Chapter Text
Yoongi sits in the alley for a long time after, for whatever measure of long, for whatever meaning of time. The rain eases to a sulky grey fuzz, pearling in his hair and drawing long, shivery fingers down the back of his neck. When he tips his head back he can see the runoff spill down the gutters, over the fire escape. It’s nearly beautiful, droplets fractal and glittering in the buzzing light.
He barely feels the knife anymore, honestly. The tacky damp of his blood blurs into the sodden soak of rain until they could be one and the same. Down at the mouth of the alley, the street is loud with nightlife, but here, everything’s quiet, still except for the muted plinking and the low rumble of the bar against his back. Here, he’s alone.
The smell of beer and varnish rises faint and familiar over the rain and the sour rot of the garbage bins. Any time, any place, that’s the same. Hyunwoo always swore you could navigate by that shit, sixteenth century or twenty-sixth. Yoongi preferred the later ones—less chance of stepping in horse crap on your way to drink after the end of a job. And there was no need to worry about getting stuck when you were sometime post-jumptech.
But here he is. Sodden and stabbed and stuck with the afterburn of his missed jump home seared across his retinas every time he closes his eyes, so he doesn’t. It’s boring watching raindrops race down the side of the dumpster he’s tucked himself behind to lick his wounds, but it’s better than the memory Kihyun’s face and the click-boom flare of jumptech dragging everyone back to their proper time.
Everyone except for him.
It’s not their fault. The setup had been bad from the start—one of those freelance gigs, the sort that always went sideways sooner or later. He’d just been banking on later, on riding his luck a little longer. But even his luck had given it up as a bad job, and now he’s somewhen in the early twenty-first century with a fabricated ident card he hasn't checked yet, someone else’s knife, and no way home.
The building at his back quakes with the thrum of a bass and pounding drums. It feels a little like a jump, the full-body shudder before the fall. That hurts far more than the knife, which he’s going to have to do something about. Or not. He could just stay here until he wears away to nothing, some unclaimed and unwanted body in Busan’s morgue. Then he could really be a ghost, timeless, haunting this ugly stretch of alley until he’s born a couple hundred years from now to live out this stupid, pointless loop all over again.
He always did love a paradox.
Somewhere nearby, a door creaks open. The beer-and-varnish smell thickens, and he gets a full blast of the music, deep and pulsing and satisfying in his gut. There’s a silver lining, at least—the twenty-first century has some good music. A hundred and one early-millennium hits to bleed out to.
He’s contemplating that with a heaping of brittle humor when the lid of the dumpster he’s tucked himself behind flips open with a startling clang of metal against brickwork. He jumps, jarring his leg, and oh, oh fuck, he definitely feels the knife now.
He groans, fingers curling into the wet of his jeans. Trying to curl, anyway; his hands are stiff and numb and swollen around the knuckles, and mostly they just press ineffectually against the denim. The dumpster lid drops with a clang that he feels in his teeth and his neck and the soles of his feet, and a boy appears.
“Oh,” he says, surprised. “Um. Sir?”
He’s got the biggest eyes Yoongi has ever seen, dark and doe-like, peering out from a curtain of equally-dark hair. He glances back over his shoulder in the direction of the door and the thin, silver swing of an earring glints near his jaw. He clears his throat and looks back at Yoongi. “Sir, you can’t be back here. Do you need me to call someone?”
That makes Yoongi laugh. “I’m not drunk,” he says, voice hoarse from disuse. The boy pauses, then inches a little closer. He’s got a trash bag in one hand, black and bulging. Must be late. Must be nearly closing time.
“Are you alright?”
Yoongi snorts. Alright isn’t the word he would use. Alright is pretty damn far from the word he would use, actually, but it’s hardly some local barback’s problem. He waves a hand at the kid, a universal and trans-temporal gesture for forget about it.
It’s a mistake, because his fingers are red with blood, and the buzzy back lights of the bar don’t do nearly enough to hide it. That’s not fair, honestly. Most of it isn’t even his.
Then again, most of tonight hasn’t exactly been fair. Most of the past month hasn’t been fair, relatively speaking, for the subjective measure of a month, but tonight—
If only he could go back and warn himself. What good is a time traveler who can’t travel through time?
The boy drops the trash bag, a tinkling crunch of broken bottles and splintered plastic. His eyes are fixed on the knife hilt lodged comfortably in Yoongi’s thigh, and it’s far too late to do anything about it now, but he tries anyway.
“Listen,” he starts. It’s pointless. The boy is already dropping down to his knees.
Yoongi flinches back but there’s nowhere to go, pinned between the wall and the dumpster. He hopes the kid’s not going to pass out. That would be the last thing he needs, a local keeled over in the blood and rain.
“Look, kid—”
“What happened?” he asks, hands fluttering like he wants to touch but won't, and oh, it’s worse than squeamishness, it’s concern. Yoongi nearly laughs, except there’s nothing funny about this. Just his fucking luck. “Who did this to you? Shit, hang on, I’ll call an ambulance—”
He halfway to his feet before Yoongi can get his hand—red and wet and filthy—around the boy’s wrist, yanking him back down hard enough that he winces, catching himself against the pavement.
“No ambulance,” he says. The boy pauses, staring at his hand and his leg and his face. The light overhead reflects in his eyes, a hundred hundred stars. Yoongi hasn’t seen stars like that in ages. The boy gently pries his fingers off.
“You need to go to a hospital.”
“No. No ambulance and no hospitals.”
“Sir—”
Yoongi wets his cracked lips. “Please.”
He hesitates. Yoongi breathes through his teeth, all his numbness whisked away, and tips his head back against the wall. It’s not like he gets a choice, anyway. He’s in no shape to fight anyone. But he hasn’t got money or papers or a presence in this century, except for his fabricated ID, and questions are the last thing he needs.
“Okay,” says the boy, and Yoongi forces his eyes open. He’s not sure when he closed them. The boy wets his lips and nods to himself. “Okay. Yeah.” Yoongi frowns at him, but he’s talking to himself, not Yoongi. “Hyung’s gonna kill me.”
“What—?” starts Yoongi, and then the boy hooks an arm under his shoulder, completely ignoring the way he flinches at the contact, and drags him up. Yoongi stumbles, leg screaming, and goes promptly limp when it won’t bear him even a little. The boy holds him upright despite his sudden wet-sack weight, barely straining.
Any other time, Yoongi would be impressed. Right now, he’s only in pain. He wheezes like a punctured balloon.
“Sorry,” says the boy, pulse pounding everywhere he’s pressed up against Yoongi. “My boyfriend is a nurse.” Yoongi begins to protest, but the boy drowns him out. “No hospitals, I know, but he can help.”
“Are you kidnapping me?” Yoongi pants around the throbbing of his leg, a little hysterical. The boy shuffles them forward, then gives up entirely and hooks an arm under Yoongi’s knees. The world tilts sideways for a horrible, nauseating moment, and then he’s being cradled, like a sleeping child brought in from the car.
“I’m not trying to,” says the boy. Yoong glances up at his chin and the curve of his mouth, almost wry, as the boy looks down at him. The entire night sky is in his eyes. “Is this okay?”
Yoongi has nothing, nobody. He's out of time in all senses of the phrase. If this is the end of him, it’s a kinder one than he expected.
“Yeah,” he replies. “This is okay.”
The boy lives close, at least. There’s an interminable, awkward huff up to the second floor of the apartment complex, then they’re standing in front of a door just like a dozen others along the breezeway, the city a glittering spread behind them.
“The code is zero nine one zero,” says the boy.
“You really shouldn’t be giving strangers your door code,” says Yoongi, but he plugs it in dutifully and the latch clicks. The boy kicks it gracelessly inwards and deposits Yoongi, wobbly but upright, in a small, neat entrance of a small, neat apartment.
The boy goes through the bother of shedding his apron—ruined, now—and shoes while Yoongi stands there, staring at the coat pegs and the umbrella stand and the slice of a minuscule living room, a battered red couch and fairy lights and a wide window with the curtain drawn back looking out over the night.
Yoongi stares. It never gets so dark back home, light pollution of the city casting everything in a perpetual smoggy haze. What catches his attention most, though, is the boy on the couch, blond hair spilling over one arm of the sofa. He holds an old-fashioned handphone above his face, mouth pursed and nose scrunched at whatever he’s reading, washed out by the glare of the screen. The door clicks shut behind them.
“You’re home early, baby,” says the boy, attention fixed on his screen. “Did Hobi-hyung cover your what the fuck?”
He drops the phone on his face. In spite of everything, Yoongi snickers.
“I didn’t know what to do.” The boy behind him ducks under Yoongi’s shoulder to help bear his weight. The other one pretzels around on the couch to stare at them, mouth agape and hair sticking up in every direction.
This would be hilarious, Yoongi thinks if he weren’t dripping blood and rain water all over the entrance of their tiny, tidy apartment.
“You call the police,” says the other boy, untwisting. “You call an ambulance, Jungkook, what the fuck.” He’s moving, though, striding across the living room and hooking an arm under Yoongi’s other shoulder. He’s surprisingly strong for his slight stature, half dragging Yoongi across the open living room to the kitchen table where he puddles morosely over a chair and onto off-white tile.
“He didn’t want one,” argues the starry-eyed boy. Jungkook. “I wasn’t going to leave him, hyung.”
“He’s a person, not a cat. You can’t just take him home with you. Do you even know his name?”
Jungkook opens his mouth and closes it again. The other boy throws his hands up and points a finger at Yoongi.
“If you’re a serial killer or something,” he says, “I’m faster and meaner and I’ll kill you first. Got it?”
“Noted,” says Yoongi, even though he sort of doubts it. The boy’s eyes narrow, like he can hear the skepticism.
“Do you have a name?”
“Yoongi,” he says, instead of something prickly. And then, because his mother raised him right despite his best efforts, he adds, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jungkook chimes in. “Jimin-hyung’s a nurse. He can help.”
“You and I are going to have a serious conversation about what my job entails,” Jimin says to Jungkook, and then he sighs. “Go get the first aid kit.”
Jungkook vanishes down a short hall on the opposite side of the living room, and Jimin appraises Yoongi carefully. Yoongi watches him clock the knife and his bloodied knuckles and the bruising on his face. Whatever conclusion he arrives at, it softens his edges, eases his scowl. Yoongi wonders if he looks that pathetic or if he’s as soft a touch as his roommate.
“Yah,” he says, and the boy’s eyes jump back up to his face. “It’s not that bad.”
“I’d hate to see the other guy,” Jimin returns, moving towards the sink to wash his hands. Yoongi snorts.
“Yeah, you would. Your roommate’s pretty stupid, y’know.”
“Boyfriend,” Jimin corrects breezily, knocking the tap off with his wrist. “And I’m the one who’s gonna patch you up. Doesn’t that make me pretty stupid too?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, and Jimin’s mouth jumps open in affront. Yoongi grins at him, lolling and lazy. “Do you make a habit of this, Jimin-ssi?”
“Helping people who need it? I make a point to try, Yoongi-ssi.”
That wipes the smirk off his face, and his retort is cut off by Jungkook’s return. He carries a battered old shoebox in his hands, setting it on the table and popping the lid to reveal a surprisingly expansive selection of medical supplies.
“I used to box,” says Jungkook at the surprise on Yoongi’s face, like that explains it. Jimin peels on a pair of gloves and pokes through the container, emerging with a pair of scissors and a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“How attached are you to these pants?” he asks. Yoongi blows out a long, slow breath and closes his eyes.
One pair of ruined jeans, six stitches, some antiseptic and a couple plaster later, Yoongi finds himself deposited in a cramped cube of a bathroom. Jungkook thoughtfully sets a towel down over the closed toilet lid as Jimin eases him down. There are fresh clothes at the edge of the sink and towels on top of the laundry hamper, and Jimin has already given him a lecture about getting his stitches wet.
“Though I don’t see why you won’t let me help,” he huffs as he draws a bath, testing the temperature of the water. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Please get out,” says Yoongi with the last of his patience. They do, but not before Jungkook points out where he can find extra towels and Jimin insists he should make as much of a mess as he needs to get himself cleaned up. That seems backwards, but Yoongi’s far too tired to point out the contradiction.
When the door finally shuts behind them, he muddles through the indignity of shedding his boxers and wriggling free of his shirt. He heaves himself up to perch on the lip of the tub and gives himself a thorough scrub, shivery and exposed. The water is warm, at least, lapping around his ankles. It takes him three tries to figure out how to work the showerhead, and he maybe gets the stitches a little damp, but when it’s all said and done, he dries himself and bundles into the borrowed clothes with relief. They’re dryer-warm and smell nice, light and clean. He tucks his nose into the collar and breathes something that’s not blood or antiseptic or garbage.
When he cracks the door open, the telltale sizzle of cooking food greets him. Voices drift out from the kitchen, too muted to make out the conversation. Yoongi contemplates looking around the rest of the apartment—there’s only one other door, which must be a bedroom—but the creak of the floorboards gives him away, chatter cutting out as soon as he steps out of the bathroom.
“Yoongi-ssi?” says Jungkook, appearing in the entrance of the hall. He reaches out to help Yoongi walk. “Here, come on. Hyung’s cooking.”
“At this hour?”
“For you,” Jungook says, helping him along. He must be an awful dead weight, but Jungkook doesn’t complain. “We made up the couch.”
Yoongi blinks at him. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why,” frowns Jungkook, gently leading him forward until he can sit on the edge of the couch, which has been set out with sheets and a blanket, and the kindness of it is a tender, swelling ache in Yoongi’s chest. It turns all his outsides sharp, prickly. He frowns up at Jungkook.
“You already patched me up. Why the fuck would you let me stay?”
Jungkook only looks more confused. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Yoongi opens his mouth and closes it again. “You— I’m a stranger. You can just invite me into your house.”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Jimin, like that’s a ridiculous thing to suggest. “We’re not kicking you out onto the street.”
“You could,” counters Yoongi. “You should. Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to bring home strangers?”
Irritation passes over Jimin’s face. “It’s three in the morning. Where would you go?”
Yoongi doesn’t have an answer. It strikes him all sudden and sideways, unbearable. Where would he go? He has nowhere and nothing and nobody. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and lets his nails find the soft inside of his thumb until that hurts more than the tenderness in his chest or the cresting wave of everything he's just lost.
“You should eat something at least,” says Jimin, gentler. “You lost a lot of blood. Do you want me to feed you?”
“No,” Yoongi huffs, thin and hoarse. Jimin hums and holds out a bowl of something steaming, chopsticks balanced over the top. “You don’t need to do this.”
“It’s just leftovers,” Jimin says. “Jungkookie, make sure he doesn’t fall asleep until he’s eaten at least half of that.”
“Sure,” Jungkook hums, perched on the edge of the table and watching him.
Yoongi ignores his stare, frowning down at some kind of stew, plucking out a bit of cabbage. He stares at it for a moment. When was the last time he had a real vegetable?
It’s hot on his tongue, flavors exploding, and oh, he’s hungry. He hadn’t realized.
“So,” says Jungkook. The sink runs in the kitchen. “Um. How did you get stabbed?”
Yoongi chokes on the stew. Something crashes in the other room.
“Jungkookah!”
“You told me to keep him awake!”
“I didn’t tell you to traumatize him!”
“It’s okay,” Yoongi says, coughing. “I’m plenty traumatized already.”
“Sorry,” says Jungkook. Yoongi shakes his head. When he glances up, the boy is all eyes.
“It’s fine,” he finds himself saying. “I’ll tell you later.”
He perks up. “You’ll stay?”
Yoongi plucks out another bite of food. Pork fat melts over his tongue. He chews slowly.
He could. It would be easy. Like sitting down in the alley, limp and loose and empty, letting the rest of the world pass him by. It’s not like he has anywhere else to go. If it’s this or the rain, at least he’ll be dry.
He swallows hard and nods.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jungkook smiles. Yoongi pins his focus on the bowl balanced over his good knee and ignores it.
He’s scraping the bottom of the bowl when the exhaustion hits, sudden and swamping. The world dims around him, everything heavy and taffy-stretched and slow. Jungkook catches the bowl before he can drop it, whisking it off to the kitchen. Jimin appears in his place, setting out a glass of water and a pair of painkillers.
“In case you need them,” he says quietly, kneeling in front of the couch. The kitchen light flicks off, leaving him smeared in shadow. “We’ll be down the hall. Yell if you need something. I mean it.”
“You don’t have to do this for me,” Yoongi says. Jimin’s mouth quirks.
“Don’t worry about it so much, Yoongi-ssi.”
Jungkook reappears. He sets a hand on Jimin’s shoulder with a familiarity that speaks to an easy, lived-in affection, and Jimin wraps a palm over it, leaning into his touch. They share a glance like a conversation, and Jimin rises.
"Do you need anything?" asks Jungkook. Yoongi shakes his head, a little dumb, a little aching. Jungkook's hand stays fixed on Jimin's shoulder. Jungkook smiles at him.
"Okay. Sleep well, Yoongi-ssi."
“Don’t forget to yell,” says Jimin, and they disappear down the hall to the bedroom, the door cracked open in their wake. Yoongi eases himself down onto the couch, which is formless and giving in the way of old, well-loved furniture. The blankets are soft under his fingers and warm when he pulls them up to his chin. A whisper of light slips through the crack of the bedroom door, cutting a knife-edge line across the hallway. He lies there in the half-dark, listening to them move around, the indistinct murmur of conversation, the sound of two lives twined together.
Eventually the light turns off, and the conversation stops, and the movement stills. Eventually Yoongi finds himself alone in the dark again, warmer and drier and adrift in a time that isn’t his own with no way home.
The rain carries on in the morning, rat-a-tatting against the window panes, a backing track to Jimin and Jungkook's murmuring in the kitchen. They stand curled in towards each other, watching as something warms on the stove. Yoongi hovers at the threshold, braced against the wall, hesitant to interrupt. Jungkook notices him first, eyes wide as he nudges Jimin.
“Yoongi-ssi? You shouldn’t be up. You’ll tear your stitches.” Jimin’s tucked into a set of navy blue scrubs, frowning as Jungkook helps Yoongi into a chair. The kitchen has been cleaned up, no sign of blood or water or last night’s impromptu surgery. It’s just as small as the rest of the apartment, counter worn and appliances crowding the backsplash, which may have once been red but has faded to a muddled sort of maroon.
“I’m alright,” says Yoongi, nodding his thanks to Jungkook. The pain isn’t so bad, and their apartment is tiny. He can reach out in any direction and find something to lean on. Mostly he’s just tired.
A bowl appears in front of him, steaming and savory. Yoongi blinks at Jungkook, who shuffles back to the stove only to be stopped by Jimin's outstretched hand.
“I’ve got it,” he says, pushing up on his toes to get into one of the cabinets, pulling out a pair of bowls. His socks are bright yellow below his scrubs. “Go sit.”
Yoongi has had his share of strange meals over the millennia. Odd foods, odd forms; the longer the jump, the less familiar things get. But no edible packaging or banquet-in-a-bottle gimmick holds a candle to this, tucked around a table with a pair of welcoming strangers, sharing soup and rice as the rain shuttles down. He keeps waiting to feel out of place, like reaching for the next step down the stairs, but the discomfort is nowhere to be found. It puts him off-kilter.
“Did you sleep alright?”
Jungkook stares at him expectantly. Jimin pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth, and sets it down again. Yoongi blinks down at his hands, the red scrape of his knuckles. His split lip stings a little from the heat of the soup.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”
He thinks he might have slept even longer if it hadn’t been for the voices in the kitchen. The grey waterweight of the rain and the fog make him want to crawl back beneath sweet-smelling blankets and doze forever.
“How are you feeling?” asks Jimin. His gaze is a dozen times sharper than Jungkook’s.
“I’m alright.”
“Stiff?”
“A little.” He’s had worse. Mostly he’s just tired, sludgy with it, mud in his chest and lungs and head. The pain is almost pleasant. Distracting.
“Is there someone we should call for you?” asks Jungkook quietly. “Let them know you’re alright?”
Yoongi breathes in long and slow and silent through his nose. Kihyun’s face—
“No,” he says. It comes out rough. “There’s no one.”
Jungkook only nods. “Okay.” He returns to his soup, hair falling in his face. Jimin, though, keeps staring at him. Sharp eyes. Not cruel, just— watchful.
Yoongi’s attention flickers just past his ear to the shuttered window behind him, and he returns to his breakfast.
“I have work,” Jimin says after a moment, frown tucked into the corners of his mouth. “Are you two going to be okay for the day?”
Yoongi nearly snorts. “Now you’re worried?”
“About you,” Jimin retorts. “Jungkookie can kick your ass. You were stabbed.”
Yoongi knows. He was there. Still, he throws a doubtful glance at Jungkook. He’s strong, sure, but it’s hard to judge his muscle mass through his baggy clothes. He mostly just looks gentle with his feet tucked up in his chair and his wide, dark eyes.
Not that Yoongi wants to fight anyone. Certainly not either of them, both too kind for their own good. Yoongi doesn’t really want to do anything, except maybe go back to sleep and let the water wash him away. That would be alright—there's nobody here who would miss him.
“We’ll be okay,” Jungkook answers, certain. “Don’t worry about us.”
“I'm just saying, I could call out—“
“Don’t,” Yoongi interjects. They both snap to stare at him, and he shakes his head, appetite disappearing. “Don’t do anything on my account.”
They’ve done more than enough for him. He has no interest in upsetting their lives any further.
“Okay,” Jimin says after a moment. He rises from the table, collecting bowls and cutlery. “I’ll check your stitches when I get home.”
“I won’t stay too long.”
Jimin’s mouth purses, but he doesn’t say anything. Jungkook unfolds himself from the chair.
“It’s raining,” he says quietly. The water drums against the window, rat-a-tat. “You can at least stay until the rain clears.”
He says it like a question, turned up around the edges. Hopeful. Yoongi sets his chopsticks across his bowl and leans back as Jimin collects it. He presses his fingertips against his thigh, ache in his teeth and sludge in his chest. Jungkook watches him. The rain comes down and down and down.
“Sure,” he says. He’s not sure he means it, but it feels good to say it anyway. “Until the rain clears.”
He’s vaguely aware of a farewell in the entrance, the smell of rain and a shivery rush of cold air. Then the door closes and everything goes quiet again. Yoongi sinks deeper into the couch. He imagines sinking straight through the cushions, down into the ground and the muddy earth.
“Do you want me to put something on?” asks Jungkook. Yoongi doesn’t particularly care one way or the other. He hums and lets Jungkook read it as he will.
He takes it as a yes, apparently, because he kneels to fiddle with the vidscreen setup. Something animated appears on the screen, and Jungkook shuffles back to sit on the floor near Yoongi’s shins. Yoongi clears his throat.
“Do you want to sit?”
“That’s okay,” says Jungkook. When he tilts his head back to look at Yoongi, his dark hair spills over the top of the blanket, silky and long. He has a scar on his cheek, tiny little divot of an old injury. “Is it too loud?”
Yoongi shakes his head.
The shush of rainfall and the noise of the movie lull him back to sleep. His dreams are strange, incomplete things: fragments of faces, the click-boom flare and lurch of the jump, the edges of the world turned sideways so he falls off them. In his dreams, hands slip through his fingers and he falls forever, startling himself awake just before he reaches the ground, which in his dream is an ocean, seething dark water dense with waves.
Yoongi stares up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. Fuzzy light struggles through the drumming rain, wrapping the world in softness. Everything is underwater. In the stillness of the apartment, he could be floating. Adrift.
“Yoongi-ssi?”
Jungkook is still sitting on the floor. The movie has ended, screen looping through silent images. He has his phone out, glow gentle against the panes of his face. Yoongi wets his lips.
“What time is it?” he rasps. Jungkook looks down at his phone.
“A little after lunch. Are you hungry?”
He takes quiet, careful stock. His leg hurts. His head too, a low, rolling ache as vast as the ocean. Something sits in his chest, crushing his heart and lungs and ribs. He’s heavy, so heavy. Sodden.
“Yeah,” he lies.
They eat in the living room, seated side by side on the couch. Yoongi pushes his food around his bowl, nibbling on bits of rice. His stomach turns over at the smell, but the warmth is nice. Jungkook watches him, concerns pressed into every line or curve of his face.
“I can make you something else,” he says. Yoongi shakes his head.
“This is fine.”
“Yoongi-ssi—”
“Really.” He pauses and meets Jungkook’s gaze. Dark eyes, gentle concern. It burns. He clears his throat. “It’s good.”
He’s not certain what his face is doing—nothing, he thinks, too heavy and tired to pull on anything convincing—but Jungkook only gives him a careful, searching look and nods.
“Okay.”
Afterwards, he brings Yoongi painkillers and a glass of water to wash them down. The overhead light reflects through the glass, throwing shifting patterns over his legs. The light hurts, a little, makes him aware of his heartbeat thuddathudding in his temples and the back of his skull.
“I’m not a stray, you know,” he says. All of him feels sandpapery, scraped raw and tender. Jungkook sits next to him, toes wiggling in the carpet. His toenails are painted a deep royal blue. He’s warm.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to fuckin’ bother so much. You don’t even know me.”
“That’s easy to fix,” Jungkook says easily. At Yoongi’s look, he frowns. His eyes really are enormous. “It doesn’t feel like a bother. Is it a bother to you?”
No. Yes. Maybe. He doesn’t know. He thinks it should be more of a bother than it is, and the space between should and is unsettles him more than anything.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jungkook says into his silence. “We’re not trying to make you. But if it’s just what you think you should or shouldn’t do, we really don’t mind. It’s okay to need a little help.”
Yoongi snorts, derisive. “Your boyfriend stitched me up in your kitchen at three in the morning.”
“Or a lot of help,” he revises. It startles a laugh from Yoongi, croaking and shuddery. Jungkook’s mouth twitches up. “That’s not such a bad thing, is it?”
Yoongi frowns down at the pills in his palm and tosses them back. Jungkook sets the glass down on the table for him when he finishes with it.
“Get some rest, Yoongi-ssi,” he says kindly. “You don’t have to do anything else. I promise.”
It’s the height of stupidity to trust a promise from a stranger, no matter how kind. Yoongi, fool that he is, trusts him anyway.
The next time he wakes it’s dark, fully and properly, all the lights off, the night still except for the endless patter of the rain. The clock below the television says it’s just past midnight, but he feels as though he hasn’t slept at all, eyelids like grit and headache pulsing away beneath them. His skin is too tight, stiff and tender, and his chest hurts. When he coughs, it comes out like scrap metal, and everything inside him roils.
He swings his feet off the side of the couch. The apartment is small; the bathroom isn’t that far. Vertigo swims in his belly for a moment as he pushes himself upright, but he holds himself still and reaches blindly for the arm of the couch to help hold him up. The dark of the night presses in close. He squeezes his eyes shut against the dizziness and sees Kihyun’s face.
“Fuck off,” he mumbles, stepping forward, and his leg crumples under him.
He hits the ground with a yelp. Pressure twists in his temples and the nausea in his gut presses up his throat. Down the hall, a door bangs open, vibrations rattling in his teeth.
“Yoongi-ssi!”
Light blazes overhead, spiking through his skull. He flinches, eyes screwed shut. Hands grab him and he flinches at that too, disoriented and hurting, but the pressure gentles immediately. The hands lift his shoulders, shift his hips to take pressure off his burning leg. He finds himself sitting on the carpet, back against the couch, a pair of dark eyes peering at him in concern.
“Are you okay?” Jungkook asks, crouched in front of him. His hands flutter about, like he wants to touch and won’t. That’s familiar. His bedhead is a little less familiar, a bird’s nest stuck up in every direction, and his shirt is a size and a half too big and fraying in the collar. All of him looks soft, sleepy. Jimin stumbles up behind him, tying the drawstring of his sweatpants as he leans over Jungkook’s shoulder, hair licked up on one side like he’s been sleeping on it. He’s missing a shirt, and the lean sculpt of his chest is at utter odds with the roundness of his face, soft and puffy with exhaustion.
“What happened?” he demands, edge of panic in his voice. He rakes his hair back, which only makes it stand up worse. There's a bruise just below the juncture of his shoulder the same shape as a mouth. “We heard a crash—”
“Tripped,” Yoongi lies. The light hurts, and so does speaking. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Forget about that,” Jimin dismisses, at the same time Jungkook says, “We weren’t, uh.”
Yoongi can’t say for sure whose face is redder, mostly because he closes his eyes again. A hand touches his forehead and he tries to wriggle back, but there’s nowhere to go. Someone hisses.
“Shit.” That’s Jimin, mumbling to himself. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine,” Yoongi says, feeling decidedly not fine. He scowls up at Jimin and shoves his hand away and is startled to find he’s shaking. The pinch of Jimin’s frown gets tighter, and Jungkook makes a low sound in the back of his throat.
“You have a funny definition of fine,” says Jimin, humor at odds with the expression on his face. “And a fever. What were you trying to do?”
“Bathroom,” winces Yoongi. He clamps his teeth together against another wave of nausea.
“Oh shit,” mumbles Jungkook, and then there’s an arm under his, and then he’s on his knees in front of the toilet, retching weakly as hands card his hair back. There’s barely anything in his stomach to come up, but it’s a long minute before it settles. He rests his head against cool porcelain, wincing as the toilet flushes.
“Sorry.”
“You’re okay.” It’s Jimin, perched on the edge of the bathtub, drawing his fingers through Yoongi’s limp bangs. “Feeling better?”
Yoongi spits into the toilet bowl. “No.” It makes sense, he supposes, that the time sickness would kick in about now—he's been here for a week already, and he's always been sensitive to it. The rain and the injury certainly haven't helped. His delicate constitution, Kihyun likes to say. The memory stings, and he puts it out of mind.
“Can I check your stitches?”
Yoongi sighs. It’s hardly as though he has any dignity left, though, so he lets Jimin shuffle him around to sit on the bathtub and slide his borrowed sweatpants down. He’s cold in a pair of bright blue convenience store boxers, Jimin’s touch careful and chilly as he removes the old bandage. The wound is a puffy underneath the gauze, tender red, but the stitches have held. Small mercies.
“Is he okay?” asks Jungkook quietly, hovering in the doorway. Jimin hums, replacing the bandage.
“He will be.”
That seems presumptuous, Yoongi thinks, shifting his hips to pull his pants back up. Who is Jimin to decide that Yoongi will be alright or not, when Yoongi himself couldn’t possibly say. Jungkook only hums and shuffles into the room, pills in one hand and glass in another. Yoongi takes the medicine while Jimin peels his gloves off and drops them in the trash. The water helps wash away the taste of sick, and with his stomach settled, the exhaustion creeps back in. All of him feels flush, overheated.
“I think we should move you off the couch.”
Yoongi frowns up at him. “To where?”
Jimin blinks back at him. Jungkook curls his fingers in the bottom of his shirt and looks between them, and Yoongi understands. He balks, mouth pulled down into something that must be small and ugly, because that’s how he feels—small and ugly and out of place. Like an improperly set bone, like a misplaced relic. He might laugh if he didn’t feel so very awful.
“No.”
“Yoongi-ssi—”
“Don’t—” A great, cresting wave of misery threatens to drown him. Stupid. He wets his lips. “Don’t worry so much.”
“Yoongi-ssi,” says Jimin, softer. The hands are back in his hair, and he only knows because he can feel it, because he’s closed his eyes against the lump in his throat. “Is it so bad to let us help?”
Yoongi grits his teeth and pulls away from his touch. “I can’t pay you back.”
“Did we ask?” Jimin returns. He’s scowling when Yoongi looks up at him, eyes dark. His hair is still half stuck up, and his eyes are warm. Even through the scowl, his eyes are warm. Yoongi breathes out long and slow and creaky in his lungs.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re very stubborn, Jimin-ssi?”
“Yes,” Jungkook pipes up immediately. “All the time.”
The tense line of Jimin’s shoulders eases a little as he sighs. Jungkook grins, nose a pleased scrunch. Yoongi coughs.
“You’re one to talk,” says Jimin, but there’s no bite to it. He holds a hand out, helping Yoongi upright until Jungkook can take his other side. He feels very small between the two of them, flushed and fragile, and also held. That part aches most of all. “C’mon, Yoongi-ssi. It’s bedtime.”
The fever gets worse, and in sickness, time moves the way he’s accustomed to—unhitched and passing all out of order. People come and go, snapshot. Jimin is there sometimes, and sometimes Jungkook, and sometimes both at once. Sometimes Kihyun is there, but he’s always leaving no matter how much Yoongi calls for him. Sometimes there are hands on him, soothing. Sometimes he even sleeps, lulled by voices at his side and fingers through his hair and the endless, gentle shush of rain.
Time, like this, is endless. Time, like this, slips through his grasp. Time moves past him like falling, like being swept away by the ocean, and Yoongi drifts.
It takes him three days to burn through the worst of the time sickness, which he only knows because that’s what Jungkook tells him when he wakes up to sweat-soaked sheets and sunlight.
“The rain stopped this morning,” he carries on. He’s sitting on the other side of the bed, legs stretched out, back against the headboard. He looks tired in the stark pour of light through the slatted windows. “Guess the sky got tired.”
Yoongi coughs. He feels truly awful, sweaty and sticky and gross. He draws his fingers through sunlight. The scabs over his knuckles have faded. The light catches against the silvery gleam of fresh scars.
“That’s good,” he says, hoarse. “Can’t rain forever.”
Jungkook’s mouth makes a smile down at him. He looks sad.
“Jungkookie?” The door creaks. “You should— Oh. Hyung. You’re awake.”
Yoongi, for a befuddled minute, doesn’t realize Jimin is talking to him.
“Hyung?” The familiarity zings through him.
“Sorry.” Jimin takes half a step forward and pauses, mouth twisted down. There’s a line between his brows, like concern has made a home there. “I mean, Yoongi-ssi—”
“It’s alright,” says Yoongi, surprised to find he means it. “But what makes you think I’m your hyung?”
“We checked your ID,” says Jungkook on his other side. Yoongi turns the other way and finds him twisting his fingers together. “Sorry.”
“I’m not,” says Jimin, but he doesn’t look like he means it, mouth pursed, eyes flicking around the room. “I’m ‘95. Gguk is ‘97. That makes you our hyung.”
Yoongi hums. He doesn’t know what date Hyunwoo put on his ident for this trip, but they’re probably right anyway. That’s the thing about time travel, is that age gets a little relative. Extra days lived in the past and future make it hard to keep proper track of what counts as a year. But hyung feels nice. Feels right.
That’s dangerous, probably, the rightness, but he feels it anyway.
“How are you?” asks Jimin, moving forward again. Yoongi sits up, slowly at first and then more assuredly when the only change is the relief of cool air against his back.
“Better,” he says, peeling his sweaty shirt further from his skin. Sunlight touches his hip, generous.
“If you want to shower,” says Jimin, “we’ll bring you clean clothes.”
“Alright,” says Yoongi, easing his feet off the side of the bed. Jungkook is at his side in an instant, hand against his back, but Yoongi isn’t nearly as unsteady as he has been. His thigh has settled down to a dull throb.
In the bathroom, he unwinds his bandage and traces a wide, careful circle around his stitches. The wound looks better today. Not so angry, not so ugly. The shower spray splutters for a minute when he turns it on before it cascades down. The hot water is a relief through his sweat-streaked hair and over his skin. And outside, the sunshine. Time to go.
A tremulous fear sits under his breastbone, knocking against his heart every second beat. He presses the heel of his palm against it and laughs a little, all crooked and frothy, and gags around something that might be grief. He closes his eyes and sees Kihyun, the one from his feverish dreams, turning his back.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, and then he spits, and then he leans his forehead against the cold-tiled wall of the shower and counts to twelve, twice, and once again backwards. He doesn’t know why it’s so difficult. He wants to sink down and let the water bury him, but the rain has stopped and the sun has split through the grey and he can’t crouch in the basin of the bath because he’ll fuck up his stitches, and he has no doubt that Jimin will gladly come drag him out of the shower buck-ass naked if he fucks with his stitches.
He closes his eyes and breathes, wheezy. Air in, air out. He knows how this works, how this is supposed to work. Lungs and shit, oxygen through capillaries, feeding his heavy, sodden, drifting body. He tips his head back, gets a faceful of water. Takes his time washing the shampoo out. Thinks of the flare of the timejump and the dark of the night and the future stretching out and out and out, all in the right order, days and nights and mornings tipped down one after the other.
All of time is nothing, but a single lifetime swamps him.
When he finally emerges, towel wrapped around his hips, skin pink and steaming, he can smell something cooking. Clothes have been left on a chair just outside the door, a pair of sweatpants that must belong to Jungkook because they’re too long in the leg. The sweater is Jimin’s; he remembers it vaguely through the haze of his fever. It smells sweet. It’s even softer than the 25th century hypo-cottons he usually wears, gentle against his skin. For a minute he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, tips of his hair curling, mouth a sullen slant, draped in clothes too big and too soft for him.
“Well?” he asks his reflection, irritated. His reflection has nothing to say to him. He wrenches the door open and limps out into the hall, hand against the wall, sour-sullen and adrift and gritting his teeth against the knowledge that he can’t stay, no matter how softly these strange-sweet boys treat him. No matter how softly he wants to be treated.
In the churn of his misery, it takes him a moment to realize the great big window in the living room is finally open. It takes him a longer, slower moment to realize that through it, sweeping and endless, is the ocean.
The city tumbles down to the water below, a clutter of boardwalks and docks and quays. Urban sprawl blots out broad sections of seaside, but he can see the horizon and the frothy crest of the surf and the endless blue expanse of it, which steals the breath right out of his lungs. The setting sun sets it all on fire.
“Yoongi-hyung?”
He startles hard enough to jar his leg. Jungkook’s at his side in an instant, arms sure and steady around his waist. He smells sweet too. A little soft, a little warm, like sleepy boy. Yoongi’s forehead knocks forward against his shoulder, nose brushing the collar of his shirt. Jungkook’s arms tighten.
“Hyung?”
“I’m alright,” says Yoongi. He takes a breath, and Jungkook must feel it shudder through him but he doesn’t say anything, only watches Yoongi with those enormous eyes as he lifts his head. “I haven’t seen the ocean in a long time.”
“Oh.” Jungkook blinks at him and then out the window, and a smile graces the crease of his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “Isn’t it nice? Jiminie-hyung found this place. I know it’s a little small, but—” He shrugs, and Yoongi understands.
“It’s very nice, Jungkookah,” he returns, and Jungkook’s smile swells. He takes Yoongi’s hand, and Yoongi looks up to find Jimin standing in the entrance to the kitchen, watching them.
“You should see it in daylight,” he says, and Yoongi swallows down a comment about sunset being daylight already. His eyes are warm. Sharp and watchful and still warm. He holds a hand out towards them.
“It’s nicest in the morning,” adds Jungkook, like sharing a secret. He tugs Yoongi forward, touch and face and voice gentle. “Especially when it’s not raining. You’d probably like it.”
“I probably would,” Yoongi agrees, letting Jimin take his other hand. He doesn’t need it. He can get along fine on his own. But it’s nice not to have to.
“It will still be there,” says Jimin. What a relief, thinks Yoongi, that some things are always true, no matter when you are. “It’s time for dinner. Come eat.”