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Hoseok hears a knock on his door. He doesn't think before hitting pause on his music and unraveling himself from his nest of blankets to go and answer it.
His stomach growls on the way there and he tries to remember what he had to eat last. Vegetable jeon with carrots, scallion and mushrooms. That explains the weirdly powerful craving he's having for ribs. It was the lack of meat with his meal.
He's swallowing said craving―running his teeth over the sharpest canine he has―when he opens the door. Immediately, his entire body locks up.
He swallows again, for a different reason entirely, and greets that beautiful, familiar face.
"Hi, Yoongi."
Yoongi is leaning against the door jamb like he can barely hold his body up.
Hoseok guesses―in the brief second before Yoongi straightens like he registers the sound of his voice with his spine―that he isn't exactly present, mentally.
Yoongi tends to space out with his entire body, as if he can't pretend to be something he's not, no matter how much he tries. It's his mouth, his eyes, his hands, they all give him away. Like right now.
As he tries to force the corners of his lips into a smile and make pleasant eye contact. Hoseok knows that Yoongi is sad.
His shoulders. They just can't seem to lean back and hold him up, no matter how strong they might look. And that's to say nothing of his eyes.
They're going to blink now, soft and pretty. His perfectly chapped lips are going to part before he asks Hoseok for...well, not what Hoseok wants to give him. Not for a kiss.
"Hey, I need some of―"
Hoseok swings the door open the rest of the way before Yoongi even finishes. "Come on."
What Yoongi really needs is to stop trying to talk if it makes him this tired. Or for his knees to give out if they have to and understand that Hoseok will catch him. And if he can't catch him right, for Yoongi to know that it's okay, they can both lay in a heap, on the floor, together.
The intensity of Hoseok's reaction to seeing Yoongi doesn't surprise him anymore.
He leans out of the way to make, way and Yoongi's body brushes past his chest as he walks inside the apartment.
A whisper of warmth blooms over Hoseok's skin. Over his ribs, around his back, down his arms. Until his hands are tingling with it.
He fists those hands―once; hard―and releases the tension. He swings the door closed and locks it.
He doesn't gesture to the couch before Yoongi sits on it like his body is the heaviest load he's ever surrendered to gravity. The unashamed physical gesture makes Hoseok smile.
He walks over to his bedroom to grab his stash from his closet. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Yoongi make a tiny wiggle into the pile of blankets he's abandoned.
Affection squeezes Hoseok's chest so hard that by the time he's digging through his sock basket, he's breathless with it.
He takes a moment to collect himself in the darkness of his room. The light from the living room is more than enough for him to see by, and in this instance, it's saving him the slightest bit of dignity that he needs to make it through this transaction.
When he thinks he's ready, he walks back to the living room to face Yoongi. What Hoseok finds almost makes him drop his bag.
Yoongi is curled around Hoseok's blankets. One of his fists is tangled up in the softest of the bunch, and that fist is pressed to his face.
Hoseok almost leaves him there, just to let him rest for a while, but then his neighbors upstairs start a fight. The man's voice is so loud that it reaches Hoseok's apartment through the ceiling.
As soon as Yoongi hears it, his eyes snap open on a gasp that sounds painful. He sits up.
"How long was I out?" He pushes the blankets away. It hurts Hoseok more than he expects it to.
"Not even five minutes."
Hoseok realizes that he's dropped his bag of drugs. He bends over and picks it up.
There's pounding now. The distinct sound of children crying. More voices adding to the noise. All of them screaming.
Hoseok wishes he could get used to his neighbors, but he can't. He hates bearing witness to this.
He doesn't want to be alone. He stares at the bag and tries to sound even-keeled when he speaks.
"You need a downer, then? To help you sleep?" He opens the bag. Removes the smaller one filled with opiates.
He walks his way over to Yoongi as Yoongi is standing up.
There's a loud bang directly above their heads and they both flinch.
Their eyes meet at that moment. An understanding passes between them.
They are both familiar with this kind of violence. It's a living thing that follows them everywhere they go. Its tongue is long and corrosive on the backs of their necks and it serves as a sick omen for the strike of teeth that begs to follow.
The work they do to forget about it is not enough. The quiet of Hoseok's living room is not enough.
Slowly, they straighten themselves out; and Hoseok notices that their bodies are in sync.
The bags in his hands feel heavy. He can't help thinking that he wants them to stay closed.
Yoongi is still looking at him.
His guard is down. He looks almost innocent. Sort of pure. Tired, quiet, and afraid in Hoseok's living room. All Hoseok wants to do is take care of him.
And then Yoongi speaks.
"You gave me codeine last time. Made me shit like a monster."
Hoseok's laugh makes his jaw crack. It sounds off to his own ears but there isn't anything he can do about that. It's already left his mouth.
Yoongi stares at him like he understands. Hoseok can't help but be undone.
In the midst of everything, it feels good not to be alone.
"You're special for that one," he says. "Most people don't shit for weeks."
When Yoongi smiles, Hoseok finds himself hoping for something.
He hopes for Yoongi not to feel alone either.
"So no to codeine," he continues, sifting through the bag for something else. There's another loud bang and it kills the hope in Hoseok's chest right where it is.
When he looks up, the smile is gone from Yoongi's lips.
"You can't do anything, can you?" Yoongi says, staring at the bag. "You can't call the police."
Hoseok looks at him. He can't look away and he doesn't question why. He just stares at quiet, smart Yoongi.
"No. They're black people. I don't know what they'll do to the family when they arrive."
Yoongi nods without lifting his head. He doesn't say anything else.
For some reason, Hoseok feels like he's seeing more of Yoongi tonight than he ever has before. Like he's seeing everything he's already sort of guessed about his life click into place right in front of him.
"What do you need, Yoongi?"
Yoongi lifts his head. His dark circles stand in sharp contrast to the rest of his face―the grey making his pale skin look sickly, and vice versa. He speaks without hesitation. "Morphine."
Hoseok is not surprised. His chest gives an ache anyway. "Okay. Morphine."
He digs it out and hates his fingers for doing it. He hates his hands for the violence they bring. He knows there's barely a difference between his hands and the hands of that man upstairs.
He grits his teeth. "One thing, though." Yoongi blinks, waiting. He's so pretty. Hoseok doesn't think Yoongi even cares about it. About how pretty he is. "You do it here. That's the only way I'll give this to you."
Yoongi frowns. He looks like he's going to ask Hoseok a reason for why―but then there's thud. Followed by screaming.
They both tense, neither breaking eye contact.
"Okay," Yoongi says. "I'll stay."
―
Yoongi isn't feeling as high as he thought he would, but he is sleepy. That's something.
Sixty milligrams on a new drug, three weeks off the wagon. His body is angry with him again. Refuses to give him the high he wants.
It wants to eat but it doesn't want to sleep. Picky picky. But Yoongi wants to sleep.
This isn't the ideal position, though. Laying like a starfish on his back. He can't even tell if it's warm or not. He feels warm, but that doesn't really mean anything.
He has to think about where his limbs are before he decides to move them. Fingers, yes, excellent. Toes, too, attached to his feet like they're supposed to be. He's doing great. Now to turn onto his side.
One―two―
He feels his body snap closed like a suitcase.
No, too coiled. He's not a cobra.
He stretches out a little.
Better.
He folds both his arms to tuck them underneath his head.
He lifts his head.
...He lifts his head.
He....lifts....god, it weighs so much. He's grunting like a pig just to be able to pick his own―
His head drops onto his folded arms like it weighs one baby. Maybe two babies.
Well. Maybe he's wrong about not feeling high. His dumbest thoughts are coming unbidden; despite the circumstances.
Usually, he puts more effort into acting normal. It starts inside his head, with normal thoughts. When's lunch? Et cetera. What time is it? And so on.
But he can't be confused about what day it is. Certainly not what week it is. That gets you found out pretty quickly. For being a ...
The floor is so comfortable. He isn't even sure how long he's been down here.
Long enough for all that screaming to have stopped. He doesn't know if that's a good thing. The world is such an ugly place.
But it's clean down here. Like Hoseok.
...Yeah. Clean. Hoseok is clean.
Like a settled snowfall. Before anyone gets their disgusting feet in it.
Or, even better, snow that remains clean all throughout the winter. The snow that lands on mountains, or in open fields, or even right there on the street but so difficult to walk through that most people stick to the shoveled pathway. And most animals...
Well, Yoongi doesn't know. Birds do what they want. But that's not the point.
Yoongi doesn't understand how Hoseok survives in a world like this. He can't even smoke right. Two puffs and he's gone.
Everyone knows that the minimum threshold is five. If you can't take five puffs without going timber, you probably shouldn't be taking any.
He'd lit up with Yoongi, earlier. Before Yoongi introduced himself to the floor.
He thinks Hoseok needed it even more than Yoongi needs this morphine high.
They didn't speak. As the muffled screaming filled the quiet, they didn't speak.
The human vocal chord is certainly an instrument. And a scream is,
It's...
Yoongi got impatient with how long it was taking for the pills to kick in. So when Hoseok started smoking, he started smoking, too. Hoseok was never going to finish that blunt by himself anyway.
It's nice watching Hoseok get high. It happens so quickly that it almost feels like an appetizer to Yoongi's desperate mind.
The flush of his cheeks, the lull in his eyes, the lax of his muscles. Yoongi doesn't think it shows when he's high, he's too good at masking it. But when Hoseok is high, it looks like he's high. He looks exactly like how being high feels.
It's intoxicating. His honesty. It feels too much like him. Yoongi already thinks too much about Hoseok when he's high.
About moments like the one after Hoseok had taken his first drag.
Yoongi had opened his mouth on instinct, holding his hand out to take the blunt, but Hoseok didn't give it to him.
Instead, he'd stuck it right between Yoongi's lips―the corners of his own mouth going up in that slow, mesmerizing way of his, not exactly forming a smile but tugging on Yoongi's sanity all the same―and he didn't release it even when Yoongi wrapped his lips around the end. Even as he started to take a pull.
He didn't avert his gaze and neither did Yoongi.
And then Hoseok had smiled at him. Soft and easy.
Like the smoke filling Yoongi's lungs, it had burned a little. And like that burn, it was a familiarity that Yoongi liked.
Violence then came from above and cut the moment in two. Hoseok didn't flinch that time, but the smile fell from his lips.
He had closed his eyes. Pulled the blunt back from the hold of Yoongi's dry mouth. The motion chafed against his lips, but Yoongi didn't react to it. The sensation remained as he watched Hoseok take his second drag of the night.
It did something to Yoongi to watch Hoseok's mouth close around the same tip that had just been in his mouth. It had almost felt like a real kiss.
That's when Yoongi had finally given himself permission to look away.
He knew that if he was going to let himself keep looking at Hoseok, he couldn't do it sober.
It's hard not to get lost in Hoseok's eyes. There's a depth to them that wraps around Yoongi almost like a hug sometimes.
It's fucking weird is what it is. Yoongi doesn't have this specific problem with anyone else's eyes. Eyes are just eyes.
He questions his decision to stay. Because he isn't sure he's going to be able to handle the leaving.
There's always a time after seeing Hoseok where Yoongi goes home and dreams about him.
They're unspeakable dreams. Dreams where the two of them are in love.
But dirt and snow shouldn't mix. Even if dirt falls in love with snow. Snow stays far away and makes it through the winter, just as clean at the end as it was in the beginning.
"Do you want ribs?" Hoseok asks.
From his underground tunnel, Yoongi grunts his response. He can barely talk. What a vision of grace Hoseok must be experiencing.
"You're right," Hoseok replies. He's being silly with Yoongi. It's so nice. People forget how to be silly. Something about getting older. Something about life beating the living fuck out of you. Forever. Until you die. "Extra ribs it is."
Yoongi waits for familiar sounds.
A phone dialing. Awkward phone speech. Nobody sounds like themselves on the phone, but Yoongi realizes that he's never heard Hoseok interact with anyone else.
He wonders how he'll sound. Like himself? Like he's being held hostage? Sweet, like when he's talking to Yoongi and he just starts smiling? Could it just be a default habit of his that actually has nothing to do with him?
The answer comes. Hoseok doesn't hesitate on the phone. He sounds friendly, but to Yoongi, it's a foreign sound. It's like Hoseok is a business man who's good at his job. It's not sweet. It's not breathless. It's not Yoongi's.
The conversation ends. Yoongi can't keep track of when.
He doesn't know how much time has passed since his rendezvous with this floor. That's been true at every nebulous interval of time since, yet over and over again, he finds himself pondering the passage of time.
He might be feeling a little nauseous, actually. Maybe eating isn't for the best right now. He can barely move his jaw, either. What's Hoseok supposed to do, blend the ribs into a smoothie and massage them into his gums?
There's a sudden breeze over his skin. Yoongi feels his skin try to shrivel like a raisin.
Did Hoseok open the door? Or...?
...There's a soft weight landing on him, covering his whole body like a,
Like...
It's a blanket.
It's a blanket and it smells like Hoseok.
Yoongi's chest aches as he registers the familiar scent.
He takes a deep, deep breath. It makes him feel calm, but not high.
Yoongi realizes that a high and a calm are two completely different things. He thinks that he might prefer the calm.
He also realizes that he has his eyes closed. He opens them.
He finds, Hoseok now laying beside him and mirroring his position on the ground. Cheek pressed to the floor, face mooshed funny, looking right at him.
A blush hits Yoongi's face and he hopes it isn't obvious. "It's cold down here."
Hoseok smiles and it's big and it's dopey. "Then get up."
Yoongi feels himself smile back, but on the inside. Whatever that means.
Who knows if it's even translating to his face. He probably looks constipated.
"You're…"
Is he going to say it? Use every last ounce of energy he has, just for this?
Yeah. He's going to say it. It seems important.
"You're beautiful, you know that?"
Now it's his whole body that's blushing. This blanket is a mere instrument in his demise. He's boiling alive under here.
Hoseok turns redder than Yoongi feels. He puts both of his hands over his face and makes an embarrassed noise that Yoongi thinks even aliens could understand.
Then he turns onto his back. He drops his hands and stares at the ceiling. Yoongi watches him without pausing to wonder if it's rude.
He thinks he sees Hoseok sober up.
As sober as someone high on weed can become, anyway.
"You never say things like that to me when you're sober."
He turns his head to look at Yoongi and all his hair tumbles with the movement. It's falling over the side of his face, brushing softly against his forehead, draping over the side of his long, delicate neck.
It's grown out since the last time Yoongi has seen him; Hoseok usually keeps it shorter than this. It suits him. Frames his oblong face better. Makes him look even prettier.
Yoongi resents the thick strands, though. It's like they're mocking his hands. Showing him all the places they could be if only he was,
If only...
Everything is so slow.
It feels like they've been down here forever. He closes his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
Strange. When Hoseok speaks, it seems to snap time into its correct place. Yoongi now feels like he knows what time it is.
"I've missed you," Yoongi says.
Even laying on the floor, it feels like he's just jumped off of a ledge.
He opens his eyes. On purpose. He thinks he's hoping for Hoseok to catch him.
Hoseok smiles with his eyes first. "I've missed you too, Yoongi." And whatever it is that he sees on Yoongi's face makes him soften his already soft voice. "I always miss you."
God, this is so painful. Yoongi isn't numb enough.
"Hoseok, please."
He can't say the rest. The truth.
He's a mess of a person who isn't strong enough to clean himself up, but god. He doesn't want to be anyone else's mess to clean up, either. People like Hoseok deserve better.
"Just promise me one thing."
Hoseok's voice. Reminding him what time it is.
Yoongi doesn't know when he'd last closed his eyes, but he opens them again. He meets Hoseok's direct gaze head on.
"Always come back to me. Like you do anyway." His eyes are big; his soul laid bare. Yoongi thinks he needs to learn how to look meaner. Hoseok needs to be meaner in general. He won't make it like this. "I'll give you what you need."
He stares at Yoongi like he knows exactly what it is that he really needs. Yoongi is barely coping.
"My drugs," he says, just to divert their attention to anything else. A joke, maybe.
Hoseok doesn't laugh. He doesn't look away. "Sure."
Jesus. Fuck.
Maybe this is how Hoseok survives. By looking assholes right in the eye and calling them on their shit.
Because Yoongi knows who's weaker here, and it's not Hoseok.
"Kiss me," he says, trying to be strong too, for once.
Pink again. Hoseok is pink again.
Yoongi could bite his ears, they're so red.
"Not like this," Hoseok replies.
Yoongi doesn't know how he feels about that.
No, he does. He wants to throw a tantrum. Kick his feet and ask again.
But he doesn't think he could get that much out of his legs right now.
Hoseok smiles like he knows what he's thinking and makes a kissy face. Then he makes a noise, one that even an alien could understand.
Teasing. This is what they call teasing.
Yoongi thinks he's in love with Hoseok.
He doesn't know what do about it.
"Did you order the ribs?" he asks in place of another demand for a kiss.
Hoseok blinks, nonplussed. "Oh. Uhhh no, I don't think..." He blinks again; frowning, looking even more confused. "I don't remember."
Yeah.
Yoongi's in love with him.
―
Hoseok checks his phone to make sure that the number for poison control is dialed on the keypad and ready to go.
It is. He puts it down and locks it.
A burp shoots out of him. It tastes like ribs.
He eyes the fridge and contemplates eating the rest of them. He's sure he can swallow a building full of food if he tries.
But then his eyes drift over to the quiet lump on the floor that is Yoongi.
No, he thinks. The rest of the food is for him.
For after he wakes up smelling like Hoseok's blankets. In Hoseok's apartment. In Hoseok's line of sight.
Hoseok imagines them kissing for the first time. He pictures Yoongi letting him cup his stubbled jaw, letting Hoseok press against him and warm him up with his body. Yoongi always looks cold, but Hoseok knows he runs hot. He wants Yoongi to know that he runs hot, too.
He doesn't think before asking the question.
"Why are you so sad today, Yoongi?"
Always so sad. Hoseok can almost see it shadow Yoongi's body like a cloak, heavy enough to run his hands over.
He hears Yoongi take a breath and he realizes that he's actually going to answer his question. He never really answers Hoseok's questions.
"My older brother, he died of a drug overdose when I was nineteen."
The words come clear as day. They steal Hoseok's breath away.
He puts a hand to his chest to try and remind his body where the air is supposed to be. "I'm so sorry."
Yoongi interrupts him like he can't even hear him. "Our parents talked about him like he deserved to die. After. Their friends talked about him like he deserved to die, too. His own friends talked about him like he deserved to die."
Yoongi seems to gag on the words, stopping abruptly with a quiet wretch.
Hoseok doesn't speak.
Yoongi's voice sounds like it's his again. "Do you want to know what I think?"
Hoseok almost doesn't reply. He thinks it'll startle Yoongi into silence and he doesn't want Yoongi's silence. He wants Yoongi to tell him everything. He wants Yoongi to confirm or deny everything that Hoseok has ever thought about him.
He gets off the dining chair and slowly, very slowly, sits beside him. "What do you think, Yoongi? That he deserved to live?"
Yoongi laughs. It's a painful sound.
"I think they killed him. I think he knew what they thought about him while he was still alive, and I think he agreed with them." He makes a tired sound. Hoseok imagines that this weight has been a difficult enough one to carry. "I'm not angry at any of them, though, and it feels like a betrayal. It feels like I'm helping kill him."
Hoseok doesn't need to hear the rest to understand. "Yoongi."
He doesn't respond.
Hoseok goes to ask a different question.
"Is that why you do this? So that no one will touch you?" Because he feels like no one should want to? "It doesn't work on me."
Abruptly, Yoongi sits all the way up. The blanket falls off his body and as Hoseok watches the goosebumps rush to cover every part of exposed skin they can, he feels envious of them.
The scent of his blanket reaches his nose, but it smells like Yoongi. Close enough, Hoseok thinks.
They're at eye level now, sitting beside each other.
"Hoseok." The effects of the drugs aren't as noticeable as they were four hours ago. Yoongi's eye contact isn't all over the place, his words aren't slurred. He has control of his limbs. "I watched my brother drug himself to death and then I stepped right up." He gestures to his body with his hands. "I'm a piece of fucking shit."
Hoseok can't hide his wince. Yoongi's eyes catch the movement and something seems to shift in their depths.
Hoseok decides that things have to be fair. Here, if nowhere else in the world.
"I'm the thirty-two year old drug dealer that spoon feeds you poison and lets you keep coming back for more."
The sentence doesn't come out the way Hoseok wants. He wants to sound like Yoongi, like he's taking ownership of himself, but he only sounds like a kicked dog.
Yoongi isn't looking at him like he pieties a dog, though. Hoseok keeps talking.
"I dropped out of high school because I was too dumb to finish, and I never bothered getting a real job. I know what a piece of shit looks like, Yoongi. It's not you."
Yoongi blinks once, staring at Hoseok like he can see right through him.
Hoseok fights the urge to wrap his arms around himself and hide.
It's physically draining, dragging the truth out into the sunlight. It's terrifying waiting to see what Yoongi is going to do with it. Will he poke at it with a stick, in disgust?
Hoseok wishes he could kiss that frown right off of Yoongi's lips. It would make for a good parting gift, if nothing else.
Maybe then he'd be able to start convincing himself that Yoongi is a person that he can one day hope to forget.
"Hoseok," Yoongi says. His voice is like Hoseok has never heard it before. "Look at me."
Hoseok can't look at him. It's too much.
He hears a shuffling. Assumes that Yoongi is getting up to leave.
Instead, there's a firm grip on his knee that surprises him enough to make him jump.
Hoseok doesn't think he can handle one word Yoongi might say right now. Not one.
The quiet rush of cool air is unexpected over his body.
He looks up to find Yoongi wrapping his blanket around him.
"What are you...?"
"Ssh." There's a grave look of concentration on Yoongi's face as he covers the exposed parts of Hoseok's upper body. "No more talking, I think."
Hoseok can't agree more.
He watches the frown between Yoongi's eyebrows. The way his tongue is sticking out―just slightly―from the corner of his mouth. The abject determination to avoid Hoseok's eyes. The faint dust of pink high on his cheeks.
Hoseok feels himself blush in response, something he doesn't mention. Yoongi's hands always looked stronger than his and as he feels him grip, and tug, and pull, Hoseok is satisfied to know that his guess was correct.
He wants to hold Yoongi's hands and feel the subtler differences between them.
Yoongi―apparently satisfied with his work―moves to sit beside him.
The press of his hips is as sharp as Hoseok anticipates it to be. He's wrong about everything else, though.
Yoongi's thighs are warmer and firmer than he initially guessed them to be. His weight, as he leans into Hoseok's body, is more substantial than Hoseok's own weight is.
And Yoongi's sigh, when it comes, feels like he's drawing it right from the center of Hoseok's own chest.
Oh.
It's love.
Hoseok is in love with Yoongi.
That's what this thing is, that lives under Hoseok's skin. That only wants to be known by Yoongi's touch. The part of Hoseok that goes very, very quiet whenever Yoongi speaks, just so it can listen.
The sigh that Hoseok releases that manages to somehow soften Yoongi's body against him. Oh.
Hoseok has been in love twice before. Each experience was as different from the other as it could get. So this love, this time, must be all Yoongi's.
That's why it's taken him so long to recognize it for what it is. It's something unique on its own. Exactly like Yoongi is.
Hoseok moves to grip the edges of the blanket and lift it above their heads. Out of his periphery, he sees Yoongi's head lift out of the way, like he doesn't understand what Hoseok is doing.
Hoseok stretches his arms wide, all the way around Yoongi's shoulders. Then he brings the blanket down again, nudging Yoongi's body back to his side.
Hoseok adjusts himself so he can tuck Yoongi more firmly against him.
Their thighs press together; and so do their hips, their arms, their ribs, their shoulders. Hoseok moves to press their temples together, too, and can practically feel Yoongi's body melt against his in embarrassment.
He's embarrassed too, but he can handle it. He'll handle Yoongi's embarrassment for him if he has to.
"Oh my god," Yoongi squeaks. It's an unexpected sound that brings an automatic smile to Hoseok's face. "The both of us don't fit."
It doesn't sound like he's talking about their bodies.
Hoseok dangles the edge of the sheet on Yoongi's side in front of Yoongi's face until he grabs it. With his left hand, he pats down their sides for Yoongi's right hand and takes it.
Yoongi's hands are big and bony. Hoseok does something he's thought about doing a hundred times before. He links their fingers together.
Yoongi's palm is calloused and rough, but it's warm when it presses to Hoseok's palm. Yoongi's knuckles push insistently between Hoseok's smaller ones, taking more room for themselves than is strictly available.
Hoseok finds that he likes that a lot. He wants Yoongi to be more like his hands. To take up as much of Hoseok's space as he can. Hoseok will find a way to make the room.
"The both of us fit perfectly," he says, responding to Yoongi's earlier statement.
He lifts his head and disconnects their temples to look at him. This close, he can count Yoongi's eyelashes if he wants to.
He sees them lower as Yoongi stares at the place their knees are joined. Hoseok tries to remember the last time he found a human being this beautiful, but he can't.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he whispers.
Yoongi blinks. His eyes darken but he doesn't lift his gaze and he doesn't meet Hoseok's eyes.
"I wish he was around to understand how deep your love for him is. I don't think it would have fixed his pain, but I think if he'd had more time to understand, it would have helped him just a little."
This time, Yoongi does lift his gaze. He turns his head and meets Hoseok's eyes.
There's an intensity in them that Hoseok feels like a touch. He doesn't look away from it. He wants to be touched.
Like Yoongi can hear him, he squeezes Hoseok's hand.
His grip is strong and sure.
Hoseok takes a deep breath and lets that strength calm him.
"I love you, Hoseok."
The words are so unexpected that they make Hoseok gasp. He breaks eye contact and ducks his head.
Yoongi doesn't seem to be done. "You're not a piece of shit. You're the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
"Jesus, Yoongi."
That's all that manages to come out of his mouth. He wants to cover his face but one hand is holding onto the edge of a blanket for dear life. The other one is in Yoongi's hand.
"I love you, too."
There's a stretch of silence.
It's heavy, but in a good way. Like sitting in the car on the way to your wedding.
It's the feeling of safety as you travel over a long, winding road. A promise of peace and real rest on the other side.
When Yoongi breaks the silence, Hoseok can hear a smile in his voice. "I wish we could kiss."
Hoseok shakes his head. "Not yet." Not like this.
"I know," Yoongi replies. He adjusts their hands so he can keep his grip. "I like your hair long. It makes you look prettier."
Prettier. Prettier.
Okay, then. Hoseok is going to cancel that appointment for a haircut.