Archive of Our Own ^beta

the first time, he is a customer.

yoongi looks up when he walks in. he is tall, dark-haired, nameless. from the build of him, vagabond. nothing irregular.

he takes a seat at the bar. for a while, he says nothing, and yoongi does not prompt him to, busying himself in polishing glasses and wiping down the counter.

“excuse me,” says the stranger. he has manners, at least, “do you serve whisky?”

yoongi does not answer for a moment. when he does, his voice is cold. “no one does, anymore. they don’t make it.”

“oh, really?” surprise, genuine in his tone. yoongi would scoff, if this damn job allowed him to, “what do you have, then?”

yoongi tilts his head. the stranger looks back at him, gaze steady and waiting for an answer.

“probably none of the drinks bars used to carry,” yoongi purses his lips, “before The Flight.”

before, and after. there is no need to live in weeks, or months, or free-flow of seconds—no need to mark time in anything but halves. before, and after. good, and bad. perhaps they have always been bad.

“i see,” the stranger looks thoughtful. he rests his chin on the crest of his palm, and hums. “then, anything. not too strong.”

yoongi just nods. he wonders about the demeanor of this stranger—the way he acts, as if, for a short time, he’d slid off the face of the earth and expected to be greeted by the same world he’d once known.

if he’s honest, that was what it felt like. yoongi remembers the first morning—when he’d still been a kid—worried about his future and not that there wouldn’t be one to worry about—waking up to the thought of missing some television special or begging for that new action figure that just came out, and then learning that it didn’t matter anymore, none of it, because the world was fucking ending.

the world might still be fucking ending, he thinks, just to fuck with us. every end has another.

the glass clinks when yoongi sets it in front of the stranger. he looks up.

“it’s called choronn.” yoongi gestures, “try it.”

he does, without hesitating, wiping his mouth after taking a long sip.

“if f’weet.” he manages, through a mouthful of ice.

“what?”

“it’th,” he chews, making a face, “cold.”

yoongi snorts. “of course it’s cold, no one asked you to eat the fucking ice.”

“it’th the bef’th part,” the stranger argues, “the ice.”

yoongi just raises his eyebrow, and waits for him to finish chewing.

“what i meant to say was,” continues the stranger, “it’s sweet.”

“that a good thing?”

“i liked it.”

yoongi nods. he picks up his polishing cloth again, and another glass—which very honestly, does not need any more cleaning—and gets back to work. back to routine.

“do you get a lot of business?”

yoongi pauses. “it’s okay.”

“really?” the stranger looks behind him, “it’s pretty empty.”

“... blunt, aren’t you?”

“little bit,” he ducks his head, but yoongi sees him smiling, “sorry.”

“hmm.”

the stranger shifts, crossing his legs, uncrossing them. he drums his fingers on the counter. “what’s your name?”

yoongi tilts his head. “what’s yours?”

it is dangerous, this game. to ask someone’s name—it is when someone becomes more than a stranger, a customer—it gives them identity.

in this world of today, perhaps nothing is more dangerous than this.

“i’m namjoon,” says the stranger-not-stranger, easily, “kim namjoon. but i asked first.”

yoongi almost laughs. the naivety of this guy—namjoon—it is startling, and if he allows himself—refreshing. if there really is a before, and an after, then he thinks, this would be it. with namjoon. with names.

“min yoongi,” he says, and puts his glass down, “nice to meet you.”

---

“hyung!” jimin yells as he jumps down from the truck. his sandal flies loose upon landing, and he makes his way hop-skip-stumbling to yoongi, mostly on one foot. “how’ve you been?”

“same as the last time you saw me,” yoongi reaches out to steady him, jimin leaning on his shoulder to slip his shoe back on, “nothing changes around here, you know that.”

“really?” jimin steps back to examine him. “you look different, sort of. smiley.”

“smiley?”

“smiley-er,” jimin shrugs, “i mean. last time we were here, you had some guy’s vomit all over your pants. so. low bar.”

“gross. don’t remind me.” yoongi shakes his head, “where are the other two?”

“asleep in the back. i’ll get them up to unload.”

“no, don’t. we’ll unload without them.”

jimin hesitates, and then shrugs, “whatever you want, hyung.”

they circle around to the back of the pickup, and jimin clambers into the back, sorting through the boxes. “just the usual things, right hyung?”

“yeah,” yoongi purses his lips, “business’s been slow, lately. might have to make quantity adjustments.”

jimin nods sympathetically. “it’s too hot, huh? not a lot of people passing by.”

it’s a half-joke, really. before cities, this area used to be grassy, fields on fields folding green upon themselves. then there were cities, and less grass, and less fields. then there weren’t cities, or fields, or grass. only desert. only heat.

yoongi gets by on the miracle well, which is exactly what it sounds like, because it’s the only source of water in miles of endless, rocky desert. it’s been years and somehow it still runs clear and cold as ever, and yoongi is a confused sort of grateful.

jimin hands him a box of herbs and flavourings, and yoongi lugs it back to the bar. when he gets back, taehyung’s woken up, propped up against the side of the truck as he scrubs at his eyes—one brown, one cloudy.

“hyung,” he yawns, and waves slowly, “nice to see ya.”

“long trip?”

“mmn. we ran out of fuel halfway over, so we spent a day crushing the oil out of lotadine plants and getting the truck running again.”

“shit.” yoongi looks them over. “your hands okay?”

“fine, hyung. we washed them well.” jimin grunts as he drops another box into yoongi’s arms. lotadine plants—an odd hybrid of plant that had sprouted itself into existence after The Third Chapter—made for a strange and yet workable alternative to regular fuel. thick-stemmed and malleable, it was easy to squeeze the oil out of them—but it proved to be damaging if left to linger on human skin, burning right through the flesh if one was careless. at the time, no one bothered to perform tests on them, but it was almost unspoken that it was just another way for mother nature to get back at them—flushing all the toxins left by human byproduct into a plant that was, then and now—essential.

“that should be it,” jimin hops out of the trunk, “you want some company, hyung?”

yoongi snorts. “are you inviting yourself in?”

“...we’ve been on the road for a while,” jimin admits. “but, no—you do get lonely out here by yourself, don’t you?”

the question sits almost like an accusation, even though yoongi knows it is not meant to. jimin’s always felt guilty after they split, and at some point it began to fissure into worry—yoongi can hear it in his tone. there is no way to fix it really—i’m okay’s and it’s fine’s have lost their meaning after—well.

“not really,” says yoongi, and finds that he does not know if he is lying, “but come in, anyway.”

---

The First Chapter didn’t really have a beginning that could be marked. perhaps it was the moment the universe—concentrated into an infinitely tiny singularity—exploded into life. maybe it was when a star spun itself into light, made a home for itself in eight planets and an almost-ninth, called itself a sun. moments, so many moments—the first sign of life, the meteor that came down on it, the years and years of passing, growing, becoming—becoming, every action and every event that led to them, or us, or humans.

even then, there is no way to pinpoint the very second. what discovery? what decision? it wasn’t worth it to find out.

the moment yoongi became aware of it was a tuesday morning a very long time ago. he was… eight? was it eight? it didn’t matter now. it was summer. he had woken up—because it was hot, and the air conditioning was off—and he’d stumbled downstairs, and both tvs were on, saying the same thing. the world is ending. the world is ending. the world is ending.

at first, he thought it was a joke—not a joke, but not serious. the world was always ending. but then his mother came out from the kitchen with her face all red, saying yoongi-yah, go back to sleep yoongi-yah, please, please, go back to sleep.

so yoongi went back upstairs and went back to sleep. thinking back now, it was probably her way of hoping, saying—a little longer, for my child who has still not known the world, a little longer.

when yoongi woke up, the world was still ending.

for real.

---

“what’ll it be?”

yoongi situates himself behind the counter, behind the bar of polished cherrywood, where everything becomes familiar again.

“ooh, asking like a proper bartender.” taehyung teases. he leans forward a little, careful not to jostle jeongguk, who lies still half-asleep on his shoulder. “i’ll have—the pink one. with the little white things? the strawberry one?”

“ordering like a proper customer,” yoongi snorts, “yeah, i got it. jimin?”

“ah,” jimin squints, “i don’t remember the names of these things—just, the one i got last time? the one without alcohol, the fizzy one?”

“sure.” yoongi puts his cloth down. “gguk? you want something?”

“mmh?” jeongguk lifts his head for a moment, “ah. um. maybe the choronn.”

he flops back onto taehyung’s shoulder again.

“oh c’mon, you’ve slept enough,” taehyung flicks his ear, and jeongguk whines. “wake up, lazybum.”

“let the kid sleep,” yoongi looks over his shoulder. “even half-awake, he’s better at remembering things than you two are.”

jimin harrumphs, and jeongguk laughs softly, tipping slowly off of taehyung’s shoulder onto jimin’s as some small form of comfort.

“so, anything interesting happen lately?” taehyung rests his chin on the counter, and yoongi would scold him, but they both know yoongi has nothing better to do than wipe it down 18 times in a row. “anyone hot stop by?”

jimin snorts, and jeongguk falls back onto taehyung’s shoulder, but harder this time, with all his body weight. taehyung yelps.

“i was just asking! i’m not looking!”

“oh i know,” jeongguk says cheerfully, “but it’s fun to mess with you.”

taehyung scoffs.

yoongi sets their drinks in front of them, and then for a while it gets quiet, the four of them sipping from their respective glasses.

alcohol today is a lot different from alcohol then—similar enough to call it under the same name, and different enough to feel like an imposter doing it. after all, by the middle of the Third Chapter, most of the plants they knew had been wiped out by virus.

there are ones that taste similar. sepezz were so similar in taste and appearance to strawberries that they’d near lost their name. so sepezz were strawberries, even though they weren’t—but wasn’t that was the human race, shoving then and now under the same umbrella, forgetting that they repelled each other?

(wasn’t that the human race, calling things nostalgic when they really meant: what wouldn’t we do to have that back?)

“you didn’t answer the question,” jimin remembers, “anything happen while we were gone?”

“not really. things are slow. last guy to stop by was three days ago.”

“was he hot?” jimin asks dryly.

“hyung! not you too, what the fuck?”

“shush. just trying to find a man for our yoongi-hyung here.”

“oh, right,” taehyung frowns, “hyung, you’ve never dated anyone before, have you? i mean. not since The Flight.”

it’s a question, a fair question, an easy question—but it brings back things yoongi has shoved down, swallowed down—has them turning uncomfortably in his stomach.

“no,” yoongi says, after a moment.

(he was in love, once. just once. it feels like such a long time ago, now.) .

“well, same difference,” taehyung waves his hand, “was he hot?”

jeongguk makes a noise like he’s going to die.

“he was fine,” yoongi says flatly.

“fine?” taehyung wiggles his eyebrows, “or fine?”

“oh my god.”

---

the second time, he is a coincidence.

yoongi doesn’t even notice when he walks in, busy with a flood of customers. perhaps the customers are a coincidence, too—travelling together, packed into four large, domed caravans, skirting across the sand in scrap metal and totalled engines, miracles just in the way they move.

most travel alone. with the kind of people that are left, there’s never a way of knowing. trust is sparse, and that is the way it must be.

so yoongi gets these crowds only once or twice a year, large groups stitched together by some luck and mostly trust, and then a little more luck. they make him happy, and they make him feel invisible, also.

what would he say, anyway? could i join you? take me somewhere else. take me anywhere. let me come with you—somewhere, wherever, please.

(but he’d never go. even if he could, he’d never go).

“yoongi-hyung!” yoongi looks up, and there’s namjoon, nonchalant as ever, sliding into the stool in front of him, “hello!”

“hello,” yoongi replies. he does not let the surprise show on his face. “what are you doing here again?”

“just passing by,” namjoon says cheerfully, and yoongi raises an eyebrow. no one is ever just passing by.

“what’ll it be this time?”

“um,” namjoon frowns, “something new. pick for me, hyung.”

yoongi catches the title, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. “anything?”

“sure. i trust you.”

yoongi goes back to work, and namjoon goes back to not-sitting-still, goes back to skimming his fingers across the table, picking at the dips and grooves and powderpost dents in the wood. crosses his legs. uncrosses them. crosses them again.

“i got lost,” he avows, “there was a bad sandstorm and i lost my way. so i’m back again.”

yoongi looks at him for a moment, “you don’t have a compass?”

“lost mine a few months ago,” namjoon shrugs, “been relying on instinct for a while now, but it fails once in a while.”

yoongi stares at him a moment longer, and then turns away.

“here.” yoongi pushes the glass onto the table, “try this one.”

namjoon, again, doesn’t hesitate a second, picking up the drink and tossing it back, throat bobbing as he swallows. constant travel has built him well, and yoongi’s gaze follows from his wrists to his arms to his hands, large and a little graceless, and still, in the same breath, pretty.

unfortunately, yoongi thinks, he is hot. as taehyung would have put it, he is fine.

(realizing this is less fine).

“oh!” namjoon’s eyes go wide, and yoongi snaps out of it, “oh, i like this one!”

“really?” yoongi’s lips twitch with an odd pride. “huh. it’s called sirew.”

“i like it,” namjoon repeats, and mouths the name to himself, “when i come in next time, and ask for the usual, it’s this drink, okay?”

there’s too much to think about in his sentence, so yoongi scoffs, “the usual? you think we’re in some old western?”

“well, i’ve always wanted to do it,” namjoon grins, “c’mon, you saw them on tv when you were a kid. must’ve thought they were pretty cool.”

“kinda,” yoongi admits.

someone calls for a refill, so the conversation cuts there, and yoongi runs off to fill up glasses and wipe condensation off tables. when he gets back, namjoon’s playing with his cup idly, drink long empty.

“you want a refill?”

“if it’s not a bother.”

yoongi blinks at him, and laughs. “it’s my job.”

“don’t wanna make it any harder for you,” namjoon says easily, and yoongi stops, hand paused midair.

“you don’t get paid a lot, do you?”

yoongi snorts, and lets his hand drop, loosely, to his side. “don’t even hesitate, do you?”

namjoon grins, half-lipped, “sorry?”

yoongi scoffs. “sure, whatever. but what is getting paid a lot, anyway?”

after all, money had lost its value after The Flight. it’d held some weight for a while—fluctuating depending where you were, when you were, who you were with—had grown staggeringly influential in the days, weeks, leading up to The Flight—and then, suddenly, nothing. offer paper bills to someone in exchange for water and they would laugh. the coin of the realm did not, then, come in any singular shape—it was in objects, trade. water for food. cotton for leather. people for—

namjoon must know this. that must be what he does—as a vagabond, scavenge through ruins, buildings, skeletons of cities, for something that might offer another day. what a terrifying, unrealistically risky lifestyle. what a convoluted, skin-and-bones way to live. yoongi fucking loves it.

“just feels like you do a lot of work for what you get.”

“yeah, well,” yoongi shrugs, “i have food. water. a place to stay,” ambition, he thinks, but maybe not anymore. maybe that’s something he lost, too. “sometimes people will stop by and they have nothing, but there’s no turning them away, is there? turning someone away is like—murder, around here.”

he sighs, and grabs namjoon’s glass. there’s a ring of condensation where it sat, and namjoon dips a finger in it, paints shapes into the wood.

“you’re nice, hyung,” he says, “you know that?”

“i—”

“really. i don’t think a lot of people would do what you do.”

this time, yoongi stutters, but he doesn’t stop. it’s almost worse—the mechanic way he moves. like—work, again.

“here,” he says, sliding namjoon’s glass back onto the counter. “enjoy.”

he walks away.

---

The First Chapter was natural disasters, floods, storms, tsunamis. was—earthquakes, eruptions, disasters, disasters—that bent and broke the spine of the earth, left everything feeling just that bit crooked.

it was when there was still hope, still light for another day. we’ll make it. worse has happened. it’ll be okay. it’ll be alright.

then, The Second Chapter. disasters—but not natural. as if to say: you brought this upon yourself, as if it weren’t obvious enough already. chemicals soaked the earth, then blood, then tears. perhaps, most of all, tears.

(this was the darkest time. if hope was a thing of flame, then our hands were made of water, unable to get too close. if hope was a thing with wings, then it was us who had them clipped. this was The Second Chapter. this was life without living).

The Third Chapter was the collapse. if you listened, you could almost hear it, the bones of the earth creaking, protesting. to us, to herself. i’m so tired. the only planet in the solar system capable of sustaining life, and we broke her. like city lights, life flickered out.

The Fourth Chapter, but no one calls it that. we broke the earth and she’d break herself too, even if just in spite. life is not free and even death comes with a cost. this was living, living every day up to The Flight, price tag over your head and knowing you were indebted to survival.

The Flight. The Flight, and then nothing. betrayal should have been silent, left to the earth only, but there were still people left to hear it.

so nothing. no one calls this The Fifth Chapter. somehow, it feels as if the story has already reached its ending. it feels as if we were not deserving of one.

---

the third time, he is a regular.

he walks in like it is nothing. today, there’s not much of a crowd—not as empty as it had been the first time, but not as full as it had been the second.

“hi,” yoongi says, first. then, “the usual?”

namjoon beams.

“hyung,” he says, as yoongi, standing on his tiptoes, reaches for a jar on the top shelf, “can i ask you a question?”

yoongi grunts, grazing the wood with his fingertips and lowering himself back onto the soles of his feet in defeat. “you were going to anyway, weren’t you?”

“figured i’d ask.”

“uh huh.”

yoongi kicks over a stepstool, only slightly embarrassed as namjoon—all 180-something lanky centimeters of him—watches, visibly amused. he doesn’t know why this bar has such high cabinets anyway.

“did you know anyone who made it on?”

yoongi grabs the jar, steps down. “sure. who didn’t?”

The Flight. the space crafts—three of them—three—playing hero to all but a fraction of the population. yoongi remembers—remembers the top bunker in an abandoned warehouse, remembers the sweltering heat and the blue-webbed bruises—remembers, jimin, breathless and sweating, stumbling through the door, and the way the world had gone mute when he opened his mouth—

—we have a chance, we have a chance—

and yoongi was saying—what do you mean—and jimin was smiling, and crying, and fumbling over words, running towards him and laughing—

—and hoseok, behind him, stirring awake—

and hoseok, grinning and saying—what’s going on? what’s going on?—

and hoseok—

“you know. did you know someone—who made you feel like you were the one leaving them behind?”

yoongi studies him. “you did.” he says. “that’s why you’re asking.”

namjoon rubs the back of his neck. there’s a twist to his smile, as if he’d expected to be asked, and still hadn’t formulated an answer. “busted?”

yoongi hums. “yeah?”

“yeah. just—a guy. his name was seokjin. we were friends.”

“how’d he get on?”

“i gave him my ticket.”

“you—?” yoongi stops, turns around. “what?”

a million things he could ask and million he wants to. who was he to you? why did you do it? you had a ticket?

were you—

“yeah. i wanted him to make it on.” namjoon shrugs. “they don’t know who the tickets belong to. they don’t have faces on the tickets, you know. just names.”

—in love with him?

yoongi knows. remembers the day hoseok came back, smiling as if he had secrets hidden between his teeth and tongue. he surprised them at dinner, pulling a ticket—for life, for survival—out of his pocket, saying, i’ll get you one too. i promise.

the way i was—

yoongi never asked how he got it. he was never interested until he found out, and then he only felt stupid about it—like, how else, and how could i have known, and was there a better way—feeling stupid about it, because of course there wasn’t. there was only ever one way, and it made yoongi feel sick thinking about it.

—with someone else?

“okay,” yoongi says, “i understand.”

he slides namjoon’s drink onto the counter, and he takes it, gratefully. perhaps doubly so.

“you did, too,” namjoon says, after a moment, “you knew someone.”

yoongi shrugs. “yeah.” he says. “his name was hoseok. we were—friends. friends for a long time. long enough that i still feel—” he swallows, “—like he’ll walk through that door one day. and then it’ll feel like Chapter Zero all over again.”

he thinks namjoon might ask him how he made it on, but he just tilts his head. “did you want him to go?”

what does it matter? yoongi wants to say. what do i matter? he’s gone. he’s not going to walk through that door. he’s not going to come back.

“he couldn’t have stayed,” he manages.

namjoon shrugs. “but did you want him to go?”

yes, yoongi thinks, because he deserved to live and this isn’t fucking living and he deserved to live. yes, because i hate him and i hate that i didn’t tell him that i loved him.

no, he thinks, because i’m selfish.

“i wish i did.” he says.

---

“you have that look again.”

yoongi blinks. jimin’s looking at him over the sun-warmed metal of the pickup, head resting in the cradle of his elbows and wrists, draped loosely over the trunk. he looks a little distant—not in the way that yoongi knows too well; the nightmare way, the wake-me-up way, the shaking, shaking way—distant, like rounded out, smoothened out. the way one looks staring at a boat out at sea. observing.

“what look?”

“the smiley look.” jimin tilts his head. “like last time. again.”

yoongi scoffs, and averts his gaze. “you’re reading too much into it.”

“it.” jimin repeats.

“there is no ‘it’.” yoongi crosses his arms, somewhat defensively. “forget it—ugh. no. no ‘it’. i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

jimin laughs. maybe it’s just the heat, but his cheeks look flushed—pink and round and full—and yoongi wonders if he always looked so happy. so healthy.

“you look better these days,” yoongi says, absently. “taehyung and jeongguk, theyre—?”

“yeah.” jimin straightens, turns to look behind him, where taehyung and jeongguk and skirting around in the sand, fooling around. there is a softness to the way he looks at them. more than rounded—just, soft. “i’m—they do a lot, for me. we do a lot, for each other. i’m really. lucky.”

yoongi thinks of the jimin then. skinny, wrists tapered into matchsticks, skin stained the colour of bruised plums. yoongi remembers thinking he was older than he was, with the way his eyes looked—empty as a hollowed tree, burrowed through with memories and waiting for someone to call timber.

(but that was just the jimin everyone could see. yoongi saw the jimin that woke up crying and screaming, the jimin who grasped at empty air thinking it was still a dream. a nightmare. yoongi saw that jimin, listened to that jimin, cried and yelled and begged for that jimin—)

“i’m glad.” yoongi says, voice quiet. “i’m glad you’re happy.”

“i am,” jimin smiles, “i’m really happy. i’m really glad i’m happy. hyung. i want you to be happy, too.”

ah, yoongi thinks, so this is what it was all about.

they don’t talk about hoseok much, if at all, because nothing ever comes of it. it makes jimin feel guilty and it makes yoongi feel angry, and it makes both of them terribly sad.

(once, it had been different. his name had sounded like daybreak. it still does. just, not in the way yoongi had ever thought it would).

“i’m fine.” yoongi says, stiffly.

this is all he can manage without lying. he’s okay, now. the pain is less, now.

“i know.” jimin says. “but you deserve to be happy.”

---

then yoongi stops counting and namjoon keeps coming, back and back and back, and at some point, yoongi thinks, perhaps foolishly, that he always will.

sometimes namjoon asks him questions and yoongi will answer them. sometimes namjoon asks him questions and yoongi doesn’t answer them. sometimes they don’t talk and namjoon just drinks his drink and yoongi wipes down the counter and lives in the relief of a comfortable silence.

sometimes yoongi asks namjoon things. things like—why are you here this time? and namjoon will says something stupid like—i lost my way or i wanted a drink and yoongi will indulge him.

“hyung.” he says, thoughtfully, one particularly hot afternoon. yoongi is fanning himself with a thick piece of cardboard he’d found lying around, a little bit pointedly. they’d had a bit of a debate about the efficiency of self-fanning, which had ended in a very unresolved stalemate and a lot more sweat than there’d been ten minutes earlier.

yoongi gives a noncommittal hum.

“tell me a secret.”

yoongi looks at him. namjoon’s drink is finished, all ice, and it sits next to him, melting in the heat.

“you want a refill?”

namjoon shakes his head. “i’ll go first.”

yoongi oddly, finds himself acquiescing. “okay.”

“okay,” namjoon shrugs. “my dad worked on one of the space crafts.”

this new piece of information hits yoongi a little bit late, takes him a moment to process. it makes sense, if he thinks about it—where namjoon’s ticket had come from—and yet all the same, he feels a little bit like he’s been hit by a truck.

yoongi has never asked, and so namjoon has never denied, and yet it still feels like a lie. because this is namjoon—who walked into yoongi’s bar asking for a drink that no longer existed. because this is namjoon—who asked for yoongi’s name—because this is namjoon, who’s broken every rule and still come out smiling.

“i—” he laughs, shortly, “who even are you?”

he tries to put humor in it, but it comes out flat, accusatory. the words taste bitter in his mouth.

“not a thing like him, i hope.” namjoon looks away. “him, and all the bastards who worked on that ship. he didn’t—work on it-work on it, you know? he did passenger selection, cargo.”

“yeah?” yoongi says, dryly. “really got to reap the benefits, didn’t he?”

namjoon’s mouth presses into a line. he doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t have to. the answer is already there.

“can i ask you something?”

“shoot.”

“were the rumours true?”

the rumours—yoongi, even, doesn’t know them in all their entirety. there was a conflict, he’d heard, between the designers of the ship and the labourers. the labourers worked for free, for long hours under the sun, in exchange for a spot, a promise of life. a spot. a ticket. just one.

they knew that, or they were supposed to. some didn’t. then there was an upset—you can spare another ticket—please, i have a daughter—just one spot, just one more—but he’s so young—things like this.

there was a death. then there was silence.

(it took too long for them to realize how dangerous silence was.)

silence meant things under the skin—under the lamp post, where people often neglected to see. silence didn’t mean nothing; it simply meant out of earshot.

so, the rumours.

they spread quickly, like wildfire; and in a forest so dry and neglected, the flames were difficult to snuff out.

there’s still room.

we can all make it.

they lie to you.

(there’s still hope.)

the planners, the designers, tried to paint it over. rumours spread by delirious workers, they said, so desperate they would say anything, hear anything, believe anything. auditory hallucinations. cold blooded lies. crazy people, sick in the head.

but it didn’t matter anymore. and on the day of The Flight, the world burned.

yoongi’s question hangs in the air like a condemnation, as if to say—i know the answer already. the question is of your honesty.

“true and untrue.” namjoon says, halfheartedly. “true because—well, they were right. there could’ve been more room. more people, more lives saved. and untrue—because people like my dad were scared that it would overload the resources we had to start again. so he—he dropped lives for cargo. that was his truth, and he thought he was right.”

“did you?” yoongi raises an eyebrow. “did you think he was right?”

namjoon laughs, dryly. it is the most cynical yoongi has seen him, maybe ever. “how could i say? that was always the question, huh—save everyone with the possibility of saving no one—or save most but leave others behind? even now, that i’m here, i don’t know. all i know—is that my dad was a fucking bastard who made bad fucking decisions. all i know is that he has blood on his hands—and i wish i could offer him sympathy—but i think that leaving him was the best decision i’ve ever made.”

yoongi knows what he’s talking about. those who worked on passenger selection—directly determining how lived and who died—had to follow a strict set of sorting guidelines.

(he thinks about taehyung, blind in one eye. about jeongguk, who stole once and felt the consequences for the rest of his life. about jimin, whose body knew too many bruises, whose head knew too much sadness.)

(about himself. his shoulder, invisible but still broken. it’s okay. they won’t see it.)

“is that why you gave your ticket away? just to get away from your dad?”

yoongi thinks about the boy, seokjin. thinks about what could have been wrong with him—maybe something big. maybe something easy to hide. maybe nothing at all, maybe like hoseok, he’d just been unlucky.

“i don’t know. i just didn’t think i deserved it. and—seokjin’s dad was the worker who was killed, you know? they never got the ticket.” namjoon reaches for his drink—tips back and swallows, even though it’s only water now. “his dad was going to give it to him.”

“oh.” yoongi says, hollowly.

“yeah. i met him ‘cause he was throwing rocks at my window. i don’t know how he found out where i lived, and i thought he was gonna kill me, or something—but we talked, and he just cried. i think i knew, then, that i would do something stupid for him.”

yoongi doesn’t respond for a moment. then, he reaches out silently, places the flat of his palm on the back of namjoon’s hand. the summer heat fizzles densely between them, concentrated at the place of contact.

“do you regret it?”

namjoon does not hesitate. “no.”

“good,” yoongi says, “me neither.”

---

“hyung?”

yoongi blinks.

jimin is staring quizzically at him, mouth open and already moving again, and yoongi shakes his head, the world coming back to him in spots.

“what?”

“are you okay?”

jimin’s frowning, chin resting on his knee where he’s kicked it up to the seat of his stool. he sloshes his drink around in his right hand, glass catching the light. “you keep zoning out, hyung.”

“oh,” says yoongi, dimly. he shrugs. “sorry. also, get your foot off my chair.”

jeongguk snorts. “he’s back.”

jimin, obediently, swings his leg back down, and kicks jeongguk with it, for no purpose other than to kick him. jeongguk knees him back, and yoongi sighs.

“wait a minute.” taehyung squints, zeroing in on him. “this is about him.”

“who?”

yoongi, jeongguk and jimin say it in unison, in increasing levels of curiosity, and taehyung grins, glad to have the attention.

“the hot guy! remember, from a few weeks back?”

“how did you even come to that conclusion?”

“i’m smart.”

“uh huh,” yoongi deadpans. “right. no, not about him. sorry.”

“liar~” jimin singsongs.

“oh, now you’re on it, too?”

“have to back up my boyfriend, sorry hyung.”

yoongi turns to jeongguk with a pleading look. there is a smile flirting at jeongguk’s lips as he answers. “have to back up my boyfriends, sorry hyung!”

“oh my god,” yoongi rolls his eyes. “why would i be thinking about namj—”

he catches himself. just, not quickly enough.

“he has a name!” jimin grins wickedly. “hyung!”

“no.”

“don’t you want to talk about the love of your life?”

yoongi groans, very loudly, and leans down to press his forehead to the counter with a plonk. the wood is cool on his skin, burning from heat, burning from embarrassment.

“it’s not like that.” he mutters, and feels all of fourteen again.

“hyung,” jimin starts, softer, and is interrupted.

“the usual!”

three pairs of eyes flick up to namjoon in the doorway, and his cheerful expression falters slightly, surprised.

“oh my god.” jimin says, whatever soft tone he’d been using already gone. “it’s him.”

“namj!” says taehyung, like he’s an old friend.

namjoon blinks.

yoongi, who did not bother to look up before, now raises his head and contemplates smashing it into a wall.

here is the thing. the heat has been particularly unforgiving as of late, and namjoon, evidently, has been feeling it, skin shiny with sweat. he is also wearing a white t-shirt, nearly soaked through, and yoongi needs to look away now.

it takes him an embarrassingly long time to tear his stare away, and by then it’s obvious.

“jesus,” he mutters, finally, “what, did you just run a whole marathon?”

namjoon gets along well with the others.

it takes a bit of sorting out—time in which jeongguk, jimin and taehyung learn namj is really namjoon, and namjoon learns that yoongi has told his friends about him. they don’t say anything about the whole hot guy conversation, which yoongi would be grateful for if he didn’t suspect jimin would bring it up later as blackmail.

he prepares namjoon’s usual drink like clockwork, sliding it onto the counter before busying himself again.

“hey,” says jeongguk, glancing over, “isn’t that sirew?”

“yeah!” namjoon grins, “it’s my favorite. yoongi-hyung chose it for me.”

“oh?” a slow smile spreads across jeongguk’s face, “did he?”

yoongi gives jeongguk the shut the fuck up right now i’ll fucking kill you look, and jeongguk, obediently, shuts his mouth.

“the usual?” jimin remembers, musing to himself, “do you stop by a lot?”

“ah—once in a while, i guess. i’m a vagabond, i don’t really have anywhere to be.” namjoon laughs, scratching at the back of his neck. “it’s nice here.”

“really?” taehyung deadpans, and they all turn an eye to the tragic interior design that is yoongi’s bar. the open-beamed ceiling is low over their heads, and the walls are patched over with a mishmash of different materials. the actual bar is perhaps the only place that is halfway decent, with the other tables and chairs small enough to be made for dwarfs.

“well.” yoongi says, defensively. “at least it stands.”

“right,” namjoon agrees. “it’s… rustic.”

“that’s the nice word for ugly.”

jimin gives taehyung a kick—partly because namjoon is too polite to, partly because he just feels like it. taehyung, naturally, shoves him back, and has him domino-ing into jeongguk, which starts a ridiculous back-and-forth that has namjoon watching, amused.

yoongi watches, too, watches them play like the children they never were. watches, in a way that is quietly exasperated, and loudly fond, and smiles.

---

(don’t you remember? don’t you remember this?)

in this frame, it is also summer.

yoongi’s feet hurt from walking. the sky is starting to darken, and he’s got to make it home soon, before jimin gets lonely, before the bad comes back. yoongi had been loath to leave him, even though this was one of jimin’s good days, even though jimin had insisted he go.

the bag yoongi has slung over his shoulder is half-full, not bad all things considered. he keeps to himself, head down as he dodges large crowds. in these days, robberies mean nothing as much as they used to.

hoseok should be home by now, yoongi reasons. he isn’t around much, these days, taking care of business he says yoongi will thank him for, and yoongi knows it has something to do with the tickets. so, he doesn’t ask. whatever way hoseok is going about this, it can’t be anything good.

he hears a voice.

two voices.

hoseok’s voice.

yoongi stops.

“hey,” hoseok’s voice is low, a quiet timbre that curls up in the edges, sweetly, “i have to go now, okay? but i’ll see you.”

“tomorrow?”

the second voice is higher.

“sure, tomorrow. whenever you want.”

“ah, but it’s so hard to contact you without a phone. are you sure you won’t take one?”

there is a brief pause. and this is when yoongi musters the courage, stepping closer to the wall and peering over the brick.

there is a small crack between this building and the next, a small alleyway, not even wide enough to fit a car.

there is hoseok. there is a girl that yoongi has never seen before.

her hair is a brown ribbon over her back, pinned neatly behind her ears. there is something about her face that resembles a doll’s, neat and delicate, features pretty although faintly disconcerting.

they are standing close. nothing has happened yet, and yet yoongi feels as if he’s already seen too much. he stumbles out of view.

“i can’t.” hoseok says, without explanation, and it seems like a discussion they’ve already had. how many times, yoongi wonders, feeling a little dizzy, how many times? “but i’ll see you tomorrow. at the usual place.”

“okay.” the girl acquiesces. “well, then, you should get home before it gets too late.”

“yeah.” hoseok says, plainly. there is a bit of a stilted awkwardness to his words, and yoongi thinks, envious and terrible—he’s not like that with me.

“give me a kiss?”

yoongi does not move for a moment. for a moment he doesn’t think he does anything—forgets how to breathe, how to stand, how to breathe, how to think, how to breathe—

and then he runs.

runs until he forgets how to do that, too.

then, it’s already nighttime and faintly yoongi remembers that he shouldn’t be out now—wandering about a park he’s never seen before—he should be home, where it’s safe, where there’s jimin and hoseok and—

yoongi’s chest hurts. he makes a horrible sound, like the whimper of a wounded thing. no one is around to hear it, but embarrassment still stabs him hard in the gut, shame coloring him pink.

the sound comes again, but this time yoongi does not know where it’s from.

he stops, slows his breath, listens. in this silence, the panic bubbles down to a thin buzz inside him, and the invisible thing that has been sitting on his chest all this time—it falls away.

the sound comes again, quieter but no less there. to yoongi’s left, through a patch of leafy undergrowth.

he should go. he should go home.

he crawls through the brush.

when he peeks out again, on the other side, there is a boy staring at him.

there is something unearthly about him. yoongi doesn’t know why. there is nothing particularly fascinating about him. and yet, something.

yoongi will call him moonboy. yoongi will call this a dream.

“hi,” says moonboy. he looks frightened, halfway to running away. his face is wet.

“hi,” yoongi says. he sits down. he doesn’t know why. he doesn’t want to think about it. he doesn’t want to think about anything.

“hi,” says moonboy, again. he chews on his lip. “you, um. you’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

yoongi raises an eyebrow. it’s not completely out of left field, not really—not in these days. still, he laughs. “it’d be a wasted effort. no point of killing you, if you think about it.”

moonboy grimaces. “i’d rather not.”

“okay, fair. no, i’m not going to hurt you. not in the mood.”

yoongi tries for humor, but it comes out flat. he kind of hopes he doesn’t come off as a psychopath. he also kind of doesn’t care. he doesn’t know what he’s doing. his head hurts. his chest hurts. he feels like shit.

“um,” moon boy steps closer, cautiously. “are you okay?”

yoongi laughs. he feels hollow. “i don’t know.” he drawls, head lolling back. the stars look bright from here. “i don’t know. i don’t know anything.”

“oh,” says moonboy. he sits down. “well, um. that’s fine. that’s why—i like it here. you don’t have to know anything. or think about anything. you can just sit.”

so yoongi does. he sits, and doesn’t think. tries not to think. but the problem about a space so quiet, so separated from the outside world—the problem about a space that gives you room to just exist, is that it also gives you too much room to think.

hoseok. the way he looks in the sun, the way he looks a part of it. the way he looks sleeping, so peaceful yoongi wishes he could look like that always.

the way he laughs when yoongi kisses him, smiling into it, giggling against his lips; the way he makes yoongi think, i could die right here.

(this was the part that hurt. more than anything. this.)

“hey,” a hand on his shoulder, touch softer than rain. “hey, you’re, um. here.”

moonboy magicks a cloth from his pocket, and absently, yoongi dabs it to his cheek. it comes back wet.

“thanks.” yoongi says, thickly.

“don’t worry about it.”

yoongi fixes himself up—at least, what he can of himself—and hands the cloth back. then, he settles, again, legs crossed, tilted back, face opened to the sky.

“are you okay?”

moonboy flinches. “what?”

“you asked me. i’m asking you.”

there is a pause. yoongi keeps his eyes trained on the sky, the stars, the moon. far as they are from earth, they keep him grounded.

“i don’t think so.” says moonboy. he sighs. in his periphery, yoongi watches him—feet pulled together, knees apart, sitting like a butterfly. he plays with the grass. “i think i love someone. and i don’t know if i’m okay with it.”

yoongi blinks. i think i love someone. it’s not something you tell just anyone. it’s not something you tell a stranger.

(maybe it’s only because they are strangers).

fuck it, he thinks.

“i love someone.” he says, quietly. “and i used to be okay with it.”

“oh.” says moonboy. “i’m sorry.”

“no—don’t be.” yoongi shakes his head. “i don’t know if i’m okay with it. but—i don’t. regret it, either. i still love him. and he still loves me. it’s just a little different now.”

when he says it out loud, he almost believes it.

yoongi stands up. his senses are returning to him, and he should get home now, before anyone gets too worried. “well. i’m—going, now. thanks.”

yoongi bats a branch out of his face as he steps back into the underbrush. his bones ache with uncertainty, but he doesn’t have the time for that, doesn’t have the time to think twice—

“wait!”

moonboy is looking at him, eyes huge in the half-light. yoongi, trapped uncomfortably between the dried branches of two fallen trees, turns.

“what’s your name?”

there’s nothing in the way that he asks that suggests any underlying notion. and yoongi—unreasonably, unfathomably, trusts him—but only like this. only because it doesn’t make sense to.

he doesn’t answer. moonboy seems to get it.

“then—can i ask you—? does it feel good? loving someone?”

yoongi’s lips twitch. there is a softness that bubbles beneath the surface of him when he answers.

“well. yeah. sometimes it’s weird, though, and messy. and hurts. but mostly, mostly things will line up. and then it’s the best feeling in the world. and you know that you’ll never regret it.”

namjoon closes his eyes. when he opens them, starboy is gone.

(i remembered. hyung, tell me i could never forget.)

---

“you owe me a secret.”

it’s the first thing namjoon says to yoongi as he returns from serving a group another large round of drinks. the bar is livelier today, like the second time they’d met, (has it been that long?) with a stream of customers disrupting the usual silence.

it takes yoongi a moment to register the words, and then he frowns. it’s been a long day, and he can’t remember, honestly, something that he hasn’t told namjoon already. something that he hasn’t told namjoon already that he’s ready to tell him.

“right,” yoongi says, depositing a handful of dirty glasses in the basin. “uh.”

i like you. you are not the first person’ i’ve ever liked. liked, or loved.

i like you. you make me want to tell you stories. you make me want to tell you everything.

i like you. i am selfish and i want you to stay. even if no one ever does.

yoongi’s eyes flick to namjoon’s glass, and he remembers.

“okay,” he says, “a secret. your drink is a pain in the ass to make.”

namjon pauses mid-sip, choking into the drink, and yoongi goes on, unfazed. “it takes a shit ton of ingredients and some of them aren’t easy on the hands.”

“then—”

“but it’s my favorite, and i wanted you to try it. and now it’s your favorite. so i’ll keep making it. for you.”

yoongi keeps his expression straight, like he doesn’t really give a shit how namjoon reacts.

(he gives a shit. he gives lots of shits).

“oh,” namjoon says, clearing his throat. his face is flushed. from the alcohol, yoongi thinks, or maybe the choking. maybe both. “but—doesn’t it burden you?”

“no,” yoongi says, simply, “why would it? it’s my favorite drink to make.”

---

yoongi is not quite sure when, but jimin and namjoon coordinate their visits so they sync up, and once in a while, yoongi’s ratty old bar lights up with a life that could rival the one he used to know.

there is, briefly, a moment between those moments. there is a moment, briefly, where there exists no guilt, and no fear, and no sadness, and yoongi revels in the lightness of it, wonders if this is what it feels like to move on.

but he’s not quite there yet, not quite—and so, whether yoongi likes it or not, things come to a head.

“how big was it?”

jeongguk is leaning forward, all agog as namjoon recounts some of his more exciting travels. yoongi keeps his eyes trained on his glass and polishing cloth, but he listens, too.

“you’ve never seen the sea, have you?” namjoon laughs, eyes glittering with the memory, “it’s huge. goes on farther than you can see. it’s all just water, but you can’t stop staring. that’s the sea.”

“wow.” jeongguk says, awestruck.

if yoongi was eight when things started to fall apart, then jeongguk must not have been older than four. he might’ve seen the sea, once, but no one remembers much at that age. there is sadness in that, that the first world you remembered would be one drowned in its own flames.

“what else have you seen?” taehyung asks between a mouthful of ice.

“lots, i guess.” namjoon shrugs. “there’s so much out there. i thought everything was lost when the space crafts took off, but—things are getting better.”

yoongi’s mouth itches to ask, ask about all the places, all the things namjoon has seen. but he keeps his mouth shut, his head down, eyes diverted.

jimin’s gaze on him is so strong yoongi can feel it.

“you should go with him, hyung.” he says.

yoongi doesn’t answer.

“oh? i didn’t know you liked—”

“i don’t.” yoongi snaps.

“liar.” jimin grits, under his breath.

yoongi drops his glass onto the counter with such a sharp crack that taehyung jumps. his hand shakes around the jagged remains of it, fingers tensed and bloody.

“stop.” he hisses.

“no.” jimin’s voice is even, and he’s not backing down, not this time. “no, you can’t do this anymore.”

“jimin—”

“do you think i’m stupid?” jimin is shaking, now, and his voice, fierce as it is, wobbles. “you think i didn’t know? when we were living together, you and me and hoseok-hyung, you thought i never heard you guys talking? about seeing the world, this one or the new planet, about travelling, about going places because you said you felt stuck here, stuck in one place?”

yoongi opens his mouth to retort, but the words don’t come, only some choked, twisted sound, rising from the ugliest, darkest part of himself.

“why are you torturing yourself? maybe the world fucked itself a while back, but you’re just going to accept that? you’re never going to move on? you want to stay like this forever, staying here because you still think he’s going to—”

“shut up!” yoongi’s voice breaks, hoarse, and he clenches his fist, ignoring how blood seeps from his wounds. he feels tired, like the weight of the world has come back, crushing on his shoulders—he’s not coming back, not coming back—

why are you still waiting?

why are you torturing yourself?

“tell namjoon, at least.” jimin’s tone is lower now, defeated. “tell him about hoseok. tell him about the stuff he has a right to know. please, hyung.”

and then he’s stood up, walking out the door, taehyung and jeongguk following slowly. yoongi can feel their gazes on him—sad, the way one would regard a bird with a broken wing—and then the bar is empty.

except for namjoon, looking up at him with a gaze so gentle that it hurts. yoongi would not be able to describe it if he tried; it’s sad, but not pitying, and curious, but not prying, and so namjoon that yoongi feels, inexplicably, like crying.

“let’s get you cleaned up.” namjoon says, quietly, and yoongi, despite himself, smiles.

namjoon’s halfway through bandaging yoongi’s hand when yoongi speaks for the first time since jimin left.

“sorry,” he mumbles. “jimin’s right. i should—i should have told you.”

“it’s okay,” namjoon shrugs. “if you’re not—”

“i want to.” yoongi says, and his gaze rests on namjoon, intense.

“...okay.”

“okay.” yoongi exhales. “well, um. i guess it started when i met hoseok.”

it was a strange day, that day. yoongi’s mom went out to get groceries in the morning, and yoongi waited for her all afternoon, all evening, all night. it wasn’t until the next morning, when he woke up propped up against the shoe closet that he realized she wasn’t coming back.

“he and i were neighbours, then. i walked to his house and fuck, i just started crying. he let me come in and i realized his parents were gone, too.”

“what happened to them?”

“i dunno. they just left and never came back, like my mom.”

yoongi’s mother was not the type to abandon her child, and yet the thought had always lingered in his mind. hoseok made for a good distraction, for a while. and then he wasn’t a distraction anymore, and it was then, perhaps that yoongi realized.

“i was fourteen, probably, when i knew. and maybe sixteen when i told him. so. it was such an unbelievable moment, you know, when i realized i could just—love him.”

they’d survived together for most of the apocalypse. and then they’d found jimin, wandering around their hideout like a lost puppy, bruised everywhere yoongi could see, and then, taking him in didn’t even feel like enough.

“he had bad parents,” yoongi explains, quietly. “he had a lot of nightmares. and he didn’t talk for the first three months i knew him. he’s a lot better now, yeah, but. it makes me so angry.”

then The Flight. jimin was the first to find out about the new planet, one that could support life, could support what was left of earth’s tiny population. it was a new start, one away from the rubble that we had left behind.

but not everyone could fit. and so passenger selection began, tickets were distributed in secret, and humans grew more apart than they’d ever been.

“we knew, i guess, that we wouldn’t be able to make it.” yoongi shrugs. “my shoulder’s—broken, never healed right. they knew about jimin, thought he was too unstable to bring along. and hoseok—he was just unlucky.”

“but he made it, didn’t he? at the end.”

“...yeah.”

hoseok secured his ticket relatively quickly, and then he promised tickets to yoongi and jimin, too.

“we thought he could get them—even though we knew that we were—” yoongi grimaces, “—wrong. and then i found out—he was with one of the designers’ daughters—they were together, you know? that was how he got the ticket. i saw them, and i thought i would be okay with it, as long as we got to live, but i—i couldn’t—” yoongi clenches his hand, the good one, gripping the fabric of his pants. “i would rather die here, loving him, than live and pretend we meant nothing to each other. and i thought he felt that way too. but.” yoongi laughs, sharply. “that was the sad part. that was what i hated, more than anything.”

namjoon doesn’t respond, taking it in. there is hurt creasing his brow, and yoongi wonders what he’s thinking about.

yoongi remembers this part of the story well. he remembers it like a movie, a scene that never changes, just forges on, unforgiving.

“then he came home the day before The Flight. with another ticket.”

yoongi pauses, here and namjoon gets it.

“just one?”

“yeah. for us, he said. he told me about the girl—i guess he didn’t want to hide it—and he seemed so happy. like it was all worked out—like we’d won, we’d made it through.”

and yoongi remembers, shamefully, that for the moment after hoseok had finished explaining, he’d felt the same. everything seemed to fit, locked in place, like it was, perhaps, always meant to.

but it wasn’t meant to. it wasn’t meant to now, and it wasn’t meant to 4.6 billion years ago, and maybe there was nothing he could do to change it, but what did humans ever do but try?

what about jimin?

the way hoseok’s eyes had shifted. shameful. the way he’d looked away. the way yoongi’s stomach had dropped. the way the question had sat between them like a black hole, stealing yoongi’s breath, sucking all the hope in the room along with it.

hyung, you know he couldn’t / there’s too much wrong / they know, they know he’s—

you didn’t think—

“i yelled at him, a lot. and he yelled at me, too. i don’t know how long jimin was listening, but he was. he knows—that i stayed, because of him.”

why would you stay?

hoseok had been crying by then, angry tears running down the slope of his cheek. yoongi had reached out—sleeve already pulled over his hand to wipe them away—and hoseok had slapped his hand away with a sting that he remembers even now.

then yoongi had been hurt, hurt beyond hurt. hoseok had slapped his hand away but he might as well have reached into his chest and plucked his heart out of his ribcage.

you could stay, too.

we could still be together. the two of us. the three of us.

why would you go?

please don’t go.

(but yoongi hadn’t said any of that).

“i told him he was stupid. for thinking that we’d be able to love each other, up there. that he was stupid for thinking he wouldn’t have to continue in that superficial romance of his, and that we’d ever be able to love each other the way we had, just like this.”

yoongi drops his gaze back to the counter. “i said so many things.” he says. “i said so many bad things. he walked out and never came back and i never got to see him again and i never got to say i love you again.”

the day of The Flight. yoongi had watched from a distance, afraid that he would change his mind if he got too close. he never did see hoseok again, but perhaps that was for the better.

he and jimin had watched from the safety of their warehouse. even then, the noise had carried. the noise of people clamoring. the sound of metal against metal. the sound of gunshots.

people had broken in, stormed the ships. the first two had gotten away relatively unscathed, but the third was dogpiled.

but it rose into the air, accelerating, gaining speed. and it rose, and people watched, and people screamed, and people cried.

and people fell.

they did not fall like feathers, and they did not fall like stones. they fell in a way that perhaps icarus would even fear, like unwanted things, to an unwanted earth, shattering against her stony embrace.

“i’m sorry,” namjoon says, and yoongi looks at him.

namjoon’s eyelashes are wet, and as yoongi studies him, his tears start to bubble over.

yoongi snorts. “why are you crying?”

“i don’t know,” namjoon laughs, wetly. “you’re a good storyteller, hyung.”

yoongi huffs. the story doesn’t make him cry anymore, he realizes. maybe he’s run it through his mind too many times.

he reaches out, on a whim, lifting his good hand to wipe at namjoon’s cheek. his fingers are warm against namjoon’s skin, and there is that buzz again, summer-sun hot between their bodies, as yoongi brushes his thumb over namjoon’s cheekbone.

namjoon lets him.

---

“you ever wonder if they’ve met?”

“hm?”

“you know. seokjin and hoseok.”

“i dunno,” namjoon tilts his head. “maybe. probably a small world up there.”

yoongi hums. the summer heat is coming to a close; the desert is always hot, but the worst of it is over. today’s weather is particularly merciful, the winds light and pleasantly balmy.

“i hope they’re happy.” he says.

---

it’s dumb, yoongi knows it is.

but he’s made himself a habit of it, looking up at the door every time he hears it open. not because he’s interested in the customers, really, but.

for years, he’s watched that door. the next time it opens, he’d thought, hoseok will be the one walking through it.

because hoseok wouldn’t leave. he wouldn’t. after all, yoongi had never seen him get on the spacecraft—he could still be out there, couldn’t he? and one day, he’d find his way back to yoongi, and they’d apologize, and laugh, and cry, and be together, again.

he’d told this to jimin, once, when he was drunk.

“i can’t go,” he’d said. “i can’t leave here. how will hoseok find me, then? remember, jimin? when one of us is lost, the other one has to go find them.”

this was true. it was a system they’d made; the one who was lost was to stay still, until the others found them.

jimin had stared at him for a long time.

(“but hyung, are you sure you’re the lost one?)

for years, yoongi has waited for someone who would never show up, and he has been disappointed, every time.

the door opens on a rather blustery morning to a very ruffled-looking namjoon, and yoongi’s heart feels so, so full.

(“the usual?”

“yes!”)

and for yoongi, this, this, is moving on.

---

“i’m going to tell you a secret.”

yoongi says this with a certain kind of a conviction, the kind that comes from considering and re-considering, re-wording and un-wording—it is, in other words, something that he says before he has time to chicken out of it.

“okay,” namjoon says, amused.

“okay.” yoongi repeats. he pauses for a moment, for effect. “i like travelling. i think it’d be cool—to see what it’s like, being a vagabond. could we—do that?”

it’s more of a question than a secret, he supposes. maybe it’s a bit of a letdown, said with too much pomp and circumstance for such a simple request, but then again, it’s really more than that.

he studies namjoon’s reaction. it seems to take a painfully long time, watching his expression shift, but then namjoon’s grinning, smile so wide across his cheeks that yoongi feels very much like kissing him.

“we could definitely do that,” he agrees. “i kinda miss it. it’d be fun doing it together, i think.”

“yes!” yoongi says, perhaps too enthusiastically.

it makes namjoon laugh, and yoongi’s heart swell, and then he’s, very stupidly, talking again. “i have another secret.”

“oh, that’s funny. i have one too.”

“well, you go first then.”

namjoon’s face is very, very pink. it’s strange, yoongi thinks, it isn’t very hot today, and he hasn’t drunk much. it’s sunburn, perhaps—

“i like you.” namjoon says, very quickly.

“oh,” says yoongi. this feels too much like a dream he’s had. “really?”

“...yes?”

“oh,” yoongi says again. he registers, dimly, that his mouth is hanging open and that he probably looks like an idiot. namjoon, though, is looking too anxious to notice.

“you stole my secret.” —is what he manages, after a short silence.

namjoon makes a disbelieving noise, and then he laughs, and then yoongi laughs, and now he really wants to kiss him.

“didn’t know you owned it,” namjoon says, voice a little lower.

“yes,” says yoongi, “it’s my thing. having a big dumb crush on kim namjoon.”

and then he kisses him.

---

“that was hardly a secret.” is what jimin says, when yoongi tells him about it.

yoongi had worried over his apology to jimin for longer than he’d like to admit, but it was easy in the end. jimin wasn’t mad—never was mad—and the longer part of their conversation comprised of worrying over yoongi’s hand and gushing over namjoon.

“it was to me,” yoongi says, defensively.

“‘cause you’re dense as fuck.” jimin says, plainly. “whew, now that that’s finally done with, can we tell namjoon about all the embarrassing conversations we had about him?”

“uh. no?”

“what conversations?”

“no.”

“i’m curious!”

yoongi makes a strained noise.

jimin, jeongguk, and taehyung offered to take over the bar while namjoon and yoongi were gone. to be quite honest, jeongguk was the only one who was half competent, but yoongi didn’t entertain the possibility of separating them for a second.

he’ll be back, he’s sure of it. despite himself, yoongi knows that he’ll miss this bar, in all its low-ceilinged cramped-wall glory.

“change of subject,” yoongi announces, “who wants some whisky?”

he reaches under the counter, and with a flourish, pulls out a very old bottle of whisky.

“you had whisky?” namjoon blinks at him.

“yeah, since i first found this place. i never wanted to drink it, and i only remembered it when you showed up, the first time.”

“and you didn’t serve it to me?”

namjoon says this quite petulantly, and it makes yoongi snort as he pulls out a clean glass.

“yeah, yeah. you can have the first sip.”

the four of them watch as namjoon raises the cup to his lips, and smacks thoughtfully.

“weird,” he says, “kinda just tastes like dirt.”

they all have their taste, and taehyung decides he likes it, so yoongi hands him the whole bottle.

“not all at once.” he warns.

“uh huh.”

a customer waves yoongi over, and when he returns, taehyung and jeongguk are recounting, in very excruciating and not-quite accurate detail, one of their namjoon conversations to namjoon himself.

“hey, hyung?”

jimin has a foot up on his stool again, chin resting against his knee. yoongi lets it go.

“yeah?”

“are you happy?”

there’s no thinking about it. yoongi just looks around—at taehyung and jeongguk making a fool of him, at jimin’s easy grin, at namjoon’s warm flush—

—at the door, opened to whoever might next walk in.

“yeah,” he says, “i’m happy.”

---

being a vagabond has its perks.

yoongi sees places he thought he might never see. he sees places he saw once, again.

things have changed. there’s sadness in some of it, in the ghost towns and skeleton cities. things robbed of life, too early.

but there’s a lot of hope. plants, pushing through the dirt. water, running through thin streams. life, if you know where to look.

so there’s that.

“why do you think they refer to things in chapters?” yoongi asks, one rainy morning, “like we’re in a great big book, or something?”

he’s never questioned it before, and neither has namjoon, apparently, because he takes a while to answer.

“well, if we’re living in a book, then there’ll be a next chapter, right? then no chapter is really an ending, except for—well, the last one. so—the ending of one chapter is just the beginning of another one. maybe that’s what gives people hope.”

yoongi likes this thought. there was a time where he was scared of beginnings and endings, but now they excite him.

so, there’s that.

the earth is, by no means, healed. things are not as they used to be. but maybe, one day they will be.

and yoongi will hold out hope for that day; for when deserts become oceans again.