https://youtu.be/wKysONrSmew

A/N: This story is based off the RUN MV, as shown above. I'd highly recommend watching it before you read the story, or you'll be lost. 

For those of you who're not familiar with K-pop, these are the characters:

Yoongi

Jungkook

Namjoon

Taehyung

Jimin

Hoseok

Seokjin

There are also some 'golden pairings' for this video, essentially two complementary characters. These are:

Yoongi and Jungkook

Namjoon and Taehyung

Jimin and Hoseok

Now that that's done, let's get on with the story :)

Two sugars in his coffee—black—and a fucking candy, for whatever reason. Jungkook can't get it out of his head, because Namjoon never used to drink coffee. Not black. He can't stand bitter, not like Taehyung could. Strange, really, how different they'd been—how different they still are, if only in that that Taehyung's—gone, gone, he's gone—and Namjoon's still here, trying to dig for himself a place in Taehyung's grave where he'll never quite fit. 

They never did find the body, and even if it's only Seokjin who sees him there, still there, flailing in the water in that favorite goddamn Nirvana t-shirt of his—but alive, alive—they all feel it in the air. Him. Taehyung's presence hangs over them—what's left of them—like something solid, sealing their airways like molten glass whenever words venture close to voicing it.

Namjoon will never say it, either, but Jungkook knows. It's his curse, knowing. He's taken to following Namjoon's thoughts around, and he knows the drill by heart. He'll wake up. Curse himself for waking up, and then get up anyway. Brew his coffee and take the ten steps down the railway lines from one construction-site tenement to the other. 

And Jungkook knows, too, that in the brief eternity that passes between the two firm knocks and the way the door creaks on its hinges when Namjoon pulls it open, he sees them. The ghosts—not the mortal, live, breathing ones of himself and Yoongi that echo in the emptiness of the house, but the ones he'd rather dwell with. 

Jungkook can hear the ringing laughter in Namjoon's head, laughter that was once human, once theirs, now tinny from distance and the background blare of old records and layers upon layers of mindless conversation suspended in the air. He doesn't have to be able to see into people's heads to know that it's the reason Namjoon moved out, the shadows and the voices and the stray confetti that even now litters the crevices behind the doors.

"Joon, morning." It comes out abrupt, skittish, as Jungkook turns to greet him, wonders why he even tries with the endearment when he can see—read—that it infuriates Namjoon. He hides it well—so well, in fact, that though Jungkook can read like a book the chasm between his thoughts and actions, he's somehow compelled to disregard the suspicion—frustration, irritation—that Namjoon's thoughts are rife with, and feign his best attempt at normalcy. Like he doesn't know that Namjoon's almost sure he knows something. More than he's letting on. "How's Jin doing?"

"Fine. He's fine." It's an outright lie, and Jungkook fights the urge to grit his teeth. Sometimes he wonders if Namjoon can sense him there, hovering at the peripheries of his consciousness, if he knows that Jungkook knows he's barely spoken two words to Seokjin since the two of them moved away. Either way, the other man forces a smile that would've deceived Jungkook if he couldn't see the exact moment that's haunted Namjoon since that night play out inside his head. Taehyung knocking over the house of cards, Seokjin's very first prophecy. The beginning of the end. 

"I don't see Yoongi around."

"Still in bed," Jungkook says, as if Namjoon doesn't know that Yoongi doesn't get out of bed most mornings—most days. He wonders if Namjoon can sense it, too, with his uncanny intuition—that he's almost glad of it, because the emptiness is easier to bear than Yoongi's dark anger and sullen eyes. 

He can't understand it, Yoongi's impotent rage—but maybe it's part of his curse, too, not being able to muster up emotion in the face of what he knows is coming. He can't understand, either—but now there's a creaking of bed springs in the far room, a clattering that means for sure that Yoongi's up and has knocked something over first thing in the morning, and Jungkook saves that thought for later. It's a part of being able to read others' thoughts, the feeling that your own are never safe from intrusion.

Footsteps, then—and Yoongi comes trudging into the room, hair sleep-mussed and dark smudges under his eyes. Jungkook wishes he knew more, knew what went into the new, tiny lines that have formed around Yoongi's mouth since Taehyung—has a feeling it's not just that, but Yoongi's thoughts are a stone wall every time he tries to encroach. 

He can't get through, doesn't know, never knows with Yoongi—and any words they have to say to each other just disappear into a void that feels like jagged edges and Taehyung, seeking a response, getting none.

"Hey," Yoongi mumbles, goes to brew himself his morning coffee. "Shit morning to you too. You want some coffee?"

He throws the last over his shoulder at Namjoon, like he doesn't know that the better part of the other's jumbo-sized coffee is gracing the railway tracks somewhere in between the two houses like it does every morning, that he fucking hates coffee, even, that he's just trying to grab at a past that insists on slipping away. 

There's so much they don't say now—and Jungkook finds it almost impossible to believe that it was them, laughing like that two months ago in the polaroids strewn across the coffee table. Before Taehyung going crazy, before the arrests and the cops hammering down the door.

"Nah, I'm good," Namjoon says, and Jungkook marvels at how his eyes don't cloud over even when his head's back there again, back with Taehyung and spray paint-stained fingers and graffitied shop shutters—those nights where there was nothing to do but run from the cops, run run run down the dead-end road of flashing lights, red and blue, and the kiss of cold metal against skin. 

He'd laughed, then, Taehyung, and Jungkook could see in his head the slow decay of sanity, the slow overtake of ruin that had only hinted at the edges all their five years together as the seven of them. And Namjoon had smiled at him up against the cop car, the way he'd only ever smiled when it was just the two of them—like they were running out of time, like Namjoon was so afraid he'd forgotten to be afraid—of Seokjin's words and his eyes that pieced together fragments of the future like an ill-fitting shirt.

But Namjoon wants Jungkook to go now, he knows, can read it in his head—wants him to fuck off so he can discuss his suspicions with Yoongi, and honestly, Jungkook has had it up to here with everything. He's not the only one lying, or the only one hiding for fucksakes, and he wonders why Namjoon can't just let it be. 

Taehyung—he was crazy, maybe he'd always been a bit crazy—and yeah, it'd been Namjoon who'd loved him still. And if he couldn't forgive Seokjin for seeing the imminent, or himself for not being able to prevent it, do something—if he could force himself to stay with that reminder of his powerlessness in the form of Seokjin's unwavering, all-seeing eyes out of sheer guilt, Jungkook shudders to think what he'd have to say to him for knowing exactly what, and for not acting.

"...I'm going to take a shower," Jungkook mutters, trudges out of the room, but the walls are thin, and even if he didn't have the steady stream of Namjoon's thought flowing into his head, he could hear their lowered voices if he strained his ears. Hiding something...yes, I'm sure...no one can just stand by and watch like that...

------------------------------------------------------------------

Jungkook strips off. Turns on the shower and closes his eyes, and tries to empty his mind of the constant background hum of thought, thought, thought. Like a moth to flame, like an animal tied to a grazing post, without the buffer of foreign thought to distract him, he keeps drifting back to that night where everything ended, and nothing began. Taehyung's last hurrah. 

He'd seen—thought, read—him planning, right down the last detail, how everything would end. Seokjin would drive. He'd stop traffic. The rest of them, they'd live out their crazies—vandalize, spray paint-stained fingers again, let themselves into Taehyung's little world. One last time, they'd go out with a bang. And when they had to run from the cops, Taehyung had known exactly where he'd lead them.

The bridge. They've never gone back, none except Namjoon, but Jungkook can see it clear as yesterday even if isn't looking into Namjoon's head. How Taehyung's body had looked strangely graceful as it'd fallen thirty feet—how all of them had stood frozen in place, Yoongi, Namjoon, even the cops. And then them trying to take the rest of them in, and Jimin and Hoseok—Jimin and Hoseok.

Jungkook hasn't thought of them much, tried not to think of them beyond the vague facts—resistance to arrest, insanity plea, some asylum somewhere—because in a way he's jealous, wants to be far away, too, from the ghosts alive and dead that encroach on his sleep and wakefulness alike. But mostly, he's jealous of their blind rage, shock, disbelief—all that which comes from not knowing. 

He envies their voices.

The water's getting cold, now, but Jungkook lets it wash over him, numbing him from the inside out in the autumn chill. Doesn't open his eyes even as his fingertips and lips lose sensation, maybe it's best that way, maybe it's his time to go, too—just like this. In that same place where they lived out some of their best, thoughtless memories—the cups, the fairy lights, and again, again the confetti. 

Memories flash through his head faster than he can keep track of, Jimin in the tub, then Seokjin, drenched, soaked through from head to toe, streams of silver confetti reflecting in the droplets—but never Taehyung. Never him, and Jungkook briefly wonders, shivering, if it was that—if it was them that gave him the idea, going from subject to object. And who the fuck is he kidding, pretending to be normal, he knows. 

It's his curse, knowing. And he can end it right here and now, sinking to the floor, legs too numb to hold him up. This can be over, this can end. And for once, for all, his mind is blissfully blank. The ice-cold water doesn't even hurt, doesn't feel like anything, anything at all—until—

"Jungkook, what the fuck?"

The door bursts open and it's Yoongi—Yoongi is running over to him, Yoongi is yanking him out of the shower and turning it off, Yoongi is wrapping a towel tight around him and hauling his sensationless body to sit on the sofa. He's getting more towels, a blanket, draping them over Jungkook as the shivers start to hit, he's feeding him hot coffee through his chattering teeth. And Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut.

"Why..." he managed to get out though a tongue that feels heavy and stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Yoongi just looks at him with an odd expression, which quickly hardens into a glare.

"I should be asking you that, you asshole," he spits out. "What do you think you're playing at, pulling that stunt? You think we can handle this? One more of us—one more—"

Yoongi seems lost for words, and Jungkook puts it down to that same black rage that's hung over him since he'd watched, frozen, Taehyung's body falling through the air, peaceful almost, the soundless splash when it hit the water an eternity later.

"I'm sorry, Yoongi," Jungkook mumbles, but proffers no further explanation. They sit there, side by side in silence, watching the sky blush and darken—how did time pass so quickly?—and Jungkook feels more keenly than ever the presence of the void between them—and who knew it'd come to this? 

They never had much to say to each other in any case, Yoongi and Jungkook—both introverts—but the silence had always been a comfortable one. They'd had something, the two of them, something beyond words, something—but maybe Jungkook had been imagining things, making up explanations he couldn't see inside Yoongi's head to confirm.

"Sorry my ass." Yoongi mutters, and the same, indescribable look is back in his eyes as Jungkook raises an eyebrow at him. Something tells him he shouldn't, but he still asks.

"What is it?"

"What is what?" It's so brief Jungkook doesn't know if he imagined it, but he could've sworn he sees Yoongi's eyes flicker. And if for nothing else but that fleeting glimmer of emotion, he presses on.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

For a moment, Yoongi hesitates, like he's on the brink of words. Slowly, carefully, like he's testing out every syllable, he speaks.

"Jungkook, do you..." he stops, takes in a breath and thinks better of what he's going to say. Shakes his head. "Never mind. You need to rest. Go to your room and sleep, yeah?"

It's not the cold, the shivers have stopped. It's something else that sends a chill down Jungkook's spine even as he nods wordlessly and gets to his feet, feeling the abyss between them grow and deepen. 

Without being able to read Yoongi's thoughts, even, he knows that this conversation's a dead end. And he almost doesn't need the message that lights up on his phone a half-hour later when he's in bed and trying to grasp at the sleep that stubbornly eludes him.

Jin

[21:48] Be careful. Yoongi.