Two weeks into Taehyung's stay, Yoongi had become accustomed to waking up with a body wrapped around him. He was starting to like it, which was a bad thing, honestly, because this acquaintance would lead nowhere. Taehyung would go back to Seoul and Yoongi would continue emboweling fish. If he got attached, it would only cause him pain in the end.

But the brain was the brain and the heart was the heart. Yoongi wasn't as stupid as to think that he could reason his feelings away. He liked Taehyung. He liked his smile, his careless personality, his voice, his hug. It was ridiculous to think that he could argue himself out of his emotions. Even if he was imagining the looks and touches, it all felt too real to deny it. Yoongi had a crush on the tourist.

Since Taehyung had arrived, his life felt like living again. He was making music. He had a reason to wake up every morning with a smile. Thankfully, the sleeping Taehyung didn't see his soppy smiles every morning, or he would think Yoongi was mad in the head.

It felt good to have Taehyung around him, even if it was just pining from afar. Yoongi had forgotten what it felt like to long for someone. He had thought he would never meet anyone again on this god-forsaken island, but apparently god hadn't given up on this island and had decided to be kind to him. He had sent Taehyung to give Yoongi's life some light. And Yoongi was sucking it up like a starving man.

Hell, he was even thinking about going to Seoul and trying his luck. If all went to trash, he could still come back to embowel fish. How much worse could Eunha's nagging become?

"Welcome home," his gran greeted him when he opened the door.

"Taehyung's not here?" Yoongi asked casually. Normally, their guest would sit with grandma chatting over a mug of tea.

"He asked me if he could take the scooter," she told him. "I suppose he went sightseeing."

Yoongi hummed and stripped off his fishy clothes. If Taehyung wasn't home, then he would work on the song they had finished recording yesterday.

"What do you want for dinner?" his gran called after him.

"Whatever Taehyung wants," Yoongi replied. He wasn't picky.

His grandma chuckled but left him be. Her nagging was slowly becoming unbearable. Yoongi felt really happy that he didn't have a real partner, or he was sure that his gran would tickle their sex life out of him. It was an awful thought.

When his grandma called him down, it wasn't for dinner.

"Yoongi-ah! Yoongi-ah, have you seen Taehyung-ah?"

Yoongi opened the door to the stairs. "No, why?"

"It's past eight and he isn't back yet."

Past eight? Yoongi looked out the window. He would've guessed that it was much later by how dark it was. Only now, he noticed the wind howling. Shit.

Hurrying down the stairs, he asked. "Where did he say, he'd go?"

"I don't know," his grandma said concerned. "He didn't tell me. But the weather is really awful."

"I know," Yoongi said absentmindedly. Then he grabbed his oil jacket and his keys to go outside.

His grandma looked like she wanted to call him back but decided not to. He wanted to hug her and tell her that everything was alright and that Taehyung was a grown man who knew how to take care of himself, but unfortunately he wasn't so sure about that.

He didn't even make it five steps when he saw the scooter. "He came back!" he shouted over the noise of the thunder.

His grandma didn't look any less concerned. She was right. Because if Taehyung was back but not at home, something was wrong. A feeling of dark foreboding took hold of Yoongi's heart. He wouldn't have...

Yoongi stepped back inside. He was already dripping water all over the floor just from less than a minute in the rain. "Try to call him. I'll look on the mole."

His grandma nodded nervously and pulled out her phone with shaking hands. Yoongi stormed through the living room towards the basement door. If Taehyung really had been this stupid... He put on his oil trousers and rubber boots and took an empty backpack and filled it with a thick rope and the bundle of carabiners.

"I'll go to Jongwoo's," he told his grandma, who was on the phone. She nodded at him.

The few steps to his neighbors door were enough to make him shake from the cold. "Where's Jongwoo?" he asked when Minha opened the door.

"Jongwoo?" she asked him confused as if she didn't know who her husband was. Then she seemed to catch on. "Oh! Jongwoo-ah!" She turned to call for her husband.

The guy was quick to appear next to her at the door. "Yoongi-hyung!" he greeted him with a big smile like Yoongi was coming around for a drink.

"Jongwoo-ah, I need your help," Yoongi cut to the chase. "Kim Taehyung, the tourist, he's missing."

At the word 'missing', Jongwoo's smile vanished. He had lost his father to a storm. They had fished the dead body out of the water the next day. So Jongwoo knew what this meant.

"Wait for me," he told Yoongi and hurried back inside the house. A few minutes later, he was back in full oil gear and with a rope of his own. "Let's go," he told Yoongi.

The two of them hurried over to the haven. The rain was so thick, it was hard to see for more than ten meters. But unperturbed, the two of them hurried from shop to shop in the hopes of finding Taehyung only searching shelter from the rain. When they reached the last shop, Yoongi's hopes sank.

"The mole," Jongwoo said with a stony face. Yoongi was reading his lips rather than hearing his voice. He nodded. He had hoped that Taehyung hadn't been that stupid, but if he wasn't at a shop or at home, the mole was the only place he could be.

It was typical of tourists and children to underestimate the weather here. This wasn't mainland where the weather was moderated by the land air, this was open sea. Weather was changing quickly and was just as unpredictable and dangerous as in the mountains. If Taehyung had discarded the rain and wind as only a normal storm, he had underestimated the gods of the sea.

"You or I?" Jongwoo shouted when they arrived at the mole.

"I'll go," Yoongi decided. Even with the ropes, this was dangerous. And he knew his lame leg would bother him, but he couldn't risk Minha losing her husband over one stupid Kim Taehyung.

They looped Jongwoo's rope through one of the concrete-anchored metal eyelets for boats and Yoongi fastened it around his middle. Then he began his way down the mole. Wind and water were pushing against him, trying to shove him off the path, but Yoongi hadn't spent years at sea for nothing. Even with a bad leg, he knew how to take on the gusts of wind and the drag of waves around his ankles. He only hoped it wouldn't become worse than this, because then even he had to crawl to make sure he wasn't pushed into the ocean.

"Taehyung-ah!" he shouted against the wind. It felt like the words were ripped from his freezing lips. "Taehyung-ah!"

It was no use. The ocean and the heavens had conspired against them.

Yoongi felt tears burn in his eyes, but it didn't really matter because he couldn't really see anything anyway. Half-blind and desperate he continued his way out in the hope of seeing a soggy Kim Taehyung clinging to the stones of the mole.

Half way down, the rope was at its end, so he unpacked his own, knotted them with a figure of eight, and continued. If Taehyung wasn't here, all they could do was pray for his safe return. Somehow Yoongi wished, Taehyung wouldn't be here but at some place they hadn't searched before. No one should feel the wrath of the ocean.

The thought brought up unbidden memories, which Yoongi tried to push back down, but with every forceful drag at his feet from another wave crashing over the mole, they were washed into his mind.

Him struggling on the deck of the Lady in Red, trying to reach the bridge to deliver the order of cut-off. Water reaching up to his knees, trying to drag him into the black waves. The safety rope that tied him to the ship tightening around his stomach. The sounds of waves clashing against the metal body of the ship, the heavy breathing of the engines, the singing wires. Everything was accumulating into one awful memory. Him switching the safety line and missing.

Another wave, the drag on his feet, but this time no safety tightening around him, no stopping the fall. He was dragged down the deck to the other side where his leg caught in the rail. Yoongi had never heard the sound of his knee breaking, of the ligaments snapping. The sound of the ocean had been too loud. He'd only felt the pain and the unnatural feeling of his leg being twisted at a wrong angle.

He also didn't remember how he had made it back on board. He only remembered how relieved everyone had been that he hadn't gone overboard. His leg had saved him from drowning in the black ocean. The leg that was now useless.

"Help me!" a voice called Yoongi back to reality. "HELP!"

Taehyung!

Yoongi followed the call and found Taehyung cowered into a niche between the stones. Water was washing over him with every wave and he looked close to fainting. Yoongi climbed down to him.

"Are you okay?" he asked the man. "Nothing broken?"

Taehyung shook his head.

Yoongi nodded. Then he used the rest of the rope to sling it around Taehyung. "Just follow me!" he shouted over the storm.

Taehyung nodded scared. Then Yoongi took the man's hand.

The way back was, strangely enough, not as bad as the way out although the waves had become strong enough to make them slip and fall at every possible occasion. Taehyung's hand was ice cold but holding onto Yoongi's like he would never want to let go. And it was distracting Yoongi enough not to think of anything else.

When they reached Jongwoo, their hands were bloody with scratches and they were both shaking from the cold.

"Grandma," Yoongi breathed when he saw the old woman standing there with Jongwoo. Half of the village seemed to have gathered. Eunha's and Hwaseung's husbands stood there, equipped with ropes of their own and self-inflating life vests. Yoongi's heart swelled at the sight.

"Let's get you warmed up," his gran said under tears and hugged them both to her chest with a shower of kisses.

She thanked Jongwoo under tears and Yoongi, too, hugged his neighbor in undiluted gratefulness, then they took Taehyung between them and hurried back home. The onlookers were following.

When they arrived home, Yoongi's grandma pulled out the electric warming blanket and told Yoongi to bundle up with Taehyung and get warm again, she would take care of the guests. So, while the rest of the village was gathering in their living room, Yoongi dragged Taehyung up the stairs and into the bedroom, where he stripped his shaking frame of all clothes to wrap him up in the electric heating blanket.

Only after Taehyung was rolled up like a burrito Yoongi took off his own clothes. The oil clothes had kept most of the rain away, but some had seeped into the collar and his face was frozen. Shaking, he stepped under the shower.

The water felt like it was scalding his skin, but he didn't give a shit. One of the most dangerous things for humans was freezing. You could starve for some weeks, you could even survive for some days without water, but if you freeze, your body had a few hours. And Yoongi felt like he was frozen to the bone.

When he stepped out of the shower, it was somewhat better, but he still felt the ache of cold.

"You too," he heard Taehyung's weak voice from the bed.

"What?" Yoongi asked stupidly.

"You warm up too," Taehyung repeated and lifted the blanket to show what he meant.

Yoongi was about to decline when a shiver made his body shake. It would be stupid not to take the offer. This was about their health and well-being and not about something sexual, after all.

He dropped his cane somewhere close to the bed and slipped into Taehyung's arms. A sigh escaped him when the warmth of the blanket embraced him. Taehyung's body was cold, but the blanket was making up nicely for it. It was lovely.

Yoongi didn't notice when he drifted off into sleep.

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