Work Text:
He and Yoongi had a routine. That was why Taehyung was so irritated on that cold, rainy Wednesday: Yoongi hadn’t sent him a selfie in the morning before work. That’s what they always did since they had officially become boyfriends, on the weekday mornings when they hadn’t stayed over at one another’s apartments. Taehyung sent a selfie as soon as he woke up, since he was the sleep-as-late-as-possible and get-ready-in-two-minutes kind of guy. Then Yoongi, who always got up earlier so that he could get ready at a leisurely pace, sent a selfie right back. Taehyung didn’t mind always looking rumpled and sleepy in his, and he loved seeing how he sometimes caught Yoongi at different parts of his routine, depending on exactly how late Taehyung had left it to fully wake himself up. Yoongi would always take his picture as soon as he got Taehyung’s, no matter what. So sometimes Yoongi was equally rumpled, his hair sticking up at odd angles. Sometimes he was brushing his teeth, sometimes he was still wet from the shower, sometimes he was fully ready to go and walking out his door.
Today, though…he had put a “heart” reaction on Taehyung’s selfie, and then sent nothing in return.
He tried to tell himself it wasn’t a big deal, that it was just a silly little tradition, and it was no big deal if they slipped up one day. So he tried not to sulk. Who knows, maybe Yoongi had gotten a phone call - sometimes emergencies came up at work and they called him to find out what the right buttons were to press to get things back on track. He tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that fretted and gnawed at the idea that it was something much worse even than that - that something was terribly wrong; that he had suddenly fallen ill or injured himself.
One of the guys Taehyung had gone to college with had had a sudden aneurysm one morning. They weren’t friends, so he hadn’t found out until weeks later, from a friend of a friend. The guy’s roommate found him unconscious, and he stayed like that in the hospital for three days, and then he was gone, never having woken up again. It was the sort of thing where nobody could have done anything about it. That’s just life. The rug could get pulled out from underneath you at any moment. Taehyung tried not to dwell on stuff like that. But sometimes he couldn’t help it. He was a worrier.
And Yoongi…if Taehyung was going to be honest, sometimes Yoongi wasn’t the very best at taking care of himself. In Taehyung’s opinion, he often didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t take enough time to eat - relying on smoothies and fast food just to get something crammed down quickly and move on to the next task. He had told Taehyung the story of how he delayed getting checked out when it turned out that he had appendicitis when he was just barely out of his teenage years, and he had told it in a funny way, clearly thinking it was a hilarious story now…but the fact was he had waited until it was almost too late, and then he developed complications after. So Taehyung had not, in fact, been all that amused at the story, of thinking about his cute, sweet, precious boyfriend being scared and in pain, alone in a hospital - even though it had been years and years before they had met.
He was also aware that Yoongi had had other struggles over the years, that he saw a therapist, that he took an antidepressant every day - that he sometimes forgot to take his antidepressant every day. But he didn’t talk to Taehyung about that stuff. Maybe he will when he finds a way to make it sound funny, Taehyung thought ruefully to himself. He did what he could, as merely a boyfriend of not quite eight months standing, coaxed him to come eat together, tempted him to stay cuddled up and sleep late on the weekends. But he also didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, or come off as nagging or clingy. Even if he did want to keep Yoongi wrapped up and covered in kisses, pretty much all the time.
But what if? What if Yoongi was having a bad day? What if he needed Taehyung to reach out and check on him?
Taehyung took a deep breath and sternly told himself to stop it. This was a ridiculously overblown train of thought to have just from not getting a selfie. So he behaved like a mature adult and let it be.
For about five minutes. Then he sent one more text: I’ll come by after work. I’m craving fried chicken, so I’ll bring it! See you then!
By the time he had to put his phone away and start the day at work, there had been no reply. The big problem with Taehyung’s job - managing digital evidence for the local police department - is that it gave him too much time to think. He had just loads of time during the day while huge folders of compressed files got copied from one hard drive to another, or a giant pile of papers was scanned in on one of the all-in-one copiers, or a seized phone was decrypted. So much waiting and babysitting, having to watch progress bars scoot agonizingly slowly across various screens, punctuated every so often with an error dialog.
So he had plenty of time to stew over his thoughts and chew on his lips and worry, worry, worry. He checked his phone at lunchtime - no reply. He checked it when he clocked out at the end of the day - no reply. He didn’t know what to think. He was sure, then, that something must have happened. Something was wrong, indisputably. He tried to convince himself it was a work thing. Yoongi was a Control Systems Engineer at a manufacturing plant, so if some part of the factory had gone down, he would certainly be working nonstop and not have any chance to be on his phone. That had to be what had happened, right? Not something worse?
The only thing he could do then was buy fried chicken and drive to Yoongi’s apartment, and try not to burst into tears or throw up or imagine too many more horrible scenarios on the way.
And then he was there, takeout chicken in a bag slung over his arm. Taehyung knocked on Yoongi’s door, split equally between dread that he was about to be presented with a catastrophe, unease that he was about to be rightfully scolded for blowing a minor situation completely out of control, and terror that he was going to get no answer at all.
Yoongi opened his door, still in the boilersuit he wore to work, looking extremely upset.
“Yoongi, what’s wrong?” Taehyung whispered, clutching the front of his own shirt.
Before Yoongi could answer, a voice called out from inside the apartment.
“Oh, you’re in for it now,” the voice said jeeringly. “Good luck explaining this!”
If Yoongi hadn’t been standing in the doorway right in front of him, Taehyung would have thought that the voice - even sarcastic and angry as it was - was Yoongi’s. It sounded just like him.
“I’m sorry,” Yoongi whispered, not looking Taehyung in the eyes.
“Who’s here?” Taehyung asked, baffled.
Then he took a half step back and put his hands up to his chest, holding up fingers three times in a row to indicate 1-1-9, a questioning look on his face. He was ready to make up a story about needing to go, and then call the police. But Yoongi shook his head, and then stepped back, inviting Taehyung into the apartment.
Taehyung stepped inside, and did a double-take. Sitting on Yoongi’s couch was Yoongi, dressed exactly the same as the Yoongi standing near Taehyung, the same hair and everything, but with a distinctly unfriendly and closed-off expression on his face. Taehyung looked back and forth between the two Yoongis, completely at a loss.
“So...you can see him?” door-Yoongi asked tentatively.
“Yes, of course I can see him,” Taehyung replied, taken aback. “Is this a prank?”
Couch-Yoongi made a scoffing noise.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” he said, looking scornfully at door-Yoongi. “He’s not going to put up with you after this.”
Taehyung stepped all the way inside the apartment and Yoongi closed the door behind him. He took off his shoes. He didn’t look at either of the men in the room with him, trying to process the situation and drawing a complete blank. Yoongi stepped away from him and walked over to the armchair that was to the side of the couch that the other Yoongi was slouched on.
“He was here when I woke up this morning,” door-Yoongi said blankly as he sat down on the armchair, curling into himself and looking small and uncertain. “I thought I was just imagining it, so I tried to ignore him. I went to work and things seemed normal there, but he was still here when I got back.”
“Only you would imagine someone following you around and insulting you,” couch-Yoongi scoffed. “Even your imagination sucks.”
“But I’m not hallucinating, right?” chair-Yoongi asked Taehyung pleadingly. “You can see him and hear him?”
“You already asked that!” couch-Yoongi barked. “How annoying are you going to be? Are you trying to get him to give up and leave before he even puts the food down?”
“I can see him and hear him,” Taehyung said, trying to stay calm. To give himself a moment, he walked over and put the bag of chicken down on the kitchen table, then came out and sat in the other chair next to chair-Yoongi.
“Aren’t you going to explain why you ignored him all day?” couch-Yoongi was taunting chair-Yoongi when Taehyung came back in. “He’s going to start in on that now, you better be ready to explain what a loser you are.”
“I wasn’t sure what was real or not,” chair-Yoongi said hesitantly. “I was afraid if I tried to call or text you, I’d say something weird.”
“Everything you say is weird, dumbass,” couch-Yoongi interjected meanly. “He probably had his best day in months without having to read your stupid-ass comments throughout the day.”
“You still went to work today?” Taehyung asked, ignoring whatever was happening with the other Yoongi’s stream of hatred from the other side of the room, eyeing chair-Yoongi’s work clothes. “Even though you thought you might be hallucinating?”
Couch-Yoongi burst into cruel laughter.
“Yes!” he crowed. “He did! He thought he was in too poor a condition to talk to you, but was fine to do complex tasks on expensive machinery! You can’t make sense of this guy! He’s so fucking stupid!”
“Hey!” Taehyung said, offended, finally turning his head just enough so he could address couch-Yoongi directly. “Don’t say stuff like that!”
“Yeah, yeah,” couch-Yoongi sneered. “I’m the worst. I should be told to shut up all the time. You’re catching on now. Stupid Yoongi and his worthless thoughts and feelings.”
“Just stop,” chair-Yoongi whispered, his head in his hands. “Please stop. Nobody wants to hear that.”
“Yes, you can feel his patience wearing out now already, can’t you?” couch-Yoongi went on, looking back at Taehyung with anger in his eyes. “Do you think he’s figured it out?”
Taehyung looked back and forth between the two versions of his boyfriend, the one who seemed to be filled with so much unwarranted anger and the one beside him who seemed totally defeated. He leaned over, extended his arm, and gently ran his hand over chair-Yoongi’s shoulder, trying to soothe and comfort.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” couch-Yoongi went on, sniping at Taehyung. “He’s such a disappointment. Look at this! You’ve walked into this situation and he hasn’t even tried to explain it. Why are you still here? You can’t possibly think you’re going to get anything worthwhile out of this person?”
Yoongi raised his face out of his hands and looked at Taehyung. He looked absolutely devastated, pleading with his eyes - for what, Taehyung didn’t know.
“Maybe you should leave,” Yoongi whispered to him in a choked voice.
Taehyung’s heart plummeted, feeling more confused and unmoored the longer the conversation continued. He reached out and clutched for Yoongi’s hand, squeezing it in his own, even though Yoongi didn’t react. His hand remained cold, clammy, and unresponsive.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked quietly, trying to massage some life back into the limp hand.
“Of course he doesn’t want you to leave!” couch-Yoongi stated, rolling his eyes. “He’s a selfish idiot who wants you to suffer too!”
Taehyung stared at couch-Yoongi for a moment, and then looked back at chair-Yoongi, who had let his head hang down again. He kept squeezing Yoongi’s hand, despite continuing to get no response to the gesture. Then, he had a sudden thought.
“Is this the kind of stuff that you think of sometimes?” he asked chair-Yoongi gently. "This is what's running in your mind?"
“Yes!” couch-Yoongi yelled immediately, “Yes! It’s a terrible mess in that head, and now it’s out here where you have to hear it until you can’t stand it any more!”
“It’s not just sometimes,” chair-Yoongi mumbled. “It’s all the time.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it,” couch-Yoongi went on. “He doesn’t seem so great now, huh? But then, he probably never seemed all that great to start with.”
“He does seem great to me,” Taehyung argued stubbornly. “Everyone has self-doubt sometimes. There’s no need to be so harsh.”
“Ah yes, now we’ve circled back to shutting the fuck up again,” couch-Yoongi said with relish. “Nobody wants to hear Yoongi’s stupid repetitive internal monologue about how sad he is for no reason and how he beats himself up for every mistake forever and lies awake at night dreading all the things he can’t change. It’s pointless! And endless!”
“That is not what I said. And it’s not pointless,” Taehyung contradicted, still holding chair-Yoongi’s hand as he looked at couch-Yoongi.
It was hard though. He hated seeing his boyfriend’s face twisted up in so much anger and pain. He wished he knew how to help, how to get this horrible version of him to go away and stop tormenting the person he cared so much about.
“It is pointless!” couch-Yoongi went on. “It’s a relentless, repetitive, selfish spiral of self-pity. Sure, you can listen to it all once, and be nice and tell him you understand, and then do it all over again the next time, and the next, but when does it stop? ”
The man on the couch took a deep breath and leaned forward, continuing before Taehyung could interject.
“Never, that’s when,” he spat out. “You’ll have to hear it again, and again, and again, until you’re so sick of it all that you want nothing more than to slam the door in his pathetic face, and then you’ll be gone, and you will be so, so relieved to never hear another word from him ever again.”
“Untrue,” Taehyung said desperately, “I care about him, I wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t care that much,” couch-Yoongi stated. “Nobody does.”
Taehyung stared at him, at a loss for words, trying to regroup to find another tack to get out of this increasingly unpleasant conversational loop, so this horrible doppelganger would stop saying hurtful things about Yoongi.
Then, in a moment of clarity, as Taehyung stared uncomfortably into the eyes that were simultaneously so familiar and yet so alien in the emotion they conveyed, he realized he was approaching this from the wrong angle entirely. As they say, you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
So, reluctantly, he let go of his Yoongi’s hand and stood up. He tried to not be affected by the terrified, bereft look he could see on that Yoongi’s face out of the corner of his eye.
“Giving up?” couch-Yoongi asked in an acid tone.
But Taehyung didn’t walk past him. He sat on the couch next to the other Yoongi, who eyed him skeptically. Then carefully, gently, looking him in the eye, Taehyung put his arms out, leaned in, and then wrapped his arms around Yoongi’s shoulders and pulled him close, tugging him forward away from the back cushions of the couch.
“Hey!” both Yoongis said in unison, startled and offended.
This other Yoongi felt exactly the same as Taehyung was used to when he hugged his boyfriend - the same shape to his slender torso against his, the same curve of his neck and shoulder, the same smell of shampoo and detergent, the exact same body heat. Taehyung reached up one hand and put it gently against the back of Yoongi’s head, scooting his own legs to the side so that he could pull him in even closer. This Yoongi was tense and stiff, not yielding to the hug but not outright rejecting it either.
“I’m sorry,” Taehyung murmured into his ear. “I’m sorry it hurts so much, and I’m sorry it’s so hard for you sometimes. I’m here for you.”
And then with a wretched little sob, the tension suddenly ran out of Yoongi’s body and he tucked his forehead against Taehyung’s neck. He finally put his own arms around Taehyung and squeezed him back even more tightly. He tried to say something, blubbering against Taehyung’s collarbone, but Taehyung just shushed him gently and rubbed his hands up and down his back.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything else, sweetheart. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
He held Yoongi as gently as he could, trying to project the love and care he felt for him through his whole body, trying to show him that even though the pain was still there, at least Taehyung and his welcoming arms were too. He let Yoongi cry into his shoulder, caressing his back. Finally, he slowed down a little, and seemed to catch his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Yoongi mumbled, not looking up yet. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.”
“I’m sorry you felt all of that,” Taehyung returned gently. “I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me when you were feeling bad. Come here.”
He reached down and lifted up Yoongi’s face with one hand, making a sweater paw with the other, and using it to wipe off Yoongi’s raw, wet, tear-stained cheeks. Yoongi still looked sad and uncertain.
“You’ve had a long, long, stressful day,” Taehyung said softly as he continued to pat him dry. “So we’re going to go to the back and get you changed into something super comfy, and then we’re going to sit together and eat fried chicken.”
“Okay?” Yoongi whispered tentatively, and Taehyung kissed his forehead.
“And I’m not leaving,” Taehyung went on, looking him in the eyes. “I’m not.”
Yoongi didn’t manage to say anything out loud in response, but at least he nodded. So Taehyung grabbed his hands, stood up, and pulled him upright off the couch. Then, still holding one hand, started walking back, already knowing exactly what flannel pants and giant sweater he was going to dig out of Yoongi’s drawers.
As they left the room, Taehyung only glanced back into the living room for the briefest moment, to confirm what he already knew. And he was correct: nobody else was sitting there, and there was just one Yoongi, and he was holding his hand.