And fuck him, but the moment Jungkook sees him— it's not panic, that hits later— it's not regret, or shame, or anything remotely close to an emotion that falls into black or white, falls kin to anything he'll agonize over later. It's just a pure, ethically colorless admiration as he takes him in— the clinging navy of the thin jumper that seems to just hang on to his sharp collarbones, the flutter of lashes as he looks down and away as marked over his pale skin as ink blotched across snow-tinted paper. And most of all— those bruises, dark with clotting blood trellising like poison ivy over his collarbones, the side of his neck, which make the trails of nail-gouges on his back throb in response.

He's only able to tear his gaze away when the heat spreading into his gut sets off all his threat responses at once, bringing with it— yes, the panic— and also the sobering awareness that the silence in the the room had passed the threshold of uncomfortable a while ago. Then,

"You should leave," Yoongi mumbles, fixing his gaze somewhere to the bottom right of Jungkook. "Ask for a change of classes. This was never supposed to happen."

An exact echo of Jungkook's thoughts earlier, and Jungkook knows that Yoongi's talking sense. But something intensely contrary rises up in his chest to hear him say it, and before he knows it, it's taken sheer, reckless control— suppressing entirely his rationale of yes yes yes you're right.

Because if Jungkook wanted an out, Yoongi had given it to him ten minutes ago. It would be easy to just take the ten steps across that threshold and pretend that whole drunken mess never happened. All he has to do is nod his head yes and walk out. Simple as that.

But if it's that goddamned simple, why—

"Why?"

He asks it, as if the answer is not written plain as day in the roughened places on Yoongi's skin, in the ugly purple-carmine swirls of contamination that hardens into jagged shrapnel to pierce Jungkook through and then through every single time he sees Yoongi. Thinks of him. Listens to him.

"Jungkook—," Yoongi pinches the bridge of his nose, fixes him with a look that says are you stupid, but Jungkook neglects to process this information when it's crowded out by that sharp elation of Yoongi finally looked at him.

And as it happens every single fucking time, Jungkook misses half of what Yoongi is saying when he's up close and personal, too enthralled by those little observations lost to distance. Like how his eyes are the same color as ninety five percent cacao chocolate, his skin completely clear—

He stems that train of thought, with a massive effort he forces his attention back, just in time to catch the end of what Yoongi's monologue.

"...you don't really like me, Jungkook. You're in lust, not in love."

An out again— it'll be easier to take it, Jungkook knows— walk out, walk out, agree with him and walk out. Indubitably easier than the other option. He needs to take it, even, this he knows.

"Oh, Yoongi," he sounds almost dangerous, even to himself, as he speaks in a forced, measured tone. "Don't you remember what happened the last time you tried to tell me something about myself?"

Because he also knows, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he'll never forget. And the blush that stains across Yoongi's face as Jungkook throws that first kiss which started this whole convoluted web of paradox into his recall— that also figures, like every other moment spent with Yoongi, in his Pandora's box of indelible memory.

Given proof that Yoongi knows exactly what Jungkook is talking about, the younger begins his advance, eyes locked on Yoongi's— who senses his intention and backs away. Undeterred, Jungkook stalks forward— on and on until Yoongi's back hits the wall. Jungkook seizes the opportunity to cage him between his arms, blocking off any escape. He wants— something from Yoongi, he wants closure, he wants, for the first time in a long, linear road of wasted time, to be seen. Recognized.

"Now tell me why exactly you think this is wrong."

Yoongi glares at him but says nothing— leaving Jungkook to fill the heavy silence with his own, inept words. The screaming in his head has, like always, quieted to an eerie silence upon Yoongi's touch— but he can't find it in himself to second-guess it. He forfeits the analysis in favor of just being thankful for it, hoping it'll stay as he rides this reckless, unprecedented high of absolute insanity. And it is insanity, his thoughts vocalizing themselves mind to mouth with scant regard for consequence.

"Lie to me, lie to every fucking one, Yoongi," he says, words leaving him with a speed and gravity— and an utter lack of filter— like he never deemed possible. "But don't goddamn lie to yourself."

Jungkook can swear he sees the exact moment when the words hit Yoongi, the crumbling of his last bit of pretense as he shoves violently at Jungkook's chest.

"And what if I don't want any of it?" his tone rising until he's yelling, proper yelling now, hands shaking and eyes suspiciously bright. "What if I don't want you to waltz in, take what you want, and fuck off? You don't know goddamn shit, Jungkook."

He's struggling in earnest now, and Jungkook has to pin his arms against the wall with his own to stop him from throwing the younger off.

"We're going to have this conversation," he states, simply.

"Let... go... you bastard—," Yoongi manages to get out through his gritted teeth, redoubling his efforts to escape at that. "Like... hell we are."

Jungkook disregards that, just holding Yoongi down until he tires, slumps against the wall, a flush running down to his neck at the exertion.

"You done?" Jungkook doesn't mean for it to sound as condescending as it does, really, but Yoongi directs the full force of his anger at him in a blistering scowl.

"Fuck you." Yoongi snarls at him, almost spitting the words out. "Just get out of my goddamned life, Jeon-ssi, because I really don't need you to fuck shit up in it."

"Really now," Jungkook retorts, incensed, a hot wave of pique stabbing him in the ribs. Without warning, he lets go of Yoongi's left arm, only to catch it by the wrist and yank his sleeve up. "Because your life is stellar right now, am I right?"

For a loaded moment, they both stare at Yoongi's exposed arm— and Jungkook has the overwhelming feeling that he's started something incontrovertible, something of a scope he can neither comprehend nor control. The scars he's brushed the raised outlines of by night, he can only wonder at by day. Like an esoteric alphabet, like bastardized veins, they run down his arm, thickening into layers upon layers at the wrist. Like tattoo ink, just a shade lighter than his complexion— they hold hate in them, but also loves lost and macabre narrative.

And then he sees the other penny drop for Yoongi, comprehension twisting his expression into something Jungkook can't place. The figurative clatter of metal almost deafening in the spaces between them.

Jungkook sees it coming in his peripheral vision, and stalls Yoongi's hand as it comes to deliver an open-palmed hit to his face.

"How dare you."

Yoongi's voice is shaky— with a violent, potent slur of tears and rage, inseparable from each other as a reel of emotion flits across his expression. For a moment, Jungkook feels like he's going to try and hit him again, but then he closes his eyes and the tears cascade down from beneath his shut lids. It's like all the strength goes out of him once the floodgates open, legs giving out so he slides down to the floor, knees drawn up.

And then he begins to scream.

Muffling it into his arms, shoulders quivering with the effort of his gasping sobs, he screams. It terrifies Jungkook, not because of the utter, total breakdown— he's seen a few too many of those, and even now dank hallways and hollow, sepulchral eyes flicker across his vision for a moment— but because he knows. Each cry for loss, for futility, for utter helplessness is answered in kind from some decayed, jaded part of him he'd never intended to bare.

And Yoongi needs to stop. Stop before Jungkook succumbs to that pure, unadulterated jealousy he feels creeping up— that Yoongi can cry like this. Lay everything bare and raze it down to build on it again.

So he sinks to his knees so that himself and Yoongi are level, face-to-face, and breaches his guarding arms to cup his face in both hands. The surprise of it is enough to cause a break in the convulsive sobbing, and Jungkook uses that to tilt his face up, look him in the eye. And he instantly realizes— fuck these epiphanies are getting old— that Yoongi like this, with his spiky eyelashes and over-bright eyes, with his cheeks swollen and flushed from tears, is rare, and his vulnerability will forever be one of those precious moments he can never quite catch on paper.

It's the moment, maybe, charged enough for anything close to plausibility to fizzle out, or maybe— actually, most definitely— Yoongi's face without a single reserve looking at him like he wants— something. But Jungkook, as if from a distance, as if completely swept along in the torrential eye of a storm, finds himself saying those powerful, damning words.

"I can make you happy, Yoongi."

And god fuck him, he actually believes it. That their jagged edges and missing parts can find— maybe not completion, but liveability in each other. Maybe even— yes— that elusive, indefinite entity called happiness.

There's no way this bubble rising in Jungkook's chest will translate into words, so he just looks— looks at Yoongi, praying to all hell that his thoughts translate into his mechanical expressions, that Yoongi can draw the implications, the nuances of it from the little that he's said.

Yoongi's expression clouds over even as Jungkook scans it for any noticeable change— and he hasn't registered when his heart rate has accelerated, but it has, and reaches a pounding crescendo at the furrow of the brow, the downward turn of the mouth. It's all happening in slow motion for Jungkook when Yoongi opens his mouth, the hesitant pause before,

"Okay."

Every muscle in Jungkook's body seems to relax at that, even as Yoongi slumps forward, rests his head in Jungkook's shoulder. It seems so natural, the arm he puts around him, the way their heartbeats align when he pulls him close. The idle playing with his hair, something that was meant to be.

A forever kind of thing.