Archive of Our Own

The first time that Yoongi sees Jeon Jungkook, it's at a shitty college gig.

Yoongi doesn't even want to be there.

There are a lot of better ways to spend his Saturday evening - lying in bed, for one. Sleeping, for another. Dying, if it really comes down to it. But instead, he's manning an ice cream stall at this shitty college because Taehyung has bribed him into it.

The worst thing about serving ice cream to a bunch of twenty year olds is that they all make such a big deal of everything that they do.

Some of them come over and ask him for simple vanilla, but can't do it without talking about how other flavours are overrated.

Some of them come over and ask him for three different scoops with chocolate chips and sprinkles, but can't do it without talking about how maybe it's childish but that's just how they are haha.

Yoongi doesn't care about why they choose their ice cream. He just wants them to pay him. But for these twenty something year olds, everything is a damned performance.

Yoongi is sprinkling crushed oreos into a cup of chocolate ice cream for a guy who is telling his girlfriend that when he was young, his father would buy him oreos every day and they'd put them in their milkshakes and once he tried to put it into a sandwich and haha isn't he so weird and crazy -

And Yoongi is sprinkling the crushed oreos into the cup, when there's sudden, deafening feedback from the sound system on stage.

Yoongi winces.

As one, most of the crowd looks towards the stage. There's a boy standing up there with a mic, his guitar slung over his shoulder, looking awkward and apologetic.

"Sorry," he says into the mic, and there's the horrible ringing again.

Yoongi lifts a hand to cover his ear instinctively.

The boy on stage scrunches his face up, embarassed, and moves away from the mic.

There's an awkward silence, with everyone in the crowd giving him dirty looks, like the mic system is somehow his fault.

The next person in the queue asks Yoongi for mint chocolate chip. He and the guy next to him get into an argument about whether or not it's the worst ice cream flavour in the world.

Yoongi wonders if he should tell them all that if they're this pressed about ice cream they aren't going to make it past twenty five.

On stage, the boy is still trying to set up his mic, flushed and awkward as hell.

He's pretty, Yoongi will give him that. Pretty, like he's trying too hard.

A wannabe rockstar, dressed in blacks and silver, an earring dangling from one ear and fringe falling into his face.

Maybe that's why Yoongi doesn’t like him.

"Oh, he's here," Taehyung says, setting a new box of strawberry ice cream into the freezer that Yoongi is standing in front of.

He's wearing a special t-shirt for the occasion, that says I SCREAM. It's supposed to be a joke. No one has laughed at it yet.

"Who's here?"

Taehyung nods towards the stage. "Jungkook."

Yoongi eyes the stage warily. "You know him?"

"He's pretty great," Taehyung says. "He sings and stuff."

"How do you know him?"

"From Jin hyung's bar. He performs there sometimes."

"Huh."

Jeon Jungkook, wannabe rock star who sings at shitty bars and college gigs.

That's the first time Yoongi hears about him.

/

Jungkook does sing pretty well.

Yoongi will admit that much.

It's a shitty location, and a terrible audience - the sun hasn't set enough for any of the light effects to show, and the strangers in the crowd are all here to spend time with each other, not to care about someone pouring their heart out on stage.

That's the second thing Yoongi hates about him - Jungkook has no fucking context in his life.

He's at a shitty college gig, hired to be another distraction. The twenty year olds are here to take a break from daily life and pretend they're all doing okay. They're here to form memories with each other, to laugh and feel important and pretend that this is a day that they'll remember some ten years later.

Jungkook is hired to be a distraction, something to look at when conversation gets awkward.

But he sings like he thinks anyone cares what he has to say.

He sings with his entire heart and soul, screams like his life depends on it. And maybe it does, but this isn't the time. Or the place.

You don't bare your soul to people who are talking about what ice cream flavour is the best.

Jungkook sings about how messed up his life is, how nothing should hold them all down, how they'll all break free - and in the audience people are showing each other photos and laughing at memes.

Who are you singing for? Yoongi wants to ask him.

No one is listening to you.

Yoongi slumps down into a chair at last, when the line in front of the ice cream stall finally thins out. Taehyung takes care of any other customers, and Yoongi stares at the stage.

It's a waste, Yoongi thinks, watching Jungkook scream out his soul.

He knows his type too well.

The kind of person that thinks being heard can make a difference, and doesn't realize that it's a privilege that very few ever get.

When the show ends, Jungkook is exhausted. He's panting hard, sweat pouring down his face. He looks into the crowd, at the halfhearted applause and cheers, and he looks -

Happy.

Completely unaware that he hasn't reached a single person in the audience.

"He's going to be crushed," Yoongi says, almost to himself.

"Hm?" Taehyung says.

"Your friend."

"He's not my friend."

"He's not going to get anywhere."

Taehyung frowns. "That's not very nice, hyung."

"Look at him," Yoongi says. "He thinks they're fucking clapping for him."

Taehyung frowns harder, looking up to where Jungkook is. The boy is bowing profusely, silver dangling from his neck, his ears. He looks amazed, he looks happy.

He thinks they're clapping for him, when they're just clapping for whoever stands on the damned stage.

Jeon Jungkook, spitting his ugly words with his pretty face - he's too desperate to be remembered.

So desperate, in fact, that he's already convinced himself that he's worth a memory.

/

The second time Yoongi sees Jeon Jungkook, it's at the side of the road.

Yoongi is getting home from work. He's had a long day of sitting behind a desk, answering phone calls and typing details into a computer. It's lonely and boring and he's desperate to go home and watch TV and sleep.

He steps out of the subway station, and he sees a familiar face.

Jungkook is sitting on the curb of the sidewalk, legs stretched in front of him. There's another boy sitting next to him, playing around on the guitar, and Jungkook is singing along to it.

There's the sound of traffic all around them, the sounds of the busy streets, and it isn't an ideal location to be trying to sing - but this isn't Jungkook singing for an audience. This is something - private. Free.

He's singing with a grin twitching at the side of his mouth, while the guitarist plays with exaggerated drama, like he's trying to make Jungkook laugh.

Yoongi slows down, not ready to cross his path.

Jungkook is all dressed up again, like he's on his way to a gig. He's wearing eyeliner that's way too thick. He's dressed like - like a performer. Like someone who'd make a living out of singing about being miserable.

He's singing about how fucked up the world is, but he looks happy, with a friend by his side making him laugh.

It makes something ugly rise in Yoongi's throat.

The thing is - Jungkook is pretty. He's beautiful.

Dark eyes, tattoo sleeves, and the smile of someone who's never seen the world. Someone who's never been hurt. He doesn't have the face to be singing about the things he sings about, and he shouldn't have the heart.

There's nothing pretty about being sad, Yoongi wants to say. He wants to drag Jungkook up by the collar and spit it in his face. Jungkook, and all the other kids his age, who don't seem to understand this.

Do you know what it means to be fucking miserable?

Do you know what it's like to want to die?

There's nothing artistic about it, nothing beautiful. It's ugly and empty and disgusting - all words that Yoongi can't put to Jungkook's face.

Yoongi can't stand it, because - this ugliness is all that he has. It's the only thing that belongs to Yoongi. And now it's like the world is trying to take it all and pose it as something beautiful, as something for pretty people with their pretty lives, leaving Yoongi with nothing for himself.

Nothing but the dirt on the ground, while being sad just becomes another thing for the people who can get out of bed in the morning.

As if they don't have enough in their lives already.

Yoongi sees Jungkook, smiling on the sidewalk, and he hates him.

He hates his freaking black clothes, the silver dangling from his ears. He hates the way his hair curls around his ear, and how Jungkook pushes it into place. He'll bet anything that every one of Jungkook's tattoos has a story, some shit about each thing in his life that has kept him going till today.

Yoongi wonders if he knows how privileged that is, to have things to keep him going.

Yoongi is just living because he hasn't died yet.

/

On Saturday nights, Yoongi likes to curl up in bed and pretend that he doesn't exist.

Sometimes he watches shows. Or movies. On good days, when he can move his hands enough, he plays video games. But for the most part he lies in bed, scrolling through social media, and absently hitting like on posts that vaguely catch his attention.

He watches his friends go out and have lives. He watches his favourite writers publish new works. Or kill themselves. Or announce that they won't be writing for a while.

He watches celebrities go out with each other, and get arrested for driving drunk. He watches the media expose rich men who assault children and then watch the same media cover it all up.

It's like this, through his mindless scrolling, that he comes across Jungkook.

Jungkook's social media account is a lot like Jungkook himself. It's full of photographs of his music sheets, the stage, the audience. His tattoos. Empty rooms with a piano.

Everything is in black and white, and the captions are like, at least I have music.

Another hard day, but it all pays off.

Wanted to die today but I held back.

It's like he's poured in so much effort to look sad, but like he'll make it through.

He doesn't seem to know what to share with his thousands of followers, and what to keep to himself, and ends up saying things all over the place.

Yoongi scrolls through his photos, and they're all the same. They're painstakingly edited, shadowed, made to look darker than they really are. His account has been started years ago but the posts only date back a few months, the tell tale of someone who keeps deleting all their posts and starting over anew.

Like Jungkook is nervous that he isn't being seen as sad as he is.

If he's sad at all.

Yoongi is willing to bet that he isn't.

There are two kinds of people, as far as Yoongi is concerned. One is like Yoongi himself. The kind that lies in bed on a Saturday because they don't have the energy to get out of it. The kind that goes to work, and comes back, and never says a word about the demons in their head because they know that there's nothing fucking pretty about them.

And then there are people like Jungkook, who think being sad make them different. Who think singing about it is going to change something for them, who think being sad counts as an identity.

Poster kids for depression.

It's always the ones that can still get out of bed.

It's always the ones who have the energy to make art, make music, make damned social initiatives to stop kids from killing themselves.

It's always them who get to talk about what depression is, simply because they're the only ones anyone can hear.

For the quiet people, lying in bed and wasting away, there's nothing.

/

It takes years for Jungkook to carve a place for himself in the world.

Years that Yoongi spends going to work. Sitting behind a desk and taking calls, typing details into a computer. Sometimes he talks to whoever sits next to him. Sometimes a coworker takes him out for coffee. And then he's back behind his desk taking calls, typing details into a computer.

He does this for years, while Jungkook works his way up.

He works his way up with shitty words about how the audience understands authenticity and he'll always be as honest as he can.

Jungkook never stops singing about being fucked up, and eventually he finds the people who love him for it. He moves on from college gigs and open bars to his own stages. And then the crowds at his performances grow. And grow. And grow.

He releases his first EP.

His first album.

The sales aren't high, and critics tear him apart. They see him as another lonely boy trying to sound like he knows more about the world than anyone else does. Another kid, trying to be the next Seo Taiji. Just a kid who arrogantly thinks he can make up for his lack of talent with fancy effects and words about how he hates himself.

If you ask Yoongi, the critics aren't wrong, but Jungkook's fans seem to disagree.

The crowds only grow larger.

Yoongi keeps filling his data sheets. Sometimes he takes his coffee break early. Sometimes he goes wild and drinks a milkshake instead.

Jungkook has a fan signing for the first time.

Yoongi's boss finally remembers his name right, but he doesn't give him a promotion.

He watches, halfhearted, as Jungkook gets older. His music grows into something that's less like a kid with a guitar trying to scream, and becomes something more sinister. The lyrics he spits are still angry, broken. He sings like he's seen horrible things, and then he smiles like he's grateful to be alive.

Yoongi still can't stand him.

He watches him from the sidelines, through social media, through the news, through Taehyung. Jungkook isn't - famous, not really, but he's well known. Well loved. He's the sort of obscure name that music nerds bring up when they're trying to prove to everyone that their taste in music is totally unique and unheard of.

As time goes on, the Jungkook? Who's that starts turning into oh, I love him too.

As time goes on, Yoongi decides he doesn't like sugar in his coffee after all.

And then one day, Taehyung turns up at Yoongi's door with two tickets in his hand.

"If you really love me," Taehyung says, deadly serious, "Come with me to this concert."

Yoongi eyes the tickets suspiciously.

JUNG KOOK.

BOY MEETS EVIL.

"You like him that much?" Yoongi asks, raising his eyebrows.

"He's the best," Taehyung says, still deadly serious. "Just come with me. I don't want to go alone."

Yoongi considers it.

"Okay," he says, and Taehyung breaks into a wide grin.

/

The venue is pretty cool.

The crowd is mixed. Half of the audience are die hard fans, holding up banners with Jungkook's name on it, and the other half is just people who wanted to spend the night outside and thought this might be both fun and affordable.

When Yoongi and Taehyung enter, it's way before the show starts. The sun hasn't gone down yet, and Jungkook is on stage, doing sound check.

He isn't fully dressed yet, in just a black t-shirt with bracelets hanging from his wrist. His hair isn't styled, still stringy and messy, and he tests his mic and earpiece with tense hands. The rest of the band tests their own instruments, and every time someone in the crowd screams Jungkook's name he offers them a shaky smile.

He seems nervous. All over the place.

Taehyung is watching him with hearts in his eyes.

"Is he always this nervous?" Yoongi asks.

Taehyung shrugs. "Before shows, yeah," he says. "He's a different person once the music starts."

They end up near the barrier, close enough that Yoongi can count the chains around his neck. He can read the words messily tattooed across his arm, that Yoongi already knows by heart from his photographs -

i want to be in another place.

The words stare down at him, buried between the skulls and roses and serpents.

Jungkook fumbles his way through sound check, fingers shaking and smile wobbly. The lights go on, and off. On, and off. The spotlight is tested, the lighting is all tried out.

It's odd, watching these moments before the magic starts to happen. It makes it so much more clear that everything about to happen is just a performance,  that nothing is real.

Finally, sound check and stage setup ends, and Jungkook disappears backstage. There's music playing in his absence, that Yoongi recognizes as the instrumental versions of some of his earlier songs.

When Jungkook reappears, he's in his usual black get up, gel in his hair and eyeliner too thick.

There are screams from the audience again, and this time, his smile is a little more steady.

/

The words that Jungkook spits, on the burning stage, under the lights that make him look dead and alive and dead and alive -

The words that he spits are far too personal.

Yoongi has heard his music before, from the videos that Taehyung shows him, and the videos he comes across on his own. Sometimes he searches for them on purpose, just to make himself feel something, because hating Jungkook is a little easier than hating himself.

Through a screen, he can pick Jungkook apart. He can say, surely his life can't be that bad. He can say he's overcompensating for something. He can be halfway through watching Jungkook spit his heart out and turn the video off, roll over and fall asleep.

But in person - Yoongi has no choice but to look at him.

He has no choice but to admit that this is someone who's saying things that are, to him, the truth.

It's a different experience altogether.

Jungkook sings about not being enough, about wanting to die. About how he hasn't felt a damned emotion since he was fifteen. About the kids who pushed him into walls, the father who never loved him, the uncle who always held him a little too close -

He sings about it all, and yet, none of it means anything.

Standing in the crowd, among all the cheering faces, Yoongi knows it means nothing, because it's not Jungkook that anyone sees up there on the stage. He's pouring his heart out, digging into all of his wounds in hopes that he's heard, but it's not him that anyone sees.

It's themselves.

It isn't Jungkook's story, the moment it leaves his mouth - it's the story of every fucker in the crowd.

It's the story of Min Yoongi.

Jungkook sings, screams, and the whole crowd screams with him. It's a moment of magic. Of beauty. And it's built on the ugliest of emotions that Yoongi has ever felt.

Put me out of my misery, Jungkook shouts.

Put me out of my misery.

Put me out of my fucking misery.

And the crowd only screams with him louder, all of them thinking the same.

There's nothing pretty about this, Yoongi wants to say, and it's beating so hard in his chest that he's scared something is going to break. This isn't right. It's not okay. It isn't alright to try to make something so ugly into something that feels so beautiful.

There's nothing pretty about wanting to die.

There's nothing pretty about Jungkook.

The crowd screams, and Yoongi hates every last one of them.

He hates them for being able to turn this into something, while Yoongi likes awake at night and can't move.

He hates them, for not seeing that this is just a fucked up soul screaming for help on stage.

Jungkook isn't here to make anyone feel better. He isn't here to do anything besides hurt himself. Yoongi knows his type too well, the sort of person who thinks the more he hurts, the more he lives. The more he hurts, the louder he can scream.

But the crowd listens to his words, and they think he's just like us.

He's not, Yoongi wants to say.

He's not like you.

He's the one who has to pour it all out.

The one digging into each of his scars.

You're just here to watch the destruction, and pretend that it's you who's falling apart.

/

Yoongi's schedule is so set in stone that he doesn't need to give it any thought.

He wakes up. Eats anything in his cupboard. Goes to work. Gets through work. Takes the subway home. Finds something to eat. Gets through the rest of the day. Sleeps.

Wakes up again.

And again.

And again.

It's one of the few things Yoongi is good at - waking up every damned day no matter how much he wants to die in his sleep.

He's on the subway today, standing and staring listlessly outside the dark windows. He can't see anything outside them, but he stares because there's nowhere else to put his eyes.

The subway is almost empty. It's late at night, well past rush hour. He could easily take a seat but Yoongi doesn't want to.

Besides, it's maybe the only part of the day that he stands upright at all.

The doors open for the next stop, and a familiar face steps inside. The train starts with a lurch, and Yoongi's heart jumps with it, because - it's Jeon Jungkook.

He looks out of place here, in the sterile lights and empty world. He doesn't look up from the floor, setting his guitar against one of the seats, and sitting down next to it, right in front of Yoongi.

He looks - washed out. Tired. Like he might be a real person after all.

Yoongi wonders if he should tell him that he knows him.

Hey, he could say.

I've known you for years now.

I kind of hate you, did you know that?

It would go over well.

Off stage, Jungkook looks so different, like someone caught between worlds. Dark clothes, bracelets around his wrists. Eyeliner too thick for his wide, wide eyes. He isn't listening to music, the way Yoongi expected a musician might be. He doesn't do anything besides just sit there, next to his guitar, staring into space.

He's too pretty, to be fucked up.

It bothers Yoongi every time he looks at him.

The train slows to a stop again, and Yoongi stumbles a bit, almost losing his footing. He tightens his fingers around the railing attached to the roof and barely holds himself in place.

Jungkook looks up, hands twitching, like he'd meant to reach out and help him but Yoongi saved himself before it.

They lock eyes.

It's the first time Jungkook has ever looked back at him.

The first time he's ever acknowledged Yoongi's existence, in all these years.

Jungkook catches his eye and he doesn't look away. There's something hesitant in his expression, like he's worried by the recognition in Yoongi's eyes. By the emptiness, that Yoongi has never learned to hide.

The hatred.

"You're Jeon Jungkook, aren't you?" Yoongi asks, voice dry.

Jungkook pauses, like he's considering lying about it. "Yes," he decides at last.

"I've been to your shows."

Jungkook just stares at him. It's like he can tell that there's no admiration in Yoongi's tone, that this isn't going to be a good conversation. He's given into it.

He's waiting, expectant, and patient, for Yoongi to try to break him down.

It catches Yoongi off guard.

He remembers Jungkook as the oblivious kid who sang his heart out at college gigs. As the kid who got crowds screaming for him at his newest concerts. In all of it, he'd forgotten that Jungkook had to deal with his own share of criticism.

And there was a lot of criticism for him.

Maybe he's used to it now.

There's a lot that Yoongi wants to ask him. He wants to ask why Jungkook thinks he should share the deepest parts of his soul. He wants to ask how much he gets paid, for tossing his heart out onto the streets. He wants to ask why Jungkook's eyeliner is so thick, why he only has tattoos on one arm, and if he knows what it truly means to want to die.

"Are you sad?" he ends up asking.

Jungkook's mouth twitches upwards, the barest hint of a smile on his face. "What do you think?"

Yoongi doesn't hesitate. "I think you were once," he says. "And then you decided you wanted to be."

Yoongi looks at him, at his vacant expression and darkness under his eyes, and he can tell that this is someone who wants to be hurt.

Someone who's so used to being hurt that they just keep going, looking for things to make it all worse.

Jungkook smiles.

It isn't the smile that Yoongi is used to seeing from him, the kind that makes it seem like he's happy to be alive. Now, Jungkook smiles like he sings - like the world is burning and he's burning down with it.

"It does pay bills, doesn't it?" he says. "Being sad, I mean."

Yoongi doesn't have a reply.

"Maybe you're right," Jungkook says. He sounds almost like he's talking to himself. "Maybe I do want to be sad."

"Why?"

"What else is there to be?" Jungkook says, a shrug in his voice.

What else is there to be.

Yoongi doesn't know.

He can't stomach the idea that Jungkook doesn't either.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Yoongi says.

Jungkook raises an eyebrow. "I don't?"

He speaks so quietly. His voice is so soft. It's like he uses up all his voice screaming on stage and there's nothing left for him to go home with.

"You don't," Yoongi says. "There's nothing fucking pretty about being sad."

There's nothing fucking pretty about you.

"I never said there was," Jungkook says, and again he only sounds tired. "You're the one who seems to think that there is."

The train slows again.

Jungkook is pretty. His soft hands, the curl of hair around his ear. His eyes, far too wide for his face. He's pretty and he shouldn't be, and -

Maybe it's just Yoongi, who sees him like that.

Maybe it isn't Jungkook at all.

Maybe Jungkook is just being himself, and Yoongi is watching this godawful destruction and finding it beautiful all on his own.

/

It's Jungkook who starts it, not Yoongi.

That's something that Yoongi won't understand until months later.

The next time they meet is at the same subway station. Yoongi is trying to buy himself a bottle of water, and Jungkook is walking by with his guitar slung over his shoulder. In the dark of the night, he looks like he belongs, like he'll fade any moment and disappear.

Jungkook doesn't spot him at first.

Yoongi cracks his water bottle open, drinking from it gratefully. He's had a long day, typing and making calls. Typing and making calls.

Wishing he'd be dead.

He takes a sip, and stares at Jungkook, who's walking towards him and hasn't spotted him yet. He keeps his gaze on the floor. He's a whole oddity of a person - everything about him draws attention but he never looks up from the ground.

He looks up when he passes the store Yoongi is standing at, like he's considering buying something, and that's when he spots Yoongi.

"Oh," he says, a hint of recognition in his eyes, and despite himself - Yoongi is pleased.

It's a good feeling to be remembered by someone who's been stuck in his head for so long.

Jungkook looks at the bottle of water in his hand, and then back at the shop. Back at the bottle, back at the shop. He seems exhausted, like his brain is working slower than usual, and Yoongi doesn't say a word, letting him work through whatever it is he's trying to process.

It's Jungkook who starts it, not Yoongi.

And Yoongi doesn't know why until much later.

"Do you - " Jungkook starts, voice far too quiet to be coming from him. "Do you want coffee?"

Yoongi blinks. "You want coffee?"

"I - uh. If you do, yeah, sure."

He wants to have coffee together.

With Yoongi.

"…why?"

Jungkook looks nervous, like he regrets asking already. He steps back a bit, like he's planning on leaving, mouth already forming some kind of apology, but -

"I mean, sure," Yoongi says. "But I was rude as heck to you, so why?"

Jungkook smiles a bit, but he still looks nervous. "You weren't rude," he says. "You only said what everyone says."

"Everyone asks if you're sad?"

"They ask if I want to be, yeah."

Yoongi looks at him, really looks at him, in a way he hasn't dared to so up close. He can tell why everyone asks that, because, after all these years, Jungkook still looks like the wannabe rock star that Yoongi first met at a shitty college gig.

Like he's trying too hard to be sad.

Like he finds something about it attractive.

"Then they ask me to prove that I am," Jungkook says, smile twitching at his lips. "Still haven't figured out how to do that."

"Prove that you're sad?"

"Yeah."

Yoongi stares at him.

How does anyone prove that they're sad, anyway. Outside of outright destroying themselves.

"Maybe you need to cry more," Yoongi decides.

Jungkook snorts.

"I didn't think I'd ever need to prove it," Jungkook says. "I thought my songs were enough."

"Songs are never enough," Yoongi says. "No one remembers that you're the one singing them."

"What about everything else?" Jungkook says.

"Hm?"

Jungkook makes a vague gesture, like he's pointing to all of him. All of his life. "All the - other stuff. I thought I did a good job of looking sad."

It's the first time that Yoongi fully understands him, and - it sinks in terribly.

This wasn't someone trying to look sad because he found it pretty.

This was someone trying to look sad in hopes that someone would realize that he was.

He was just trying to be taken seriously, trying to scream, but getting turned down at every turn he took.

"No one ever looks sad," Yoongi says. "Not until they're dead."

And even then, not really.

Even then, it's maybe they had a bad few days. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe someone conned them into it.

Maybe they were too hasty.

Maybe it's a mistake.

They couldn't be sad, we'd have seen it if they were.

There's no way we didn't notice.

Maybe it's a mistake.

"Come on," Yoongi decides. "Let's get some coffee."

/

There's a lot that Yoongi learns about Jungkook after that.

He learns that he puts so much sugar in his coffee that the sugar barely dissolves. He learns that Jungkook doesn't sleep much at all, which is probably a direct result of how much freaking sugar he ingests. He learns that Jungkook has the words no thanxx tattooed on his shoulder for reasons that he splutters to explain.

He learns that if Yoongi doesn't reply to his messages, he texts him three more times and then assumes Yoongi hates him.

He learns that if Jungkook is working on a song, he won't notice Yoongi's calls for days together.

He learns that Jungkook's vocals make his throat sore for ages after each performance, and that he's never happier than when he hears the crowd cheer for him on stage.

He learns that the day after a performance he always tries to kill himself.

It's a routine, at this point. To feel good, then want to die.

To feel good, then want to die.

"Isn't it like that for you?" Jungkook asks, his head pillowed on Yoongi's lap. They're at Yoongi's apartment, a small three room set up that Jungkook shouldn't look at home in, but he does. He's lying in Yoongi's lap and he looks like - he could have belonged here, in a different world.

Maybe in an alternate universe, Jungkook would be here, in Yoongi's lap, because he wanted to be.

Not because Yoongi had to stop him from swallowing too many sleeping pills.

"No," Yoongi says. "I don't ever feel good enough to be able to crash that hard."

There's silence, and then Jungkook laughs a bit, under his breath. "I don't know if I should feel bad for you or not, hyung."

His eyes are closed, face pressed into the softness of Yoongi's sweatpants. Yoongi pats his hair, giving it too much thought.

"It's a good thing," Yoongi says, almost amused. "I don't have the energy to crush my skull. Literally too tired to try to die."

It isn't funny, but Jungkook laughs harder, and Yoongi grins with him.

Jungkook laughs until he tires out, and Yoongi pretends he doesn't see the tears that don't fall. He laughs until he's just lying there again, exhausted, but not the kind that can let him sleep.

"I should order food," Jungkook says, fumbling for his phone.

It's another thing Yoongi learns about him - they never meet up without Jungkook buying him food. He seems to think of it as an excuse to ask Yoongi to hang out with him.

He can't say hyung, I'm lonely, do you want to go somewhere.

So instead he says hyung, do you want me to pay for your food.

"There's food in the fridge," Yoongi says, dismissing him. "I can heat something up. Or cook something, if you want."

Jungkook seems to want to say yes, but something stops him. "I'll order something," he says again. "Don't want to use up your food."

"It's called eating, Jungkook-ah."

"Yeah, but - you would have cooked it for yourself."

"Just say you're scared of my cooking."

"I'm not," Jungkook insists, suddenly worried, like he's scared Yoongi will misunderstand. Yoongi continues patting his head, hoping to settle him again. "I just - you let me inside your apartment, hyung. I should buy you food atleast."

It's one of the other things he learns about Jungkook, after spending so much time with him.

He can't accept things without giving in return.

Yoongi wonders sometimes, why the same doesn't apply to him. How can he pour out so much of himself into his songs, and not demand the blood of anyone who listens to them?

"You don't have to," Yoongi says. "But fine. Okay."

Jungkook clicks his phone on, starting to order.

It's funny, in a way. Every time Yoongi tries to stop Jungkook from dying, he gets a free meal.

/

Yoongi can't say he likes going to Jungkook's shows.

It feels like a horrible invasion of privacy.

It's one thing to hear Jungkook screaming from the point of view of a stranger. From that distance, Yoongi can think about what sort of person he might be, if he's really as messed up as he seems or if he's a performer. He could wonder if he's singing on behalf of someone else. If he ever lost someone, if he ever loved too much.

It was different when Jungkook was a stranger.

Now, when Yoongi hears him scream, and then comes back home to see Jungkook's face -

Too happy and too afraid of whatever his brain throws at him next, feverish with leftover energy from the concert -

Now it's hard not to let his heart break with it all.

Jungkook screams on stage like he thinks someone hears him. Like he thinks, on stage, he's Jeon Jungkook, who fucking matters.

He pours out so much of himself that it's disgusting to look at, and the crowd screams with him, over him. The spotlight never misses him, and the smoke rises over the stage.

Jungkook burns on stage, deadly and beautiful.

And the crowd pays to watch him die.

You can have my heart, he sings.

You can have my heart.

He sings it to the whole crowd, to everyone screaming his name, and it crushes Yoongi to hear because he knows Jungkook means it.

He knows he means - you already do.

Jungkook bleeds out into his music in hopes that he's heard. He burns himself alive. He's running empty, heart thrown into pieces, into the crowd.

Yoongi wishes he could say that he doesn't want Jungkook's heart.

He wishes he could say, I'd rather you live.

I'd rather you be happy.

I don't want your heart.

Keep it.

But he can't say that.

He looks at Jungkook, destroying himself in some kind of public spectacle, and it's disgusting and beautiful and one thing Yoongi can't look away from.

He thinks about the lonely boy who sits in Yoongi's apartment, after the high of the concert wears off. The quiet boy who buys Yoongi food because he thinks it's the only way to keep Yoongi by his side.

If Jungkook is going to destroy himself -

At least this way, it's loud.

"You give them too much," Yoongi says once, when Jungkook hasn't come down from his high yet.

He's still practically vibrating, digging out bottles of alcohol from the back of his cupboards. He drops them into Yoongi's lap with shining eyes. One bottle, two, three four. It's like he thinks the more alcohol he hands Yoongi, the happier Yoongi is going to be.

He looks at him with expectant eyes, each time he hands him a bottle, like he's hoping Yoongi will smile at him.

"Hm?" Jungkook says, too far in his head to even listen. His voice is a little cracked from overuse, but he's still loud enough to hear. The only time that Jungkook speaks out loudly is after a show, before the crash. "Do you want chicken? It's not late, we could order chicken - "

"Your fans," Yoongi says. "You give them too much."

Jungkook stops.

"You - you don't like my singing?" he asks, and it's a little confused, caught off guard.

The high is starting to wear off, way too fast.

"Of course I like your singing," Yoongi says. "I mean - you give out too much of yourself. It's your life, Jungkook. Not the fucking crowd's."

There's a horrible silence.

Jungkook stands in front of him, holding a bottle of alcohol in his hand, wavering. His eyeliner is too thick, his hair is starting to settle again.

The high is wearing off.

"That doesn't mean shit," he says.

"What?"

"My life is shit," Jungkook snaps. "It's fucking - nothing. I'm not losing out on it, I'm just making sure someone else finds something in it."

"They don't find something in your life," Yoongi says harshly, because it's true.

It's not Jungkook's life that matters to them. It's their own. Jungkook is just someone they ran into on the way.

"They find something in their own lives, not yours."

"But it's because of me, right?" Jungkook asks, and he sounds desperate.

He is desperate.

That's when it sinks in that Jungkook thinks that his music, his work, the parts of his soul he lets bleed onto his music sheets - he thinks any of it matters. He thinks pouring his heart out is saving lives. He thinks the people who scream along with him in the crowd are going to get through life a little easier because of him.

Jungkook doesn't know that all art is shit - and Yoongi doesn't know what to say to someone like that.

It's not because of you, he wants to say. And that's the truth. There's nothing special about Jungkook, he's just another voice screaming in pain. If it's not him that the crowd latches onto, they'll find someone else.

If not someone else, then someone else.

Whoever is alive, whoever wants to be heard. Whoever convinces themselves that screaming into the void and being heard makes a fucking difference.

There's no shortage of voices like that.

It's not because of you, Yoongi wants to say.

This isn't some martyr shit.

You're just killing yourself and you'll be forgotten in a minute and you'll be another fucking tattoo on someone's skin while they look for better reasons to keep going.

But Jungkook looks so desperate to mean something, that Yoongi doesn't dare to say anything at all.

/

The first time Yoongi goes over to Jungkook's apartment, Jungkook looks nothing like himself.

He's in a ratty white t-shirt that hangs loosely off his shoulders. His shorts are faded and old. He isn't wearing any eyeliner but there are the remnants of shadows around his eyes, a combination of not enough sleep and not enough effort put into washing his makeup off.

He stares at Yoongi blankly, like he doesn't remember why he's here.

"It's 7PM," Yoongi reminds him. "You said we'd have dinner together."

Some sort of recognition fades into Jungkook's eyes.

"I'll order something," he says quietly. The sort of quiet that he seems to exist in when he's with Yoongi.

It's like it takes everything in him to scream his soul out on stage and there's nothing left of him once he steps out of the lights.

Looking at Jungkook now, he seems like a completely different person.

There are two different Jungkooks - the mirage on stage, and the shadow that's left in his room.

Yoongi steps inside the apartment.

He's had a long, shitty day, letting customers yell at him through the phone, typing details into datasheets. Mixing his coffee all wrong and fighting the urge to pour it down the sink.

He keeps adding too much sugar.

He sits on Jungkook's couch, and it's dusty and worn. The whole place is a mess.

The lighting is dull, with a piano stuffed into a corner and music sheets spread all over the table. Dirty dishes are piled in the sink and there's a bag of chips upturned on the dusty floor. Jungkook sits on the floor in front of Yoongi, by his feet, typing away their food order on his phone.

Even now, he manages to look pretty.

It's the sort of beauty that shouldn't come with madness, with suffering, with art - but that Yoongi somehow keeps seeing anyway.

It would be so much easier, if death was a little uglier. If the crowds that watched Jungkook kill himself on stage knew enough to run screaming for help.

But that isn't the world they live in.

Instead, cries for help are torn apart with criticism. Madness is seen as art, and art is seen as noble suffering. A boy standing on a stage and crying that he doesn't want to be alive is somehow a public spectacle that's cathartic for everyone who sees him.

Yoongi reaches out to run a hand though Jungkook's hair. Jungkook leans into it instantly, like he isn't even aware of it, still typing on his phone.

Yoongi's nightmares are of Jungkook bleeding out onto his music sheets. He sees him slitting his wrists open and letting the blood pour out over his words.

Then he wakes up and can't convince himself that the nightmares weren't real.

They had to have been real. It's the only explanation for how Jungkook writes the way he does.

"Jungkook-ah," Yoongi says.

"Hm?"

Yoongi slips his fingers between the strands of Jungkooks hair, scratching gently at his scalp, like he might do to a cat. Jungkook leans in further, touch deprived and lonely.

Jungkook's hair is in a terrible state. It's tough and stringy, knotted everywhere. It's one of the downsides of using too much dye, too much product, and putting too much effort into styling it for his shows.

Here, in his room, his hair is just a mess.

"What do you like to do?" Yoongi asks, voice careful.

Jungkook blinks, like he doesn't understand the question.

"In your free time," Yoongi says. "What do you like to do?"

"Oh," Jungkook says, still a little confused. He looks younger than he should, staring up at Yoongi from the floor. "I compose, mostly? And write. Sometimes there are good days and I can keep going all day - "

"No," Yoongi says, trying to be firm. He doesn't stop stroking his hair. "Apart from - apart from music. What do you like to do?"

Jungkook stares at him for too long.

He stares at him, with the vacant sort of look of someone realizing how empty their life is.

"I like - doing laundry," he says at last. "My shirt smells clean."

He pulls at the front of his shirt, as if to offer it to Yoongi to take a sniff - and then catches himself and lets it drop from his grip, embarassed.

Yoongi doesn't want to tell him that he should have more in his life that he's happy about.

He gets the feeling that Jungkook already knows.

"What do you like, hyung?" Jungkook asks.

To be honest, Yoongi doesn't know.

He's never put a lot of thought into thinking what he likes.

He's got through his whole life only thinking of what he could stand. Yoongi doesn't like his job, but he can tolerate it. He doesn't like coffee, but he can stand it.

He doesn't like anything, in particular, but none of it has killed him yet.

"I like sleeping," Yoongi decides at last.

Nothing matters when he's sleeping.

He also likes coming back to his apartment to see that Jungkook hasn't killed himself yet, but that isn't really something he can share.

Maybe he likes this - running his fingers through Jungkook's hair. It's messy, and rough, and not the most pleasant of sensations, but it's Jungkook.

He doesn't like Jungkook.

But he's the closest Yoongi has come to liking anything in his life.

/

"Do you want me to kiss you?" Jungkook asks him bluntly one day.

Yoongi starts.

He's sitting on the floor of Jungkook's apartment, staring at the ants that are tracking their way towards spilled food. It's been spilled for two days, and neither of them have swept it up. The ants are having a field day, and Yoongi is pretty sure they live in the cracks between the kitchen tiles, and Jungkook asks him -

Do you want me to kiss you?

Jungkook hasn't showered in a week. His hair is dirty, messy, and his clothes stink of sweat. He's sprawled across the couch with music sheets on top of him, from where he was apparently trying to brain storm.

Yoongi isn't here for much of a reason. He turned up after work, and has spent all this time watching the ants carry away food.

He doesn't want Jungkook to kiss him.

"Why would I want that?"

"I don't know," Jungkook says. "Why else would you be here."

Honestly, Yoongi is just here because he's allowed to be.

It's easier, being in this quiet room with Jungkook, instead of sitting in his own lonely apartment and having no energy to fall apart. There's something a little cruel in it, Yoongi thinks. He can't destroy himself so he watches Jungkook destroy himself instead. All the energy he might have poured into trying to stay upright, he pours into keeping Jungkook alive.

Admittedly, it's not a lot of energy.

His attempts to keep Jungkook from dying are halfhearted at best.

The idea of kissing Jungkook makes him feel sick. He knows too much about Jungkook that such kinds of intimacy only feel like taking advantage of him.

And then he wonders how many people Jungkook brings back to his apartment for him to think that maybe this is the logical next step. How many people did Jungkook try to hurt himself with, before Yoongi? Did they leave, fall apart?

Did they decide this was too much for them?

"I'm here because you said you'd buy me food," Yoongi says, voice dry.

Jungkook stares at him blankly. A moment passes, and Yoongi realizes that he thinks he's being serious.

He really thinks that Yoongi is here for free food.

Jungkook pats around on the side table, searching for his phone and wallet, and there isn't a hint of annoyance on his face. If anything, he looks like he accepts it. Like Yoongi's existence has suddenly made sense to him.

That's what scares Yoongi the most.

"Jungkook, no," he says.

Jungkook stops.

"I was going to order," he says, voice still so quiet.

"I was joking," Yoongi says. "I'm here because we're friends."

Too much emotion passes across Jungkook's face. Disbelief, mistrust.

Disappointment.

Yoongi doesn't understand it. He isn't used to Jungkook looking at him like this.

"We are?" Jungkook asks, and his voice doesn't give anything away.

"Don't you want to be?"

"Of course I do."

They don't speak after that. It's awkward as hell.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yoongi spots Jungkook's fingers reaching for his phone, trying to order Yoongi something to eat.

/

There are people who hear Jungkook, despite it all.

Yoongi doesn't know if that makes it better or worse.

Jungkook makes him go through his messages on his social media profile, before he looks at them himself. It's an attempt at self preservation - so that Yoongi can delete the uglier messages that he knows will make him spiral.

But after Yoongi goes through his messages, Jungkook loses trust in the good ones. There's nothing to say what Yoongi might have deleted, or how much - so he's forever afraid that he's got hundreds of shitty messages for every good one he gets. Yoongi can't convince him otherwise.

A lot of the messages that Jungkook gets are the same.

Your music keeps me alive

your beats are damned cool man

Hi, I was going through a really tough time and I wanted to kill myself, but then my friend took me to one of your shows and I don't know. Something about your performance just made me - I don't know. I need you to understand how grateful I am -

hey do you know RM lol I think you guys should do a collab

my girlfriend keeps talking about you idk why. your stuff sucks

I know you don't know who I am but please know that everything you do means everything to me and there is this random stranger here who loves you so much. It might not mean anything to you but you keep me going every day and the fact that you exist is enough to keep me alive  -

I wish I was as brave as you

you put everything that I could never say into words

You look like a fucking girl

Look I'll just be honest people would take you more seriously if you wore less makeup

Your shows make me feel so alive

I'm so glad I found your music

J-Hope is so much cooler I don't know why you get all this attention. He's actually been through shit in his life while you've just had it all easy. Maybe you think it's cool to sing about how hard your life is but some people actually have to deal with all this. Do you know how much J-Hope had to suffer before he got where he was -

I got a tattoo with your lyrics and I wanted you to see. I'm sorry if this is weird but your songs just mean so much to me and I hold them very close

A lot of messages that Jungkook gets are the same.

They all talk about how Jungkook is their last hope, or how he's a stupid kid who has no clue what he's doing and should get out of the scene.

The first time Yoongi sees a message that's different -

I'm sorry if this is crossing a line, but. Are you doing okay?

Yoongi's heart stops.

There's nothing else to the message. It's not even a comment on one of his posts - it's a direct message, and it might not have ever been seen if Yoongi didn't check them almost religiously.

Are you doing okay?

At first, Yoongi doesn't want to show it to Jungkook.

He doesn't know what it will make him feel.

On one hand - he thinks this might have been what Jungkook wanted. This is probably what he's been waiting for, for someone to look beyond how his music makes them feel and realize that there's something freaking wrong with him.

But on the other hand - Jungkook isn't doing okay.

And there's no way he can say that to a total stranger.

He can't send this random person the fact that he wants to die. He can't tell them that he's always wanted to die, that he hasn’t been okay since before he can remember, that all his memories are blurred because of how much he's bled out. He can't talk about how much of his life he's cut out of himself because he treats it all as something to make music about instead of something he needs to process.

Jungkook can't tell his audience that he isn't okay, because then everything shatters.

It becomes a little uglier.

Then he stops being the guy who screams on stage about not being okay. He becomes the guy who isn't okay, who screams about not being okay -

Who people pay to watch die anyway.

It's a different kind of public spectacle - a fall to watch with morbid eyes that are waiting for a crash.

Are you doing okay?

It translates to

Is there anything more you can share about yourself so I can idolize your fucking depression?

Is there anything else of yourself I can use to pretend that I understand you?

Yoongi refuses to believe that Jungkook's fans care about him, and that's why he doesn't want to show Jungkook the message.

But it's not Yoongi's life. It's Jungkook's.

So he shows Jungkook the message.

Jungkook is sprawled across the floor, surrounded by music sheets and empty packets of snacks. Yoongi kicks at his foot.

Jungkook looks up at him, eyes blank, making no move to get up.

"A fan of yours is asking if you're okay," Yoongi says.

Jungkook frowns, squinting a bit. "Did I do something?"

He seems to think about it for a long time, like he's running over everything he's done in public for the past month. Jumping from one incident to the next, like he doesn't understand that all of what he does in public is worrisome.

Everyone's just gotten used to it.

"I think it's because of you in general," Yoongi says.

"Oh."

There's silence for a long time.

"I'm okay," Jungkook says at last.

It takes Yoongi by surprise.

"Why are you telling me that," he asks flatly.

"Oh right." He holds out a hand, still lying on the floor, silently asking for his phone. But right now Yoongi doesn't want to give it to him.

"What do you mean you're okay?" he presses.

"What else do I say?" Jungkook scoffs. "I'm lying on the floor being miserable because I ran out of potato chips?"

"That’s what you're doing?"

"Among other things, yeah."

Yoongi hands him his phone in silence.

The blue light of the screen makes Jungkook look worse than he usually does in his apartment. A little emptier, a little more unreal.

He types in a response to the message that Yoongi had handed him, and then hands the phone right back, going back to being miserable about his potato chips.

Yoongi stares at the screen.

It's sweet of you to ask, the message says. But I'm doing okay! Things are hard sometimes but making music and hearing you all makes it better.

"Does it?" Yoongi asks, voice deadpan.

"Hm?"

"Does it make it better?"

Jungkook looks at him, with something calculating in his eyes. "Don't I look better than I did when you first met me?"

Yoongi almost laughs. He can't help it. "Do you really think you do?"

Jungkook's expression falters, in something like confusion.

"I mean," he says. "I'm happy sometimes, now."

And it's true. The better Jungkook's performances get, the higher he feels -

And the harder he crashes after it's all over.

He's happier than he's ever been and more miserable at the same time, fluctuating so hard and so fast that it's dangerous and a little terrifying to watch.

But he doesn't seem to realize this.

"Sure," Yoongi says. "But you also wanted to die once you got off stage."

Jungkook's frown deepens. "I mean, that's normal," he says, but he seems a little confused still.

"…Jungkook-ah, that's the precise opposite of normal."

"No, I mean," he stumbles a bit, unsure of how to say what he wants to say. "Like, it's how you pay for it, right? To be happier?"

Yoongi just stares at him.

He doesn't know what to say to that.

/

Sometimes, and Yoongi is afraid to think it - it feels like Jungkook didn't just want to be friends.

It feels like he might have wanted more than that, and never knew how to ask.

Do you want me to kiss you? He'd asked.

Maybe it had meant I want to.

Jungkook doesn't say anything about it, and Yoongi doesn't dare to ask, but honestly - Yoongi doesn't need Jungkook to tell him these things. He finds out anyway, because Jungkook can't keep a thing to himself.

It's scrawled over the pages of his songs, sung into the heartbreak that he composes. Yoongi listens as Jungkook's music changes, from wanting to be okay to wanting someone, and he traces the words scribbled along his music sheets. Crossed out, overwritten.

I'd give it all away

Just to have someone to come home to

Give what away, Yoongi wants to ask, when it's dark and he's angry and there's nowhere to put it all.

Give what away?

You have nothing.

He doesn't know where the anger comes from.

Yoongi keeps going to work. Keeps filling his mug of coffee, taking calls from shitty people and typing data into spreadsheets. He doesn't crash because he has no highs. He isn't like Jungkook.

And Jungkook keeps making music. Keeps going to shows. He's been called to a couple of in person interviews that he turned down because he didn't think he could answer questions without having his hands shake.

Give what away? Yoongi wants to ask.

You have me to come home to already.

But he knows that's not what Jungkook means.

Because Yoongi is there, all the time, to watch him fall apart - but Yoongi doesn't make anything better. He doesn't even try.

And maybe he would have, if he loved Jungkook - but Yoongi doesn't think he does.

He doesn't love Jungkook in the way that he should.

He loves Jungkook like - how he'd loved the stray dogs that his brother took in when they were younger.

What had worried Yoongi most, about raising those dogs, was that he'd be expected to react to them dying.

He knew they were going to die. They were dogs. They would die a lot earlier than Yoongi did himself.

They lived eight years, nine years, ten years.

They were always going to die before him.

And Yoongi worried, not because he didn't know how to live without them, but because he'd be expected to be upset about it. He'd have to pretend he didn't see it coming, that he hadn't spent every moment of his life running through what that last day would be like.

Yoongi didn't cry when the dogs died, because in his mind he'd watched them die a hundred times. In his mind, they were dead, the moment they turned up on his doorstep.

He loves Jungkook in the same way he loved those dogs.

He's watched him die too often for him to think of him as alive.

He doesn't tell Jungkook that anything is going to be okay, because it won't. It won't for Jungkook, and it won't for Yoongi. He can't make Jungkook feel better because Yoongi doesn't know how - and maybe doesn't care enough to try.

There isn't a lot of effort you can put into stopping an inevitable crash.

If Yoongi watches cars collide - not jumping between them doesn't make him uncaring.

It just means he knows that there's nothing he can do, and that he isn't going to pretend that there is.

/

Jungkook starts dating.

It's the worst thing Yoongi has ever seen.

He gives himself to strangers that he's never met before in the same way that he pours himself into every other shitty aspect of his life. It's ugly and dangerous but Yoongi can't stop him. He can't tell him to stop it, when he's one of the reasons for Jungkook's broken heart in the first place.

It tears him apart to watch Jungkook come back home after each date.

He's far too quiet, nerves shot, as he locks the door carefully behind him. There are ugly marks littered on his skin that Yoongi is too afraid to ask about.

He doesn't try to smile at Yoongi. He doesn't even acknowledge how Yoongi is here, in Jungkook's apartment, when Jungkook wasn't home. It seems normal to him, but it isn't. Not really. Yoongi isn't here to hang out, he's here to see if Jungkook gets back home in one piece.

Jungkook doesn't smile, or say anything - he goes straight to the kitchen and tries to make himself a cup of coffee. His fingers shake too much to get it right.

It's the same story, every time he comes back after a date.

It always takes Yoongi a full minute of staring before he has the sense to take the cup from him and make it himself.

"How much sugar do you take?" Yoongi asks quietly.

He asks like he doesn't know, but it's how he judges the situation.

Jungkook takes a heaping spoon of sugar on normal days.

Two spoons when he's feeling lower.

Three when he's fucked something up.

Four when he wants to die.

"A lot," Jungkook says. His voice is a little cracked.

"Three?" Yoongi presses.

"Okay."

Yoongi puts in four.

The problem with Jungkook trying to date - is that he has a type.

His type is people who know who he is.

It's not even just fans. It might be easier if that was it, if he found someone who thought he was cool and decided to give them a chance. But people who actually love Jungkook make him nervous. They make him feel like he has something to live up to, an alternate persona that he's never known the existence of.

His type is people who know who he is, and don't really care.

People who go oh, yeah, I've heard your songs, and don't look particularly fond of him.

People like Min Yoongi.

What he doesn't realize - or what he does - is that this is the easiest way to find people who want to hurt him.

He gives Yoongi a ton of excuses. He says it's easier, to date people who know him, and that it's refreshing to meet someone who doesn't look up to him because of his music.

But that's all bullshit.

Jungkook dates them because they know the deepest parts of him, and it wasn't enough for them to love him.

He dates them because his heart can't handle that, without trying to give it another shot.

The problem is - not only do they all know the deepest parts of him, they also know what's wrong.

They know that Jungkook wants to die. They know he runs from raised voices. They know his father hasn't spoken to him in years, that he's been hit, too often, and that he thinks he deserved it.

They know how desperate he is for someone to love him.

It's easy to see, and meeting Jungkook - spending just two minutes with the guy who wears his heart on his sleeves and keeps every insecurity in his eyes - it's more than enough for them to know far too much.

It makes it easy for them to hurt him.

It's too easy to hurt Jungkook, and Jungkook lets himself get hurt. Over and over. He comes back home with wet eyes and shaky hands, and Yoongi puts four spoons of sugar in his coffee.

"What did he say?" Yoongi asks quietly.

It's none of his business.

It's also entirely his business.

Jungkook shakes his head.

He's already pulling his clothes off, turned away from Yoongi in some semblance of keeping boundaries but not caring enough to go into a different room. It's always odd watching Jungkook get changed when he gets back home. It's like watching a butterfly tear it's wings off and then go back into its cocoon.

He takes his clothes off, and puts on his usual ratty t-shirt, and immediately he looks like the Jungkook that Yoongi is used to again. Wide eyed, lonely. The empty shell that's left of him off stage.

"What did he say?" Yoongi asks again, a little more firm.

"Nothing," Jungkook says, quiet and defensive.

"Nothing wouldn't make you cry."

"I'm not crying."

Yoongi looks up at him. He looks - pitiful. He's making an effort to hold back tears now that he knows Yoongi has caught him, and it's failing miserably.

"You are," Yoongi says flatly.

"I'm not," Jungkook tries to say, harsh, but it comes out shaky. And then, "Or maybe I'm crying because you're always on my back about anything I do."

It's such a desperate effort to hurt him that - Yoongi doesn't even feel bad. He only feels a little sad.

"It's not like you want to fucking go out with me," Jungkook's voice rises in anger, a little hysterical. "Why do you have a problem with who I go out with then?"

That - stings.

It stings because it's true.

Yoongi doesn't want to go out with Jungkook. The idea of it terrifies him.

Loving someone so messed up, someone who's painstakingly built his own grave and is just waiting for the right moment to fall into it - it's not something that Yoongi can do.

Being in love with Jungkook is the sort of thing he has nightmares about. Then those nightmares turn into the ones of Jungkook sitting over his music sheets, bleeding onto the pages. Carving out his own heart with a blunt, bloodied knife.

And then, when Jungkook's heart is out, and there's only emptiness inside of him - Yoongi still stays alive every day. He goes to work, takes calls, fills spreadsheets.

That's maybe the worst part of the nightmare.

Yoongi doesn't want to go out with Jungkook, but he also can't stand watching him get hurt. He wonders if in his own twisted way, hurting himself was Jungkook's way of trying to hurt Yoongi.

Like he's saying you didn't love me.

You didn't love me so I had to do this instead.

But Jungkook isn't like that. He'd never hurt Yoongi. He'd never hurt him on purpose.

Yoongi doesn't say anything, listening to Jungkook's harsh breathing as he tries to calm himself down. He seems to be waiting for Yoongi to do something, anything.

To hurt him, maybe.

Yoongi stirs the coffee carefully. When he finally hands it to Jungkook, with all four freaking spoons of sugar, there are tears pouring down Jungkook's face.

"I'm sorry, hyung."

"I'm not mad at you."

"I'm sorry, you were only concerned - "

"Jungkook-ah, I'm not mad."

He really isn't. He can't be mad that Jungkook points out the truth. He can't be mad that he's upset about it.

Yoongi just wants to know what the bastard he went out with said to him, so he can decide if he needs to beat him up or not.

But Jungkook doesn't tell him.

Maybe it's the stress of the day, maybe it's the fact that he screamed you don't want to fucking go out with me and Yoongi made no move to deny it. Whatever it is, Jungkook doesn't stop crying.

"I'm sorry," he tries again.

"I told you I'm not mad."

"I was mad. I just - you just keep acting like you care."

Yoongi stops.

"What?"

"You act like you care, when I go out," he says. His voice is tired, he's tiring out. "It makes me so mad."

"I do care."

"You don't."

"I do," Yoongi says, firmly. "Fucking - hell, Jungkook, of course I care if you come back crying each time. What do you think I am?"

"You never say anything when I'm leaving."

"Because you're an adult," Yoongi snaps. "I can't ban you from seeing someone you want to see. Especially because - "

Because -

Yoongi bites his tongue in time, but Jungkook catches it.

"Because?" he asks, and his voice is already a little stiffer.

And Yoongi thinks - to hell with it.

He's watched Jungkook die enough times in his head.

" - because it's like you want to get hurt."

Jungkook looks stricken.

You want to get hurt, Yoongi wants to say again.

You aren't a martyr. You aren't bleeding out to help people.

You're just searching for ways to make yourself miserable because you think it's how you write music, and that's the only way you know to make yourself feel a little less dead.

He doesn't get to say any of it.

"I - I don't do it on purpose," Jungkook says at last, voice weak.

Yoongi's heart stops.

"What?"

"I don't do it on purpose."

He's - admitting it.

Yoongi never thought that -

He'd admit it.

"It makes me feel better," Jungkook says. "When everything burns down."

"How does hurting make you feel better?" Yoongi asks, and he isn't really asking Jungkook. He's asking the empty room.

How does hurting make you feel better?

Yoongi only ever feels like shit.

"It feels like something," Jungkook says. "Just - something. And maybe it's a good thing."

"Hm?"

"It's something to write about, at least."

He looks hollow, and Yoongi's heart stops.

He wants to shake Jungkook out of this fucking tragedy that he's slowly building for himself. Instead, he says nothing.

/

Yoongi gets him to go to therapy.

It takes him forever to work up the courage to ask.

He tries being subtle about it at first. He leaves brochures lying around Jungkook's studio. He sends him emails that he carefully fabricates to look like they're random forwards, that highlight the need for getting help with your mental health even if you're doing totally fine. Every time that Jungkook gives him his phone to delete messages on, Yoongi uses the time to search for specific keywords so that all the ads Jungkook gets, on all his apps, are about therapy.

But the subtlety doesn't work, and finally Yoongi has to get it to him straight.

There's a lot of screaming, and crying, and angry you always want there to be something fucking wrong with me. But finally Jungkook goes.

It seems to change him somehow.

He doesn't drop by Yoongi's apartment for too long, so Yoongi has to go over to check on him. He does this for days together, but Jungkook is quieter than usual. He doesn't seem angrier, or sadder, just - empty.

He says he's tired, that the sessions take a lot out of him. Yoongi wants to believe him.

Jungkook keeps a journal with him now, that he writes in before he goes to sleep. He looks horribly stressed while he does it, like every word kills him to write.

It isn't like watching him write music.

When Jungkook writes music, he's barely human. It's like he's fallen from a different dimension. He writes quick and furious, mapping out words all over the page and scribbling into his music sheets as well, with the sort of crazed light in his eye that Yoongi has learned to hate because he's learned to blame it for everything that's wrong with Jungkook in the first place.

When he writes music, he's alive.

When he writes in his journal, about whatever his therapist puts him up to - he looks like he's struggling just to get from one second to the next.

Jungkook meets his therapist for three months.

For three months, he doesn't turn up at Yoongi's apartment on his own. For three months, he sits every night, writing in his little notebook with his death grip on the pen too tight. The indents that his words leave in the cheap flimsy paper are far too deep.

For three months, he doesn't tell Yoongi a word about his sessions, except that they're going on.

For three months, he doesn't write any music at all.

And then one day, Yoongi comes home to a pile of Jungkook's childhood photos dumped outside his apartment.

It's not even in the trash, it's just piled up at the door, like Jungkook was in such a rush to get rid of them that it didn't matter where he threw them out.

Yoongi picks up a stack of the photos.

The first picture that he sees is of a small family. He recognizes Jungkook instantly, the wide, wide eyes giving him away even as a child. The couple behind him must be his parents. They're posing in front of an art installment, all three of them with serious faces. Jungkook is maybe six, seven.

Yoongi has never heard him talk about his family.

He's only heard the words he spits in his songs, and those words have been nothing good.

He moves on to the next photo.

In some of the photos, Jungkook is smiling. He has the same sort of smile that the Jungkook that Yoongi knows now wears outside in public - the smile that makes it look like he's happy to be alive. His parents don't smile in a single photograph. Sometimes they're outright glaring at the camera, sometimes they're trying too hard to pose.

The photos have an air of necessity to them. Like they needed to be taken to prove that this family existed once.

And for very little other reason.

There aren't too many photos, but they're all well worn, the corners faded and starting to tear. It's too clear that Jungkook had held them close once, despite his ugly relationship with his parents.

And now, he's thrown the photos out altogether.

He opens the door cautiously.

"Jungkook-ah?"

Jungkook is sitting at his piano, hands in his lap, not playing it at all. His shoulders are tense, like he's holding something in, and doesn't know where to bleed it out.

He blinks when Yoongi enters, like he's unsure as to what Yoongi is doing here. "Hyung?"

"You're home," Yoongi says a little obviously.

"I came back early."

"How did it go?"

Something dark passes over Jungkook's face. Something that Yoongi isn't used to having directed towards himself.

For the very first time, Jungkook looks at Yoongi like he hates him.

He's been angry at him before. Sometimes Yoongi pushes him too hard, or his words cut too deep, and Jungkook cracks and shouts until he's burned himself out, and then after it he shuts himself in, draws inwards, terrified of how he'd let himself explode.

It always takes Yoongi too long to get him to understand that he's never mad at him. It takes forever to explain that Jungkook has every right to hate him.

He's dealt with Jungkook being angry at him before.

He isn't used to this quiet hatred.

Jungkook looks at him like he wants Yoongi gone, like he wishes they'd never met - but like he doesn't have the energy to do anything about it.

He's only seen his therapist for three months.

"I'm not going again," he says.

"What?"

"You can't make me," Jungkook says, and his voice is still quiet, but tense with anger.

"I'm not trying to make you," Yoongi says slowly. "Just - do you want to talk about it?"

Did she say something to hurt him?

Or had Jungkook just - had enough?

He managed to get through three months. Yoongi doesn't want him to let go, he can't let him give up now, when it seems like he finally has a fighting chance -

Jungkook brushes at his eyes with the cuffs of his sleeves, and Yoongi's heart stops.

"Jungkook?"

He doesn't turn around, but he keeps crying silently, wiping his tears away with the sleeves of his shirt. Yoongi doesn't know what to do.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

"Please don't make me go," Jungkook says, and it's cracked and terrible.

It makes Yoongi's heart break, because - he doesn't want this. He doesn't want to force Jungkook to do something that makes him cry.

Is it even making him better? Is it even helping him out?

Yoongi has heard, over and over, that therapy is the solution, that it can save lives, but -

What's happened to Jungkook, over these months?

He's just become a worse shell of himself, without even the moments in between that were keeping him alive. Yoongi can't promise him that things are going to get better because Yoongi doesn't know if it will.

He doesn't know if this will save Jungkook's life, or if it'll just kill the only parts of life that Jungkook loves.

He only knows that he can't do something that makes Jungkook cry.

"Please don't make me go," Jungkook says again, like he's terrified that Yoongi is going to drag him out.

"I won't," Yoongi says. "I won't, it's - it's okay. You're okay."

He reaches out, to stroke his hair, and Jungkook falls into his chest, tears staining his shirt. Yoongi can't make him do this, if he doesn't want to.

He can't say live, but be barely alive.

That isn't up to Yoongi to decide.

/

Jungkook gets back into music again.

It takes him a while, to shake off whatever it is that those three months left inside of him, but then he's back a hundred times more intense. He works like he's insane, like he has to make up for lost time. He barely gets any sleep at all, and Yoongi barely does either, learning to try to doze off with the sound of the piano and the guitar and the music blaring from Jungkook's speakers.

Jungkook's performances only get better.

The crowds get larger. The critics get sharper, but more and more of them turn to his side. They start to see Jungkook as a sort of revolution - as someone with raw, inspired honesty. The darkest parts of humanity, a critic says, but with skillful hands, carefully molded into art.

Yoongi wants to shake the man by the collar and tell him that the song wasn't skillfully molded, it was just Jungkook crying over his music for three days straight.

His concerts get better, and better, and money rolls in. He pours the money into better stages, better sets, food from better restaurants to eat with Yoongi at the end of the day. He buys better equipment, better instruments. He takes Yoongi out to an all you can eat buffet.

He gets quieter in his apartment. The floor gets so dusty that Yoongi takes it upon himself to sweep it. He picks up empty packaging and boxes of takeout, while Jungkook lays on the floor, totally passed out after working for days without sleep.

One day, Yoongi turns up at the door, typing in the passcode to the apartment.

He's quiet as he enters, trying to survey the situation. Sometimes Jungkook is writing. Sometimes he's banging away at the keys of his piano like he's never loved the instrument at all, like it's only in the way of him trying to pour out the things he needs to say.

Today, Jungkook is asleep on the couch, music sheets torn into pieces around him.

Yoongi watches him for a moment, and then -

He turns around and just leaves.

Jungkook doesn't wake up. He doesn't notice him slipping out as quietly as he came. Yoongi shuts the door softly behind him, and goes back down the stairs.

Back to the bus stop.

He sits there, waiting for his bus back home. It passes by, but Yoongi doesn't get in.

Another passes, but Yoongi doesn't get in.

He stays on the bench, staring into space, thinking about Jungkook asleep in his apartment.

Yoongi is sick of it all.

This isn't like watching a car crash. It isn't as loud, as sudden.

It's like watching an hour glass pour out its insides.

Like watching a clock tick down to midnight.

Every day, Jungkook screams a little louder on stage. And at home, he gets a little quieter. Sometimes he forgets to buy food, and Yoongi cooks him meals that he eats because he doesn't remember he'd promised to order out.

He puts four spoons of sugar in his coffee.

Five.

Six.

He stops drinking coffee and eats sugar straight out of the container.

Every day, Jungkook pours out a little more to run a little emptier.

And Yoongi is sick of watching it.

An hour passes by, and Yoongi's phone rings. It's Jungkook. The number is saved in his phone with a smiley face next to it that Jungkook had put there himself, and it's such a far cry from what Jungkook means to him in the real world that Yoongi was never able to delete the emoji.

He doesn't pick the phone up.

The texts come next. Yoongi was supposed to meet up with him after all. The first text asks him where he is. The next asks if he's mad. The third apologizes, because that seems to be the only thing Jungkook knows how to do.

Yoongi turns his phone off.

He doesn't need to watch Jungkook die.

/

On Saturday nights, Yoongi likes to curl up in bed and pretend that he doesn't exist.

Sometimes he watches shows. Or movies. On good days, when he can move his hands enough, he plays video games. But for the most part he lies in bed, scrolling through social media, and absently hitting like on posts that vaguely catch his attention.

He watches his friends go out and have lives. He watches his favourite writers publish new works. Or kill themselves. Or announce that they won't be writing for a while.

He watches celebrities go out with each other, and get arrested for driving drunk. He watches the media expose rich men who assault children and then watch the same media cover it all up.

He watches Jungkook.

Jungkook hasn't been posting a lot, in the two weeks that Yoongi hasn't seen him. He's probably scared to put up anything new without Yoongi there to check all the comments and messages before he has to look at them.

He doesn't post a lot, but he does share temporary stories - short videos, of his music sheets. Of the night sky. Of Jungkook's middle finger held up at the world in general.

His account makes it look like he's actively going around, doing things, and being sad.

The real Jeon Jungkook is dying in his room.

Yoongi manages to not see him for two full weeks.

He hangs out with Taehyung. It feels like forever since they've seen each other, and Taehyung has made other friends - the sort of friends that Yoongi knows he'll never get along with and can't be bothered enough to try to be nice to. Taehyung talks to him about all the stuff he's been missing in the real world, hiding in Jungkook's room.

Their high school teacher, who finally got arrested for sexual assault.

Their friend, who moved away.

Taehyung's uncle, who got too drunk and fell out a window.

The old man down the street who tried to stab his son.

The new cake shop near the place that Taehyung works.

How Jungkook's music is getting both better and more frightening.

They talk about it all in the same conversation, in the same breath, as if it's all sort of the same after all.

He spends two weeks without seeing Jungkook, and it's like a breath of fresh air. Like for the first time in too long, Yoongi is looking at the world.

The world is still shit, of course.

But at least Yoongi is looking at it.

He spends two weeks without seeing Jungkook, and then he comes home to find Jungkook curled up on Yoongi's couch.

Yoongi stands at the door, unsure of what to do.

It's been a long time since Jungkook was in his apartment. And he's never turned up when Yoongi wasn't home, even though he knows the passcode. It was just an unspoken agreement, that the passcode was there so that Yoongi wouldn't need to open the door for him - not so that Jungkook could be here on his own.

Everything in Yoongi is tense, unsettled.

It's not like he minds. It's - okay, for Jungkook to feel welcome here. Maybe even expected, seeing as how Yoongi had been all but living in Jungkook's apartment for the past few months.

It's just that - Yoongi's place has always just been his way to get away from it all.

It's just that -

He can't deal with this now.

Not when Yoongi hasn't seen Jungkook in two weeks, and had almost hoped that would be the end of it.

Jungkook is asleep, curled up in a way that looks uncomfortable. He's dressed in his usual ratty t-shirt, the sort that he'd never wear outside in public. Did he even realize he was still wearing it?

How did he even get here? How did he not remember to change?

Did he just - turn up by instinct?

Jungkook's expression is scrunched up, like even sleeping is hard for him.

Yoongi wonders if he should shut the door and leave him there. But he can't do that. Not again. Yoongi isn't that shitty yet.

Instead, he lights the stove and sets to work on dinner.

He digs out all the vegetables he can find and sets to work, washing and peeling and cutting. He sets the rice cooker on and cracks a couple of eggs to make bibimbap. When he's done, Jungkook still isn't awake so he takes out the leftover kimchi in the refrigerator and decides to make jjigae.

He cooks with a sort of crazed frenzy, and he's making way too much food for just the two of them, but there's nothing else for Yoongi to do.

This is the only way he can stop thinking about the boy on his couch, and it's funny because it's still a way of thinking about him.

When Jungkook finally wakes up, Yoongi is scarping the food into bowls and smaller containers and laying them on the table in front of the TV.

Jungkook sniffs the air, eyes still closed, a frown on his face like he isn't sure where he is. All the new smells that Yoongi has cooked up seem to have confused him.

When he finally blinks awake, and spots Yoongi, it all seems to dawn on him.

He looks almost afraid.

"I'm sorry," he says instinctively.

"I'm not mad," Yoongi says. "Come eat."

"I shouldn't have come without telling you," Jungkook says. "I'm sorry, hyung, I know I shouldn't have - "

"I'm not mad," Yoongi says again. He cracks a pair of chopsticks open and settles on the couch, next to Jungkook's legs. He pokes at the food, testing if it's cooled enough to eat.

"My apartment was cold," Jungkook says, voice still shaking like he's scared Yoongi will throw him out. "I - I just wanted to be warmer, I'm sorry - "

Yoongi puts his chopsticks in his bowl.

"Jungkook," he says firmly.

Jungkook falls quiet.

"I don't mind you being here without telling me," Yoongi says. "I would appreciate the heads up, but - it's fine. I'm not mad at you for it. Just - just eat."

Jungkook sits up, keeping his head down, as he shifts to the furthest end of the couch, like he's trying to make space for Yoongi and like he could only do that if he erased himself.

Yoongi nods towards the bowl set in front of him, and Jungkook reaches for it, hesitant.

"I missed you, hyung," he says at last, voice shaky.

Yoongi stops.

He breathes in, lets it out slowly. The food in front of him is still steaming, and he's tempted to just ignore Jungkook entirely and keep eating.

Maybe if he ignores Jungkook for long enough he won't have any hold over Yoongi's heart.

He doesn't even know why he missed Jungkook.

The entire time that Yoongi has known him, he's tried to be careful not to let him too close. He watches Jungkook be happy, watches him destroy himself, and lets him hold onto Yoongi's shirt as he cries - but he tried not to let it mean anything to him.

Every part of him, everything that Yoongi had done so far, had all been part of his effort to not miss Jungkook.

He'd tried to hold him at arms length so he wouldn't miss him if he was gone.

But it's been just two weeks, and the emptiness has set in like a hole in Yoongi's chest. And maybe it's the hole that's always been there, the one that no one could ever fill, that he'd for some reason stopped seeing as the void and thought of instead as an integral part of him, because when he was with Jungkook, all the emptiness just felt like saying -

Look I'm empty too.

Look we're empty together.

Look you're not the only one that's sad, maybe you're pretty but I'm sad too -

And without Jungkook there, it was just empty.

Ugly.

Nothing of note.

The emptiness didn't have any purpose except to be there.

"I missed you too," Yoongi says softly, but it hurts to say.

Jungkook smiles, but it's wobbly, and his eyes are still too wet.

/

Sometimes Yoongi listens to the words that Jungkook sings, and he wonders what any of it even means.

Yoongi is watching him from backstage. It's odd, not being a part of the crowd. From here, it's not the energy of the fans screaming that strikes him, it's the bustle of staff behind the stage. There are too many people running around, setting up lights and stage and sound. All of them putting in their best work, paid to make money off of the walking disaster that Jungkook is.

From here, he can see Jungkook too clearly. There's sweat pouring down his face, a terrifying intensity in his eyes. He's a storm of a person, lit up with the belief that he's creating something that no one else can - that by doing this, he's changing the world.

It's something that never makes sense to Yoongi.

How can someone so unsure, so insecure of everything about their life - be so convinced that every word they spit is something the world has been waiting for?

How can he be so convinced that the pain clawing out of him is something everyone wants to see?

Jungkook's hair, that he'd spent ages getting carefully styled, is already starting to fall limp. He moves so much on stage, running and jumping and falling and screaming -

He lives an entire life, in those two hours that he spends on stage. He lives, and dies. Lives and dies.

Yoongi just watches him, from the sidelines, and he wonders if any of it is worth it.

He watches as Jungkook spills out everything he's too afraid to say off stage. About how much he's lost, how much it hurts to breathe. How much he wants to carve out his insides. How he wants to burn the entire world down but how he also just wants to be loved.

He sings about how he wouldn't be here, today, if it wasn't for his fans.

And Yoongi wonders if any of it was worth it.

He thinks about what here means, and he thinks that he and Jungkook have very different definitions of it.

Because Jungkook says I wouldn't be here, and he means alive.

And Yoongi hears fucked up.

Sometimes, Yoongi thinks about what it would have been like if, all those years ago, he hadn't ignored Jungkook on stage. If instead of just turning away to keep serving stupid twenty year olds their ice cream - he'd actually gone up to the stage. If he'd seen that boy, in that shitty college, trying to sing because he wanted someone to listen to him - if he'd seen him and said -

Hey.

It's okay.

This isn't what you need.

It doesn't make a difference to be heard by people who don't care to listen.

You don't need this - you need a friend.

Do you want to be friends?

He wonders how differently it could have gone.

He thinks about a better world, where he could come home, at the end of the day, to Jungkook in his apartment. Cook for him, watch him smile as he eats. Take him out to his favourite places, get lost in the rain, not spend every second trying to judge how many spoons of sugar Jungkook would take in his coffee -

A world where he could have let himself love Jungkook, because he didn't have to be afraid of losing him.

He thinks of how small Jungkook's hands are, when Yoongi lets himself hold them. He thinks of music and movies, of the softness of Jungkook's clothes when they've actually been washed.

He thinks of a world where Jungkook was happy, and -

He lets himself cry.

On stage, Jungkook is still singing. He screams louder, longer, than he ever has before, the pain shattering out of him and turning into something that is much too big for him to call his own. The crowd goes wild because they think he's singing about them. They think he's voicing out all of their pain, all of the things they couldn't say for themselves, when all Jungkook is really saying is -

I told you everything, but nobody is listening.

Jungkook screams, and the lights go insane, and all Yoongi can think of is that he's let him die.

He could have saved Jungkook, but he let him die.

I tried to warn you, Jungkook sings, and his voice is demented, cracked, horribly raw.

I tried to warn you.

I told you everything, but nobody is listening.

Yoongi doesn't think he ever stops crying.

The show ends, for what feels like the last time. Every moment with Jungkook feels like the last. Yoongi doesn't know what he's crying about anymore - if it's how the dreams of them being happy could only ever happen in a different world, or if it's that he doesn't know what he'll do if Jungkook ever does leave.

Or if he's just sick of this world, sick of it all - of the ugly souls that prey on uglier emotions in some kind of fucked up attempt to feel alive.

Everyone clinging onto screaming voices, in hopes that it helps them survive.

Dragging the voices down further, until they're snuffed out, and then moving on to the next one.

The show ends, and Jungkook bows low, sweaty hair hanging over his face. In the lights, he shines. The silver around his neck, his wrists, his waist - it all shines so bright and Jungkook shines even brighter.

He bows low, and then he kneels down, pressing his forehead to the ground.

The crowd goes wild, but Jungkook doesn't move.

Like he's praying.

Like he's never been more grateful in his life.

Get up, Yoongi wants to shout.

Get the fuck up.

He wants to grab Jungkook's hair and drag him to stand, and tell him that there's nothing pretty about this. No one deserves so much of him. He shouldn't be fucking grateful, he should just -

He should just be okay.

For Yoongi's sake.

For Jungkook's.

But he watches, as Jungkook gives himself to the crowd and then rises with tears in his eyes.

When he meets Yoongi back stage, he doesn't notice the tear tracks on Yoongi's cheeks. He's too excited, too high on being alive.

"Hyung," he says, happily, like Yoongi never broke his heart at all. Like Jungkook isn't slowly breaking what's left of his.

"Hyung, were you watching? You watched the whole show?"

"Of course I did, Kook-ah."

"What did you think? Did you think it was cool? Did you see the lights, weren't the lights cool? Hyung did you see the whole thing?"

Yoongi tells him that yes, he watched the whole thing. Yes, he's been watching Jungkook forever. Yes, he doesn't know what he'll do when he can't do that anymore.

Yes, Jungkook was beautiful, when he shouldn't have been.

Yes, Yoongi wishes he'd take him with him when he died.

Let's go eat something, Jungkook says, because he has too much energy, too much excitement, and he isn't going to settle down for a long while. Hyung, come on, I'll pay, let's go have fun somewhere -

Okay, Yoongi says, because all he's ever done is watch Jungkook and do nothing.

I'll - I'll buy you all the food you want - did you see the crowd? I've never seen such a big crowd, hyung I was so happy, I think this is it, I think I want to do this for the rest of my life -

Hyung I don't feel bad anymore I think I can be happy like this -

Hyung do you want to go to that new place near your office? I think they have lamb skewers, I'll pay -

Okay, Yoongi says to it all. Okay.

He holds Jungkook's fingers tight, his hands small in Yoongi's, and he pretends that if he holds tight enough, he can hold on to Jungkook forever.

/

Jungkook kills himself on a Tuesday morning.

He hangs himself, right above the couch that he and Yoongi used to sit on. The floor hasn't been swept, there are packets of snacks spilled across the dust.

There are music sheets, half finished, lying near the foot of the chair that he's kicked over.

There's Jungkook, hanging from the ceiling, dead.

It's Yoongi who finds him. Yoongi, who calls the ambulance. Yoongi, who with shaking fingers tries to remember all the times he ran this scene through his head.

He had only turned up today to see if Jungkook had swept his floor.

There isn't enough blood, the way he'd thought there would be.

Yoongi had always imagined more blood. In all the times that he imagined this scene playing out - he thought of Jungkook lying in a pool of it, his pretty face unmarred.

But the Jungkook hanging from the ceiling is unrecognizable.

Ugly.

Yoongi throws up, before the ambulance turns up.

They tell him he's been dead for hours.

There's no rush, to get him out - he's been dead for too long.

Yoongi wants to tell them that he's been dead longer than that. Much, much longer. He's been dead for so long that Yoongi doesn't remember him ever being alive.

But he knows that no one cares to hear it.

/

Everyone insists that they never saw it coming.

They talk about how alive Jungkook was. How brave. How determined to live on, no matter what the world threw at him. They talk about how many lives he saved, through his music, and how it was a tragedy that he couldn't save his own.

The fans tear the critics apart. They highlight every shitty word that's been said about Jungkook, every horrible event that's happened in his life. They build a graveyard of Jungkook's worst memories, trying to track down the precise moment that made him want to die.

Was it because of heartbreak?

Was it his father?

Was it how badly his previous album had done on the charts?

Was it that time that someone tried to attack him outside a concert?

Was it heartbreak?

Was it heartbreak?

That idol that Jungkook had once looked at for too long - was that a secret relationship that ended badly? The time that Jungkook had disappeared from the public eye for a month - had he tried to kill himself then too?

Was Jungkook - seriously depressed?

They tear his lyrics into pieces, dissecting his every word. This was a call for help, they say. This was an admission that he was sick in the head. This was him screaming. This was him screaming. This was him screaming.

And Yoongi wants to burn them all down because -

How did they not hear it before?

They twist the words, to suit their own narratives. I've felt like this too, they say. I know what he must have felt. It's so hard to stay alive, I'm proud that he did it for so long.

He's so loved.

He's so brave.

RIP Jungkook, you made my life worth living.

And Yoongi wants to say, so what?

It doesn't fucking matter, that Jungkook made their life worth living.

It doesn't fucking matter, that Jungkook saved so many lives besides his own.

It doesn't fucking matter because Jungkook is dead.

Trying to make up for it with the fact that he kept someone else alive -

It's just saying that their lives meant more than his.

That at least something good came out of him burning down till there was nothing left.

Yoongi hates them, every last one of them. He hates them so much that he wants them to die.

And he wants them to take him with them.

Jungkook's death sets off a whole string of events. Suddenly, everyone is talking about suicide prevention. Idols speak up about the times they wanted to die. Movie stars talk about the times that they nearly did. Suddenly everyone admits that they all have their own sort of darkness inside of them, that they've all been fighting this war.

That it wasn't just Jungkook, it was all of them.

Because even when he's dead, everyone wants a part of his life.

It circles for days, weeks, months. Over and over, someone comes out about their struggles. Suicide hotlines are sent around, as if no one who wanted to kill themselves knew that they could search for one.

Yoongi called a suicide hotline just once in his life. It rang forever, and no one picked up, and he found it so funny that he stayed alive that night.

All over the country, there are tributes to Jungkook. Candle light vigils. Everyone mourns a part of themselves that they've lost, a part of Jungkook that they couldn't hold on to anymore.

All over the country there are services in his name, while the real Jeon Jungkook sits in the ashes of an urn in his father's house, when the man hasn't loved him in years, and maybe never had at all.

/

There's something very selfish about being alive, Yoongi thinks.

Somehow, being alive means turning every tragedy of every dead man into something about yourself. Something to get over, something to heal from, something that is somehow, still, about the living.

Jungkook is dead and gone forever, but the story is still about Min Yoongi. Because he's the only one left to tell it, and because Yoongi is too tired to die.

He wakes up. Eats anything in his cupboard. Goes to work. Gets through work. Takes the subway home. Finds something to eat. Gets through the rest of the day. Sleeps.

Wakes up again.

And again.

And again.

He sits behind his desk at work, taking calls. Typing information into spreadsheets.

He wonders if he should take a coffee break.

He thinks of how much sugar to put in his coffee.

One spoon, two spoons, three, four.

He pours the coffee down the sink.

He isn't like Jungkook, who could burn bright and beautiful. His own death wouldn't be a public spectacle. Yoongi could cease to exist, and it wouldn't cause a single ripple in the world that had been built around them.

Sometimes he wonders if that means he lived a better life.

He thinks about Jungkook, hanging from the ceiling.

He thinks about the comments on Jungkook's old posts, praying that he rests in peace and 'how did they not notice he was so sad'.

Yoongi pretends he's taking a coffee break. He throws up in the bathroom.

He's too tired to die.

He stares at the photographs of Jungkook's childhood. His angry father, and unsmiling mother. He tears them out of the photo and looks at Jungkook's face, the face of a child who knew that something wasn't right inside of him but knew he should smile for the camera anyway.

The child who started to learn that it paid better to cry in front of the camera instead.

He takes the photographs and throws them out of his apartment window.

He goes outside at night and picks them all up again.

Yoongi wishes he could fucking die.

Some movie star admits that he's been depressed. He talks about the importance of therapy, of medication, of surrounding yourself with people you can love. People who love you. He shares suicide hotlines and announces that he's donated a fair bit towards mental health services.

Yoongi wonders how much he loved Jungkook.

He wonders if he loves him more, now that he's dead. Now that he's a part of Yoongi's life that he can use to be more fucking miserable.

Now that he isn't in constant fear of losing him.

He throws up in the bathroom again.

He buys a bottle of sleeping pills.

He flushes them all down the toilet.

There's a list being sent around about things you should never say to someone that's suicidal. Things like get over it. There's so much to be happy about. What would I do if you died.

Yoongi wonders what would have happened if he'd asked Jungkook what Yoongi would do when he died.

He wonders if Jungkook ever thought about it at all.

He watches celebrities talk on TV, faces that he's sure have never even heard Jungkook's music. They only know that someone dearly loved has passed, and need to have an opinion about it.

They talk about how it's sad that he died so young, and insist that these are the pressures of a life in entertainment. They talk about how stigmatized mental health is and how sad it is that they have to lose so many precious lives for the world to realize that they should be talking about it.

It's the phrasing that gets to Yoongi.

The fact that they have to lose all those lives.

They didn't have to lose Jungkook.

It isn't a mark in history, or a tragedy that'll lead to better things.

It's just - Jungkook being dead.

Why is it so hard, for them to let him be dead? Why does something good have to come out of it?

Don't they realize he's dead?

Don't they realize he was never theirs to lose?

Jungkook is dead and gone forever, but the story is still about the living. Because there's something so selfish about being alive.

Yoongi wakes up. Eats anything in his cupboard. Goes to work. Gets through work. Takes the subway home. Finds something to eat. Gets through the rest of the day. Sleeps.

Wakes up again.

And again.

And again.

Yoongi is too tired to die.

/

Yoongi is too tired to die.

/

Yoongi is too tired to die.

/