"Those patterns take away my time."

~P

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"Shit."

Yoongi turns to Jimin, who is currently gripping his phone with an expression that looks like a person who saw their grandma get run over by a train right in front of their eyes.

He hopes that isn't the case, but better to have his fingers crossed than be sorry.

"What?" Yoongi asks tentatively.
"This is bad. Really bad." He's lost in his own bubble as his lips set into a hard line, Adam's apple bobbing as he continues to blink down at his phone. The blond looks between him and the screen, then furrows his eyebrows.

"What's wrong, babe?" he asks, voice softening, then resists the urge to balk at his own affection. Babe of all things? He remembers a time when he gagged just thinking about using pet names, but now, they flowed off his tongue like water. And better yet, Jimin liked them, and his smile became something to look forward to instead of dread.

The strings of his heart tug closer to him every time he focuses a little too hard on making coffee or asks for thirds on his cooking. It's becoming harder and harder to push him away, pretend he's unaffected. The mission is blurry in his mind even as he thinks about it, and he wonders if it's worth sacrificing what he could have just to avenge someone who can't rise from the grave to do it himself, only for bitterness to shroud him like hungry vines.

It's the fate he always knew he was marching toward, but it didn't mean he liked it any more than he did that fateful night. When everything changed. When he had to grow the fuck up and wipe the blood that obscured his father's form in the picture frame next to his desk.

Never forgiven, never forgotten. That is the mantra he can't release for his sake.

Jimin shifts on the bed.

"Taehyung's dad died," he says.

"Oh."

Is he supposed to care? Is he supposed to comfort him? Mild panic settles in. Is this the time to tell him everything's going to be okay, or be angry at the world alongside him? Had Jimin mentioned Taehyung's father before as someone he particularly cared about, or is he just empathetic enough to expect him to react the same way?

Luckily, he doesn't have to pick a side, because Jimin continues.

"This is so sudden. He didn't even talk about him that much. Well, he's not really a touchy-feely guy, but I feel like he would've said something if his dad was terminally ill or something, right?"

"I guess so." Yoongi goes back to looking at his phone, then glances back up again to see Jimin's eyes welling up with tears, head down as to appear busy on his phone, as well, but he's never been good at hiding his emotions. "Are you okay?"

He makes an attempt at shrugging, but it comes off more like a half-dead fish trying desperately to prove that it's alive and well. "I just know what it feels like to lose someone close to me."

"Eun-jin?" Yoongi asks tentatively, to which Jimin meets his eyes in a whirl of confusion.

"How'd you know her name?"

"You say it in your sleep sometimes. I just guessed."

"For all you could know, she's a chick I banged..." Jimin trails off, voice thick and not even able to finish the deflection without biting his lip in order to stop himself from crying. Yoongi puts a hand on his and pulls himself a little closer. Not enough to smother his boundaries, but enough to know that he's here.

"Jimin," he murmurs, tracing flowers on the boy's knuckles. He imagines red blooming over the tendons that flex over the skin now, trying to hold in the tension that will certainly destroy him. He doesn't reply. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about?" Jimin asks bitterly. "It was years ago. I barely... barely remember." He swallows thickly, then angles his body toward Yoongi ever so slightly for the subconscious body warmth he seeks. His eyes tell all. They remember. And they will never forget.

"Who was she?"

As if his lips have a mind of their own, Jimin utters in painfully clear words, "My sister."

It takes every fiber of Yoongi's willpower to conceal the growing horror that threatens to boil over into something dangerous.

No. NO.

(Stay away from Jimin and his sister.)

All this time, he thought the pictures he saw on Taehyung's phone at the party was a potential victim, not someone who has already succumbed to the evils of a broken world. That his business with him was, at most, linked by common ground in one enemy.

He remembers the flicker of emotion in the man's eyes before it was replaced by glossy obsidian. He thought it was incredulity at the mention of harming Jimin, but as he replays the conversation in his mind, he realizes it was human panic. So unlike his brother, who is able to hide anything and everything behind that mask of his. This is only the sad mockery of him, what Taehyung has strived to be in his cool indifference.

"I can't even imagine that kind of pain," Yoongi says blankly. A partial truth.

Jimin lets out a breath, then snaps, "Why does everyone tell me that? Are you all reading from the same script or something?" The outburst takes Yoongi aback enough for him to shake his head frantically. Heat slowly bubbles around them.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think-

"No one ever does," Jimin says, but the words come out choked and garbled. "They say they can't imagine my pain, but they've never even tried! Do you know what it feels like to be the one to discover the only person who's ever been... who's ever been there for you-" A pause to hold back a throaty sob. "-keeled over in a bathtub? Wondering whether she... she d-drowned or bled out first?"

He can't continue, pushing his lover away to breathe heavily into his hands, scabbed-over wounds cut open by the knife of painful evocation, and Yoongi looks upon it all.

He can't decide whether to stay or go. Whether to be sad first or angry first.

What have you done, Kim Taehyung?

"I... I lost my father in the same way," Yoongi says slowly. "Not in the exact same way, but close enough to where it counts. I'm the one who called the cops."

No details, but he doesn't need it. The image is clear in both of their heads. The description of the room won't bring him back, devoid of sentiments except for a small family portrait overlooking the cherry desk.

The memories he should've cherished—or simply not made at all in the case of the many dramatic episodes they got themselves into concerning Yoongi's monthly allowance—slip and pull, sometimes rushing at him so quickly that he physically falls back.

He used to look at his father's dimples when he couldn't bring himself to look him in the eyes, and as the years went by, they deepened and deepened until they were an integral part of his face. His hands were firm but soft, good for holding when he felt a surge of affection for the man. His eyes held knowledge he always seemed eager to share, but Yoongi wasn't interested at the time. They never hardened in his son's presence.

They were open in terror when Yoongi found him. He did him one last service by closing them.

Jimin looks up, eyes bleary with tears.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, reaching over to grab his hand so hard the blond is afraid he might sprain it.

Sorry for your loss, sorry for being mad at something you couldn't help, sorry for assuming you didn't know.

"I am, too."

They envelope themselves in the city traffic outside, the call of an owl, the crunch of a paw on leaves. It grounds them to reality, tethers their string to something concrete as to watch the sky fade without joining them completely.

But they wonder, what gems fill the stars? If the moon were to burst open, would it sprinkle its secrets onto mortals, or keep the gift of forgotten history to itself as an act of generosity?

"What helped you snap out of it? Y'know, the initial shock," Jimin finally says, and Yoongi looks at him impassively.

"Friends."

The shapes and colors only conceivable in a disturbed mind during sleep, stroking his hair and committing plots of revenge to memory, ones that haunt him with each footstep. They are his true friends. The others left long ago, as soon as they realized the old Yoongi was in his father's grave.

"And you?" Yoongi asks. "How did you, uh, snap out of it?"

"Guess the same as you. Well, Taehyung, more specifically. Not like he was my friend before she, um." Jimin doesn't elaborate, and the blond doesn't need it as his brain latches onto that singular word like a viper laying waste to a robin's egg. How does he keep snaking his way into the equation?

"How did he help?"

This is worse than he thought. Not only does this put into question what exactly Taehyung has in his arsenal, but involving himself in the crosshairs of his current victim's life is simply a choice for his amusement, not an established ritual he's cooked up somewhere down the line.

He is unpredictable, and whether that comes from being a rookie or a veteran in these matters, there is no option for Yoongi to stay out of it anymore. The evil has permeated into the second son, and like a weed, it must be purged at the root before it spreads too far.

How will he make it out of this spider web alive?

"Well, he doesn't know this," Jimin starts, "but we met about a week after the funeral. I was fresh out of high school, and in my mental state, I wasn't even thinking about getting a job, and my parents certainly weren't rushing to get me out of the house, but he told me about a new position at The Rose Petal and asked if I was looking for hire.

"I don't know what it is, but something made me say yes. Maybe it was the compassion in his voice when he talked to me. No one ever talked to me like that." He shakes his head, then rubs his temples as the pressure of old memories builds upon his crown. "And I know this sounds cheesy, but I feel like it was... Fate, or something, like we met for a reason. The timing was just a little too impeccable, y'know?"

Oh, he knows. All too well. Seokjin was the same way, prancing into his life pretending to be some starstruck actor who wanted a mentor to guide him through the entertainment industry, but even from the beginning, there was something rigid about him. He learned not to look the man in the eyes after the first time he did so, and he let his father do it, instead.

They promised an unmerciful death.

But this is his chance to correct his wrongs. Taehyung stole a life, and Yoongi was put into Jimin's to steal it back.

"A karmic cycle," the blond says grimly, and Jimin tilts his head to the side thoughtfully.

"I guess so," he says, then yawns, opting to lie down while Yoongi trails after him with curious eyes. Carefully, as if afraid to disturb the sheets, he follows suit.

Once again, they are on an island of their own making, the city all around them.

Yoongi focuses on Jimin's breaths and sinks further into his pillow, his eyelids feeling the weight of sleep in thick waves. Is this too bad? A domestic boyfriend to look forward to every night after work, living as the couple who keeps a private garden in the back that serves as the neighborhood's envy. Healing each other in ways they wouldn't be able to discern until they looked back on their younger days years later. They are victims of the same evil, the same sin. 

The string tying them together is thin but stronger than titanium; they escaped the wrath of the Kim family by a fraction of an inch, yet the ones closest to them fell in their place.

Now is not the time to be alone in his thoughts, and Yoongi murmurs, "Come here," beckoning with a lazy finger. Jimin obediently pulls himself into his embrace, listening to his heartbeat race as he clutches at his shoulders, waist, hair.

All of their energy went into bearing their souls to each other, and even then, Yoongi still feels the shadow on his heart asking to be unveiled. He quiets it with a swallow. There are some things that are better left unsaid, and the fierce protection he felt over Jimin wouldn't allow him to open his mouth, anyway.

Yoongi peeks over at him, who is beginning to nod off into the blissful silence of sleep. His eyes are puffy from tears, and he resists the instinct to wipe the dried streaks away with a simple gesture. They mark him as a survivor. His lips part, sucking in precious oxygen from the crook of the blond's arm.

And in that moment, Yoongi knows he has never seen true beauty until now.

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안녕 여러분! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and
got some insight into yoonmin's relationship
and their past! What are your
thoughts on what will happen next?
Please let me know.

QOTD: what's your favorite mythical
creature?

Mine is definitely the gumiho (9 tailed fox).
I grew up with the stories and always thought they were
cool as shit. Also, pretty girls eating my liver?
Yes please.

Until next time, happy reading!

Love,
Haneul