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“You ever think of quitting?” Yoongi says.
The smell of bleach burns in his nose. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, asking Taehyung this. Maybe the fumes are getting to his head, maybe that’s why he’s asking a killer if he ever thinks of not killing anymore.
He has convinced Taehyung to do most of his jobs in people’s bathrooms by now. They’re easier to clean. When Yoongi first started working for the infamous assassin that, back then, had no name for him, he was messy, and that’s putting it mildly. Usually there was blood everywhere, in the most impossible fabrics, too. Clothes, curtains, carpets, blankets, furniture, Yoongi actually cleaned a shopping bag for him once. Taehyung has never been good at doing clean kills, but he’s been getting better for Yoongi.
Not good enough to rob him of a job, though. Yoongi travels after him whenever Taehyung gets hired to murder someone, waits for him to finish his target off and then joins him at the crime scene to help him clean up. Taehyung shares his pay with him, and nobody has to go to jail. A win-win situation.
He looks up from the bathtub when he doesn’t get an answer. Taehyung leans against a wall in the hallway, Yoongi can see him through the open door, and stares at the coat rack. Yoongi’s eyes briefly follow his gaze; he knows exactly what he’s looking at.
“You’re thinking of stealing that umbrella,” he says flatly.
At that, finally, Taehyung blinks and tears his gaze away to give Yoongi a sheepish grin. They don’t steal from crime scenes. Of course they don’t. They’re professionals, and they can’t. The umbrella is neon green and looks like something Taehyung would carry everywhere, regardless of the weather, so Yoongi isn’t surprised he’s been eyeing it. But they both know better. The neon umbrella stays here.
“Quitting what?” Taehyung finally asks him.
Yoongi blinks. He thought that much was obvious. “This,” he says. He sits back on his heels from where he was kneeling next to the bathtub and gestures around the bloody bathroom with both of his rubber gloved hands. “The job. Killing.”
“Oh,” Taehyung says. He looks around too now, his mouth opened just a little, thinking. Then he closes it again. “No. Guess I don’t.”
Yoongi knows you can’t force love. Most of the time he just wishes he had known earlier.
He talked Taehyung into it, that was his first mistake. When Yoongi realized that he himself wanted to quit, he was too scared to do it alone, and so he tried to get Taehyung into it, and he should have known it wasn’t going to work out, but he had to try. He was so scared. He had worked with Taehyung for so long, Taehyung had been his only interhuman contact for so long, he was scared to do it alone. Scared to do it without Taehyung.
And so Yoongi kept talking about it during their little sessions, kept talking about it in other people’s bathrooms with gloves on his hands and bleach in his nose, kept talking about it with Taehyung leaning against walls or sitting on toilet lids or the floor next to him. He talked about bus tickets are so cheap these days, he talked about you know that guy who makes fake passports, he said things like this is such a pretty apartment I wish I could have it for myself in another life and look they have an italian place right across the street can you imagine sitting there after work and just talking about normal people things? He talked and he talked until he saw Taehyung’s expression go weak, until he saw him frown and chew at his lower lip while cleaning his gun, and then he talked some more.
And it was too much, he knows that now. You can’t force someone to leave everything behind and come with you just because you’re too scared to do it alone, just because you don’t know what to do without them. You can’t tell a killer to drop his weapons and help you plant tomatoes on the balcony of your new apartment and expect it to work out.
They tried. They did. Even Taehyung tried to make it work, because Taehyung’s a good guy, he is. He is when it comes to Yoongi. They were partners in crime for so long and Taehyung knew very well that he’d be long dead or in jail if it wasn’t for Yoongi. They spent years together, major parts of their lives, and it stuck, and they tried. They used all that money they had made while killing people and making the mess disappear, to buy those cheap bus tickets, and then expensive plane tickets, to rent that pretty apartment in a good part of a nice town halfway across the globe. They slept in separate beds in separate rooms because they weren’t together together, that’s not what it was, no matter how often Yoongi dreamed and daydreamed about it, and that was alright. He just needed Taehyung close, he just needed the reminder that they did this, that they made it, together, and they could be alright, if only they tried.
But Taehyung grew distant. He got antsy, kept staring out the window during the day and creeping through the apartment during the night, he stopped talking to Yoongi and started typing on his phone whenever he saw him, if he saw him. Eventually they didn’t always sleep in the same apartment anymore because Taehyung would stay away overnight and he didn’t tell Yoongi where he went, and Yoongi didn’t ask. Yoongi was scared to lose him, but he had tried once and he realized that it wasn’t fair to keep Taehyung holed up in here like a caged animal.
His tomatoes were dying when he came home one day and found Taehyung’s room empty, his bed unmade and the shelves and his wardrobe cleared out, with a note taped to his desk.
I can’t do it
And Yoongi took the note in his hand and nodded at it, because he understood, and he couldn’t force him to stay. Taehyung couldn’t do this and Yoongi had failed to change his mind, and he had to let him go.
He taped the note back to the desk, and then he sat down on the floor in Taehyung’s room and leaned his head against the empty bed, and he closed his eyes and he cried for a long time.
Yoongi grows basil on his balcony now. He buys his tomatoes from the marketplace two blocks down, they’re way bigger and better anyway. His basil plant is well and healthy and the free room in his apartment is a library now, and he’s doing fine.
Maybe Taehyung couldn’t do this, but he can. He got an office job that’s pretty boring, but Yoongi appreciates sitting on his ass on an ergonomically shaped desk chair all day and not having to breathe in bleach or clean blood out of carpets at three in the morning. He made friends with some of his coworkers and they go out for drinks every now and then, and Yoongi really likes them.
He still thinks about Taehyung, but that’s alright. Yoongi thinks he’s allowed to do that, as long as it doesn’t go overboard. He just hopes that wherever Taehyung is, he’s doing okay and staying out of jail and trouble, and he hopes that he’s happy and forgives Yoongi for trying to force him into a life that wasn’t his. That’s all, and that’s alright.
The thing is, Taehyung isn’t happy.
Not anymore.
He used to be, he thinks. Probably. He’s at least somewhat sure he used to be happy, maybe.
It’s not like killing people was his dream job. He just never actually thought about it that way, it was just something he did, something that was part of him, like breathing. Something he couldn’t just stop doing, no matter how hard he tried, how much he wanted to, for Yoongi. It wasn’t because it was fun or what he wanted to do until he’s eighty, it was just… it was just what he did. And he can’t remember if it made him happy or not.
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe he was never really happy in the first place. He was doing okay, though, it wasn’t a bad life he led. He got tons of money and he got to travel the world, he got to hang around in strange places in the middle of the night and talk about everything and nothing with his friend while they cleaned blood out of the gaps between bathroom tiles. Maybe he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t miserable either.
He wasn’t alone. He had Yoongi.
“Go visit him, then,” Jin says.
Right. He’s not alone right now either. Taehyung blinks his eyes open and looks over to him, bent over a kitchen counter and scrubbing at a spot behind the sink. Jin wants him to kill people in the kitchen. Too many fabrics like carpets and towels in a bathroom, and better lighting in kitchens. Taehyung still has trouble admitting when his reasoning sounds more logical than Yoongi’s.
“I don’t know,” Taehyung says quietly. He sits curled up on the kitchen island, hugging his legs with both of his arms and watching Seokjin work. “I can’t just show up there again, I wouldn’t… How can I ever even look at him again after just walking out with nothing but a note on my desk?”
“So call him.” Jin doesn’t even look up from the sink. Taehyung isn’t sure if he appreciates this attitude or if he wants to shove his face in the garbage disposal. He sighs.
“You make it sound so easy. What am I supposed to say? That I miss him, and then what? He’s still over there and I’m still over here, he doesn’t want to get back into business and I don’t wanna leave it, so… Nothing’s changed.”
Jin sighs too now, and mutters something that sounds a lot like How old are you two? He straightens his back and does one last swipe on the sink before he turns around. “You like each other, you’ll figure something out. It’s not like you gotta be Mr and Mrs Smith to make this work. Just call him. And get your shoes off that countertop.”
Taehyung hops off the kitchen island with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he should just get out of this apartment altogether.
He calls Yoongi two days later. This time, Taehyung sits on the floor of his own kitchen, hugging a bottle of soju to his chest with his free arm. The phone rings for what feels like hours, then it goes to voicemail.
“Hey,” Taehyung says after the beep. He has no idea what time it is in Yoongi’s part of the world. He has no idea what he’s doing here.
“It’s me,” he says. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say. I miss you.” Taehyung squeezes his eyes shut and swallows against the sharp burn in his throat. “I don’t think I know how to be happy.”
And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? What is he expecting? Did he somehow think that Yoongi was going to pick up the phone and teach him how to be happy? Again? Yoongi tried once and Taehyung left, so who does he even think he is, crawling back now that Yoongi probably has a house in the suburbs, and a home office and maybe a wife and, statistically, one point two kids and a minivan. A laugh bubbles up in Taehyung’s throat at the thought of it, but it comes out as a desperate sounding snort instead.
“This was a stupid idea,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
He hangs up before he can come up with even more ways to ruin both of their nights.
He gets up the next day and nurses his headache, cooks himself breakfast, and does his laundry. He smiles about how normal these things seem now, and how they would have made Yoongi talk about running away together. This was all Yoongi ever wanted, Taehyung knows, getting up in the mornings to a regular apartment and eating regular food and doing regular chores. It’s not like they killed and cleaned up every night. Hitman isn’t a full-time job. Yoongi just wanted it to not be a job at all anymore, and Taehyung can’t help but wonder, again, if this isn’t worth a try.
Another try.
Only he can’t quite see the point of it if he stays alone. Taehyung doesn’t even know how regular lives work, Yoongi was the one to explain all that to him and he still doesn’t think he could do it by himself. If he tried now he’d just be an unemployed killer, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, what to do next.
So, no, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it isn’t worth another shot.
Maybe he missed his chance.
Yoongi doesn’t call him back.
A month later Taehyung kills some sort of businessperson he doesn’t care about, drags him into the enormous kitchen in his highrise loft apartment and slits his throat there. He lets him drop to the floor and puts his knife on the counter, then he opens the faucet and lets cold water run over his hands so he can clean the blood off, but there’s a stain in the sleeve of his sweater. Taehyung can barely see it in the darkness of the apartment at night, but he just knows it’s there, and he knows it’s not coming off.
Taehyung tenses up from head to toe and he starts rubbing frantically at his sleeve, holds it under water and keeps trying to get the blood out with his fingers. He starts shivering quickly, cold water starting to soak his sleeve up to the elbow, and his jaws hurt from gritting his teeth, and his eyes burn and he doesn’t know if he’s breathing, and when Seokjin shows up out of nowhere to gently pull his arms away from the sink, Taehyung flinches so hard he almost shouts at him.
“Easy,” Jin says softly. He reaches across to turn off the tab and wrenches Taehyung’s sleeve free from the iron grasp he had on it. “Don’t rub it in now.”
“Sorry,” Taehyung mutters. He starts at how choked up he sounds. Breathing carefully, he decides to just pull his wet sweater off completely, pushing it off his shoulders and rolling it up in a ball to press it against his chest. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Jin says. He throws the body on the floor a cold, calculating look. “You can go, if you want. I don’t need you here if you can’t focus anyway.”
“No, I,” Taehyung says, but stops when his gaze, too, drops to the man on the floor. The blood is thick and drying already, pooling around him like a giant, dark red halo. Taehyung can see his windpipe through the slit in his throat, and he’s seen plenty of bloody windpipes through slits in people’s throats, this one isn’t special, but it still makes something hot and acidic climb up his own throat. He feels sick, almost like it’s his first time seeing blood, like he’s about to throw up just from the sight of a dead body in front of him, like it’s all too much.
He swears, turning away and pressing the heels of both hands against his eyes as he does. This doesn’t make sense. It’s stupid and it doesn’t make sense and he’s never wanted to cry about some random dude’s death before, but it just feels wrong. Like this isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing, this isn’t where he’s supposed to be.
Taehyung breathes in and lowers his hands. He can hear and smell Jin work behind him while he stares out of the big panorama window, into the darkness of the night and the blinking of the city skyline. “You ever,” he says, “think of quitting?”
“No, Taehyung,” Jin answers without missing a beat. “I don’t. But if you do, don’t let me keep you. Quit and find him, for all I care. Just make sure to cover your tracks.”
Taehyung huffs a hollow laugh through the loft. Yeah, he can do that. For once, he supposes, he could clean up after himself.
He doesn’t do it.
He stays in the same damn place and does the same damn things and he can’t bring himself to leave. When the next job comes in, Taehyung shoots his target in their kitchen and covers the head with a plastic bag so he doesn’t have to look at the wound until Jin comes to help him. The gun feels heavy in his hands and Taehyung can barely stand even holding it there, but it’s like he doesn’t know how to let go of it either. Like it’s glued to his fingers, and it doesn’t matter what he wants.
“Hey, Yoongi.”
He’s on the floor in his kitchen again, and he doesn’t know what kind of bottle he’s hugging to his chest this time, he just knows it’s stronger than soju and makes the buzz in his head feel louder and better.
“It’s me again. I still miss you.” Taehyung sniffles and shuffles his feet. He can’t figure out how to arrange them to get himself more comfortable, so he just gives up and pulls his knees to his chest. “I’m sorry I’m calling you again. You’re probably doing something nice. Movie marathon with your friends. Or, like, family.” Taehyung laughs into his voicemail again. The thought still sounds weird. “I think I’m gonna be out of a job soon. I can’t … do it anymore. I get sick every time. I got a new cleanup guy -- I know, I’m sorry -- and I swear he laughs at me behind my back, I can hear him. Blood just makes me wanna throw up now. I don’t wanna see another dead body for the rest of my life. But I don’t know… I don’t know how to quit.”
Taehyung sniffles again. His face feels wet, so he takes another swig. That makes sense to him.
“You had it all figured out. I thought you hadn’t, not for me, but you had. You knew just where to go and what to do to make it all work out. I wish I was there with you.” Taehyung takes a long, shaky breath and ignores the sob that comes with it when he leans his head back against the cupboard behind him.
“Do you remember that one night, when you first asked me if I ever thought of quitting?” he asks. His voice sounds a little more stable now. He’s smiling, and it hurts somewhere between his temples. That, too, makes sense to him. “I feel like it all started there and then. If I had just… If I had just said something else, anything, maybe I would have made it. I really wish I had. I really…” He laughs again, and it makes more tears spill out. They drop off his chin into the dip of his collarbones and it’s cold.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” he says. “That damn umbrella. The one you caught me staring at. I keep thinking that I should have taken it, ran away with it, never look back. All our lives, we always had to, to cover our tracks , to be clean and quiet and I’m sick of it. I’m so… I just want that damn green umbrella, Yoongi. I wanna be the guy with the neon umbrella people see around town, and they smile when they see him ‘cause he looks ridiculous, and I’m sick of hiding and I wish I had taken the umbrella. We could have bailed then and there. You and me and my flashy umbrella.”
Taehyung tries to laugh again, but he coughs instead. He curls in on himself and he loses his bottle, it slips from his arm and drops to the floor with a dull clunk, and Taehyung hears liquid spill over his kitchen floor, but he can’t see it because he’s closing his eyes, and he’s crying. He’s crying into his phone, loud and ugly and shaky, and he doesn’t know how to quit, anything. Killing or crying or feeling bad or missing Yoongi, it’s all the same thing right now, and he can’t stop.
“I miss you so much,” he says, his voice a messy mixture between slurring and sobs, and some part of him still hopes Yoongi won’t understand him if he ever gets this. “You-- You were my shot, you know? I k-keep thinking about it, and it’s why I, why I can’t be happy anymore, it’s b-...” Taehyung takes a deep breath that whistles through his windpipe. “I-It’s because I missed my chance. You were m-my shot at happiness. And I missed it. And now I’m stuck like this, and I’ll never find you again.”
Taehyung drops to the side to lie on the floor. He thinks his shirt is soaking in booze, and he thinks that serves him just right.
“I’m sorry, Yoongi,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry -- I hope you’re happy. I hope at least one of us is. I’m gonna fall asleep now, I think. I hope you,” this time, his giggle does sound like a giggle, but it still doesn’t seem right, “I hope you never listen to any of this. Good night.”
That night, he passes out on the kitchen floor with his phone in his hand and alcohol in his hair, curled up into a ball and snoring through a stuffy nose. He wakes up with bruises from the hard floor and the cupboard in his back, and a hangover that thankfully has him forgetting most of the things he said.
Yoongi doesn’t call him back.
That’s fine; Taehyung didn’t expect him to. He’s still not completely sure what all he said to him, but he’s a little embarrassed nonetheless, so he can deal with not talking to Yoongi just a bit longer. Or maybe forever. He doesn’t know. He can’t know for sure if he’ll ever see him again, even now that he has finally gotten his shit together.
Humiliating himself on Yoongi’s voicemail and then further humiliating himself on his own kitchen floor helped, for some reason. Taehyung didn’t think that it would, but it did. He’s doing stuff. He’s trying. Maybe Yoongi was his shot at happiness, but maybe he can at least find something else, something close to that. He’ll see. He has to. He can’t stay here.
Taehyung looks himself over in the mirror. He’s going to buy new clothes as soon as he’s out of this city. He wants something colorful, something cute, something new. But his mostly black wardrobe will have to do for now, he’s just traveling. He looks at himself a little longer, then he lets go of his suitcase again and pulls out his phone.
There’s still time. Enough time before he has to leave and drive to the airport, enough time to leave one last message.
“Hi,” he says to the now familiar beep of Yoongi’s voicemail. “I won’t call you again after this, I promise. I just wanted to tell you that I’m better. I thought, you… Well, maybe you care. So I’m letting you know. I haven’t killed anyone in two weeks!” Taehyung grins at his mirror before he blinks and lets out a laugh. “Boy, I really hope I got the right number with these. Anyway, I’m quitting. I’m leaving. I thought I might buy a house, maybe, a small one, you know. And a dog, or two, or three. I’ll--”
There’s rustling on the other end of the line. Someone picked up. Taehyung freezes and stares at his own reflection.
“Tae, are you drunk?”
Taehyung’s breath leaves him in a rush so quick it almost makes him feel dizzy. “Yoongi?” he says, but of course it’s Yoongi, he’d recognize that voice anywhere, and it is the right number, and it’s Yoongi. “I-- No, actually. I mean, I was drunk for the first two, but I’m sober right now.”
“How do you end up talking about killing people when you’re sober but not when you’re drunk? What the hell?”
“I’m sorry!” Taehyung laughs. He staggers backwards and sits on his bed, still staring at the mirror, watching his own widened eyes. “I didn’t think you’d pick up. I wasn’t sure if you were getting these.”
It’s quiet on the other side. Taehyung thinks he can hear his breathing, his steps, and cars rushing by. Someone honks.
“I was on a business trip when you first called, and didn’t hear it until two weeks later,” Yoongi says with something that sounds like sincere regret. Taehyung feels like something in his chest is being ripped apart, but in a strangely good, warm way. “I… I don’t know, I wanted to call back, but it felt weird after leaving you hanging for weeks, you know? I figured you were just drunk and you’d be getting better on your own. Then last week that second call came and I listened to it in the morning, and, um. Well, I had to do some stuff first, of course, I had to talk to my boss and convince my coworker to look after my plants while I’m gone, but--”
“Yoongi, what are you talking about?” Taehyung says. Somebody honks again, first outside his apartment window, then over the phone. Suddenly he can feel his heart beating in his throat. “Where are you?”
“I’m outside,” says Yoongi. “Do you still have your old place?”
He does. Taehyung moves quickly to buzz him in downstairs, and he keeps his phone pressed to his ear while he runs out into the hallway. He doesn’t put it down until he’s two floors down and sees Yoongi come towards him from the other end. Only then do both of them put their phones away, and only then does Taehyung start running in earnest. He doesn’t think, he only flings himself at Yoongi, wraps his arms around him in a hug as tight as he can manage without breaking ribs, and Yoongi hugs him back, Yoongi puts his arms around Taehyung’s waist and Taehyung thinks that maybe happiness isn’t supposed to be this complicated maze he always imagined it as. Maybe sometimes happiness is just a hug in a hallway.
“I missed you,” Taehyung says, muffled into Yoongi’s hair. “I missed you.”
“I know,” Yoongi says, equally muffled somewhere against his shoulder. “I missed you too.”
And it makes Taehyung shudder and almost fucking cry again, because he didn’t think Yoongi was going to miss him, he didn’t think Yoongi would still want or need him in any way, he thought the life that Yoongi had found had no room for him.
“I was,” Taehyung says, still holding him, still standing pressed against him in a hallway on a floor that isn’t even his, “going to catch a plane, but I could just … not go. On that plane, I mean. I can…” His voice grows softer with every word, but he forces himself to keep talking because Yoongi still hasn’t let go of him. “I can just come with you.”
Hot air rushes past his neck when Yoongi laughs. “If you can afford that. You still make mad cash, huh?”
“Made,” Taehyung says quietly. Yoongi pulls back just enough to nod and smile at him.
“Made,” he repeats. He reaches up to fix the collar of Taehyung’s sweater that got skewed when they rushed into their hug. “You can come with me, if you want, yeah.”
They go to the hotel Yoongi booked for two nights, they sit on the bed, they look at each other. Yoongi looks mostly the same, Taehyung thinks. His hair is a little longer, his cheeks a little fuller. He looks just that tiny bit better, happier, that’s almost indiscernible but still there.
“What have you been up to?” Taehyung asks. He grins, even though there’s that fear again, fear of what he’s about to hear, of the realization, again, that it’s not going to work with them, not the way he wants it to. “You got a house? Wife? Minivan?”
Yoongi looks at him in silence for a good few seconds. There’s the ghost of a smile playing with his lips, bemused, when he tilts his head. “You think I’d have a wife?”
Taehyung shrugs. “I might have entertained the thought now and then.”
“Yeah? What’s she look like?”
“Hmm,” says Taehyung. The nervous flutter in his chest settles for something calmer, another kind of nervousness, a better one. “Taller than you, definitely. Big hands, cute grin, moles on her face. She’d have really long eyelashes--”
“You’re my wife, I get it,” Yoongi laughs and Taehyung feels like he’s floating up and only the ceiling can hold him. “I get it.”
Taehyung smiles. Yoongi smiles, too, and then they both look down at their hands, lying barely an inch apart on the weirdly yellow bedspread. Yoongi’s fingers twitch, and Taehyung wants to take his hand and pull him close and kiss him, but even he realizes that might be too early. He can count his blessings that he’s here at all, he’s not going to ruin it. Not again.
“I’ve been doing okay,” Yoongi says finally. Neither of them look up from their hands. “Been doing the same job for a while now, it’s not bad. Pay’s good, I’m friends with my coworkers, which is nice. I gave up on tomatoes, but I’ve been growing some plants on the balcony, and at least half of them usually survive. And I put my books in your old room. Some of yours, too, the ones you forgot.”
“Yeah,” Taehyung says automatically. His voice sounds hoarse, far away. He really wants to take Yoongi’s hand. “I’ve been missing those, too.”
“You’ll get them back. Actually,” just like that, no warning, Yoongi wraps his fingers around Taehyung’s and takes his hand as he gets up from the bed, “I got you something.”
And Yoongi pulls him over to the coatrack, and pushes his own coat aside to reveal something so horridly orange it burns in Taehyung’s eyes a little. Yoongi takes it with his free hand and holds it up, his grin gummy, his back straightened with pride. “Sorry it’s not green,” he says as he pushes the umbrella against Taehyung’s chest to make him take it. “They only had orange, but it’s still pretty neon. I figured this is even tackier than the green one, so I hope you like it.”
Taehyung takes it in his other hand and stares at it, dumbfounded. “I,” he says. He’s still holding Yoongi’s hand. Yoongi squeezes his softly. “I love it.”
Happiness is strange, he thinks.
He used to be so sure that it’s something permanent, something you achieve and then keep forever, but he’s starting to believe it isn’t. Taehyung figures happiness can be fleeting moments, happiness comes and goes, and he figures you have to keep moving to catch it whenever it flies past. And that means happiness isn’t always a house and a car and a desk job. Happiness isn’t always a spouse and one point two kids and three dogs.
Sometimes, happiness is standing in a hotel room holding someone’s hand and staring at a neon umbrella.