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i'm up, down, i'm spinning around
Park Jimin wakes up with trembling fingers and cold sweat soaking the back of his neck.
He flings himself against the side of the metal railing, throws up the contents of his stomach onto the floor, the bile acrid and sour against the back of his throat. He doesn’t register that the lights have been flicked on until there are hands pushing him back against the pillows and a cloth is pressed to his mouth.
His ears are ringing, his head is spinning, and he’s not even sure where he is. As the noise slowly creeps back into his ears, he hears shouts, random scraps of conversations filter in around him as he clenches his eyes tight. The tears seep out from under his eyelids, track hot trails down his cheeks.
He needs to get out, get out of here. The gunshots are ringing in his ears, his hands are shaking from the impact of the recoil from the rifles, his hands are wet with something. He doesn’t want to look down, he doesn’t want to look up, he just wants to get out of here before it happens.
Jungkook’s lifeless face in his lap, eyes wide open and unseeing, red seeping through his military scrubs, long turned ashy grey by gunpowder and dirt. His young face, bruised from butts of guns, tanned by the scorching sun, littered with scars both healed and healing flickers before Jimin’s eyes. He barely registers the churning of his stomach before he lurches forward, dry heaving with a gurgling sound that scrapes at the walls of his throat.
“Hey, hey, breathe. You with me? Park Jimin?”
There are warm, long fingers stroking down his back, thin, strong arms encircling his waist, and he lets them push him back against the pillows. His chest is heaving from the puking, he tastes the acidity of the bile on his tongue, he can’t feel his limbs. His heart is beating too fast in his chest and he’s fucking scared.
I need to get out of here .
“Park Jimin, look at me. Open your eyes, you can do this.”
The voice is warm honey to his ears, cutting through the daze of noise and the echoes of gunshots, going straight to his brain. Jimin reaches for it, tries to find it, his fingers trembling and weak and there are long warm digits interweaving with his, holding his hand gently. There is a thumb stroking over his knuckles, tapping a rhythm over the thin skin stretching over his small hands. Jimin grips back; his chest is burning, his mouth gasping for air.
“C’mon, baby, open your eyes for me.”
“Can’t,” Jimin rasps out, and the words come out like sandpaper against his vocal chords.
“Yes, you can, baby,” the voice is soothing, a balm on his ears, a cool glide against the heat of his open wounds. The hands on his tighten, and there’s a forehead pressed to his. Jimin can feel the bridge of another nose against his and he tries to back away, squeezing his eyes tighter.
“No, no, don’t wanna. Wanna go home,” the words tumble out of his mouth one after another. The forehead is cool against his, ice against the fire raging in his veins threatening to burn through his capillaries and muscles.
“Jimin, baby, you’re home. You’re not out there anymore.”
Home.
Jimin stills, his breaths harsh against the cold air. The noises around him still, and there’s only quiet, only his breaths loud in the silence. He hears the other person’s breaths, measured and paced, a constant rhythm under the heaves of his own lungs.
“Home?”
“Yes, baby. C’mon, breathe for me,” the hands grip a little tighter now, the voice is a little lower. Jimin breathes with him, the sounds syncing, weaving together until they are thudding to the same beat. Slow, measured, careful; everything was going to be alright, he was home.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” the voice praises, thumbs rubbing gentle circles against his skin. Jimin’s breaths stutter, but he breaths along, his chest trembling from the effort. He lifts his head up, seeking the source, his fingers wound tightly around the other’s. They are an anchor in the ocean of emotions and memories that Jimin is drowning in, and he doesn’t want to let go.
He wants to live, Jimin realises, he doesn’t want to drown.
There is a squeeze on his hands, and the voice is back.
“Baby, you trust me, yeah?”
Jimin nods against the forehead, squeezes the hands in his. There is a sigh of relief from the other, the exhale fanning cool air across Jimin’s face. It’s soothing and cool against his cheeks, and Jimin realises that he’s no longer crying anymore.
“C’mon baby, breathe. Open your eyes. Breathe.”
Jimin takes a deep breath, opens his eyes with the exhale, breaks out of the waves filled with smoke and ash.
---
i'm lost and i'll never be found
His name is Min Yoongi, and he is Jimin’s doctor. He specialises in dealing with PTSD, he was a medical officer in the war, and he has stitched up more wounds than Jimin has on his body. His hands are gentle when he changes Jimin’s bandages and his fingers are warm against Jimin’s skin. Jimin watches him tape the cloth down, watches him smooth the creases away.
“Hey.”
The blonde raises an eyebrow as he trims off the end of the bandage. He turns away from the bed, arranging the utensils carefully on the metal tray on the side. Jimin watches him, watches his hands, watches the delicate fingers dance across the cool silver surface. The doctor ignores him, but lingers around Jimin’s bed, like he wanted to say something.
“You know, you could say what you want,” Jimin tries cautiously. He has learnt some things about Dr. Min Yoongi, about how he was cranky he was, about how he’d rather let the nurses talk to the patients themselves. However, said doctor was now dawdling around his bed, pink speckled on his chest, stark against the pale expanse of his skin.
Dr. Min sighs, his shoulders slumping momentarily. He turns around to make eye contact with Jimin, his eyes darting up and down his face.
“You keep having nightmares.”
Jimin shrugs. “It’s the war, nothing much. I’m hardly the only one in here with that,” he draws his knees up, wraps his arms around them. “Don’t you talk to them?”
The side of Jimin’s bed dips down as the doctor settles down, untucking his coat from under the pressure and collecting the fabric in his lap. Jimin peeks out at his side, his eyes following the strands of blonde hair curled behind his ear.
“I don’t talk much,” a muscle in his jaw twitches as Dr. Min folds his hands in his lap, pointedly
Avoiding his gaze. “How are you coping though?”
Jimin scoffs, tucks his chin into his knees, staring out at the hospital walls. All he sees is white, white and more white. It was so different from the grimy, gritty filth of the medical tents that he was used to in the war, where the iron stench of blood was constant in his nostrils.
“I see it every single day in my dreams,” he thinks of his hands, slippery with crimson, his fingers digging determinedly into the trigger. He had to fire shot after shot, knocking down the advancing soldiers like flies. He had watched as their silhouettes, black against the blood orange of the sunset, had dropped down one by one, just like flies.
The doctor shifts beside him, his lips parting momentarily before he closes them again. Jimin frowns, jabs him with his elbow. Dr. Min glares at him, tucking his arm against his chest before grumbling out a “what was that?”.
Jimin shoots him a disgruntled look, pinches the sheets in between his thumb and index finger.
“You can ask you know. I have the final decision of not answering.”
Dr. Min is silent for a while before he picks himself off the bed, dusting his hands off. He grabs the tray, turns around to smile at Jimin gently. It’s just a gentle curve of corners of his lips, but it makes warmth run through the soldier’s veins, makes his heart beat just a little faster.
“Another time maybe. The next time, just call me Yoongi-hyung, kay?”
Jimin sleeps a little better that night, his dreams filled with blonde hair, a warm smile, and pale hands holding his own in the midst of grimy smoke and fog.
---
my lips were much too shy, the lines about you they never rhymed
“Hello, Yoongi-hyung.”
Jimin grins cheekily up at the doctor as he sets down the tray on Jimin’s bed side table. Yoongi snorts, snaps on a fresh pair of gloves.
“Hello, Park Jimin. Can I check your arm wound today?”
“Why, you’re more than welcome,” Jimin chirps happily, stretching out his arm. Yoongi pushes up the loose sleeve of the hospital gown that he is wearing, cuts away at the gauze wrapped around his bicep. He teases the cloth away, inspecting the wound underneath. Jimin follows the delicate movements of his slim fingers, watches his face that is set in a stone mask of concentration. Dr. Min Yoongi is an extremely attractive young man, he’s aware of that.
“So, any girl waiting back at home?”
He is jerked out of his observations by the question posed by the doctor. Jimin laughs sheepishly; he’s never sure how to approach the topic every single time it’s brought up. He trusts Yoongi enough, he thinks, so he decides to say it.
“I’m, um, gay.”
Yoongi doesn’t react. He finishes disinfecting Jimin’s wound, reaches for the roll of gauze on the tray. When he’s done bandaging it up, he pulls off his gloves, pulls out disinfectant wipes to clean his hands. Jimin is seized with a sense of panic, and his hand lurches out to grab at the sleeve of his white medical gown. He doesn’t know what has propelled the action, but he’s slightly relieved when the doctor turns to look down at him on questioningly.
“Don’t hate me,” the words tumble out of his mouth faster than his brain can process the action. “Please don’t hate me. I trust you, Dr. Min, that’s why I told you. Please please please don’t hate me I beg of you.”
Dr. Min is untangling his fingers from the edge of his sleeve, and a flood of panic spreads through Jimin. He should have known; military personnel are usually more traditional, definitely homophobic . He hadn’t told anyone about him liking other men; it was dangerous to do so. You got beaten up in the toilets, your scrubs were stained, your supplies raided by the stronger ones. Jimin had sucked it up, gritted his teeth when obscene jokes were made about those faggots , forced smiles when his platoon mates clapped him on the back and made vulgar gestures.
He shouldn’t have expected anything from Dr. Min. Really, he shouldn’t have.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I don’t hate you, Jimin.”
The fingers on his jaw are warm, and Jimin’s not aware that he’s crying until Yoongi is thumbing away at the tears on his cheeks, shushing him gently. He tucks his face into Yoongi’s hands, lets the doctor rub circles into his cheeks gently.
“Y-you d-don’t?”
Yoongi smiles, the same gentle smile that Jimin now sees in his dreams. The same smile that now guides Jimin through his dreams filled with mazes of grenades and trenches. The same smile that Jimin now clings onto whenever he finds it hard to breathe at night. The doctor watches him carefully, his thumbs light wisps on his cheeks, and Jimin feels heat rush into them at the skin contact. Yoongi’s hands are soft, smell of disinfectant, and they are cool against his own warmer skin. He always had a higher body temperature, Ju-- others had always told him.
Yoongi leans down to kiss him, careful, gentle, and Jimin doesn’t even think twice about kissing back.
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baby where’d you go? i need you here tonight
Jimin breaks out of the smoke and the gas with a gasp, tears scorching down his cheeks, his breaths laboured and heavy. His hands are shaking, his vision blurry as he reaches out, searching blindly as he scrabbles at the cheeks. The sobs warble out from his lungs, get lodged in his throat, and Jimin feels like he’s back in the trenches again. Choking on gas and gunpowder, tasting iron on his tongue, his hands smeared slick with blo---
“Jimin.”
Yoongi’s there, warm fingers wrapping around his wrists, arms around his waist, his face warm against Jimin’s neck. Jimin’s hands find the back of Yoongi’s coat, his cheek pressing against the smooth silk of Yoongi’s black hair, his body welcoming Yoongi’s weight against his. He opens his mouth, wants to say Yoongi’s name, but nothing comes out of his throat. It brings a fresh wave of tears to his eyes, burning at the back of his eyeballs, threatening to just spill over onto his cheeks.
“Jimin, you’re alright. I’m here, I’m here.”
Yoongi presses kisses to his cheeks, to his forehead, to the corner of his mouth. His thumbs wipe away the tears on Jimin’s cheek, rubbing soothing circles into his skin. His legs tangle with Jimin’s, slender and warm against Jimin’s bare skin. Yoongi surrounds Jimin, fills up the empty stale air with his presence, chases away the ghosts of the nightmares that linger on Jimin’s skin with his warmth. He’s everywhere, touching Jimin in the most tender way possible, sweet sugar spinning itself into Jimin’s pores and purging away the filth and grime of the war.
Jimin finds it easier to breathe again when Yoongi touches him.
When he’s calmed down, stilling under Yoongi’s hands, Jimin presses his forehead to the doctor’s. Yoongi’s fingers are tapping a rhythm on the bones of his wrists, the digits cool against his heated skin. The doctor hums once, leans down to press a quick kiss to his lips, lingering there while his breath fans lightly over Jimin’s jaw.
“You alright?”
Jimin nods once, twice before slumping against the doctor’s lean frame. Yoongi’s arms wrap around him, a comforting cage around him. Jimin tugs him down against him on the bed, tucking his head into Yoongi’s neck, breathing in the smell of antiseptic and disinfectant. It’s all sterile, all clean and Jimin finds comfort in it. It reminds him that he is now far away from the war, from the gunpowder and the stench of rotting bodies. He remembers the gunshot, too close to his ear. He remembers the slumping of the body against his, too slack and too relaxed. He remembers the horror settling into the pit of the stomach, cold and dreadful, as blood soaked through the rough fabric of his shirt, staining the spot right above his heart.
He shudders, pulls himself closer to Yoongi.
“Stay,” the word is muffled into the clean cloth of the shoulder of Yoongi’s coat. Yoongi massages fingers into his hair, the pads gentle against his scalp, and tangles his legs with Jimin’s carefully. There are lips pressed to his hairline carefully and Jimin feels the cold leave his gut, feels more secure and safe already.
“Go to sleep, Jimin.”
Jimin sleeps soundly that night, no gunshots, no screaming, no nightmares.
---
singing myself to sleep, you’re still my favourite memory
Jimin drops his bag to the floor, takes in the cool tones of blue and beige around him. He hasn’t been in an apartment in a while. He hadn’t had anywhere to go; not when his parents had moved to California, and his own brother had died in the war. They hadn’t bothered to get in touch with him, and Jimin was fine with that. He hadn’t spoken to them after the war had ended, he didn’t plan to contact them. They wouldn’t want to waste money on their only surviving child, suffering from PTSD, with a slight limp in his leg.
Cool arms wrap around his waist, lips press gently to his jaw, and he turns around to meet Yoongi in an open-mouthed kiss, their tongues sliding gently against one another. Yoongi still kisses him ever so reverently, ever so gently, his thumbs pressing lightly into Jimin’s hipbones.
“Don’t like it?” Yoongi murmurs against his mouth, his eyes half-closed as he pulls Jimin closer. Jimin laughs quietly, tilts his head forward to steal another quick kiss.
“Nah,” he wraps his own arms around Yoongi’s torso, drops his head on the doctor’s shoulder, “I love it, it’s like you.”
Yoongi laughs, nuzzles along Jimin’s jawline gently, pulls him so that they collapse on the couch in a tangle of limbs and giggles. After slotting limbs carefully together amidst quick kisses peppered here and there, Jimin ends up under Yoongi, the doctor’s face tucked into his chest, his own fingers tangled in blonde hair.
“Yoongi-hyung?”
“Hm,” Yoongi mumbles into his chest, his own fingers playing idly with the strands at the nape of Jimin’s neck. The ex-soldier takes a shallow breath, and his fingers still in Yoongi’s hair. The doctor seems to sense the sudden change in the atmosphere, and he’s pushing himself off his younger lover, pulling Jimin upright so that they are sitting on the couch. He pulls Jimin’s legs across his laps, takes his smaller hands into his own, rubs circles on the back of his hands.
“Hey,” Yoongi’s voice is soft, careful, reassuring, “you don’t have to tell me anything you want to, okay, baby?”
Jimin shakes his head, clenches Yoongi’s fingers with his own.
“No,” he swallows hard, bites his lower lip gently, looks up at Yoongi with conviction in his eyes.
“His name was Jeon Jungkook. He was my partner.”
---
cause i’m drowning when i close my eyes, and i’m falling can’t breathe tonight
Yoongi lies there in the dark, unable to close his eyes. Jimin is curled up beside him, tears dried on his face, but sleeping soundly nonetheless. He’s tucked into Yoongi’s side, his legs tangled with the doctor’s. His breaths are slow and measured, and Yoongi’s fingers card through his hair while he looks down on the relaxed sleeping face of his boyfriend.
He thinks about what Jimin had told him, about how the gunshot was too loud in his ears, the moment in which the body of his younger partner slumped against him. He thinks about the times that he spent in Jimin’s hospital bed, cuddled up in the cramped space of the single bed. He thinks of the nights that the younger has screamed incoherently, thrashed around in bed, almost knocking him off the fragile bed frame. He thinks of the mornings that Jimin has woken up, eyes puffy with the sleep, scrunched up happily when Yoongi wakes up next to him.
Jimin has been drowning for so long. The nurses had been telling the truth; he doesn’t usually interact with his patients. The war had been merciless on all of them, and as a medic, he was constantly stressed and pressured. He might not have suffered the impact of the conflict that happened on the battlefield, but it has still taken a toll on him. He never had time to himself, never had outlets to take out his own sexual frustration. There were stolen moments here and there; a random tryst with the commander of his camp, ten minutes in the toilet with one of the nurses. Nothing serious though, and Yoongi never goes back to the same person twice.
He doesn’t want to think about what Jimin had been through. The boy had been so young, so skinny before the training had bulked him up and forced him to grow up a bit too fast. Jungkook had been even younger, Jimin had told him, two years younger and a little bit too bright-eyed. The war had taken him in, made him run away from his parents who had moved to America in order to stay out of the war.
The war had also taken him too early.
Yoongi had a lot of things to stay about the war, but he had always held his tongue. He had seen too many dead bodies like Jeon Jungkook; boys too young to be fighting, their bodies piled up on tarp sheets, their surviving comrades the only ones shedding tears for their sacrifices. He also also witnessed too many soldiers like Park Jimin; men that survived the war, but who are still boys on the inside, dreaming of the horrors of the battlefield and their dead comrades in their last moments. He has seen so many things, he doesn’t think he needs to see anymore.
He didn’t know what had drawn him to Jimin, what had made him stay at his bedside. After talking to the younger boy and getting to know him, he got to know the young boy underneath the scars of the battle-worn soldier, the boy who cried for his partner and reached for his parents in his sleep. He had wanted to kiss the boy very early into their friendship, but he had refrained to do so, not wanting the boy to latch onto him as a source of attachment. However, somewhere along the way, he had taken the initiative, kissed the boy, stayed the nights in his bed.
It might be some weird form of attachment, but he doesn’t want to let Jimin go. He wants to hold him in his arms every single night, make sure that he catches up on all the hours of sleep that the war has stolen from him. He wants to stay with Jimin forever, press kisses to his cheeks, bring him breakfast in bed, watch him wake up in the morning.
He wants to marry Park Jimin.
The rate at which he is falling scares him, but he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want to do anything else. Min Yoongi wants only Park Jimin, for the rest for the years that he has to live out. He wants to put a ring on Jimin’s ring finger, wants to promise to love him for the rest of their lives, wants to watch Jimin’s hallowed up cheeks become puffy again as the days past.
The war had been cruel, taking a lot of things from him, but it had given him Park Jimin.
---
i never said i was the best thing for you
“Do you, Min Yoongi, take Park Jimin to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Jimin bites on his lower lip, his fingers trembling in Yoongi’s grasp. He watches the doctor through his eyelashes, watches how the dyed gray strands fall into his eyes. His heart is stuttering, his palms are sweaty as he waits for his fiancee to open his mouth.
Yoongi catches his gaze, smiles his favourite smile (that same gentle smile that he had first seen in the hospital, the same one that he had fallen for) and squeezes his fingers gently. Jimin swallows, looks at him fully in the eye, smiles brightly back at him.
“I do.”
Jimin’s heart bursts, soars with the love that he has for Yoongi, and he can’t believe it. You’re married , he’s trembling, you’re married to Yoongi. He vaguely hears the mumbling of the officiator in the background before Yoongi’s hands are tight on his waist, pulling him flush against his lean torso and kissing him hard.
The heat of Yoongi’s tongue against his blurs out the applause in the background (he’s sure Taehyung is catcalling in the background, rude ), and he kisses Yoongi back like he’s a dying man. His hands are grappling on Yoongi’s suit, sliding up into his hair, angling their faces so that they could kiss better. It’s not the best kiss that they’ve shared, it’s not the most magical, but god they are married and it’s the first kiss they are sharing as husband and husband.
They break apart, and suddenly the noise crowds into his ears, overwhelming him, but Yoongi’s there to steady him. Their noses are brushing, and Yoongi is smiling widely down at him, the gummy smile searing its way into Jimin’s heart. Yoongi is just as happy, just as excited as he is, and he’s hasn’t felt so delighted in forever.
“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he whispers into Yoongi’s cheek when they are slow-dancing on the floor, the first dance of the night. He’s leading the dance, being the better dancer between the two of them. Yoongi is pliant in his arms, his torso languid and loose. Jimin thinks about the night ahead of them, having Yoongi naked in bed with him, their first night together as newlyweds. Everything’s different when you’re married; you’re experiencing everything for the first time again.
“Not the best thing,” Yoongi corrects him, turning his head to press a quick kiss against the edge of Jimin’s jawline. He presses them closer, and Jimin slows down the dance further, just swaying on the spot down. Other couples are filtering out on the floor to join them, the music soft and the lights warm.
“Not the best thing, perhaps,” Jimin agrees. He knows both of them are still struggling with their own demons from the war. It might have been fifteen long years, but they all still had wars of their own to fight. Jimin still woke up crying sometimes, Yoongi still smokes too much. But they’re okay, they’re fine, and they have each other.
“You’re all I need to fall asleep,” mumbles Jimin. They aren’t the only couple on the dance floor, but they are in their own world. Min Yoongi is Park Jimin’s whole world, and he’s never been so happy to be living, to be breathing, to wake up every single morning.
Yoongi’s fingers are gentle against his skin, his kisses breathy against the column of Jimin’s neck.
“I’ll sing you to sleep every night. You just have to wake up the next morning.”