Archive of Our Own

Yoongi-yah, you want to be a stone in your next life?
Don't worry, it's no big deal!
I'll carry you to all of the beautiful places.

⥁

Taehyung only makes it to the hospital for the funeral.

The call comes in the middle of the afternoon with the sun bright and high, Namjoon’s smiling face flashing across his phone display. Taehyung doesn’t think anything of it as he picks up and, like always, immediately starts talking.

“Hey, Joon-hyung. Everything going ok? Hyung mentioned this morning that you guys were really stuck on that one bit, and I was wondering if I should worry about ordering us dinner? I don’t want to bother if the two of you are going to make noodles again and sit in the studio all night— ” 

Taehyung is three quarters the way through his standard bombardment of greeting questions before he realizes that Namjoon is already speaking. 

The words are a jumble, almost intelligible over an electronic wailing in the background and the heaving of Namjoon’s breathing. Taehyung makes out: ‘jumped the curb— ‘, ‘coffee— ‘, ‘my studio— ’, and ‘ambulance— ’

“Joon-hyung? What’s wrong? I can’t hear a word you’re saying— Did something happen?” Taehyung can feel his shoulders rise with each question, body drawing tight. 

“Taehyung-ah, I’m so sorry. I think— “

The sirens stop, and Namjoon's voice cracks, and that's when Taehyung knows.

“I think he’s gone.”

Something cuts every tendon in his body. Taehyung’s knees slam against the carpet next to the couch and he doesn’t feel the ache of it. He chokes out, “That’s not funny, Namjoon, what the fuck.”

“I’m not joking.” Namjoon’s flat, almost lifeless, voice replies. “Look— the paramedics want me to come with them. Something about paperwork. I’ll call you back when I know more.”

When it’s confirmed rings unsaid over the call. Taehyung doesn’t reply, can’t reply, breath trapped in his throat. 

“Tae?” There’s more noise in the background now, clanging metal doors and another muffled voice. Namjoon says something indecipherable to someone beside him before his voice cracks again over the speakers. “I’m so sorry. I have to go. I’ll call you back. Bye.”

The line goes silent. 

Distantly, as if coming from someone and somewhere else, Taehyung hears himself begin to scream. 

⥁

You [15:23]
text me back
hyung, text me back what the fuck
this isnt funny
why arent you picking up the phone
hyung im so serious this insnwt funny
i dontk now what jyou and joon0hyung
think youer doing haha funny joke

You [16:09]
pick up the phone
stop letting me go to voicemail
what the fuck

You [17:41]
please
dont do this to me
text me back
hyung, please

⥁

joon-hyung [17:58]
I turned his phone off. 
Taehyung, I'm so sorry. 
But you need to stop. 

⥁

The funeral goes for three days and Taehyung attends the entire thing from a vantage point somewhere several metres above his own left shoulder. He’s not technically part of the family (never got the chance), but he stays regardless, nights spent tossing on a cold mat on the funeral home floor. 

He becomes one with his mourning clothes, the flaxen armband around his bicep a pressure cuff matched only by the vice around his ribs. 

The second night is worse, all the creaks and groans of the strange room reminding him of nothing except voices, trying to tell him something. Impossible to understand. 

The next morning, he greets the rest of his friends with a blank stare and watches them try to comfort him like a movie starring someone else. When they pull away and get into position as directed, Taehyung does nothing except look at the sky. As they walk two by three, each gripping a brass handle, only the smallest part of Taehyung manages to be grateful that they’re helping him carry. 

In the back of his head, the screaming continues, drowning out nearly everything else. 

Later on the third day, when all the ceremonies are over, ashes and photographs interred behind glass, Jimin helps him get home. Helps him shower and changes him into soft clothes that still smell like before. Tucks him into bed and crawls in beside him, pulling their bodies close. He cards a hand through Taehyung’s hair and whispers about sweet, quiet things, occasionally switching to humming lilting lullabies. 

Eventually, exhaustion taking over, Taehyung floats into the oblivion of a viscous, dreamless, sleep. 

⥁

The bed is still warm beside him when Taehyung wakes to the low rumble of the coffee machine filtering its way into the bedroom. 

Sunshine creeps around the heavy blinds, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut as he buries his head back into the safety of his pillow. Something pricks at the edges of his memory, a bad dream or an inauspicious omen, but he pays it no mind as he curls back into the blankets, content and snug. The faint scent of coffee and the sound of pans clattering in the kitchen lull him into drowsiness until the promise of food wins out over his desire to stay in bed. He pictures the way the plates are probably already arranged, as they are every Sunday, perfectly rolled omelettes surrounded by a wider assortment of side dishes than is reasonable for two people. It’s one of his favourite traditions for the pair of them, a morning away from their hectic schedules and the rest of the world. 

He doesn’t bother to put on his glasses as he stumbles out of bed, but that doesn’t stop him from quickly spotting the slight frame of the man cooking, back turned, a steaming mug on the counter beside the stove. Unable to shake the last vestiges of the uneasy feeling, Taehyung slots himself behind him. 

“God, hyung, I had the worst fuckin’ dream.” He wraps his arms around the other’s middle, bending down to nuzzle into the back of his neck “It was like you’d died or something.” 

The body under his freezes, and something in the back of Taehyung’s head starts to count the things that are wrong. Shoulders: too narrow; hands: too small; jawline a harsh straight line where it should have been angled and soft. And then, with a force like recoil, Taehyung’s mind springs back into place and the memories of the past week overwhelm him. 

“Jimin.” It comes out desperate, like a prayer. He steps back and presses his spine into the harsh edge of the doorway. 

Jimin stays frozen, eyes blown wide and glassy, gaze focused somewhere an eternity past the spatula in his hand. They stay like that, a tableau of grief, until a curl of smoke lifts itself off the pan on the stove, setting the alarm above their heads blaring. 

“Shit, shit. Fuck.”

Jimin moves first, pulling the frying pan off the burner, fumbling with the knob in an attempt to turn off the gas. The eggs tumble off the pan and land, uncooked side down, with a wet splat on the floor. They both stare at them in horror, still silent. 

And then they’re laughing, high and hysterical. Not from joy— but from absurdity, and from exhaustion, and from something that might be agony. It goes for several long minutes, the pair of them collapsing to the floor, until they’re breathless. When the laughter is gone, chest heaving, Jimin moves himself closer to where Taehyung is sitting, curled against the wall. 

He tucks himself into Taehyung’s side and says, “I just— I wanted something to be normal for you. Familiar.” 

“Maybe too familiar, hey?” Taehyung replies, closing his eyes and tilting his head back so it bangs against the plaster. “I can’t think about normal right now.” 

Jimin deflates, then pulls Taehyung closer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. You okay?”

Taehyung’s not totally sure what qualifies as okay in the current situation but he nods regardless. The half-cooked omelettes are leaking out in a slow puddle on the floor, one side scorched carbon black. The residual smoke in the air stinks, acrid and sour. It smells so much better than the coffee. 

All Taehyung is thinking about when Jimin moves away is what it’s going to feel like when the leaking mass of egg finally hits the bare skin of his outstretched leg. Cold, probably. Disgusting, definitely. He doesn’t move away from it. Jimin stops it with a kitchen rag before it can, anyway. Squatting back onto his heels and offering a hand to Taehyung, like he wants him to stand, Jimin says, “Why don’t you go take a shower. I’ll check on the rice and put all the extra stuff away. Jin-hyung gave us a big thing of galbi yesterday. We’ll eat that instead. Something familiar, but not out of the ordinary, yeah?” 

“Okay,” Taehyung replies, grasping Jimin’s hand. He lets himself be pulled upright. 

As Taehyung turns towards the bathroom, desperate to get away from everything that just happened, Jimin’s voice follows him. He asks, “It was the omelettes though, right?”

“No.” Taehyung pauses, breathes. “Coffee machine. Nobody else has ever used it.”

He hears it, but doesn’t see it, when a large quantity of liquid is poured into the sink and down the drain. Gurgling as it goes.

⥁

The next day, sometime in mid afternoon, Taehyung notices that Jimin is packing to leave. His things are scattered around the bedroom, a pair of pants on the floor, a handful of jewellery on the dresser. His toothbrush in the bathroom. Little pieces of someone else that are filling the space and making it seem different, like a sleepover or an extended staycation. Taehyung doesn’t know what he’s going to do with himself once they’re gone. 

“Don’t go. Please,” he begs, hating himself for sounding so desperate. 

Jimin’s head snaps up from where he’s folding a sweater into a duffel bag. “Tae…”

“Please, Jimin— I can’t be alone here.”

The reply is hesitant, and careful, Jimin’s hands curling into the fabric. “Kkyu, he needs— “ He stops and gives himself a shake. His voice gets stronger, he doesn’t look at Taehyung. “He needs me too.” 

The guilt washes over Taehyung strong enough to temporarily mute the screaming. Of course. Taehyung isn’t the only one who’d lost someone. Taehyung isn’t the only one who’s grieving. Selfish.

Jimin must be able to tell by the way he’s gone still, because he immediately starts to talk again, eyes snapping up to meet Taehyung’s face, “No— No. I didn’t mean it like that. He understands, everyone understands, he’s been staying with Hoseok-hyung, it’s okay. But I want to— I need to see him.” 

“He can stay here,” Taehyung insists. Jimin stands, takes a few steps, and puts an arm around Taehyung’s shoulder.  

“And sleep where? On the couch?” Jimin shakes his head. “There’s no place for us here, Tae, and you know that.” 

He pulls Taehyung into his chest and burrows his nose into his hair. “But you can come with me, we’ll make up the mats in the office, you can stay as long as you need.”

The part of Taehyung that still refuses to admit anything has changed spikes with fear. He stammers into Jimin’s shoulder, “I think if I— If I leave now I’ll never come back.”

Jimin pulls back and looks Taehyung straight in the eye. “Would that be so bad?”

“Yes.” He nods, whispering, “I need to stay.”

“Okay.” Jimin cups his face in one hand and runs a finger over his cheekbone. “I’ll call Seokjin-hyung and Hoseok-hyung, one of them will come stay with you. As long as you need.” There’s a name missing from the list of options. From the list of his hyungs. Taehyung notes it. Understands the omission.  

“No.” He separates himself from Jimin and takes a jagged, creaking breath. “You’re right. I can’t force all this on them. If I want to stay, I have to learn to stay by myself.”

“It’s too soon— “ Jimin starts. 

Taehyung cuts him off. “It’s not too soon. Band-aid, right?” He manages the closest thing to a smile that he can. “It’s going to hurt anyway, and god, Jimin-ah, I don’t think I’m physically capable of feeling any more hurt. So I may as well do it now.”

Jimin deflates, fight gone. “Okay,” he says, before pulling himself to full height and continuing, “I’ll be back in the morning. No— No. Don’t argue with me. I’ll be back in the morning and I’ll bring breakfast. Please call me if you need, or one of the hyungs.”  

Not Namjoon , Taehyung’s brain helpfully provides. He tucks himself back into Jimin’s smaller frame and manages to breathe out an agreement before they both turn to finish packing Jimin’s things. 

So Jimin leaves, and then Taehyung is alone.

⥁

It takes Taehyung less than two hours to realize that it is, in fact, possible to hurt more than he had that afternoon. 

With Jimin in the apartment, it hadn’t been real. Another long business trip weekend where Taehyung had whined and complained about not wanting to be alone, about how this was perfect soulmate bonding time, come eat takeout and watch dramas with me, please? 

Jimin leaving should have meant that it was a matter of hours, maybe even minutes, maybe even only seconds, until the door beeped open and there was the rattle of plastic wheels on the tile floor and someone complaining about the flight, or security, or the long train ride from Incheon International Airport— Why the fuck does nobody ever book these things out of Gimpo, do you have any idea how much easier that would make my life, Taehyung-ah? Are you home?

His body is still expecting it. The noise. The greeting. When he hears someone pull a suitcase down the hall, a sound so distinctive it couldn’t possibly be anything else, Taehyung’s entire being breathes out in relief. He’s here. He’s home. It was all just a dream, some silly anxiety hallucination, the kind of thing someone invents out of worry, or fear. It doesn’t matter, it wasn’t real. 

And then the sound gets more distant, moving away instead of towards and Taehyung understands, maybe for the very first time, the meaning of silence. It crashes over him, pulls him under, fills all the space in his lungs with something thick as honey but not nearly as sweet. 

Because if those were someone else’s shoes pulling someone else’s luggage— 

Because if the door is going to stay closed— 

Because if he isn’t coming— 

Because then— 

Taehyung opens his eyes, and looks around the room, and drowns. 

The apartment is so empty. The apartment is exactly the same. It shouldn’t be the same. Taehyung’s entire life has shattered, collapsed into itself like a star dying, and the apartment is the same. There’s a load of laundry drying on a rack near the window, a standard mix of both their clothes. One of the hoodies, peeking out from under an array of socks, is frayed at the hem and advertising a hip hop contest several years past. Perfect for sleeping in. Never to be slept in again. 

Taehyung can’t reconcile those two things. How everything is still here; all his clothes, all his books, all the things he had or they’d had together. All his things are here but he— 

Instantly, Taehyung needs the hoodie out of his sight. Needs it all out of his sight. 

The drying rack crashes to the floor with a sound that Taehyung doesn’t hear, blood rushing in his ears. On his knees he pushes every piece of clothing he can under the couch and out of view. His hands come back smelling like their laundry detergent. Smelling like home. With a few gasping steps he’s at the kitchen sink and he’s scrubbing. He has to get it off, it’s not right, it can’t smell like home because Taehyung’s home is gone. It’s gone. The front door stays locked and everything is gone. 

The soap in the dispenser by their sink is the same. Different smell, but the same immediate flood of memory. A thousand dirty pots, a dozen handfuls of suds thrown across the room. Laughter and the warm feeling in the pit of his stomach after a particularly good meal. 

Taehyung doesn’t know how to cook. He’d always done the dishes.

There’s a sponge with an attached scouring pad sitting on the edge of the sink. He uses that instead. He rubs and rubs and rubs until the skin on his fingers and forearms is cherry red and stinging. His knees buckle, almost give out. The sponge drops into the basin with a disgusting wet sound as his hands grip the edge of it, elbows locked. 

Somehow, gravity has multiplied itself by a factor of five or his legs have been turned to lead, too soft to hold the rest of him up and too heavy to bear. Either way, the only thing keeping him upright is the grip of his hands on the corner of the counter, fingers curling into the sink. 

He shakes. Tastes copper in his mouth as he bites down a sound that is so much worse than a scream. Something drips into the sink in a slow rhythm, pinging against the stainless with each drop. It’s too clear to be blood and falling from too high to be coming from the tap. Taehyung doesn’t see it, his eyes are closed. He’s not sure when he last took a breath but it’s burning in his lungs and he can’t let it out. The sound would come with it. 

It passes.

He stands, lets go. Wipes the blur out of his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. Breathes. There are more things in the living room that he needs to get rid of. Things he doesn’t think he will survive looking at in the daylight. 

He doesn’t make it very far. It’s less than three steps from the wall of cabinets he considers their kitchen into the main part of the living room. The sheer volume of objects overwhelms him. How had he never noticed? They’re everywhere, on every shelf, tucked into every corner. Hundreds, no, thousands of memories. Everywhere he looks. 

The skin on his hands burns. 

He takes another few steps. Collapses to the floor in front of their television, no stone countertop to hold him up. 

Forehead scratching on the carpet and knees pulled up under his chin, the realization comes to him slowly. It’s not their television anymore. It’s his television now. Just his. 

Everything in the apartment is his. 

⥁

Crying is the wrong word for what Taehyung does that night, curled up in what has always been a bed for two and face pressed into an old, dirty shirt. As a verb it’s too soft and fails to capture the terrible shaking of his shoulders and the rigid claw of his fists. As a descriptor of sound it’s too loud and misses the way the only noise in the room— in the entire apartment— is the almost silent rattle of his breathing. As something that sometimes means a demand for attention it is a lie. Taehyung has sent everyone away and there is no one coming, not tonight. He is alone. 

Still, it’s the only word there is, and so Taehyung cries. 

Somehow, he falls asleep. 

⥁

Taehyung wakes the next morning with a blinding headache, tension in his temples pulling his eyes out of his skull. With a groan he presses the heels of his palms into his sockets, massaging back and forth as if the motion will do anything to soothe the redness, or the accumulated dried salt. He waits for the grief to hit him. And waits. And waits. Blinking up towards the ceiling, all he can feel is a yearning black pit, stomach sunk past his toes. The t-shirt pillowed near his head doesn’t smell like anything anymore. 

His phone buzzes on the bedside table. 

soulmate 💖💖✨ [07:51]
hey
ill be by in like an hour, any special requests? 💜

You changed soulmate 💖💖✨ ‘s nickname to chim

chim [08:03]
tae…… 

You [08:09]
anything is fine
thanks

chim [08:09]
ok, see u soon
love u 💜

You [08:24]
<3

Taehyung sets his phone down with a sigh, knows he’s being rude for no reason, that Jimin is just trying to help, but he’s having a hard time finding the energy to reply with anything but the bare minimum. He’ll apologize to Jimin when he arrives. A quick glance back at his phone tells him he still has half an hour before that happens, so he slams his head back into his pillow and stares at the ceiling. He tries to process the guilt, the shock— tries to force the grief to come and overwhelm him the way it had the night before— and hates himself even more when it doesn’t. 

He’s not sure how long he lays like that, but it’s the knocking that finally rouses Taehyung out of bed, confusion running blearily through the already overwhelming jumble of emotions in his head. It’s not like Jimin to knock, Jimin was the first one they had ever given the door code to, mere minutes after moving in. 

Still, Taehyung pulls himself out of bed and drags his body to the door, not stopping for a second to glance in a mirror or check the peephole. 

He swings the door open and expects to see Jimin with his hands full, smiling bright. Instead, the doorway is empty. 

No Jimin, no anyone. 

He frowns, and knits his brows in confusion— sticking his head out the door and looking up and down the hallway. Nothing. He’s about to take a step into the hall, preparing to call out for whoever thought it would be funny to prank him, when he steps on it. 

Startled, he looks down. 

Sitting on the doormat ( his doormat, an angry cat telling visitors to Go Away ) is a rock. Fist sized, river smooth, and totally unassuming. The bottomless pit from that morning upends itself and suddenly his mouth is full of bile. Within a heartbeat his phone is back in his hands and ringing with an outgoing call. 

The second the line connects, Taehyung spits without greeting, “What the fuck, Jimin”

“Tae? I’m just around the corner I’m running a little late— “ 

“Do you think this is some kind of fucking joke?” He hisses and it’s rage then, boiling over and vicious. “I get it, that was always the line, right? ‘I want to be a rock in the next life’ Ha. Ha. Ha. Clever. Very funny. Great timing.” 

“Tae, I have no idea what you’re talking about— “

“The rock, Jimin, you left a fucking rock at my door like some kind of goddamned ‘sorry your boyfriend is dead, here’s a fun inside joke as a replacement’ present.” 

“Kim Taehyung, I don’t know anything about a goddamned rock.” Jimin’s famous temper flares. “I’ve been at the bakery, I’m running late. It probably fell off the roof or something.” 

“From the roof to the hallway? Magically passing through five other floors? Yeah. Totally what happened.” 

“Look, I don’t know where it came from, okay? Maybe one of your neighbour's annoying kids was out treasure hunting and dropped it.” Jimin’s voice is out of breath, strained even through the tin of the speakers. “But I’m walking up to your building right now. I will be there in literally four minutes, just wait for me okay? We’ll figure this out. I’m hanging up now. Bye.” 

The line goes silent and Taehyung lets his phone drop out of his hand, not even blinking when it cracks against the tiles of the entry hall floor. 

⥁

Taehyung is sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring at the doormat, when Jimin finally rounds the corner from the elevator. His hands are full and there’s a flush high on his cheeks, breathing ragged, as if he’d been running. He approaches the apartment carefully, like one would approach a stray dog— open and cautious. Taehyung only glances at him long enough to confirm who he is before his eyes snap back to where they were— staring. 

He squats down beside Taehyung, gingerly placing the drink carrier and multicoloured pastry bags on the floor. 

“Hey,” he says, carding a hand through Taehyung’s hair, pushing it back from his face. “You okay?”

“Where did it come from, Jimin?” Taehyung croaks, the anger gone, replaced by an all-encompassing hollow. The rock is still on the ground, perfectly centred on the mat. It doesn’t look like anything. It may be the most important thing Taehyung has ever seen. 

“I don’t know, babe.” Jimin presses their bodies together and tucks his chin over the crown of Taehyung’s head. “But we’re not going to figure it out sitting out here.”

Taehyung curls into him, makes himself small. His eyes stay locked where they are. 

“Come on.” Jimin says, shockingly strong hands circling Taehyung’s ribs. He pulls, heaves, and just as they’re both wrenched to stand, Taehyung’s hand snaps out and grabs the rock off the ground. It fits perfectly in his palm, just the right size for holding. 

The grip around his chest manhandles him into the apartment, and deposits him on the couch. A few seconds later, the door clicks shut and Jimin is placing their drinks and food onto the counter in the kitchen. The dish soap is probably still knocked over, Taehyung doesn’t remember picking it up. He hopes it isn’t leaking. 

“You look like shit, Taehyung-ah,” Jimin says, turning to face him. 

Taehyung scoffs, and tries no to sob, and says, “Wonder why.”

Grimacing, Jimin runs a hand through his hair and sighs, “I knew I shouldn’t have left yesterday. Kkyu, he’s— he would have been okay for another day. I should have stayed, I’m sorry.” 

And, for a moment, Taehyung hates him. Just a little, and only in the bitter, screaming, parts of his heart. For having someone to go to. For feeling sorry. 

He pushes the feeling away, buries it deep, and asks, “How— How is he? Kookie.” 

“He’s— ” Jimin’s eyes focus somewhere behind him and his eyes go wide. He stammers, “Tae-yah, what happened— ” 

“Don’t.” Taeyhung says, cutting him off. He doesn’t need to guess at what Jimin is staring at. The books had been the most dramatic, a flurry of pages as he pulled them off the shelves. Several of them had torn as they fell, sending shreds of paper flying around the room like confetti. 

Jimin spins slightly and takes a half step into the living room. He knits his brows, eyes tracking over the floor. “What— ” 

“Don’t ask. Please,” Taehyung repeats. He doesn’t think he could explain, even if he wanted to, just how desperate he’d been the night before for anything that could save him from drowning. Not even the books had had enough buoyancy. 

“Okay.” Jimin says, obviously not understanding. He takes another step towards one of the piles. “Do you want me to help put everything— ”

“No.” Taehyung snaps. His hand goes tight around the stone in his palm and he wishes so deeply that it could grab back. “No. Just leave it. All of it. Where it is.”  

Put it away or put it back. Whatever Jimin was going to say, it wasn’t an option. Not now. Maybe not ever. Taehyung will learn to live with things on the floor, if that’s what it takes. 

“Okay,” Jimin murmurs, turning back towards the bags he’d brought, face still tight. “I got us croissants, and egg tarts. Your favourite ones. And fresh juice.” 

The bags crinkle as Jimin starts to put the pastries on a plate and Taehyung doesn’t have to watch him do it to know how he’s meticulously arranging them, shifting them back and forth, just to have something to do with his hands. 

All Taehyung can see right now is the stone, anyway. It looks like any other rock you could find in a riverside park, edges smooth and rounded, set through with black veins and glinting with pink quartz. Taehyung could go down to the Han right now and pick up a thousand just like it. 

But the thing is— the river is kilometres from here. They’d never had the money to afford something in the nicer neighbourhoods, and it’s the mountains that are barely visible outside the apartment windows, not the water. Still, someone could have dropped it, but Taehyung hadn’t heard any children— and that doesn’t explain the knocking. 

Handing him one of the bright yellow juices, Jimin sits beside him, placing the plate of pastries on the coffee table in front of them. As he settles into the other side of the couch, pulling his knees up under his chin, Taehyung whispers, “He came back for me.”

Jimin goes stiff, and doesn’t answer. Without looking at him, Taehyung continues, voice getting louder and more excited as he starts to understand what’s happened, “He always said he would. A stone in the next life, right? That’s what he really wanted and now he’s back and he’s here and oh— Jimin I made so many promises, so many things I have to do now but I always knew— ” 

“It’s not possible, Tae. You have to know that,” Jimin murmurs, suddenly, almost not loud enough to hear. Taehyung stops talking and stares at him. In that instant, the single couch cushion between them could be an ocean, or a brick wall. “That’s not— that’s not how things work.” 

“It is! It is!” Taehyung says, almost singing and so relieved. “Look it just makes sense, it came out of nowhere, right? And there was knocking and Jimin he always said— ” 

“Taehyung,” Jimin snaps, and his eyes are shiny when Taehyung turns to look at him. “The real world doesn’t work like that. Get out of your head. It’s just a rock.” 

Taehyung finds himself standing, towering, glaring down at Jimin like a marionette on strings because it is— 

It has to be. 

“Get out,” Taehyung hisses, fingers white around the stone. “Jimin, get out. If you’re not going to— If you won’t— get out of our house.” 

“Tae, I mean it, I just don’t want— ” Jimin says as he stands to match his posture. 

Taehyung is still looking down at him, and has always looked down at him. It has never seemed significant before this second and Taehyung uses it to his full advantage, unable to give up the bubbling maybe, what if that’s building itself up in his throat. “He wouldn’t leave me, Jimin. He wouldn’t. If you don’t believe me then just— Just get out.” 

Jimin just looks at him, mouth pressed into a thin line and eyes turned down at the corners. Then he walks into the entry hall, puts on his shoes, twists the doorknob, takes a few more steps, and gently shuts the door behind himself, not saying another word. The silhouette of his shoulders shakes, just a little, as he goes. 

Listening to the lock whir itself closed, Taehyung thinks that he’s never been so grateful to watch someone leave. 

Returning to the couch, Taehyung cradles the newfound stone in his palms and knows, down to the marrow of his bones, that if anyone deserves a miracle right now, he does. 

You came back. I knew you would. You wouldn’t leave me here alone. You love me too much for that. 

All of the beautiful places, right? That was my side of the deal?  

I promise.

⥁

Jimin delivers him breakfast and groceries every day for two months. If he notices that the stone stays put, displayed in a place of honour at Taehyung’s bedside, he doesn’t say a word. 

Jungkook and Seokjin show up on Fridays, holding bags of greasy food, tangled wires, and videogame controllers. Namjoon, every Wednesday afternoon, first with stacks of novels left soundlessly outside his door, then, later, with a bicycle helmet and a whispered I don’t want to lose you too . Seokjin, again, whenever he hears that Taehyung is mostly surviving on instant noodles, dropping off takeout containers full of home cooked meals. 

Hoseok somehow acquires the passcode to his apartment, and appears at random to drag him out into the sun, even if it’s just to eat convenience store sandwiches on a bench near the river. Jimin must have told them, Taehyung knows they talk about him in worried tones when he’s not around, but not once do any of them mention the stone. 

They don’t mention the studio, either. The door stays shut; a darkside mirror to the constantly open door of the bedroom. Dust accumulates on the handle, and nobody says a word. 

⥁

Eventually, because he has no other option than to keep going, Taehyung’s life slowly returns to something tangential to normal. He goes back to work, and dodges the pieces of sympathy his coworkers try to give him— torturous in their sincerity when all he wants is to have one space in his life that isn’t a reminder. 

He becomes a being made of glass, somehow totally transparent and irrevocably fragile, defined entirely by the parts of himself that are missing. The people around him make sure that he doesn’t forget that for a second. He sees it in the way they’re more hesitant, more careful— softer. In the way that every time he enters a room it goes silent, and he knows by their plastered-on smiles and forced laughter exactly what they had been talking about. 

The past becomes an untouchable subject, and not because he doesn’t want to talk about it— 

Some days it’s all he wants to do, to let the stories tumble out of him, their weight in the hollow of his throat inescapable and desperate to be free, echoed only by the ever-present anchor of the stone in his pocket— 

But because the second he does, the second he starts a sentence with do you remember when or that’s like that one time where the atmosphere becomes awkward and strained, full of tendons of pity and stuttering, apologetic responses. He stops starting sentences that way, and starts talking exclusively about the future, about all the things that will be . People seem to like that better.  

Eventually, he learns to ignore it— swallow it down.

Eventually, he runs out of tears. 

⥁

Taehyung shows up at his first family dinner since the accident with the stone in his pocket. Not his biological family, down in Daegu and distant, but the new family he’s made for himself in Seoul. Seokjin and Namjoon and Hoseok and Jimin and Jungkook and - nausea, breathe Taehyung - and Taehyung himself. It’s been eleven weeks since the last time they were all in a room together (eleven weeks since the funeral).

Kicking off his shoes and stepping into the apartment, it takes him a minute to notice that something is off. It looks just like it always has, an oversized table on one side, couch on the other. Big television, big windows. 

But there’s something about the table. It takes him a second to realize what exactly it is. 

The table is set perfectly, four places in the middle and one at each end, exactly as it was designed. There’s a long bench along one side, where a typical table would have held two chairs, but in front of the bench there is a standard pair of place settings. Magazine perfect, showroom perfect. And so completely and utterly devastatingly wrong. 

“Set him a place,” Taehyung says, frozen and staring.  

Seokjin’s head pokes around the entryway to the kitchen, “What?”

“Set him a place.” Taehyung repeats, not turning to look at him. “Please.”

Family dinner wasn’t supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be chaos, off axis and wild. Knocking elbows, spilled soju, and incalculable pieces of dishware. It was supposed to be too many bodies crowding around a piece of furniture that wasn’t meant to hold so much. 

“Please, Seokjin-hyung, set him a place.” 

Taehyung wants to run, to bolt out the door and sprint down the street, anything, anything, to get out of Seokjin’s apartment. He wants to go home and lock himself in the closet, bury himself under piles of unwashed clothes. Perfect. The table is perfect. Set for six. 

“He’s already gone, don’t you understand that?” Taehyung says, and a dim part of him recognizes that his voice has gone a little hysterical, a little desperate. 

Seokjin hasn’t actually said anything, still standing in the entryway to the kitchen, mouth half open.

“Stop erasing him. You already don’t let me— ” He draws in a shuddering breath and tries not to think about the way every shape in the room has gone blurry. “Nobody will even say his name around me anymore.”

“So please, hyung. Set him a place. Don’t force me to forget him,” Taehyung begs, blinking until he can make out the expression of utter devastation on Seokjin’s face. “Please, I need to remember.” 

They compromise. They don’t set another place, Seokjin worried that the precedent would never allow them to move on, but they do leave the seat at the head of the table empty and crowd three places where there should only be two. Nobody notices Taehyung slide the stone onto the empty chair, hidden where it’s tucked under the table. 

So, Taehyung eventually  finds himself between Hoseok and Jungkook on the bench, shoulders brushing and elbows knocking, totally silent. The untouched food sits on the table, giving off steam. Seokjin makes several motions like he wants to start eating, acting on impulse as the oldest in their group, but he holds back. The quiet is oppressive— humid and heavy and totally stifling. Every word that Taehyung has wanted to say over the past eleven weeks disintegrates in his throat. 

It’s not Taehyung who speaks first, even though later he will reflect on this moment and think that it should have been, but Jimin. He doesn’t look at anyone as he starts— head tilted down towards the wood of the table and fingers clenched around chopsticks poised over an empty bowl— but he starts nonetheless. It’s the bravest thing that Taehyung has ever seen. 

“The last thing I said to him was an insult.” 

“Not— ” Jimin stammers, “Not anything serious, just a barb. You— you all remember how we were.” Taehyung can feel it when Jungkook’s hip shifts against his own, leg extending to press a foot to Jimin’s calf. 

“But I— ” His breathing is ragged, but stable. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have— ”  

His head comes up and his eyes meet Taehyung’s as he says, “I would have made sure he knew I didn’t mean it.”

“He knew,” Taehyung insists. 

Jimin blinks, and makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. “You don’t know that.” 

“I do,” Taehyung whispers. “He had that special smile. The little one, around his eyes, it only showed up when you two were fighting. Chim, I promise you he knew.” 

Jimin just stares at him, lips pressed so tight together that they’re almost invisible, eyes shining. Taehyung is opening his mouth to speak again when Namjoon cuts him off. “Taehyung-ah, I’m so sorry,” he says. “Everyone, I’m so sorry.” 

“I— ” Taehyung can hear the way he sucks in a short breath, the way it stops itself in his throat almost immediately. Namjoon’s teeth become visible over his bottom lip, running back and pulling tight. He swallows again, and stammers, “It was my fault.”

By the expression on his face and the grip of his fingers, Taehyung can tell that Namjoon believes the words he’s saying in the same way that Taehyung believes the sky is blue. Like a fact, unquestionable. 

“He’d been bothering me about it for weeks.” Both of Namjoon’s eyes are closed now, head tilted down and to the left. Face pointed as far from any of them as possible. “It was the stupid coffee machine. The stupid, goddamned, fucking, coffee machine.” 

His fist slams into the table, punctuating the statement. The dishes on the table rattle and chime with the force of it. He laughs at the sound, and it’s the furthest thing from happy, starting with a harsh inhale and finishing with a wet, bouncing, exhale. “All I had were those hazelnut pods. I’d been meaning to get more normal ones for weeks, but I’d been putting it off so when he said that he wanted a coffee before we made more edits, I told him that hazelnut was all we had left and he laughed at me.” 

“I told him— ” Taehyung thinks that if Namjoon’s head sinks any lower into his chest, he’s going to become perfectly circular. His shoulders shake. “I told him that if he didn’t want the flavoured stuff he’d have to go get his own somewhere else. I told him that the closest café was only a few buildings down.” 

A familiar nausea settles itself into the pit of Taehyung’s stomach. He hasn’t eaten yet, so it can’t be the food. 

“Taehyung-ah I am so sorry.” Both of Namjoon’s hands come up around the back of his own neck, and Taehyung can tell by the whites of the knuckles that his fingernails are digging in deep. 

“If I’d had— If I hadn’t— The coffee pods were like ten thousand won and I didn’t want to— I am so sorry. It was all my fault.” Taehyung is pretty sure that Namjoon isn’t breathing at all anymore, fully collapsed under the invisible drowning of guilt over his shoulders. His head is lower than the level of the table, between his thighs. All that’s visible anymore is the heaving way the curve of his spine is lifting and falling at its horizon line. 

“It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my— ”

“Hyung— ” Taehyung interrupts him. He has to interrupt him, because it was an accident. Taehyung’s entire ability to get out of bed in the morning depends on his core faith that what had happened was random, impossible to predict. Impossible to prevent. He continues, “Hyung it’s not— It wasn’t— ”

Seokjin’s hand is suddenly in Taehyung’s face, the universal sign for stop. Taehyung hadn’t noticed him getting out of his chair. He squats beside Namjoon’s shell. 

“Namjoon-ah,” he says, his other hand visibly coming up to rub at Namjoon’s back.  “Namjoon-ah, I need you to breathe for me. Nobody here blames you. Nobody.” 

“Namjoon-ah, let’s go to the bathroom, just for a second, get you some water,” Seokjin says, grabbing Namjoon by the biceps and pulling him to stand. Namjoon just makes a high pitched, choking sound as he does, but he follows Seokjin around the corner. As they go, Seokjin never stops speaking, low, soothing words that Taehyung can’t quite make out over the sound of his own heart, pounding. 

“Tae— ” Jimin says when they’re finally out of sight, glancing across the table like he’s not sure what he’s looking at. 

“Jimin-ah. It wasn’t— ” Taehyung starts and then stops. “It wasn’t my fault was it?” 

“That day— That day we were supposed to be together, but he— He wanted to go work. He said they were almost at a breakthrough. He asked me if we could hang out later, just a few hours, and I said— Jimin, I said yes. I said no problem. I told him he was insufferable like this, and that I wouldn’t want to hang out with him while he was thinking about work anyway.”  

An arm comes up over his shoulder, Hoseok. Another comes around his waist, Jungkook. They both pull him tight, and he feels like a creature separating. It’s too warm. He’s freezing cold. 

“It wasn’t your fault, Tae,” Jimin says, careful and slow. “It wasn’t Namjoon-hyung’s fault either, I’m sure that’s exactly what Seokjin-hyung is telling him right now. Sometimes bad things just happen.” 

Taehyung nods once, hard, but doesn’t answer. They sit in silence for what feels like a lifetime but is probably only a couple of minutes before Namjoon and Seokjin come back around the corner. There’s water speckled on Namjoon’s shirt and on the cuffs of Seokjin’s sleeves. From the sink or— somewhere else.

As they both take their places back at the table, Seokjin rubs at Namjoon’s shoulders and says, “Tae-yah, I know you want to talk but—“ 

“No— No.” Namjoon interrupts, stronger than Taehyung would have expected to be possible.  “We still can. You can still— “ He breathes, heavy. “I want to. Please.”

“What about happy stories only?” Taehyung’s eyes snap to Hoseok beside him. 

“Happy stories?”

“Yeah, you know—“ Hoseok shrugs, too measured to be casual. “Good memories.” 

Good and bad isn’t the binary that defines Taehyung’s memories anymore. Only things that were before and things that were after. He doesn’t know how to say that in words without setting off another chain reaction at the table. Hoseok gives him a look like he understands. Taehyung isn’t sure that’s possible. 

“I’ll go first. Show you what I mean,” Hoseok says, hints of a careful smile on his face. “Is everyone okay with that?” 

He makes eye contact with every person at the table. Waits for their nod. Namjoon almost doesn’t give his, eyes still red behind the wire frames of his glasses. When he does, it’s short and curt, almost unnoticeable. It’s enough. 

“Fantastic!” Hoseok says, clapping. It’s not as loud as it could be, knowing Hoseok, but it’s louder than anything has been since they agreed to crowd three places onto the bench, so Taehyung startles, just a little. He gets a squeeze on the shoulder at the reaction, but Hoseok doesn’t look at him. His other hand swings open, free to move into the empty space at the head of the table. “I’m going to tell the one about the snake.” 

Namjoon’s head snaps up, eyebrows raised. 

“Don’t spoil it, Joon,” Hoseok says. He pulls his hand off Taehyung’s shoulder and both his arms go wide, fingers flashing in that way Taehyung has always thought looks like music. “It was when we were first years. Rather, when me and Joon were in first but hyung was in second. In the dorms. There was this old lady who worked at the corner store who had this snake and this one time— ” 

And Hoseok has always been so good at this. At pulling happiness like blood from a— at pulling happiness from somewhere it isn’t normally found. Seokjin laughs first, a smothered, squeaky sound. He stifles it quickly, an obvious apology shaping his lips until Jimin does the same. Bright and airy, more a gasp than anything. But it’s real, and Seokjin doesn’t apologize and suddenly Taehyung finds himself asking, “Did you seriously? In your dorm room? How did you possibly— ” 

Namjoon groans, burying his head in his hands. His shoulders shake and Taehyung ducks, just a little, to make sure it’s the rise of his cheeks that’s forcing his eyes closed. 

The story continues, taking so many dramatic twists and turns that if Namjoon hadn’t been adding his own input, unfurling into someone that almost looks human as he corrects details and supplements parts of it that Hoseok had missed, Taehyung would have guessed that Hoseok was making it up on the spot. 

“— and that’s how hyung got free honey butter chips for an entire year.” Hoseok finishes telling it with a quasi-bow over the table and a dramatic flourish of his hands. 

They’re all smiling now, wet around the edges. During the pause between Hoseok finishing and the next person working up the courage to speak, Jungkook reaches for the food. He stops, arm outstretched, when everyone’s eyes snap to him. He pulls his hand back slowly and looks like he’s about to apologize when Taehyung’s stomach grumbles and they all laugh again, lighter this time, more human. 

Seokjin serves the food, or at least convinces them all to eat. They ease into it slowly, more quiet than usual but still, somehow, they do. 

A bottle circles the table that Taehyung declines, the sharp tang of alcohol mingling with the rich scent of meat in their bowls. He piles his servings high, eats as much as he can. Compliments the food. Tells the stories he’s been so desperate to remember, the sparkling ones. Hears stories he’s never heard. Laughs, and laughs, and laughs. 

If anyone notices that some of his laughter is tinged, sharp and high, nobody mentions it. Wouldn’t be fair of them to say anything anyway, because everyone at the table has roughly bitten lips and damp sleeves. 

It’s the closest Taehyung has been to happiness in a long time. It’s the most painful thing he’s ever done. 

And when a stray chopstick nearly takes his eye out, Seokjin and Jungkook fighting over the last piece of pork belly,  it almost, almost, feels like coming home. 

We talked about you tonight, were you listening? Sorry if it was embarrassing. 

Everyone has a story about you. I guess I— Sometimes I forget that your life went beyond the pieces that had me in it. There’s so much I don’t know. 

They’re— they remember you. 

⥁

There's a sock in Taehyung's laundry that doesn't match any of the others. Just one. It almost looks like something Taehyung would pick for himself, but it's not quite right, an athletic brand logo at the ankle. He almost misses it as he folds another t-shirt into a perfect square and sets it beside the rest. It should be impossible. Everything is hidden, put away, locked down and out of sight. Taehyung has a catalogue, knows where every single item is and when it was last touched and how many of them there are, but there it is. Just the one, its other half disappeared into that endless washing machine void where lost things seem to always go. Where a lot of things go, maybe. Taehyung is familiar with unpaired things. 

Had he worn it? Is that why it's here? Pulled it on in an early morning haze and not even noticed? Ground it down under his feet for a full day and pulled it off again without a thought? 

That's the only way it could have gotten here. He hadn't even known. The sock is his, just like everything else. 

Taehyung's first reaction is to throw it, a vicious sharp jerk that aches against his wrist bones like he'd been holding a thing on fire. It doesn't go very far, unrolls and collapses flat only a few feet away, not making a single sound as it lands. Taehyung wants to laugh at himself, can feel it bubbling up at the back of his tongue in a way that tastes like crying. It's just a sock. This is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. 

On his hands and knees, Taehyung crawls over to where the sock landed and wraps his hand around it, crushes it between his fingers like if he holds it tight enough it'll compress down into a diamond, or a knife. Something small with sharp edges. 

It doesn't do any of that. His hand barely closes around it, balled small but resisting. He holds it for a few more seconds, maybe minutes, it has gotten so hard for Taehyung to track time passing, but eventually he lets it go, just holds it loosely between his fingers as he crawls back towards where the rest of the laundry is. Folding it once, twice, he puts it beside the rest of the pile. Back into the dresser it will go, ready to be worn again. 

And then Taehyung grabs a pair of pants out of the hamper, folding them neatly down the middle. 

There's still more laundry to do.

There always is. 

⥁

Life continues. 

At the hundred days ceremony he is numb and robotic, going through the motions on full automatic. Someone compliments him on his stoicism. 

At the convenience store, when a certain brand of ramyun is on sale, he is a wreck— curled tight on the floor between the aisles, sending out nothing but a single text that says: help me. 

With his friends he is happy, part actor’s mask and part truth. Some days he believes it enough that he almost manages to forget. 

In his apartment he is hollow— and so impossibly silent. 

⥁

Half a year after the funeral, Taehyung realizes that he needs to move out. The entire apartment is drowning in grief, every wall and piece of furniture screaming about what had been . 

The door to the studio is the worst of it, a constant ghost, the barest slip of delusional hope that if Taehyung were to just open the door, pop his head inside, he’d be sitting there, whole and hale, oversized headphones around his neck, grumbling about something on the computer screen. That he would jump a little at the sound of the hinges and whine, ‘ Taehyung-ah, baby, please, I really need to finish this, I’ll come to bed soon.’ Even if the scattered half-full coffee cups on the desk were proof that he was lying. 

On his most terrible days, it’s this image, this tenuous gossamer wish, that keeps Taehyung standing. So he doesn’t open the door. Can’t open the door. 

But he can’t live with it either. 

So, he’s going to have to leave. And in order to leave, he’s going to need help. Help he needs to ask for, first. 

Taehyung grabs his phone and inwardly steels himself. This is going to be a hard conversation, and a harder request. 

He presses Call. 

“Taehyung-ah?” Slurs out over the phone line a few rings later. “Is everything okay?” 

“Everything’s fine. I think— Hyung, I think I need to leave. Find somewhere else to live. I can’t— Everything is so— ”

“Leave? The apartment? Do you want me to help you look for listings? Real estate is really more Jin-hyung’s thing but I could probably— ”  

“No, I need— “ The rest of the sentence comes out in a rush, almost more of a blur of sound than actual words. “I need someone to help me clean out the studio. I don’t know what all the equipment is, please you’re the only person I know who understands.” 

The line goes so silent that Taehyung thinks, for a moment, that Namjoon may have stopped breathing. 

“Please,” he begs. “Hyung. I can’t do it alone, please.” 

Taehyung can hear the way Namjoon sighs at the statement before he says, “No, I know, Taehyung-ah, I know. I just thought—“

“It’s worth a lot of money,” Taehyung says, cutting him off. “Nobody else knows what it is or what it’s worth. I don’t want to sell it but I don’t know what else to do with it, please you need to help me.” 

“Okay,” Namjoon says, and Taehyung doesn’t have to imagine very hard to picture what his face must look like in this moment, unwilling and pinched. “I’ll help. Give me a date and I’ll do what I can. Promise.” 

“Thank you,” Taehyung says, and means it. He says thank you again, and again, and then says sorry and Namjoon stays on the phone with him for almost an hour as he talks through it, hardly ever saying a single word in reply. 

⥁

Finding the new apartment is the easy part. Listing, interview, key money, done. So is the packing, mostly. Everything except this one last room. They stare at it, side by side, until Namjoon moves his hand like he’s about to reach for the door. 

“Wait.” Taehyung grips Namjoon’s forearm in an attempt to hold him in place. With a half smile he chokes out “Sometimes— sometimes I like to imagine that if I don’t go in there, that he’s not really gone, you know? 

Namjoon looks at him with sad eyes. “You and I both know he’s not in there, Taehyung.” Namjoon whispers, but there’s an angle to the set of his shoulders that implies that Taehyung might not be the only one with an impossible prayer. 

They open the door and the studio is empty, just like it has been for months. There was no other option. The last piece of light in Taehyung’s chest withers and deflates into the floor. 

The studio looks just like Taehyung remembers— mostly. It’s small with sound isolation panels on the walls and tangled piles of cables in the corners. On one side is the desk, and on the other is the warm wood of the upright piano. It’s exactly what he was expecting to see.

What he was not expecting is the overwhelming stench of rot . It puffs out of the open door like a mushroom going to spore— mold and dust and stagnant air, and under it all, something decomposing . 

In front of the monitor is a paper takeout box leaking black and green grease, and next to it a bowl of what must have once been fruit, reduced to a semisolid orange and grey mass. Scattered around the keyboard are half a dozen coffee mugs, each floating a thick cap of steel blue mold. Several houseflies are making lazy circles around the trash can by the chair. Every inch of the studio is perfectly untouched. Every inch of the studio is festering . 

Before he fully realizes what his body is doing, Taehyung is in the bathroom throwing up everything he’s ever eaten. Namjoon follows close behind, one hand fumbling with his phone, the other rubbing comforting circles into Taehyung’s back. Between retches, Taehyung can make out pieces of the call. 

“Seok-ah? Yeah, it’s Joon.” 

“I’m at Taehyungie’s— ” 

“The studio— “ 

“ — need another set of hands. Can you come over? Quickly?”

”Thanks, you’re the best.” 

When he finally finishes heaving enough to lean against the wall, Namjoon asks him quietly, “How did you not notice?”

Taehyung wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Never got close enough to check.” 

Namjoon helps him back to his feet and hands him a glass of water from the cup beside the sink. 

When Taehyung goes to head back into the studio, Namjoon stops him with a firm hand on his chest. “It’s probably best if you don’t go in there until the worst of it is cleaned up. I called Hoseok, he’ll be here in a few minutes. Go hang out in the living room or something, I’ll call you when it’s better.”

By the time Taehyung is settled on the couch, phone in hand and pulled open to a game that almost distracts him, Hoseok is pushing open the door to the apartment, a bag of brand new cleaning supplies under his arm. 

“Hi, Tae-yah,” he says, giving Taehyung’s shoulder a squeeze. “Doin’ okay?”

All Taehyung can do in reply is shrug. Namjoon must hear the door open because he comes around the corner any says, “Oh you’re here, thank god. Did you bring gloves?”

Hoseok steps back from the couch and Taehyung looks back down at his game. He doesn’t want to watch them discuss this, not this. Anything but this. “I did,” Hoseok says, voice getting more distant as he follows Namjoon into the studio. “And more stuff besides, I wasn’t totally sure what you needed.” 

Then they’re gone, and the sprite on his phone sings something in celebration as he clears another level and the only thing in the whole world that Taehyung wants to do is cry. None of his stuff is visible anymore, stacked against the wall in boxes, and for the first time since he’d made the decision, weeks ago, Taehyung regrets it. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to be able to leave. 

His phone goes black in his hands as he stares at the wall and he’s not sure how much time passes but eventually Hoseok comes back around the corner, carrying garbage bags and a tight look on his face. “Worst of it’s cleaned up,” he says. “Joonie says you can help him, if you want. I’ve gotta go, late class at the studio, but if you need me I can come by after— ”

Taehyung looks at him then, takes in the way he’s standing, and says, “No, I think we’ll be fine. Thanks though, hyung. I really appreciate it.” 

Hoseok nods at him once and, with a small smile, puts on his shoes and leaves. He takes the garbage with him. 

Heading back into the hallway, Taehyung takes a deep breath before pushing open the door to the studio. 

Inside, they’ve cracked the singular window and there’s a fan running to circulate what little breeze is available. All the dishes and trash have been removed and someone has lit a candle that smells like amber and clean clothes. 

Namjoon looks up at him as he enters, and doesn’t smile, but does say, “Hey, Tae. Boxes are over there, why don’t you start on the bookshelf, just normal stuff in there. I’ve got the desk covered.” 

Taehyung nods, grabs a box, and so they start, working together in a silence that should be awkward, or should be strained, or should be desolate, but is instead just— working. Side by side and quiet, none of them saying anything until— 

“Fuck.”  Namjoon mutters it under his breath from where he’s standing at the desk, cleaning out drawers. Taehyung is about to ask him if everything is alright when he speaks again. 

“Tae-yah, I think— I think you’re going to want this.” Namjoon turns, something small and square in his hand. He holds it delicately, like something precious, like something caustic. It’s offered outstretched in his palm to where Taehyung is sitting on the floor, dull navy velvet reflecting in the overhead light. “It’s for you he— He bought it for you, you should have it.” 

When he takes it in his hands it takes every ounce of will in Taehyung’s body for him to croak out a muffled please leave. And Namjoon does, silently ghosting out of the apartment, probably understanding better than most all of the reasons someone would want to be alone. 

Taehyung knows what it is before he opens it, the snap of the box opening only punctuating the way the light reflects off the—  perfect, so perfect— silver engagement ring inside. 

He doesn’t know how he stands, but he does, rushing out of the room and into another. In the bedroom, he digs out a thin silver chain from the dust-covered tangled pile on the dresser. He threads the ring onto it  and clasps it, with fingers that don’t belong to him, around the back of his neck. It feels like a lead ball digging into the hollows of his sternum, a penance piece. 

He stands there for a moment, silent, letting the new weight settle his heels into the floor, until he looks towards the nightstand and sees the stone. Padding over to it, he cups it in both hands and whispers, “Thank you.” 

Hands full, he walks back into the half-empty studio and settles himself not into the chair (never the chair) but onto the ground, back against the wall. There’s nothing left in the bookcase, all cleared out. Contents stacked into a box somewhere to Taehyung’s left in a pile of perfectly identical, totally novel, brown cardboard cubes. He stares at the hole they left, straight through to the pale grey paint, outlined in cherrywood. 

Why couldn’t you clean up after yourself, huh? I know you weren’t expecting to be gone long, but five cups of coffee? All of them mostly full? That’s extreme, even for you. 

They’re going to split your equipment. I think Jungkookie is going to get most of it. I think that’ll make him happy. He always complains about having to steal time to use hyung’s. I’m going to have to sell your piano. I’m so sorry. Please, I’m— I’m so sorry. 

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. 

⥁

Jimin pushes open his door a few hours later and doesn’t say a single thing, just joins Taehyung on the floor, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Together, they breathe. 

⥁

Taehyung doesn’t go out very often.

At least, he doesn’t go out very often anymore. 

He used to like it, once. The dancing. The music. Having a single drink and riding the buzz of it for hours, spinning and laughing towards the neon lights on the ceiling. 

He’s already on his second drink, tonight. Something too complex for the overworked club bartender, but sweet enough that Taehyung knows he’ll be able to down it without too much trouble. 

He doesn’t want to be here. 

His friends had insisted. They’re celebrating— something. A promotion, maybe. Taehyung is sure that they’d told him but it’s slipped away. His fingers drum on the peeling fake marble of the bartop as he waits for the bartender to notice him so he can order a third. Whatever beat he’s tracing, it doesn’t match the one echoing through the soundsystem. 

Someone slides up beside him as Taehyung finally gets the bartender’s attention, showing his now-empty glass and asking for another. As the bartender nods and Taehyung goes back to centering his attention on the press of his fingers into the tabletop, the man beside him says, “Hey, why don’t you let me get that one. Guy like you shouldn’t be drinking alone.” 

As the bartender passes him his finished drink, the response comes out of his mouth automatically, “Sorry, not interested, got a boyfriend.”

Grinning, the man says, “I don’t see a boyfriend.”

The glass in his hand is so cold. Taehyung’s entire being focuses completely on how cold it is. The man is still talking, saying something that’s coming out as slow as molasses in Taehyung’s ears. Whalesong. Inhuman. There are five ice cubes floating in his drink, vibrating in time with the bass pounding through the speakers. His fingers are numb. When he goes to shift his weight, his left foot sticks, just slightly, to the floor. The man is still smiling. 

When Taehyung doesn’t reply, his expression drops. One of his hands comes up and pushes Taehyung’s shoulder, just a little. Like he’s trying to determine if Taehyung is about to collapse. Maybe he is. 

“Hey, dude,” the man says, “Are you like, plastered or something?” 

Taehyung’s head snaps up and his eyes finally focus, for the first time, on the man beside him. He could be anyone, not a single distinct thing about his features. Taehyung tries for a smile, but judging by how the muscles in his jaw are pulling, it probably looks more like a baring of teeth. He says, “No, sorry, I’m fine. I need to get back to my table, my friends are waiting for me.” 

As he stumbles away, the man shouts after him, “All I’m saying is, if I had a guy as gorgeous as you, I wouldn’t be leaving him by himself in a place like this. You might want to rethink that boyfriend of yours.” 

Finally turning the corner and out of sight of the stranger, Taehyung’s fingers give out and the glass slips from his hand. It shatters into a thousand sparkling pieces on the floor. They crunch under the soles of his shoes as he staggers his way back towards their table. 

A bartender might yell at him for the mess. He’s not sure. It’s so hard to hear things. The music is so loud. 

He finds his table and all of his friends, and makes his excuses to go. He’s been here long enough to have two— three— drinks and that’s enough that nobody complains too loud as he does. Some of the eyes that watch him do it are sharper than others, and Taehyung knows that he’s going to have to explain later. Another day. A quieter day. 

Outside, he sits on the curb with his head between his knees, certain that he must look like a drunk, when he’s really just trying to remember what breathing is supposed to feel like. Someone comes out of the door behind him. 

“Club was a bad idea, huh,” Hoseok says, sitting beside him and pressing their bodies together. One of his arms pulls Taehyung tight, or as tight as he can with Taehyung still folded in half. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung rasps, eventually, “bad idea.”

What the fuck were you thinking, leaving me here? Did you think I’d be strong enough for this? Did you think I’d be able to handle it? Because I can’t. Not even close. I don’t know how. I’m not sure I want to know how. It’s not exactly something I can look up the answers to on the internet. 

I hate you. I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d kept your stupid fucking face under that stupid fucking beanie and I wish you’d never looked at me and I wish you’d never gotten into our stupid fucking university and I wish you’d never fucking asked if I’d have coffee with you. Think about how much easier my life would be. Without you in it. At all. 

I just want to be normal.

⥁

The worst part about the grief is having to justify it. Explain it. To almost everyone he talks to. 

“I’m sorry. I lost my partner recently and sometimes I— ”

It’s not that he wants their pity, or even their understanding. It’s just that he needs to get ahead of it, to say something before they realize, because they always do, that something inside him is broken. That despite his self-professed proficiency in acting, the fragments always give him away. He doesn’t know how to hide them. 

So, he stops trying, and instead gets good at apologizing.  

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to say this but— ”

If he can say it with a laugh, a small one, just measured enough to be light, most people accept it in silence and give him the space he needs to breathe through it. It only takes a few seconds, typically, to sweep all the shards back under the rug. And then things can carry on, and the person won’t ask for details. They never want details, if he can say it just right. 

It’s the details he needs to avoid. 

“I’m sorry. Please give me a moment, I just— ”   

Taehyung puts all the objects in his apartment into identical cardboard boxes and drops half of them off at a donation centre. He doesn’t look at them in the rearview mirror as he drives the van away, a building block foundation of a life that isn’t his anymore being maneuvered into a warehouse by faceless, blurry, men. 

He hadn’t needed to explain anything to them. 

⥁

The new apartment is smaller, a single room with an elegant partition separating the bed. Taehyung likes it better that way, he thinks. Fewer doors. More light. 

The entire space opens up to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, which in turn open out onto the balcony. It had practically doubled the rent, the sun-drenched outdoor space almost unheard of this deep into the city. He’s never been so glad to spend money. Because here, on the eleventh floor and looking out, Taehyung sometimes feels like he can breathe.

It has, by now, been several weeks since he’d moved into the new apartment, but he’s slowly discovering that unpacking is somehow harder than leaving. Having to find new spaces for familiar things. He’d thrown the boxes together, scrawled on them in messy characters ‘kitchen’ or ‘bathroom’, not really paying attention to what was going inside. 

He’s already battled the easier demons, the necessary ones. Exorcized the ghosts from his pots and pans, from the cup in the bathroom that he uses to keep his toothbrush upright. There’s nothing else that he needs to unpack. But still, the boxes sit in a pile near the window. They’re blocking the light, and he can’t ignore them forever. Can’t live in a soulless apartment on nothing but bare bones. 

He grabs one labelled ‘living room - photos’, takes a deep breath, and starts. 

The photographs make his heart clench, shoulders curling in. But that’s familiar, now. A feeling he can work with, work past. They go on display, some of them on the walls in glass frames or taped-up Polaroids. Some of them go on the shelves, leaning against books and other memories. It hurts, but when he pulls the final one out of its newspaper wrapping and sets it, perfectly at eye level, on a shelf next to a gifted succulent, Taehyung smiles. 

He grabs the next box automatically, hoping to ride this feeling of serenity for as long as possible. If he can get everything unpacked, put away, then he can finally start making this new place feel like home. The photographs will help with that. 

The box cutter glides through the tape, smooth and satisfying. One of the Polaroids on the wall is of him and Jimin, kicking sand at each other on a beach outside Busan. It’s a light memory, a sunshine one. He replays it in his head as his hands work, breaking the last remnants of tape with a sound that feels almost too loud for what he’s doing. 

For this strange, meditative, mourning. 

The sun is warm, streaking across the tile floors and over his arms, the bare soles of his feet. There is cardboard everywhere, and that’s warm too, reflecting the light in subtle tones of gold against the crisp white walls of the room. He doesn’t realize it, but Taehyung is singing, under his breath. An old jazzy classic. Fly me to the moon. 

His eyes focus on the first item in the box and the delicate peace shatters. 

He snaps it closed, Pandora locking away hope, and his eyes focus instead on the words on its side. His handwriting has never looked so rough, traced several times over as if this past-self version of him had wanted the words to be as visible as possible. Read before opening. 

STORAGE ONLY!!!! FRAGILE!!!

He doesn’t remember packing this box at all, even though he’s sure it was his hands that put it together. So far beyond himself and running on pure desperation. Get it done. Get it done. Get it done. 

His phone rings.  

Taehyung answers, not bothering to check the caller ID, and someone on the other end of the line is screaming.

It takes him several pounding heartbeats to recognize the emotion coming through the speakers as euphoria, not pain, and then several more to push the last time he got a jumbled call like this out of his head. The words are rapid and almost drowned by the sound of what must be the ocean in the backdrop. But he recognizes Jimin’s cadence, and can almost make out the words ‘said yes— ‘, ‘beach— ‘, ‘married— ‘ and ‘so happy— ‘.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa— Jimin, slow down, I can’t make out a word you’re saying. What’s going on?” He kicks the box out of sight, and tries not to think about it. The flaps on the top spring open and Taehyung looks away. 

“I’m engaged!” Even through the tinny speakers, the sound is radiant, sparkling joy. “We’re getting married! Kookie and me! It just happened, here on the beach! It’s so romantic, the ocean, the rocks. We drove up the coast a little, to Gijang-Gun. I took you here once, do you remember? Anyway, we’re the only ones here and it’s so beautiful.” 

Jimin’s voice is running a mile a minute, as if each word brings with it a piece of the happiness he’s so desperate to share. 

Taehyung takes a second to process before speaking. He’s happy for Jimin. He is. He has to be, no matter what was in the box. “Wow, so that coward finally found the courage.”

“What? No. I’m the one who asked, dummy. He said yes!” 

There’s a hair of genuine offence in Jimin’s tone, but Taehyung knows which buttons he can’t and can’t press, so his reply is a deadpan, “I would have absolutely bet money that he was going to be the one to pop the question.”

Jimin lets out an overly dramatic gasp. “No way I was going to let this giant baby beat me.” 

Taehyung doesn’t have to imagine very hard to picture how Jungkook must be rolling his eyes. “Sorry, you wanted to beat him? At proposing?”

“Yeah you know him, always Mister Big Romantic Gesture. I mean Tokyo for my birthday? Come on. I wasn’t going to let him have this too.” An indignant squawk comes from Jungkook somewhere behind him. Taehyung feels himself smile.

Jimin pauses and seems to let some of the elation drain out of his tone. “Besides, it was time. I’m ready and so is he.” 

Taehyung can tell by how the sound in the background changes that he’s turned away from Jungkook, taken a few steps for privacy. 

When he speaks again it’s quiet, muffled, like he’s holding his hand over the microphone. “Look, I know it’s fast. Barely a year, officially, but we’ve known each other for so much longer than that and he makes me so— so happy. I never want to let him out of my sight.” 

Taehyung does everything he can to keep his voice bright. “It’s only fast if you think it’s fast, Jimin-ah. If you know then you know and that’s okay, I’m definitely not judging.”

“I just— I need— ” Jimin falters, stops.

It goes unsaid. 

Jimin wants to be married before it’s too late. Needs the security, the commitment, the public celebration. In some ways, this is a part of how he’s grieving. 

“Tae, I didn’t mean— “ 

“Stop, no,” Taehyung says, abruptly cutting him off. “This is your happy moment, I am absolutely not going to let you make it about me.” Over the phone, it must almost sound convincing because Jimin doesn’t say anything else. He finds a heavy book and puts it on top of the open box, forcing it closed. “How are we celebrating when the two of you get back? Have you told your mom yet? Did she completely freak out?”

“No, I haven’t told her yet.” The smile is back in Jimin’s voice, hand pulled away. “We’ll see her next, at home. She’s going to kill me ‘cause I didn’t tell her right away, but you’re my person Tae, there was no way that you weren’t gonna be the first to know.”

Something warm bubbles in Taehyung’s chest, two shades off acidic, three shades off joy. The desiccated, charred parts of his heart in constant war with the parts of him that love, love, love. 

“Thanks, Jimin-ah. That really means a lot. Let me know once you’ve told the others, I’m sure we can put together a truly outstanding party before you get back. Oh! And send me a picture of your rings, I need to see before it becomes Instagram official.” 

Taehyung expects Jimin to laugh at this, to promise that he gets first veto on any photo captions, but instead Jimin stutters out, “There’s uhh— one more thing.” 

“Another thing, Chim? Christ, are you trying to give me heart failure? I’m delicate, you know.” Delicate is the wrong word to use and Taehyung regrets it the second it leaves his mouth, can almost hear the way it sets Jimin’s anxiety on edge. 

A beat goes by, and then— 

“Will you be our MC, Taehyung-ah?” The words are fast, almost slurred together. “I mean I could ask Jihyunie, or Hoseokie-hyung, but like I said, you’re my person and I want you by my side.” 

There’s a hesitancy there, but no hand over the microphone so Jungkook is listening too, a supportive pillar at Jimin’s back. Jimin knows, of course, about the delicate silver yoke around his neck. Knows just how much he’s asking. 

The line stays silent a second too long and suddenly Jimin is apologizing. 

Taehyung won’t stand for it. “Chim, stop. Jimin-ah, shut up, fuck.” 

Jimin continues to babble. 

“Jimin.” Jimin stops. Taehyung sighs, fiddles with his necklace, and continues, “Of course. Of course I’ll do it. I’d be honoured.”

“Are you sure? If it’s too— ”

The ring slips onto his fourth finger only slightly too tight, the chain in the way. “It’s fine, Jimin-ah. I want to. Your special day, right?”

“Right,” Jimin echoes, before he says, “But I mean it if you ever— ”

“If I change my mind you’ll be the first to know,” Taehyung says, sliding his finger free. “I’m not going to change my mind, though. I want to. We both know Jihyun would give a garbage speech.” 

“Okay,” Jimin says, laughing. “Okay. Thanks Tae, love you. We should get going, my mom still needs to know.”  

Taehyung can feel himself nodding, a motion that Jimin can’t actually see. He says instead, “Love you so much Jimin, congrats again. Bye.” 

The line goes dead and Taehyung goes back to being alone, staring at the box near his feet. 

The tape is in the kitchen, thrown to the back of a drawer as he’d unpacked various utensils and gadgets. He needs it now, but it isn’t that many steps towards the handful of cupboards, and there isn’t enough junk in the drawer yet to make it difficult to find. 

Returning to the box, Taehyung shifts the heavy book and tapes it closed, using the same knife he’d used to open it to cut the end of the tape. He stares at it for only a few seconds before he starts to push it towards the bed. It slides under the frame just barely, almost too tall to fit, but it does. Getting onto his elbows, and then his stomach, Taehyung pushes it as far back as it will go. Under the place where he sleeps, as close as possible, but totally and completely out of reach. 

When he stands again, the joints in his knees pop and he winces through it. Giving up on unpacking anything else, Taehyung picks up the stone from the bedside table, steps out onto the balcony, and starts to recount the phone call. 

You should have heard him, hyung. I don’t think I’ve heard Jiminie that happy in— well in ages. The two of them are so good for each other. You knew that. You called it two years before either of them ever worked up the courage to admit it. I wish you could see them glow. 

I put some of your stuff under the bed. You’re probably mad at me because it’s not temperature controlled or properly sealed or whatever. I promise I’ll deal with it later. I just can’t, right now. 

They’re going to want a happy speech.  

⥁

The best part about the new apartment is that all the mail that shows up has Taehyung’s name on it. 

Not that it helps with the dreams, but still, it’s something. 

⥁

Taehyung brings the stone to the engagement party. It stays mostly in the pocket of his fashionably oversized slacks, unobtrusive and unnoticed. He only takes it out when absolutely necessary, when the shrieks of Jimin’s seemingly thousands of friends— Oh my GOD, you’re getting married! Look at you, you’re glowing, so in love!— become too unbearable to manage on his own. He grips the stone in his left hand, keeps it under their table, wrist angled in a way that almost perfectly mimics the weight of another hand. 

Seojkin notices, and presses their shoulders together, but he doesn’t tell Taehyung to put it away, and for that he’s grateful. 

With the warmth of someone else’s body pressed up against his, Taehyung manages to smile through it, somehow. 

It’s a party, afterall. 

⥁

Taehyung has good days. And he has bad days. Bad weeks. 

A good day means the weight in his chest— in his pocket— is light enough that when he goes about his errands he almost forgets it’s there. Almost. A good day means that when it comes up to suffocate him, in the middle of his office-block floor or standing in the subway station, he can push it away. Push it down. Pretend it’s not there. 

On a good day he can go to dinner with his coworkers and smile and actually mean it. On a good day the weight he carries is a comfort. A reminder but not an unwelcome one. Something he goes towards to ground himself, to lend him strength. 

On a bad day none of that is true. 

On a bad day everyone in the street has the right kind of shoulders, or the right kind of shoes. The right kind of something that’s just close enough that Taehyung feels the hope like bile in his throat. And then it will shatter, because they will turn, or say something, or step away and Taehyung will realize that no, those aren’t the right shoulders, even if they are the right shoes. 

On a bad day he curls the stone into his chest and presses it so hard that it practically becomes one with his bones— or he throws it into a distant corner where it becomes buried in a pile of dust. Out of sight but never out of mind.

On a bad day, a bad week, Taehyung doesn’t even leave the apartment. The new one. The sterile one. Full of so many memories, but none of them his. 

On the worst days, the most terrible ones, Taehyung isn’t even able to cry. 

Not that he’d be able to hear it, anyway, over the screaming. 

Still, Taehyung has good days. 

⥁

They all fly down to Jeju before the wedding to celebrate, one last hurrah, even if nothing was fundamentally going to change about any of their lives. They rent an apartment on the coast, barely big enough for four, let alone six, but they make it work. Pile into bedrooms and onto couches and fill the space with everything that makes them them.

The first activity is a hike, up the only peak on the island, the dormant volcano. 

The view at the top is incredible, the ocean on all sides. In the centre of the crater is an electric-blue lake, surrounded by wildflowers. Taehyung gasps when he sees it, reaching into his pocket to pull out the stone.

“Look, hyung, look,” He says, holding it outstretched. “Look at how beautiful it is. Almost as nice as Bhukansan, don’t you think? We need to do more hiking, for sure. The city is fun, but it’s not nearly as beautiful.”

He spins, once, twice, doing his best to give the full three-sixty. It's only when he stops spinning that Taehyung notices how the rest of the group is staring at him, all of his friends. Their faces range from resignation, to sadness, to— Taehyung stops looking when he sees Jungkook’s face. He knows what it means. 

Not that he needs to be looking to hear Jungkook hiss, “Put it away, hyung.” 

“He’s grieving, Jungkook. Let it— ” Seokjin says, gravel crunching under his shoes as he moves towards where Jungkook is standing. 

“We’re all grieving,” Jungkook roars, spinning to face him. His back is turned to Taehyung now, but that’s doing little to hide the set of his shoulders and the curled fists at his sides. “He’s delusional. It’s been over a year and he’s talking to that fucking rock like it’s— like it’s— ”

Taehyung thinks about how it has been four hundred and seventeen days, exactly. 

More gravel crunches and Taehyung figures that it’s Seokjin moving again, and it’s not until he sees the dark cargo pants tucked into darker boots that he starts to understand what’s about to happen. Not that that gives him time to react because in an instant Jungkook snatches the stone out of his hand and considers it, for a second, eyes slit. 

And then he throws it, skittering, down the wooden stairs and out of sight, saying, “Give it up, hyung.”  

Watching it go, Taehyung wails, like an animal, wounded. It’s not a sound his body has ever made before. 

“Jungkook,” someone shouts, more gravel crunching. “What the fuck.” 

Taehyung’s knees slam into the ground, shards of stone digging into his palms and he’s still wailing, still gasping. 

“Jimin, deal with him,” that same voice says. Hoseok. “I don’t care if he’s not your dog, he’s acting like a child and he’ll listen to you. Get. Him. Out. Of. Here. Right now.” 

More voices, more rocks tumbling, more creaking of wood as people step onto the stairs. “Jin-hyung, can you help Joonie it looks like he— ”

“— No I’ll handle Tae, if you’ve got Joon. Yeah, I know— ”

“— look, he doesn’t seem to be in much better shape and I don’t want him up here when we find it.”

“— gonna try. It’s important to Taehyung. Yeah, I know, but— ” 

More footsteps, more hollow wood echo, but no more voices. 

The last pair of boots come into Taehyung’s vision. Hoseok squats down in front of him, as close to eye level as he can without also getting on the ground.

“Come on, Tae,” he says, offering his hand. “I’ll help you find it. It can’t have gone far. We’ll look until the sun goes down if we have to, okay?”

Taehyung nods once, jerky and blurred, before he stands and brushes his hands off on his pants. The screaming has never been so loud, drowning out everything, Taehyung isn’t completely sure he ever stopped wailing. 

It’s Hoseok who finds it, somehow, just off the path and settled into a patch of grass. Taehyung doesn’t believe it’s the right one for several long minutes, not until Hoseok makes him look at all the other rocks around them, jagged and dark, not a single water-worn edge to be seen. 

Taehyung almost collapses again when he realizes it, babbling, thank you hyung, thank you, thank you, I don’t know what I’d do, I can’t— I couldn’t— thank you. 

Hoseok just gives him a smile, small and sad, and says that now it’s their turn to leave, they don’t want to be up here when the sun goes down. 

They hike the rest of the way down the mountain in silence, Hoseok’s hand in his, cradled around the stone. 

It’s so beautiful here. We hiked up Hallasan today. Kookie was being such a brat that I threatened to throw him into the crater at the top, did you hear? Jiminie didn’t think that was funny, but Jin-hyung did so I guess you win some and you lose some. 

I’m sorry I didn’t get to show you more. The others they— they don’t like it when I bring you out. I guess that’s fair. I wouldn’t want to be reminded of my dead friend while on vacation either. Too bad I don’t really get a choice. 

I’m not crazy. I’m not.

⥁

seokjinie-hyung [14:21]
do u want to come fishing with me?

You [14:25]
?

seokjinie-hyung [14:26]
im going tomorrow morning
early
i think the others might still need more time to cool off
wanna come with?

You [14:25]
uhh
sure i  guess
never been before

seokjinie-hyung [14:28]
thats fine
its easy ill show u

You [14:33]
Ok

⥁

seokjinie-hyung [00:04]
you can bring it
if you want
your rock

⥁

Fishing is weird. 

They leave so early it’s still almost completely dark, only the faintest hint of pink coming up over the ocean. The boat hums through the waves, spray coming up to mist Taehyung’s face as they break against the bow, continuous like a heartbeat. 

They’re not going very far out, Seokjin discussing with their captain something about middle-depth and smaller catches. But still, they need to get away from the shoreline. Taehyung watches it fade into the distance, his back to the rising sun. 

They shut the engines down a few kilometres off the coast and set the boat adrift. 

Seokjin gestures him over, handing him a fishing pole. The instructions are simple, cast, wait, reel, pull. His first cast gets tangled in his hair, and that sends Seokjin into a fit of hysterical, squeaky laughter. Taehyung’s second cast goes better, an inaudible plop into the ocean off the side. Seokjin stands beside him and Taehyung opens his mouth to ask, to find out if this was anything like how he used to— 

“You don’t need to say anything, Tae-yah.” Seokjin looks at him out of the corner of his eye, a smirk on his face. “You’re going to scare the fish.” 

So, Taehyung closes his mouth and adjusts his grip on the fishing pole. Side by side, close but not touching, they stare out into the waves. 

They’re successful, mostly, a handful of long silver fish and two plastic shopping bags, tangled in their lines. The sun is almost at full noon when Seokjin tells the captain to bring them back to shore. As he packs the gear back into its carrying case and back turned, Seokjin says, only barely louder than the roar of the engines, “Thank you for coming, Taehyung. It means a lot. I know this isn’t how you planned on spending your vacation.”

“Of course, hyung,” Taehyung says. “Anytime. It was fun, really.” 

And that’s the end of that, Seokjin standing and giving him a blinding smile, saying, “Ah, you shouldn’t have told me that. Now you’re on the line to come every time, get it— on the line?” 

Taehyung laughs and they settle onto a bench as the boat makes its way towards the dock. It doesn’t take very long and soon Seokjin is opening the industrial freezers built into the deck and digging out their catch. 

“What do you say I make this into some hwe for dinner tonight? Maybe some soup?” Seokjin says, hoisting the fish like a prize. “Should be easy enough and I think I saw most of the ingredients in the kitchen at the apartment. Would be nice to eat something that’s not from the store, hmm?” 

Taehyung tries desperately to not look at their milky, glassy eyes. A sure sign of a thing that is dead. He nods as they step off the boat and onto the pier. It does sound good, a home cooked meal. Taehyung doesn’t eat very many of those anymore. Seokjin holds the fish by their teeth as he kicks open the coolers they’d brought with them. 

 Watching Seokjin pack their catch into neon ice-lined cubes, the idea comes to him. Feels like a betrayal, or another step forward. Maybe those are the same thing now. 

“Hyung will you—” he stammers. “Will you teach me? How to make the soup?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Seokjin says, eyes coming up to meet Taehyung’s, a furrow in his brow. “Of course, Taehyung-ah. Of course I’ll teach you.”  

I get why you used to like it so much. It’s like meditating, almost. The ocean feels good under your feet. It makes hyung really happy, too. Maybe you didn’t like fishing at all, just that part. Making him happy. 

I need to apologize to Jungkook, I think. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I need to. I wish they would just let me do this, don’t they understand what a promise is?

I can’t lose you again. 

⥁

The apology comes stilted. Late into the evening, well into the darkest parts of the night. After the soup and the conversation and more than one beer. Jungkook hadn’t said a single word to him all evening, hadn’t even looked him in the eye, but he’s here now and he’s saying, “I talked to Jiminie this morning, while you were out with Jin-hyung and I just wanted to say— ”

Taehyung snorts, cutting him off. “Jimin doesn’t believe me either, Jungkook. Probably agrees with you that I’m, what did you call it, delusional? So whatever you have to say I probably don’t want to hear it.”  

“No, that’s not— ” Jungkook starts and then pauses, running his hand through his hair. They’re laying side by side on the floor in the living room, where Taehyung had unfurled a sleeping mat the day they’d arrived. Out in the open had, after all, been preferable to sharing a bed. “That’s not where I was going. I talked to Jimin and he put it into perspective for me.” 

Taehyung waits for his explanation, the only thing he can do. He can’t count the number of times he’s tried to tell Jimin just how important the promises he’s made to the stone are to him. It never seemed to get through, at least not in the way he wanted.  

“I don’t know if I could lose him,” whispers Jungkook eventually, almost inaudible and totally invisible from where Taehyung is tracing constellations in the popcorn plaster above them. “I don’t know what I’d do. Jimin said it’s important to let you have this because none of us could understand— I’m trying to understand, hyung.” 

So this was Jimin’s angle, then. Taehyung wants to laugh because it’s not like understanding at all, but at least this is a game that he knows how to play.

“You’d get up in the morning,” Taehyung says after a few seconds of silence. “And the morning after that, and the morning after that. You’d get up in the morning even though most days it feels like it would be so much easier if— ”

He swallows it down, the screaming. Jungkook must hear his shaky inhale because suddenly he’s pressing their shoulders together and wrapping an arm around Taehyung’s waist. The weight in the dark is so familiar. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung continues, breathing deep and staring blankly into the dark expanse of ceiling. “You’d get up in the morning. Every morning. You’d cry a lot. More than you thought was possible. And then you’d stop crying, mostly. Maybe pick up some quirky habits.”  

“Quirky habits,” Jungkook parrots, a choking laugh catching in his throat. “Yeah, you’re right I’d probably pick up some quirky habits.” 

“But they’d help,” Taehyung says, feeling the confession brand itself across his skin. He twists himself, just a little, out from under the weight of Jungkook’s arm. Out from the things he so desperately isn’t able to believe. “The habits. They’d help. With everything.” 

“Yeah, hyung,” Jungkook says, quiet, and solemn, and grieving. “Yeah, I’m sure they do.” 

Things get a little bit easier after that. 

⥁

The first time that Taehyung feels joy again— actual joy, the kind that makes him forget, really forget— he’s with Jimin at the wedding hall and trying every flavour of pastry they can get their hands on. The venue offers three standard dessert packages and Jimin is on a mission to pick the very best one. They offer samples, one-offs of each menu so that they can choose their favourites, but really all that’s meant is that Jimin and Taehyung have been stuffing their faces with pastries and laughing. 

This third option is the most expensive, individual tarts in golden pastries wrapped in berries and whipped cream side by side to dark chocolate cakes and more traditional syrup-puddings. Taehyung dips his finger into one of them and is nothing but giggles when he smears it against Jimin’s nose. 

It’s only when he realizes how breathless he is that it hits him, a bullet train. He freezes as it comes up to pull him under, the same level of down that it's always been. He wants to step away, but he doesn’t and instead he just stops . And Jimin is still laughing, icing on his nose and in his hair. It takes Jimin long seconds to realize what has happened, but still, somehow, he does. 

“Tae— ” He says, grabbing both of Taehyung’s hands. “Tae-yah, I think you should talk to someone.” 

Looking at him, icing still on his face and eyes so so sad, Jimin continues, saying, “Tae, I don't know how to tell you that you’re allowed to be happy.”  

Sometimes I think Jimin wants to leave. Leave Seoul, leave me. Move back to Busan with Jungkookie. It’s like he looks at me and doesn’t recognize who I am. I think sometimes all he sees is what I've lost, but I don’t know how to look like anything else. That’s just what I am now, I guess— a walking monument to you.

Maybe it would be easier if the distance between us was literal instead of whatever this is. If the universe is good to him like he deserves, he’ll never understand in any way that matters. Maybe I should tell him it’s okay to go, if that's really what he needs.

Yeah, I’d survive it. I can survive anything, I think, now. After this.

⥁

The grief counsellor tells him the same things that everyone tells him. Taehyung doesn’t know why he expected any different. 

What you’re feeling is normal. There’s no wrong way to grieve. It’s important for you to give yourself space to process this. Have you tried anything creative? It says here that you used to paint? Some people find that helpful.

She looks at him like he’s worth pitying when he mentions the stone, and somehow that is so much worse than an outright dismissal. When she asks if she can see it, he lies and says that he thought it best if he left it at home, for this. All she does is nod in response before she asks if he has any other coping strategies. 

At the second session she doesn’t even remember his name. 

But her office is in the same hospital where they’d held the funeral and there’s something ironic there, somewhere, if Taehyung could be bothered to look for it. 

⥁

Taehyung does not bring the stone to the wedding. His pale grey suit is tailored far too close to his body to hide the additional bulk and Jimin’s disapproval is far too risky to consider starting a fight about it, not on a day that was supposed to be about his joy. It stays by his bedside as he steps into his freshly-shined shoes and out the door. 

Halfway to the venue, Taehyung isn’t even sure if he’d said goodbye. 

The ceremony is beautiful, because of course it is. Every detail planned and accounted for, not a single petal out of place. One of the walls is towering glass and through it the sun is just starting to go down, setting the entire venue into cascading pink and orange, not for a second diluted by the chandeliers hanging from the vaulted ceilings above them. 

Never once does Taehyung envy them, too consumed with how much he loves these people to let the jealous resentment trickle in the way he had worried it might. Instead, he adores them, and their happiness, and how contagious it is. 

And if he sheds just a single tear, a sparkling one, well, Taehyung has always been a romantic and nobody can blame him too much for that, really. 

Against his heart, the ring on the chain around his neck is so warm. 

After it ends and they all settle into their places at the tables, Taeyhung gives his speech, glass in hand and ready to toast, crystalline and flawless. His smile makes his cheeks ache as he speaks. 

“ —turns out she was his professor.”  

Everyone laughs and Taehyung turns towards the pair seated beside him. “Jimin-ah, my baby, Jungkook-ah, my other baby, I am so happy for you. You’re the best people that I know— ” Hoseok kicks him under the table and Taehyung laughs through it. “And I’m so happy you found each other.” 

He turns to the crowd and raises his glass in celebration. “To the happy couple,” he says. The audience mimics him and gives a small round of applause, before settling back into conversation at their own tables. 

Everyone looks surprised when Jungkook stands. “There’s uhh— one more thing,” he says, obviously nervous, hands twisting in front of him and eyes averted. 

“You all know me. I’m uhh— “ he stutters and takes a pause before straightening his shoulders. “I’m not so good with words. But I made something— for today. I promise it’s short and everyone will get to eat soon.” The assembled crowd titters and Jungkook looks down at Jimin beside him. “But this is for you, Jimin-ah, I hope you like it.”

The lights go out and a projector springs to life from the ceiling, shining bright onto a blank wall at one end of the dining room. 

It starts with home video footage that Jungkook must have gotten from their parents, a compilation of round cheeked children screaming on a playground, in the ocean. The pair of them, in ugly matching school uniforms, arguing over a soccer ball. It’s obvious when Jungkook first gets his hands on a camera, sometime in the middle of highschool, because the spotlight in every shot is suddenly on Jimin. Jimin dancing. Jimin pulling faces. Jimin laughing. Jimin, Jimin, Jimin, bright and shining like the sun. When the setting shifts to Seoul, to their university, the rest of them start to filter into the picture. And oh. Oh. 

Taehyung drives his fingernails into his palm so hard he’s sure that he’s about to draw blood. 

Because, in the background of every frame, the camera focused on Jimin but picking up the others too, there he is. There they are. The pair of them, holding hands as they run between classes, sharing bites of food in the cafeteria, leaning into each other’s body heat as the seven of them laugh around a campfire. The pair of them, effervescently, overwhelmingly, dazzlingly, visibly, happy. Taehyung and— and— 

Another hand grips his under the table. Unpries his fingers and slots between them. Allows Taehyung to crush their joints in an attempt to not vomit all over the gilt of the tableware. 

The scenes change again, to Jimin alone, still incandescent, but different—  Taehyung doesn’t think about why . There’s a final moment, Jimin, windswept and radiant, standing on a beach and screaming into the receiver of his phone, a thin band of gold on his finger glinting in the sun. 

And then it’s over, screen paused and displaying “I’ve loved you forever” in black and white text. Jimin is openly crying, face split wide by a brilliant smile. He pulls Jungkook into a kiss and Seokjin boos at them from somewhere at the other end of the table. 

Hoseok carefully unwinds their fingers, runs a soothing thumb across the back of Taehyung’s hand, and lets it go. It takes Taehyung a moment to remember that he’s supposed to be smiling. 

But then he does, and he claps Jimin on the back and teases him for being such a sap— Look at you! You’re a mess. Over a video compilation?— and gets a playful shove in return. He tries to ignore the way Jungkook is watching him from the corner of his eye, a hint of tension in his brow. 

The food is served, and the mood remains light.

⥁

The afterparty is a different affair altogether. 

They sprint, breathless with joy, out of the taxi as it gets stuck in Hannam traffic, almost to the Hill. There are too many of them to fit in one car, but somehow they come to the decision unanimously. Doors slam open and shut as they pour onto the sidewalk, still in suits and cocktail dresses. Moving as one, they walk, dance, sing, the last few blocks to the club, under the darkening sky and free. 

Jungkook has flowers in his hair, braided into the strands framing his face, stolen from the venue. They’re almost as lovely as he is, delicately blushed at the edges and smiling, smiling. One of his pinkies is linked with Jimin’s, swinging between them as they walk— a promise. 

Taehyung stays a few steps behind them, grinning at the way his friends love, loud and open and yet somehow shy, like they still can’t believe it, not yet. That’ll come, maybe in the morning, inevitable like the sun rising. 

Seokjin bumps his shoulder and offers his hand, wiggling his fingers in a dramatic invitation. Taehyung grips it, maybe too tight, a mirror, or a thank-you. 

The steps down into the club are sticky— and familiar. Taehyung has been here before. They’ve all been here before. But this time there’s a hand in his and a collection of tables behind a velvet rope, reserved special just for them. A different kind of place all together. 

As they step behind the line, the bartender delivers several trays of glimmering shot glasses to the tables, more than enough for everyone. The first tray is quickly dispersed into the assembled crowd. It’s quiet, for a second, like they’re all holding their breath. 

Until someone raises their drink in a toast and shouts, “To love!” 

The moment breaks, and everyone drinks. As the glasses bang against the rickety wooden tabletops, Jungkook grabs Jimin and spins him, giggling, in a wide circle, as if to show him off. When he finally finds his feet again, Jimin picks up another shot off the second tray and lifts it towards the ceiling. 

“To the future!” He cries, before he tips his head back and swallows it down. 

And Taehyung feels it, liquid in his chest like maybe. 

Liquid in his chest like longing. 

⥁

Later in the evening, as the party winds down, the six of them find themselves huddled together in the closest thing to a quiet corner they can find, shoulders knocking and foreheads almost pressed together.

Namjoon has somehow mysteriously acquired a bottle of whisky— Where did you get that Joon-hyung, we are absolutely not paying for bottle service— and they’re passing it in a silent rotation between them. The alcohol burns down Taehyung’s throat and he hates it, wants to pull a face and spit it out onto the floor— but the disgust feels right, like payment for the fact that he’s the one still standing here, breathing. He chokes it down. 

It’s Namjoon that speaks first, voice low and soft. “He would have been so proud of you.”

Jimin visibly squeezes Jungkook’s arm before he replies, eyes shining, “We know. But thank you, hyung, for saying it.” 

Namjoon nods and takes another swig from the bottle before passing it to Seokjin. They lapse back into silence, each of them thinking the same sorts of thoughts. Remembering.  

Eventually, Taehyung locks eyes with Jungkook across their little circle and whispers, “Thank you for including him, Jungkook-ah.”

“It wouldn’t have been right not to, hyung. I hope it wasn’t too much.” Jungkook looks worried, in that way he often does, like he thinks he may have crossed a line. There are tiny red crescents on Taehyung’s palm that say maybe he did. They’ll take the rest of the week to heal. 

“It was perfect,” he says instead, and means it. Scars or not, the alternative would have been worse. The hole it would have torn in the images of their group would have taken Taehyung with it, swallowed him whole. Jungkook smiles back at him, careful and delicate, and Taehyung looks away. 

They stand in silence, the bottle making another orbit, before Hoseok claps his hands together and announces, “Enough of this. Jimin-ah, you made all of us promise that today wasn’t going to be a sad day, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word. Come on boys, let's dance.” 

He pulls Jimin and Jungkook back out onto the dancefloor by their wrists, where they’re quickly mobbed by their younger family members and other friends. Seokjin follows them, lagging a bit to share an inscrutable look with Namjoon. 

Taehyung and Namjoon don’t immediately rejoin the rest of the party, standing instead in silence at a back table, looking out over the dance floor, the amber bottle two thirds full between them. 

Taehyung lets his eyes wander and tries to pick out his friends from the crowd. He finds Jimin and Jungkook first, in their own universe, bodies pressed close and swaying softly at one edge of the dance floor. Then Hoseok, in the centre, surrounded by more admirers than Taehyung thinks should be possible, teaching hip hop dance moves that are in direct contrast to the low bassline echoing over the speakers. Seokjin is harder to spot, leaning against the bar and engaged in conversation with a woman that Taehyung recognizes as one of Jimin’s coworkers. 

The song ends and changes to something upbeat and poppy, squeals of excitement coming from Hoseok’s horde. Taehyung is considering getting up to join them when Namjoon starts to speak beside him.

“It should have been you.”

Something pulls its claws tight around Taehyung’s chest and digs in deep. It’s not the first time he’s heard those words, has heard them a thousand times running through his head like a prayer, has screamed them at his own reflection in the mirror until his voice fails. It’s not something he ever expected Namjoon to say to his face, but he was the one who lost his best friend, so Taehyung supposes it’s only fair.  

It should have been you. It should have been you. It should have been you . 

They pound through his head, a cacophony against the music, and it’s several seconds before he realizes that Namjoon is looking at him, waiting for a response. 

“What?” 

It comes out a strangled whisper, all of Taehyung’s joints locking in place, but the lights are too low and Namjoon is too drunk to notice Taehyung’s change in mood, so he continues, “You. First. Married. It should have been you.”

“Oh,” he breathes. Somehow Taehyung had managed to forget that despite all the time that’s passed, and despite long conversations to the contrary, the only person Namjoon blames for the accident is himself. Still, he doesn’t add anything to the statement, knowing this is the exact road he’s been trying to avoid travelling throughout all the preparations, the ceremony. The ring on the chain around his neck burns against his skin. 

Unprompted, Namjoon keeps talking, alcohol making his words bleary. “When we found it, in the studio that day. Would you have said yes?”

“Would I have said yes?” Taehyung laughs at that and it’s a quiet, broken thing. “Hyung, it was my idea. ”

“I’d been bothering him about it for months, we’d been together for three years at that point, and we both knew that this was it for us. Honestly, I knew after the second date, but he always did take longer to warm up to big changes.” Taehyung smiles softly, like cracking glass. “But I wasn’t going to be the one to propose, you know how I am, so caught up in the romance, the drama .” 

“So I told him he had to do it, but you know how he was.” A pause there, Taehyung’s voice going gruff and curt. “Marriage is an exploitative heterosexual institution, Taehyung-ah, one that’s been used to trap women into bondage for millennia, do you really want us to subject ourselves to that?” 

The rough mockery of the ranting style draws a small chuckle from them both, ghosts of a happy memory on their faces. 

“It was just a front, of course. I knew it and he knew it, but he was trying to draw me off the scent so I would actually, you know, be surprised when it happened.” 

Another pause, a longer one, the mood returning to somber.  

“I guess I’ll never know what he had planned.” Taehyung lets out a sigh and the silence stretches between them as they both sip at their drinks and stare at their hands. The song changes several times before Namjoon speaks again, voice soft and almost inaudible over the sound of the dance floor. 

“Art gallery, the one that was showing that photographer you liked. Private booking. Strawberries. Champagne. Jungkook hidden in a corner with his camera. Family dinner at Seokjin’s afterwards to celebrate. Dancing.” 

Taehyung turns his entire body towards Namjoon at that, face open, an entire bouquet in his throat, words failing him completely.

“I helped him plan it.” A shaky breath. “And then, after— ” Namjoon stops, swallows hard, and continues, “After it happened, I managed all the cancellations. I still have the champagne somewhere, I think, in the back of my closet. Could never find an occasion worthy of opening it. He would have— He would have wanted you to know.”

Once Namjoon finishes speaking, voice cracking and tears rolling down his face, Taehyung knows that it’s time for them both to leave. 

He pulls Namjoon into a bone crushing hug and murmurs into his shoulder, voice shuddering but not breaking, “Thank you, hyung— for telling me. It would have been perfect.” He hoists them both to standing, still entangled, and gestures wildly with his free arm at Seokjin from across the room. 

Seokjin’s eyes go wide when he gets close enough to see them properly. “What happened, are you both okay?” 

Namjoon is very obviously not okay, still crying and barely conscious, weight held up more by leaning onto Taehyung than his own legs. Taehyung bites at the inside of his cheek to keep his voice steady and sends a pointed look at the bottle, at the assembled crowd. “We got to talking.”

Seokjin understands immediately and wraps a supportive arm around Namjoon’s ribs. Taehyung lets go and takes a half step back, relinquishing responsibility. 

“He’s had too much to drink, can you help him get home? Or to a hotel? Don’t let Jimin or Jungkookie see him like this, we all promised. I’ll make up an excuse.” 

Seokjin nods, and starts to talk to Namjoon in a low voice, guiding him towards the stairs. Over his shoulder he looks back at Taehyung and asks, “And you? You’re okay to get home?”

Taehyung forces a tight lipped smile onto his face. “I’ll be fine, hyung, thanks.” Another nod, and Seokjin turns his attention fully back to Namjoon.

When he finally sees the pair stumble around the corner and out of sight, Taehyung allows himself five trembling breaths to get back under control. Head tipped back towards the ceiling and blinking furiously, he counts them. One, two, three, four, five. Swallowing down the lump in his throat, he snaps back, eyes forward, and makes his way onto the dancefloor. 

He finds Jimin and Jungkook first, still wrapped up together, sharing a chair and talking to a group of strangers at a table. He makes his excuses to leave, plants a giggling kiss on each of Jimin’s cheeks and gives Jungkook’s arm a tight squeeze. He turns away from them before either of them notice how frail his smile is. Some part of Taehyung is almost surprised that Jimin is letting him go without a fight. Maybe he had noticed, and letting Taehyung go without an argument is his way of offering peace. 

He finds Hoesok next, talking to a cousin of Jungkook’s that Taehyung only barely recognizes. He makes the same excuses, but Hoseok sees right through him, and, hand in Taehyung’s hair and voice soft, offers his couch— somewhere else to sleep if going home to the apartment doesn’t feel like an option tonight. 

He gives Hoseok the same smile he’d given Seokjin, promises that he’s fine and that he’ll see them all the next morning at brunch. Hoseok obviously doesn’t believe him, but lets him go anyway with a tight hug and a kiss to the crown of his head. 

Nobody notices him grab the half full bottle of whisky from the table as he makes his way out. 

The cab ride back to the apartment is quiet. The driver reads his mood and sets the radio to a classical music channel, volume low. Taehyung watches the city blur past him from somewhere behind his own eyes, lights becoming neon streaks in the reflection of the glass. 

There’s no traffic in the middle of the night so the taxi arrives at his building quickly. Taehyung pays, steps into the lobby, and then the elevator, body moving on full automatic.

It’s only back in his apartment, shoes and jacket discarded and back pressed against the wall, that Taehyung finally allows himself to cry. 

He’s not sure how long he sits there, body shuddering with the weight of his grief, but it’s a while before he manages to wrench himself back to standing. He holds the whisky by the neck and stumbles towards the bed, grabbing the stone off the nightstand before making his way out onto the balcony.

He settles onto the ground with the stone in front of him, the pair of them outlined against the glittering skyline. 

Alternating between taking swigs directly from the bottle and letting drops run off his fingers onto the back of the stone, he starts to recount the evening. He goes through it in detail, voice booming through the dramatic moments and going soft through the sweet ones. He talks about the video, and the dancing, and the way Jungkook’s mother had cried. He asks open-ended questions about the bottle in his hands, pretending to know the difference between a scotch and an Irish malt. They go unanswered, which is fine, because Taehyung doesn’t care about alcohol anyway. 

He sits, and he talks, and he drinks. He never brings up the engagement plans.

Taehyung doesn’t sleep at all that night, but instead stays on the cement and watches the sun come up over the city, alcohol dripping down his palm. 

You should have seen Jungkook, hyung, when Jiminie said I do. I’ve never seen anyone look so happy, or so scared. Like he was looking at his whole world, and only in that second, realizing what exactly that meant. I know they’ll be good— if anyone believes in the one true love, they do. 

The hall was so beautiful. Classic, you know? All gold and white and green. Simple. Maybe you would have wanted a wedding like that. 

Namjoonie-hyung really misses you.

⥁

The next morning, at brunch, the only person who looks worse than Taehyung is Namjoon. His hangover is evident, body tinged an off-green colour at the edges, oversized sunglasses pulled over his eyes. Taehyung isn’t sure how much of the conversation they’d had at the table Namjoon remembers, so he doesn’t bring it up. There will be time later to open old wounds. 

Taehyung orders the waffles and blinks away his surprise when they show up covered in strawberries and dusted with matcha powder and cream. 

It’s not that strawberries are a problem, now, but still, there’s something in his throat and it’s making him— 

He takes a bite and it dissolves, figuratively and literally. If he keeps his mouth full of food there’s no reason to say anything and there are so many people around this table right now, all of them laughing. 

Namjoon doesn’t speak either. Hangover or something else, Taehyung isn’t sure. 

It goes on, Jimin and Jungkook still careful against each other in a way that should be endearing but instead just makes Taehyung want to scream at them, especially now in this sober morning. Something like you have this please enjoy it, please understand what it means when they’re still acting like it’s their first date, so much more awkward now that they have gold on their fingers instead of just promises spoken aloud. 

Still, brunch goes fine. Taehyung eats his food and drinks his sugar-sweet latte and laughs when he’s supposed to, not a mask just his genuine reactions. It’s just as they all move to leave that he remembers all the details of the ceremony. The bills are paid, but Taehyung remembers. 

He pulls Jungkook aside as they all stand to go. Jimin gives them a hard glance as he does, protection and hope on his face. 

Stumbling, Taehyung says, ignoring Jimin, “Hey, Jungkook-ah. The video, yesterday— “

Jungkook’s eyes go wide, flashing with guilt and apology. He stammers,  “It was too much wasn’t it? Fuck, I’m sorry, I went back and forth for weeks about whether or not I should include— “

Taehyung cuts him off with a quiet smile. “No— No, I meant what I said last night. It was perfect.” His voice catches, suddenly nervous. “But— ” 

Jungkook waits for him to continue, head tilted and eyes sad. 

“Do you have any more footage?” Confusion ripples across Jungkook’s face, Taehyung realizes he probably thinks he’s asking for footage of Jimin. “Of— Of us ?” 

“Oh,” It’s more of a breath than a sound, and then, “yeah, I think I’ve got lots.” Looking down at the ground, Jungkook says, quiet, “It might be mostly in the background.”

It’s what Taehyung had expected, no separating the artist and his muse. Still, he asks, desperate, “Can you— Can you show me? I’m so scared every day that I’m going to forget him, the little things that made us us”  

Jungkook looks back up and grips his shoulder, squeezes tight. “Yeah, hyung, absolutely. I can do that.”

⥁

It takes longer than Taehyung would have expected for Jungkook to compile the footage. Weeks pass and eventually the request settles somewhere in the back of his head, mostly forgotten. 

So it’s a surprise then, when he checks the apartment mailbox to find a small padded envelope with his name and address scrawled on the front in a familiar script. The fact that Jungkook had decided to put the package in the post instead of simply dropping it off is not lost on him, an additional layer of distance between the contents and Taehyung’s reaction. Taehyung isn’t sure if he should be grateful or annoyed, whether watching the contents would be easier or harder with an audience. 

He shrugs the thought away and heads back into the apartment. He slits the envelope open with a paring knife and shakes the contents out onto his coffee table. Two USB sticks, one pink and one purple. Taped to the purple one s is a note in Jungkook’s handwriting that reads: 

This is everything that I could find. It’s kind of a lot so I made a compilation too, maybe more like a documentary. The purple one has all the raw footage, but it’s like two hundred hours. The pink one has the edited version, I brought it down to an hour and a half. I think I got most of the good bits, but I also didn’t want you to think I’d left anything out, so that’s why you have the purple one too. I want you to have it, because it’s the least of what you deserve, but please don’t get lost in it hyung. 

Love you, 

JK

ps: Jimin is watching me write this over my shoulder and  he wants you to know that while all the work was me, he also loves you a lot a lot

He starts with the raw footage, not wanting to subject himself to anything close to a narrative, not yet. He plugs the stick into his laptop and navigates to the first clip, Jungkook naming the files in chronological order. The first one is different though, it’s dated to sometime mid-last year. Late. Almost near the end. But someone— Jungkook— put two zeroes at the beginning to force it to the top of the list. Like it’s important and he wanted Taehyung to watch it first. 

Taehyung clicks it open. It’s short, and obviously cropped, just a little bit too pixelated to be the whole frame. But there they are. There he is. There’s audio too, the blurred background noise of a nondescript cafe and the occasional spike of someone else’s laughter, but still it’s mostly quiet and the camera picks them up. Picks him up as he leans over and says, in that grinning quiet way he always did, “ I love you.”

Watching the version of himself that smiles at it in the video frame, Taehyung’s heartbeat is so loud. It ends before this past-self version of Taehyung is able to say it back. Maybe he didn’t, a reason for the cut. 

Shaking the thought away, Taehyung tries to figure out when Jungkook had gotten it on video. He doesn’t recognize their clothes, at least not enough to determine where they were. The date in the file name isn’t familiar. Just another day like any other day. 

He replays the clip. And replays the clip. And replays the clip. Figures out how to set it to loop. Loops it. 

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love— 

⥁

Taehyung wakes up several hours later to the video still looping. The words are meaningless now, mostly. More of a cascade of sound than anything he really recognizes as language. He pauses it and somehow the silence is worse. The screen is frozen on what most people would probably consider an unflattering angle, eyes half closed and mouth open, crooked. 

Taehyung clicks out of the video. Figures out how to upload it to his phone. Puts it in an easily accessible folder. Locks his phone and buries it under a pillow. 

There are still more videos. There are so many more videos. 

It starts at their university. Taehyung, four and a half years younger and rounder along the edges. It misses all the first times he’d met Jungkook, just him and Jimin alone, but includes the first time he’d dragged along a date, awkward and shy, blurred fragments in the very back of the frame. 

And then something in the content shifts, because the footage isn’t just of the pair of them, together. There are also what seem like hours of footage of him alone, all the spaces he occupied without Taehyung around. Taehyung thinks back to all the time that Jungkook spent with him in the studio, asking questions and learning about music, a subject that Taehyung himself hadn’t particularly cared for. 

It’s a part of him that Taehyung had never known, not really. He focuses on the way the monitors over his ears seem to dwarf his face, the way his head bobs in time with a silent beat, on the smirk that curls at the corner of his mouth when he encounters what must have been a particularly clever lyric or instrumental. 

“This is really good, Jungkook-ah,” he says, slipping the headphones around his neck. “Let me put it through the speakers and we can talk about the bits I think we can make better.” 

The camera shakes like Jungkook is nodding, and then sound floods the recording. Taehyung doesn’t recognize the song itself, probably one of the thousands that he figures Jungkook has abandoned on the cutting room floor. But just the sound of his voice, the gravel in it— the care— as he repeatedly pauses and offers suggestions on layering and structure, is enough to bring tears to Taehyung’s eyes. Jungkook’s hands come in and out of frame as he jots down notes, until the song ends and Jungkook whines something about being hungry and the camera shuts off. 

As the scene cuts to black, Taehyung hits pause on the autoplay. 

Standing, he walks towards his bed and grabs the stone off the nightstand before returning to the couch. 

He doesn’t talk to it, not yet, and instead just holds it in his fingers and passes it back and forth between his palms until the stone becomes warm enough that Taehyung can almost fool himself into believing it’s generating its own heat. 

Once he’s fully settled back on the couch he presses play on the compilation— the documentary— and lets his joints go white around the stone as he grips it, as he watches. Three years of footage. Three years of love. The last chapter of the movie hurts the most, because there’s absolutely nothing to distinguish it from everything that came before. Just more of the same, Taehyung smiling and laughing and poking at his cheeks while he grumbles and tries to keep down a grin of his own. 

Taehyung hates it, the way he knows this is the last recording, the way it feels like there should be some narrative arc or some dramatic goodbye, a swell of violins and a cut to the heroine sobbing in a field. None of that happens, it’s just the seven of them laughing around a barbeque table, chaste kisses and entwined fingers. He keeps his focus on the pair of them, just slightly blurry and out of frame behind Jimin’s shoulder. They’re laughing about something, pointing chopsticks at where Hoseok is sitting across from them, looking flustered.

It ends unceremoniously with a close-up shot of a beer being delivered to their table. Behind it, if Taehyung looks close enough, every person in the frame is smiling. 

After a few seconds, the video cuts to a blank screen, words scrolling by in subtle earth tones. 

“I know he was special to you. He was special to me too, in a different way. Hyung was my hero, he taught me so much that I’ll never get the chance to thank him for. So let me thank you, instead, for letting me make this. For asking.”

It’s not signed, but it doesn’t have to be. Taehyung’s hands itch to grab his phone and reach out to Jungkook. To tell him to take back the thanks. To find some way to convey in black and white text just how much the video, the entire archive, means to him. How scared he’d been to forget the exact pattern the creases around his eyes made when he smiled. The arpeggio notes of his laugh. 

Jungkook must understand already. Nobody that dedicated to capturing every moment on tape isn’t secretly terrified that it all might disappear one day. Go up in smoke. It’s something Jungkook has done as long as Taehyung’s known him. Maybe saying anything would make it worse, like some kind of vindication. Maybe there's a reason Jungkook had sent the files by mail. 

Taehyung plays with the stone in his lap instead. Leaves his phone untouched. 

Hyung was my hero. The tense of the verb holds him, like it always does— like it always has— ever since that first night in front of the television. Was. Taehyung tries to find the pain in it, the sharp edges, and instead just finds the water-smooth weight of the stone in his palms. 

Jiminie wants me to go back to school. I never finished my final year. Dropped out half way through the fall semester. You— you know why. You’re probably so disappointed in me, I always did think that  those anti-school rants of yours were a facade.   

I’m trying to figure out what the rest of my life looks like without you in it. I’m not sure it looks like anything at all.

Look at us, hyung. We were so beautiful. 

⥁

Time passes, somehow. 

Every morning, Taehyung wakes up alone, eyes blinking open to find the stone at his side. 

The new year comes and goes, marking things that should have been impossible, if the world worked the way it should. Taehyung spends it alone, the last time he will, curled up in a corner of his couch and wrapped in blankets, holding the stone in his lap. They're not outside, because it's sleeting, a harsh mixture of snow and rain that pounds against the windows, a drumbeat, almost music. 

I’m older than you now. Imagine that. Don’t worry though, you’re always gonna be my hyung. 

I read this thing recently, about how rocks are immortal. That they get ground down and reformed and built back up again, deep in the hearts of volcanoes. I don’t know why I told you that. It just— seemed important. I like how that sounds, immortal. 

You’re another year older too, somewhere. Congratulations. 

⥁

joon-hyung [10:07]
hey
can you stop by the studio?
this afternoon?

You [10:14]
is everything ok?

joon-hyung [10:15]
yeah ofc
theres something i need to show you
in person, preferably

You [10:16]
now im really worried

joon-hyung [10:16]
its not bad
just personal

You [10:16]
even worse
i can be there around 3:30?

joon-hyung [10:17]
perfect
thanks

⥁

Namjoon’s building is a skyscraper, a behemoth of glass and steel that makes Taehyung want to duck below it, even as he steps into the polished marble lobby. There’s someone waiting for him, a delicate-featured intern who recognizes him on sight, somehow, and gestures him past the mandolin-sharp gates. 

In the chrome elevator, Taehyung has nothing except his own reflection to look at. He’s not sure he enjoys what he sees. It beeps itself open on the eighteenth floor, and there Namjoon is, waiting for him. The walls are an off-grey and the floor is an almost-marble linoleum, and Taehyung is a stranger here, even as Namjoon embraces him.

Pulling them towards one of the doors that looks like any of the other doors in the hallway, Namjoon smiles at Taehyung and says, “I’m so glad you came.” 

Namjoon unlocks the door with a press of his face and the studio is warm, as much as any strange place can be warm. The floors are industrial carpet with another carpet on top, almost corner-to-corner, like it wanted Taehyung to pretend that that was the original flooring. It's off-yellow and off-orange and feels safe, despite. 

There’s a couch on one side of the studio, and Taehyung knows this is where he’s supposed to sit. Settling into it, Namjoon takes his place near the desk and that’s when Taehyung notices how anxious he is. 

“There’s coffee, if you want it.” Namjoon offers, waving a hand at the rainbow display of pods near the machine to their left. “Hot chocolate too, I think. On the far right. Next to the tea. I don’t recommend trying to make tea, it always ends up tasting like coffee.”

Taehyung pulls a face. “Gross,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Namjoon replies, laughing. “It’s pretty awful. But, I like to have options.” 

Options is probably putting it mildly. Taehyung thinks he can count at least a dozen different pods, and he’s sure there are more in the cupboard below. Still, this isn’t something he’s going to poke fun at, and instead shakes his head and says, “I’m good. What did you want to show me?” 

“It’s less about showing,” Namjoon says, looking down at his hands. He’s sitting in an expensive looking office chair, almost dwarfed by the magnitude of the recording equipment behind him. “It’s more about asking, I guess.”  

Taehyung can feel his own neck quirk at the statement but he doesn’t know how to ask. 

“The day he— ” Namjoon starts, and then stops, his hands clenching and unclenching around nothing in his lap. Taehyung understands in an instant but can’t form words, not that he needs to because Namjoon heaves in a breath and continues, saying, “We were working on a song. I’d like to finish it. More than that, I— I want to publish it. Put it on an album.”

Taehyung closes his eyes, shuts the world out. He should have guessed, a language he never spoke. He must take too long to answer because within a few heartbeats Namjoon is saying, “But I won’t, Taehyung-ah, I won’t if you don’t want me to.” 

Sucking his cheeks between his teeth, all Taehyung can say, the only authority he has left to give, is, “Is it a good song? Something he would have— ” 

The breath cuts itself off in his chest, but still Namjoon clearly understands because he smiles and then— 

“Yeah,” Namjoon answers, “Yeah it’s a great song.” 

Taehyung nods once, sharp and sniffling. “Okay. Yeah, do that. Go ahead. I want you to.” 

⥁

He titles the album Different Loves, a minimalist set list of six tracks that span Namjoon thanking his parents for raising him, to an electro-pop breakup song, to an indie-acoustic ode to his bicycle. The lead single, his song, does well enough on the charts that Taehyung starts to hear it randomly, in public places. It takes until the sixth time he hears it at the grocery store for it to stop bringing him to tears. 

The tenth time he hears it, it makes him smile. 

Hey, it finally happened. Your big break. Just like you said it would. Took a little longer than you were expecting, I think. But Joon-hyung made it happen, for both of you. He just needed a little extra time. He’s got a contract now, a real one with a big label. They gave him everything he asked for, full creative control. Exactly like you wanted.  

I’ll play the song for you. I hope it’s what you’d envisioned when you recorded it. Hyung said it was only half way done when— Come on, let’s listen. 

Are you proud? 

⥁

Taehyung pushes open the door to his apartment with peach soju on his breath and someone else’s hand in his back pocket. It’s late, so late that it’s almost early. They stumble into his apartment in a pile of limbs and Taehyung quickly finds his back against a wall with warm hands on his waist. 

“Wait— ” Taehyung gasps, pulling himself back to breathe. “Wait. There’s something I need to do first.”  

“I’m prepped.” The man— Chanhee? Donghee? Something-hee, Taehyung doesn’t care enough to remember— purrs into his ear. “You don’t need to worry about that.” 

“Not that,” Taehyung says, almost mean, before taking another step away. The man looks at him, confusion written on his face. “I just need to do something first.” 

“Dude, if you don’t want to do this— ” the stranger starts, shifting his jacket back onto his shoulders.  

“No— No I do. I do. I promise.” Taehyung says, leaning in to kiss him again. With a smile that he only kind-of has to force, he flaps his hand in the approximate direction of the only other door in the apartment. “The bathroom is through there, just give me a few minutes, that’s all, is that okay?” 

The man still looks suspicious, but he nods his head once and wanders over to the door, saying, “Whatever you want, dude.” 

Taehyung exhales as the bathroom door closes, pressing his eyes together. On the inhale he moves into the area near the bed, and grabs the stone off the nightstand. There’s a plastic bag on the floor near the front door, full of things that should be in this piece of furniture, but aren’t. He’s not going to explain why there’s a rock in their place instead. 

Gripping it in his palms, Taehyung steps out onto the balcony. Saying a few words, he places the stone on the little table he has set up to watch the sunrise, next to a pot of flowers. There won’t be any light for hours, but Taehyung feels that almost makes it easier, to know that the stone will be sitting in the dark. Even with the dim glow of the apartment behind him, Taehyung is having a hard time making out anything other than a few blurry shapes. He stands next to it for a minute and stares out over the city. 

And then he steps away, slides the glass door closed behind him, and turns his back on the balcony completely. 

Just— don’t think about it, okay? The city is beautiful tonight, look at all the lights, barely any dust. I’m going to do my best not to think about it either, but I need— I need to know if I can still feel things. Or if that— if that part of me is gone for good. 

He’s just some guy I met at a club. It doesn’t mean anything, I promise. I’m never going to talk to him again, I swear. 

I love you. 

⥁

The next morning, Taehyung wakes up alone and, with an ache in his head and an ache in his chest, gets out of bed the same way he always does. Pulling open the glass sliding doors, Taehyung’s eyes find the stone first, sun-warmed and sparkling, exactly where he’d left it the night before. Some part of him is surprised, like he’d expected the stone to disappear, or turn a vicious, carbon-charred black, but it’s the same as it always has been. 

Cradling it in his hands, Taehyung takes in the colours of the city waking up, coming alive, neon lights flickering on and jewel-beetle cars racing down the streets, before he turns back into the apartment and gets ready to start his own day. There are things he needs to do. 

He doesn’t put the stone back on the nightstand. It goes on the bookshelf in the living room instead, next to a framed photograph and an overgrown succulent. 

Still, it doesn’t gather dust. 

⥁

It starts to become clear to Taehyung that grieving is less of an action, and more of a state of being. Like a permanently bruised rib, aching and sore. The kind of thing you have to adjust your sleeping habits for. 

The kind of thing you learn to work around.

Some days, he still grabs two bottles out of the fridge at the store and he’ll make it all the way to the checkout before he realizes what he’s done. He never puts the extra one back, but instead carries it home. He’ll drink it later, he always does. Sometimes with breakfast on a Sunday morning. 

⥁

As always, time passes. Years pass. Taehyung finds some kind of rotten-wood stability where if things can just be the same maybe he can— until he wakes blearily to the sound of someone pounding at his door. 

It’s New Year’s eve, another New Year’s eve, and Taehyung hadn’t planned on doing anything, but the sound at his door can’t be ignored. 

Pulling it open, Taehyung can hear the person standing there say, “I just realized— ”

Stepping back, Taehyung knows who this person is as he whispers, probably unheard, “Hi, hyung.” 

“He’s officially been gone— ” Hoseok chokes out, barging into the apartment and hands shaking as he lays out takeout containers on the coffee table in front of the couch.  “Longer than I knew him alive.”

That day had passed for Taehyung last year, on a perfectly average spring Tuesday. He’d spent it in the national park, climbing mountains and taking in the view. He hadn’t told anyone, but he had brought the stone.  

Hoseok doesn’t look at him as he keeps talking, still fixing an impromptu dinner party on the table, “That’s when we became friends, you know, on New Year’s Eve?” 

“I know,” Taehyung says, watching, knowing.  

“I was in the dorms, didn’t see a reason to go home because I’d just been for Chuseok, you know? But it had mostly cleared out, so it was like a ghost town, and I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t , but it was weird being the only person around,” Hoseok says, snapping open the containers of radish. “He didn’t even know me, not really. Joonie was my roommate, and we’d met a few times because they had classes together, but we weren’t really friends, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Taehyung echoes, just watching him. 

“I don’t even really know how he knew I was alone, I mean maybe Joon told him but that doesn’t sound right, but he knew somehow and— ” Hoseok stops moving then, head bowed over the meticulously arranged takeout and trembling. “And he knocked on my door and told me he ordered way too much food and asked if I wanted any.”

Head lifting, Hoseok looks Taehyung in the face for the first time all night and says, after a pause, “Tae-yah, I ordered way too much food, do you want some? I hear this chicken place is really good.” 

“Yeah, hyung,” Taehyung breathes, moving to sit next to him. “Yeah, I could eat.”

The chicken is good, from the same place they always used to go to, just steps off the university campus. Halfway across the city from Taehyung’s apartment. But it’s still hot, and still crispy and the cheese powder falls off it in little orange clouds, just the way Taehyung likes. 

“I miss him,” Hoseok says as they finish eating, picking over piles of bones.  

Taehyung smiles small, and says, “I know, hyung. Me too. Always.” 

“It’s crazy how much I miss him,” Hoseok says again, distracted, like he wasn’t listening to Taehyung at all.  

“Hyung, I— ” Taehyung starts, before Hoseok cuts him off. 

“You didn’t think I did, right?” He says, and it’s not cruel, but it could be.  “Thought I held it all together, figured it all out?” 

Taehyung gapes at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I didn’t, I— ”

“You all needed someone to keep it together.” Hoseok smiles as he says it, clenching his fingers around the back of his neck.  “Needed someone to keep it alive, all of it. Everything.” 

Taehyung thinks back to every sun-drenched afternoon that Hoseok had ever spent with him, in the early days of after. It hadn’t been laughter then, no, but it had been something soft. Something bright. Strawberries and cream pressed between slices of white bread. A smile when he needed it, or someone to hold his hand. 

It hadn’t been a distraction. Nothing back then had been a distraction, Taehyung’s sense of self buried so deep beneath the screaming. But it had been something— Fresh air. 

Taehyung grips and ungrips his hands around nothing as his perspective shifts on one of the only good things he’s ever known. 

“Taehyung-ah, can I ask you for something?” asks Hoseok, still looking down at the floor. 

Taehyung shuffles himself closer to Hoseok on the couch and says, “Anything, hyung. Anything.” 

“Am I allowed to mourn him now?” Hoseok says, cadenced to the melody of Taehyung’s heart breaking. “Tell me you’re okay. Tell me it’s alright if I stop pretending.” 

Hoseok’s head is on his shoulder, then, wet and shaking. Taehyung chokes out, “You never said, hyung, if I had known— ” 

“Yeah, not saying was kind of the point.” Hoseok replies, somehow laughing, like he still has something to hide. “Who else was going to do it? Not you, or Joonie, or Kookie. Definitely not Seokjin-hyung, even though I think he tried. Still trying. I don’t think he’s ever going to ask.”  

Sighing, he continues, “Jiminie would have managed it, I think. If he had to. Maybe in some ways he did. But it would have gotten to him eventually, pulled him under. No, it had to be me. The heavy lifting.” 

“Hyung, that’s not— Nobody asked— We could have— ” Taehyung stammers, even though it might be a lie. Hoseok had always been the one to break them out of it, every time the water started getting deep. 

“No.” Hoseok says, “No, it had to be me. And I think I did a good job, hey?” 

Taehyung doesn’t know how to answer that, because it’s true. 

“He was my best friend,” Hoseok whispers, shoulders collapsed so small.  “I wasn’t his, I knew that. He and Namjoon always had that thing, that spark— ”   

Eyes flicking up to meet his, Taehyung insists, “I don’t think it’s fair.” 

Hoseok laughs at him, without joy, and says, “Nothing about life is fair, Taehyung-ah, I thought that was exactly what we were— ”

Cutting him off, Taehyung insists, “No, I mean I don’t think it’s fair for you to say you weren’t his best friend.” 

“I mean it's just the— ” Hoseok says, finally lifting his head. 

“No.” Taehyung says again, hard. “He didn’t see the world like that. You knew him too well to actually believe he saw the world like that.” 

They lapse into silence at the statement, Hoseok going back to staring at the floor for several long seconds until he murmurs, “Can I talk to him?”

Taehyung moves silently at the request, standing and grabbing the stone off its place of honour on the shelf. He cups it in his palms and passes it delicately to where Hoseok is crumpled on the couch. In doing so he says, careful, “I always talk to him outside.” 

Hoseok nods in response, tendons in his neck straining. Several long seconds go by before he reaches out to accept the stone with two hands. 

“Taehyung-ah— ” Hoseok whispers, eyes fixed on the stone. Taehyung is surprised by how much larger it looks in Hoseok’s more delicate grasp. “Is it really— ”

“I don’t know,” Taehyung answers. It may be the truest thing he’s ever said, something he’s only recently allowed himself to consider. He continues, “Does it matter?”

Lips pursed and eyes shiny, Hoseok says, “I guess not.” 

As he stands, Taehyung jerks his chin towards the balcony and Hoseok goes, sliding the door closed behind them. 

Taehyung turns away, settles himself onto the couch and tries to give them what they deserve, a moment alone. 

At one point Hoseok laughs so hard that his head slams into the glass of the window, sending a resonant thrum through the apartment. Taehyung smiles when he hears it and turns up the volume on his headphones. 

Hey, I know you came back to see me, but you really should see the others too. Some of them might not want to, they still don’t believe me. But I think it would be good if they had the option. Maybe I’ll— maybe I’ll ask them. 

I don’t know how to put into words the hole you tore in us. In all of us. I think everyone has something they wish they’d said. I hope you’re listening. 

Even if this isn’t— even if this isn’t you. I hope you’re listening. Wherever you are.

⥁

Jimin slams the piece of paper down onto the café table so hard that Taehyung is almost offended on its behalf. Certainly, the table did nothing to deserve that. It’s a lovely table, wood top with brass legs. Very trendy. 

“Hey to you too, Chim,” Taehyung says, a single eyebrow raised.  

“Can’t go fuckin’ anywhere without— ” Jimin starts, and then cuts himself off, pressing his face into his hands. He pushes the paper towards Taehyung’s side of the table. 

He picks it up gingerly and lets out a genuine laugh at the phone number and ‘call me cutie ;) ’ scrawled on it in bubbly text. He says, “What, the ring isn’t obvious enough for the barista?”

Jimin groans again from behind his hands before he peeks between them and says, “It’s not for me. I radiate taken energy. It’s for you. I can’t go anywhere without someone trying to hit on you through me, it’s exhausting.” 

“Oh,” Taehyung breathes, as he feels the smile drop off his face. 

“You should call him.” Jimin says, still leaning into his palms. “It would be good for you to get out more.” 

“Jimin, I— ” Taehyung starts as familiar excuses come to his lips. 

“You’re not ready. I know.”  Jimin’s hands drop away from his face and he looks Taehyung straight in the eye. “Tae, are you ever gonna be ready?” 

“You can’t ask me that,” Taehyung whispers. 

Jimin’s face goes soft, but his gaze doesn’t falter. “Tae, how many guys have you hooked up with in the last two weeks?” 

It hits right between his ribs like the first stone at an execution. His eyes go wide as he snaps, “Fuck you.” 

“Can’t, married,” Jimin replies with a greasy smirk before his face goes back to stony.  “Taehyung, I’m serious though. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Who cares what I’m doing,” Taehyung says, and he’s trying to be mean but he can hear exactly how it sounds as the words leave his lips— pathetic, a little lonely. 

“You’re hurting yourself,” Jimin says, soft. “Taehyung, I know this isn’t what you want. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”  

“Who cares,” Taehyung insists and he’s not going to cry in public. “I won’t betray him.” 

“Loving someone isn’t a betrayal, Tae. It could never be,” Jimin says, not for the first time, but this time it rings, just a little bit louder, in Taehyung’s ears. “Just— think about it okay?”

Taehyung nods as Jimin continues, saying, “Think about what that could look like. Who that could look like. If maybe you have someone in mind.” 

The statement sets something off in Taehyung’s memory. It’s the library, first, an impossible dream, but it’s his lecture hall, second. Newer, a piece of after. Clenching his jaw, Taehyung whispers, “There is this one guy.” 

Jimin gasps, clapping as his face lights up. “You do!” he exclaims. “Oh, you have to tell me every single thing right this very second.” 

“He’s in one of my social development classes. I think he might be interested,” Taehyung confesses as he bites down a grin. Bites down the guilt. “He’s really cute.” 

I went on a date today. Someone from one of my classes. He was nice, it was nice. Just dinner, at a new noodle place in Sillim. I think I want to see him again. 

We have a lot in common. He let me ramble about impressionism for forty-five minutes before I realized what I was doing. You used to let me do that too, even when you had no idea what I was talking about. 

I love you. Forever. Please believe me. 

⥁

Taehyung takes up painting again. 

He sets up an easel on the balcony, right in the centre. Like so many things in his life, it feels like something easier to do under the sky, with the sun on his hands. It’s been years since he last painted, a different kind of before. Something he gave up after highschool. Before Seoul, before the dorm rooms, before the first time he looked up from a library book and— 

That makes it, as far as activities go, fairly safe. A welcome distraction. 

If he keeps his shoulders back and strong, his spine unbent, it’s easy. The stone rests on his right shoulder, angled towards the skyline, and Taehyung paints with his left hand. Making something beautiful. 

If he lets himself droop, give into it, the stone teeters off its position and falls to the floor. Once, it tumbles and comes within mere millimetres of the balcony rail. Milimetres from falling eleven floors and shattering into jagged fragments on the pavement below. There is no stone on earth strong enough to resist that kind of blow. 

He learns to keep his back straight. 

Taehyung can paint for hours at a time, soft sounds of the city below swirling around his feet.  

⥁

One date turns into two dates turns into five months turns into Taehyung finding himself smiling— at cherry blossoms, at hearts swirled into his latte, and at the lyrics to the cheesiest idol songs on the radio. 

Some days he hates it, this bubbling, blushing thing in his chest— but most days he doesn’t. It feels different, the second time around, like he had expected it to take over but instead it’s more like it’s squished itself beside, carved out a new space. 

They go about things slowly, and it’s a hard thing to explain, all the parts of Taehyung’s heart that are made of glass, already broken, but starting to become water-worn smooth. He doesn’t understand, not really, but that’s not his fault. He gets enough of it though, to know when Taehyung needs another hand in his, warm and responsive. To know that there are some days that Taehyung doesn’t want to see him at all. 

“Get away from me,” Taehyung will snarl at him, jerking back from his touch on a day that should mean nothing, by the calendar, as if that means anything at all. “I can’t do this, I can’t, I won’t, I— ” 

“I’m not asking you to give him up,” he will say, stepping back, giving Taehyung the space he asked for, but doesn’t actually want. “I’m just asking you to let me in.” 

And then he will leave, but not before saying that he really wants this to work, and he understands that it’s hard, but that he’s just a phone call away and he’ll come back, he will, he promises. 

Taehyung will only call him in the morning, but they'll figure it out, and so, he stays and Taehyung starts to smile— at old couples in the park, at the colour of bubblegum ice cream, and at a new person’s jokes. 

Hey. I heard this song today and it reminded me of you. The kind of thing you always like. Liked. You must still like stuff like this. I’ll play it for you, just give me a second. 

Yeah, he showed it to me. Don’t be mad, it was just on his playlist. We were sitting down by the river, had a pizza delivered and everything. We were just chatting and listening to music. Don’t worry it wasn’t the place where we— it was a different spot. Yeah— it was a different spot. 

I promise I’m not just trying to replace you

⥁

There’s another apartment that Taehyung visits, every time he goes down to Daegu to see his own family. Somewhere else he has a meal. The bare minimum he can do, almost an obligation. It’s only a few blocks down, afterall, fate always tying them together so tightly. 

The apartment is, as it has always been since it happened, a mausoleum. It’s not obvious at first glance. On the surface, the apartment is totally normal. Small, two bedrooms and an open living space. The furniture is warm, all shades of wood and beige. Cozy. 

But there is something about it that is empty. 

There is no art on the walls or trinkets on the side tables. The calendar next to the fridge is years out of date and turned to the wrong month, ink fading. One of the days is paler than the others, like it’s been touched so often that the pigment has rubbed away. There’s a concert flyer pinned beside it, in a similar condition. 

The only decoration, as far as Taehyung has ever seen, is the bowl of dried chrysanthemums beside the television. He knows where they’re from, sitting next to the only photograph in the entire apartment, and the incense stand. 

Down the hall the door to the main bedroom is open, always open. And the door to the second is closed, dust on the handle. Taehyung always notices the similarities between here and the place he left behind, a dark, drowning, kind of mirror. 

As always, when Taehyung knocks on the door she greets him with a warm smile and an embrace like he really is the son he was supposed to become. Stepping into the apartment, he hands her the cellophane wrapped package of fruit he’d picked up at the market on the way over. 

“And where is— ” Taehyung starts, sliding off his shoes. She makes a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. 

“My husband?” She says, turning away from him and walking deeper into the apartment. “Who knows with that man. Never home anymore, always out somewhere, like he can’t stand to be here.” 

He follows her into the living room where there’s already a teapot and two cups, next to a tray of chestnut cookies, obviously homemade. As she sits she continues, saying, “Enough about me though, Taehyung-ah, tell me about you and the rest of your friends. I was talking with your mother the other day so I already know some of it, but she didn’t know anything about how Namjoonie and the others were doing.” 

“They’re good,” Taehyung says, taking his own seat. “Joon-hyung’s got another album in the works, but he won’t let me hear any of it, so that’s all I know about that. Everyone else is pretty much the same, I think.”

She smiles at him and pushes the plate of cookies towards him. He takes one, bites into it. They’re good. Soft and sweet, roasted nuts and honey. “And you?” She asks. “Your courses are going well?”

He nods, mouth still full of cookie. Swallowing, he says, “They’re good, busy. Trying to juggle all of them plus work, even if I’m down to part-time, plus everything else has been hard. Jiminie and Jungkookie are moving next weekend, did my mom tell you that? Finally into a new place with a little more room, they’ve been living in that teardown since before they got engaged, so it was time. I’m going to help them move, but Jimin is trying to convince me to help him paint in the evenings when I get back to the city, but I’m trying to convince him that he’s a full adult with a full job and he can just hire someone to do it for him, probably do a better job too, you should see Hoseok-hyung’s place it looks like it was painted by toddlers with muscle atrophy, awful, no way Jimin wants the same thing to happen to his new fancy apartment.”

She laughs, light, at the story, moving to pour them both cups of tea. It catches the light as it pours, sparkling, just a little. 

“And then I have another date with— ” The words die in Taehyung’s throat as he realizes what he’s said. Who he’s talking to.  

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry— ”  He starts, stammering and desperate. Her head tilts, like she doesn’t understand what she’s hearing. She looks, for a second, stricken. But then she smiles, small, with her eyes downcast. There’s a bead around her wrist that she plays with when she gets nervous. It turns his stomach as he watches her toy it up and down the bracelet.

“Taehyung-ah,” she says, “did you love my son?” 

It’s not a question he can answer, not with the way it was phrased. Instead, he says, “I do. I do love your son. I will always love your son.” 

The stone is in his pocket and he is such a hypocrite. Her fingers drop the bead and her hands come out to grasp his. The skin of her palms is dry, paper-thin, as if he were to grip them too tight, they would tear, right along the seams. He doesn’t grip them at all, just lets her do the holding. 

Softly, she says, “Life is a long journey, Taehyung-ah. Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep.” 

“It’s enough, though. For me— ” She stops, looks around the room as if she’s expecting someone to arrive. Nobody comes. “And for my husband too. To know that he had you while he could. It’s enough.” 

She sighs. Taehyung looks at their joined hands, and wonders if maybe she’s imagining another palm. “It’s not right for a mother to lose her son. Not the way things are supposed to be.” 

“But you? Taehyung-ah you were so very young.” She looks around the apartment again, not like she’s waiting for someone, but rather like she’s seeing it, really seeing it, for the first time. “I’ve been so worried about you. It’s been so long and— ” 

It’s been forever since it last happened but Taehyung starts to feel the screaming bubbling up in the back of his throat, choking and dark. One of her thumbs comes up over his knuckles and, rubbing gently, soothes it away. Taehyung breathes.

“It’s a good thing,” she says and Taehyung tries so desperately to believe her. “You deserve to find happiness, Taehyung. You always had so much love to give, and it deserves to have somewhere to go. It’s what he— ”

She cuts herself off, but Taehyung knows. The same thing everyone always tells him. It’s what he would have wanted. Taehyung has absolutely no way to know if it’s true. He never will. But there’s something about her statement that reminds him of something else, something he had read a very long time ago, in the early days, about how grieving was just love that had nowhere left to go. He shakes the thought away.  

“It’s a good thing,” she repeats, squeezing their hands together. He doesn’t have anything to say in return, and instead just offers her a small, close-lipped smile that he can feel tremble, just a little. She gives him an identical one and Taehyung knows that she understands. 

“Now, come on,” she says, letting go of his hands and picking up her tea. “Tell me everything about him, don’t deny an old lady her gossip.” 

And so Taehyung does. Forcing a bigger smile onto his face, he says, “I met him in one of my classes. He’s younger. Really likes kids. Wants to be a teacher.” 

It’s not the blessing I wanted. It’s not the blessing I should have had, not from her. Your family was always so good to me. To us. I’ll make sure to visit your brother next, okay? 

I thought about leaving you with her. I think she might need it. 

I don’t think only dead things become ghosts. 

⥁

Some days, dark days, Taehyung counts the years on the calendar and almost laughs, small and to himself.

Dragging his finger over them, he wonders if it is really love at all, this thing he carries, ever older than what it's supposed to represent. The finite days he had. The endless days he will have not.

Maybe it's just become what's comfortable. A thick blanket to wrap around his personality to keep out anything else that may cause him pain. Like maybe he's being dramatic— or sentimental-- or indulgent. Like maybe everyone gets their heart broken young, at least once, but everyone else seems to get over it. He knows that this situation is different, but still. On days like these, he thinks about forever. 

Maybe he is a monster for even considering it. 

He should ask, but he doesn't. 

Taehyung is used to not getting answers to his questions. But this time, the silence—

He holds it in his chest, and goes on wondering. 

⥁

Taehyung is surrounded by cardboard, pieces of packing peanuts in his hair. 

The apartment is mostly packed by now, all the detritus of his life stacked against the wall like lego bricks. Nothing left but a few pots and pans, the little cup in his bathroom that he uses to keep his toothbrush upright. The essentials. 

There’s one box left, under his bed. Despite the fact that it’s already all packed away, it needs to be moved. Just like everything else. 

It’s heavy. Heavier than he remembers it being, when he’d kicked it under the bed all those years ago. Dustier, too. At the edges and under where some of the tape didn’t stick quite right. The letters on its side are still clear though, in all their urgency. 

He crosses them out, doodles some flowers around the edges of the now-incoherent scribble. Writes underneath it, in serene blue instead of vivid black: 

studio
please be careful - fragile!

There’s a spare room in the new apartment, somewhere he can paint without worrying about the rain, or anything falling. Taehyung has already planned for exactly where the things in this box are going to go. How he can bring them back to life by making sure they’re used, instead of hidden away. 

He pulls the box open, because he has to. Because the apartment is emptying and this one last box is the only thing Taehyung has left. The only demon he still needs to face. 

At the top are the records. Disks of vinyl that he knows, mostly. The smiling faces on their covers shining up at him through the open tabs of the aged cardboard. 

His fingers itch to close the box. They don’t. 

Instead, the records start to form a pile beside him. One stacked on top of another, a rainbow of colours and blunted corners. He finds one in particular that he remembers with a flash of salt-tinged nostalgia. He sets it aside. 

Under the records is the player, dark wood and delicate chrome accents. He pulls it out reverently, plugging in the small speakers and setting the counterweight on the needle. It goes on the table beside the bed, a place of honour. 

Sliding the vinyl out of its sleeve, Taehyung takes a second to appreciate the way the light reflects the bright blue of the cover, sending the walls into the same shifting tones as the sky outside. The smile tugs at his cheeks, small and quiet. 

And then he sets the record to spin. The first song floods the room and Taehyung closes his eyes, letting it fill him. 

In other words, hold my hand. 

He sways with it, sitting and smiling, until the last of the trumpets fade to nothing and the next track on the list begins. It’s bright, and warm, and talks of summer winds, and better days. It’s enough to give him courage to lift into the last few things in the box. The cushioning layer, buried at the bottom. 

Pulling them out, he recognizes them. Dark fabrics, some stained in spots and folded into squares. All covered in plastic, pulled tight. There are more than he remembers packing, but still, somehow, he knows they’ll never be enough. 

They had been a recommendation from a forum post, years ago. Something researched in the early, sleepless, screaming, mornings. So desperate for anything that could make it easier. 

What’s something you wish you had done, the first few days after? 

> set some clothes aside.
vacuum seal them if you can.
you'll be grateful to have them in a few years
if you need them.
best thing i ever did. 

He puts most of the packages back into the box right away. Takes them out just long enough to look at them, to catalogue the contents back into his head from where they had become blurry. But there’s one he keeps out, pulls open. 

The hoodie is exactly as it always has been, frayed at the hem and oversized for sleeping. There’s a collection of lint clinging to one of the wrists, like something gathered from a forgotten corner. Like something picked up from under a couch. Still, Taehyung knows it, and all the stories it could tell. 

Pressing it to his nose, Taehyung cries. But it’s a quiet thing, a gentle thing. Not significant enough to disturb the dust floating through the slants of light on the floor. More like remembering than it is like grief. 

He pushes his face into it, hard. Hard enough that it will probably leave red patches on his cheeks and around his eyes. Tears are leaking through the fabric and he can feel them on the heels of his palms, but that’s okay, because he’s smiling. He’s smiling. 

Eventually, Taehyung pillows it under his head, pulls the stone into his chest, and curls onto his side on the mattress. Staring out the window, he listens to the music play.  

He falls asleep wrapped in warmth from the sun. 

Golden. 

⥁

They set a seventh place at the table. It’s Taehyung’s turn to cook. 

⥁

He graduates on the hottest day of the year thus far. 

Earlier in the semester he’d taken the ring to a jeweller, had it melted down and remade. The silver shines in his ear as he throws his cap in the air, screaming in celebration with the rest of his class. 

Stumbling down the stairs after the group photos are done, Taehyung greets his friends with a wide, wild smile, triumphant with everything he’s managed to accomplish. How far he’s come. His family is here too, younger siblings chasing each other in the grass as his parents watch with fond smiles. They all hug him, one by one, and give their congratulations. His father hands him an envelope with a gruff acknowledgement and a one-armed hug and Taehyung thanks him in the only way he knows how, bending low. 

And then, just like that, it’s done, years of work that feel like a lifetime, amounting to nothing except the piece of paper in his hands and his own satisfaction. The people around him start to leave. 

As she turns towards the car, his mother presses a second envelope into his hands and tells him who it’s from. She says that they offer their congratulations, and that they’re sorry they couldn’t make the trip. Taehyung bows as he accepts it, and asks her to give them his thanks, when she sees them next. She promises that she will. 

Taking a second to slide it into his jacket pocket as everyone else makes to leave, Hoseok’s hand grips his and squeezes tight. Taehyung squeezes back, twice as hard. An unspoken conversation. They hold each other for a few seconds longer until Taehyung bumps their shoulders together and then lets go. Tears gather in the corner of his eyes, a different kind of crying from the expressions of roiling pride and bare faced relief on the families surrounding him. 

He blinks them away. 

Across the university green, someone is shaking a bouquet of flowers in his direction. Taehyung recognizes the shape of his head, and his blinding smile. He waves back. They’ll end up in the same place, eventually. Taehyung has no reason to go over there, there’ll be time later, so he instead turns to follow the rest of his group into the parking lot and the assembled vehicles. 

The celebratory dinner is just that, a celebration. His parents rent out the entire restaurant and the food is piled high on the banquet table, all of Taehyung’s favourites. 

Jungkook gets the whole thing on video, swinging the camera lens wide to capture each of them on frame, and Taehyung knows that they’re glowing. Almost every single person in the world that loves him, drinking and smiling, and telling him how proud they are— of him, imagine that.  

Surrounded by them all, Taehyung feels so warm. 

After it’s over, and back in their shared apartment, Taehyung celebrates in a different way. A quieter way. It’s been a long day and he has so many stories to tell. The night is incredibly beautiful, not a single cloud to cover the pale blue light of the moon.  

When he’s done, he goes through his nighttime routine feeling weightless. He washes his face and brushes his teeth, making sure not to knock the little cup into the sink when he puts his toothbrush back. It’s a little more unstable now that it has to hold more than one. He keeps the lights off as he moves into the bedroom, gingerly pulling back the covers so as to not disturb the softly breathing lump that’s already there. As he settles in, a dream-heavy arm comes over his waist and pulls him close. 

Sleep comes easy to him like that, rubbing his nose into the collarbone of someone he knows he loves, somehow. 

I did it hyung, finally. Graduation. I know you’re proud, you don’t need to tell me. It’s different from what I wanted before, but it feels better this way, I think. To know I’ll be helping. You always wanted to help. So I’m going to do this, for me. For both of us. 

Everyone is— they’re good. We’re good. Jiminie is talking about adopting, and what that’s going to mean for his job. Seokjin-hyung has a new restaurant, I’ll take you, I promise. Hoseokie-hyung is going on tour, performance director for this little label. He’ll be gone for a few months, I’m going to miss him a lot. Not like I miss— Anyway, I’m going to miss him. Namjoon-hyung got a spot for Kookie at the studio, it’s just something he does in his spare time for now, and I don’t know what a kid is gonna do to that, but still. I think there’s something there. His new space is set up with all your old equipment. We’ll go see it. Yeah that’ll— that’ll be good. We’ll go see it. 

Is this what okay feels like?  

⥁

The stone is an anchor in his pocket, the sky a pre-sunrise shade of ash, and Taehyung is climbing. Step by careful step, path dark and twisting. It goes on for kilometres, slowly, steadily upwards until he crests the final ridge and the entirety of Seoul is spread out like a starfield below him. 

He is totally and completely alone. 

Taehyung settles his back against the biggest tree at the peak, draws his knees in towards his chest and rests the stone on top of them, almost at eye level. He sits there, staring, for an eternity, until he finally starts to speak. 

“I'm going to ask him to marry me.“ The statement is barely audible over the wind in the trees. 

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I bought the ring. Platinum. It’ll look good against his skin. I don’t want to make it a big deal, but he deserves a big deal. Something classic, maybe. A restaurant, or a party with all of our friends,” Taehyung says, fiddling with his earring. 

“Namjoonie-hyung told me, you know? I never mentioned it to you because it never felt right, but he told me, at Jimin’s wedding, drunk off his ass. He told me about the gallery and the champagne and the strawberries, and I told him that it would have been perfect. And it would have been, because fuck hyung, anything with you would have been perfect. You know that, right? I never really cared how you were going to do it, not deep down. I always just wanted you.”

A pause, another deep breath— a second to take in the first hint of blush at the other end of the world. 

“But, in the spirit of honesty, if you had wanted it to be really perfect? You would have done it here, at the top of this mountain. Just you and me and the open air. No formalities, no hidden cameras.“ Taehyung squeezes his eyes together, and tries to remember how to breathe.

“We had our second date here, do you remember? I thought you were going to kill me. Nobody would have blamed you. What kind of person schedules a second date for four in the morning on a Saturday? And more than an hour outside the city? I still don’t think you slept at all that night, even though you told me you did. But you showed up anyway, and humoured me when I told you about the travel blog I was reading, about how it said the sunrise in Bukhansan park was the most incredible sight in Korea. I made you hike for almost two hours after we got here, and even then we almost missed the dawn. At the summit, it was like we were the only two people in the whole world. When I kissed you, here, for the first time— shut up I kissed you. Don’t rewrite our history, I was there. You were always going to be way too scared to make the first move— “ 

The stone isn’t actually replying, but Taehyung still remembers the rhythms of their conversations, their little points of contention.

“Like I said, when I kissed you here for the very first time, at the very top of the world, I knew I never wanted to give my heart to anyone else.“

He goes silent again, closes his eyes and holds the stone in his lap as pink starts to bleed into gold on the horizon. So early in the morning, the air this high up is just the wrong side of cold. It stings against the back of his throat. At least, he tries to convince himself it’s the air causing that feeling. It probably isn’t. He turns the stone over in his hands.

“I never told him about you,” he whispers. 

Taehyung stops for another long minute, choosing his words carefully— as if they mean something. “I mean, he knows about you. Dead you. Gone you. There’s a picture of us, will always be a picture of us, in the living room. We visited— a few weeks ago, for your birthday. We left flowers even though I know you hate them. He even asked for your blessing. You would have liked him, I think. Would have absolutely approved— if not for the whole steal-your-man thing.”

“But he doesn’t know about you. Stone you. Reborn you. Never noticed the extra weight in my pockets when we ran into each other randomly, in the early days of dating. Never asked why I would spend hours on the balcony talking to nobody, when things between him and I got more serious. No one else told him either. The others all think I gave you up when I started seeing him. All of them except Jimin, I suppose. And Jimin’s never approved of you, thinks you’re a coping mechanism, but it’s not in his nature to go out his way to pick a fight, not without you— breathing you— around. So Jimin’s never said anything, either.”

“So he doesn’t know about you and I’m not going to tell him.” Taehyung’s fingers go white around the stone as he says it. “But I really want him to say yes when I ask.”

“I think I’m ready to be stolen. Properly stolen. He makes me happy and god, hyung, I am so ready to be happy. But I don’t think— I don’t think I’ll ever be really happy if such a huge part of me feels this incessant need to carry you with me, everywhere I go— weighing me down.” He swallows hard and squeezes his eyes closed, tilting his head up towards the cotton candy clouds. 

“I’ve been a terrible boyfriend to you anyway, all the beautiful places ?” Taehyung scoffs, rolling his eyes. “The inside of my pockets and a shelf in my living room are not beautiful places.” He cups the stone then, holds it outstretched at shoulder height, as if to show off the view. 

“But here? Look, my love. Look at the mountains, at the city. Look at how if you squint just right you can see the sun sparkle off the Han. This is the highest point for ages, with a perfectly unobstructed view of the sky. This is the place where I first realized that I loved you. I can’t think of anywhere more beautiful than here.”

He pulls the stone back into his chest and cradles it against his heart as the last rays of dawn break over the landscape. He sits there for several long minutes, and then with a gentle kiss to its smooth surface, he nestles the stone into the roots of the ancient evergreen, in a location visible to both sunrise and sunset. He stands, turns, takes a deep breath, and starts to make his way back down to level ground. 

And if he stops, half way down, and leans his body weight into the trunk of a different great pine, allows the sobs to burn through him like wildfire— out of control and purifying— nobody can judge him for that, either.