Archive of Our Own

Was a fucking pineapple too much to ask for?  Okay you had to match four of a kind to get a pineapple but there was no way Yoongi was getting through this level without one.

Yoongi stared at his phone and stretched out further on the couch, letting his head completely fall back onto a throw pillow.

Seokjin and Jungkook had comfortable furniture.  Yoongi liked that about them.  Jimin and Namjoon were too worried about how their place looked and Taehyung was only half aware that the 20th century happened, let alone the 21st, when it came to outfitting his apartment.  So that left Seokjin and Jungkook as the only vampires who, in Yoongi’s estimation, anyway, had a living room really meant for lounging in.

Not that Yoongi wasn’t fascinated in his own way with interior design.  Molding.  Light fixtures.  Wainscotting…

“Gimme a minute and I’ll be ready to go!”  Seokjin poked his head around the wall, clearly awake and ready to take on the night and way too chipper for a guy who, by Yoongi’s count, couldn’t have even been awake for more than three minutes.  If that.

“Good morning to you, too!” Yoongi called back a little sarcastically before going back to his game.

“Greetings take time!”  Seokjin’s voice rang down the hallway.  “We’re going fishing!”

Jungkook wandered into the living room in a t-shirt and athletic shorts, looking considerably more bleary-eyed.

“Hey, hyung,” he said, flopping down on a chair near Yoongi.  “What’re you up to?”

“Pineapples and wainscotting.”  Yoongi replied without looking up from his game.

“Okay,” Jungkook slid down a bit and fuzzily stared into the middle-distance, not the least bit phased or curious.  “You guys are gonna be out all weekend this time right?”

“Yup,” Yoongi confirmed. 

“DON’T TRASH THE HOUSE WHILE WE’RE GONE!”  Seokjin’s loud voice boomed across the apartment again.

Yoongi looked at Jungkook curiously, wondering if Seokjin was serious about home alone antics.

Jungkook rolled his head to the side and looked back at Yoongi.  “I clean up after him,” he said dryly.

Okay, that was easier to see.

Seokjin poked his head back into the living room again.  He squinted at Jungkook.

“You’re young and undead.  Who knows what you want to get up to.”

“I do,” Jungkook laughed while he protested, turning toward Seokjin.  “I do!  I know!”

Seokjin tried and failed to hold back an entertained smile.  “Fine.  Are you going to get up to something I don’t like while I’m gone?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you’re too old to enjoy a good blood-soaked orgy.”

There was just enough seriousness in the barb that Yoongi stared at the back of Jungkook’s head and wondered whether or not he was joking.

“Just make sure you don’t stain the rug,” Seokjin replied nonchalantly in a tone that could have meant either “I’m not rising to the bait” or genuinely, “don’t stain the rug with your blood-soaked orgy.”  Then he was gone again, back down the hall.

A different thought popped into Yoongi’s head, though.  How old was too old to enjoy a blood-soaked orgy?

Not that there’d ever been a point in Yoongi’s life where he would have been up for a blood-soaked orgy but it was a better thing to think about than repeating the phrase blood-soaked orgy to himself a sixth time.

“How old is the Old Man, anyway?”  Yoongi asked curiously, finally managing to convince himself to take his head off the throw pillow and sit up straight.  He knew Seokjin was older than any other vampire he’d met and Yoongi would be lying if he said he’d never wondered about it before.  But Seokjin hadn’t thrown out a number on his own, so Yoongi usually let that thought slide.  When you already knew someone three hundred years old you stopped worrying about birthdays.   

But if anyone would know it would be Jungkook.

“No idea,” Jungkook replied, giving Yoongi a shrug.  He sounded as blase about it as he had been about the pineapples and wainscoting.

“None?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, you have to have at least picked up some context clues,” Yoongi cajoled him, even more curious now that he knew Jungkook didn’t have an answer.

“Well…”  Jungkook bit his lip and looked to the side like he was thinking.

“What?”  Yoongi pushed, leaning in a bit.

Jungkook mirrored Yoongi, leaning over the arm of the chair and his voice dropped in volume like he was telling a secret.  “He’s so old, silver doesn’t hurt.  That old.”

Yoongi blinked in confusion.  He was sure he was always going to vividly remember the gashes and ugly wounds the silver wire had left on Jimin and Taehyung’s arms and it still turned his stomach to think about it.

Jungkook was probably exaggerating for effect.  Or out of some affectionate desire to make Seokjin sound cool.

“So it doesn’t hurt that bad?”  Yoongi clarified.

Jungkook leaned in even further so he was almost comically pushing himself over the arm of the chair and toward Yoongi now.

“I saw him rip up silver wire.  Like it was nothing.  That old.”

Yoongi felt his eyes involuntarily go wide while his brain tried to undo the puzzle he’d been handed.  If Taehyung was three hundred then…

“Wait.”  He hissed, his own voice having dropped to a sharp whisper while he tried to make sense of it.  “I don’t have a ton of context here.  What does that mean?  Like at what age does that even happen?  Or is it something he’s just really good at, like Jimin’s floaty thing or you being all agile and shit?  How old is ‘fuck silver’ old?”

“I’M READY TO GO!”  Seokjin bellowed out before Jungkook could answer, emerging with a couple of bags slung over his shoulders, completely shattering Yoongi’s train of thought.

Yoongi squinted a little, wondering if the interruption had been intentional, and then deliberately pushed the thought out of his head.

The most important thing was that it was time to go fishing.

*     *     *

Normally it was an hour’s drive to the marina where Seokjin kept his boat.  But the drive stretched out, slowed by traffic even this late in the evening, thanks to an exodus propelled by a three day weekend.  

They passed time making fun of the radio and yelling increasingly absurd lines of profanity at other drivers when they did something obnoxious.

“Christ on a cracker, we get it!  You’re a formula one reject!  Chill the fuck out!”

“What the fuck, you goddamn cumsmeared cockgoblin!”

“At least go the speed limit, you slow-ass titmonger!"

“I’ve seen otters that can drive better than that!"

Yoongi looked away from the road and over at Seokjin.  “How the hell would an otter even drive?”

“One,” Seokjin took one hand off the steering wheel and held up a finger, “that was the joke.  Two,” he counted off another finger, “they get a pair of penguins to deal with the break and the gas.”

“Whatever,” Yoongi grinned, stretching out.  “As long as they’ve all got licenses, who cares.”

Traffic sped up slightly and a little more space stretched out between the cars, some bottleneck up ahead apparently giving way.  Then another car swerved in front of them taking advantage of the barely reasonably sized gap between their car and the one ahead of them before pulling the same maneuver into the lane to their left.

“Oh fuck you!”  Seokjin shouted in pure frustration.  He glanced over at Yoongi and then back to the road.  “You sure you don’t want to drive?”  

“No way.  Not after the fucking week I’ve had.  Road stress is all on you.  I’m just along for the ride.”  

Work had been particularly awful lately with his long hours running even longer than usual, thanks to a temperamental vocalist he’d been talked into working with. 

(It was so bad, that late one night when Yoongi was still in the studio Jungkook had cornered him and asked Yoongi if he wanted him to “get rid of” the singer.  Yoongi had looked at him hoping Jungkook was being hyperbolic.  Instead, with an incredibly helpful tone in his voice, Jungkook had said, “I’m hungry anyway and no one will know what happened to him,” making it clear that he really was sincere.  Yoongi had rubbed his eyes and sighed at that, deciding he didn’t have the energy to be horrified and took the sympathetic gesture for how it was meant, thanking Jungkook for the offer but politely declining.)

Yoongi had spent much of the week trying to soothe the artist’s ego enough to finish a couple of tracks while at the same time day-dreaming and counting the hours until he could get away from everyone and everything.

Well, almost everyone, anyway.

Everyone except the vampire next to him who’d completely shifted topics now and was babbling about his Maple Story character.  

Yoongi stared ahead, nodding occasionally although he was barely listening, just enjoying the warmly familiar cadence of Seokjin’s voice. 

They had an odd friendship and Yoongi knew it.  It wasn't just the human-vampire thing.  They seemed like wildly different people on the outside, Seokjin's enthusiasm and boisterousness contrasting heavily with Yoongi’s quiet and reflexive cynicism.  But they’d still liked each other from the start and the longer they’d been friends, the more it was obvious that on some basic level that was hard to define, they understood each other.

Yoongi didn’t get into specifics when he talked about himself much.  He was a private person and had to manage social anxiety on top of it.  When you shared details, you never knew where a conversation would go and what facts about your life someone suddenly expected you to share.  It was better to leave things vague.  Not hidden.  More like standing behind a pane of frosted glass, still visible but softer and smoothed over.

Seokjin was the same way.  Yoongi knew him well-enough to know that his reasons weren’t the same as Yoongi’s but he had a lot he didn’t go into detail about and had the same tendency to reflexively deflect when someone veered toward something he’d rather keep to himself.  No sharp edges.  Nothing that could be examined in a microscope.

They understood the starts and stops and shapes of what the other was comfortable saying without having to be told.  It put Yoongi at ease and made him feel safe in a very particular way.

So when Seokjin would ask if he wanted to go fishing, he went.

Eventually they managed to make their way out of the exodus of traffic and arrived at the marina where Seokjin kept his boat.  Swearing at other cars was swapped out for trading jokes while they unloaded things from the car and into the boat.

It wasn’t a lot, really.  Just fishing gear, some clothes, food, and a few other necessary odds and ends.

Seokjin particularly made a show of making sure a bottle of spf 100 sunscreen made it on board.  It was sweet, even if he was also teasing.  Between the amount of time Yoongi spent locked up in his studio and not being much of an outdoors person, he probably didn’t see the sun much more than Seokjin.  So he’d learned the hard way that if he wanted to spend any time on the deck during the daylight he’d have to be careful or else he’d wind up being his own very human version of burned to a crisp.

Yoongi took the teasing in stride, clapped Seokjin on the shoulder and shot back that someday they’d find an spf 1000 for the other man’s poor, incredibly delicate skin.  Seokjin had thrown him a look and then told him to double check the emergency equipment below deck.

The boat wasn’t large so it didn’t take much time to finish the checklist of things that needed to be inspected before they headed out to sea.  There was room on the deck for fishing gear and a couple of lounge chairs.  Underneath there was just enough space for a bed, a small kitchen area (barely more than a minifridge and a couple of cupboards) and a small built in table and two chairs stuffed into a corner.

It was a cozy place for two people but it’d never felt confining or even cramped to Yoongi.  It was hard to feel like you were crammed in when you were in the middle of an infinite stretch of sky and sea.

Easy for Yoongi to feel small, sure, but not claustrophobic.

Once Seokjin was satisfied with his last once over, they untied the ship from the dock and it was finally, finally time to head out into the ink black sea.  

Yoongi had never been out on the ocean at night before he’d gone fishing with Seokjin.  At first he’d found it unsettling, surrounded by so much darkness that just went on and on.  But once he’d gotten used to it, it’d become a source of calm and peace instead.  Everything else in his life, every stressful, mundane, and annoying part, was back on land where it couldn’t touch him.  For now, all Yoongi had to do was float along and exist in the sparkling void.

Once they were far enough that they couldn’t see the lights on the shore or worry about navigating around another boat or ship, Seokjin turned off most of the lights on the boat.  He liked to navigate by the stars and it was a new moon, so the path laid out by the constellations was crisp and clear. 

Yoongi supposed old habits died hard or something like that but he also supposed there was no reason to use GPS when you already knew every road of a familiar place.  No one went home and pulled out google maps.  It was how Seokjin had learned, however long ago that was, and so that was how they went, enjoying the rise and fall of the ocean in companionable quiet.

At some point Seokjin decided they were here, although what made it here or exactly where they were Yoongi wasn’t sure.  He’d never really put in the effort to ask questions about navigation or boating or even learn more than a smidge above the bare minimum.  He wasn’t that interested and if he was honest, fishing wasn’t his hobby, not really.  But he liked Seokjin and he liked the endless expanse of empty ocean.  That was enough.

Fishing, however, was absolutely Seokjin’s hobby and one that filled him with unfettered glee.  He was giddy and he hummed while he unpacked the gear.

Yoongi followed suit, at his own, more relaxed pace.  He sat down on the edge of a deck chair and started putting his pole together.

“I’m going to get a tuna,” Seokjin sniffed and squinted like he was predicting something.

“Good luck with that,” Yoongi snorted.  “You said that on the last three trips.”

“This time it’s happening.  I can feel it.”

Yoongi snorted again and shook his head.

When he glanced over at Seokjin again, though, he was threading a fishing line through his pole.  And like a film, one image layered over another in Yoongi’s mind.

I saw him break silver wire like it was nothing.

How old is the Old Man, anyway?

Fuck.  Now he was curious.

“Hey, Seokjin?”

“Yeah?”

“How old are you?  Ballpark.”

“Older than you,” Seokjin laughed.

“So are my dad and my grandfather.  That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Older than your grandfather,” Seokjin shrugged, popping open the foul smelling chum bucket.

“Come on,” Yoongi shot back, with his own smile on his face.  “Be serious.”

“I am serious!”  Seokjin protested.  “I’m not lying.”

Maybe it was the scent of dead fish hitting him in the face making him more easily annoyed but he was starting to get annoyed by the runaround, so he didn’t drop it like he ordinarily might have.  “But you’re not saying anything either.”

“Fine.”  Seokjin said a little shortly.  “What Jungkook told you back at the apartment.  That old.”

The whispering, Yoongi knew, had been for show, because it’d been that kind of conversation.  Just the pretense.  Of course he’d heard.

“You’re really not going to tell me,” Yoongi replied, exasperated.

“Why should I.”  Seokjin’s voice came out flat and a little sharp and it stung.

Yoongi got that Seokjin liked to be vague but this was starting to hurt.  It felt shitty that he wouldn’t answer a simple question for someone who was supposed to be one of his closest friends.  It didn’t feel like the kind of trust that came out of wordlessly understanding each other’s boundaries.  This was a pretty benign piece of information friends generally knew.  And it was that Yoongi also felt like he was kind of an exception, let in just a little bit more than most people.  So this felt a bit like being rejected.

There was only one thing for human consumption that was always in Seokjin and Jungkook’s apartment and that was Yoongi’s beer.

He'd thought that meant something.

“Because I think I should get to know," Yoongi snapped back, not willing to eat the cold disillusionment that would come from letting the conversation die there and what it would say about their relationship.

“What?”  Seokjin looked at him a little frozen, although it was hard for Yoongi to tell if it was with shock or some other bit of unnatural undead stillness coming through.

“I mean, it’s a pretty basic thing for friends to know,” Yoongi barrelled on, his tongue running faster and sharper than he wanted it to.  

“And I don’t get why you think you’re entitled to know.”  

Entitled to know.  Okay, this shit really hurt now.

He was breaking the cardinal rule of their friendship now and Yoongi knew it.  Demanding hard lines instead of graciously backing off and letting things stay hazy.  But he couldn't stop himself.

“Sorry,” Yoongi snapped back.  “I thought we were close or something.  And I thought friends got to know simple shit about each other.”

“Well you don’t!" Seokjin pounced on his words, starting his sentence before Yoongi even finished, his voice rising.

“So we’re not?”  Yoongi’s own voice grew in volume, the hurt starting to crash into anger, a deep wound starting to settle in.  “Is that why you brought me into the middle of the goddamn sea to tell me we're not friends?”

“Because you are my friend and I don’t want to lose you!”  Seokjin’s voice boomed, loud and pained before it was sucked into the darkness, leaving nothing but the sound of the water against the side of the boat in its wake.

“What are you talking about?”  Yoongi’s mind lurched sideways and spun out trying to figure out what the hell Seokjin even meant by that.  “Is there some weird astrology chart or some shit?  Because I cannot fucking figure out why that would even fucking matter.”

“Then why do you keep asking?”

Yoongi stared at Seokjin, almost mirroring the stillness he’d retreated back to.  He didn’t quite manage it, though, his lips quivering and hands slightly shaking with emotion.  

“Why don’t you trust me?  Do you think I’m shallow?”  Yoongi gestured vaguely out into the night.  “Five hundred years?  Six hundred?  Who cares?  It doesn't matter, it just feels weird that we spend all this time together and I don’t even know.  It feels like something I should know.”

Seokjin sank down to the deck and let his head drop between his bent knees, with his hands knitted into his hair.

Yoongi didn’t like feeling like he was looking down at Seokjin.  He set his rod to the side and sat down cross-legged next to him, waiting for Seokjin to decide to speak.

Seokjin finally looked up but he didn’t look at Yoongi.  His broad shoulders stayed hunched and he seemed almost defeated.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly.  “I don’t know how old I am.”

“Okay.”  Yoongi nodded.  He wondered if he’d gone through some kind of amnesia like Jungkook or something else.  His voice went soft, trying to pull back from his earlier demands.  Hazy was fine.  He’d wanted a number, not to hit a nerve.  “That’s okay.  Whatever happened we don’t have to talk about it.”

Seokjin just let out a humorless laugh and gazed up at the stars while he thought some more.

“The only thing that happened is time.  There is so much time and eventually it’s not just calendars but people's memories and history and even language…”  He shook his head and there was another short stretch of wave-punctuated silence.  “I think I was born in Jin.  I think.  Or maybe I just like that there’s a really old kingdom with my name.  Might have been before that.  Sometimes I go to the museum to try and figure it out.  See if anything looks familiar.”

The boat rocked gently on the sea and Yoongi let the movement draw him back into the moment and remind him to breathe.  His mind was spinning out trying to imagine going to a museum just to guess your own age and that thought made him feel like he understood why Seokjin hadn’t wanted to tell him.  He didn’t know for sure but between Seokjin’s reaction and what he’d just felt, he could imagine the expression Seokjin would usually see after saying something like that.

So he made sure his face was neutral when Seokjin looked back at him warily.  Expectantly.  Sadly.

“I’m not a good person.”  Yoongi stated it like a fact.  No self-judgment or exaggeration.  “I beat the shit out of someone.  Twice.”

Seokjin’s eyebrows knit together but he didn’t interrupt.

“The first time I was in high school.  It was dumb.  Some guys in my class liked to pick on me.  I was poor and queer so I was basically fucked, you know?  They'd call me names.  Break my shit.  Fuck with me.  One day, I just snapped.  Didn’t care the guy was taller than me.  I just charged at him, grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into a brick wall.  He was so surprised he just went.  I still remember the sound of his head bouncing.  There was this red smear on the bricks when he fell.  Freaked the rest of his friends out so much that when I turned around and ran they just let me go.”  Yoongi took a deep breath, letting the salt air fill his lungs.  There was the taste of iron in the back of his mouth now, just from the memory of the sight of it.  “The second time, I was at a club.  There was this guy up in this other guy’s face giving him shit.  And the other guy, he was smaller, too, like me you know?  Then the asshole said one word, one stupid slur, and I guess I just had some kind of flashback because I saw red, pulled him away from the other guy and screamed at him.  He said some shit to me, I don’t remember what.  I was pretty drunk.  And I said some shit back and he took a swing at me.  Hit me right in the eye and it hurt like fuck.  So I took a swing at him and I got him.  And then I didn’t stop.  I remember I had him on the floor and I was above him and I just kept going.  They had to pull me off of him and I must have broke his nose or made him bite his tongue or something because his blood was all over my knuckles.”  Yoongi set his jaw and fixed Seokjin square in the eyes. 

“Why are you telling me this?”  Seokjin cocked his head and knit his eyebrows together.

"Do you still want to be my friend?"  Yoongi asked pointedly.

"Yes?"

“Then we're even.  Your shit you don't tell anyone for my shit I don't tell anyone.  Deal?"

Seokjin’s lips quirked up into a curious smile.  And at that, now that his mouth had finally slowed, Yoongi realized that the sensation he had of his body being in constant motion now was less the rise and fall of the sea and more his own heart beat beating a loud, adrenaline-fueled rhythm throughout his body.

"Deal."

The pounding eased a little and Yoongi felt a cold slash of relief that his giant, thoughtless gambit had worked.

And then he let his head drop and glanced down at his hands.  His ordinary, uncalloused hands.  He could remember the feeling of blood across his knuckles, wet and sticky.  More than anything, though, he remembered the feeling of hands on his shoulders pulling him off.  That he hadn’t been able to stop.

“Seriously, though,” he said.  His voice felt rough, as though he was exhausted from screaming for hours rather than just puffing out an impromptu monologue.  “Please don’t tell anyone.”  There was a familiar knot of shame in his gut and he wanted to hide.  “Especially not Namjoon or Hobi.”  He added quietly.

“I won’t.”  Seokjin’s voice was quiet.  Comforting.  Then he shifted and there was a hand on Yoongi’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly.  “It’s not a bad thing, though.”

Yoongi shook his head.  He was human.  The rules were different from where he was sitting.

“Okay,” Seokjin amended.  “It was bad for the other guys.  But not for you.  You know what you’re capable of.  That’s not bad.”

Now it was Yoongi’s turn to look at him curiously.  “As in I can keep myself from doing it again?”  

“That.  And you know that that’s in you now.  You can use it.  Or not.  But it's an item in your pocket, something you’ve got.  Whatever you do with it is up to you.  But you know it’s there.”

Yoongi analyzed Seokjin’s face carefully, looking for a judgment he knew wouldn’t be there.

“I won’t tell anyone.”  Seokjin reiterated.  “It’s important to you so I won’t,” he said simply. 

He didn’t have to think twice.  Yoongi knew he could trust him.  Belatedly Yoongi realized he never would have said it if he hadn’t.

“Can I ask you about it?”

“About knowing what it’s like to beat the crap out of a guy?”

“No, you idiot.”  Yoongi half-laughed and smacked at the side of Seokjin’s shoe.  He was sitting cross-legged next to Yoongi now.  The breeze tousled his hair and the lights from the boat cut across his face somehow making him look even younger, like a university student out on a break.  “I mean about being older than Christ.”

“Never met him.”  Seokjin chirped.  “I was in Asia.”

“Well, I was going to say older than Buddha but if you were born in Jin, that’s kind of a toss up.”  Seokjin grinned at him.  “What?”  Yoongi protested.  “Sorry if I know some history.”

“You’re a nerd and I love it.”

“I just…” Yoongi tried to think, wondering what his follow up-question was after all.  "What's it like?  Living for so long?"

"I…" Seokjin paused.  Then he tipped his head back and looked up at the stars, like he was looking for an answer in the constellations the same way he found route.  "Fun?" He said finally, voice tipped up at the end like he was asking a question. "Wonderful?"

Yoongi straightened up, thrown back on his heels.  He couldn't help it.  A lifetime of stories had primed him to think of immortality as something tragic, he realized. 

"Doesn't it get lonely?"

Now it was Seokjin’s turn to look hurt and Yoongi immediately regretted his question, even if he didn't understand the reaction.

"How could I be lonely?"  The hurt expression stayed on his face and Seokjin’s voice pitched a little high and raspy.  "I've got Jungkookie.  And Taehyung and Jimin and Namjoon and Hoseok and…you."

Yoongi reflexively thought about prodding deeper.  But he finally had the presence of mind to shove a stupid thought aside.  He got what Seokjin was saying.  Suggesting he should be lonely implied he wasn’t really a part of their loyal, tight-knit group.  That the little family he and Jungkook had made wasn’t enough.  And the pause…it was filled with whatever it was between them, whatever it was that after years still had Yoongi routinely thinking to himself that he liked Seokjin, whatever connection was that made the frosted glass intelligible and sent them scurrying out to sea, just the two of them.  Yoongi had just implied that maybe it wasn't quite real. Or disposable.

It hurt Yoongi’s heart thinking about it.  Not in the way that Seokjin deflecting the age question hurt Yoongi but in reverse.  This time he'd been the one to hold the boundaries of their relationship at arms length.

"Sorry," he said.  "I wasn't thinking.  I think I've watched too much Doctor Who."  It was a lie.  He'd only seen a few episodes and then only because Taehyung and gone on a kick and it was stupidly hard to say no to him when he was excited about something.  It still gave cover for his thoughtlessness, though, so he hid behind the lie, anyway.

“No, it’s…  I do get what you mean,” Seokjin sounded a little apologetic.  “I know that trope.” Seokjin sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned against the side of the boat.  Yoongi scooted around next to him, mirroring his posture.  He wasn’t a particularly touchy person but right now he wanted to be close.  As if closing the physical space would keep the emotional space from spinning out of reach again.  “Alright,” Seokjin went on.  “How many of your friends do you keep for your entire life?”  

Yoongi thought back and had to admit the answer was none so far.  At this point his oldest friend was Namjoon and Yoongi hadn’t even met him until graduate school.  His friends from home had drifted away with the space of half a country between him and them.  And when he’d moved across the country again to Seoul it was the same thing all over again with his undergraduate friends.

That was something to think about, he realized.  He’d chalked it up to being bad at keeping in touch but with that much of a pattern, maybe it was something more.

“Not many,” Yoongi answered with a little shrug.

“But do you feel lonely when you’re with your friends?  Even though you probably won’t have them forever?”

“No.”  Yoongi caught his point but it still wasn’t the same for him.  He’d let friendships drift and die in the past but with the seven of them it was also different.  They still joked about being a coven but the joke carried on because there was some truth there.  Yoongi was pretty sure that at this point they were locked together for at least the length of his lifetime.  He had that option.  But for Seokjin with a life on his scale…

He swallowed.  Thinking in those terms made him feel like there was an enormous space between them even though they were sitting right next to each other and he didn’t like that.  So one of the people he was closest to had an age measured not in decades or even centuries but millenia.  Fine.  It was what it was and it changed absolutely nothing about this moment, right now, with the two of them together.

He put a hand on Seokjin’s thigh and squeezed it lightly before rubbing it with his thumb, trying to reassure him.  Closing the space between them.

“Okay.  I get it.”

“Thanks.”  Seokjin smiled at him softly and his eyes were warm.  “So can we start fishing now?  I can feel a tuna nearby.”

Yoongi cracked up, his laugh seemingly rising before bouncing once and then being swallowed by the night.  Seokjin still was Seokjin and Seokjin was Seokjin.

“I still don’t think you’re going to catch a tuna but yeah.  Let’s do it.”

*     *     *

“I can’t believe you caught a fucking tuna.”

“I told you!”

“You said that the last three fishing trips, though.”

“I was manifesting for this one.”

“...right.”

*     *     *

Yoongi was stretched out in a deck chair and was contemplatively drinking a bottle of beer.  Tuna had been caught, pictures had been taken, (“just put this up on tinder,” Yoongi quipped, “if you wanna try a dating app and never get a date”) and the fish had been unceremoniously released back to the ocean.  Seokjin offered it to Yoongi but Yoongi wasn’t in the mood to take on cleaning an enormous fish and didn’t want to pay for someone else to process it.  He tried to get Seokjin to give it a good bite around where it's neck would be if it had one but after a few tries of daring, bribing, and trying to think of some way to blackmail him, Yoongi finally gave up and acknowledged what he thought would be a hilarious photo was never going to happen.

So here they were now, sitting on the deck, taking a break, and not doing anything except talking about their lives.  Yoongi had already vented about his obnoxious singer and Seokjin had listened before kindly offering, “do you want me to ask Jungkook to take care of him?”  

Yoongi groaned.  “He already offered, thanks.”

“He’s a good kid,” Seokjin nodded.

Yoongi thought back to earlier that evening and the conversation about Jungkook not wrecking the apartment while Seokjin was gone.  It made absolutely no sense that he could offer to kill people and allude (possibly) to vampiric sex parties and yet Yoongi still felt in his gut that he was also one of the sweetest, most bizarrely innocent people he knew.  A good kid.

He’d given up trying to understand it.

Now they were on to another topic, though, and Seokjin was telling him about upcoming travel plans.

“...and then I was thinking of stopping to see Moonbyul for a bit in Busan.”

“Wait what?”  Yoongi stiffened at the name.  “Not like, Solar’s Moonbyul?  The one Jungkook ran around with?”

“No, her.”  Seokjin shrugged nonchalantly.  “I knew her way back.  And she’s chilled out some now that Solar’s gone.  We started texting.”

Yoongi stared at him blankly.

“Is she uh…” he fumbled trying to find a way to say, “still one of the bad guys,” without actually putting it that way, before settling on, “does she, you know, still enjoy killing people?”

Seokjin shrugged again.  “Uh-huh.”

Yoongi took a long drink of his beer and sat back in the lounge chair again.  He stared out, trying to work through what Seokjin had just said.

This seemed different from Jungkook's well-meaning offer.  It was one thing to have extreme and morally dubious instincts when it came to problem solving.  It was another to kill people out of apathy or for fun. 

The ocean stretched out black in front of him, save for the few lights from the boat twinkling on the surface.  The boat gently rose and fell with the waves but the rocking was soft and Yoongi barely noticed it unless he thought about it.  Everything seemed still out here.

Even with an atmosphere waiting to be filled with thoughts, no matter how he turned it around in his head he couldn’t unwind it.

“I don’t get it,” Yoongi said finally.

“What’s not to get?”  

“You try not to kill people.”

“Right,” Seokjin confirmed.

“But your friend doesn’t really care.”

“Not really, no.”

“How the fuck does that work, then?  How is that a line that you won’t cross?”

“Not my choice to make.”  Seokjin shrugged.  

“You’re doing it again.”  Yoongi drained the last of his beer and popped open the cooler in between the two of them for another one.  Maybe it was the beer exaggerating things but he felt like he had some extra leeway right now.

“What?”

“Deflecting 'cause you think I might look at you weird.”

“Fine.”

There was a noticeable silence.  Seokjin hated being called out but Yoongi didn’t care.  And it wasn’t like it wouldn’t come back at him.  So he listened to the water lapping against the side of the boat and he waited.

“I saw a video on the internet a little while ago.”  Seokjin said finally.  “There was a lion picking out a small zebra from the herd and trying to take it down.  And just when she thought she had it, another zebra ran up and kicked the lion until it let the smaller zebra go.  And everyone in the comments was cheering for the brave zebra that saved the other zebra.  Way to defeat the big bad lioness.”  Seokjin gave a little mirthless laugh that was really half a grunt.  “But all I could think about when I saw it was that the lioness looked like she hadn’t eaten in a while.  Her stomach was taut and she looked hungry.”  Seokjin lolled his head over so that he was looking at Yoongi.   “The thing about lions is that they don’t really run around alone, they live in families, you know?  They’ve got that whole pride hanging out, raising cubs together.  So if she doesn’t catch that zebra, it’s not just no dinner for her, who knows how many other lions aren’t eating.  Maybe she’s got kids that are hungry.”  Seokjin turned his head again, going back to contemplatively staring at the sky.  “The real kicker to me was that all these humans were cheering for the herbivore but then most of them are more than happy to turn around and eat a cow for dinner.”  Seokjin sighed and shook his head like he was disagreeing with the stars.  “That’s the thing.  We’re all inconsistent and willfully blind sometimes.  There’s no way to live in this contradictory world and not be.  So I’m not on the lion’s team or the zebra’s.”  Seokjin gave a little laugh and folded his hands on top of his stomach.  “But I’m inconsistent, too.  Because I wish them both all the best even though that's literally not possible.”

Yoongi stared at Seokjin for a long moment, trying to process everything he’d just said.  The vampire seemed pretty pleased with himself.

“Bullshit.”  Yoongi took another long drink of his beer and went back to watching the lights on the black ocean.

“What?”

“It’s not fucking lions and zebras.  You’re just old and tired of thinking about it.”

Seokjin burst into laughter, that loud squeaky one that came out when he thought something was genuinely funny.

“Maybe,” he said when he calmed down.  “But you’re the human hanging out on a boat with the vampire who doesn’t care about other vampires killing people.”

Yoongi snorted.  “Yeah but you’d never let anything happen to me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you like me and also fuck you, that’s why.”  Seokjin started laughing again.  Yoongi tried to hold back for a second, tried to hold on to his cool seriousness while he brought the beer bottle to his lips again.  It didn’t really work, though, because in the next moment, Yoongi was struggling to keep his laughter down so he wouldn’t spit beer all over his lap.

“Shit,” he said, wiping his mouth after he’d calmed down.  “I think I’m starting to tip past sober.”

“Wanna break out the Scotch?”  Seokjin grinned at him.  “Drunk Yoongi is a fun Yoongi.”  

“Hey,” Yoongi protested.  “Sober Yoongi is fun, too.”

“Yeah but different fun.”  

Yoongi grunted in response but before Yoongi could protest again Seokjin was already disappearing below deck.

He sighed.  He took another swig of beer.  He stared at the water.

Seokjin reappeared proudly holding a bottle of Scotch.

“Oh no.”  Yoongi scrunched his face up almost painfully and turned away from Seokjin.

“What?”

“It’s good.  It’s that super smokey one I really like.”

“Because I know you and I love you.”  Seokjin grinned and poured a couple of fingers of Scotch into two mugs he brought up with him.  “But because I’m annoying,” Seokjin handed Yoongi his mug and then turned to the cooler and pulled out a bottle of beer, “we’re also going to ruin some of it.”

Yoongi noticed then that Seokjin had also brought up a larger glass and a shot glass.

“Oh no," Yoongi said again, although this one was far more plaintive.

Seokjin pulled the cooler between the two lounge chairs so it could serve as a table and started pouring beer into the larger glass.

Yoongi sighed, giving up before he even really protested.  Instead he took a moment to savor the smoke and peat that he could still smell coming from the wisky, even over the salty sea air.  He sipped at it and closed his eyes for a second, indulging himself.  Then he opened his eyes and looked warily at Seokjin.

“This is a travesty and a terrible idea.”

“I told you I’m annoying.  Why is this a terrible idea.”

“Because we’re on a boat.  And boats don’t hold still.  It’s just going to spill all over the deck.”

“It’ll be fine.”  Seokjin plopped a shot glass in the beer so it floated at the top.  “Besides, I don’t think there’s a more appropriate place to play submarine than on a boat.”

“I dunno,” Yoongi shrugged.  “A game that’s supposed to be a sinking ship sounds like tempting fate.”

Seokjin uncorked the bottle again, poured a little in the bottom of the shot glass and then handed the bottle to Yoongi.  “If I were Taehyung, I’d ask who doesn’t love temptation.”

“And if I were Jimin,” Yoongi smiled, taking the bottle, “I wouldn’t be tempted, I’d just do the thing.”  He delicately poured a few more drops in the shot glass.  He handed the bottle back to Seokjin but just for a moment they caught each other’s eyes and for a half second, things seemed more serious than they had a second ago.

Yoongi took another sip of his Scotch and let his mind drift as the flavors danced across his tongue.

“Will you tell me a story?”  His voice came out a little hazy as though he hadn’t realized he was saying it out loud.

“What kind of a story?”  Seokjin’s forehead scrunched and he stared at the shot glass as though they were on their 20th round rather than the second.

“I dunno.  But you’ve got two and a half millennia back there.  There’s gotta be something interesting.”

“Yeah, which means that’s a really broad ask.  Narrow it down.”  Seokjin squinted one more time at the shot glass then sat up straight and with demonstrable care he poured a very small amount into the shot glass then handed the bottle to Yoongi.

Yoongi took five distracted seconds to pour a few drops of his own into the glass.  It was barely full, anyway.

“Good point.” Yoongi smacked the bottle against his palm while he thought.  The weight of the heavy glass was soothing and the sound of it was a pleasant rhythm.  “Alright,” he said, relinquishing the bottle to Seokjin again.  “Tell me about another time when you were happy.  We’ve had enough serious shit.”

Yoongi was rewarded with a soft laugh and a grin.  Then Seokjin’s eyes lit up.  “Do you want to hear my one good name drop?”

“Just one?”  Yoongi teased.

“I knew a couple other famous people way back when but no one remembers them now,” Seokjin shrugged nonchalantly.  Yoongi ran that through his head a couple of times and then decided not to get hung up on that.  That could mean fifty years ago or a thousand.  People’s memories were short.  

“Alright, shoot.  I’m curious.”

“Okay.”  Seokjin leaned forward excitedly and Yoongi’s lips quirked up slightly.  It was odd seeing him animated about specifics about the past.  Yoongi guessed he was right.  Things could be pushed a little further tonight.  “Way back, I used to know a lot of kisaengs.”  

“Really?”  Yoongi wasn’t sure why that surprised him but it did.  It just felt like it didn’t square quite right with the homebody he knew.

“Oh yeah.  They were great.”  Seokjin started counting off his fingers.  “Smart, fun, and usually up way past dark.”

That did make some sense, Yoongi admitted to himself.  Seokjin wouldn’t exactly have had video games to keep him busy at home.

“Ready for my name drop?”

“Just say it.”

“I was friends with Hwang Jini.”  Seokjin leaned back, entirely too pleased with himself.

“Bullshit.”

“Really.”

“Fuck me.”  Yoongi took another drink of Scotch, this time a long swallow.

Yoongi was a history nerd.  And a literature nerd.  And honestly, he just kind of had a thing for intelligent, stubborn women on general principle.  There were dramas and movies about her but he was fascinated by the real Hwang Jini.  She'd been brilliant and clever as hell, a great poet and…well just a fucking legend, that’s what.

By the time the Scotch had hit his stomach he’d gotten over his initial reaction and was ready to full on fanboy.

“Tell me everything.  How did you meet her?  What was she like?  Did she have any weird habits?  Just go.”  Yoongi leaned over eagerly with his elbows on his knees.  

“Really funny.”  Seokjin poured a few more drops on into the shot glass, that shit-eating smile still on his face.  He handed the bottle to Yoongi but Yoongi just set it on the deck.  “Loved puns.”

Yoongi raised an eyebrow.

“Puns used to be cool,” Seokjin sniffed, handing Yoongi the Scotch bottle.  “And I met her because I wanted to have her for dinner.”

“Dinner.”  Yoongi felt both a little disappointed and offended.  You didn’t just go around eating great poets, damn it.

“Maybe dessert.”  Seokjin shrugged.  “I was on this kick where I was really into sneaking into rich people's manors and castles…things like that.  Fancy places that were hard to get to.  I think I was bored.”

“Creepy way to keep yourself entertained…” Seokjin raised an eyebrow, “but not weird if you’re a vampire, I guess.”  Yoongi amended.

“Yup.”  Seokjin confirmed cheerfully, popping the p at the end of the word.  “Anyway, so I found her alone in her room - she slept alone most of the time…”

“I know, I know.  Really high standards.  Men had to solve an impossible riddle.  Keep going.”  Yoongi waved the bottle of Scotch at him for emphasis.

Seokjin laughed but he went on, anyway.  “And she talked me out of it.”  He paused, probably for effect, and took a drink of his own glass of Scotch.  “Ridiculously smart woman.  Made a deal with me that I had to leave if she beat me at a word game.”  He smiled at the memory and Yoongi smiled back.  Yeah.  Happy.  “It sounded fun and I thought I stood a chance because I like wordplay.  I had no idea who she was, though.  I lost so fast.”  Seokjin snapped his fingers and dropped his hand like he was mimicking a fall.  “We became pretty good friends after that.”

Yoongi let out a short, airy laugh and then turned his attention to the shot glass, buying himself a little time to digest the story so far.

“So you’re saying a vampire,” Yoongi spoke slowly and deliberately as he gently tipped the bottle, “snuck into her bedroom in the middle of the night and wanted to drink her blood and she beat him at a word game and then what…wanted to hang out?”  He glanced up at Seokjin a little cynically.

“We had fun.”  Seokjin leaned back a little and stretched out his legs straight to one side of the cooler so his feet were neatly crossed at the ankles under Yoongi’s deck chair.  “Like I said.  She liked puns.”

Yoongi gave up and handed him the bottle.  He kind of hated that it made sense.  But sneaking into rich ladies' bedrooms aside (although he supposed he could see how that would be fun - maybe) he was pretty sure that Seokjin five hundred years ago had the same warm squeaky laugh and love of dad jokes he did now.  And he was on a boat with the same vampire now, anyway, so he guessed he didn’t really have room to criticize.  

He was friends with someone that had been friends with Hwang Jini.  That was pretty damn cool.

“Okay, my turn.”

“What,” Yoongi snorted and picked up his Scotch again, “you want me to tell you about the time I was ten and I broke my arm?”

“Of course, I do.”  Seokjin sounded almost offended.  “But that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

“What?”

“Different story.  Present day.”  

Yoongi cocked an eyebrow at him.  He had an uncomfortable feeling that his own fuzzy boundaries were about to be pushed.  But he couldn’t say no.  Not really.  These things had to go both ways.

“Okay.”

“How do you feel about Namjoon now that he’s been turned?”

The mug in Yoongi’s hand almost slipped out of his fingers.  He was able to clumsily catch it with his other hand before it fell, though, although not before some of the whisky splashed over the side onto his fingers.  For a half a second he considered wiping his hand on his pants but by the time he was finishing the thought, he’d already popped his thumb into his mouth and then done the same with his forefinger, cleaning up the smokey liquid.

It was probably kind of a gross way to clean up, he considered, and wiped his licked hand on his pants.  His brain was just fuzzy enough to congratulate himself on the quick save.

“What do you mean?  He’s still my friend.”

Seokjin shrugged and started focusing on the shot glass again.

“Seriously,” Yoongi prodded, “why do you think I’d feel any differently?  I’m friends with you aren’t I.”  He took another sip of his Scotch and eyed Seokjin, prodding him with his mind to give away what he’d been thinking.

“I don’t know.”  Seokjin sounded almost distracted, he was so focused on slowly tipping the bottle.  “I guess I just wondered if anything struck you as different.  You’ve known him longer than me.”  No more than two drops fell out before he had the bottle upright again and was holding it out to Yoongi.

He rolled his eyes internally at the vampire showing off.  (At the same time, a small far softer voice pointed out that there was no one else around, so he was really just showing off for Yoongi.  And that was cute, he had to admit.)

“He’s, uh…”  Yoongi started, trying to get his thoughts back on track.  Namjoon had changed but Yoongi could never quite figure out how to put it into words.  He was paler and less clumsy and he obviously wasn’t a vegetarian anymore.  But he was also still contemplative and too smart and kind.  “He’s sharper somehow,” Yoongi settled on.  “It’s like there’s something else that was always under there somewhere but it didn’t really come out when he was just a guy in a music studio.”  It felt weird to try and say it out loud, so he took his own turn at focusing just a little too intently on the shot glass, still bobbing at the top of the beer glass.  “Just vibes, I guess.  I don’t know how to say it.  I know it sounds dumb.”

“It really doesn’t.”  The vampire paused for a moment and Yoongi took the opportunity to pour his own few drops into the glass.  He took less time than Seokjin again but he didn’t really care.  He wasn’t exactly competitive or invested in the game itself.  “He was never just a guy in a studio, though,” Seokjin said contemplatively.

Yoongi didn’t exactly disagree.  Namjoon was also the kind of person to move in with a vampire half out of curiosity, fall in love with things like art and bonsai and just…there was a rare kind of empathy and intelligence behind his eyes.  It’d been what made Yoongi realize that everything about him was genuine and that Yoongi wanted to be his friend.

“True.”  Yoongi went to take a drink and noticed his glass was almost empty.  He poured himself a second drink before handing the bottle off to Seokjin.  

Drunk Yoongi was so weak for good whisky.

“Have you known many vampires like him?”  The question came out distractedly, with half his attention on the warm, smokey scent in front of his nose while he tipped his glass up to his face.

“None.”

“Really?”  The word came out a bit garbled as Yoongi was in the middle of taking a drink with the glass between his lips.

“This whole group of humans and vampires together thing is kind of new to me honestly.”

“Huh.”  That surprised Yoongi in a “nothing new under the sun” kind of way.  “Any hot takes then?”  He asked, going in for another sip, the tingle of the last one still on his lips.

“About which?  Namjoon or all of us?”

“Both.”  Why not.  Yoongi wasn’t entirely sure which one he’d been asking about either.

“I don’t know.”  A slow grin spread over Seokjin’s face.  “But I can’t wait to find out.”

Something clicked in Yoongi’s brain.  Pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t even been consciously putting together slid into place with the kind of clarity that only came from a fog of booze.

“This is why when I asked about living so long you said it was wonderful isn’t it?  There’s always something new.”  

Seokjin met his eyes and there was a sweet smile on his face.  Yoongi felt himself smile back, closing the loop of fondness.

“Absolutely.  And it…it just doesn’t stop.  For as long as I’ve been around the world has just grown and grown, gotten bigger, more places, more kinds of people, more things.  And even if it’s not in the same way that it used to be, the world still just keeps growing.  People fly now!  Go to space!  There are video games!”  Seokjin said the last example with just as much affection and enthusiasm as the first two and for once, it didn’t strike Yoongi as unserious.

There was an alienness to it, though.  Video games were technically marvelous, sure, and a fantastic new medium.  It was what hadn’t made the list.  Seokjin didn’t have to be productive in the way that most people did and he didn’t pay attention to ordinary human miracles, like medicine or human rights.  But art and leisure impressed him.

Yoongi laughed and leaned over just enough to clap Seokjin’s knee.  Then he leaned back and finished his Scotch, draining his second glass much faster than he had the first.  The foggy bits of puzzle pieces were sliding around again in his mind and he liked picking Seokjin apart just a bit.  Seeing how he worked.

A privileged little hobby from his privileged little perch.

He stared at the bottom of the mug and wondered if he needed another drink.  Since this one was gone.

“You were a little right about the lonely thing, though.”

Yoongi’s head jerked up.  Almost like he’d been so lost in his thoughts that he’d forgotten Seokjin was right there.

“Howso?”  He noticed Seokjin was still holding the bottle of Scotch and hadn’t made any moves toward taking his own turn with the shot glass again.

“Sometimes…” The excitement in his voice was gone.  He was saying something in confidence.  “Jungkook looks at me like I might go out for a pack of cigarettes and never come back.”  He shook his head.  Disappointed in himself.  “And I get really mad inside.  I mean, I get why,” the vampire followed up quickly, before Yoongi could interject with any kind of psychology.  “It’s not his fault.  But it brings up this fear I have, like I’m temporary.  Like people see me as just floating through their lives.”

Yoongi gaped at him, forgetting entirely about the Scotch or the drinking game and his own little self-congratulatory thoughts.  

His heart just fucking hurt, instead.

He slid around to sit next to Seokjin again.

Frosted glass or crystal clear, nothing that mattered really changed.

“You know I’d catch a bullet for you, right?”  The words surprised him, coming out like that.  The stars twinkled and swayed together when he looked up.  They also reminded him that it wasn’t just overdramatic but it was a dumb way to put that.  “Okay so that’d be fucking dumb considering but…” Yoongi stopped talking the moment he looked back at Seokjin, his face turned toward Yoongi’s now.  His eyes were dark and wide and the starlight glittered back at him.

“I’d run across a street in broad daylight for you.”

Yoongi swallowed.  Because he knew Seokjin meant it just as much as he meant the thing about the bullets.

“But please don’t make me, though.”  Seokjin’s voice was still quiet.  “That’d be a really dumb way to die.”

He gently brushed the hair off Seokjin’s forehead although it did nothing, the breeze blowing it back to where it’d been just a moment ago.

“I’ll try,” Yoongi said even more quietly.

Seokjin’s lips were soft against his when they finally pressed together.

Later Yoongi would think about what the vampire’s mouth had felt like.  He tasted like the same whisky Yoongi had been drinking but without any of the accompanying warmth.  Later he would think about all the implications and the questions that would come rushing in behind them.  About the two of them.  About Seokjin.  About Yoongi.

But for now it was blissfully simple.  

There was the boat.

There was the push and pull of the dark and endless sea.

There was the blackness and glitter of the universe spread above them.

And there was Yoongi and Seokjin moving past words to say, “I’m here.  I’m here.  I’m here.”

*     *     *

They didn’t talk about the kiss.  The boat rocked a little too much and the glass with the shot glass in it tipped over, falling off the cooler and spilling all over the deck, just like Yoongi said it would.

And maybe it was drunkenness or habit or straight up just not knowing what to say next but the moment after they were broken apart by the thud of heavy glass on the deck, things snapped forward like the kiss had never happened.  Like skipping a track on a playlist.  One moment to the next and the one in between completely ignored.

They both burst out laughing.  Then Yoongi shoved Seokjin in the arm and shout-laughed, “I told you so!”  

“Nooooo!”  Seokjin reached a hand out toward the glass.  “Now we’ll never know who was going to win!”

“We all win,”  Yoongi threw back, heading down to grab a towel for the mess.  “No one had to drink that.”  Coming back up to the deck, he noticed the barest edge of light below the horizon.  Not much.  The moments before pre-dawn.  Not really even light, so much as the absence of the absolute blackness that had swallowed up distance the night before.  The existence of a horizon itself.

He gripped the towel a little tighter before going to mop up the spill.

“You should head back under.”

“Don’t worry so much.  There’s a ton of time before the sun comes up.”  Seokjin knelt down and tried to take the towel from Yoongi.  

Yoongi just looked up with the best grumpy-mama-bear-I’m-serious look he could muster.  Seokjin put up his hands in surrender and backed off.  “Okay, okay.  I’m off.”

It didn’t take that much time to finish cleaning up the beer and grab the glasses and mugs and Yoongi ended up following Seokjin below deck just a couple minutes later.  He placed the dishes in the small sink and stood with his hands on the counter, letting his head hang loosely for a few moments.  

It’d been silly to be that anxious over something so ordinary.  Yoongi wondered if that was something he needed to take stock of.  If he should do a quick breathing exercise or something.  Or maybe it was just the booze magnifying one of the million tiny worries always somewhere in his mind.  Or maybe it hadn’t been that big of a deal and the booze was just making him overthink his own feelings.  Anxiety about anxiety.  If that wasn’t the fucking name of…

There was a rustle from the bed area and the sound pulled Yoongi back to the present.  His head snapped up and stared vaguely in the direction of Seokjin, who was completely hidden behind a thick black curtain that closed the bed off from the rest of the space below deck.  It was tacked to the walls with the kind of industrial strength velcro, to keep out even the possibility of a sliver of daylight.

Yoongi was hit by the thought that while he might be a human on a boat with a vampire in the middle of nowhere, he could destroy the vampire just as easily.

He supposed the trick to living for a couple of millenia must be knowing who you could trust.

A yawn stretched its way across his face, making his eyes water while he sucked in air.

Fuck but he was tired.  He’d been up all night.

Yoongi was hit by another yawn and this time it pulled out one of those sleepy groans.

“If you can tell me I have to go to bed, I can tell you, you have to go to bed,” Seokjin’s voice came from behind the curtain.

Yoongi grunted and smiled a little to himself.  He shucked his pants off and didn’t bother to pick them up off the galley floor before pushing the curtain back and crawling on top of the bed.

“I’m not gonna die if I stay out too late” Yoongi muttered under his breath, while he made sure the curtains were pulled shut.  The material reminded him of stage curtains, satisfyingly thick and heavy.

He flopped onto his back and stretched out next to Seokjin.  The only light was the soft glow of Seokjin’s phone, working as a sort of night light, in the otherwise pitch dark space.

Seokjin was laying on his side facing Yoongi and there was a tiny, amused smile on his lips.

“What?”

“You get cute and overprotective when you’ve been drinking.”

Yoongi just huffed and stretched out his arms and legs.  

Seokjin laughed and rolled on to his back.  “Last time you got drunk all you wanted to tell me about was some history podcast you’d been listening to.  Cutely overprotective is a lot better than that.”

“Now you’re just being a dick,” Yoongi argued.  “You can’t tell me that it’s not fascinating to look at the mediterranean right before the first Punic war…”  He held up two curved hands opposite of each other, symbolizing Carthage and Rome in his mind.  Then he stopped himself mid-sentence.  “Okay, fuck you,” he laughed and let his hands fall onto his chest.  “You’re probably right.”

He turned his head toward Seokjin to see him looking back at Yoongi with one of those soft half smiles of his.  Yoongi had to wonder if it was the half-light that made his eyes look even softer.

“So tell me the story,” Seokjin said softly, the smile still on his lips.

“What story?”

“About when you broke your arm when you were ten.”

Yoongi let out an entertained grunt.  He’d completely forgotten about that remark.

“There’s not really much.  I was running around some playground with a cousin.  We decided to crawl on top of the monkey bars for some weird kid reason.  I slipped and fell.  He ran away screaming for my aunt while I laid there in the sand wondering why the fuck it looked like my arm was on backwards from the elbow down.”  There was a pause while Yoongi waited for some kind of reaction.  He got one but it wasn’t the one he expected.

Seokjin let out an annoyed little puff of air and the smile was gone from his face.

“What?”

“That was just a really boring way to tell all of that.  There’s all the makings of a great story there.  Danger.  Crunching bones.  Agonizing pain.”

Yoongi squinted at him and shook his head.  “You know, that might have been the most stereotypically, ghoulishly undead thing you’ve ever said.”

“What?!”  Seokjin sounded almost offended.  “Like that’s not every action movie ever made.” 

"That's not why…”  Yoongi stopped himself mid sentence and gave up, too tired to think through whether or not Seokjin had a point.  “I had to have surgery,” he said instead.  “They stuck big metal pins in my elbow and everything.”

“Do you still have a scar?”

“Yeah.”  He'd always hated it but Yoongi awkwardly held his elbow up, anyway.  “If you look it looks kinda like a frowny face.”  He pointed at two small round scars and then traced a long thing one below it that arced around his elbow.  “Eyes.  Mouth.”

Seokjin reached out and ran his fingers over the spot.  He had odd hands but Yoongi liked them.  His long, slender fingers looked more like wavy lines when he straightened them.  It was unique.  An interesting characteristic.

Yoongi had always liked interesting better than ordinarily pretty.

The vampire’s touch lingered, though, for just a moment too long and something thick and heavy filled the quiet.

They had kissed.  That had happened.

And now they were lying next to each other on top of the blankets in the nearly dark berth.

And Seokjin was lingering on something that had made Yoongi self-conscious for a long time.  But instead he was looking at him like it was something lovely.

I’m here.

I’m here.

Yoongi closed the small space between them and kissed Seokjin again.

Seokjin kissed him back, his hands moving up to cup Yoongi’s face.  Their lips and tongues moved against each other slowly and their ankles tangled together as they gradually slid closer.

It was the intoxicating feeling of really being with someone.  Of seeing them and being seen.  The safest of havens from the aloneness that always seemed to beat around the edges of reality.  

Clothes came off easily.  There wasn’t much to get rid of, just underwear and t-shirts.  And it was just as easy to let Seokjin kiss anywhere he wanted on Yoongi’s naked skin.  His full lips felt beautiful and his too small waist fit perfectly into Yoongi’s hands, a wispish feature on a man who was anything but.

Kisses were good and wonderful but it was a night to be close and bodies could be so, so much closer.

*     *     *

Yoongi woke up with a headache.  Not a pounding hang-over but the kind of a headache that could have come from staying up all night just as easily as it’d come from drinking too much.

He groped around in the pitch black berth until he found his phone.  There wasn’t any service here but he wanted to see the time and maybe have enough light to find his underwear.  Luckily, the bed filled the small space, so it didn’t take long, even if they were annoyingly on the far side next to Seokjin.

Yoongi paused briefly before reaching over to grab them.  Seokjin was asleep or whatever it was that counted as sleep for a vampire.  He lay perfectly still, without so much as a flutter of an eyelash or the gentle rise and fall of a breath.

He looked dead.  It’d unnerved the crap out of Yoongi the first time they’d done an overnight trip but now it just was.  Normal, if that was a thing that even existed anymore.

Underwear and t-shirt retrieved he slipped out of the berth and grabbed the pants where he’d let them fall on the floor.  After getting dressed he popped open the mini-fridge to see what it’d been filled up with.  Yoongi had given up on packing his own lunch once he realized that Seokjin was never going to stop loading up on piles of food, whether he asked him to or not. 

It reminded Yoongi of an overly affectionate owner overfeeding a pet.

He settled on a spam triangle gimbap and a can of coffee and headed up to the deck.  The sun hit his face and the dull pounding behind his eyes grew more insistent.  He collapsed onto one of the deck chairs, wishing he’d grabbed a pair of sunglasses on his way up.  But he really didn’t want to head back down into the pitch dark cabin.  Instead he cracked open the can of coffee and sipped at it slowly while he opened his eyes a bit at a time until they adjusted.

The world was just as empty as it had been the night before, just ocean and sky, but it was infinitely more alive now than it had been then.  Sunlight danced and sparkled on top of the water and wispy clouds drifted high up in the sky.  He knew if he glanced over the side there would be things to see in the water, not just an impenetrable obsidian sea.

It was the waking world.  The real one.

Not the world where Yoongi had just slept with one of his best friends.

He closed his eyes again and let his head flop back on the deck chair.

Fuck had he been fucking thinking.

That was a dumb question, though.  He’d known exactly what he’d been thinking.

Yoongi forced himself to sit up again, threw back a large gulp of coffee, and started pulling the wrapping off the gimbap.  

It’d felt good.  Of course it had.  Kissing him had felt good.  It all felt good.

Except this part now where Yoongi had to think about what was going to happen next.  This part felt awful.

He picked at the seaweed, eating little bits off his finger tips while he thought.

Yoongi wasn’t Namjoon.  Yeah, they had a lot in common but they also had a lot that was different, too, and Yoongi knew this was a big one.  He couldn’t deal with a life in the nighttime.  He couldn’t try to figure out a life with someone undead as a partner.  It wasn’t like fucking once meant anything that big but…

Yoongi was Yoongi and he was just one stupid, weak, achingly human man.  And every last bit of himself, down to the smallest mitochondria floating around in his cells, knew that was true.  And if anything along that avenue was cut off…

A few grains of sticky rice stuck to one of his fingers and he put the gimbap down, his stomach descending into an empty churn.  He walked the few steps to the edge of the boat and flicked the rice into the water.

Might as well be a snack for a fish.  One sort of good thing he could do today.

Yoongi watch the rice disappear almost immediately and let the hypnotic rise and fall pull him into a blank space, staring mindlessly down into the endless depths of the sea. 

He’d just completely fucked up their friendship.  Probably permanently.

Because of course he had.

Because that was what Yoongi always did, wasn’t it?  That was why his friends from home and college had drifted away.  Because he was too distracted to answer a text.  Too busy to make a phone call.  Too scared to reach back out after time.  Drowning in anxiety just at the thought of having to endure the entirely warranted disappointment and anger he was sure he deserved.

He’d screwed up almost every friendship he ever had.  Sex wasn’t usually a part of it but why not add it to the million ways he fucked things up.

Yoongi’s mind replayed the whole previous night looking for the moment where he’d taken a left turn and started fucking everything up.  

He always did this.  He always fucked things up.  

Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed Seokjin past where he was comfortable.  He shouldn’t have picked at him for details.  He shouldn’t have let himself translate closeness into someplace he shouldn’t and couldn’t go.  If he hadn’t done any of it they wouldn’t have gotten into that weird intimate space where Yoongi just. fucked. up.

Yoongi squeezed his eyes shut, like maybe if he didn’t have to look at the world it wouldn’t hurt quite as badly knowing that Seokjin was about to be gone, not his friend.  That he was about to lose this person he’d gotten so, so attached to.  He scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes like he was punishing himself.  Like he was trying to summon an angry and judgemental version of the stars that had seemed so forgiving last night.  He deserved it because this hurt so bad because he couldn’t…he didn’t have it in him…he was too weak…  A hand flew to his chest and pressed against his breastbone.  It felt like his lungs were clenching and it was getting harder and harder just to breathe.  Because he finally thought he’d landed somewhere he belonged, strange as it might sound.  He thought he was finally done with running and pushing people away.  But everyone was going to find out and he was going to lose everyone in his life…

The boat felt like it was tipping sideways, like the world was sliding.  Yoongi opened his eyes again and saw that confusingly the ocean was placid as ever but of course it was but he was  struggling to gulp down hair, his voice making hitching noises in his throat.  

Some small, sharp voice in the back of his mind told him he had to short-circuit this now.  That he had to push his thoughts away enough to stop the cycle his body was tumbling towards or else this was going to get even worse.  

He clumsily stumbled over to the cooler and dropped to his knees in front of it.  He was consciously trying to push air into his lungs now but felt like he was barely making a dent.  The world was threatening to tip again, angry and frightening.

There were a few beer bottles still in what had once been a chest of ice and was now just a pool of icy water.  He gracelessly pulled the bottles out and dropped them on the deck.  He could feel his heart beating in his chest and the blood pounding in his ears.  

No more gentle waves against the boat.  Just the awful drumbeat of his own failure.

He forced himself to take the largest breath he could and then plunged his face into the ice water.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5…

He counted holding on to his breath

6, 7, 8, 9, 10…

He the desperate gasps for breath were gone and all that was left was his heart, powerfully jack-rabbiting away.  

11, 12, 13, 14, 15…

The ice water was quiet.  He couldn’t hear anything else.  Not the sea, not his breath.  Just silence and that thrum-thrum-thrum.

16, 17, 18, 19, 20…

He could feel his heartbeat slowing.

21, 22, 23, 24, 25…

Decelerating like someone was tapping a break, retreating back to where it should live in his chest.

26, 27, 28, 29, 30.

Yoongi pulled his head up, coughed out the breath he’d been holding, and inhaled deeply.  A large, normal, breath that went into his lungs without being forced.  Then he fell backward and lay splayed out on the deck.  He felt shaken out and empty now, all of his muscles slack and drained of the will to make even the smallest movement now that the adrenaline was leeching out of his system.

He stared up at the blue sky and focused on a high and wispy cloud floating by, keeping his eyes locked on it as it drifted.  He was a little torn between loathing having an anxiety disorder and being grateful that he’d had at least a few tools to manage it now.  He wasn’t even close to ready to think back to the thing that had started the panic attack, though, so he stared at the cloud instead and decided that feeling both at once was fine.

The sun felt warm and sweet on his face, gentle in a way that seemed to belong to late spring.  Like an apology for winter.  Like a sleepy lover, close and comforting before the harsh light of summer set in.

Even so, Yoongi was pale enough to make white bread look tan and it wasn’t long before he could feel a sting settling into his cheeks.

The sun was stronger out here, no matter what the season he reminded himself.  The rays bouncing off the water were more intense and damaging against his skin.

For a moment he thought about just laying there for the rest of the afternoon and burning to a crisp.  He could picture the angry red shades his skin would turn and just how much it would hurt in every position.  Hell, if he had enough time left in the day, he could probably end up with a few good blisters on top of it.

It seemed like a fitting punishment.  He imagined the pain would provide a welcome distraction from the consequences of his actions.  He pictured the sense of relief that would come from knowing he deserved it.

But Seokjin was the one who made sure to pack sunscreen.  And he’d probably be pissed if Yoongi let himself get torched in the sun.

It was just enough to make Yoongi peel himself off the deck.  He went back down to the cabin.  He brushed his teeth.  Washed his face.  Put on a clean shirt.  Found the sunscreen and his sunglasses and headed back up to the deck.  

After thoroughly lathering his exposed skin he picked up the beer bottles he’d unceremoniously tossed out of the cooler and put them back in the icy water so they wouldn’t heat up in the sun.  Then he sat and calmly watched the ocean, forcing himself to methodically eat the gimbap and drink the rest of the coffee.

His blood sugar usually dropped after a panic attack.  Even though he still didn’t have an appetite it made him feel better.

And then he went back for another can of coffee and waited.

Ordinarily he’d pass the time before Seokjin got up reading or doing a little fishing by himself.  He didn’t have it in him to do either of those things right now, though.  Instead he stared out at the horizon and thought.

He supposed if they were lovers, he’d probably head back to the berth before Seokjin woke up, either to watch him wake up or cuddle him until he woke up a bit early so they could exchange little nothing conversations in the dark.

Or not.  Yoongi realized he’d never seen a vampire wake up, let alone Seokjin.  Who knew what that looked like.  Given how very unalive Seokjin looked sleeping, Yoongi had to wonder if him waking up was something entirely outside Yoongi’s frame of reference.

Yoongi caught a glimpse of something small flying across the horizon.  It was too far for him to be sure but it looked like some kind of gull.

He lifted his coffee toward it like he was making a toast.

“You are way farther out than you should be, buddy.”  He pressed his lips together and looked back at the can, reading the nutritional information even though he didn’t care.  “You and me both.”

*     *     *

“Hey!”  Seokjin’s voice was jaunty and cheerful when he jogged up to the deck from the cabin.  The horizon was still visible around the edges of the world, a dusky gray line of not entirely disappeared light.  “I was good and waited an extra couple of minutes before I came up,” he teased lightly, coming to stand next to Yoongi where he was leaning on the side of the boat and looking out at the water again.

Yoongi laughed lightly despite himself.  He’d spent the last hour or so turning over and over in his mind how this conversation was going to go.  He’d managed to pick the cuticles raw on half his fingers since that afternoon and he half consciously curled his hands up, not wanting Seokjin to see the mess he’d made.

And now he was here and the very first thing Yoongi had wanted to do was laugh.  It was dizzying feeling his anxiety cut through by the natural easiness he felt around Seokjin only to be whipped right back again by the reality that it couldn’t last.

Seokjin turned serious quickly, though, and he made a little sniff, as though he was catching the scent of something beneath the smell of salt and sea and fish.  He gently took one of Yoongi’s hands and pulled it toward him, so he could look at Yoongi’s fingers.  One of his ripped cuticles was bleeding, Yoongi realized, feeling like a kid who hadn’t been good enough at covering his tracks and was being caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Are you okay?”

Yoongi pulled back and shoved his hands in his pockets, out of sight.

“I’m fine, I just have a tendency to… when I’m nervous…”

“I know, that’s why I asked.”

When Yoongi forced himself to look, Seokjin’s face was wearing a look of profound worry, his graceful brows pulled together and his eyes looked sad and confused.  The wind tousled his hair but he didn’t move to brush it aside.

Why couldn’t Yoongi be a different person? 

But he wasn’t.  What he could be, though, was direct.

“We need to talk about last night.”

“Okay.”  Seokjin nodded.  He looked mature.  Adult.  At least Yoongi wasn’t going to feel like he was crushing a lovesick teen.  Although he supposed the man in front of him was the farthest from that Yoongi had or probably would ever meet.

Yoongi shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets, letting his elbows lock into place.  “I know things happened between us.  But I can’t.  I can’t go any further.”  He stared down at the worn wood of the deck.  He wondered if he’d ever see it again.  Maybe he’d gotten a little more attached to the boat than he’d thought.

“Okay.”

The response was light and simple.  Just.  Okay.

Yoongi stayed tense, though, knowing there was no way that was the end.

“You don’t seem okay, though,” Seokjin ventured.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I just…”  Yoongi bit his lips and made himself start over.  “Look, I don’t know how you really feel about it all.  You haven’t said and if you don’t want to, that’s fine.  But I can’t go any further.  With you.  And I think you know me well enough that you know why and I feel shitty about it but there’s just a limit in me about how far I can go with this stuff…”  His face was starting to feel hot and he heard himself sniffle, like he was choking back a sob.  He looked away and smacked his flat hands heavily against the side of the boat in front of him.  “I just always do this,” the self-pitying part came tumbling out now, whether he wanted it to or not.  “I always fuck up my friendships and I’m just really sorry you had to be on the receiving end of that.”

“One,” Seokjin’s voice was completely unshaken next to him, “I am not going to make a sex joke about being on the recieving end and I want points for that later.  Two, I’m pretty sure it takes a minimum of two people to do what we did.”

Seokjin looked almost mischievous when Yoongi looked back at him, holding up a pair of wonderfully crooked fingers where he’d been counting.

“What?”  Seokjin pulled back in half-serious offense.  “Maybe this just my pride talking but I really hope you didn’t think I was just laying there and thinking of England.”

Yoongi let out another laugh without meaning to, although it sounded more like a wet snort than a genuine laugh.

“Don’t make me laugh.  This is serious.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why is this serious?”  Yoongi felt suddenly exasperated.  This was potentially the end of their friendship and Seokjin was standing there in front of him cracking jokes.

“I mean,” Seokjin sighed, “that things happened and things aren’t going to turn into something else, so why do we have to be dramatic about it?”

Yoongi gawked at him.

“You don’t have feelings about it?  You don’t think it’ll make things weird?”

“Yes, I have feelings,” Seokjin said a little tartly. “And I guess it could make things weird unless we decide it doesn’t and move on with our lives.  But frankly, I’d really like to go with number two and to be honest it pisses me off a little that we fuck once and you want to call off our whole friendship!”  Seokjin clamped his mouth shut, like he was cutting off his emotional crescendo like he hadn’t meant to let it all out to begin with.

Yoongi didn’t move, he just stared.  His stupid, self-pitying insides were churning and yelling at him for not really thinking through how it could look or feel from the other side.

It brings up this fear I have, like I’m temporary.  Like people see me as just floating through their lives.

“I’m sorry.”  His voice came out softly.  Barely a whisper above the waves.  If Seokjin hadn’t been Seokjin, he wasn’t sure if he’d even hear it.  “I’m sorry,” he said again, at a normal human volume this time.  “I shouldn’t have jumped to a bunch of conclusions without talking to you.”

“No…”  Seokjin glanced away a little awkwardly.  “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“No, here’s the thing,”  Yoongi’s voice picked up and he suddenly felt a both a little braver and more vulnerable all at once, ready to explain himself.  “I have really bad anxiety.”

“I know.”  There was that little non-judgemental nod Yoongi had seen so many times.

“No,” Yoongi pushed.  “The thing is that when I screw things up with someone, my first, second, and third thought is that I should just run away.  And I think…” he took a deep breath.  Fuck this was surprisingly hard.  “I think I just realized that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“Oh.”  It was a thoughtful little sound.  Seokjin took a moment, clearly working something out in his head and then gave a half nod to himself, clearly satisfied with whatever he’d come up with.

“Will you make a deal with me?  If you promise you won’t leave me, I won’t let you run away.”

It occurred to Yoongi after Seokjin said it that it sounded paradoxical.  But Yoongi knew what he meant.  

It was a sad thought, two broken men promising to keep each other from their worst tendencies.  But it was a wonderful one, too, just because of the idea that maybe they could.

Yoongi wiped away a couple of tears before they could escape his eyes.

“Deal,” he said finally.  “I promise.”

Seokjin looked tentatively happy but Yoongi was suddenly done.  Whatever had seemed impossible to navigate had been navigated and they’d landed safely, maybe even safer than they’d been before.

He pulled the vampire into a hug and Seokjin embraced him back without hesitation.

They stood there on the gently rocking boat, holding one another.  When he opened his eyes, Yoongi could see the moon over Seokjin’s shoulder.  The tiniest sliver of a crescent appearing after the darkest night.  He watched it until the heavy feelings of the moment finally seemed to take a cue and slipped back, just a little.

“Come on,” Seokjin said, pulling back and clapping a hand on Yoongi’s bicep.  “Let’s catch some fish.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi grinned.  “Sounds good, Old Man.”

*     *     *

Getting back into Seokjin’s apartment was a challenge.  Because for some reason they’d decided to try and bring everything back up in one trip.  

Seokjin awkwardly tried to juggle an armful of gear and bags while he tried to put in the keycode.  

Unfortunately, even ancient vampires only have two hands.  

After standing on the side and trying not to get too much entertainment (but still pretty entertained) out of watching Seokjin struggle, Yoongi finally put down what he was carrying and elbowed Seokjin out of the way so he could type in the code himself.

“Jungkookie, we’re home!”  Seokjin bellowed the second he walked in the door.  

A distracted “hey” came back from the living room, followed by what sounded like some mumbled swears.  Curious, they left everything in the entryway and went into the apartment.

Jungkook was kneeling by the edge of the rug, scrubbing furiously at a spot with a bottle of carpet cleaner next to him.

“What did I say about the rug?”  Seokjin asked, crossing his arms in mock disapproval.

“I spilled something, sorry.”

Yoongi was ready to take the explanation at face value but then Seokjin turned to him and sighed.

“Undead kids and their parties.”  He shook his head and made a clicking noise with his tongue.

Luckily, it looked like Jungkook didn’t want to go down that conversational route as much as Yoongi and changed the subject, putting on a cheerful face.

“How was your weekend?”

Seokjin and Yoongi glanced at each other and gave each other a knowing shrug.

“Fun,” Yoongi said.

“I caught a tuna.”

“Drank too much.”

“I would have won at submarine if the glass hadn't fallen over.”

“I managed not to get sunburned.”

“Did some more fishing.”

“You guys are so boring and so cute at the same time.”  Jungkook grinned at them.  “I love it.”