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There are some instances in the universe, set aside for special use long before the existence of everything. These fragments of time are more bridges between two points, than points in the chronology themselves. On these bridges, there is a sense of pause, a heaviness. It feels like gravity’s doing all the work, pulling, pulling towards a center, a core that reaches somewhere both nearer and farther than humanly imaginable.
If caught on these bridges - roads - highways, caution is imperative. The metaphysical and the physical warp, sound waves and light rays and fate threads twisting impossibly together to create - a new projection, an alternate dimension, (a time jump). Anything can happen.
-
There is a second where he is aware that there is nothing be aware of. No light, no temperature, no space. Then a shutter-click brings the world into life.
A blink, and:
“—lcome,” the valet is saying to him. “To the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
“To the —?” he begins to say, but the man is moving away already, so Yoongi rushes as best as he can to follow him.
Inside, Yoongi loses his trail; the view’s too breathtaking with the ceiling, the walls, the floor, all made entirely of glass. It’s like he’s walking on absolutely nothing. The stars and planets grace the skies above him, and around him, and below him. People mill at the tables, looking as if they’re part of some huge, complex masquerade - clothes from every culture, every era, and then some.
“Welcome,” a waiter stops in front of Yoongi. “Your table will be this way.”
“But I don’t have a reservation,” Yoongi tries to tell him. The waiter just smiles serenely and continues walking through the crowd.
Blink.
He’s at the table, seated, with his hands on his cutler and the waiter nowhere in sight.
Blink.
He’s staring up at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his back. A shower of gold sparkles over their heads, dusting the ceiling with fiery glitter that hisses - he can hear it, even over the din of everyone else’s talk - and steams, before fading.
“Glad you could make it,” someone says in his ear, and Yoongi startles, stepping away even as he turns around. He blinks, but everything remains the same. There’s a man, taller than him, standing and staring up as well. He seems familiar.
“You know,” he’s saying, and Yoongi’s body gravitates of its own accord, coming closer and leaning in - just the right amount of (no) space, chest pressed against the man’s elbow, head tilted at a practised angle - as if he’s done this already. Already, a thousand, million times.
“I wished for this, when I blew the candle.”
And Yoongi feels used to this, too. The slightly vague wording, the reminiscent tone in this voice. “Which birthday?” he finds himself asking.
The man smiles down at him, and Yoongi looks back, wanting him to never stop. It’s beatific and wide, eyes shining in a way Yoongi somehow knows doesn’t happen often. Yoongi wants him to never stop.
“My fourteenth, of course.”
And strangely enough, Yoongi does have a memory of what he’s talking about.
(“Seok-jin! Seok-jin!”
Everyone’s gathered around the table, yelling and clapping, as the skinny boy grins confidently and blows out all fourteen candles in one breath.
Somewhere, a balloon pops. Yoongi startles, latching onto Seokjin’s back.
Seokjin snorts, “You big baby.”)
“Weren’t you reading that book at the time?” Yoongi says. “Something part of that galaxy series. Douglas Adams, I think.”
“Yeah,” Seokjin - Seokjin? It must be - grins, staring around, outside the walls. “Jesus, Yoongi, look at all this.”
Yoongi follows his gaze, then glances back Seokjin. “Yeah,” Yoongi says, quietly. “I’m looking.”
Blink.
They’re at the table again, plates full but untouched. Yoongi’s speaking and he doesn’t know what he’s saying until it’s coming out of his mouth. It’s like stepping into a skin, or a role, or watching a part of you do something you didn’t know you could do.
“—an’t believe. Straight out of a book.”
Seokjin’s eyes twinkle. “It’s not straight out of a book,” he says. “The book just borrowed it. Guy clearly did his research, when he was writing.”
“He’s dead now,” Yoongi thinks out loud, slowly. “Isn’t he?”
Seokjin pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth. “Well,” he says. “Yes. But he probably came here before he died, you know. Be somewhere around here, I imagine.”
He takes a bite, closes his eyes. “God, Yoongi,” he sighs, mouth full. “This is just beyond.”
“Only the best for you,” Yoongi smiles, and Seokjin swallows his bite and opens his eyes, pretending to glare at him.
“What did I do to get you, of all people?”
“Uh,” Yoongi laughs. “Something idiotic?”
“Nah,” Seokjin relents immediately, the tips of his fingers brushing Yoongi’s. “I did several awesome, mindblowing things.” Then he leans back in his chair. “Just like I always do, every single day.”
“I could refute, but I’ll let you have your moment.”
Blink.
They’re walking around the restaurant, and Seokjin’s laughing quietly. It’s an adorable sound.
“We could bump into ourselves, couldn’t we?”
“Honestly, I think I saw us over there a minute ago. No , I’m not going show you. We were leaving anyway.”
Yoongi’s head spins. “So there’s no oh-I’m-gonna-confront-me-and-kill-both-my-selves shtick here?”
“No,” Seokjin says, agreeably. “This was never Hermione’s Time Turner. That one’s really just in a book. No, see, we’re in a bubble, projected forward, so to speak. To the end of time in the universe.”
“It seems kind of impossible,” Yoongi remarks, faintly.
Seokjin laughs again. “Isn’t it? But here we are. It’ll all end this evening, tomorrow evening, on and on for ever.”
“Here for dinner, as usual?” someone else falls in step with them. “Some people prefer experiencing it with breakfast, you know. Nothing like the Big Crash and waffles for a good wake up call.” The guy laughs at his own joke. “Hyung,” he adds. “Good to see you.”
A name rises to Yoongi’s tongue before he can register it. “Taehyung?” he asks.
Taehyung laughs again. “You remember me this time! Oh,” he addresses Seokjin’s confused expression. “Pardon.” He raises his glass. “Don’t mean to play prophet but —” he takes a sip “— You’ll be coming here a few more times, at the very least.” He smiles at them both, before walking away.
Blink.
Seokjin’s holding his hand tightly, the space around the restaurant seeming to vibrate. Everyone’s deathly quiet.
A nebula bursts into bloom, petals of metagons of heat and light unfolding, colors pouring out of its center. Beams flicker out of it and onto the rest of the binary system: now the twin suns slow in their dance, now the planets grow closer and closer and closer -
“Yoongi,” Seokjin whispers, voice trembling. “May we go now?”
Blink.
-
He wakes up on cracked concrete, legs dangling on the edge of an abyss, body held back by short rails. He remembers nothing of how he got here or where he should be. He remembers nothing.
He looks down, and he sees windows. Storeys and storeys of windows, each one farther than the other and covered even more in mist.
Directly ahead, the sun burns. Hello, it seems to say, but something’s off. Yoongi would talk to it, maybe, say hello back, if he didn’t catch sight of everything else.
Everything else: the sprawling skyscrapers, construction cranes broken down and stopped forever. The city, stretching up to the distant horizon, where sand and brick meet rock and salt water.
Yoongi strains to see people, but there’s no movement. As if, years ago, the city took a breath and held it. Everything’s still waiting.
Yoongi looks up at the sun again, and feels the stranger (stranger?) before he knows he’s there.
“Have a flower,” a voice says, and it sounds pretty. And it sounds odd, against the backdrop of this collaged mess. “It’s your favorite,” the voice adds, and Yoongi half-turns around.
His heart flounders, jumps, falls and tries to stutter back to normal. The railings keep him there, pressing in painfully on his thighs. The boy facing him tilts his head, bangs falling into his eyes. In his outstretched hand is a lone violet. He’s right. Yoongi’s favorite.
“It’s a present,” the boy insists, and Yoongi swallows, reaches out and takes it.
“Thank you,” he says.
“It’s nothing. The world’s ending, anyway,” the boy nods towards the sun. “Won’t be seeing him again for a long while. Ever again, really.”
Yoongi swallows again. So that was it. The sun was burning and saying, goodbye.
“It’ll set peacefully,” the boy tells him, likes he’s talking about the grocery list. “Then we’ll see some real work.”
Yoongi closes his eyes. He can’t find it himself to -
“Come on. It’s not so bad. You can see.”
“Stop,” Yoongi’s fist curls around the violet’s stem. He feels the cool life give slowly and crush.
There is silence, for a long while. Yoongi falls asleep.
When he wakes up, it’s the end of dusk. The sky is a glowing pink, this breathtakingly beautiful for the last, last time.
He watches as comets streak past in a violent haze, red and green and purple. Only the red ones make it to earth, he notes, and is almost surprised by how distant he is about this. There are probably people out there, he tries to tell himself, before he remembers it’s the end of the world.
“Bit of a metaphor,” the boy behind him smiles up at the sky, as if it isn’t run over with fire and the blood of constellations, of meteors. He lets out a sigh and sits down next to Yoongi, cross-legged and easy.
Yoongi studies him, before gazing back up. “Your name is Seokjin,” Yoongi says.
“Yes,” Seokjin replies. “But that’s not the metaphor.”
The comets keep ripping the clouds apart. It begins to rain, in orange droplets, in violet drizzles. Seokjin’s hair plaster down to his scalp, stick to his forehead the way his shirt sticks to his back. Yoongi takes a deep breath, tries to think. The comets keep ripping the clouds apart.
“Look,” Seokjin says. “The clouds are dying.”
Yoongi’s mouth is dry. He opens his mouth and drops flicker in past his teeth. “People used to say the clouds cried.”
“That was rain, you know,” Seokjin leans back on his arms. “This is different.”
He isn’t wrong. This is completely different.
“Tell me about the metaphor,” Yoongi says, just as the earth begins to shake. Seokjin’s hand comes up to grip around his wrist. It’s painful, but he’ll take it.
“Come with me.”
“You’ll tell me?” Yoongi insists, even as he gets up to follow him.
Seokjin glances at him over his shoulder, smile blazing “Of course,” he says. And he says, “Yoongi.”
Seokjin says his name . Yoongi was never going to say no, even if he hadn’t.
-
The green lights play something dreadful on Seokjin’s face. “I can come with,” Yoongi’s saying all of a sudden, then starts a little and looks around.
They’re near a carousel or something of the sort. Seokjin’s holding a balloon that says 14 on it and looking towards the haunted house, chewing his lip.
“Uh,” Seokjin says, sounding helpless. Then he seems to catch onto his own tone and squares his shoulders. “Nah,” he says. “It’s fine.”
Yoongi bites back a grin. Seokjin’s practically see through right now.
“Alright,” Seokjin rolls his neck and stretches out his arms, hyping himself up. “I can do this.”
“Scare ‘em,” Yoongi drawls, hand easy on Seokjin’s shoulder. Seokjin huffs out a laugh.
“If you put it that way,” he says, and goes up to the front door. On the porch he turns around and waves. “See you later, alligator!” he calls.
Yoongi cups his hands over his mouth, ready to yell back -
Lights out.
-
“My prince,” Yoongi is saying, and his fingers fumble suddenly in the ribbons of Seokjin’s jeogori. He takes a deep breath, ties the knots tight.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin looks at him sideways and smiles. “Will you miss me?”
“Will I miss you,” Yoongi repeats, and he has to fight to keep his voice from shaking. Will he miss Seokjin? Does his heart stop beating in his sleep? Doesn’t he miss Seokjin, even now?
“My prince,” Yoongi says again, and Seokjin turns around quickly, catching both of Yoongi’s hands in his. He grins at Yoongi for a moment.
“You taught me that.”
Then he sobers and tightens his hold on Yoongi; tightens his hold but looks away.
“Seokjin,” Yoongi rasps, honor gone. He wants to speak to just Seokjin this once, Seokjin from his childhood. Just Seokjin and just Yoongi, two men in a tent before one of them rides out to war and the other stays behind. “Take me with you. I’ll be of use, I’ll help, you — you need to be safe, I promise I’ll —”
“Your use is best for the entire kingdom,” Seokjin’s words cut through Yoongi’s.
Seokjin raises his face from the beaten down grass to Yoongi’s eyes, and he smiles again, heartfelt - a second, two seconds, and it drops off. “Not just for me.”
“But I—” My life is for you, Yoongi wants to say, but can’t bring himself to say it. Seokjin drops his hands and walks away.
“Be well, my friend! May the gods look after you!” he calls, and Yoongi slowly, slowly, falls to his knees.
Alone on the hilltop, he doesn’t stir for hours after Seokjin and his horse disappear.
The sun’s only just beginning to set, but the entire sky runs black.
-
“Wouldn’t it be crazy?” Seokjin says, cheerfully. “If time jumps were real. If you could mess with them.”
They’re sitting in a pillow fort, Yoongi’s thin blanket - the one with stars and planets on it - stretched over their heads. Seokjin’s got the torch aimed at his own chin, and the shadows play something awful across his face. Yoongi curls up closer to him, as discreetly as he can.
“Would you choose the future, or the past?” he asks, curious. Personally, Yoongi would very much like staying where he is. Or if he had to, then maybe the future. But he wouldn’t mess with it, like Seokjin’s saying. Yoongi’s thirteen, which doesn’t necessarily equal unintelligent. And besides, he adds to himself in a frown, thirteen is a perfectly respectable age.
“Both,” Seokjin says, at once. “First stop, my birthday next month. The end of the world, the end of the universe. And then, let’s see. The past. Imagine if I were royalty.”
Yoongi rolls his eyes. “As if. You’d be a chimney sweep. Or a stable boy.”
“I was going to make you my knight,” Seokjin raises his eyebrows. “But this attitude isn’t getting you dragon feces.”
Yoongi grins despite himself. “Dragon shit,” he says, and Seokjin shushes him immediately.
“What if your mother hears!”
“She won’t.”
Seokjin glances at the doorway, devoid of matriarchal figures, and lets his shoulders sag. “Whatever. You’re gonna get it.”
“My knighthood,” Yoongi reminds him, and Seokjin rolls over onto his back.
“Yeah, tough luck. You’d be on your knees and then my saber would, like, rest on your shoulders. That’s how it’s done, right?” he turns to look at Yoongi, squinting.
Yoongi shrugs. “I dunno. Your mum watches more period dramas than mine.”
“True. Well, I think that’s how it’s done. And then we’ll go to war, and I’ll die a martyr’s death and be glorified and turn into a god.”
“And me?”
“You…” Seokjin thinks, “You’ll just weep rivers over me and get a beautiful wife, but nothing will ever fill the hole in your heart from my leaving.”
“Um,” Yoongi says, loudly. “I protest. You shouldn’t die, we’ll both get beautiful wives.”
Seokjin smiles. “Can’t live without me, can you?”
“Oh,” Yoongi shrugs, lying down and shifting onto his back as well. Seokjin wriggles the torch around, light splaying on a Saturn now, now on a Uranus. “I don’t know,” Yoongi says.
Seokjin’s clicks the torch off and drops it, so they’re in relative darkness. Twilight rays fall softly on their fort, and Yoongi hears Seokjin’s leveled, even breathing, pats his hand over onto Seokjin’s, and feels Seokjin lock their fingers together messily and squeeze.
“Well,” Seokjin says, in that decided voice he uses before a big confession that’ll leave him somewhat vulnerable. “I’d rather you stick around.”
“Oh,” Yoongi says again, feeling something warm and bursting. “Then I guess I’ve got to.”
It’s a strange moment - more like a stretch between two moments than a moment itself. Like a bridge that Yoongi’s riding shotgun on, one hand out the window with Seokjin sitting in the passenger seat, chin tucked over Yoongi’s shoulder. It feels heavy, and slow, like he’s being pulled somewhere, to the core of something.
It feels like a fragment of truth; like anything can happen.