woundedness ever be a good thing?

(But it can. It can.)

Yoongi’s tired and all he feels is wine and Taehyung and that perfect patch of light. “Let go if you’re tired, Taehyung-ah. It’s okay to let go.”

“I want to think it’s okay to hold on, too.”

“Not always.”

“Not always,” Taehyung agrees. “Maybe not ever. Maybe holding on is the thing we shouldn’t do but do anyway.”

Yoongi hums something low and asleep.

Taehyung adds, “Maybe holding on is the only reason we hurt.”

Yoongi doesn’t want to agree but it feels so exact, the pinning down of a dove with its wings straining against the concrete.

Exactly like that. 

/

Jennie in the morning looks like she’s not ready for it to be morning, and she hasn’t been ready for the past two weeks.

She opens the door for Yoongi and yawns, her eyes hardly open and her hair a mess. Yoongi, on the contrary, had a chance to somewhat put himself together — drink his coffee on an empty stomach which would surely give Taehyung a heart attack but Taehyung was not there to judge him, left in a whirlwind of stuff is happening, hyung and Yoongi didn’t have the chance to inquire what stuff, exactly, entails but they wished each other a good day, nevertheless, and Taehyung left wearing the strawberry earring he ordered, nevertheless, and Yoongi contemplated wearing his but didn’t, nevertheless. He took his sweet time drinking coffee and peeling a perfectly orange tangerine and lingering in some quiet and lingering in not wanting to move but moving anyway and wishing the sky was at least a little bit blue, a little less grey, a little less winter and a little more of that curved upwards spring thing.

“Morning,” Jennie grumbles, her voice scratchy and not stretched out at all.

Yoongi feels a small like a pearl endearment he could wear in his ear and carry with him at all times. “Good morning, Jennie-yah.”

Jennie stops mid-stretch and eyes him suspiciously and her eyes trail down to the purple garment he’s keeping in the crook of his elbow, and up again, and Yoongi feels aware of every inch of his body the way she does it. “Very original.”

Yoongi looks down in a sort of bewilderment, it can’t mean the dress, but what if she means it, what if he blew it with purple and it’s not her colour at all and, “What?”

She pokes him in the center of his chest. “Your sweater. You’ve been wearing it the whole winter.”

Yoongi feels his mouth squeezing into a pout and his lungs deflate like an inflatable swimming pool. “Have you been outside? It’s a war zone.”

“Oh, don’t even talk to me about the outsides,” Jennie groans and shuffles aside to let him in. “I’d give up everything for some quality indoors.”

“You and me both.”

Rose sits at the dinner table surrounded by a mess of papers and sketchbooks. A voice streams out of a tablet in front of her, a male voice, a voice Yoongi knows and a voice which knows Yoongi and Rose doesn’t seem to notice Yoongi, nodding eagerly and repeating yeah yeah yeah in a soft rainfall until he abruptly stops in front of a dangerously left on the floor printer with a wire slithering to the living room’s whereabouts and she notices him, a pen in her hand hovering just above another tablet that’s under her palm, a rough sketch there but Yoongi can’t tell what it is, just that it’s rough and black and white and surely zoomed in because Yoongi cannot tell whether what he’s seeing is an elbow or a branch of a tree.

(With Rose, it might as well be both.)

She looks bright, refreshed, dipped in caramel and laid in the spring wind to dry. She smiles at him and tries to rearrange the papers on the table which are covered in script-like text and more sketches and what Yoongi thinks might be a storyboard if he ever got any of the explanations right but she just might make more mess than she intended so she stops.

“Hi, oppa,” she says with an exhale.

“Hi.”

There’s Jeongguk on the tablet screen, looking very much ready to take on the day, just as Rose is. He leans forward and waves, hands sleeve-covered to the very tips of his fingers but his smile out in the open, all teeth and eagerness. “Hyung! Hi.”

Yoongi lifts up his hand but stops midway and waves there and it’s a small wave, a little embarrassed, Yoongi doesn’t understand why he’s waving back but he is and Jeongguk doesn’t stop smiling and he pushes the round glasses up on his nose with his knuckles.

“The whole gang is here,” Yoongi says and means the early morning crowd which, really, is mostly Jeongguk and Rose.

Jennie groans from another room. The metallic scrape of hangers on a pole. He did manage to catch her before work and she never bothered to be especially pleasant and host-like for Yoongi.

“Not everyone’s happy about it,” Rose says but so softly, as if she sprung up from a flower and is covered in dew and morning light. “Whatcha got there?”

She juts her chin towards the fabric in Yoongi’s hands, an easy curiosity. Jeongguk leans forward, big round eyes nearly meeting the screen dead center.

“Careful, Jeongguk-ah.”

“My eyesight is already ruined, hyung. Show me.”

“That art kid charm,” Rose jokes and her eyes jump between Jeongguk and Yoongi, and Yoongi puffs out his chest, in denial. “Yeah, show us.”

“I’m managing,” Yoongi argues but Jeongguk and Rose look at him all funny. “Jennie-yah, c’mere.”

Jennie appears in the bedroom door, pulling a dress shirt into high waisted pants. Rose drums her fingers on the table, looks at Jennie with the opening of the sky. Jennie says why so flatly it doesn’t even sound like a question.

Yoongi catches the shoulders of the dress between his thumb and index finger, unfurls it in front of his body in a waterfall of purple glittering fabric. “I think you might be a person of interest.”

Yoongi can’t see her but can feel her stillness from the other side of the room. He hears Rose’s oh wow and Jeongguk’s i can’t see what is it and Rose whispering a dress in English and Jennie still doesn’t move and then, “For me?”

Yoongi lowers the dress to look at her. “I told you I’d have it done.”

“You just told me not to worry about it.”

“Same thing.”

Jennie comes up and Yoongi feels some of the weight being lifted when she holds the skirt of the dress, certainly the heaviest part of the construction, folds and folds of fabric there, to contrast with the tight-fitted and delicate bodice. Yoongi thinks he could’ve done a better job connecting the upper and lower body, it’s not quite as seamless as he’d like but he’s not at all mad at it.

“There are pockets,” Yoongi says, has to clear his throat. “In the folds, hidden. You can—”

Jennie moves the fabric every which way and her hands find the edge of a pocket, slipping her entire hand inside. He can hear her exhale, rather gently, and her eyes round something softer.

“For all your business phones,” Rose jokes, an airiness in her voice. Yoongi glances at her, and she’s not looking at the dress.

Jennie smooths her hand up and down the bodice, and all the ruffles catch and rearrange under her hands. She has this zoned-out look on her face, the look she gets when she sits down in front of her computer and pulls up one of her coding programs that Yoongi’s pretty sure starts with either a C or an S and has one or two pluses in its name, and is deep into her work.

“What do you think?” Yoongi asks, feeling a little self-conscious. He likes the dress, likes how it came out. It could always be better but he felt proud as he finished it, this surge that carried him upwards. He showed it to Taehyung and Taehyung couldn’t stop looking at it. He said, hyung, you’re capable of so many things. you have such range.

And Yoongi wanted to kiss his cheek but also bury himself in the tossed bedsheets and the only thing he said was, why are you saying that?

And Taehyung smiled like it was an ending of a film, and all the answers were in that smile like in the last scene. you know. don’t tease me, hyung, you know.

And Yoongi thinks he knows. Thinks there’s something like an empty house between them and they walk into it and meet each other halfway. Something like that.

“It’s stunning,” Jennie whispers thinly and Yoongi can’t remember the last time he’d seen her so touched but it’s not an uncomfortable feeling at all, it feels rather precious and rather lovely in this moment.

“It is,” Rose agrees.

And then,

“I still can’t see it.”

Jennie snorts and the bubble pops. Rose turns towards the tablet, “Oh my god, Jeongguk,” and says it with such a pretentious-sounding accent that Yoongi chuckles and looks down at his feet.

“There you go,” Yoongi says and steps behind Rose, raises the dress as high as he can and hopes something other than his knitted sweater is visible, although it is a lovely sight.

When he lowers it down all he can see it Jeongguk’s eyes filling the entire screen again.

“Jeongguk-ah.”

“Bad eyesight never killed nobody.”

“Want to bet?”

Jeongguk throws himself back on the chair and looks up at what Yoongi presumes is the ceiling in his clean and well-kept bedroom. 

Jennie nudges his waist. “Let the kid have it for once.”

“I’m one year younger than you,” Jeongguk argues but adds, “noona.”

Rose picks up her phone and touches her thumb to the lock button, checks the time. “Go try it on, unnie.”

“I won’t be late,” Jennie grunts but takes the dress out of Yoongi’s hands.

“You’ve been pressing your luck lately.”

“But I’m not late.”

“But almost.”

“But not.”

Rose narrows her eyes but her mouth curves upwards and Jennie steps forward, puts her hand at the nape of Rose’s neck and kisses her forehead. They both close their eyes.

“Please, go now,” Rose says and nudges Jennie lightly, with a restrained hesitance. Jennie looks at her with that complicated and more difficult thing.

“We still have time ‘till Friday if it needs fixing,” Yoongi says when Jennie starts toward the bedroom.

“I can tell it’s perfect,” Jennie says and there’s a purposefulness in her now, longer stride. She waves her hand in the air. “But don’t quote me on that.”

Yoongi grins at her back. Thinks, i have many clothes left for you. Says, “Yeah, yeah. Humour me anyway.”

Jennie closes the door behind her and Yoongi drops down on the chair next to Rose, to have a good look at Jeongguk, too. Rose unlocks the screen of her tablet and the other screen is filled exclusively with the crown of Jeongguk’s hair, the sound of a pencil against paper.

Yoongi taps his index finger on the wooden table. “How’s the film going?”

Jeongguk and Rose lift up their heads at the same time, gauge for each other’s reactions. Neither of them wants to speak first.

“Good, I think?” Jeongguk says after a moment’s pause. He scratches the back of his neck and his glasses slide down his nose and Rose’s hand twitches as if she’s used to fixing them for him. There’s something sibling-like about them, the hard-earned knowledge of each other that’s hard to scratch clean.

“It’s good but it’s a lot,” Rose adds, her chin sliding off her fist, squashing her cheek instead, a full-on croissant cheek. She traces the topmost edge of the propped tablet with her index finger but she’s careful to avoid the camera. There’s a glimmer of something harder in her, hardened. “A lot of work.”

“We’re almost done with the characters,” Jeongguk says like he’s trying out for how Rose might feel, how she might respond. Yoongi almost asks what he means by that but Rose beats him to it.

“He means character design.”

Yoongi blinks and hums and rubs his bottom lip with his index finger. He’d like to see what they have so far but he doesn’t want to be imposing. 

“Why don’t you…” Rose says and starts to shuffle the papers in front of her, her eyebrows drawn. “I made a whole mess, Jesus— Okay, here you go.”

She pushes paper sheets towards him, drawings of girls in flowing dresses and a forest and moonlight pooling in a lake and Yoongi realizes it’s not only character design but concept art as a whole, outfits and sceneries and moods. Yoongi gets a deeply mystical feeling out of it, otherworldly, magical. He would like to see the movement of it, the sounds, the way it plays out. He flips the pages carefully, with the tips of his fingers.

“Those are good,” Yoongi says and glances up, Jeongguk taking a sudden interest in something on his desk, Rose intensely watching her hand on the tablet. “You’ve put a lot of work into it.”

“Sure feels like forever,” Jeongguk says but Yoongi can’t tell whether he’s tired and sick of it. Looks like he doesn’t mind at all, the amount of work.

“Most of what’s left is the technical stuff,” Rose sighs and taps at the corner of the tablet, her cheek sliding down to press against her forearm. “Drawing—”

“So much drawing.” Jeongguk’s voice hikes up and he grins and rubs his hands together.

Rose looks at him like he’s out of his mind but there’s fondness in there. “So much drawing on these sorry excuses of tablets and compiling it together and scouting for voice actors—”

Jeongguk leans forward abruptly, says on an exhale, “We’re thinking of asking Taehyung—”

Rose straightens up and glares daggers. “Jeongguk-ah!”

“Asking him for what?” Yoongi asks but he has a pretty good idea and Jeongguk looks positively proud of the fact he got to break the news. Knows Taehyung would love to help no matter what it is, and not only because it’s Jeongguk and Rose, he means, that sure is a part of it, but then working on another film, throwing himself into this project, he’ll like it. 

Yoogni rubs his arm and smiles at the thought of him. Hides it in the curve of his cupid’s bow.

A door opens but Yoongi doesn’t turn around. Hears Jennie’s faint mumbling and approaching steps.

“We’re thinking about it,” Rose says forcefully and points her finger at him and has that serious look on her face. “Don’t you dare tell— Oh.”

Rose’s face goes slack and softens around the eyes. Yoongi turns around, takes Jennie in, standing behind him with her hands on her hips and hair thrown back and that thing in her face runway models gotta have, the playful confidence. The bodice hugs her just right, the sleeves and the skirt give the impression of space, of movement without movement, the dress flowing even as she stands still. If statues were chiselled out of air.

“Fits you,” Yoongi says and feels more of that good thing, of that good thing when someone makes him aware he can make clothes that suit people and make them stand taller and Yoongi can tell Jennie likes the dress, she doesn’t fiddle with it or adjust it, it floats down her body in perfect waterfalls and it feels good but he wants to make sure. “Fits you?”

She comes up to him, hand balled in a fist. Yoongi bumps his knuckles against hers. Her lashes curl something so warm Yoongi feels hugged by her, and held and knows but she says it anyway, “Fits perfect. Quote me on that.”

Yoongi looks down and smiles to himself. “Will do.”

“You look so good I might have to make a film about you,” Rose says and it sounds like dark stones thrown into the water.

Jennie looks above Yoongi’s shoulder and her mouth curves something mischievous. “Aren’t you already?”

There’s a deep, distorted sigh and Yoongi turns back around and Rose is lifting her eyes towards the sky, “You’re insufferable,” but she tugs Jennie by the waist and holds her close and Jeongguk sighs, content, “that’s better, oh, that’s so much better, what a lovely— Rosie-yah, noona’s right, you’re already making a film about her.”

Rose buries her face in the dip of Jennie’s waist. “Shut up.”

Jennie tugs a strand of Rose’s hair behind her ear and her body sings of softer things.

/

(Rose decides to be host-like on Jennie’s behalf and Yoongi takes her seat and a conversation erupts in the kitchen and Yoongi can’t catch many Korean words but he gets Rose’s blueberry pancakes and i’ll cut the fruit and Jennie’s i’ll do the rest and Rose’s it’s for the better and catches the sight of Jennie still wearing the dress, smoothing her hands down the length of her arms, where the fabric is sheer and nearly translucent. 

Jeongguk leans forward on folded in front of the screen hands, not quite looking at Yoongi. “Hyung.”

“Yes?”

He sounds embarrassed to bring it up, embarrassed that something eluded him. “It’s Rose’s birthday this week.”

sounds like it’s more of a question.

“I know, I pooled—”

“Shh, hyung, quiet, quieter.”

“I’m quiet.”

“So?” Jeongguk prompts. He rubs his thumb over his wrist bone.

“Rose said she already had a dress. Jennie wanted one. I made it. There’s not much to it.”

And really there isn’t much, there’s never anything much. Jennie might have said dresses aren’t all that bad and I want to match Rose for her birthday and online shopping is terrible and no, all shopping is terrible and Yoongi said i’ll take care of it and there wasn’t much to it at all.

Jeongguk looks at Yoongi like there’s something there. A kindness Yoongi’s not quite aware of. “It’s a lovely dress, hyung.”

Yoongi looks at the soft pink wall of the dining room, at Rose’s animation major certificate, my parents would want me to hang it here, at Jennie’s IT one, this one, too, is a must, at framed prints of artwork from independent creators and Atlantis: The Lost Empire poster. Says thank you because he doesn’t have other things to say and it’s the easiest way to get himself out of the spotlight.)

/

(Accepting your own kindness as an act of kindness is a process in itself. Yoongi will get there.)

/

Yoongi is not quite sure what wakes him up and he’s not sure he’s being woken up, either, until he blinks slowly, eyes finding it hard to adjust to the pitch dark of the room, face buried in the bedsheets.

And then it’s Taehyung’s body that flips to the side behind Yoongi’s back and Yoongi knows Taehyung is awake because Yoongi wakes up without being one way or another cocooned by him. It’s dark and Taehyung is awake and Yoongi hardly manages to keep his eyes from closing again.

(It’s dark and Yoongi feels like he knows the exact shape the dark makes, the dark is a shape in itself, another piece of furniture in the room. Another thing Yoongi wakes up to, and knows he’s seen it before.)

“Taehyung-ah,” Yoongi says and it barely comes out as an audible word.

Taehyung stills and the shapes in the dark start to gain contours — the edge of a desk, the sewing machine, the figurines on the windowsill, the plants with many leaves. “Hyung.”

Yoongi blinks and rolls on his other side with a heavy sigh, Taehyung already there, facing him, tousled hair and parted mouth and the sheets pooling somewhere around his waist and his phone on the pillow.

“What’s up?”

Nothing on Taehyung’s face shift the other way. “Lots of things.”

Yoongi is heavy eyelids and steady breathing and things that start to make sense in the dark and he waits but Taehyung doesn’t add on top of that. And it’s late and Yoongi doesn’t know what hour but he was asleep and it must be a strange hour to be awake or, even, to talk.

“Wanna watch a film?”

Taehyung’s eyebrows shoot up. “A film.”

Yoongi nods and his cheek rubs against the pillow, the softness of it, the roughness, too. “A film.”

Taehyung says, “It’s the middle of the night.”

Yoongi looks at him and it’s strange they’re facing each other and not touching and it’s night and strange. He moves his hands under the sheets, tries to find Taehyung’s. His fingers resurface somewhere close to Taehyung’s chest. He doesn’t know what to do with them.

“And you can’t sleep.”

Taehyung moves and shifts and his hand covers and envelopes Yoongi’s fingers so delicately as if the night is filled only with delicate things, things that must not be woken up. “Can’t.”

“And I’m awake.”

Taehyung says nothing.

“I watched The Shape of Water,” Yoongi says and his voice begins to sound more real, like it has a place here. “The other day.”

Taehyung nods, rubs the side of his face on the pillow and scoots closer. Their knees knock together. “What did you think?”

“You are all around me,” Yoongi mumbles and he’s not sure how it goes, there are words that resurface and he tries to string them together.

“What?” Taehyung asks and it gets caught somewhere in his throat, and latches, and stays.

“Ain’t that how it goes?” Yoongi’s tired and he would be better at this if he were fully awake and in sunlight. His eyes itch. “I can feel you everywhere.”

“The poem,” Taehyung says and something catches there, an understanding that sounds a little like disappointment. Like there was supposed to be hope there.

(dove, pinned down, straining)

“Yeah,” but he wants to say not only the poem. it’s late and it’s not only the poem.

“What about the rest of the film?”

mysterious, vivid, irrevocably sad

“Green.”

Yoongi can feel his smile in the exhale on his knuckles. His hands curl and uncurl on themselves and Taehyung doesn’t move away. “That all?”

Yoongi finds another piece of the poem in the waves of dark green. “It humbles my heart.”

Taehyung’s mouth is at the edge of Yoongi’s hand and Yoongi didn’t think it possible to see so much warmth in someone’s eyes especially with all the lights out but it’s there, the softening. “Hyung, go to sleep.”

(taehyung looks at him in the dark and yoongi doesn’t fail to notice how shapeless he looks, how blurry and yoongi does find taehyung all around him, humbling, encompassing.)

“What sorts of films do you hope to make, Taehyung-ah?” Yoongi asks, his heart full.

“The ones I’m making right now.”

“That’s good. That’s good, hyung’s glad.”

Yoongi’s eyes itch and itch and itch but he doesn’t want to move his hands away so he closes his eyes, just a blink, he just wants to blink and give his eyes a rest, and nuzzles into the pillow and Taehyung reaches out as Yoongi opens his eyes and touches his hand to Yoongi’s cheek and Yoongi knows he’s tired but Taehyung isn’t and that’s the shape he knows in the dark. That something he wakes up to and knows it rings familiar.

“Think I’m gonna watch that film,” Taehyung whispers, thumb stroking the peach of Yoongi’s cheek.

Yoongi hums okay against the inside of Taehyung’s palm and feels it reverberate there. He can’t keep his eyes open.

He hears Howl’s and Moving and Castle as if through a membrane.

“Are you sad?” Yoongi whispers and doesn’t think about the implication of Taehyung’s hand still being there.

“I don’t really know,” comes from somewhere close and Yoongi wants to open his eyes but they’re so heavy.

“Let me know,” Yoongi mumbles. “When y’know.”

Yoongi knows Taehyung kisses his forehead and Yoongi knows he buries his face in Taehyung’s neck and Yoongi knows Taehyung covers the top of his face with a pillow and Yoongi knows the lit-up screen can’t reach him there and Yoongi knows he hears her heart was stolen by howl and there you are and i’ve been looking for you and then he knows nothing and he’s asleep.

/

A knock on the door. Yoongi dries his hands on the dishcloth but Taehyung beats him to it, drops the knife on the cutting board and goes to open the door, leaving only the wind behind. Yoongi glances at the cutting board. Cucumber in the shape of stars. He follows after Taehyung.

Jimin stands in the doorway, his face peeking from behind a tabby cat, raised slightly in the air like an offering.

“Periwinkle!” Taehyung exclaims and takes Charm into his careful hands, cuddles him to his chest, puts his nose to Charm’s little face and the cat takes it gracefully, as he does.

“Hello?” Jimin whines and shuts the door behind him. He steps light on his feet, looks refreshed. Yoongi’s glad he had the night off.

Yoongi keeps his distance from Charm, out of respect. When he looks at him, he has no idea where Taehyung’s Periwinkle came from. He certainly doesn’t look like a soft flower. “You can’t just do that.”

Jimin and Taehyung look up at him in twin, offended surprise. “Why not?”

Yoongi points towards the wall separating them from Mrs Lee’s apartment.

Jimin shrugs and grins, “We’ll just blame it on Charmie.”

Charm looks unbothered by the whole ordeal, seeming to have accepted his fate in Taehyung’s arms and it is a good fate if Yoongi were to be the judge of it.

Jimin walks further into the apartment, shrugs his denim jacket off. He’s wearing a white jumper underneath, with golden thread.

Jimin starts to lift it up too but realizes he’s not wearing anything underneath. He drops it back down, pouts at Yoongi. “The heating here is ridiculous.”

“It’s February,” Yoongi points out and thinks of getting him something to change into.

Jimin’s eyebrow makes a perfect upward curve “And?”

Yoongi rubs his hands. “‘S cold.”

Jimin coos and confidently steps towards Yoongi, hugs him close, chin on Yoongi’s shoulder. His body is small and compact against Yoongi’s, a sturdy chest, tiny waist. They’re the same height which always renders Yoongi speechless the same way submerging in water does.

Something soft and fluffy and moving touches the side of Yoongi’s face, something with whiskers and a cold, wet nose.

“Periwinkle feels left out,” Taehyung says.

Yoongi’s voice is muffled by Jimin’s sweater. “Doesn’t.”

Jimin is already leaning back and drawing Taehyung in. Yoongi is cocooned in warmth, Taehyung’s chin atop his head, Jimin’s nose at his jaw and Charms face next to his.

“Poor Charmie,” he whispers.

Taehyung’s hand on his waist feels steadying, Jimin’s heartbeat against his own, heavy and reassuring. He, maybe, holds them both closer. Maybe. No one but the window flowers can tell.

/

The kitchen feels stuffy and the air smells of grilled meat. Yoongi flips the cut pieces on the pan and Jimin leans back on the chair, hits the back of it on the wall, playing with the long silver necklace on his neck, twists it around his tiny fingers, heavy with rings. Yoongi told him it’s okay to sit down after he fussed around with side dishes, wanting to help with everything at once, even Taehyung’s star-shaped cucumbers.

“And I tell this guy,” Jimin continues, crosses his legs. Taehyung puts down a bowl with water in front of Charm who found his happy place on the floor, under Jimin’s chair. “I tell him, sir, I can’t call your doc and he’s like, why not, for real, get this, he really fucking wants me to call her, I mean Sojin, Sojin was the doc, at 4 am just ‘cos he had a check-in, and so I have to explain, calmly, ‘cos fuck me if I flip at him, I have no idea how—”

“Easy,” Taehyung shrugs, caressing Charm’s back as he drinks his water. “Person gives you unpleasantries, you give ‘em back.”

“At 4 in the morning especially,” Yoongi adds, leans against the counter, arms crossed.

“I can’t, people keep telling me that I can, and should but it’s not really— Do you get the environment I’m in, the social situation? It’s not easy,” Jimin sighs and smashes his full cheek against an open palm. “I wish people would just let me live.”

He looks sweet like that, has a very sweet face, very unlike the rage he carries around.

“You look like a good guy,” Yoongi points out.

Taehyung points a finger at him, that’s right, that’s right, says, “Yeah, and you talk all sweet ‘n kind.”

Jimin throws his arms in the air. “‘Cos I have no idea how to do it any other way.”

“Not saying you should be mean, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung says, puts his hand on Jimin’s knee. “But you have value some people are too shitty to see and it’s none of your fault. You gotta take back that value.”

“You can speak up, an asshole’s feelings are none of your concern,” Yoongi says, feels the urge to step closer to them, put a hand on Jimin’s arm but he waits too long to get on with it. When their eyes snap to him he looks away, outside, the sky dark. “Some people will use your kindness against you, and you gotta recognize when they do. I know you want to be kind, and like being kind, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re sure making it sound like it is.”

“Nothing,” Taehyung emphasizes. Jimin looks down at him, such a delicate smile on his face, rounded, easy. Tangles his hands in Taehyung’s hair. “There’s no requirement to treat people better than they treat you especially when their attitude doesn’t change. There’s no use in that. You are of value and the time you give others is precious. It’s their shortcoming if they don’t know what to do about it.”

Jimin looks at them with so much eagerness Yoongi feels like they said some truths Jimin might have only now tapped into. It’s not so much that Jimin doesn’t do introspection but Jimin would rather put himself down to make someone else feel better about themselves.

“Fuck other people being uncomfortable,” Yoongi adds and turns towards the aggressively sizzling meat. Taehyung pats his calf. It’s a small space, easy for Taehyung to reach through. (It’s a small space, easy for them to fill it with plants and paintings and love.)

“Should we drink to making other people uncomfortable?” Jimin asks, sheepishness seeping into his voice, a little cunning. 

“Oh, like in high school,” Taehyung says in awe. He straightens up, Charm looking curiously up at him (Yoongi doesn’t blame him), reaches for the cupboard where they store beverages, red wine mostly since Yoongi stocks them on it every now and then, not terribly often but a wine night with friends is a good way to spend the night.

“I want to see the pictures again,” Jimin says dreamily, stands up in one fluid motion, bumps into Yoongi as he takes out the glass from the cupboard above the stove, turns around and wraps himself around Taehyung as he pours wine.

“We have them somewhere, don’t we, hyung?” Taehyung asks. 

Yoongi tries the meat, rolls it around in his mouth to get rid of the hotness, deems the meat edible and piles it on a plate. Says with a mouth full of food, “On my laptop. Or yours.”

“Both, probably,” Jimin says and he’s very likely right. Easy with those people details.

Taehyung corks the bottle again and leaves the kitchen. Jimin helps Yoongi finish setting up the table. Taehyung returns with a laptop and the folding chair they store in the hallway cabinet and take out in summer, to put out on the balcony. Taehyung moves the windowsill plants around to make room for the laptop. The screen crowded by leaves. Yoongi sits in the middle and Taehyung gets the folding chair because he’s the tallest. Taehyung pours himself only enough wine for a single sip, cracks open a strawberry soda can instead. They clink glasses. Yoongi swirls the wine around, puts his nose to it. Jimin gulps half of his glass down in one go.

“That’s refreshing,” he says and puts it down among the dipping sauces and bowls of rice. 

Taehyung gapes at him, the edge of the can pressed to his lower lip. He says in a long, elongated drawl, “Jimin-aaaaaaah.”

Jimin smiles smugly and raises up his glass for another toast.

Taehyung picks out the best pieces of meat and leaves them on Yoongi and Jimin’s plates before choosing some for himself. Jimin insists on feeding him and then feeding Yoongi, glass wine in hand. Yoongi busies himself with turning on the laptop and searching for the right folder but he feels homesick, in the best way, this ache of longing you get while being right where you’re supposed to be, when you’re home or next to the person you love and you miss them, they’re here but you miss them. It reminds him of—

apples, round and red and glowing, held in tiny palms; Yoongi’s mom used to hire dozens of people to help with apple picking but Jimin and Taehyung and, of course, Yoongi would come and help anyway, their first part-time jobs, and the orchard Yoongi knew to be quiet turned busy once a year and there would be tons of trucks leaving with yellow crates and fallen apples would litter the ground and people on the market would call them kkul sagwa which means honey apples because they were so sweet. His mom told him people these days like to visit Daegu just for the apple picking and she lives comfortably thanks to the tourists. They still call them kkul sagwa. 

reminds him of—

taking the same train to cram school, feet scruffing the sidewalk after midnight, plans for summer, bodies longing for water-dripping fruit and popsicles; Jimin and his brother would leave for Busan for a month and Yoongi would drive with Taehyung’s family to Jeju Island once a week or Taehyung would drive with Yoongi’s family where Yoongi’s hyung would take pretty pictures of them by the sea; Yoongi only liked to go in the evenings when the air cooled down and the sand didn’t burn his feet and he could spot the stars in the sky and try to find the ones he named with Suran (when he couldn’t, Taehyung helped him name them again: Seund Ja and Miuccia and Gazania and Gustav and Morning Glory); they’d visit Jimin for a week, the two of them, and Jimin’s grandma would prepare futons and lay them down on the floor in Jimin’s bedroom but they’d always fall asleep next to each other and his grandma would go to the fish market in the morning and buy strawberry rice cakes on her way back and they’d sit on the back porch on an itchy blanket and Taehyung would pick raspberries from a bush by the fence and he’d carry them back, cupped in his palms and they’d go to the sea where Jimin and Taehyung would spend hours in the water and then smell of salt with their fingertips wrinkled and pruned like dried plums and Yoongi would mostly stay under an umbrella covered head to toe so no ray of sunshine could touch him and they’d spray water on him or occasionally throw him into the shallows and Yoongi would push them back into the sea and their laughs would resound even underwater and Yoongi couldn’t help but laugh, too; Jimin’s grandmother would always tell them Jimin sounds just like a Daegu boy and she didn’t sound either happy or unhappy but Yoongi couldn’t see it — once Jimin returned to Busan the different cadence rolled around, the intonation and falling of syllables which his classmates weren’t very fond of when he first moved in and the dialect which Taehyung would make fun of but fondly so fondly Jimin would have to laugh too and Jimin sounds just like the waves and the sun and the pebbles on rocky shores and only sounds like a Daegu boy in Daegu because Jimin knows how to adapt and does it well. 

reminds him—

parties with the same recycled group of friends from their small town, asking Taehyung where he got his new jeans from and mockery which didn’t feel like mockery because Taehyung would just search for Yoongi and Yoongi was always nearby, and if Yoongi was nearby Jimin would be nearby, too, the three of them navigating towards each other, the maps of them interconnected, roads leading to all the same places (which were: Taehyung’s home, the orchard, a football field laden with cement, a grocery store run by the same old lady for as long as Yoongi’s mom could remember), Taehyung would search for him and point towards him or rather reach toward him, finding each other meant not staying away, and he’d say hyung vamped them up for me and he would sound proud, so proud Yoongi believed he did something very good, and it would feel good and safe, somewhere he could work in himself the courage of not giving a fuck about shitty people with their shitty veiled remarks.

“Hey, hyung?” Jimin says suddenly, with a level of softness that always renders Yoongi suspicious of incoming gentleness. He plays with a leaf of a salad wrapped around a piece of meat and Taehyung watches him fondly, chewing on the star-shaped cucumber. “Thanks for the shirt.”

Yoongi nods, hums. Taehyung chokes on his food and Yoongi’s hand shoots out, pats him on the back.

“Thought he’s gonna be like,” Taehyung says, chokes, laughs again, Yoongi’s hand massaging his back, “what shirt? ”

Jimin snorts and covers his mouth with the back of his hand. “I know.”

Yoongi wants to roll his eyes but something encouraging rolls around instead, like first snowfall. “I can do that alright.”

Jimin laughs deep in his chest, grabs the nape of Yoongi’s neck, surely, as only he does. “Nah, you’re good.” He wipes his mouth with his knuckles. “You’re good. I love it. Thank you.”

Yoongi leans his head back, smooshes Jimin’s hand. Taehyung laughs, ocean-like, when Jimin whines, their knees knocking into Yoongi’s and it’s a mess of bodies that have known each other for too long. Yoongi likes this worn-out place. Likes the comforting assurance of it.

If nothing else, this. If nothing, this. If nothing—

They find the pictures they were looking for. Taehyung in a skirt borrowed from his mother, Jimin with glittering eyes, painted by Taehyung’s sister in the living room while Taehyung’s dad stood in the background and chose records to play on the gramophone, the bookshelf filled with vinyls rather than books. Yoongi took the pictures. Had a particular affinity for photography and his hyung’s Zenith which he passed down to Yoongi after he bought his first Canon and left for his voyages. They went out like that, on the rare occasion Yoongi was back in town. They were leaving for the university that spring and didn’t care. Yoongi liked that they didn’t care. He had enough confidence earned in fashion school to wear the clothes he made. He argued with some of his old friends about the convention of gender. (Yoongi thought and still thinks it’s a whole lot of bullshit simply because gendering clothes is limiting and he doesn’t like any sort of boundaries to hold him, or anyone else, down, let everyone wear what they want in a sense that pink doesn’t have gender nor does blue, and skirts aren’t inherently female same way pants aren’t inherently male and what’s the use of thinking they are, anyway? Where does it lead anyone since all that line of thinking ever brought was prejudice?) They listened but with judgement, their minds closed. It’s easy to tell when people are not really hearing what you’re saying. They only nod and ask so it’s like that? They left an hour later and sat on the stairs leading up to Taehyung’s house and Yoongi’s anger boiled down into nothing as Jimin’s eyes glittered and Taehyung’s skirt flowed gently in the wind and the wind chimes on the front porch sang their good luck tunes.

Jimin scrolls through the photos, laughs at how young they were, what’s this face hyung and taehyungie you were a baby, laughs at his burnt orange hair, fake brand hoodies; Taehyung’s hand is on Yoongi’s knee, smiling quietly, he always experiences the world so quietly, contently, the good things, as if it’s a soft wonder. Yoongi joins Jimin and how could i’ve made this why didn’t you stop me why didn’t you — and they match him right up, hyung what where those jeans and hyung you look like an angry cat and hyung who did that haircut— oh, right, it was me and—

(If not, this.)

/

Hyojin leans over Yoongi, drops her phone on the sketches in front of him. “Hey, isn’t that Taehyung in the new Jang Dahye film?”

Yoongi leans back in his chair, the back squeaking, tries to bottle up his frustration but can’t quite work up the nerve. The workroom is empty, unfinished garments laid down on the tables, empty mannequins. “You didn’t go?”

“Lunch? You didn’t either.”

“I’m working here.”

“You’re taking a break now.” Hyojin taps the screen with her sharp nail. “Taehyung.”

Yoongi sighs and looks down at the article. He skims over the text, catches Dahye catches promising catches Taehyung catches phenomenon catches Seoul and film and festival. He scrolls and scrolls until he doesn’t, a snapshot of Taehyung, hair his natural colour, looking positively lethal as he stares at the camera with the confidence true only to him, chin propped on his hand, a scarf around his neck, a single earring in his left ear. He knows the camera loves him, never particularly shy about it. 

Yoongi swallows. “That sure is Taehyungie.”

Hyojin leans against the desk, takes the phone in her hands, scroll through the article again, popping gum. “She’s blowing up. Jang Dahye, Seoul’s Female Filmmaker On The Rise.”

“Taehyung said she’ll go places.”

“Well, he seems to be going places with her. When’s the film coming out?”

Yoongi shrugs. “They just finished filming. Dunno.”

Hyojin nods, drops her hands to her thighs. “Have you seen Lanterns?”

Her first film. Taehyung watching and rewatching it between takes for this one awful office short he did. I want to work with her, he would say. Not many people knew of her, outside the ones the likes of Taehyung and Namjoon who were in the industry. Yoongi told him, you will, you will, just a matter of time, out of confidence in Taehyung’s drive and the way filmmakers in Seoul seems to be so tightly knit, Taehyung’s phone full of contacts he accumulated during uni. And out of sheer pride, the simplest form of it, filling him up like nourishing water whenever Taehyung revised scripts at their apartment or seeing Taehyung on screen — the screen of his phone, the cinema screen during a film festival — this feeling of i know him i know him i know him and strangeness of seeing Taehyung on film but the good kind of strange, the strange that makes him realize Taehyung can become so many different people, if he wants to, and Yoongi cannot even tap into half of them, and that’s okay. Pride of the skills that are uniquely his, out of Yoongi’s reach. Pride.

“Have,” Yoongi says. There was honesty in it, an honesty which seems deeply personal. Yoongi felt an ache he couldn’t quite find the origin of. “Have seen it. You?”

Hyojin stops chewing for a moment and says in a voice much softer, “Hard not to. What’s best about it, outside of the whole live for yourself agenda, is that you can tell she’s so completely herself, doesn’t give a fuck, makes you want to ask, who broke your heart? makes you want to come up and ask because it feels so tangible.”

“You could just tell it was a lived-through experience.”

Hyojin gets real excited, Yoongi can tell by the way her eyes go wide, her body animated, hands flying in front of her body. 

“And it’s fucking bonkers—”

“The skeletons in the closet.”

She throws her hands at him, like look at that. “Literal fucking skeletons dripping roses, but it makes sense. Get on that, world.”

Yoongi picks at his hangnails. “It’s interesting, that you can tell it’s all her. When someone’s unapologetic, you can tell. There’s so much power in authenticity.”

“And it moves something in you, doesn’t it? That you know and can tell and you believe whatever they say.”

“Yeah.” Yoongi’s fingers curl and uncurl on the project he’s drawn ten different drafts of and it still wasn’t finished and in need of retouching. “Yeah, that.”

Hyojin massages her temples. “Vulnerability is plain terrifying but it’s the only thing that will ever win. Nothing’s as powerful as exposing that broken fucking bone.”

“Are we doing that right now, noona?” Yoongi asks in a surge, heated, sad, angry. “Exposing that broken fucking bone?”

Hyojin looks down. Pops her gum. Something hard to displace in her face. Something she couldn’t get rid of for a while now. “Don’t know. Hope we’re exposing something.”

/

Yoongi’s hips press against the sink. Taehyung’s hands are on his scalp, that rubbery feel of a glove but slow, careful, as if afraid to touch or afraid to mess up; afraid. Tentative. The bathroom smells of hair dye and Taehyung’s body is lined up against his, all the ways they’re not afraid to touch. Jimin hums happily in his bedroom, the bathroom door ajar. Yoongi hears the rustling of fabric, hangers moved around, something falling on a bed, like a jacket, has that heavy sound of a jacket, heavier than a shirt, anyway. Taehyung starts humming the same tune and Yoongi feels it like falling off a tree chestnuts.

“You know what’s the problem with retail?” Yoongi asks as Taehyung rinses his hair in the sink, real careful about it too, keeping Yoongi’s head down and fingers tracing along his scalp.

Taehyung’s humming goes up higher and then down in a quick curve.

“People shop there on the daily and don’t even think about what the clothes are made of and complain how expensive it is when, really, it’s underpriced ‘cos who the fuck knows where all that money goes or comes from.”

Taehyung stays quiet for a bit, the type to think before he speaks, his words coming from some underwater cave, rescued from the flood. “Big conglomerates that can afford that.”

“Exactly, but why doesn’t anyone ever think about it? ‘S not like it’s secret knowledge.”

Taehyung presses his thumb to the bone behind Yoongi’s ear. “Hyung, not everyone’s gonna research every single thing like you would.

Yoongi sighs when Taehyung scratches at the spot, closes his eyes. “But, I mean— what’s the appeal? It’s of poor quality, and everyone knows it is, even the employers and employees, and it’s a huge shared fucking play-pretend.”

Taehyung shifts from one foot to another, Yoongi feels shift against his hip bone. “But it’s cheap and easily accessible. Hard to fight with that.”

“No, easy. Go to any thrift store. Make a goddamn effort, and at least pretend you don’t want to look like everybody else.”

A droplet slides down the back of Yoongi’s neck and Taehyung wipes at it with his wrist. “Fair point, hyung, fair point but it’s not only clothes, you think that Singer of yours came from any legitimate source? Everything is overpriced and unethical except for used items.”

“I know what you want to say. That Namjoon guy would agree. No ethical consumption under capitalism, isn’t it?”

“Is hyung on a tangent again?” Jimin shouts and his voice comes in muffled. “I hear babbling.”

Taehyung turns off the tap water, says, “He sure is.”

“Listen…” Yoongi starts and begins to straighten up and Taehyung pushes his head lightly to the side so he avoids the tap and whispers hyung with a watch out in his voice but Yoongi’s not slowing down, he needs to get to the point and the point is—

He slams the back of his head on the glass shelf under the mirror and all of Jimin’s rings clutter and waterfall down to the floor.

Yoongi whispers ouch as he pushes down on the throbbing pain with his fingertips, his hand overlapping with Taehyung’s, Taehyung already there, Jimin’s worried, “What was that?”

“Told you to watch out, hyung,” Taehyung murmurs and his body presses against Yoongi’s side and Yoongi feels in every way like a departing train, even though it doesn’t hurt all that much and he said ouch the same way a child does just reacting to the hit even if the hit they took was nothing and water rolls down his temples and jaw and trickles onto his shoulders.

Yoongi pats Taehyung’s hip. “Gimme a towel, Taehyung-ah, will you?”

Taehyung sighs and reaches back to grab the towel draped over a heater. Yoongi sees a movement out of his peripheral, Jimin’s face squeezed between the door and the frame, no shirt on.

“We’re going to be late,” Yoongi points out as he accepts the towel from Taehyung and dries his face, puts it on top of his head.

“I’m not the one looking like an ice cream cone,” Jimin says with the corners of his mouth tilting upwards and then his eyes land on the floor, where all the scattered rings are. “Look what you’ve done.”

“A mess,” Yoongi deadpans.

Taehyung raises his eyebrows. “Jimin-ah, have you seen your apartment?”

Jimin snags the towel off the top of Yoongi’s head and snaps it at Taehyung’s abdomen, Taehyung already laughing, hands braced for impact.

“I’m going to die,” Yoongi says.

Taehyung turns towards him with amusement. “What from?”

“Hypothermia.”

The towel lands back on Yoongi’s head and Jimin tugs on both ends, Yoongi staggers a step closer. “Can’t die of hypothermia only ‘cos you have wet hair.”

“Can.”

“Indoors?”

“Leave all the windows open and I might as well.”

“Hyung, you’re not going to die of hypothermia,” Taehyung sighs and bends down, picks an earring up with his index finger, slides it down so it stops on his knuckle.

Yoongi bends down next to him, mumbles, “It’s possible.”

Jimin joins them on the floor, grabbing a fistful of the jewelry. “You can be real dramatic sometimes, you know that?”

“You’re the one wearing ten kilo worth of rings on you at all times.”

“Well, Taehyung only ever wears one earring—”

“‘Cos I have class. Ever heard of that?”

Jimin pushes Taehyung’s arm and Taehyung sways on the balls of his feet, supports his weight with a hand behind his back.

“You’re all fucking dramatic,” Yoongi says. “Don’t blame it all on me.”

Taehyung smiles at him so sweetly Yoongi knows it’s fake. “At least now we know where we got it from.”

“Give me a break.”

Jimin leans forward and laughs into Taehyung’s neck.

They clean the floor off all glittering and straighten up, pour the rings back on the glass shelf.

Jimin asks, “So what happened?”

Yoongi shrugs, massages his scalp and slings the towel over his shoulders. “Bumped my head.”

Jimin coos. Taehyung says poor hyung and draws him in by the back of his neck, kisses the top of his head, long — lingers. Yoongi feels like he’s still floating on that departing train ache, unintentionally swaying towards him. When Taehyung leans back his eyes are full of carefully laid down things and his mouth is blue.

Jimin grins, all crescent eyes and sponge cake soft face. Yoongi says, in wonder, “Hypothermia.”

Taehyung looks between them with wide eyes. “Wha—”

Jimin reaches out and wipes his palm across Taehyung’s mouth, a small, sure hand, all fingers with gold and silver bands around them, “You got blue lips, Taehyung-ah.”

Taehyung turns around and leans into the mirror as if he wants to see what’s beyond. He rubs his bottom lip. Mumbles, “Hyung was onto something.”

Yoongi chuckles with the rise and fall of his shoulders. Jimin tells him to try soap.

/

Jennie opens the apartment door downstairs with damp strands of hair sticking to her forehead. The music streams out, honey-like, along with the human buzz, the buzz of people dancing and singing and talking and laughing. 

She hugs Yoongi first, tight, but Yoongi’s stiff, not used to being hugged by her. She smells like oranges and rosemary and wine. “Lovely blue, oppa.”

“It’s not on me,” he mumbles into her arm, meaning lateness. He feels the texture of the chiffon against the back of his hands, the smoothness of the ruffles. She looks pretty in it, as if taken out of a myth, softened around the edges, matte. Yoongi did an alright job, he did.

The people at the party are mostly Rose’s friends but he recognizes Jeongguk in the distance, the hesitant sway of his body, Nayeon’s excited pigtails and a glimpse of Hoseok’s body going limp as he laughs. The apartment feels smaller than it is, growing smaller, but not the same kind of closing in like at the fabric store, a different kind, a much less pleasant kind, the one that makes Yoongi wish he weren’t there or, at least, that there were fewer people and the room wouldn’t rumble quite so. 

Taehyung bumps into him from behind, nudges him forward, a presence like that of a tree you might sit under and feel comforted being next to something bigger and sturdier and more real than yourself. “Let’s go find Rose,” he says. Yoongi follows him into the crowd, gladly. Holds onto his wrist with the tips of his fingers, hooking pinky fingers with Jimin.

They slip through the everflowing bodies. Someone accidentally bumps into Taehyung but they apologize immediately and it turns out guys it’s Hyejoo and Hyejoo has blue reflexes in her raven black hair and wears ripped fishnets and Yoongi places her face quickly, says the office film with a sort of triumph at having figured it out and Hyejoo’s bewildered voice merges with Taehyung’s, we don’t talk about that and they hug briefly and we’ll catch up later and as they go deeper, Jimin’s hand on Yoongi’s arm, there’s more people Taehyung hugs and greets like it’s really his party and some of them, like Jihyo, will catch the folds of the long cardigan Yoongi made for him out of sheer white lace inspired by the Anna Sui s/s ‘94 fabrics, trimmed with that Taehyung touch of pink feathers, and say many kind things that make Yoongi kind of embarrassed but also very much grateful and Taehyung will look at him, overwhelmingly so, say it’s the Min Yoongi brand and Jihyo has such a gentle face it makes Yoongi feel as if there really exists such a brand. Many, if not all, go on to tell Taehyung about the film they heard of and i saw you were in it and Taehyung closes on himself and blooms with the compliment at the same time, a work in lightning-quick contradiction. Yoongi presses his index finger into the protruding bone in Taehyung’s wrist and Taehyung’s arm twists and he grabs onto Yoongi’s hand and squeezes. Yoongi squeezes back. Jimin leans back to talk with Nayeon, arm extended to reach Yoongi, Nayeon bending her head and dancing in place.

She, in turn, guides them to Rose, takes Jimin’s hand and tucks it under her arm and they surge forward, Nayeon more adamant on getting to their destination. White star-shaped fairy lights hang at different lengths from the ceiling, basking everything in a softer kind of glow, a slight illumination of the shadows moving. Taehyung’s shoulder blades move under the sheer layers of fabric, a lovely trick of light. Someone cuts through Nayeon’s path and they have to stop abruptly and Yoongi puts his forehead in the center of Taehyung’s back. Feels sort of reassured, for hidden reasons.

“Rosie-yah!” Nayeon exclaims over the music. Rose, caramelized sugar in her white dress, turns around, face growing confused before she spots Nayeon, and Momo whom she’s talking to turns to face them as well, that lean dancer body and wearing a checkered two-piece. Rose smiles eager and anticipating as if they’re about to tell her a great story, her tiny body buzzing with it. She hugs the four of them at once and Yoongi ends up being mushed between Taehyung and Jimin, the warmth of their bodies twin to his own.

“You guys made it,” she says, voice like a river of cotton and candy.

Taehyung steals a flower from her hair and puts it behind his ear. He looks luminous and lovely and Yoongi reaches out to touch its petals and blooms with the smoothness of it. It’s white like Rose’s dress and the star-shaped fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. Jimin knocks one with his knuckles, watches it sway with a happy curiosity. Yoongi steadies it with the tip of his finger, the plastic hot to the touch. Nayeon swings her arm over Momo’s shoulders, drags her to her side and they stagger away.

“Happy White Day?” Yoongi jokes and all three of them groan, Rose rolling her eyes and Taehyung covering his face. Jimin nudges his ribcage with an ah, hyung. Yoongi looks down but smiles, self-satisfied. “We would’ve brought chocolates if we knew.”

“You didn’t bring chocolate?” Rose pouts, her voice hitting some real sad notes.

“I’ll get you chocolate when we run out of booze,” Jimin promises and she immediately shakes her head, says, no, no, you don’t have to, I’m just joking, I’m happy you’re here. Yoongi knows the chocolate will get acquired either way.

They wish Rose happy birthday and wait till you see the gift and everyone’s telling me about it i’m dying here. As they get ready to dissolve into the party Rose grabs onto Taehyung’s and Jimin’s elbows, thanks them for helping around.

Taehyung tugs on one of the fairy lights. “They hold on steady.”

“Told you they would,” says Rose.

The following hours stream out. Yoongi drinks red wine while he dances next to Hoseok and Jeongguk or more like bobs his hips left and right, wanting to be wine-fizzy quick quick quick, wants to join the party already, feel like a lung of it, something breathing nice and steady. They make fun of the way he moves and he feels the red settle on his tongue and he dances with more strangeness so they laugh harder. Hoseok spills beer on his shoes and bends down, moans, oh, no, guys, my balenciagas and Yoongi says into the glass where it lands muffled and flat it’s what they deserve even though he owns the exact same model but in black and Jeongguk scrunches up his nose in a way that exposes his front teeth. Hoseok pinches their ankles. Jeongguk yelps and Yoongi looks down at Hoseok in pretend disinterest. Hoseok tells him to stop killing the mood but they go back to dancing all the same.

The wine makes its languid, curling way through Yoongi’s entire body, to the very tips of his fingers. He takes raspberries out of the fridge and sits at the dinner table and puts them on his fingers and eats them one by one. Jimin and Nayeon and Momo do soju shots and Jimin says, hyung, drink with us, so Yoongi does and then Jimin steals raspberries out of the container and aims them at Momo’s open mouth and Nayeon says, “let’s make a necklace out of them or, better, yet, earrings, let’s do something, let’s, Jimin-ah, Momo-yah, I’m buzzing”. They leave to dance and Rose joins them. Jennie happens to pass by, presses a kiss to Rose’s cheek, holds the side of her neck all tender and Rose blushes crimson but the fairy lights soften the blow. Make it gentle.

Yoongi finds himself on the couch next to Hyojin. She seems to be glowing gold. He moves outside of time.

She thumbs the puffiness under Yoongi’s eyes, the feeling rough. Her fingers come away glittering. 

“It was Taehyung’s idea,” Yoongi says, feels at the glitter under his eyes with his knuckles.

“Ain’t it always that boy’s idea?” Hyojin says and she sounds like she doesn’t really believe him.

“You’re onto something here, noona, onto something for real.” He’s not sure whether he believes himself, either. The words in his mouth feel like those of a stranger.

She guides her index finger down Yoongi’s nose and Yoongi knows it will shine and he allows her. She looks at him with an intent which makes Yoongi aware of his age and aware of the age gap between them and aware of the fact that he’s never had a big sister but he sure as hell has a bring brother he rarely ever sees. 

Jeongguk sits down on the floor in front of them and there’s Heeyeon, folded against Hyojin’s other side like arranged carefully fresh laundry which knows its creases more than the hands folding it. Jeongguk’s damp bangs fall into his eyes and he slid down his sparkling jacket to the crooks of his elbows and Heeyeon is leaning forward with her eager to listen face and Yoongi steals Hyojin’s champagne glass and takes a sip and scrunches up his face, says, “That’s wine.”

Hyojin cocks an eyebrow and steals back the glass filled with sparkly white beige soft yellow, Yoongi can never quite tell what colour white wine actually is. “What do you mean, ‘course it’s wine.”

“What are you drinking it from a champagne glass for?”

Hyojin shrugs. “Why not?” Which seems to be her only running policy, and Yoongi respects it. She adds, “If you want, there’s still some left, I think, I left it on the bookshelf, next to one of those candle holder thingies whatever the fuck they’re called and what do they need so many for anyway?”

Yoongi’s mouth must be red and he doesn’t feel steady when he gets up but he answers, “Rose really likes candles,” waddles off to the kitchen to acquire his own champagne glass because why the fuck not and spots the bottle of wine Hyojin mentioned and it’s indeed next to one of the candle holders and glasses people already managed to leave on the shelves. Taehyung is there and he glows white and illuminated and his mouth is animated and the people around him laugh and he laughs with them, shoulders curling a little forward. Yoongi hears him say, “It’s not that hard, you just have to sort of imagine you’re crying, like the mechanics behind it, and you get going.”

They look at each other across the crowd. A Japanese artist sings about the night and hearing someone but Yoongi thinks they’re unable to, in the end, unable to hear someone in the night. He never learned enough Japanese to understand.

Yoongi returns to Hyojin with his freshly acquired white wine and Jeongguk is saying, it’s about a girl and his mouth is a little unsure but his eyes are big and glowing and full of star-like shapes which are of course the fairy lights but Yoongi is drunk on wine and he finds passionate people especially dear to him.

So Jeongguk says, “It’s about a girl and she comes into this forest and inside this forest there’s a lake and inside the lake there’s a nymph and the nymph doesn’t know human language which is to say they don’t share a language so we are looking for different ways for them to communicate—”

And Yoongi realises he’s talking about the animated films he’s developing with Rose, that same one with gowns and moonlight and forest and he doesn’t lean forward or anything but he looks down at his knees and says, “Like in this film.”

Means The Shape of Water but somehow feels like he doesn’t have to mention the name for them to know what he means.

“Yeah, Rose told me about it,” Jeongguk nods. “Haven’t seen it, though.”

“It’s unsettling,” Hyojin says.

Taehyung sits on the armrest of the couch, body echoing warmth. Yoongi leans back against his side, knows it’s Taehyung without looking. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?” 

“He’s been summoned,” Yoongi says in such a low voice that everyone laughs, including Taehyung, deep and resounding and that’s the shape of the water, Yoongi thinks, this is the real thing.

Taehyung leans forward, chest to Yoongi’s back, Yoongi hunching with it but also leaning back. Taehyung whispers to Heeyeon lovely earrings, they’re colourful and clink plastic or glass Yoongi can’t quite tell against each other and she smiles sky-wide, thank you thank you would you like them it’s for the new collection i can send you samples and i’d like that very much and Yoongi reaches out and smooths a hand over Taehyung’s long earring, strings of metal flowers, it must be so heavy, he thinks, but it somehow grounds Taehyung, adds a necessary weight to him. Yoongi wishes he wore his, the other one, the matching one, only one earring in Taehyung’s ears, only one centerpiece. Taehyung looks down, watchful, attentive. “What, hyung, what?”

Yoongi’s mouth feels wine-strange, “I wish I wore mine.” Tongue loose, it’s that hour of the party, tongue loose and only partially responsive, Yoongi stills feels like he’s in his body but the edges are all blurred and the world might entirely consist of light and soft things.

Taehyung tilts his head, illuminated, lovely, winter bloom. Yoongi puts his hand on Taehyung’s knee and Taehyung plays with the hair at the nape of Yoongi’s neck, Yoongi unable to say how long he’s been at it, time feels stretched out and golden and full of bubbles.

“Wanna try it?” Taehyung asks melted chocolate how it drips down slow and weighted down, loving the fall of gravity.

Yoongi wants to and he knows he should shake his head no but doesn’t, instead says “can I? Shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Taehyung’s already taking out his earring, leans forward, breath hot on Yoongi’s cheek, fumbles around Yoongi’s ear but not painfully so, his actions measured and precise and then Yoongi’s ear droops down with the heaviness of it and Yoongi likes it and angles his head just right, asks “How do I look?” do i look sweet lovely pretty gorgeous good tell me how do i look is it pretty taehyung-ah does it glow in the dark?

Taehyung takes him in, in all seriousness, and the time slows down and they have handfuls and pocketfuls of it, all the bubbles and golds of time. Taehyung drags his eyes up and down Yoongi’s face Yoongi can tell he’s not only looking at the earring he’s taking him in fully and Yoongi feels

sweet lovely pretty gorgeous good

“You look lovely, hyung,” Taehyung whispers full of flowers and warm metal pressing against the side of Yoongi’s neck and Yoongi feels full with the knowledge of it, knowledge and honesty. Yoongi wants, suddenly, feels his body surge with it, red red red. (red flashes dangerous, red flashes watch out, red flashes raw skin red flashes you won’t be able to pick yourself up from this red flashes what makes you think you can stand being an exposed nerve? )

They’re alone, Hyojin and Heeyeon holding each other among pulses of light, Jeongguk walking towards Rose in the distance, emerging every few beats between the waves of bodies. Yoongi puts his glass down on a low table Rose usually keeps her poetry books stacked among Jennie’s phones and work spreadsheets, now full of empty glasses, not even candles or candle containers, turns back to Taehyung.

Taehyung’s eyes are on Yoongi’s mouth and Yoongi swallows and his throat feels dry.

“You have wine lips, hyung,” Taehyung whispers and it weaves through the music like cloves and ginger.

Yoongi licks his lips, feels the wine clinging to his tongue. “Do I?”

Taehyung nods, his eyes sweeping across Yoongi’s lips. Yoongi gets the urge to lick it again and he thinks he does and Taehyung can’t stop looking.

“What about me?” he asks and his voice is heavy, just like the taste of wine in Yoongi’s mouth.

Yoongi looks at the shape of his mouth, at the raspberry fullness of it, says, “Doesn’t look like it.”

Taehyung leans forward and Yoongi has no idea what this moment is trying to be but he stops and hovers not even that close and he looks at Yoongi with such steady control Yoongi couldn’t muster in himself and perhaps it’s all the acting that does it for him and he stays so still and Yoongi’s hand wavers and hovers above Taehyung’s knee.

“More like pink wine,” Yoongi says absentmindedly and squeezes Taehyung thigh and Taehyung chuckles and Yoongi feels it atop his nose.

And Taehyung looks at him that charged way again and Yoongi doesn’t know what to do with himself other than lean into it because Taehyung is dipping forward and Yoongi is wine and light and everything pulsing and time and not stopping and Yoongi closes his eyes and

Taehyung noses at the skin under Yoongi’s eyes and Yoongi feels his lungs expand and hold in so much summer that he grows hot all over and his hold on Taehyung’s thigh tightens and 

Taehyung is leaning back and looking at Yoongi all dark and Yoongi doesn’t understand any of it and he’s red mouth red flesh red want want want and he knows what’s made of red

“What was that for?” Yoongi rasps. His mouth feels coated with wine and too heavy with it and taehyung-ah he feels like saying taehyung-ah wine lips what should we do about that what should we

(wounds and stop signs and all that screams you will come away bloody )

Taehyung taps his nose and it shimmers, catches particles of light. He looks mystical, a thing you see with glowing, glowing eyes in the middle of a forest and your mother tells you not to approach but you do anyway. “You had glitter.”

Taehyung’s eyes hold fire and Yoongi’s skin is molten lava and some things are more difficult than others and

Taehyung is his best friend and it’s not the hardest thing of all. Being his friend is rather easy — the hardest is the wanting and the not knowing what to do with this want and the want going nowhere but not really, it stays pressed to the underside of Yoongi’s skin, tightly, skin being the only thing holding it back.

“Hyung, wanna dance?” Taehyung asks suddenly and his nose glitters and Yoongi wants to drag his index finger across the length of it and he does and then he draws a circle on Taehyung’s cheek and then another and Taehyung is there and lovely and Yoongi withholds so much and he’s skin, skin, skin and they both have glitter under their eyes and they glow with it.

Taehyung’s hand flipped palm up hovers in Yoongi’s vision and Yoongi doesn’t take long to take it.

He takes a step and suddenly they’re among others, next to Jimin because of course they’re next to Jimin, the three of them are at a party together, the red inside Yoongi bruises purple and heals blue, turns a pretty shade of yellow a bruise could never turn (but perhaps a lovely patch of sunlight?) Yoongi huddles close and Taehyung keeps his arms around them both and Yoongi holds onto their waists and listens to the music, the heavy bass, Rihanna’s irreplaceable voice, he says mouth against Jimin’s ear, “Jimin-ah, Jimin-ah, it’s your—”

“I know, hyung,” Jimin says. “My favourite.”

The song slips into an English chorus Yoongi only partly understands and he’s pretty sure there’s a word which is translatable but his brain is fog and Jimin’s singing at the top of his lungs and Taehyung keeps them together in the bubble and when the song ends Yoongi feels hot and his hair sticks to his forehead and Jimin’s shirt glows as if moonlit, Taehyung’s cardigan backlit by the lights of the cars, both of them stark against the night, if they were outside that’s how they’d reflect the light. “Hey,” Yoongi says, a little out of breath.

“What?” Taehyung’s forehead against his temple, Jimin’s cheek to Taehyung’s arm, looking at Yoongi through his lashes.

“I’m really glad— The clothes, they suit you well.” 

i’m really glad i’m here with you, i’m really glad i can do this with you, i’m really glad

“I feel great, hyung,” Jimin says first. Taehyung adds like he gets it, “Like I’m on top of the world.”

Yoongi looks at him, feels a steady shyness with all the places it can rush out of because Yoongi feels open, unusually open, “You are.”

Eyes balancing between Taehyung and Jimin. “You are.”

“Guys,” Jimin whines, hugs them to his chest, Yoongi clutching onto their waists, feeling enraptured, wrapped in a sort of goodness that’s impossible to replicate in loneliness, the goodness that comes from other bodies and comes from being with other people and Yoongi might enjoy his alone time but there’s nothing as soothing as being with friends, nothing as easy as breathing around them. “Guys, I love you so much.”

“There he goes,” Taehyung laughs so close to Yoongi’s face and Yoongi laughs because it feels like such a funny lovely sweet thing, Jimin’s tiny body filled with so much love. 

Taehyung says, “We love you too.”

Yoongi nods and they’re so close Jimin surely feels the motion of his body. He’s already spilt a lot of words today, they spilled out of him easy like music and fabrics and touch.

Everyone gathers around the dining room table near midnight and Rose stands in the center of it all and her face is golden-lit, fairy-lit and the cake is too big for Jennie’s hands and Jeongguk is nearby mostly grinning, mostly grinning looking at Rose and Jimin is filming the whole ordeal on his battered phone with a thick black case he bought post-mortem meaning post breaking his screen he didn’t bother to fix and everyone sings happy birthday and Yoongi hears Taehyung’s voice most pronounced across other voices and he has this content look on his face, this content look of being with other people, among other people, among many people and Yoongi’s glad to be here with him and Nayeon places a bowl of steaming seaweed soup on the table and Jimin pouts turns to Yoongi, “I was supposed to do that.”

Yoongi says, “You’ll do that on my birthday.” It’s the middle of February and Yoongi’s birthday is three weeks away. He remembers it so suddenly that it startles him that he forgot in the first place.

Taehyung looks at him all hopeful when Rose blows her candles with a single intake of breath and everyone claps and Yoongi claps harder than he usually would, not feeling his senses right, wanting to feel more profoundly. “We’re throwing a birthday party, hyung?”

“No, we’re not.”

“Something small, then,” Jimin pleads, still filming Rose, his hand unwavering, used to holding his phone and filming.

Taehyung asks, “What would you like, hyung?”

Rose unwraps a box which Jennie mouths to her about being heavy. Rose holds it so carefully and lowers it to the ground and Yoongi swears everyone leans forward in anticipation, even though they all know what it is because they have all pooled for it. Rose unwraps the paper slowly and Jennie tells her to beat it and Rose glares at her and there’s a cardboard box inside and it’s a drawing tablet, a huge one, used by animation studios and artists who have saved their money. Rose sobs into her hands and Jennie and Jeongguk and Nayeon envelop her in a hug. Yoongi rubs his chest, feeling all sorts of good.

“A hand cream,” he says. Both Taehyung and Jimin groan.

(Yoongi doesn’t want much. He’d like to spend his birthday not thinking much about his birthday. He used to mythologise the day but now he will be glad to talk about a movie with Taehyung or buy new fabrics and chat with Jinsoul or marathon Star Wars with Jennie for the millionth time. He’d feel glad doing a big, happy, glorious nothing. He likes people and enjoys close company but he breathes easier in smaller marvels. Breathes easier in simple springs.)

“A hand cream,” he repeats and will be glad for whatever he gets because he’s happy for Rose, she’ll get to draw and draw and draw and make her films about girls and nymphs and forests and lakes. Taehyung and Jimin don’t press further and instead inch forward so Taehyung can get some cake and so Jimin can take a glass of freshly opened champagne which Hoseok has popped off with a loud firework explosion and the champagne mostly spills on the floor and Hoseok jumps up and away and keeps the streaming bottle at arms-length and Jeongguk curls in on himself and his laugh resounds around the room and weaves through the music and it’s a tapestry of a whole lot of people talking and Yoongi revels in the buzz of it and Taehyung gets the cake and smudges whipped cream on his upper lip and Jimin wipes it with his thumb and licks it off.

Yoongi steals a cream-stained strawberry from Taehyung’s plate and barely feels the taste of it in his mouth but knows it’s there and knowing it’s there is enough.