Work Text:
Two years after Hoseok fell out with Taehyung, he comes to work and against all expectation sees Taehyung sitting in the waiting room of Cypher's workspace studio. Jungkook loiters off to the side, peering curiously at the floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked full with glass beakers. To his left, Jimin sinks deeper into exasperation as he tries to explain what happened. "I told him not to climb that tree, I knew the bird was fine, it was a 5-meter drop at least—"
"So, can you help him?" Jungkook interrupts. "This is what you do, right?"
Namjoon's eyes are boring into the back of Hoseok's neck, waiting for a signal on whether to go ahead. They all know this case is his call. Taehyung's expression is neutral, maybe a little apprehensive, and Hoseok needs to pull away from his face so he can stop trying to search for the flicker of recognition that he knows isn't coming. He swallows, then nods imperceptibly.
Yoongi clears his throat. "You have the paperwork ready?"
Jimin slides a manila folder across the desk. "It's all here, the doctor's referral, everything. Taehyung's health insurance should cover standard memory retrieval."
The studio is quiet apart from the rhythmic whir of the overhead fan. Yoongi scans down the clinical report before handing it to him to review.
Patient: Kim Taehyung. Age: 22. Diagnosis: Mild damage to the neocortex, neural blockage in hippocampus. Comments: Only past episodic memory is affected. No known allergies. Recommended treatment: Memory retrieval.
Hoseok glances up to see Jimin's anxious face tracking their movements. "This won't hurt him, will it?" Jimin asks. "The doctor also said his memories might come back on their own with enough time and rest, though probably piece by piece instead of all at once."
Yoongi tosses over a packet of papers. "Our liability terms and release forms start on page five." When Jimin's mouth drops open even further in concern, Yoongi sighs and amends, "Kim-sshi is young and otherwise healthy. There's low risk for complications. Should be routine."
"So there's no complication if Taehyung has past history with, um—" Jimin's eyes dart to Hoseok, and he hesitates.
Everyone turns to stare at him, including Taehyung. The apprehension starts to melt away to curious appraisal and a faint glimmer of interest. With startling clarity, Hoseok realizes that this, in its twisted way, is Taehyung's first meeting with him again, a false imitation of a first impression. For one wild moment, he wonders if he's dreaming. The hum of the fan, low enough before, now sounds deafening in his ears, splintering the neural pathways of his brain.
"It shouldn't matter, right?" Hoseok finally speaks up. The earthquake stays inside him; his voice barely trembles. "He doesn't remember anyone right now. There's no difference between me or the next person."
Taehyung still doesn't say anything. He'd never be this quiet, Hoseok thinks. This, too, is a false impression.
Namjoon breaks the silence. "Let's get started."
⇔
Past history is both an understatement and an exaggeration. It's not like Hoseok and Taehyung ever dated, unless playing an increasingly elaborate game of gay chicken in college counted as dating.
Hoseok met Jimin in dance class the middle of his senior year; Jimin was one year below, cute, respectful, eager to learn, the exact type of underclassman that preyed on Hoseok's upperclassman sensibilities. They would spend hours practicing routines in the studio until midnight, just the two of them, and sometimes Jimin's friend would show up in the middle of practice with bags of snacks and energy drinks, then stay to watch them dance until one of them finally surrendered to fatigue.
As far as Hoseok could tell, Taehyung's purpose was primarily to be Jimin's #1 hype man and secondly to make sure he didn't skip dinner. Taehyung was loud, easily excitable, and overwhelming in his enthusiasm, but what was most memorable was his uncanny knack for leaving a vacuum in a space that he shouldn't have even occupied in the first place. After a while, the studio sounded a little hollow on the nights he didn't show, enough that Hoseok brought it up with Jimin the third night in a row that Taehyung skipped their practice.
"He had a paper due today," Jimin said by way of explanation. "I have midterms next week, so I might not be around much the next few days either."
Which was fine, except that the next night when Hoseok was at the studio by himself, the doors banged open with the familiar squeak of sneakers on linoleum, and there was Taehyung with a backwards cap and a popsicle in his mouth, filling a space that was never open for reservation.
Hoseok paused in the middle of a spin, only muscle memory saving him from a fall. "Jimin's not here today."
Taehyung grinned around his popsicle; his mouth stretched to take up half his face. "A little chickie told me you missed me."
"Did the same chickie tell you I can be bribed with banana milk and honey butter chips?"
"I'll remember that for next time," Taehyung said with a salute. "Anything else? Long walks on the beach, hip hop serenades, homemade mixtapes?"
"Looks like someone's also been stalking my Facebook," Hoseok grinned back. Sweat was starting to settle in the dips of his back, down the camber of his shoulders, but the heat seemed concentrated at the tips of his ears, the thin skin over his pulse points, the hollows of his palms. He inserted himself back into the dance routine on the next beat, letting the music wash out the hotspots erupting across his body.
That was how it'd started with Taehyung. Every time Hoseok remembered to look up, Taehyung was one step closer, the closing gap imperceptible if measured day to day but undeniable if seen through time lapse. Late-night studio sessions graduated to a casual arm slung around his shoulder on the walk back to the dorms graduated to playing footsie under the table while doing homework. One time Taehyung stole his favorite sweatshirt for weeks before Hoseok realized and demanded it back, and it'd smelled like Taehyung's favorite brand of fruit candy until he finally washed it.
"Where's your tail?" Namjoon asked him once when they ditched a review session in favor of a DJ Clazzi set off campus. It'd been the first weekend all month that Taehyung hadn't been around, on one excuse or another. Hoseok shrugged, drained his drink, then said, "We're just messing around." If Namjoon didn't believe him then, he didn't ask any questions or push the issue; that was how they worked as friends.
Even though Taehyung was also an underclassman, he wasn't Hoseok's underclassman, at least not in the way Jimin fit in his worldview, so he knew he should've set boundaries before the rumbling tipped into dangerous territory, but he kept missing the cue on when to jump ship. Taehyung shared the same allergy for boredom and sported a truly impressive tolerance for teasing, and it was easier for Hoseok to go with the flow of their relation-skinship, until the flow turned into a tsunami and overturned the ship entirely before he could remember to grab a life vest.
Sink or swim came on a warm night the week before graduation.
Exams were over, and Hoseok talked everyone into one final karaoke session for the school year. Taehyung spent the first hour monopolizing the playlist with Zion.T and Crush ballads before Jimin wrestled the controller away from him; somewhere between "Yanghwa Bridge" and the opening verse of "Just", Jungkook swapped out everyone's Chilsung cider for yogurt soju without anyone noticing. After a few bottles, they forced Namjoon into rapping Zico's verse in "Oasis" and he got so into it he knocked over an entire pitcher of beer with his ass. Jimin got it all on video.
That could've been Hoseok's lasting memory from college: the ease of their collective laughter, as unstoppable as a full breeze through open sails.
Instead, that was overwritten three hours later, sometime between late night and early morning, when the only thing faster than the cars zooming by on deserted streets was the speed of the alcohol sweating out of his system. He had an arm around Taehyung's waist to steady him, even though they were both too sober by that point to really justify the contact. "Where's Jimin when you actually need him?" he muttered under his breath, and Taehyung stifled a yawn before answering, "Ask Jungkook," with a sly smile half-hidden behind Hoseok's shoulder.
Hoseok shook his head, the motion causing Taehyung's face to roll closer to his, and Hoseok's mind recorded the next moment like an out-of-body experience, watching their mouths move into each other's orbit as if by magnetic pull. This is the last chance to jump, he thought, and then he didn't think at all, because his lips were on Taehyung's, and he could taste the lingering flavor from whatever last drink Taehyung finished, made sweeter by the soft sound that escaped out of his mouth.
Maybe some place inside him, deep under the dirt of his subconscious, always knew this was how the night would end, that every step they'd taken was a choreographed dance leading up to this moment. Hoseok's mouth came to life on its own, caressing against the full swell of Taehyung's bottom lip; their noses brushed against each other's cheeks, and Hoseok angled his jaw to better access the surface area of Taehyung's mouth, feeling it ripen under his attention.
If he still believed in the illusion of control, all of it broke the second Taehyung worked his tongue against the press of his lips, trying to coax them open. Hoseok's entire body locked up, like every joint and muscle lost synapse connection at the same time. Adrenaline flooded his system, and he jerked backward, sending Taehyung scrambling for purchase at the sudden disorientation.
"That's over the line. This isn't funny anymore." Hoseok felt winded and lightheaded; his mouth, so insistent and traitorous mere moments ago, worked now to gulp in huge breaths of air.
Taehyung stared back at him. "I didn't know there was a line," he said stiffly. There's confusion and a streak of dissent across his features that settled into a faint sullenness. "And you're the only one who tries to be funny all the time."
If Taehyung's grins took up half his face, then his face in distress engulfed his whole frame, the affliction broadcasted from the furrow of his eyebrows to his nervous posture. It was the first time Hoseok was seeing this side of Taehyung, he realized. It was the first time Hoseok himself had lost control of his temper, either around or toward Taehyung, so out of character for himself that it felt like a misstep instead of a bad reaction. Up until then, everything about them had felt easy and intuitive, like reading the beat from an addictive hook. They shared a class of personalities that naturally fed off each other, except whatever they kept feeding was now too real and tangible for Hoseok to ignore, and he didn't know where to set this burden down.
"I don't want to fight about this. I'm graduating next week, let's just forget it," he said, swallowing words he didn't yet have the responsibility to say, words that would eventually poison him from the inside out.
He didn't know it in that moment, but the crushed look on Taehyung's face would be Hoseok's lasting memory from that night.
⇔
So: Now they're here.
Yoongi fiddles with the vial of Somnacin in the PASIV machine, monitoring the dosage settings before unwinding the IV cords and running two to where Hoseok and Namjoon are reclined to strap them into the machine.
"Our chemist Kim Seokjin mixes all his creations in-house. They're the smoothest on the market. Kim-sshi shouldn't feel a thing until it's time to wake up." Yoongi looks pointedly at Jimin. "That means you can relax."
"I am relaxed," Jimin huffs, but he doesn't let go of Taehyung's hand.
"Don't worry, I'm not scared," Taehyung reassures him, flexing his arm to give better access to the vein running across his wrist.
Yoongi offers a rare smile and inserts the needle. "That's the spirit," he murmurs. One final check, and the PASIV hums to life. A crackle of anticipation runs across the room, makes Hoseok want to chase after it just to give his body an outlet from where his muscles are coiled tight, waiting for the punch down. Yoongi's eyes meet his before he pushes the central button, and then everything goes black.
⇔
Dream technology was initially developed for military use, but the first PASIV machine dropped into the black market within a year, followed shortly by defected back-alley chemists. Beyond its intended use for information theft, drug cartels quickly learned to tap into the full potential of dream escapism, causing Somnacin prices to skyrocket and alerting the government to the missed revenue potential. Pharmaceuticals soon lobbied to harness the technology for medical use, and Somnacin was successfully introduced as an aid for pain relief, post-traumatic stress rehabilitation, and phobia exposure recovery.
Memory retrieval, the newest form of dream therapy, was the least regulated, with mixed results and high payoff potential. No formal training existed in the beginning; the first wave of dream retrievers were former extractors who wanted to retire from black-market operations in favor of more legal paychecks, paperwork and all.
On the surface, extraction and retrieval are cousins on the same family tree. There's just one distinct difference: In the former, extractors try to access the target's confidential database; in the latter, the target has to be the one who opens the secured memories. The retrievers' job is to find where the memories are stored in the recesses of the subconscious, then guide the target there.
It's getting the target there that's always the hard part.
⇔
When Namjoon and Hoseok surface, they're in a meadow. The horizon is dotted with vibrant yellow dandelions. On Hoseok's far left, he can make out a glimmer of what looks like rushing water at the bottom of a sloping hill and, in the opposite direction, the grassland stretches to the edge of a dense forest that parts in the middle, revealing a winding path that disappears into pitch darkness, like a gaping jaw lying in wait.
Namjoon lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of sunlight playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds. The light glints off the flash of black ink on his forearm, the words DREAM TEAM tattooed in small block letters on the inside of his wrist, making Hoseok instinctively thumb over the matching print he has on his own arm. The tattoos only exist in dreamspace, a reminder that despite how convincing the breeze feels carding through Hoseok's hair, none of this is reality.
"Any leads?" Namjoon stays still, waiting for him to do his assessment. When Namjoon had mentioned after graduation that he had a hyung in the dream business, Hoseok didn't see how digging around other people's subconscious overlapped with his dance background, but Namjoon insisted all they needed was someone quick on his feet. "I'll be the brains, you be the instincts," Namjoon had said, with the kind of inspiring conviction that made Hoseok willing to follow him to the ends of the world, both real and imagined.
He hums under his breath and tries to take in as much sensory information as possible. The wind is blowing toward the lake, carrying with it the scent of pine trees. A movement in his peripheral vision catches his attention, and he spots a deer trotting in the direction of the trees, followed by a trio of squirrels and, inexplicably, a stray puppy. They watch as the party is joined by a pair of birds that look too plump to ever aerodynamically get off the ground. The puppy loops back toward them, tugs once on Namjoon's pant leg, then tumbles after the rest of the furry crew.
"Think they want us to follow them?" Hoseok cuts his way through the tall grass tickling his calves, the sound of Namjoon's thrashing footsteps behind him. Just before they reach the clearing, a voice rings out.
"Stop!"
Hoseok does a double-take, because it's Jimin. No, not Jimin. A projection. This one has his feet braced in the dirt in front of the forest opening, dressed in a striped sweater with baggy sleeves that slip past his wrists, spilling almost to his knuckles.
That's not what's striking about him.
This Jimin, who looks shrunk down inside his oversized clothes, has a bazooka cocked against his shoulder.
Hoseok raises both hands in a pacifying gesture. "We're not here to hurt anyone."
In response, Jimin levels the barrel of the gun at him. "State your intentions with Kim Taehyung!" he demands.
They have a backup plan for difficult targets whose mental defenses veer into more brutal territory. First use diplomacy, then die cleanly, because pain sure as hell will feel real in the dreamscape. This is Namjoon's cue, but he's still too far behind. Hoseok mouth goes dry, his tongue useless. Words keep shriveling up in the barren caverns of his cheeks.
Jimin flashes a radiant smile that Hoseok swears causes a dozen flowers to bloom into view.
"Time's up," he says sweetly. Aims the rocket launcher straight at Hoseok, then pulls the trigger.
⇔
Getting punched up feels like someone suddenly stripping him off the bed onto a cold floor mid-REM cycle, and Hoseok has never gotten used to it no matter how many times it happens. He jolts awake, clutching at his chest before his heartbeat stabilizes. Yoongi blinks down at him, taken aback.
"You're not due to wake up for another half-hour," he remarks.
Next to him, Namjoon startles into motion. Dream Jimin must have fast recoil and killer aim.
"What happened?" Jimin's worried expression crowds into his vision, the real one this time. With the dream still fresh in Hoseok's memory, the sudden reappearance of Jimin's face is unsettling, his mind overlaying the two versions like a double-exposure image caught mid-transition.
"You shot me in the face with a bazooka before we could even find Taehyung." Hoseok rubs at his chin gingerly, as if to confirm that the bones there are still intact. "Well, not you. Taehyung's projection of you shot me in the face."
Jimin looks almost pleased with himself.
"Since both of you are out, we might as well bring Kim-sshi up too." Yoongi presses a button on the PASIV machine, and the amber liquid drains from the vial. Within moments, Taehyung slowly stirs awake, his eyelids fluttering to life under everyone's curious scrutiny, and he stares back at everyone surrounding him, breaking into a good-natured grin. "I still don't remember any of you, so I assume it didn't work?"
Namjoon stretches out his legs, careful not to disturb the IV still attached to his arm. "Do you know that the only projections in your subconscious are woodland animals and Jimin? Oh, and a puppy." He casts a suspicious glance at Jungkook. "That tried to pee on my leg."
Yoongi interrupts before either Jimin or Jungkook can protest. "We see this with many of our clients. Think of the first session as a warm-up. Namjoon, did you get some diagnostics of his dreamscape while you two were down there?"
"Yeah, let's scale back on the Somnacin serum. I think the default setting is a bit harsh on his neural system. His subconscious is too bucolic in nature, so it's having trouble supporting the usual dosage."
The PASIV beeps as Yoongi ejects the empty vial and slots a repleted one into place. "That obvious that Kim-sshi grew up on a farm, huh?" He pushes Taehyung back against the recliner with one hand, recalibrates the settings on the machine dashboard with the other. "Let's try this once more."
This time, Hoseok's prepared for it. He closes his eyes, his mind wiping blank even before Yoongi punches them down.
⇔
The breeze is gone. They're at the edge of a lake, shielded on all sides by jagged walls of rising cliffs, slabs of rocks stacked atop each other in a crude imitation of steps. The sun burns high in the sky, not a single cloud in sight, and everything is impossibly still and silent around them. There's no evidence of the meadow from before, no scent of pine trees or any other sign of living life surrounding the new dreamscape.
Except one.
"Up there." Namjoon nudges him, and on a far ledge directly extended over the water's surface is a silhouette cast in sharp relief against the shadows.
The figure's in a loose sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, face directed away from them so Hoseok can't get a good read on the features, but the slouch of the shoulders gives him away. "It's Taehyung," he murmurs.
In dreams, there's no requirement for anyone to keep their human body; like the brochures say, the only limitation is the confines of your own imagination. But you can't take a pedestrian driver and put them in the cockpit of a race car with triple the horsepower and expect the dreamscape to compensate for the skill differential, and that works the same with flesh and bone. Hoseok could construct himself a framework more lithe and stronger than physics should allow, but he can't force the neurons of his brain to fire faster, have his heart pump enough blood to maximize such a potential, or harness his instincts to match.
He puts a little extra strength into his limbs when they climb up the cliffs, enough to dull the singe of muscles straining against the hot surface of uneven rock. If Taehyung knows of their approach, he doesn't acknowledge them until they've hoisted themselves over the last ledge. Below them is a sharp drop to the lake, spread out under their feet like a smooth sheet of pale blue ice. Ahead of them, the lip of a cave juts out from the mountainside, a boulder firmly sealing its opening.
"That's it," Hoseok says, breathless.
Taehyung turns around to peer at the boulder, then back at them. "What do you think is behind there?" His voice is distant, like he's speaking from the receiving end of a long-distance call.
Hoseok takes a tentative step toward him. "Don't you want to find out?"
"I don't know." The hood of his sweatshirt is still wrapped around him like a security blanket, and Hoseok wants to tug it down, see Taehyung's face fully in the sunlight, confirm that the figure in front of him isn't a half-formed projection from his own mind. Like scratching a phantom itch, he presses a thumb to the inside of his wrist, rubbing back and forth over the texture of raised skin. He wishes now that he'd made his dream-state body less like his real self, less exactly like how he'd react both in and out of his subconscious.
Namjoon walks up to Taehyung and touches his shoulder, the contact causing Taehyung to whip his head back around, refocusing his attention. "Hey. I know it's scary, but you have to remember these are memories, not fears. You've already lived through all of them. They can't hurt you."
"Can I trust you?" The question floats in the air between them, but Taehyung is looking over the line of Namjoon's shoulder, directly at Hoseok. His face is open and earnest, and it's impossible for him to be a projection, because even in Hoseok's weakest moments, he wouldn't allow himself the hedonistic desire to rewrite history.
"Yes," he says, and he means it, from every iteration of himself.
The dreamscape is a held breath, the three of them suspended in time, weightless and free from past sins. Taehyung hesitantly raises a hand toward the boulder, his fingers hovering over the unassuming surface before applying the barest pressure with his fingertips.
There's the sound of thundering water, then a deafening crack as a waterfall bursts through solid rock and sweeps them over the ledge, the impact sending them tumbling down—and down—
⇔
Hoseok gasps awake. Without a word, he rips off the IV in his arm, bypassing Yoongi's questioning look to stare at Taehyung blinking awake behind him until, one by one, everyone else follows his gaze.
Bathed under everyone's attention, Taehyung's face slowly lights up, like a waxing moon moving across a cloudless night sky.
"Park Jimin," he says triumphantly, then cranes his neck in excitement around the room. "Jeon Jungkook! Kim Namjoon!"
Relief floods over Hoseok, a brief respite before Taehyung turns to him and pauses, his eyes shuttering into a startling stillness that immediately sends Hoseok back to that cliff ledge, the sharp drop stretched beneath him. He clears his throat, tries to joke, "The least you can do is tack on a hyung after not seeing us for years."
"I'm sorry, but—" Taehyung starts, and before he can even finish, Hoseok can feel the fall again, the air rushing past his ears, an invisible force pushing him down into the abyss of his own fears, "—should I also know you?"
⇔
"This isn't uncommon," Yoongi tells him later, as if that'll make the situation better. It's after hours, and only the two of them are left in the studio, so Yoongi made an exception and broke into Seokjin's emergency minibar. "Memory recovery isn't always perfect, some get lost in the shuffle." When Hoseok doesn't reply and continues to stare miserably into his open beer, he sighs and adds, "It's my fault. You've never worked on someone you already knew, and I shouldn't have agreed to his case. It was a mistake to let you go down again after what happened in the first session."
"Don't blame yourself." Hoseok runs a tired hand through his hair, and Yoongi reaches up to massage the back of his neck, his fingers working over the top of Hoseok's spinal column. "I don't blame Taehyung, either. We shared some pretty shitty memories. I'd probably erase myself too."
He sputters on his drink when Yoongi bops him on the head without warning. "Resolution by erasure isn't a real solution, dummy."
Not that Hoseok would have the self-preservation to erase those memories anyway, even if given the choice. He just never thought Taehyung would be the one to let go first.
"It isn't fair, you know," he mumbles, his cheeks warm with liquid buzz. "If I'd known the only two options would be keeping him for real or him completely forgetting me, I would've picked the first one."
⇔
When Taehyung walks through Cypher's studio doors two days later, Hoseok first checks the inside of his wrist to make sure he's not dreaming, then curses that of course this happens when Namjoon and Yoongi are out to lunch, and finally tries to hold himself together from where he's already starting to unravel at seeing Taehyung's face again, a reminder that even in dreams, you can't rewrite history.
There's a beanie jammed over Taehyung's hair, a backpack slung over one shoulder, and an open bag of honey butter chips clutched in his fist. If ever Hoseok constructed a projection of Taehyung in his sleep, this would be it. Something that could be a distant relative to panic flashes across Taehyung's face, then dissipates as fast as it came.
"I came to drop off my follow-up report," he says, avoiding eye contact as he swings his backpack around to grab a bundle of papers from the front pocket.
Hoseok mechanically smooths down the wrinkled edges, scanning down the report despite his mind struggling to register any of the information on the pages. A loud crinkle of plastic breaks his concentration as Taehyung pops a handful of chips into his mouth, and Hoseok looks up at him in mild annoyance.
"Oh, sorry," Taehyung says sheepishly, his mouth full. He turns the bag to Hoseok in offering. "Want one? Your favorite flavor, right?"
"I'm fine," Hoseok replies, tone clipped.
Then, a fissure cracking open on the floor of his stomach, swallowing his organs whole from bottom up. His guilt, all-consuming before, now subsumes under a surge of confusion, followed by a flicker of hope.
"Kim Taehyung," he says slowly. "How do you know these are my favorite flavor?"
To his credit, Taehyung has the audacity to freeze mid-chew, guilt immediately stamping over his features. The truth hits Hoseok like the impact from a seismic wave, short-circuiting every neuron in his system. "You've remembered this whole time," he accuses, and his voice shakes, angry and ruptured.
"I haven't seen you since that night," Taehyung blurts out. "I didn't know what to say to you, so I pretended I didn't have those memories back yet. I was going to tell you in a few days, promise! I just wanted a little more time to think."
Hoseok feels swept up, unbridled with quaking energy. "Taehyung, you flaming pile of trash."
"Hyung, I'm really sorry." Taehyung hastily lets the offending bag fall to the floor, reaching over the desk to clasp at Hoseok's hands. "Don't throw me away just yet."
Hoseok tries to tug his hands free, but Taehyung has always had a vise-grip as stubborn as a bear trap, and no amount of twisting releases him from his grasp. "Let go," he says, narrowing his eyes.
"Even if it hurt when you left, I wouldn't want to give up all the memories we shared together," Taehyung tells him somberly, and the inside of Hoseok's ribcage still feels like the aftermath of a burnt volcanic eruption, but the aftershocks are waning into tremors, and soon Hoseok won't be able to tell them apart from his heartbeat working in double-time.
He lets his hands go slack in Taehyung's grasp. "I wouldn't either."
As if emboldened by his admission, Taehyung perseveres forward. "I know you thought we were just playing around back then, but I was always playing to win."
All this time Hoseok assumed he'd made a mistake letting Taehyung get too close, that doing so was taking advantage of how easily Taehyung was willing to follow his careless lead, but maybe he was misreading himself all along, and Taehyung was the one with enough faith to see past the imaginary boundaries Hoseok had put up. And maybe the burden that Hoseok had thought they were feeding between them wasn't a burden this entire time, but instead a boulder that just needed to be lifted out of the way, leaving behind space for them to realize the full potential of their synergy.
"I wasn't playing around," he says, an echo of a better version of himself that was able to stand in front of Taehyung and promise, Yes, trust me.
"Then," Taehyung says, with a grin that takes up half his face, a sight more solid than any memory, "you up for trying round two?"
A second chance. The desire planted in the dirt of Hoseok's subconscious those years ago, now ripe for harvest.
"Yes. For keeps this time."