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Up on the roof of Seoul’s tallest building, the wind bites.Yoongi crouches on the ledge. He’s got no equipment with him, solely here for reconnaissance and scoping. His back feels strangely light, his palms weirdly empty. It’s been a slow night; not much traffic, not much of anything at all.It feels like he’s the only person in the entire city.He braces himself against a strong gust of wind. In one fluid movement Yoongi rises to a stand, his black turtleneck nearly choking with how tight it is. From here Yoongi can see directly into the building across the street. A few windows are lit, mostly shuttered, but one catches his eye; one with the blinds pulled open, lights illuminating the face of what must be a journalist with round glasses and brown hair. Yoongi can’t see much else, but they’re staring at their computer without moving, not even typing or anything, and Yoongi gets the sense that they’ve seen him. A figure of black silhouetted in darkness; a phantom, a spirit, a nightmare. Everywhere and nowhere all at once.Yoongi takes a small step forward on the ledge and lets himself fall, arms spread-eagle.
“What—what are you?” The man’s voice is so, so panicked, shaky and high and slurred with the blood in his mouth. He’s backpedaling himself into an alley, arms windmilling. Yoongi watches impassively from the entrance, stretching his fingers and inspecting his knuckles. What is he?“Does that matter?” Yoongi’s tone doesn’t change, but he tilts his head in question. The man spits a grotesque spray of blood onto the pavement and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, slumping back against the wall of the alley when he bumps into it. He has effectively trapped himself, but Yoongi doesn’t think he’s noticed.“A hitman, or somethin’? Just fuck off, dude. I’ve done nothing bad to anybody here.”Yoongi hms. “Definitely not a hitman. Just a person who knows that the definition of bad is rather subjective. To a lion, killing a gazelle is nothing but a way of life. To that gazelle, well—it's hell. Quite literal hell. What you consider bad and what I consider bad are clearly two different things. Which do you think you are, in this scenario, Mr. Jung?”“Enough of the heroic monologue bullshit. Just get on with it, you si—““I thought I’d humor you.” Yoongi frowns. Mr. Jung jumps when the cloaked figure seems to appear right before him, as if he dropped straight from the open sky and landed there noiselessly, the only sounds being the quick swish of fabric, the tug of a metal wire, the faint traffic sounds from a world away.Yoongi loops the wire around Mr. Jung’s slender neck twice and tugs until the skin breaks. He chokes him out of life in the deepest corner of a hidden alleyway and lets the resulting rain wash the blood off of his hands.
“Min Yoongi,” Jeon Jeongguk’s voice is light and smooth. His lips curve around a smile and he’s clutching an iPad to his chest, his cable-knit sweater covered chest. Yoongi recognizes him; Seoul’s up and coming journalist. Seoul’s sweetheart. The 24-year-old who singlehandedly shut down the largest and longest running drug ring Seoul has seen in years. Jeon Jeongguk, with the round glasses and glossy brown hair parted off of his forehead.Yoongi looks around the lobby. “I suppose that’d be me.”Jeongguk treats him to a gentle laugh. He pulls the iPad back and taps at something on the screen, eyes flicking up to Yoongi from beneath his eyelashes. “I had an appointment scheduled?”“You did.” Yoongi nods once, smiling at Jeongguk when he rises from the loveseat and holds a pretty hand out. His grip is firm and confident. In his office, Jeongguk sinks into the leather chair in front of Yoongi’s desk and rests his ankle on his opposite knee. His neatly pressed slacks ride up to reveal cream socks and slick, brown oxfords.He’s the image of comfort and confidence, and Yoongi smiles to himself, something small and unnoticeable.“You’ve had a successful career, Min Yoongi.” Jeongguk swipes through something on his iPad, not looking away from Yoongi as he does so. “Youngest Chief Executive Officer of one of the biggest conglomerates on this side of the planet. Not even thirty years old and your net worth has doubled that of men who’ve been working here their entire lives.”Jeongguk talks in smile. His words curl enticingly, sweetly, and his parted lips reveal big teeth. He’s amused, but not mockingly so.“That’d be a perfect opening line for my biography.” Yoongi comments.“Well, as long as I get a royalty.” Jeongguk tilts his head and lifts a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. It’s Yoongi’s turn to laugh. He’s had many experiences with many journalists, all asking the same textbook questions about his career, his rise to success, how he handles the stress of the job. For all he knows, Jeongguk could be the exact same, just with a prettier smile. Yoongi drums his fingers against the armrest of his chair beneath his desk and smiles encouragingly when Jeongguk looks up at him.“I hate this part, so it’s best to get it out of the way first, right? Bangtan has a few questions that they require for the article. If it were up to me, I’d omit them all together.” Jeongguk rolls his eyes and pushes his glasses up onto his head, like sunglasses. It pins his bangs back and makes visible just how big and knowing his eyes truly are, illuminated by the screen of his iPad.“Bangtan. The company you work for, right?”Jeongguk smiles, close-mouthed, and he nods quickly. “Yeah. Two years, now. A bit of freelance beforehand right out of college.”“Mm,” Yoongi nods in understanding. “I read your piece, the exposè on the drug ring.”“What’d you think of it?” Jeongguk asks, boldly, unabashedly. Yoongi thinks it may be because he knows it was good, is confident in the fact, and likes to challenge people to say otherwise. Or maybe he genuinely is curious as to what Yoongi thought of it—he can’t tell.“It was really, really good. You’re a magnificent writer.” Yoongi answers truthfully. Jeongguk jostles his knee a bit and gives Yoongi that same, close-mouthed smile.“Thank you.” He ducks his head and looks back down at the iPad. Yoongi thinks about how he had been in the midst of trailing the rings leader, waiting for the perfect time to strike, when the exposè had come out and the ring had dissolved the very next day. He had been altogether bitter that he hadn’t gotten to the shithead first and—gleeful, that he wouldn’t have to do it himself. Yoongi has no idea how Jeongguk got all of that information; apparently, nobody else does either. It had been a hot topic for weeks. Jeongguk clears his throat and raises an eyebrow at Yoongi. “If you’re ready..?”Yoongi nods. Jeongguk picks up the iPad with the palm of one hand and readies the other to type, or write, in front of the screen. “How old were you when you realized you wanted to go into this line of business?”“Well, I don’t think any kid out there is lying up at night dreaming of running a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Unless they’re exceptionally intuitive, that is.” Yoongi throws in a hearty laugh, just so Jeongguk will have it to write in and give Yoongi as much personality as possible through the words. “I actually majored in Film Scoring in college.”Jeongguk’s interest piques; he looks up at Yoongi with wide eyes for a split second before catching himself and looking back down at the screen. Yoongi wants to know about that, but he continues. “It went well. I had a real passion, and talent, and I enjoyed it, but this job just kind of came to me on a whim. I worked as a secretary in the building straight out of college for some extra cash. One of the higher ups, he—well—“ Yoongi cracks a wistful smile. “He appreciated my rigid work ethic. My scheduling, my organization, my business like approach to arranging his meetings and whatnot. I moved up quickly before I could even really process it. And, now I’m here.”Yoongi can still feel the slide of the old man’s blood on his hands after Yoongi had finally gotten him where he wanted him, after coworkers shared plenty of horror stories about the man’s strict work ethics and manic, rage induced episodes, after Yoongi had done a bit of digging and discovered an entire can full of writhing, nasty worms on the old fuck. From tax fraud to a narrowly avoided sexual assault charge—it was the first time Yoongi had been slapped in the face with the knowledge that money truly can get you anywhere.“Truly a story for the books.” Jeongguk remarks with a quick eyebrow raise. His hand flies lightening-speed across the screen, and Yoongi watches the golden skin, the elegant fingers and knobby knuckles and well-kempt nails. He huffs out a chuckle through his nostrils.“What is one word you would use to describe your life?”“Unexpected.” Yoongi answers, after a moments deliberation. Jeongguk types and looks up at him.“Okay, last standard question. If there’s one thing you could tell your younger self, what would it be?”With a smile, Yoongi answers, “Expect the unexpected. Keep your eyes open, trust yourself, and roll with the punches.”
Double entendres. All the fun with none of the harm.
“We can move on to my questions, now, if you’d like.”“I would very much so.”Jeongguk shakes his head with a small scoff of disbelief. “If given the chance, would you further pursue your Film Scoring major?”Yoongi startles a bit, because he knows it must be a question Jeongguk just came up with. “I’m not sure. I liked it then, but that was years ago. I like what I have now, and not pursuing something doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it nonetheless.”Jeongguk nods. “Fair point. Do you feel like you belong in the position you’re currently in?”“I do. I can’t say I expected to ever end up here, but I do.” Yoongi watches Jeongguk as he answers. Jeongguk, who is going off-script and asking his own questions, personal and borderline unprofessional but cutting, and clever, and calculating. He pulls his glasses down back onto the bridge of his nose.“Would you change anything about your job, or your life, as it is?”“Everybody has things they want to change, don't they? Nothing major for me. I’m content.”“Really? Nothing major? Excuse me if this is crossing a line, but I find it hard to believe that a man such as yourself has nothing he would change.” Jeongguk is no longer writing. The iPad is lax in his hand, and he’s focusing on Yoongi.Yoongi doesn’t take offense. He’s intrigued, rather. “What makes you say that?”“Ah, no mind. We’ll move on.” Jeongguk doesn’t pick the iPad back up. “It’s common knowledge that you donate a large portion of your salary to anonymous charities. Any reason you keep them anonymous?”“To keep them safe, I guess. Away from the media.”“Safe.” Jeongguk smiles at the word. “Would you say any major events in your childhood led to where you are now?”The questions are coming in quicker succession now, Jeongguk just asking and watching and asking and watching. Yoongi barely has time to think before answering. “No. My childhood was pretty nondescript, standard.”“Good childhood, then?”“I’d say so.”“Parents married? Divorced?”“Married.”“Siblings?”“Three sisters.”“Say, Min Yoongi, what did you do last night?”“Stayed in and watched a movie.” Yoongi answers automatically. The question had come so quickly that Yoongi didn’t even get a chance to process it before it slapped him right across the face. Last night, he had been threatening a man outside of a nightclub worth less than the dirt on his shoe within an inch of his life. Last night, he had been cloaked in darkness, footsteps soundless as he trailed along the roofs of Seoul’s city-buildings. Last night, he had stayed in and watched a movie.Yoongi looks at Jeongguk, who is smiling slightly at him. “Sorry, you seem a little thrown off guard by that. I like to ask something that’ll separate the interviewee from the cold, prototype character they have to give for the interview. Best to shock someone while you’re at it, too. Get a real truthful answer.”Jeongguk picks the iPad up and resumes his writing. Yoongi doesn’t take his eyes off of him, because for a split second, one singular moment suspended in time, he had seen the look in Jeongguk’s wide eyes that he took just a moment too long to conceal.
Yoongi’s entire forearm rattles with the force of his punch. Clean in the jaw, the gratifying grinding of bone against bone. The man hadn’t even seen it coming, which--sure, it’s dirty. But Yoongi plays nothing but dirty when it comes to people like this.“What the hell?” His voice is slurred, disjointed, probably from the blood pooling in his mouth due to the tooth Yoongi knocked loose. He turns to face Yoongi, but Yoongi is quicker. Yoongi is always quicker. He spins the man back around with a rough grip on his shoulder and slams him into the brick wall of the restaurant.Overhead, the sky is midnight black. It’s a cold night, with the wind dragging the dead leaves across the pavement and people wrapping their coats just a bit more tightly around their bodies. Yoongi tilts his head at the figure before him, slouched over, short of breath and dripping blood from his sickeningly greasy chin.“Hello, Mr. Cheong.”That seems to do the trick. With a prolonged groan, Mr. Cheong manages to pull himself upright. He towers a good foot or so over Yoongi himself, which--if he were a normal person, perhaps it’d be intimidating. Yoongi just drops his head back to accommodate the height difference and smiles, even though all Mr. Cheong will be able to see in the darkness is the white gleam of his teeth.“The fuck was that for?” He growls, rubbing at his jaw and poking his tongue in his cheek.“Can you honestly say you didn’t see it coming?” Yoongi asks. “You’ve done some very, very bad things.”The man’s laugh makes Yoongi’s skin crawl. It reminds him of why he’s even here to begin with, which reignites his blood with a newfound vigor, tenfold stronger than it was before. “Bad? Fuck have I done that’s bad. You don’t even know me, you tiny fuck--”“Hm. Miss Eunbi and her family would seem to think otherwise.”Yoongi watches the color drain from the man’s pudgy, sweat-ridden face. “I—” He swallows. Yoongi can recognize someone teetering on the edge of complete destruction and trying desperately to compose themselves when he sees it. “I was drunk. That wasn’t me, I wouldn’t do—I—“In an expected act of boldness, the man lunges forward. But Yoongi is quicker--Yoongi is always quicker, and he spins out of the way and grabs his overlarged arm and flips him fully onto his back. He hits the pavement with a heavy thud and a deep, lung-shaking cough, and Yoongi doesn’t hesitate to press the heavy sole of his boot down against his trachea.“I wasn’t aware that two wine coolers was enough to get a man such as yourself so drunk to the point where he’s not even aware of his own actions.” Yoongi tilts his head. He presses his boot a little harder down on the man’s throat. “Especially not when I personally have seen you down five vodka shots and be coherent enough to make a business deal. Killing a mother and assaulting her kid daughter requires a bit more coherency, wouldn’t you agree?”“Let me go! You sick fuck, let me go!” He struggles against Yoongi’s weight with a sudden passion, jostling and thrashing and steaming out of the ears. “Who are you? One of those higherup mother fuckers? Did that dumb bitch tell somebody? You won’t get off clean, you bastard. You kill me now and you’ll wake up to a gun against your head--I have people.”Yoongi cracks a smile at that. “I want you to keep this in mind, Mr. Cheong. I won't kill you, not tonight. But when nightfall does come, and it will, and you are alone in your room, so dark that you cannot even see your own hand in front of your face, and you get the feeling that somebody is watching you—that you are not alone—that sick feeling that travels down your spine and settles in your gut and causes you to roll over and burrow under the covers as if that would hide you from me—I’ll be there. I will always be there. My people know your people. My people are your people. I am everywhere, and I want you to carry that with you until the day comes that I finally decide to end your pathetic existence, and it will.”And then Yoongi’s gone, leaving the man with silent tears streaming down his face, shaking so violently that the entire city of Seoul can feel it.
When Yoongi wakes up, there’s a suicide all over the news. First thing he sees when he unlocks his phone, turns the T.V. on, opens his email.
Did you hear about Mr. Cheong? So terrible. Such a good, striven man, worked so hard for everyone and everything around him. I feel like I can’t go one day without hearing about one of these tragedies. He must’ve had some well-hidden demons.
“Yoongi.” Taehyung says in lieu of greeting, pocketing his own personal key copy to Yoongi’s apartment. Yoongi switches his T.V. off and faces the front door. Taehyung is wearing a blinding pair of white slacks and a loose, open-necked blouse, his dark mullet neatly combed. Yoongi raises his eyebrows at the ensemble.Taehyung smiles at him from across the room. “Let me treat you to dinner tonight.”“Wining and dining me?”“You wish. I was going to take you to the bar down the street.”Yoongi scoffs. “Truly, an amazing offer to a millionaire.”“Oh, yes, throw your sickening amount of money in my face more. You really know how to get me going.”With a scoff, Yoongi rolls his eyes and stands from the couch. “I’ll go. They have good food.”
Taehyung failed to tell Yoongi there was some kind of event at the bar tonight, as he usually does. It’s not exactly obvious what is going on, but it’s significantly more crowded than Yoongi has ever seen it, and nearly all of the booths are taken save for one in the dead center.“So, Yoongs’. How’s work?”Sometimes, Yoongi gets an inkling of a suspicion that Taehyung knows of Yoongi’s ‘double life’, for lack of a better word. Taehyung just seems to omniscient and observant not to know, despite Yoongi never giving him any indication or reason to believe he has a life outside of work. “Good. Steady. I’m making money. How’s Jimin?”Jimin. Taehyung’s husband of four years who Yoongi has—coincidentally enough—run into on the streets before, once or twice or six times. The first, Jimin had nearly scooted out of his way and patted his cheek in an alarmingly familiar gesture. Each time after he just nodded his head with a soft ‘Yoongi,’ and was on his way.The thing is, Yoongi knows he isn't the only one in Seoul. Statistics show that he literally cannot be, but he can’t imagine having the abilities he has and not doing anything with them. Or maybe Jimin doesn’t have anything out of the ordinary—maybe he’s just superhumanly clever, or observant, or maybe he recognized Yoongi in the dark space between two street lights. They’ve never interacted outside of these late night encounters and on the rare occasion when Taehyung brings him along when he and Yoongi go out, but Jimin always acts normally. Never any prying eyes or questions, so Yoongi doesn’t know what Jimin knows or doesn’t know.“Jimin is Jimin. Good, beautiful, happy.” Taehyung takes a sip of his beer. “The love of my life.”Yoongi hides his smile in the froth at the top of his beer glass. He takes a quick sip and licks over the front of his teeth, watching the dark sky outside of the window over Taehyung’s shoulder. “That’s cringey.”“You’ll find someone soon, Yoongi. I believe in you.” Taehyung busies himself with people-watching the large crowd gathered within the bar, all slumped over the counter or mingling in the floor space. Abruptly, he straightens and cranes his neck and drops his mouth open, and Yoongi closes his eyes on a groan.“No way! Hey, that’s--no fucking way!” Taehyung rises to stand which is a bit--impossible, given their booth seating situation, so he slides out of it and disappears into the crowd, exclaiming all the while. Yoongi resolutely does not watch him trail after whoever he had seen. Instead, he stares out of the now unblocked window, watching the people walk by in a hurry to get wherever they’re going, the city lights illuminated against a backdrop of black, black sky.“You won’t believe who I just found, Yoongi.” Only a few seconds later he hears Taehyung’s voice again, nearing their booth, and when he turns his head it’s only through years of practice and training that he does not gape.“Hi, again. It’s good to see you.” Jeongguk is smiling. Jeongguk is smiling and he’s wearing a pair of skin-tight black jeans and a silky, royal blue blouse with a low cut and some sort of loose hanging ribbon in the front. His hair looks darker in this light, sleeker, and his eyes are warm and his skin is tan, and Yoongi blinks and sets his glass down with a thud.“Hello. Didn’t peg you as a drinker.”Jeongguk wrinkles his nose, which causes the skin around his eyes to pinch, which causes Yoongi’s lips to curl just slightly into a smile. “‘M’not, really. My friends dragged me out. I’ll drink in social settings, I guess, but.” He shrugs his shoulders. It’s weird to see him outside of a professional setting--somehow he seems much younger, softer, not as inquisitive and prying. Taehyung’s eyebrows lower over his eyes.“How the hell do you two know each other?”“He interviewed me,” Yoongi says at the same exact time Jeongguk says, “Work.”Something in his tone makes Yoongi look back up at him, but he’s already turned, searching for somebody in the direction they came. “If you have somebody to get back to, feel free. Ignore Taehyung.” Yoongi offers, though part of him hopes Jeongguk denies. He’s not entirely sure why.“No, it’s fine.” Jeongguk reassures him, and Taehyung slides back into the booth and drags Jeongguk along with him.“You didn’t tell me you interviewed Yoongi, Jeongguk.” Taehyung pokes Jeongguk in the soft flesh just below his ribcage and Jeongguk twists his body to get away, frowning.“I didn’t know you knew him.” Jeongguk says.“Still. Yoongi is famous in these parts, you know?” Taehyung says conspiratorially, as though someone is waiting around the corner to hear. Yoongi scoffs at the irony.“I’m not. Shut up, Taehyung.” Yoongi would kick him in the shin, but Taehyung’s sitting sideways, one knee drawn up to his chest and the other slouched across Jeongguk’s lap. Yoongi rolls his eyes.“He’s kind of got a point. My entire office wouldn’t get off my back before and after the interview.” Jeongguk admits. He’s chewing on the inside of his lower lip, giving him two deep dimples just above the corners of his mouth. Yoongi frowns. “Apparently they’ve been trying to score an interview with you for months.”“Oh? And he gave one up for you, Jeongguk? What an honor.” Taehyung gushes, throwing his head back in a swoon. Yoongi reaches across the table and slaps him in the bicep to make up for his inability to kick him.“He must’ve scheduled one when I was in a good mood.”“Must have.” Jeongguk agrees, nodding his head thoughtfully. The bobbing motion makes the light dance across the crown of his head, his glossy, dark hair. Yoongi watches it transfixed for a moment, before he feels the all too familiar weight of Taehyung’s gaze, heavy with what Yoongi knows he sees.When Yoongi looks, he raises his eyebrows quickly, a blink-and-you’d-miss-it type of movement. Yoongi just shutters his gaze and sips meaninglessly at his drink so as to occupy himself--otherwise, he’d have no choice but to watch Jeongguk and the captivating way he moves, the bend of his fingers and the curve of the tip of his nose and the way his lips rise and curl into a smile and--and--
When the article comes out, Yoongi finds out first through an excited text from Jeongguk himself.(They had exchanged numbers the night he and Taehyung went out, at the bar, under a small halo of street-light in an otherwise pitch black street. Jeongguk’s breath had puffed out before his face in white clouds and his nipples were fully hard through his thin, silk shirt, and Yoongi’s yes hands had been shaking when he took his phone back from him.)He finds out second through Taehyung who is equally as excited, just in a more bothersome way. He had sent Yoongi twenty texts in a row because apparently, he keeps more tabs on Yoongi than Yoongi does himself, and had gotten the notification the second the article went public.It’s a good article. It’s a fantastic article, to be honest, and Yoongi doesn’t know what to do with this version of himself Jeongguk has written--something honest, something true and warm and sweet sitting in his palms. He can’t exactly work up the courage or gather his thoughts well enough to text Jeongguk about it, so he calls him instead.“Hello?” Jeongguk’s voice is even sweeter on the phone, if not a bit deeper, and Yoongi unconsciously smiles at the sound. He relaxes against his kitchen counter and stares at the wood floors, holding the phone a bit closer to his face when he speaks.“I read the article.”“Oh,” Jeongguk sounds genuinely shocked for a moment, like he didn’t check who was calling before he answered, and then his smile bleeds through the line and warms Yoongi from his cheek all the way down to his toes. “I would sure hope you did.”“It was incredible.” Yoongi admits, wrapping his free arm around his torso. “I’ve never read an article like that about myself. It didn’t even sound like me. It was so--good.”“What do you mean, it didn’t even sound like you? And that’s supposed to be a good thing?” Jeongguk scoffs, and Yoongi worries that he’s offended him for a moment before he continues. “No, Yoongi, I wrote you exactly as you are. Thank you, but it’s you who is incredible.”Yoongi’s chest feels equal parts heavy and light. He’s positive that Jeongguk must be able to feel the warmth of his cheeks through the phone when he replies, “Stop that,” and all Jeongguk does is laugh, loud and full-bodied and ringing in Yoongi’s ear for the rest of the night.
Yoongi hates the rain. It makes the roofs much too slippery, and it weighs his hair down into his eyes and sticks to his skin and permeates every single item of clothing he is wearing, straight down to his briefs. It’s sticky and uncomfortable and he hates it.He can’t even see the top of the building across from him. This high up, the rain comes down with such ferocity that it stings Yoongi’s exposed skin. His cloak—blessedly—is water resistant; otherwise, it’d be too heavy for him to even maneuver in right now. The weather forecast he had been watching just hours earlier said nothing about rain, but Yoongi knows that nighttime always brings something new, unexpected. He could feel it in the air.Somewhere on the ground, Yoongi hears the tinny ring of police sirens. He lets his body drift off the face of the building and does one straight-bodied flip so that he’s falling feet first—and if he guessed accurately, which he always does—His feet land on the roof of the police car without so much as a tremble in the air.It’s dark enough—he’s dark enough—and the rain has decreased the visibility so much that there’s really no chance of being seen, but he crouches at the knees anyways. He keeps one hand wrapped over the side of the car and the other balanced before him, and he lets the wind and rain pellet his face mercilessly.Not much has been happening the past two weeks. A suspicious amount of not much. One man Yoongi particularly had his eyes set on this past week has seemed to disappear of the face of the planet, which—fine. Yoongi’s not one prone to complain when his own problems are taken care of for him, but he can’t deny the oddity of it all.As if the universe is just throwing a big ‘fuck-you’ sign in his face, the police car spins around a corner and Yoongi adjusts his grip and swears he sees Taehyung standing under a wide, clear umbrella, waiting for the light to change so he can cross the road.In rapid succession, a few important facts cross through Yoongi’s mind:Taehyung works 9-5, five days a week, and he’s very rarely (never) seen outside of his house, without Jimin, past nine P.M. As it currently stands, it’s 12:03 A.M.When Yoongi had asked Taehyung what his plans for the night were, five hours prior, Taehyung had said he and Jimin were staying in with a movie. As it stands, it is 12:03 A.M., and Taehyung was carrying no bags of any sort that would indicate he went out to grab an emergency popcorn, or something.There appeared to be what looked like blood on the front of his shirt.And, most worrying out of this list Yoongi has conjured up,He smiled at Yoongi.Yoongi jumps up and off of the car and vanishes into the night once Taehyung is fully out of sight.
The first time Yoongi has sex with Jeongguk, it is totally, undeniably, completely unexpected.(All the times after weren’t as much, but—)After weeks of texting and calling and meeting up when their hectic schedules allowed it, Yoongi finally asked Jeongguk on a proper date. He mainly did it for the gratification of seeing Jeongguk blush, apricot flesh high on his pretty, pretty cheekbones, and he was in no way disappointed.“Am I going to have to wear a suit?” Jeongguk asked him, over the phone. Yoongi was laid flat on his bed, one hand resting high on his stomach and the other holding his phone close to his face with an obnoxious grin.“Why would you have to wear a suit?”“You’re rich. Shouldn’t you be taking me to some five-star restaurant, rented out for the entire night?”Yoongi snorts. “No. Do you want me to?”When Jeongguk doesn’t respond immediately, Yoongi laughs. “Well, no. That’s not really what I like.”“I know that,” Yoongi says, voice lingering with the lightness of his laughter. He shakes his head fruitlessly. “Just wear whatever you want to wear.”“You do realize that’s about the worst thing you could say in this situation, right? I’ve spent the past hour reorganizing all of my movies and books and games just so I could avoid this exact moment. Atleast give me some pointers.”Yoongi hums. “Since when were you so worried about fashion?”“What is that supposed to mean? I can dress well when I want to. You know that.” Yoongi imagines that if Jeongguk were in front of him right now instead of speaking through the phone in his apartment across the city, his lips would be curled into a frown. “Besides, this isn’t just your everyday thing.”“It’s not? Technically, we’ve already gone on about five dates now.”“But did we call them dates? I don’t really think that counts. I’m going to go now and prepare myself for our first actual date, since you’re utterly useless and a pain in my ass. Goodbye.” Jeongguk pauses. Yoongi holds his breath in waiting. “I’ll see you at seven.”His voice is sweet, impossibly so, and Yoongi smiles at absolutely nothing when the line clicks dead.Their ‘date’ isn’t quite anything extraordinary, unless you count Jeongguk. He looks beautiful when Yoongi picks him up—Yoongi is starting to realize that Jeongguk looking beautiful will just be an everyday thing, so he should really teach his heart not to twist in his chest each time he sees him—and drives them out of the city.Jeongguk interlaces their fingers from the top, his palm sitting atop Yoongi’s and his fingers curled into the empty spaces between Yoongi’s own. Jeongguk likes hooking his ankle around Yoongi’s when they’re seated, likes when Yoongi ruffles his hair in what was supposed to be an indignant gesture but quickly evolved when Yoongi saw the way Jeongguk reacts to it—eyes fell shut on their own accord, head tilted to the side—likes resting his arm on Yoongi’s shoulder when they’re standing side by side as if to flaunt the two—max three—inches he has on Yoongi. It doesn’t even work, not really, because he has to hitch his arm up uncomfortably high to get it to rest on Yoongi’s shoulder. Yoongi has long since stopped trying to break the habit.Jeongguk likes long car rides. Not long to the point where his ass hurts and he gets restless—flicks between radio stations, plugs his phone into the aux only to unplug it three songs after—but long enough that he can settle into drowsiness, comfortable enough to let himself drop off into sleep if he wanted, but he doesn’t, not usually. He rests his head against his closed fist, arm propped on the arm rest, and Yoongi can just see the curve of his cheekbones and the tip of his nose but it’s enough—enough to make him find a museum purposefully out of town, just to experience this. To experience Jeongguk when he’s tight-roping the line between sleep and wake, his eyes blinking slowly and sweetly, like molasses. His hair is honey-brown in the setting sunlight on the horizon and he’s wearing a black turtleneck, layered with a striped button-down, and Yoongi thinks it’s enough. Yoongi knows it enough.The museum is nice; more for Jeongguk, who loves museums of all sorts, than Yoongi, who is partially indifferent towards them. Jeongguk keeps their hands intertwined the entire time, more of just a barely there twist of fingers, a loose chain link so they don’t lose each other. They get ice cream, even though it’s freezing cold out and Yoongi can’t even feel the tips of his ears. But Jeongguk looks gleeful, in a gorgeous way that stretches his grin impossibly wide and makes his laugh ten times louder in the quiet of the night, so it’s enough.Jeongguk’s invite up to his apartment by the end of the night was innocuous—Yoongi can tell, because the second he proposed the offer, he scrunched his nose and opened his mouth to clarify that he didn’t mean it like that, but Yoongi already agreed. He tried not to smile at the sight of Jeongguk’s hands trembling from the cold as he tried to open his door, the way he absentmindedly flipped the lights on and rummaged through the kitchen for mugs to prepare them hot chocolate. Yoongi isn’t a fan of sweet stuff, but he’s definitely a fan of Jeongguk, and—is there really any difference? He figures he can stomach a mug of hot chocolate if it’ll keep Jeongguk smiling at him like that.They talk, something they’re both extremely good at doing together, and Yoongi smiles when Jeongguk rises and crouches in front of his impressively large collection of movies to search for his Studio Ghibli Collector's Edition, because he’s extremely proud of it. His shirt hitches up when he bends down to retrieve it from the lower shelf and Yoongi almost—almost—catches sight of black ink, stark against Jeongguk’s golden skin, trailing up the curve of his back, but then Jeongguk is straightening with a sky blue box in his hands and a victorious look on his face and Yoongi has to rearrange his features quickly enough so that Jeongguk won’t realize he’s dying to ask him about what was definitely a tattoo on Jeongguk’s back, and a large one at that.Yoongi has to admit—the Collectors Edition is rather impressive. The box itself looks pristine and untouched, but Yoongi can tell just about how often Jeongguk uses it due to the scratches on the surface of the DVD. It’s all so painfully endearing in a way that Yoongi wasn’t expecting, and he has to excuse himself to the bathroom just to rinse his hands and get away from the overwhelming scent of warm spice and amber, from the incinerating heat of Jeongguk’s thick thighs pressed against his, from Jeongguk.When he exits what he deems to be a reasonable amount of time later, Jeongguk is nowhere to be found.Yoongi wanders into the kitchen, peeking his head around the corner, and it’s only when he feels the heat of another body behind him and he tenses and spins around with his hands poised to—do something, does he find him.“Holy shit.” Yoongi exhales. “I didn’t even hear you.”He didn’t even hear him, which is setting off alarm bells somewhere deep in the recesses of Yoongi’s mind.Jeongguk smiles broadly. “Not used to being snuck up on?”Yoongi laughs, a bit nervously and out of breath. “I guess not.”He’s definitely not, because nobody in this entire city is lighter on their feet than him. Except for Jeon Jeongguk, apparently. Twenty-four-year-old Jeon Jeongguk, Seoul’s sweetheart, Seoul’s up and coming journalist who apparently has more to him than Yoongi ever thought possible.Jeongguk shrugs, and whatever weird tension that had brewed between them dissipates. “I used to dance a lot. Had to be light on my feet, especially for ballroom.”Yoongi sighs in relief—he hadn’t even realized he had been worried, or tense, or whatever that just was. And for what, exactly? He couldn’t even pick out a singular answer amongst the thousands floating in his mind. He’s about to carefully divert the subject when he feels Jeongguk’s eyes seeking out his, and he looks back. Jeongguk is watching him intently, his dark eyes carrying the weight of a thousand untold desires, and Yoongi opens his mouth to speak but Jeongguk beats him to it.“I want to suck your dick,” Jeongguk says promptly.They both default into startled silence. It doesn’t take long at all for Jeongguk’s brain to catch up to his mouth, and he flushes so deep, deeper than Yoongi has ever seen before, and he takes a step back. He looks betrayed, scandalized, something else Yoongi can’t place, like—relieved.Yoongi closes his mouth and runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. Nobody says anything for a long moment, until, “So, why don’t you?”Jeongguk’s face screws up. “I—what? I can’t just sink to my knees and start sucking your dick. I don’t even know if you want that.”He’s handling this far better than Yoongi would’ve thought, though it could be the panic sending him into autopilot. Yoongi smiles. “I do want that. I want you in general.”“Oh.” Jeongguk says, like Yoongi had just given him an extremely simple answer to a hard equation. “Then I guess I could just sink to my knees and start sucking your dick.”“Well, first—“ Yoongi closes the minimal distance between them and grabs the back of Jeongguk’s head. “This alright?”“Yeah. Yes. Anything is. Everything is alright.”Yoongi rolls his eyes, but he’s sure Jeongguk can feel the curve of his smile when he presses their lips together.Seconds, minutes, hours, an entire lifetime later, Jeongguk doesn’t even suck Yoongi’s dick. He’s not complaining, though, not one bit—not when he’s got Jeongguk laid out on the bed, spread around his first three fingers, the cold metal of the ring at the base of his middle finger making Jeongguk shiver every time it drags in and out.(The second Jeongguk had stripped his shirt off, he adamantly stayed flat on his back. Yoongi never got a chance to ask about the tattoo. He’s too far gone to even think about it at this point.)Yoongi’s got him shaking so hard that the entire city of Seoul can feel it.“Yoongi.” He gasps out, drawing his knees up and together like he’s suddenly shy. Yoongi tugs them right back down. “Yoongi, there is no possible way your dick is this big. I’m ready.”“Hey now,” Yoongi halts his hand with a dramatized frown. “I’ve made people cry, I’ll have you know.”Jeongguk’s entire torso contracts with his gasps. He chuckles breathlessly at Yoongi, staring down at him, the hair at his temples black with sweat. “Cry because you move at the pace of a fucking snail—“Yoongi crooks his fingers in the angle that he recalls made Jeongguk’s body positively writhe. It effectively shuts him up, replaces the words in his mouth with a drawn out whine; a symphony with Jeongguk’s body as the taut strings and his gasps and pants and moans and whines the music—and Yoongi, the dutiful conductor, taking his time to produce the greatest piece known to man.“Please, god, I’ll come like this.”“Come, then,” Yoongi scissors his fingers. “I’ll work another one out of you. Don’t worry about it.”Jeongguk doesn’t respond, and it takes a moment for Yoongi to sift through both of their harsh pants for him to hear the sniffling, and Jeongguk shifts his forearm away from his face, and shit.Yoongi freezes. “Are you crying?”The questions seems to draw a sob out of Jeongguk, tears streaming down his red cheeks with abandon now. Yoongi feels his stomach drop. “Oh fuck. Jeongguk, I’m sorry, why are you—?“Jeongguk rapidly shakes his head, ruffling his hair against the pillowcase. He sniffles once, twice, doesn’t bother to wipe away the continuous stream of tears from his eyes—considerably slower now—and audibly swallows the lump in his throat before he answers. “No, it’s—I do this a lot. Cry, I mean. I’m sensitive I guess—I—I get worked up really easily. I’m kind of a crybaby. But it’s good, it’s nothing but good—fuck, Yoongi, you’re so good.”He eloquently finished off with another sob that racks his body, causes him to shift against Yoongi’s fingers which are still frozen inside of him. He gasps wetly and Yoongi—can’t seem to unfreeze himself. “You’re a crier.”“Yeah, I’m—sorry, if it makes you uncomfortable. I can wipe them—“With his free hand, Yoongi stops Jeongguk’s hand from where it was rising towards his face. “No. Keep them. It’s fine.”I like it, he almost says, but he doesn’t want Jeongguk to think he’s some sadist who gets off on him crying. It’s just—the tip of Jeongguk’s nose is dewy pink, and his long eyelashes are clumped together and wet, and his pupils are blown wide. The twin tracks of tears down each of his cheeks are—beautiful. He’s stunning. Yoongi doesn’t think he has to say this for Jeongguk to understand what he’s thinking, because he blushes even more than he already had been.A singular tear escapes from the corner of his eye and lingers there. Yoongi kisses it away, the saltiness lingering on his tongue, and when he pulls back he can see Jeongguk has his eyes clenched shut. He’s undulating his hips, so minutely that Yoongi nearly didn’t realize. Probably wouldn’t have, had it not been for the soft moans.“Please do something. Please.”Yoongi skims his lips up and down Jeongguk’s neck, curling and uncurling his fingers where they’re lodged deep inside of him. After a few moments of this Yoongi draws back and hooks his free hand under Jeongguk’s knee, lifting and spreading it, and when he tugs Jeongguk down further on the bed and drapes both of his thick thighs around his hips, so Jeongguk is essentially straddling him while lying flat, Jeongguk sighs contentedly.He watches his fingers slide out of Jeongguk with a bubble of air held within his chest, and he wipes the wetness off on the inside of Jeongguk’s thigh and hastens to prepare himself because Jeongguk’s patience is running short. Yoongi can feel the thighs clenching tightly around him, and Jeongguk is curling and uncurling his fists in the sheets rhythmically. The sight brings a grin to Yoongi’s lips.Yoongi wraps his hands around Jeongguk’s impossibly narrow waist and whistles low, under his breath and reverent. “Fuck. Look at you.”Jeongguk does, in fact, look down at himself. His stomach is clenched, lean muscles stretched tight and on display, and his nipples are dark and his chest is flushed, sticky sheen with sweat. His cock stands pretty, erect, fire-truck red. “Shit,” Jeongguk whines, looking down at Yoongi’s hands. “Shit. Your hands almost wrap around my—fuck, my entire waist.”Yoongi looks down at where his wide hands encircle the tapered flesh. They look good together; pale, veiny, ring-adorned hands clutching tan, smooth, hot skin. Yoongi squeezes his waist and Jeongguk’s dick positively weeps, precome overflowing and painting his lower stomach. Yoongi laughs in disbelief.He readjusts Jeongguk’s thighs, leaving one pushed down and spread open, curled around his hip, and lifting the other so his calf rests on Yoongi’s shoulder and hit foot hangs limp. Jeongguk manages a weak moan when Yoongi skims the tip of his fingers down the inside of
his thigh, scratching his nails lightly at the juncture between thigh and pelvis, running both of his hands up Jeongguk’s torso and tweaking his nipples. He writhes, squirming away from and closer to Yoongi’s touch, and the tears on his cheeks have long since dried but his eyes are still damp.Yoongi aligns himself. He keeps one hand on the skin above Jeongguk’s knee, holding him in place, and the other wrapped around his waist, sinking in slowly. Jeongguk’s knee twitches and Yoongi can tell how badly he wants to cross his legs, to try and contain the pleasure and the breathy moans radiating off of him, but Yoongi keeps his leg pinned down against the bed as he bottoms out.He leans forward, placing one palm flat on the bed beside Jeongguk’s head. One leg stays wrapped up and over his shoulder, bending Jeongguk nearly in half, and the other falls to hang around the back of Yoongi’s knees. He rolls his hips once, twice, smoothly and fully, experimental, and Jeongguk chokes on his moans.“Hold my hands. Hold—hold—stop me. Don’t wanna touch myself, wanna come on you—wanna come on your dick.” Jeongguk gasps out, his words coming in short bursts of air between moans. Yoongi is more than happy to obey—he gathers Jeongguk’s wrists in one hand and presses them into the bed above his head. He’s even more breathtaking, stretched out like this.After a while, Yoongi has to move both hands back down to Jeongguk’s hips. Jeongguk obediently keeps his hands held above his head, adamantly not touching himself, and Yoongi wants—The kiss is more shared moans and hot breath but Jeongguk arches into it, and Yoongi presses him flat against the bed by his sternum and fucks him so hard, so thorough, that he can’t feel his own legs. Jeongguk doesn’t seem to be faring much better—he’s so fucking loud, and his thighs are clenched, muscle as hard as marble, and his calves are trembling so much that Yoongi has to stop mid-thrust and massage his thumbs into the overexerted muscles, pressing warm kisses against the inside of his knee until the tears stop flowing.Jeongguk comes to the sound of violins, cellos and bass and beautiful strings, the prettiest orchestra Yoongi has ever heard. Yoongi fucks him through it until he’s gasping from overstimulation, and when Yoongi himself comes, Jeongguk drops his leg from Yoongi’s shoulder and wraps his hands around Yoongi’s face, dragging them up and through his hair, cradling the back of his head and pressing their foreheads together.Minutes later, when Yoongi has regained feeling in his body and Jeongguk excuses himself to the bathroom to clean up, Yoongi investigates the bedroom. It’s nice, if not a little plain, and Yoongi can imagine that Jeongguk probably doesn’t spend very much time here. There are a few pairs of shoes shoved into the corner by the doorway, a sweater thrown over the desk chair, and piles and piles of manila folders and a closed laptop screen sitting atop the desk itself. There’s a Bath and Body Works candle on the corner, seventy-five percent burned, and the curtains on the window are closed tight.Yoongi slides his boxers back on as he approaches the desk. He’s not a nosy person—never has been—he’s just curious to see what those folders contain, what that candle smells like, what Jeongguk sees out of the window when he sits at his desk and writes. A majority of the folders are unmarked, stacked primly with no askew papers, but one, in particular, catches Yoongi’s eye.Stacked on the top of one of the heftier piles, the file has a black Sharpie mark down the center. It’s so full that the papers are barely contained, poking out of the side and the top and the bottom, and Yoongi really doesn’t know what overcomes him, but—He lifts the cover, and something in the movement causes the papers to shift and the entire file gets thrown off balance and comes crashing to the ground in a flurry of papers and photographs, raining down around Yoongi, and all he can see is—
Mr. Cheong. President of Cheong Enterprises. Forty-two. Mr. Cheong, found dead in his Seoul home Thursday morning— Mr. Cheong—suicide, or murder?
Typed papers, classified documents of all sorts, glossy photographs of Mr. Cheong in his kitchen, in his office, completely unaware and unsuspecting. Copies of credit card transactions, internet history, phone bills, blaring red confidential stamps left and right. A photo of what looks like a pool of blood, partially concealed by a bundle of papers, and just as Yoongi crouches down to move it out of the way, the bathroom door opens.“Are you okay? I heard something—“Yoongi stares at Jeongguk, who has changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. His skin is damp like he had splashed it with water, and he’s looking down at Yoongi with a terrifyingly blank expression, like someone had taken a rag and wiped him bare. Yoongi’s stomach drops at the sight.And then Jeongguk is laughing, a genuine, bright laugh, and he’s waving off Yoongi’s unspoken apology. “Oh! Don’t even worry about that. That file was way too full, anyways.”He crosses the room in a waft of amber and cold water, dropping to his knees beside Yoongi and straightening the papers. When Yoongi stays silent, his expression still one frozen in horror, Jeongguk looks up with a small smile. “Seriously, it’s no big deal. I would’ve hidden all of that stuff away if I wanted it to be secret.”Yoongi watches his deft hands collect all the photographs. “You aren’t angry?”Jeongguk pauses, glancing up at Yoongi briefly before looking back down at the open file. “Why would I be angry? You were just looking. It’s normal. If there’s anything you want to ask, I’ll tell you.”The thing is, Yoongi can tell that Jeongguk isn’t angry. He’s calm, a bit amused, still blushy and lax from his orgasm, but Yoongi still can’t get the image of Jeongguk’s face when he had first stepped out of the bathroom off his mind. It had looked familiar; it had looked almost as if—“Why do you have so much information on him?” Yoongi asks. “I mean—what’s so special about him? Big business guys kill themselves like that more often than you’d think.”Jeongguk sits back on his heels with a soft sigh. “Bangtan is trying to get me more on the investigative journalism scene. I gathered as much information on this guy as I could for weeks, and then they just suddenly dropped the project. Said it was already out of the news cycle. I still haven’t gotten around to throwing the file away.”Yoongi’s mouth falls open a bit, and he laughs at himself. It makes sense. Investigate journalists are always on the scene of deaths if they can manage, snapping more photos than cops and detectives themselves. Yoongi has seen it firsthand, he just wasn’t aware Bangtan was venturing further into that line of work after the drug ring scandal. “Seriously?”“Yeah.” Jeongguk frowns. “Shitty, I know.” With a shrug, he flips the file closed and rises to his feet. He offers his hand to Yoongi, who lets Jeongguk pull him up. “Come to bed?”Yoongi looks at the file on the floor in between their feet. Jeongguk is still holding his hand, skin cool and dry, and there are so many questions Yoongi wants to ask—the tattoo, the bloody photograph, the blank expression—but all he does is meet Jeongguk’s gaze with a true smile and a nod.
The thing is, Yoongi can’t just drop it.He trusts Jeongguk, but that’s not at all what he’s worried about. He’s more curious than anything because even he has no true idea of what happened to Mr. Cheong. Yoongi hadn’t killed him, and he also hadn’t pegged Mr. Cheong as the type of man to just off himself. All he can think about is the concealed, bloody photograph, the night he saw Taehyung in the rain, the blood on his shirt—The thing is, Yoongi can’t just drop it, and he’s always had a terrible penchant for getting himself into tricky situations.Jeongguk’s apartment is painfully easy to break into. Yoongi should really have a talk with him about it, indirectly, because Seoul isn’t the safest city to live in, but he’s got other things to worry about at the moment. He creeps soundlessly through Jeongguk’s apartment to where he knows his bedroom door is, even in the pitch black. The door opens with a soft creak but Yoongi locates Jeongguk’s figure, spread in the center of the bed, unmoving except for the steady rise and fall of his back, and he pushes it the rest of the way open and slips inside.Yoongi spots Jeongguk’s clothes on the floor beside his bed. He recognizes the blue sweater he had been wearing when he met Yoongi for lunch, earlier that afternoon, and Yoongi has to be careful not to trip over the shoes haphazardly strewn across the floor. The desk looks unchanged from the last time Yoongi had seen it, a week or so ago, and he can see the thick file sitting on top of Jeongguk’s laptop.Risking one last glance at Jeongguk, whose face is turned away from Yoongi and pressed into the pillow, Yoongi swallows the tiny ball of guilt at the bottom of his throat and stalks over to the desk. He’s shadowless, the bright moonlight rays having no effect on him, and when he peels back the top of the file and flips back papers and photos in search for the glossy gleam of blood, it’s noiseless.Yoongi finds the photograph hidden below a thick packet of telephone records. He pulls it out by the corner, careful not to tear or crease it, and the sudden pressure of a bulging bicep against his throat nearly causes him to drop it.Jeongguk wraps his arms around Yoongi’s head, arms straining, and he can rapidly feel his airway constricting. He sneaks a hand up in between a loose space between his throat and Jeongguk’s arm, prying it loose just a tad, and his heart is absolutely pounding madly in his chest because he hadn’t even heard Jeongguk wake, or slide out of bed, or approach him from behind. He had been so invested in the photograph that he hadn’t even sensed his presence, and just as quickly as it was there the pressure against his throat is gone. Jeongguk’s muscles loosen, though his grip doesn’t, and Yoongi doesn’t miss the opportunity to twist out of Jeongguk’s arms and backpedal them until Jeongguk’s solid back slams against the bedroom door.Jeongguk’s movements are inexperienced and clumsy. He’s muscular—clearly—but doesn’t have much knowledge on how to use his muscles, and they tussle against each other, Jeongguk grunting and Yoongi adamantly not loosening his hold on the photo. He fights against Yoongi like someone who took one, maybe two, self-defense classes a year ago, and Yoongi really, really doesn’t want to harm him, so he grabs one of Jeongguk’s arms and forces it straight and jabs his fingers into the crook of his elbow. Jeongguk goes limp, slides down against the wall, legs kicking out in between Yoongi’s feet.Yoongi pants, staring down at Jeongguk’s bare feet, bracketed by his own. He feels a little nauseous and a little relieved and a little proud. Jeongguk was no match for Yoongi, but up against any regular robber, he likely would’ve incapacitated them. Weight and power often trumps technique to those who are inexperienced. Oddly enough, Yoongi can’t find it in himself to tamp down on the smile playing at his lips when he turns to haul Jeongguk up and back into his bed.Once Jeongguk is tucked back into his bed, blissfully asleep and unaware, Yoongi straightens the papers in the file before he closes it and lets himself out of the apartment. If Yoongi knocked him out deeply enough, which he did, Jeongguk won’t even remember the night's events. Yoongi feels bad—would feel worse if the picture had actually been of any value to Jeongguk, but he said himself that he just hadn’t gotten around to throwing it away yet. The picture is of too much importance to Yoongi for him to just let it get thrown away, so it was a necessary evil.The trip back to his apartment is quick. It’s a cold night, which usually doesn’t bother Yoongi in the slightest, but he can’t shake the feeling of eyes on his back the entire way.When he finally makes it back to his apartment, the light is on under his closed front door. Yoongi’s hackles instantly rise, because he never leaves his lights on. He steps closer to the door and presses his ear to the wood and—just there, barely audible, the sound of someone rustling through his kitchen drawers. He takes a long step back and checks both sides of the deserted hallway, looking back down to the shadow moving beneath the door frame. Yoongi doesn’t even have time to think.When Taehyung exits the apartment, careful to close the door behind him, Yoongi is left to stare at the crown of his head from where he’s plastered to the ceiling, arms and legs starfished to hold him in place. Taehyung lingers in front of the doorway for longer than necessary, the light of his phone screen illuminating the bridge of his nose. Yoongi furrows his eyebrows and holds his breath.Finally, Taehyung pockets his phone and moves towards the elevator, at the end of the hallway. He punches the down button and crosses his arms across his chest as he waits. Yoongi closes his eyes as a bead of sweat travels down the curve of his chin and lands on the carpet below with a soft plat, inaudible to those who aren’t listening for it. Yoongi watches Taehyung step into the elevator, watches his shadow disappear behind the closed doors, and waits a few extra minutes for good measure before he comes down.Inside, his apartment looks untouched. Not a particle of dust is out of place. He searches it top to bottom for cameras, mics, bugs, anything. The normality makes Yoongi’s blood run cold. He flips the photograph between his fingers as he stares down at it. Mr. Cheong’s corpse is a sight to behold; gruesome bullethole in between his eyebrows, brain splatter painting his headboard. Yoongi can’t tell what type of gun was used from the bullet hole alone, and the photo is too vague to decipher any more information, but Yoongi is glad he took it.He doesn’t get any sleep that night.
Jeongguk likes Yoongi’s apartment for a myriad of reasons, one being that he has a bigger bed than Jeongguk, which, as Jeongguk has said, gives Yoongi more creative freedom in how he fucks Jeongguk.Another would be: it’s his favorite place to get work done. He’s always lounging on Yoongi’s bed typing away at his laptop, sitting on Yoongi’s kitchen counter with his laptop in his lap, typing with one hand and eating with the other at the dinner table while Yoongi reads, or answers emails, or rubs his foot up and down Jeongguk’s entire leg until he gets worked up enough to slam his laptop shut.“Which title sounds less cheesy? Less bait-y?” Jeongguk nudges his glasses further up his nose and pushes up higher on his elbows, looking at Yoongi over the lid of his laptop. Yoongi crosses the bedroom and sinks onto the bed, pushing the laptop screen back so he can read it better.Jeongguk watches him read. Yoongi snorts. “They’re both pretty cheesy.”“Which is less, though?”“That one.” Yoongi taps the front of his fingernail against the screen twice and leans back.Jeongguk groans. “I hate that one.”“Then do the other one.”“But that one’s cheesy.” Jeongguk simply closes his laptop and turns to lie flat on his back, staring down at Yoongi over the curve of his cheeks. “You’re no help.”“So you keep saying. Don’t write cheesy titles next time.”Jeongguk rises to his knees and places one on each side of Yoongi’s hips, settling down into his laps with his palms flat against Yoongi’s chest. “You’re cheesy.”“Am I?” Yoongi asks, tilting his head. He leans further back on his palms to get a better look at Jeongguk, who’s melting in the light of the setting sun.“Very.”Jeongguk leans forward and presses his lips against Yoongi’s, close-mouthed and soft. He pulls back and asks, “Kiss me?”“Mm. I’m too cheesy.” Yoongi says, though he leans forward to peck the corner of Jeongguk’s mouth. “Just take what you want.”“I only want this,” Jeongguk answers, letting his head fall to Yoongi’s shoulder with a heavy thud. Yoongi reaches down to slip his glasses off. “I only want to be close to you.”Yoongi’s heart clenches so painfully that he fears he’s suffering cardiac arrest for a moment. He straightens his back and curls his arms around Jeongguk, hugging him in tight. “Look who’s cheesy now.”“Shut up,” Jeongguk hisses. “I am so gone on you, Yoongi. It’s embarrassing.”He doesn’t respond right away. He thinks about Jeongguk, about himself, about how bloodstained his hands are and how good Jeongguk is. Jeongguk, who smells like soft amber and clean sheets, whose skin is so soft because he deep moisturizes after every shower (lying starfished on his bed, the only thing on him a blue towel wrapped daintily around his waist, skin sheen and slick with lotion), who lets Yoongi take and take and who gives and gives. Yoongi lets his chin hook over Jeongguk’s shoulder, traces his fingers up and down the knobs of Jeongguk’s spine and the strong planes of muscle on his back.“Not embarrassing,” Yoongi responds. The kiss he presses to Jeongguk’s neck says, me too.
The deep shade of blood is blinding on the fresh layer of snow coating the cement. It crunches beneath Yoongi’s boots as he follows the trail, tell-tale red line leading him straight to where he needs to be. It’s not often a target manages to get away, but they never get very far when they do.With the snow came silence; the permeating kind that fills all of your empty spaces and seeps in through your pores. It’s insidious, the way a city as loud and boisterous as Seoul can be so silent. Yoongi’s cloak drags behind him with an ominous scrape.Tonight, it had been the owner of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant who just so happened to run an underground human trafficking ring during his free time, operating out of the restaurant itself. Yoongi had caught him as he was closing up the shop with a bandana wrapped around his mouth, pulled so tight it worked as a makeshift gag. His pleas went unheard. Yoongi dragged him like that until his jaw had dislocated—he waited to hear the pop—-and they had gotten far enough away from the more active parts of the city. He had planned to slice the man’s throat—he wasn’t in the mood for anything fancy, any speaking, other than to tell the man that his crimes and sins have not gone unnoticed.Tears streaming down his cheeks, the man had managed to ask Yoongi, “Are you God?”Yoongi barely managed a smile at the words. “Only for tonight.”He got his knife two inches from below the man’s ear to just before his jugular when he kicked Yoongi’s arm away and sprinted off into the snow.Yoongi had counted to five before he pivoted on his heel and followed after him. Judging by the amount of blood in the snow, Yoongi considers the possibility of the man bleeding out before he even gets to it. He almost hopes for it, but when he turns into the alleyway that the trail leads him to and sees the man slumped against the wall in the far corner, throat cleanly slit in a cut much smoother than Yoongi’s would’ve been, he gasps.He looks up at the rooftops, checks the surrounding alleyways for any footprints, searches the man's body for any signs. There’s nothing, other than a knife cut that Yoongi definitely isn’t responsible for. The chill that settles into his bones goes deeper than the snow, the nip of the winter air, the knowledge that somebody just finished his own job for him and promptly disappeared.Yoongi weaves his way back to the bustling streets and fumbles for his phone. He knows he really shouldn’t, not at this time of night, not when he’s in such a panicked and confused state of mind, but—“Yoongi?” Taehyung picks up after three rings.Yoongi holds the phone closer to his face and sets off in the direction of Taehyung’s apartment, ducking through the shoulders of people crowding the streets. “Where are you?”“Uh, home? What’s up?”Taehyung sounds thrown off, and Yoongi tries not to imagine him cleaning blood off of a freshly sharpened blade, tossing his dirtied clothes into a trash bag to be burned later. “Can I come over? Something happened.”“Of course.” Taehyung answers immediately. “Everything okay?”“Fine. I’ll be there soon.”Yoongi hangs up and hightails it to Taehyung’s apartment.When he arrives with two swift knocks on the door, Jimin answers. He’s got a greeting halfway off of his tongue when he seems to fully take in Yoongi, and he shifts his body in the doorway and pulls the door closed tighter. Yoongi didn’t even think about the possibility of Jimin recognizing his cloak.“What the hell is going on?” Jimin asks, looking over his shoulder before glaring at Yoongi. He’s changed since Yoongi has seen him last. His hair is dark black now, resting fluffy against his forehead, and he’s got more piercings in his right ear.“Jimin.” Yoongi ducks his head once, in greeting. “Can I talk to Taehyung?”Jimin squints at him for a moment. Yoongi can feel the deep analysis being conducted on him at that very moment, but his mind is too muddled with thoughts of Taehyung for him to really care. Eventually, Jimin nods and widens the door.“Taehyung?” Yoongi calls out, walking further into the apartment. It’s been a while since he’s been here, but not much has changed; same overweight calico cat, same dilapidated corduroy couch, same bright yellow fridge. Taehyung wanders out of the back hallways and into the living room. He looks as normal as he ever could; his hair dark and unruffled, sweatshirt soft and clean. Nothing in or out of the apartment smells like blood. Yoongi’s lip twitches.“Is everything okay, Yoongi?” Taehyung asks, stopping at the back of the couch. It stands between him and Yoongi. “You sounded panicked.”Yoongi details Taehyung’s facial expression. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps a bit tinged with concern. He’s either one hell of an actor, or Yoongi just--misinterpreted this entire situation. Maybe his cut had been deeper and bigger than he had originally thought, and the man just bled out. It’s the only logical explanation because Yoongi definitely would’ve noticed another presence in the immediate vicinity. He had just judged too fast, assessed the situation and took what he wanted from it, a habit he thought was long broken but apparently isn’t.The cool ice of his face cracks and breaks into a smile. “Yeah. I’m sorry for disturbing you. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”“It’s no problem, but why wouldn’t I be alright?” Taehyung asks. “Nice cloak, by the way.”Yoongi racks his mind for something. Something he skimmed over in the newspaper, something he heard on the news, something.“I was just reading about the string of break-ins in this area. I guess I got paranoid or something. I haven’t been sleeping too much these days.”The entire statement is only about one-fourth a lie, which Yoongi considers a success. Taehyung’s expression softens slightly, but Yoongi can feel Jimin’s eyes on the nape of his neck, heavy and hot.“We’re fine. I’m glad you’re okay, too. Do you want to stay for a while? I was just gonna make tea for Jimin.”Yoongi swallows the mouthful of sand and grit down his throat. “No, no, I’m fine. I should really be getting back home. Just--call me if anything weird happens, yeah?”Yoongi makes sure to glance at Jimin, over his shoulder, when he says it. Jimin nods, and when he looks back to Taehyung, he’s nodding, too. Yoongi stands in the center of their living room for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next, when all three of them burst into motion and Yoongi is crossing the room and closing the front door behind him before Jimin got the opportunity to pick him apart any further.On the walk back across the city to his apartment, Yoongi weighs the possibilities. He thinks about the Taehyung that was standing on the corner in the rain with blood on his shirt, the Taehyung who broke into his apartment for no apparent reason, the Taehyung who took him to dinner and the Taehyung who knows Jeongguk and the Taehyung that Yoongi has been friends with for upwards of six years and the Taehyung--
His blood looks grotesque where it’s splattered on the brick walls. Yoongi can’t take the time to stop and heal the gaping wound on his thigh, not when this target of his is madly swiping at him with a fucking butcher knife. He doesn’t even know how the situation devolved so rapidly, nor can he remember the time a target tried to fight back and actually gained some ground. It’s been a while.It’s not often that Yoongi gets hurt, but it’s bad when he does.He parries their blows with the bulk of his forearm. They aren’t coordinated, or very strong for that matter, but none of that matters when you’ve got a sharp knife to swing around. Yoongi figures it’s probably the alcohol coursing through the guys system—perhaps it wasn’t his brightest moment when he decided to break into the home of a notorious alcoholic who has also paid off many courts in many districts to keep his countless DUI and manslaughter charges off the records.Yoongi manages to grab hold of the wrist clutching the knife and he squeezes until he hears bone grind. The man opens his mouth in what is preparing to be an ear-piercing scream, but Yoongi slaps his palm over their mouth and pushes them down to their knees. He’s panting, chest rising and falling almost violently, and his eyes glint in the moonlight coming in through the window on his right.It’s December, and it’s snowing in Seoul, and Yoongi is damn near bleeding out all over a living room rug. The man’s alcohol ridden breath is hot on his gloved palm, and Yoongi can feel the reverberations of his whimpers all the way up his arm and into his shoulder, rattling his entire body right down to the core. There’s a T.V. to his left, and Yoongi reaches over with his free arm and rips out the telephone cable, shaking the television precariously on it’s stand. He wraps it once around his palm and twice around the man’s neck, flicking off the tears that have collected on his glove.Yoongi pulls and pulls until there’s no more give. He lets the body and the cord fall to the ground in a puddle of his own blood, and he staggers backwards a bit, hands aching and thigh throbbing. He really, really should clean all of this up, because when the police do finally come his blood will still be there, but his vision is blurring. He knows the effects of blood loss like the back of his hand, and he can’t waste anymore time loitering around. He’s already spent too much time in the area--should’ve checked to see if the man was actually dead--should’ve killed him the second he got the chance--shouldn’t have hesitated--In a flurry of snow, sticky snow that sticks to Yoongi’s open wound and the sticky blood on his leg, on his hands, he’s stumbling through Main Street, narrowly avoiding bodies and curious glances. He keeps his head tucked into his chest and is thankful that it’s dark enough out--that he’s dark enough--so nobody will see the blood painting his entire right side unless they really look.Yoongi’s blinks are coming slower and slower, feeling heavier and heavier with each passing minute. His hand is applying as much pressure as he can physically exert at the moment on the wound, and he predicts he has roughly eight minutes to get home and patch this up before he fucking--In the second too long that it takes Yoongi to blink, he bumps into somebody. Or somebody bumps into him. Roughly, with a lot of force and speed, and Yoongi trips and hisses in ice-cold air through his clenched teeth and freezes in more ways than one when--“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you--hey, are you okay? Holy--is that blood?” Jeongguk takes a step back from Yoongi, who refuses to look up farther than Jeongguk’s shoes. His heart is pounding weakly against his ribcage, and Yoongi can feel the blood streaming from his wound with more passion than before.He grunts, and makes a move to go around Jeongguk, but firm hands on his shoulders stop him. “Seriously, are you alright? That’s a lot of blood, I—“Yoongi can’t deal with this. Not right now. With his free hand, he shoves at Jeongguk’s chest, sending him back a step or two, and quickly weaves his way back into the main crowd, hoping that his small stature and dark clothing will keep him hidden. He walks as fast as he can without passing out then and there, and he doesn’t stop until he’s at his apartment door, left hand shaking as he fumbles the key in and out of the hole.It takes too long for Yoongi to crash into his bathroom and rip the already torn fabric open. The wound really is nasty—large, an inch wide, bleeding profusely—and he bites down on his own gloved hand as he pours half a bottle of Whiskey onto it. His eyes roll to the back of his skull and he lets his head thunk painfully against the wall, following the rivulets of cold alcohol as they drip down his knee and onto his boot.When the wound is cleaned enough, Yoongi tears off a long string with his teeth and douses the needle in alcohol and holds his breath as he sews his skin back together. It takes five sutures, and at that point Yoongi has slid all the way down to his bathroom floor, blood making the tile slippery and stained. He keeps the needle held between his top and bottom teeth as he tears off a band of medical tape and wraps it three times around his thigh, tearing it carelessly and exhaling long and slow when he’s all finished.He spends a few delirious moments staring at his cabinet. He most definitely needs to eat something sooner rather than later, and his entire bathroom is clouded with the scent of blood, and there’s a tinny ringing in his ears—Yoongi swims back up through the fog, like breaking the surface after sitting at the bottom of the deep end of a pool, and he realizes the ringing is from his phone. His phone, ringing and vibrating against the tile from where it slid out of his back pocket. Yoongi wipes the excess blood on his hands off on his trousers and carefully reaches over to grab it.He clears his throat and licks his lips when he sees the caller ID. “Hello?”“Hey,” Jeongguk sounds relaxed. Yoongi curls his fingers around his phone with a hard swallow.“What’s up?”“Nothing.” Jeongguk answers. “I was just thinking.”Yoongi looks up at the ceiling and down at his exposed thigh, the matted blood and the angry red stitches. “About what?”“Not much.” Jeongguk’s voice gets distant, like he’s pulled the phone away from his face. Yoongi tries to think about the possibility of Jeongguk recognizing him from the street. “You, I guess. What are you doing now?”“Finishing up some work.” It’s not a lie, so Yoongi doesn’t feel bad saying it. “What about you?”“Out and about. It got really cold all of a sudden, huh?” Jeongguk laughs a bit, and Yoongi thinks he can hear the slide of his jacket getting pulled tighter against his body.“Yeah, it did.” Yoongi agrees. This conversation feels like it was pulled right out of a fever dream. Jeongguk sounds relaxed, but off, in a way that Yoongi can’t place his finger on. “Listen, I should get back to work now. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”“Yeah, four, right?” Jeongguk doesn’t wait for Yoongi to confirm the time of their reservation. “Goodnight, Yoongi.”“Goodnight, Jeongguk. Sleep well.”When Yoongi hangs up, he finds that the heavy ball at the base of his stomach is heavier than it was before.
Jeongguk ends up canceling on their date.He sends Yoongi a two-paragraph text, detailing how sorry he is, how swamped he is at work, how he tried to get his boss to let him off early but he just wasn’t budging, and so forth. The smile that grew on Yoongi’s face when he got to the string of sad face and heart emoticons at the bottom was entirely out of his control.Yoongi had woken up to five clean sutures in his bed sheets. His wound was healed completely, skin unmarked, and he spent the morning bleaching his bathroom and burning his sullied clothes in the alleyway behind his apartment. He was off from work today, and Taehyung had pre-arranged dinner plans with Jimin, and Jeongguk would likely be stuck in his office until the wee hours of the morning. Yoongi sifts through the files locked away in his filing cabinet, looking for a new prospective target to trail tonight. His reserves are running a bit dry: Seoul has been oddly peaceful, lately. It makes Yoongi’s skin itch.When the sun drops below the horizon and gives way to the black blanket of a sky, Yoongi jumps from his fireplace to the rooftop across the street. Cars zoom by beneath him, the thumping bass from the nightclub down the street thrumming through his veins. He takes Seoul by the rooftops, moving seamlessly between the city lights and the bodies too drunk to notice his presence.It’s a slow night. The air drags cold and nippy against his skin, and the snow has collected in all of the untouched corners and turned into brown mush. The moon is huge, hanging low in the sky, so close that Yoongi could reach out and snip the strings it’s hanging on himself. He feels the phantom pain of a gaping wound on his thigh. Yoongi inhales all of this deeply through his nose and exhales it through his mouth, breathing life back out into the city. His eyes flash with the moonlight, and he’s off again.It happens when he’s hanging off the side of one building, peering down at a street corner where he heard suspicious activity happen. The longer and closer he looks, the more it appears to be a group of drunk college kids doing no more harm than simply being loud, but Yoongi can’t pull himself back up to the roof, because there’s suddenly the heavy mass of a body slamming into his, knocking him clean off the face of the building and sending him rocketing towards the ground.His cloak billows out around him, the air whistling so loud in his ears that’s it stings. He can’t see anything other than the stars up above, and Yoongi reorients himself just in time for his feet to land on the cement below with a soft pat. One of the drunk kids from the group is made aware of his sudden presence and jumps, swearing loudly, but Yoongi is chasing after the retreating dark figure before he can make too much of it. They’re barely a pinpoint of black running into more darkness, legs moving swiftly, but Yoongi locks onto them and lets his feet carry him the rest of the way.Their hair is dark; that much Yoongi can tell from the streaks of lamplight that pass over it every few seconds. Their shoulders are broad and their outfit is dark and something--that same unidentifiable thing that follows Yoongi like a dark storm cloud--tells him that this is the person who killed his target for him--this is the person who intervened. Yoongi can feel it in the way the air hangs around him, the way their feet don’t seem to make a noise on the ground. He pushes his thighs to go a bit harder, a bit farther.Yoongi just--wants to know. Wants to know why, because he knows he isn’t the only one in Seoul, he can’t be, but he’s never run into another one before, certainly never had one meddle in his affairs, but he’s--he’s never met another one, which is the root of it all. There’s a difference between knowing you aren’t the only one and knowing you aren’t the only one, because you’ve met others, you’ve seen others, because there’s the no way, no way you can possibly be the only--Yoongi’s desperate. So desperate that he nearly lets these thoughts consume him, nearly lets himself lose sight of the rapidly moving target. He curses under his breath and takes a sharp left turn into an alley that he knows will put him out further back up the main street, closer to them, and when he scales the building and gets his feet flat on the rooftop he sees them standing at the opposite ledge, poised to jump off, and he--he doesn’t think--“Wait!” Yoongi yells, breath stuttering out in a way that it hasn’t in years. He crosses over to the ledge, getting closer to their frozen figure but stopping a foot or two away. They aren’t moving--doesn’t even look like they’re breathing--and Yoongi panics, because he’s just virtually exposed himself to someone who he doesn’t even know, to someone who could have ill intentions, and--“Who are you?”His words get carried away on a breeze, but Yoongi can see their shoulders tense. Yoongi can see their movement before it happens, and he catches onto their arm just before they take a running jump off of the building, and then they’re falling together with Yoongi’s hand wrapped around their wrist and they’re bringing Yoongi close to their body, wrapping his cloak around himself as their arms circle his arms and hold him tight as they descend. They land steadily, and Yoongi stumbles around his cloak, flails to get it out of his face so he can see, and--Yoongi thinks of Taehyung. The Taehyung who knows him probably better than anybody else, the Taehyung who proposed to Jimin over the phone, the Taehyung with blood on his shirt, the Taehyung that he suspected, that he doubted. The Taehyung who is currently at dinner with Jimin, far away from any of this, the Taehyung that--that--Jeongguk smiles a bit sadly at Yoongi. “You couldn’t possibly think you were the only one in Seoul, Min Yoongi.”Jeongguk’s hair is dark, parted off of his forehead like it was that night at the bar, and his shoulders are broad, in a way that Yoongi knows like the back of his hand, and his outfit is dark, black, and he’s--looking as beautiful as ever in the moonlight, the shadows of the alleyway falling into the hollow of his cheekbones and casting streaks down his cheeks from his long eyelashes. Yoongi’s stomach turns.“What are you doing?” Yoongi asks. His voice is steadier than he had thought it would be. Jeongguk is standing just out of reach.“I was going home.”“No. No, Jeongguk, I mean--no--what are you doing? Here? This? Knocking me--what?” Yoongi shakes his head, closing his eyes momentarily and biting down on the tip of his tongue. He can’t feel Jeongguk’s presence, his warmth, and he nearly tricks himself into thinking this is a particularly odd dream when Jeongguk speaks again.“Somebody was about to notice you.” Jeongguk’s voice sounds like it had on the phone last night. Relaxed, but just a notch off, like someone had tried to replicate the voice that Yoongi has grown accustomed to but they missed an extra dash of Jeongguk.“So you were--what? Saving me? What the fuck is going on, Jeongguk?” Yoongi asks. He can feel his brain rushing to catch up, because this means--Jeongguk was the one who slit the man’s throat. Good Jeongguk, who was supposed to be better than Yoongi, bloodstained Yoongi--“Yes, Yoongi,” Jeongguk hisses. He sounds--unexpectedly angry. “This whole time. It’s been me this whole time. Who the hell else do you think tied all your loose ends after you?”Yoongi shakes his head dazedly. “What are you talking about?”Jeongguk throws his arms in the air. His hands are ungloved. “Jesus. Mr. Cheong. Do you really believe it was a suicide? Sure, you scared him, but he was just planning on fucking submitting a tip to the police department, probably paying a few P.I.’s off to track you down. And they probably would’ve found you, because you’re messier than you think you are.”The heavy ball in his stomach chokes him. Yoongi can’t speak, but he doesn’t have to, because Jeongguk continues. “I had to gather as much information on him as I possibly could, weeks before you even acted on him. I knew he would be your next target. I had to figure out what would be the most probable way he’d kill himself--real old-school guy, bullet through the brain. Did he cry for you too, Yoongi?” Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi--Yoongi nearly doubles over and vomits with how much this all is.“You killed him?”“Yes, because he would’ve killed you, and then we all would be fucked.” Jeongguk answers. “Our existence is riding on your --whatever this is. Vigilantism, I guess. I cleaned up after you before I even knew you.”“You’re--? One of--what? How did I not know? How--?”“How else do you think I brought down that drug ring? I had to infiltrate. I had to pick them off one by one until all of those scum-of-the-earth pigs were in the ground, and only then could I publish my story. Tell me, Min Yoongi, do you really think an ordinary human could do that?”Like puzzle pieces finding their place, it all comes together. “This entire time you’ve been--following me? Protecting me?”Jeongguk scoffs. “Do you remember, last night, leaving bucketfuls of your blood in that man’s living room? The police would be there by the next morning. You would’ve been tried and found guilty for murder, Yoongi, because they don’t know the things we do.”Yoongi thinks about bumping into Jeongguk on the street, Jeongguk’s phone call, and-- “You knew it was me.”“I did. I always do. I called you when I had just got done scrubbing your blood out of his rug.” Jeongguk shakes his head. He hasn’t broken eye-contact once. “I had to kill that target of yours because he was going to get away. I saw it.”“Do you just--sit on a rooftop somewhere and watch me? What the hell, Jeongguk?”“No. I said I saw it, Yoongi. It--my--it goes deeper than that.” His eyebrows are drawn low over his forehead, the crease in between them deep, and he looks nearly unrecognizable. “It wasn’t even a thing until you slipped up with the Lee case and I had to clean it up. I just kept kind of finding you, after that.”“Has this all just been some sort of--some sort of ruse? Our relationship? You knew this entire time. Holy shit, Jeongguk. You knew.”That seems to strike a chord in Jeongguk. Hurt ripples across his face like a wave, a stone thrown into an otherwise calm body of water. “Not at all. Not one second of it was anything other than what you saw. What you felt. What I felt. Don’t even accuse me of that.”“What else am I supposed to think?” Yoongi asks. “You just--swoop in and shove me off the face of a building, try to run away, and think I won’t chase after you? And then you tell me that this entire time--you knew me before you even knew me? You’ve killed people? You’re--one of them?”“I wasn’t planning on ever telling you, but you didn’t leave me much of a choice. Is me killing people that shocking to you, Yoongi? Did you think I was too--incapable? Too soft? Too weak?” Jeongguk asks, and the ripples are turning into waves, threatening to drown him. Yoongi blinks.“No. You were supposed to be good. Better than me.”Jeongguk goes silent. Yoongi doesn’t know where they are--for once in his life can’t orient himself--but it must be far from the city, because when Jeongguk goes quiet, the entire world does, too.After a handful of seconds, he speaks. His voice is soft--sweet, like Yoongi knows it to be, and the relief that floods his system is more than he ever thought possible. “We kill people who deserve to be killed, Yoongi. Who should have been killed long ago, but somehow managed to escape their own fate. We’re finishing what should have already ended.”“When I broke into your apartment.” Yoongi blurts, the thought coming to him on a whim. “Did you know?”“I knew it was you the second you entered the building.” Jeongguk replies instantly. “I stopped fighting because--I couldn’t risk exposing myself, or hurting you.”“I--” Yoongi can’t speak--for once in his life can’t find the right words--and Jeongguk won’t meet his eyes. Something is passing between them, but Yoongi can’t tell what it is. “I can’t be here right now.”Jeongguk doesn’t protest when Yoongi turns to leave--on solid ground, because he doesn’t trust himself on anything but right now. The silence follows Yoongi all the way back to his apartment.
Taehyung is already waiting on his fire escape when Yoongi arrives.Were it not for the night he’s already had, Yoongi would probably jump at the sight. He simply stares.“You saw me that night. It was raining, and you had blood on your shirt.”Taehyung is still wearing his button-down from dinner, slacks pressed neatly, feet bare against the metal grating. The wind shifts his dark hair. He doesn’t respond.“Whose blood was that?”“Jeongguk’s.” Taehyung answers, after a moment's hesitation. Yoongi’s entire body halts. “It was Jeongguk’s. He’d had a close encounter with a bullet and called me.”There’s so much--so much that Yoongi wants to comment on, but his mind can only funnel one thought through the maelstrom raging in his head, and he asks, “How much do you know?”“I know about Jeongguk. I know about you--I have, for almost a year now. I know Jimin’s known for longer.”There’s an earthquake that Yoongi thinks only he can feel. It rattles his legs, splinters his foundations, and he has only a few more moments to grasp onto something steady and solid before it all comes crumbling down. He feels predominantly like a fool--all the people he desperately tried to hide this life--this darkness--from already knew.“How?”Taehyung meets his gaze. “I saw you. The second time was on top of that police car, the night it was raining.”Yoongi wants to ask, but he doesn't want to know. He feels the sting of bile at the base of his throat, and he turns and clutches the railing and stares out over the city. “Why did you break into my apartment?”“Jeongguk had called me. He said you guys had a close encounter, and he was worried about you but he couldn’t make it to your place, so he asked if I would check on you.” Taehyung looks back down. “I apologize for that, by the way. It felt awful, going behind your back like that, but Jeongguk--”“How come you didn’t say anything when you introduced us at the bar that night?” Yoongi cuts in.“He asked me not to.”Yoongi can’t determine how he feels. Somewhere, he thinks maybe he should be angry, but he’s not, because he understands Jeongguk. Yoongi would’ve done the exact same thing if the roles had been reversed, but he can’t shake the sickness enveloping his entire body like a wet towel, because everything that he thought he knew has just been blown to smithereens.Yoongi doesn’t know how Taehyung knew he would be coming. Doesn’t want to know, either. He jumps off of the fire escape without another word spoken.
He’s not avoiding Jeongguk--he couldn’t, even if he tried--but Yoongi holes himself in for an indefinite amount of days to just think about it all.It’s like a slap to the face, being told that everything you thought was hidden was actually clear, in plain daylight. He feels mainly embarrassed, and ashamed, because he can barely hold back the overwhelming disgust at himself on a good day, but he’s threatening to sink in it now. He thinks about all of the things Jeongguk said, all of the things Taehyung said, and then he opens a new bottle of Whiskey and doesn’t really think at all.It takes three days for Jimin to come knocking at his door.“Don’t you have an actual corporate job to be at?” He asks, letting himself in with Taehyung’s spare key. Yoongi doesn’t look up at him from his spot on the couch.“I called in sick. Took the week off.”Yoongi can practically sense Jimin taking note of the half-drained Whiskey bottle on the coffee table beside Yoongi’s feet. “Taehyung and Jeongguk are worried.”“Well, can’t Jeongguk just come in and check on me himself? Since he’s so good at it?”And, maybe Yoongi is harboring a bit of anger at being treated like a child, at being told that he’s messy at doing the one thing he knows like the back of his hand. Jimin quirks an eyebrow at his tone.“Yoongi, you know Jeongguk wasn’t just babysitting you. You can’t even lie and say that you wouldn’t take the opportunity to save his ass if the roles were reversed.”Yoongi doesn’t respond, because Jimin is right, and he hates when he is. Jimin stands behind the recliner with his hands folded on top of it, staring mutely at Yoongi, and he sighs deeply and disappointedly and heavily. “He called me crying, three nights ago, after you two talked.”Jimin is clearly trying to bait Yoongi into something, but it works, because his head turns and his eyebrows raise. “He was crying?”“Quite uncontrollably. He felt awful. He never wanted you to know about any of this, and he was worried that you were angry at him.”“Why?” Yoongi asks. He’s not sure which part of Jimin’s statement he’s questioning, but Jimin answers him, anyway.“Because he didn’t want what is happening right now to happen. He knew what it would look like and come across as, and he hated it. He only stepped in when he knew something bad would happen otherwise, because he couldn’t just let you take the fall for something he could easily fix, Yoongi. It would kill him.”“Did he send you here?” Yoongi asks after he takes a moment to digest Jimin’s words. They make sense, and they’re--Jeongguk, in the most basic form. Caring, and capable, and so many things that Yoongi could never find enough words to list them all.“No. Neither did Taehyung. He’s pretty sure you’re never going to speak to him again.” Jimin rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “But I’ve told him he’s just being dramatic. You need your time. You always have.”Yoongi wonders when Jimin grew to know him so well. They stare at each other briefly. “I’m not telling you to run over there and talk right now. Just keep these things in mind: they didn’t want to hurt you. Maybe by not telling you they did, but it was never their intention. I think you already know that, though.”And then Jimin’s leaving, just as quick as he had come, giving Yoongi new thoughts to mull over and turn around in his head until they’re worn down to dust.
When Yoongi is two floors down from Jeongguk’s apartment, he smells blood.He’s beginning to think his nostrils are forever tainted and brushes the faint metallic scent off. Yoongi worries that it’s a bit of a dick move, showing up here unannounced after five days of nothing, but he couldn’t think of any other possible way to do it. He needed to talk, and if he did it over the phone there was always the high chance of his words being misconstrued, and--When the elevators open, the scent of blood hits Yoongi like a freight train.He freezes, one foot in the elevator and the other one out. The doors go to shut and immediately retreat back into the recesses, and Yoongi feels lightheaded with how strong and heady the scent is, permeating every inch of his skin. The man in the elevator beside him is unaffected--only reacts by shooting Yoongi an odd glance when he stays frozen in place over the threshold of the hallway.Yoongi crosses over, and the doors slide shut behind him with a ping. It’s painfully hard to even tell where the scent is coming from--there’s so much of it, but it gets notedly stronger the closer he gets to Jeongguk’s door, and then Yoongi’s heart is on the floor and he’s pounding with his fist on the wood, and there’s stumbling and glass-breaking on the other side and the door is swinging open.Jeongguk hides the right half of his body behind the door. He looks extremely shocked to see Yoongi--he can’t blame him, after five days of radio silence--but Yoongi can’t comprehend anything past the smear of blood on Jeongguk’s neck, and he’s pushing the door open and Jeongguk is stumbling back and the entire right side of his body is drenched in blood, his shirt heavy with it, his pants matted to his thigh. Yoongi can’t tell where it’s coming from, can only see the puddles of it behind Jeongguk on the floor, the unusual pallor to his skin, the sickly sweat dampening his hair--“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Yoongi rushes to approach Jeongguk, who takes a weak step back, his shoe nearly slipping in his very own blood puddle. “What happened to you? Oh, fuck. Jeongguk.”“Don’t.” Jeongguk’s voice is ragged and weak and he’s pressing his right hand against some spot in the fleshy area between his waist and his ribcage. Yoongi’s heart get stomped beneath his own feet when Jeongguk winces.“Jeongguk, you need help, what the hell happened?” Yoongi approaches him again, and this time he gets as far as gripping the hem of Jeongguk’s shirt, fingertips instantly wet with blood, but Jeongguk stumbles backwards and out of his grasp.“Yoongi, don’t--”“Seriously, you’re going to bleed out if you don’t--”“Stop!” Jeongguk yells. It seems to drain all the energy he had left in him, because he slumps back against the wall separating his kitchen from his living room, and the next breath he exhales is shuddery. “I can do it myself. I can handle this. I--please, just let me--”Jeongguk coughs, and Yoongi watches him with wide eyes. He sees it happen from far away, miles away, suspended in the atmosphere outside of his own body.“Please let me--” Jeongguk is muttering, and then he’s falling face first towards the wooden floors, eyes rolled back into his head. Yoongi barely manages to catch him by the shoulders and hold him just an inch before his forehead would’ve banged on the hard surface, and he doesn’t even want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t come. He doesn’t think, not about anything, as turns Jeongguk onto his back and tugs his shirt over his head and finally manages to locate the source of all the blood.The gash is wider and deeper than it is long, likely a stab wound from a pocket-knife, and Yoongi uses Jeongguk’s shirt to mop up the blood around it and apply pressure. His hands are shaking, and he’s blinking rapidly against the oncoming tears, and he’s searching desperately for alcohol of any sort, tearing open cabinets as quickly as he can. He locates a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol below Jeongguk’s sink and all but leaps over the counter back to where Jeongguk’s body is laid in the living room, blood trailing slowly from the wound.Yoongi grabs Jeongguk’s hand with his free one and uses the other to clean the wound, pouring the alcohol directly onto it and dabbing it with the shirt. Part of him is thankful that Jeongguk isn’t awake for this, because Yoongi doesn’t think he’d be able to handle Jeongguk in pain, and the other part of him is just--scared shitless.There isn’t any internal bleeding, because none of the organs surrounding the wound give way to Yoongi’s prodding fingers, and there isn’t any blood in Jeongguk’s mouth. It’s a surface level wound, just barely skipped puncturing a lung, and Yoongi laughs in disbelief, tears blurring his vision and slipping down his cheeks as he applies more pressure on the wound and squeezes Jeongguk’s hand.With the rubbing alcohol came an untouched medical kit--Yoongi has to break the plastic seal to open it, and he pinches and pricks and stitches Jeongguk’s skin together with more care than he has ever done anything in his life. It’s a startlingly similar image to where Yoongi was on his bathroom floor, just about a week ago, but Jeongguk is still passed out, breaths fanning weakly out of his nose, and Yoongi wraps medical tape so tightly around Jeongguk’s waist that he worries it’ll cut off circulation.He grabs the sugariest drink he can find in Jeongguk’s fridge--a carton of banana milk--and props Jeongguk upright against his chest, his legs parting to fit Jeongguk’s body, and he can’t even think to clean any of the blood up as he unscrews the carton and pours a drop or two into Jeongguk’s parted mouth.“Drink, Jeongguk,” Yoongi begs, closing his chin and tipping his head back just a bit. Jeongguk’s weight is dead heavy against Yoongi’s chest, and the tears weigh on his eyelashes and sting on his lips. “Jeongguk, c’mon, baby, drink.”He needs to be in a hospital, treated properly and replenished with an I.V., and Yoongi knows this, but--the closest hospital is still too far away, and as long as he can get Jeongguk to wake up he’ll be in the clear. But Jeongguk is getting heavier and heavier against Yoongi, his skin colder and colder, and Yoongi pours a bit more of the milk into Jeongguk’s mouth and tilts his head all the way back until he hears it slide down his lax throat.“Please. Jeongguk, please,” Yoongi begs, and his voice is slurred and wet with the tears and snot and regret, because if he hadn’t waited so damn long to talk to Jeongguk maybe this wouldn’t have happened, or maybe he could’ve helped Jeongguk sooner--Jeongguk’s blood is still slick and warm on Yoongi’s hands, and the banana milk carton slips from his grasp and spills out onto the floor. Yoongi curses and barely manages to salvage a fourth of the liquid, and he doesn’t try to hold back the sob that builds and bubbles out of him. He drags a bloodied hand through Jeongguk’s bangs, slaps his cheek, opens his mouth and pours the rest of the liquid in.“Come on, Jeongguk,” Yoongi closes his mouth and tips Jeongguk’s head back against his shoulder. The liquid slides down his throat and Yoongi slaps Jeongguk’s cheek gently, hard enough to stimulate some reaction, and he reaches down to grab one of Jeongguk’s hands and squeeze so tight that his fingers ache. “Wake up.”Yoongi almost thinks he’s imagining the tickling of hair at his ear. He lets go of Jeongguk’s hand and sits up, bringing Jeongguk with him, and he slaps Jeongguk’s cheek and pours whatever was left of the banana milk into his mouth and--Jeongguk coughs it back up. Jeongguk groans, and a tear or two slip from his still closed eyes, and he takes in two shuddering breaths before he opens them. Yoongi is bent down over his face, tears falling shamelessly onto Jeongguk’s cheeks, and Jeongguk squints up at him and licks his lips and--“Did you force feed me banana milk?”Yoongi closes his eyes against the violent onset of tears, letting his forehead drop against Jeongguk’s. His entire body feels hot and cold all at once, and he’s still covered in Jeongguk’s blood, but Jeongguk is awake, and that’s all that matters. It’s enough.“Don’t ever fucking do that again. I’ll kill you.”Jeongguk shakes his head and then seems to regret the action when he shuts his eyes and exhales slowly through his nose. “No, I--I’m sorry. I need--a bed, or something, I feel like--”“Don’t apologize, either. Do you want me to call an ambulance? You lost a lot of blood. How did this even happen, you--”“No ambulances.” Jeongguk murmurs. There’s a slight curl to the corner of his lips. “I don’t like hospitals. Just--carry me to my bed. I should have cookies or something in my kitchen.”And Yoongi does just that. He takes Jeongguk’s pants off and tucks him in wearing only his boxers, and he makes Jeongguk promise to stay awake until he gets back with food. Yoongi digs through his cabinets again with impressive speed and finds a half-eaten box of Oreos. Jeongguk barely manages to look delighted at the sight of them, and Yoongi doesn’t speak until he’s eaten every cookie in the box.“What happened?”Jeongguk has cookie crumbs on the corner of his lips, and he’s not looking at Yoongi. Yoongi, who still has Jeongguk’s blood on his clothes, on his skin, who is still nauseated from the smell, who still has a headache from the crying.“I got stabbed. And before you ask, no--it wasn’t like that. Someone was trying to jump me. I wasn’t just going to let them.”“So you got stabbed.”“Don’t say it like I chose for it to happen.” Jeongguk says, frowning slightly, and Yoongi just closes his eyes and breathes deeply and tries to clear his head from the rollercoaster of emotions it just went on.“You almost just died of blood loss, Jeongguk. Why didn’t you call someone? Or go to the hospital?”“I wasn’t going to die. You were here.” He says it with such confidence, and it makes Yoongi’s entire chest ache. “I was a bit preoccupied.”“What could possibly have been more important than your life?”“Well, for starters, you were here. After five days of just--nothing, you were here, and you were trying to touch--to help, and I just wanted--god, this sounds so dumb. I wanted to show you I was capable. I wasn’t whatever you think I am.”Yoongi can’t think up an adequate response right away. He lets the statement hang in the air between them, suspended momentarily before he grabs it with his hands and doesn’t let go. “Christ, Jeongguk. I know you’re capable. Of so many things, so many things beyond my grasp, so many things that I don’t even want to think about doing. You took down an entire fucking drug ring by yourself. You amassed an entire file full of information in days. You write, you’re Seoul’s best journalist, I--I’m sorry for making you think you need to prove yourself to me. I’m so, so sorry. I think you’re one of the most amazing people I will ever know--that’s what I think you are. You don’t need to prove anything for absolutely anybody, Jeongguk. Ever.”When Yoongi looks back up at Jeongguk, he’s staring. Staring like he’s never seen Yoongi before, his wide eyes stretched big and brown and beautiful. It drags on long enough for Yoongi to feel squirmish, and he clears his throat and asks, “How are you feeling?”“Fine.” Jeongguk responds. His voice is light. “One of the best things about being superhuman. Extreme healing abilities.”“Are you sure? You still look pale.”“That’s for an entirely different reason.” Jeongguk admits. That brings a splattering of color to his cheeks, and Yoongi delights in the sight. “I’m sorry, too, for never telling you. For telling you like that.”Yoongi shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be. You did what I would’ve done. What I still would do.”“Which is?” Jeongguk asks, shaking his head as if he doesn’t understand.“Protect you.” Yoongi answers. He wills himself not to look away from the glimmer in Jeongguk’s eyes. “Though you don’t need it.”“Neither do you,” Jeongguk says instantly. “You never need it. I didn’t want to make you think that I thought you were weak, or--whatever, you aren’t, Yoongi. Not in the slightest.”Yoongi smiles. He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t think he needs to, because Jeongguk is smiling back at him, and whatever had been hanging in the air between them like heavy fog over a river settles back down, seeps back into Yoongi like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket, or putting on your favorite old shirt. Jeongguk reaches for his hand, and Yoongi meets him halfway.
Three weeks after—everything, after Yoongi’s entire world was broken down and rebuilt, after Yoongi spent an hour in Jeongguk’s shower scrubbing his blood off until his skin blistered, things have settled. Settled in the sense of: Taehyung dragged Yoongi for overpriced coffee just yesterday morning, and Jeongguk booked them an appointment for a couples massage (because he’s ‘always wanted to try them’, and he thinks the oil will be fun to experiment with), and the wound of Jeongguk’s side really had been fully healed the morning after Yoongi stitched it up but Yoongi withheld any strenuous activity, number one on the list being sex, and now—Jeongguk stares relentlessly at Yoongi from across the couch, the light from the movie dancing across his face and lighting his eyes.Yoongi can see him looking, like a singe on his peripheral, but he doesn’t look back. He wants to finish this movie, and Jeongguk has been fidgety all day, and Yoongi knows what Jeongguk wants, but—Ice cold toes press into his bare thighs. Yoongi yelps and turns to look at Jeongguk, betrayed, but Jeongguk is already crawling across the couch and into Yoongi’s lap.“This movie sucks.” He whispers, draping his arms over Yoongi’s shoulders. Yoongi briefly considers glancing over Jeongguk’s shoulder to keep up with the movie, but he knows he’s already too far gone when his hands come to settle on the top of Jeongguk’s thighs.“It’s good, you ass.”“Considering you paid eight dollars for it, I was expecting it to be better.” Jeongguk shifts his weight, and the movement, for reasons beyond him, turns Yoongi on immensely. He drags his fingers up and down Jeongguk’s thighs until he’s shivering.“Did you even watch it? Or have you just been trying to get your dick wet?”Jeongguk glares, scandalized. “I did. And it’s not my dick I’m trying to wet, it’s yours. Don’t be so ungrateful.”With a breathy laugh, Yoongi shakes his head and stares up at Jeongguk. He would try and tamp down on the pure wonder and amazement in his eyes, but he likes the way it makes Jeongguk blush. “Then why is my dick not wet?”Yoongi tips his weight forward and presses his lips to Jeongguk’s chapstick smoothed ones. Jeongguk tilts his head and murmurs, “So, you want this?”“Yeah. Yes. Will never not want this.” Yoongi doesn’t have to think about his answer. Jeongguk seems satisfied with it, because he presses against Yoongi again, chest to chest, hip to hip, and kisses him deeply.“Hm. Have I healed enough for strenuous activities, doctor?” Jeongguk asks, tilting his head to the side, and Yoongi pinches his waist and silences his yelp with a kiss. Jeongguk laughs into it, and their teeth knock slightly together, and the angle is a bit wrong, but it’s so right. Yoongi wouldn’t have it any other way.Jeongguk strips his shirt, still straddling Yoongi’s hips, and his skin is warm and smooth and he shudders when Yoongi drags his nails down his back where he knows the tattoo is. That’s a question for another time, because Jeongguk is arching his lower back and pressing his hips deeper into Yoongi’s, and it’s all Yoongi can do not to flip him and fuck him into the couch.Instead, they stumble to the bedroom. Yoongi doesn’t even bother trying to carry Jeongguk because they tried that once before--they both ended up on the floor, where they had stayed, and Jeongguk complained about the rug burn on his elbows for days--and it’s much more enjoyable to let Jeongguk grab his hand and tug him through his apartment.They keep the lights dimmed, because it’s one of those nights where the moon pours right in through Yoongi’s window, and he loves how Jeongguk looks in the silvery light. His hair is inky black against the white bed sheets, skin the color of raw honey, and his lips are kiss-bitten, red and wet and he’s looking up at Yoongi with an expression that Yoongi imagines must mirror his own, because they smile at the same time and the blush stains higher on Jeongguk’s cheek than it does on Yoongi’s.Yoongi kisses Jeongguk slow and thorough, losing sight of where he ends and Jeongguk begins, and he fucks him slow and thorough, taking care to stretch him out because he loves the way Jeongguk looks when he’s spread around his fingers, muscles trembling, thighs clenched. He keeps a hand wrapped around the base of Jeongguk’s dick as he pushes in, keeps it there as he bottoms out and rolls his hips, doesn’t move it until sweat is dripping from the curve of his nose and Jeongguk is trembling and crying and his entire chest is ruddy.When Jeongguk comes, he arches so high off the bed that all Yoongi has to do is dip his head and he’s kissing Jeongguk’s sternum, his stomach, roaming his mouth across the vast expanse of skin until he comes back down and he’s panting for Yoongi to come.Afterwards, when Jeongguk’s skin is still damp from the shower and his hair drips onto Yoongi’s pillow, Yoongi pushes Jeongguk on his stomach and finally, finally looks at the tattoo.It starts just above Jeongguk’s ass, following the dip of his spine and stopping just below the nape of his neck. It’s one large pond, with water-lilies and lily-pads, all black ink and clean lines. There’s the silhouette of a deer near the left side of Jeongguk’s waist, and a weeping willow tree hanging over below his right shoulder blade, and there’s all kinds of flowers and koi fish and details, so many details that Yoongi could spend days upon days picking them all out, and he runs the flat of his palm over it and across it and around it and he gasps.“Jeongguk. Oh, Jeongguk,” Yoongi whispers reverently. “It’s gorgeous.”Jeongguk’s still and silent, face pressed into the pillow and arms crossed beneath it. Yoongi lets his nails scrape over a cattail and Jeongguk’s entire back ripples, and he whines into the pillow, and Yoongi grabs his shoulder and hauls him onto his back.He’s leaning above Jeongguk, weight balanced onto his elbow. He uses his free hand to brush Jeongguk’s bangs away from his face and cup his cheek, run his thumb across the arch of his cheekbone, and when Yoongi leans forward and presses a kiss to the gumdrop tip of Jeongguk’s nose, he closes his eyes.“It was part of my ‘initiation’ for the drug ring.” He says lowly. “They let me choose what I wanted, though. Obviously.”The knowledge that Jeongguk chose to have that design inked onto his skin--that scenery, that small piece of paradise--makes Yoongi’s heart stutter in his chest. It skips a beat, and his breath hitches, and Jeongguk opens his eyes and the drag of his eyelashes on his cheekbones is enough, it’s enough for Yoongi--and Yoongi slides his hand down to cup Jeongguk’s chin and kisses him sweetly, so sweetly, until Jeongguk is giggling into his mouth and wrapping his arms around Yoongi’s shoulders and crushing him in a hug.It’s enough for Yoongi. It’s more than enough.
Up on the roof of Seoul’s tallest building, the wind bites.On the farthest corner, he crouches, hand placed between his bent knees to steady himself. His back feels strangely light, his palms weirdly empty. It’s been a slow week, but tonight is busy; tonight, there’s blood in the air. So heavy that Yoongi can taste it on his tongue. From here, Yoongi can see directly into the building across the street. Every single window, top to bottom, is black. Shutters drawn, offices closed up for the night.It feels like he’s the only person in the entire city--but then it doesn’t, because Jeongguk’s presence is at his back, on his sides, in front of him and surrounding him in the best way possible. It weighs him down against a strong gust of wind and he closes his eyes and breathes it in.Yoongi slowly rises to a stand. His cloak flutters in the wind; a figure of black silhouetted in darkness; a phantom, a spirit, a nightmare. Everywhere and nowhere all at once.Yoongi takes a small step forward on the ledge and lets himself fall, arms spread-eagle. He’s not worried about waiting up for Jeongguk, because Jeongguk will find him. He always does.