The bed sheet rope was dangling from the window just like it always was when he returned for neither Hoseok nor his parents ever seemed to look out of the kitchen windows and see the knotted length of white cotton dangling from the eaves, dancing in the gentle breeze like a surrender flag. He had been relying on this fact because it was really the safest way to leave the house without causing any concern, without having questions and attempted chaperones trying to tag along behind him.

Taehyung climbed the back fence, lifting himself up in a quick clean motion to drop on the other side. His boots thumped in the low grass and he glanced at his hands to see little specks of paint on his palms. He roughly dusted them off on his jeans and glanced up at the open window, squinting slightly because the sun reflected off the glass back at his eyes. It was so bright out that for once he wasn't wearing a jacket, and he felt oddly naked with his bare arms on display. He might not have scars like Yoongi to want to cover, nothing more than faint scratches on his tanned flesh from years ago: falls and scrapes, the results of his father's hands, but he still didn't feel right being so...exposed. It was as if his skin could lay bare all of his secrets, and Taehyung had enough to want to keep buried, to carry to the grave with him if needed. He reached up to trace a particularly jagged little scratch, from a jutting edge of slate on the side of the roof he had been scaling one evening. Then he crossed the garden to get to the rope and then he reached up to grab a handful, twisting it tightly around his hand so that he could drag himself up and seize another handful.

That was the worst part of it all really, the chaperoning. Everything had been hard to adjust to, the sharing of a home that wasn't a single floor with broken windows and the sounds of people yelling outside the thin door at all hours; sitting at a table to eat food rather than hunkered down under the awnings of closed stores before moving on. He had tried leaving in the company of one of his parents way back shortly after moving into the house and had found it unbearable. It might have had something to do with the fact that his friend's mother had dragged him to a supermarket like an actual son and had tried to get him to talk to her. Passing the booze aisle, after nearly two weeks of being dry and sober, he had strongly considered grabbing one of the bottles and cracking it open just to get her to stop asking questions. It wasn't just about him, oh no, she made sure to ask about Hoseok too. Never in a way that seemed intrusive, all smiles and soft words, maybe with the sensation of her hand on his upper arm that would be enough to make his stomach feel all tight and hard.

He didn't need parents touching him. He had had enough of that as a child.

So, whilst wandering the aisles of the store he had had her picking her at his stitches without even knowing; at the loose threads that his friends had barely managed to suture his wounds with, and he had never wanted to be left alone in her company again. Even if she meant no harm by it, if it was weird maternal thing, Taehyung couldn't stand the attention.

He reached the top of the rope after a little effort, having to bunch the fabric up tightly in his hands and grip the lengths between his boots as he shimmied up it, and by the time he managed to swing himself up and grab hold of the window frame he could feel a sweat breaking out on his brow. He dragged himself up so that he could sit on the sill for a moment. He reached up to wipe at his brow and then brushed his hair back off his face roughly. He really did need to cut it at some point, take a pair of scissors to it and cut it back choppily like always, but he couldn't seem to find scissors in Hoseok's room. Taehyung stuck the tip of his tongue out to wet his lips and he tasted sweat on the very edge of his upper lip. His gaze shifted to settle on the bed, which still looked as messy as always, the sheets wrinkled and the covers kicked down to the bottom.

It had been exactly a month since the most deepest secret of his had been dragged painfully to light, or to be more precise, their secret. Needless to say he had been staunchly avoiding his friend's father since the man had walked in on them both in a very compromising situation, having returned home earlier than usual and been drawn upstairs by the loud music that had been blaring from his son's bedroom. It was hard to look another man in the eyes after being caught enthusiastically riding his son in rhythm to a sleazy rock song. In fact it was more than hard, it was impossible, which was why he had taken to living in Hoseok's bedroom in an almost perfect imitation of his actions of the previous year. It wasn't even about the sex, not really. It was the fact that Taehyung knew that his parents were not at all pleased with their relationship. The relationship that Hoseok had kept hidden under the guise of a strong friendship all for nothing in the end. Hoseok had told him one night, fingers tracing along his jawline slowly, that it didn't matter if his parents didn't approve because they couldn't change his feelings; that soon enough he would find a way of moving out with him and then it wouldn't matter at all. It would be just the two of them, and their friends: perfect. But that wasn't the point. Taehyung couldn't stand being in the company of yet another set of parents that disliked him, even hated him maybe. He was the washed up recovering alcoholic of eighteen years of age, fucking their son with his fantastic grades and causing a lot more trouble than needed.

Taehyung already had one set of parents that hated him. He didn't need another set too.

He shifted to get off the windowsill, grabbing the bed sheet rope and pulling it up. He looped it around his forearm and then he followed the lengths down to the desk chair to unknot it from around the leg. Once it was neatly wrapped up he crossed the room to store it back in his friend's wardrobe, burying it away under backpacks to keep it hidden, and then he went back over to the chair. On it he had stacked countless books, college textbooks, photo albums, books that Hoseok seemingly read for fun though he found that hard to believe. He needed them to anchor the chair in place and hold his weight when descending the side of the house, and right now he needed to put them back where they belonged before his friend returned. So he picked up a handful and carried them over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room, carefully placing them back in the right order: alphabetical by author names rather than book titles. If Taehyung had been given the chance to organise he would have put them all on in colour order, made a rainbow out of boring old books with creased spines. As he did this he hummed under his breath and when he was finally finished he pushed the chair back under the desk. He was about to move and throw himself back down on the bed when he heard footsteps on the staircase and he paused, leg cocked up in the air in front of him stupidly. A few seconds later the door swung open and in stepped Hoseok.

His friend was so distracted with his phone in hand that he didn't even look up as he entered the room, closing the door behind him as he ran his thumb along the screen. Then he glanced up at him and after a second or so he registered that he was standing there and he smiled at him. Taehyung realised how stupid he looked standing there, looked like he had been caught in the act of doing something, which he almost had been.

"Hey," Hoseok said as he locked his phone and shoved it into his trouser pocket. "You OK?"

"Uh yeah, yeah I'm good," he replied with a nod. It was a little too bouncy, too forced, and he wondered if he would notice this. Yet his friend seemed to preoccupied crossing the room to dump his bag on the bed. Taehyung watched him pulling things out of it; a cardigan that he mostly certainly wouldn't have needed in this current weather, his name tag, a bottle of water that was practically empty, and lastly his diary and a handful of pens. These went onto the side table and then he sat down and crossed his legs on the bed. He saw that his feet were bare and that was when he remembered that he still had his own boots on. He was supposed to have spent his entire day in this house, in this bedroom, and yet he had his boots on. That was about as obvious as the bed sheet rope.

"I feel you're like a pet," Hoseok remarked as he placed his notebook on his knee, soft smile on his face. "Waiting at home for me every single day."

If only Hoseok knew that most days he wasn't in the house but rather walking down the streets of the capital, busking for spare change on street corners. Of course he had no clue, he had never caught him in the act and there was no way that he would find the actual cash where he had hidden it; crumpled notes cramped into an old wallet beneath a loose floorboard. He had made sure to check under it every few days, had counted the notes religiously to make sure that nothing had been taken. So far over the course of a year he had quite an amount saved up, enough to afford several months in a hostel should he need to. It was an emergency stash, just in case. He didn't want to be caught up in the middle of a family argument and find himself on the streets without a single won to his name. Not again, he didn't need to repeat what had happened those few years back all over like an endless cycle. If he went, he went with a boot full of won notes at least.

"Just try and get me on a leash," Taehyung responded as he shifted to shove his hands into his back pockets. Whenever he was nervous they would start to shake, an annoying habit that his drinking had left him with.

"Is that a challenge?" Hoseok asked as he opened the diary and flicked through the pages, glancing up at him as he did. He grinned at him and sat down on the bed beside him, shifting to place his head on his shoulder. The pages he went through were covered in his neat print and he didn't know what any of it said, just catching the occasional words before he turned to the next. Taehyung could smell coffee on his clothing and he wasn't at all surprised for he spent many hours around it, had little stained specks on the rolled up cuffs. When he breathed in he felt warm and secure in the most intangible way.

"No, think I'll pass," Taehyung replied as he shifted his gaze up to study the side of his face. "Are you OK?"

"Uh-huh," his friend nodded and the movement made his jaw brush against the side of his head, against his hair. "Today was a good day." The bedroom fell silent for a minute, nothing but the sound of traffic bleeding in through the window. The downstairs was empty, both parents at work, so they had quite a few hours between themselves to talk. Hoseok stopped turning the pages and then he sighed. "It was good, I suppose. I mean, today was strange you know?" Taehyung let this hang in the air for a moment before asking him what he meant by that. "On the way to see Doctor Lee I was thinking. I was supposed to be writing in my diary but I started thinking and then, before I knew it, I was drawing this."

Hoseok turned the page one last time, the paper rustling as he pressed down to keep the diary open. Taehyung saw that there was some writing in front of him but his eyes barely registered it before focusing on the sketch that had taken up most of the page. His friend he always been good at art, fantastic even for good didn't seem to convey just how talented he was. Over the years he had greatly enjoyed eyeing the tiny doodles at the corners of pages, the inside covers of textbooks that he wasn't supposed to draw on covered in a collage of random thoughts and images. He had watched him fill up portfolios with actual art: chalk, pencil, paint, watercolour, even print, and yet Taehyung often found that he loved those little doodles more. They were raw, fleeting seconds captured in lines of ink that would be forgotten about minutes later, and that fragility made him love every single one. The sketch in front of him looked to have started out as a doodle before it had rapidly gotten out of hand. He could see the skeletal lines that had been added upon, layers and layers of blue ink thickening them into solid lines. The subject matter was that of a train track stretching forward, lined by trees and thick grass. He could see every little stroke of ink and he knew that the length of grass would reach his shins if he could step inside. He almost felt like he could, for the depth perception of the sketch was immense. The track ran to a point in which he could almost see the edges of the line touching, like they would in reality.

"Tae?" Hoseok asked, yet his voice sounded faint to his ears.

Looking at the sketch made Taehyung feel like he had been dragged backwards, hooked by a memory that had snagged onto his very soul and tugged hard. He was in the bedroom and yet he wasn't. Right now he could see more than the blue lines in front of him. He could see the actual tracks. They were rusted metal with wooden slats between them, pebbles caught in the dusty soil. The sunlight fell down over the tops of those trees, making him almost feel the need to shield his eyes from the glare, reflecting on the trash scattered all of the field; bottles, food wrappers, rusted cans. The sunlight even had a weight to it, a heat that he could feel on his skin. He could scent the perfume of sweet grass over the pungent exhaust fumes, the sound of the traffic rumbling along the road behind the trees and the distant echo of laughter.

"Hey Tae?"

Taehyung finally managed to take a breath and that was when he recalled that he was still in the bedroom, with Hoseok; his head balanced on his warm and soft shoulder with the scent of coffee on his work shirt. He could feel the rounded curve of his shoulder against his cheek, faintly hear his heartbeat, and yet he was so badly disoriented that it took him a moment to accept this. Then his friend was shifting to knock his head free, to cup his chin and turn his face towards him.

"Huh?"

"Are you OK?" Hoseok asked, and Taehyung realised that he had went blank and distant on him, that he had been staring at the diary like he had never seen one before. He made a soft noise at this and then reached up to place his hand on the back of his. His own hand was shaking and he wasn't surprised at all.

"The uh...the tracks it uh," Taehyung wet his lips. "It made me think about the ones, y'know? The ones outside of Seoul?" His friend confirmed that he did, of course he remembered. "It was weird, looking at the sketch just made me think about it." Hoseok reached up with his free hand to run his fingers through his hair and the contact was enough to make his fingers stop shaking. "Shit, it's been so long but it feels like-like-"

"Like yesterday," he finished for him in a soft voice, fingers trailing through his hair and then back down across his brow. "Yes, it feels just like yesterday, I know what you mean."

"I can still feel it," Taehyung explained. "The sun and the sensation of the soil crunching under my boots, can hear all of you guys talking shit." The remark made Hoseok laugh. "But it's been a whole year. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel that long at all and...I can't remember a lot of what happened y'know? The nights mostly, I was tuh-too drunk to remember a lot of it," Taehyung said this quickly, trying to not let the thoughts of alcohol get back onto his mind. It was enough to make him want to scrunch his face up, from shame mostly but also from that little ache in the pit of his stomach that just felt like a shot of soju would be heavenly right now. A year dry and he still felt like shit every time his eyes settled on a bottle of booze, when he saw it on a TV screen clutched in an actor's hand, on a supermarket shelf. Even glasses of wine and champagne were enough to make his mouth go as dry as carpet. "But I remember that part," he finished. "I was sober then I think. We had only just started the adventure then, so I wasn't as...as bad as I got."

"It was a good day, I remember it too. Even when I had a headache and I was taking those stupid pills I can remember that that was a good day. I never would have thought that a place like that would exist just out of the city, the old train tracks and the forest. Like something out of a fairy tale." He made a noise in agreement and Hoseok let go of his face, turning back to glance at the diary. "It's the kind of memory I'll treasure the most, the kind I'll think of instead of the bad."

"It's hard for me to not think about the bad," Taehyung muttered as his friend closed the book over with a sigh. "'Specially when I caused all of it."

"No, you didn't cause all of it. Not at all." Hoseok shook his head in rapid denial. "We all caused trouble together, all of us. You started the adventure and if it wasn't that then I don't know where we would even be right now."

"...What'd you mean?"

"The adventure, it caused a lot of shit. Yes, we all know that it caused a lot of shit, but it also helped us," his friend explained, running his fingers along the cover of the diary so that he could trace the embossed letters. "All our problems with growing up, we're still overcoming them right now but we've started getting better. The adventure helped us get better."

Taehyung watched his finger moving along the book, slow and carefully. His words seemed to be floating in the air around his head rather than going into his head. The idea that he might have done something that had resulted in a positive change, rather than an entirely negative, was an idea that he couldn't possibly understand. He reached up to start tapping his fingers on his lips, feeling rough skin from where he had gnawed on it constantly. Hoseok's lips were always so soft and smooth. How he could stand feeling his chapped raw lips against his he didn't even know.

"Do you want to go out?" his friend asked suddenly, shifting on the bed as he did so that he could face him. He balanced his weight on one wrist and cocked his head at him softly. Taehyung lifted his gaze and studied him for a moment. "Just for a walk, or whatever. Just to get out and clear your head."

"...OK."

The last time that he could recall leaving Hoseok's family home in the company of another person, rather than sneaking out of the bedroom window, was two weeks ago. It had been to meet with the others except Seokjin had been unable to come due to issues with college, and Hoseok had dragged him along with him because he had claimed that their friends had wanted to see him a lot. Taehyung had known that to be the truth and yet he had still found the idea of staying in the house instead more appealing because the sight of the trainyard was always enough to make his skin feel all clammy and leave him slightly breathless. It wasn't about seeing his friends again after everything for he greatly enjoyed that, even after all of the shit that he had put them all through - which according to Hoseok was apparently a good thing. It was just seeing the trainyard at the end of the tracks should he and Hoseok decide to walk along them, or sliding down the slope if his friend wanted to take a shortcut instead. He supposed that most people might find his breathlessness, the clammy skin, a sign of fear but that wasn't it.

Taehyung felt like he was stepping onto sacred ground whenever he entered the abandoned trainyard, sacred ground that he shouldn't be allowed near; ground on which promises were made, first kisses shared and happiness seemed to radiate from the open doors of the empty freight carriages. It was not the place for people like him, full of broken promises, filth and trouble. Entering the trainyard for Taehyung was like what he imagined the devil would feel should he step into a grand cathedral.

But they weren't going to go to the trainyard because his friend had started walking down the street in the complete opposite direction and he had pulled him along with him. Not by the wrist, like he had always done in the past whether or not Hoseok wanted his fingers in a vice around his wrist. No, his friend reached down to grab his hand, entwining his fingers within his in an unconscious way. Taehyung had often wondered if holding hands felt entirely normal to him or if it felt special. He wondered what his lover would think if he told him that the contact made his heart skip that little bit faster even when it was nothing more than palm brushing against palm and fingers linking together. It was as wonderful for him as their kisses were, the secretive lovemaking, and even Taehyung found it strange how calm the feel of his hand in his could make him.

When Hoseok gently pulled him down the street, hand in hand oblivious to any second glances they might get, he felt all of the thoughts about empty trainyards and train tracks leaving his mind and instead being replaced by a little peace. No more focus on the past but rather the present, no more worries about his fuck ups but rather his meager achievements over the last year. It wasn't great, like high school graduations and improved grades, like getting jobs and enrolling in college, but he had done something. He had managed to kick an addiction and that was no easy feat. Days filled with shaking hands and an ache in his stomach that wouldn't seem to go away, nights spent wide awake with hot and cold flushes and waking up sober from nightmares. Yes, Taehyung had achieved something and just because he didn't get a certificate and a celebration party didn't mean a thing.

"Y'know what?" he asked suddenly as he took a few quick steps, doing so that he was just slightly ahead of his friend. Taehyung turned so that he could look at him whilst walking. "We should go see Soobin."

"She won't be in school," Hoseok remarked as he dropped his gaze to their hands. "We might just be able to visit her."

The walk to the suburban neighbourhood that Soobin now lived in wasn't that far from Hoseok's house at all, just across a dozen or so blocks and several main roads. It had been just two days after Taehyung had first slept in his friend's home that Hoseok had dragged him across the city to collect his possessions from the old hostel room, claiming that he couldn't live in the same threadbare clothing that he had for the near month they had been on the road. Hoseok hadn't really been aware of the little possessions that he did possess, yet he had still dragged him there only to find that the room had been cleared a week prior. The old mattresses had been dumped in a skip at the bottom of the tenant block, whatever clothing and belongings that had been inside taken by the others in the block, and so Taehyung had went racing up the steps onto the very top floor to pound on the door he had once told the little girl to go to when she had needed help. That was when he had discovered that social services officers had come and turned the block upside in his absence; countless kids and young teens 'rescued' and taken away to a local centre. He and Hoseok had spent nearly three hours locating the building, upon his rather frantic insistence, and they had finally located the converted chapel after some helpful directions. Inside Taehyung had seen a few familiar faces from his months crashing in the hostel block, and a worker had finally relented and revealed information on Soobin when he had gotten down on his knees and had begged her. Soobin had been one of the lucky ones, a runaway kid that was pretty and still sweet enough to find herself being fostered within a few days of being in the centre.

Soobin's new parents were nothing like her uncle, a mean drunk that hated having the burden of his dead sister's child in his life. No, they were both working people: she a dentist and he an office worker, and they were also both very happy people. Upon first meeting them Taehyung had felt uncomfortable looking at their smiling faces and even now he was still getting used to it; getting used to the apparently common sight of happy parents that he had never personally experienced. It might have had something to do with the guilt he felt for leaving her in the hostel for such a long time on her own, with nothing more than a bundle of cash when she needed company, but in his absence she had gotten something much better than that. Soobin had gained a family just like he had, an actual family that didn't need to be blood to be real.

"You ever think about weird it would be to have a kid?" Hoseok asked suddenly, just a block or so between them and the girl's house. Taehyung studied his face for a moment and then asked him what he meant by that. "Don't you think it would be weird, having something like that, someone like that? A responsibility that's so much more important than anything else?"

"I'm used to watching over Soobin, she didn't really feel like a responsibility," he explained. "I feel like Jimin is more of a responsibility than she is."

"Looks who's talking!" Hoseok retorted with a laugh. "Jeez Tae, we were the ones watching over your ass remember? Besides, Jimin's matured a lot over the last year. He's not a kid anymore, or a pushover."

"Wow, I didn't think getting laid could change a person so much..." Taehyung felt his friend reaching over with his spare hand to smack the back of his head lightly. "You think a kid's something scary, huh?"

"I think holding another life in your hands is a scary thing, yes."

"Nah, not kids," he disagreed with a head shake. "Kids are easy, it's adults that're scary." His friend didn't react to this and he turned to look back over his shoulder at him. Hoseok was studying his shoes, right left, right left, rather than look at him. "I hope you get over that fear, I like kids..."

"What? You think that...that there will be kids in the future? That's what you're saying right now?" Taehyung nodded at at the question and Hoseok looked too shocked to even respond to this. "How?"

"Adoption." It took a few seconds for his friend to start laughing and when Hoseok reached up to cover his mouth with his hand Taehyung couldn't help but join in.

"Tae, you're eighteen years old. Sure kids sound like fun but when you realise they're not little brothers and sisters you also quickly realise how notfun it is."

"I want a kid before I hit twenty," Taehyung continued over him. "So I can still teach 'em all of the cool shit and be the best par...parent ever." The word slipped out and he didn't like the sensation of it on his tongue and he wondered if his friend had heard it or if it had been just a slight stutter.

"Twenty? Try fifty and the law might just allow you, allow us, to try adopting." He asked him if he thought that they would still be together by the time that they hit fifty. "...If I don't kill you first."

The house that Soobin lived in reminded Taehyung greatly of Hoseok's; with the perfect fence and the slight porch on the front door. The one major difference was that the outer walls were white unlike the deep grey of his friend's house, and there was a large blossom tree in the front lawn area. But it was a pretty home, a picture perfect one that Soobin greatly deserved after everything she had been through. As always Taehyung had to remember to open the front path rather than jump over it, because his friend would look at him funnily if he didn't; almost as if Hoseok was telling him that the people in this area didn't scale fences like action heroes and they would attract many stares if he did. The hinges on the fence didn't even creak because they were oiled and gleaming in the sunlight, and then Taehyung hastily went up the front path to get to the door, rolling his fist and knocking on the wood a few hard times.

"Why don't you beat the door down, huh Tae?" Hoseok joked sarcastically as he stepped up onto the porch.

"I could, but I'd rather beat you off lover boy." His friend sighed heavily at this even when he offered him his widest grin. Then he quietly told him to avoid making such jokes in front of children. "Pft, I was talking shit like this when I was a kid and-" The front door swung inwards and Taehyung stopped talking to look at it. On the other side of the door he saw Mrs. Oh, who had told him a great many times to call her Seohyun but he didn't like doing that. Shorter than him by a few inches with wide hips and long hair currently free around her face, she laid eyes on him first and then glanced over at his friend before smiling widely.

"Oh look who it is, I swear Soobie summons you two." She always referred to her by that name 'Soobie' and Taehyung had to admit that it was rather sweet; kinda like 'Kookie'. "She was just talking about you and here you are."

"Speak of the devil...and he shall appear," Taehyung remarked, to which Mrs. Oh laughed and corrected him, stating that he meant to say 'angels' instead. No, he very much felt that he had used the correct term and if the woman had any clue about the shit that they and their friends had caused then she would agree. Angels didn't battle alcoholism and self-harm, consider suicide and nearly commit homicide in a drunken rage, not like he and his friend.

"Would you like to come inside? I could make tea?"

"Actually, is OK for Soobin to come out?" he asked. "To the park or something, just for an hour or so. It won't get in the way of homework or shi-stuff."

"Soobie already finished all of it this morning. She's very good at maths. Hang on I'll go get her." Mrs. Oh closed the door over slightly and he saw her walking down the hallway through the frosted glass. Taehyung glanced over at his friend to see that there was a slight smile on his face, yet when he asked him what he was thinking about Hoseok just shook his head as if to say that it didn't matter. After near half a minute of waiting the door swung open fully again and he caught sight of a blur of movement before he felt something slam into his lower ribs.

"Ah! Man down!" Taehyung cried out dramatically as Soobin's arms went around his stomach almost ridiculously tight, so much strength in her now seven year old arms that he was rather amazed by it. When he reached down to ruffle her hair he noted how he didn't have to stoop as low as he had used to, and that meant that she was getting a little taller.

"Tae Tae it's been forever!" Soobin announced with an attempt at a grumpy pout. "Did you run away again?"

"Tae Tae was asleep the entire time," Hoseok explained. "Because he's lazy, right Tae Tae?"

"We'll see who's lazy tonight," Taehyung muttered out of the corner of his mouth before turning his attention back to the little girl. "Piggyback?"

Not only had Soobin gotten taller but he also quickly discovered that she had gotten heavier too. A lot of things changed over a single year it would seem. But her weight was nothing in comparison to what it had been like carrying semi-conscious Jungkook along the streets of an unknown city, bleeding and bruised and nearly broken. It had been strange carrying her when she had felt so light, almost as if she wasn't weighed down with worries or sins at all. If that was the case then Taehyung was pretty certain that he would be like an anchor for anyone else to carry. But Jimin has managed to carry him, and he supposed that that made his friends stronger than other people.

The park was at the end of the block and across a main road, large enough to take up most of the opposite street and ringed with fencing with rounded tops rather than pointed. The inside was made of dirt rather than rough tarmac like most parks, and there were benches and various equipment inside for the kids to play on: two large seesaws, three sets of swings from the smaller bucket seats for babies and larger ones for older children and maybe even teens. There was also a massive roundabout, a swing set with monkey bars on which a few young boys were swinging from, and a few rocking toys shaped like animals. Taehyung had passed this park a great many times in the past yet he had never paid attention to it, mostly because it was always nearly empty and he had had no need to, though he had had to leave notes once or twice for Jungkook to find because the boy had slept inside in the past. Now he looked at it as less as a shelter for the night and rather a place of enjoyment, the sound of sweet giggles carrying on the air.

When they got inside he let Soobin off his back and she eyed the seesaw instantly, grabbing his hand and pulling him across to get to it. Yet she required assistance from Hoseok to apply enough weight on her end to make it go up and down, for Taehyung was too heavy to balance the saw out. So his friend had to apply his weight on her end to let her down, and then shift back off to let her fly back up again, Soobin laughing uproariously every single time. Yet after a few attempts at this he noticed her looking over at a bunch of other girls and then she was asking Hoseok to help her off so he lifted her down off the seesaw and put her back down.

"Are you ever going to see them again Tae?" he asked him as he looked over at him, arms folded over his chest. Taehyung stayed seated on the seesaw for a moment, hands on the little metal handle as he watched Soobin race off towards the girls that had just broken scrunchies and hair brushes out in the middle of the park, seemingly ready to open a hair salon on the dusty ground. Then he glanced back at his friend and his face was hard to read. After a few seconds of silence he quietly asked him what he meant. "Your parents? Are you ever going to see them again?"

"...No," Taehyung replied with a head shake. "No, I'm not gonna see 'em again. What's the point? After all of that shit, after the...the beatings and the...hell I went through, nu-uh. I don't wanna see 'em again no matter what. Y'know that, I've told you before."

"Yes but, haven't you ever wondered what's going on with them right now?" Hoseok started running his fingers over his elbows, which he saw were practically perfect just like the rest of him. No scars like the pink line on Jimin's elbow, no rough and cracked patches of skin like his often looked like, from always picking and scratching and years of skinning them on concrete. "It's been a few years Tae, you've not seen them once since. I haven't, none of the others have either. I've never glanced across a supermarket aisle and saw your mother standing there, or passed your father on the street. I haven't seen them at all, it's almost as if they don't even exist."

"I wish they didn't," he muttered under his breath.

"It just got me thinking about...what if something happened to them? You would never know." Taehyung tried getting the seesaw to work but it wouldn't work on his own, he couldn't push it off no matter how hard he tried because he would end up dropping back a second later, the jarring thud of his boots hitting the hard ground and giving off little puffs of dust as they did. Hoseok wasn't looking at him but rather across the playground at Soobin. "You should visit the house one day, not on your own of course I mean...shit maybe not even visit it just check it out, you know? Canvas the area or something, check them out from a distance and just know."

"Keeping a distance is exactly what I'm doing right now, by avoiding 'em," he explained and he saw Hoseok's eyes roll slightly. Across the playground Soobin was currently watching how to braid hair with an intense look of interest on her face, watching as the other little girl went slow and showed her what to do.

"They might just have changed..."

"People like my parents don't fucking change, they just get worse and worse until they die, the end." Taehyung gave up with the seesaw and he swung his leg over the side so that he could get to his feet. As he did Hoseok uncrossed his arms and reached down to grab his wrist. "I don't really believe in second chances lover boy, y'know that."

"Oh, so we're starting the 'lover boy' shit again, huh?" his friend asked as he raised his eyebrows, feigning annoyance terribly. "If you don't believe in second chances then what exactly happened to all of us? How did we get another chance at life after all of the shit that happened to us?"

"This ain't our second chance," Taehyung argued, "this is our first chance 'cos we didn't have a fucking chance to begin with, yeah? This ain't some kinda redemption, this is what living is supposed to feel like."

"It feels like redemption to me," Hoseok said in a quiet voice. "It feels like we really needed saving after everything we had been put through, for years and even just for months. We needed saving before we could live, don't tell me that that wasn't what happened."

He avoided his gaze and glanced across the yard to see a small huddle of parents sitting on a bench watching over the kids. To them, they probably thought that one of them was Soobin's older brother. Most likely Hoseok for his features were slightly more similar to hers than his. They wouldn't look at them and think that they weren't related, that this little girl was here today because she had been living in a hostel with him and had finally struck lucky. Fostered child, a new chance at life. Taehyung had pondered on what his life might just have been like had he ended up being dumped as a child, had he been adopted or fostered by a loving family rather than left to fester and twist in the hellhole that Hoseok was now suggesting he go back and visit. How could he even possibly explain to his friend why he couldn't just do that? How could Hoseok possibly imagine the waves of sheer horror that ran down his spine at the thought when he hadn't been there? He had seen some of it, the closet treatment, the smacks on the head and the backs of the legs, oh they had all seen that. But not all of it. That was just the surface and he couldn't even imagine telling Hoseok about it all.

"It was just a suggestion," Hoseok said after a minute of silence, letting go of his wrist as he did. "You don't have to do it I just thought that you might want to know but I understand. It was stupid of me to suggest it."

"I've only just started living," Taehyung said in a quiet voice. "I don't wanna go back to dying again."

It was 2am and he couldn't sleep.

He could feel the familiar weight of his friends arm across his stomach and his warm breath against his neck as he stared up at the ceiling with eyelids that didn't even feel remotely heavy. The window across the room was open and there was a breeze coming in but it felt warm on his skin instead of cool like it should have been; almost as if the breeze was breath too. Taehyung shifted slightly and placed his hand on top of Hoseok's and he didn't stir in his sleep at all, too deeply in his dreams to feel his palm against his knuckles. He traced the sensation of the tendons under his skin and then went along to his wrist bone, swirling the pad of his thumb over it softly.

It was the sketch that was making him feel like this, but also something else, something that his friend had said back in the playground to him.

We needed saving before we could live.

Taehyung kept playing those words over and over in his head as he thought about the page in his friend's diary. That day outside of Seoul, dancing along the tracks like children or perhaps a more fitting term would be runaways. How light had he felt that day, arms out as he had marched along the line and had sang that stupid cadence to make them all laugh; almost as if he could have just floated away without a care in the world, and here he was currently feeling heavy and tired but most frighteningly...he felt old.

Since when had he started feeling so old he didn't know, but the thought of him finally reaching that dreaded stage of being an 'adult' was not something that he wanted to think about.

He turned his head ever so slightly and saw that there was but an inch or so of space between his and Hoseok's nose. In the light coming in through the window he could study his face with a perfect clarity, see every single tightly curled eyelash and that tiny little freckle on the tip of his nose and very upper lip. He should just roll onto his side and pull him closer, feel his bare skin against his and have his arms go up to his back, hear a breathy little sigh escape his lips. He could wake him up with a kiss and see if Hoseok could take his mind off everything; slow and gentle and quiet so that his parents wouldn't hear them. But instead Taehyung gently moved his arm off his stomach to place it down on the mattress and then he sat up. He swung his legs over the side and grabbed his jeans from the floor, slipping them on as he got to his feet and crossed the room to get to the bookshelf. He located the photo album and he pulled it out, moving to sit at the desk so that the warm orange streetlight would help him see what was on the pages.

Taehyung placed it down and opened it to the front, not really looking for anything with a purpose but rather just for the sake of it. Copies of wedding photographs of his parents and then various shots of Hoseok's mother during pregnancy, glowing as her stomach seemed to swell and swell. He looked at photographs from the hospital and progressed through to see Hoseok go from a baby to a child, to the age of four when they had first met in primary school. When he turned to the next page he even found one of them together, so small and terribly dressed in patchwork pullovers and loose jeans. Even then he had had that wide grin that always saw him getting in trouble even when he was innocent, though in the photograph he was missing a tooth. Large eyes, round cheeks, Taehyung found it hard to believe that they had looked that way once.

He shifted to look over at his friend. Hoseok was on his side with the sheets pulled up just over his waist. He was still too thin, the bumps of his spine and the wings of his hipbones able to be traced by his fingers and tongue much too easily, but at least his colour had started to come back so he wasn't pale anymore. The boy on the photograph in front of him was smiling and chubby - happy, and the young man over his shoulder suffered from depression: a jarring juxtaposition.

What did he look like right now? If people looked at him in the photograph and then in front of them what would they see exactly? Would they think that he looked the same, the tanned skin and grin, the messy hair and fawning eyes? Or would they notice other things, like his chapped lips and elbows, his shaking hands and soft mumbles under his breath? Did they see beneath the thin surface of his flesh and figure out how hollow he really was? Taehyung's worst fear, along with becoming an adult and seeing his parents again, was that people would know about all of the fuck ups he had amassed.

Taehyung sighed and closed the photo album over, hearing it thumping softly in the silence of the room. There was nothing like this for him, no photographs, no albums, and he wondered what it would be like if he had some. Why, he could slip them inside just like the book was his own family photo album, and he could collect other photographs too and fill up the pages; turn the bad memories into a book full of goodness instead. But the photographs that he did possess...they were all back in the family home where he had left them the night he had ran away; not yet fifteen with a single backpack full of clothing and cash he had stolen from his father's wallet when he had been passed out drunk on the kitchen floor. The photographs had likely been tossed away years ago, maybe even torn up or burnt, so there was very little point in thinking about them.

Photographs weren't really that important, and yet he couldn't push the thought away as he looked at the album in front of him. Before he could stop himself he was getting to his feet and retrieving more books, stacking them on the desk chair in a tower. He pulled the bed sheet rope out of the wardrobe had knotted it around the chair leg before tossing it out of the window. He leaned out to watch it unravel so that the ends dangled a foot away from the grass, and then he dragged himself back through the gap. Taehyung looked back over his shoulder at Hoseok for a few seconds before moving over to the bed to snatch his tee from the floor. He roughly shrugged it on and then hastily got his boots on, not even bothering with securing the laces tightly. When he was dressed he shifted to lean over the bed, pressing his forehead against his friend's.

"I love you," Taehyung said in a whisper, and the soft noise that Hoseok made in reply was better than any words.

He descended the bed sheet rope as fast as he could, to make his body move quicker than his mind so that he couldn't stop himself. He knew that he would end up walking a few blocks and then end up retreating back because the thought of going there was enough to make him shudder. For all he knew it could be empty, abandoned even just like his old hostel room. Hoseok had told him that he hadn't been near it and that he hadn't seen either of his parents in a long time so he wouldn't be surprised at all if it was. It was something that he just had to do. If Taehyung drew close and saw signs of life coming from the house then he would walk away and forget all about the photographs. He would undress and once again settle down in the warmth of Hoseok's arms that would get the chill of the night air off his skin, and he would push away all thoughts about his parents and the old house and the hell that he had been through, he just wanted to check and see.

Walking the streets at night no longer felt the same as it had used to, back a year or so ago when he had felt free and safe on them because he knew and understood them. Right now Taehyung felt cold and naked and no amount of rubbing his lower arms would warm him up and stop his chattering teeth. It was turning into a stupider idea with every street that he passed along and yet he couldn't stop himself and he just kept his eyes focused on the roads and traffic lights, following the glowing green and orange and red beacons like the northern star as his feet carried him from clean and well-lit neighbourhoods into dirty and desolate ones. When he finally stopped walking Taehyung found that he did so not because he had reached his destination but rather because he had lost his ability to do so.

He was paralysed by the sight of the badly whitewashed fence and the broken awnings and straggly grass in the front lawn. The house looked almost sunken, decrepit and ancient: a corpse. He had his arms crossed to rub at his skin and he could feel the wave of goosebumps that broke out all over him at the sight. Right there, still hidden in the grass and rusted beyond any possible use, he could actually see the handlebar of a tricycle sticking out like an antenna. The tricycle that he had ridden up and down these streets as a mere toddler whilst his father had watched him from the front step, can of beer in hand and grin on his face. He could remember it so clearly that he felt a moan escape his slack lips. Yes, those early days that were foggy and hidden deep in the recesses of his mind; of laughs and smiles and warm and wet kisses from his father, of his mother singing nonsense lullabies at him before it had all gone so wrong. Taehyung had been too young to understand why, and even now thirteen years later he didn't know what it had been. The alcohol? Being fired from work? His mother cheating on him? He didn't know what had caused the man he had known as a father, that had often smelled like beer but had been warm and had had large hands that would ruffle his hair, to change into a demon. It had just happened. He had just seemed to have... shifted.

Taehyung still had nightmares plague him about it all, nightmares that the alcohol had helped numb. Of his father reaching up to touch his face and pulling his skin free like a mask, tearing his skin like cheap paper and revealing a grinning maw of teeth and cold dead eyes underneath. A monster hidden away under all of that deceiving skin.

There were no lights on inside the house and he would be shocked if there was even electricity. He could hear no sounds coming from it, nothing more than the faint drone of traffic from a block or two down. No vehicles came down these streets, desolate and dead streets that led to nowhere but corpse houses and nightmares. Taehyung dropped his gaze to study the fence for a few seconds and then lifted his eyes back to the windows. He could leave if he wanted to, could just turn around and go, but he couldn't seem to do that. He wanted to check, wanted to see if it was as abandoned as it looked. So he slowly climbed over the low fence and crossed the lawn, hearing the grass brushing against his jeans like whispering voices in the silence. It was as if the whispers were warning him, telling him to go back, but he kept going forward until he was around the back of the house and stepping onto the awning. It creaked under his weight, the sound as loud as a scream in the silence and he flinched with his hand on the back door handle. He let his breath out in a wheeze and took a few deep ones to steady his heart, and then he twisted it. Unlocked, like it always had been growing up because his father had returned in the early hours too drunk to use keys. He pushed the door open and peered through the gap, holding his breath as he did.

The ground floor was open-plan, meaning that he was technically in the kitchen area and could see all the way across and into the sitting area. The light coming in through the windows was pure moonlight rather than streetlights, and the interior was lot in a faintly blue glow. He saw the counter and the outline of countless bottles stacked along the length, could smell the sour tang of beer. For once his stomach didn't clench from hunger pangs but rather fear, strong enough for his legs to feel all wobbly.

Taehyung could see no sign of anyone inside the house and so he pushed the door open wide enough to step inside. He stayed in place for a few seconds before slowly crossing the kitchen, more or less dragging his feet for fear that his boots would make an echo on the linoleum tiling. He edged closer and closer to the sitting area and is eyes adjusted to the dark he saw that the battered settee was empty, no one lying on it. He eyed the interior to see barely anything still inside, no furniture beyond the settee. No tables, no low kitchen table where it had used to be, no TV... Taehyung ran his eyes over everything and that was when he saw that the bookshelf was no there either. He gnawed on his lip as he stared at the corner of the room, mentally recalling that it had been covered in books and albums and that there had been an old figurette of a porcelain baby on it; a gift his mother had received when she had been pregnant with him. Yet it was not there. After a moment of blank staring he caught sight of something on the wall out of the corner of his eye and he turned his head to see a photo frame hanging on the wall. He took a few cautious steps forward and reached up to pull it free. It was only a small frame, small and light enough to be held in one hand, and he ran his eyes over the photograph inside.

One of his mother holding him in her arms, still in her hospital gown and her cheeks ruddy, a few stray locks of hair across her brow that had fallen free from her messy bun. He was nothing more than a swab of blankets in her arms with a slight hint of pink face. Taehyung stared at her face and felt himself going numb. It had been several years since he had last seen her but she looked so beautiful in the photograph: probably the most beautiful woman of them all. Was she still beautiful now? He struggled to recall her face from the last few years because he had barely seen her, always out of the house to avoid his father. What he could recall however was the sound of her screaming through the thin walls at the man and the threats of bags being packed, of moves down to her mother's house that had never happened.

Taehyung turned the frame around and pulled at the back, nails scratching along until he found the metal fasteners and he pulled them back to slip the back off. Then he removed the photograph and shoved it into his back pocket, small enough to not need folding. He went to fix the back onto the frame when he heard a thumping sound and he froze in place.

Shit, his heart actually stopped in his chest.

The sound came across the ground-floor and he knew that he had to turn around but he couldn't, he was stuck in place. His heart was hammering in his chest so hard he wondered if he might just keel over like a rabbit and die. He wouldn't be surprised if he did because his chest was actually hurting from his fear.

"Huh...huhzatt?" Taehyung understood the drunken slurs well enough to know that his father had just asked who he was. From behind he wouldn't recognise him and he doubted he would from the front either, in the current stupor he sounded to be in. "Iz at..." A muttered curse and another thumping sound. Taehyung craned to look across the floor and he saw the man bouncing off the open back door frame, arm hitting it as he slumped against it. But his father couldn't finish his train of thought for he was too drunk. He gently lowered the frame to place it down on the floor, moving as if he was a dog that would bite him, even holding his empty hand up in front of him.

The light coming in through the back door meant that he could only really see a silhouette of him, and what he could see did not look like his father. Too thin, skeletal almost, all limbs. But he knew that it was his father because he could sense it, that angry little black ball of hatred that seemed to radiate off him.

"Fucking Choi," the man spat as he reached up to rub at his head. It probably felt like it was several feet wide, stretched and heavy and aching. "Come to cuh-cause more shit huh?"

"N-No," Taehyung replied because it seemed like the right thing to do. "Not Choi I, uh, I should go I-"

"Wuh-wait," his father held an arm up, so thin and frail he couldn't believe it, and pointed right at him. "Know you. You're..." The man took a few staggering steps and ending up reeling to hit the kitchen counter. The force of him colliding with it caused the bottles to shake and one to fall and hit the linoleum, shattering with a deafening sound that made Taehyung jump so hard his head probably should have hit the ceiling. "Aeyoung?" He stared at the shattered bottle to see a puddle of beer pooling out all over the flooring and then he looked back up at him. "Aeyoung, did you...you cuh-come back?"

Aeyoung was his mother's name. His father was looking at him with drunken eyes, faces morphing and blurring into a mess in his stupefied brain. It dawned on Taehyung at that moment that his mother had left, yet he didn't know what he meant by this. Left as in packed her bags and ran away just like him? Left as in...dead?

"Muh...muh sorry," his father managed to slur out, voice heavy and thick, and he knew that he had to leave but he didn't seem able to move his legs. "Suh...ry Aeyoung, muh fucking muh...mess."

"I...I," he ran his eyes across the room and realised that his best bet was the open backdoor, for the front could be locked. He couldn't risk trying it and finding that his fingers couldn't work the locks, fumbling uselessly. He was just about to turn back when there was another series of loud shattering sounds and then his father was stumbling around the counter towards him. Taehyung saw his drunken lurch and it was like it had always been. Those days when he would get caught in a corner by him, trapped and unable to fight his way past, unable to free himself from those large hands and their crushing grip. He felt his back hit the wall and that was when Taehyung realised that he had been backing up to get away from him, instead of trying to escape. Escape? When had he ever been able to escape this? Years and years of being trapped and defenseless. He could feel a coldness spreading deep down in his body and he had a feeling it was his bladder very much wanting to loosen on him. Wouldn't that be fantastic, to piss himself in front of his father like he was eight years old all over again?

"Nuh-nuh-not Aeyoung," Taehyung stuttered as he dragged himself along the wall towards the front door. He felt his hands against the wood and then the lock but no amount of pulling or twisting would make the fucking thing work. It was jammed with age and rust. His only way out was the backdoor and that seemed miles away to him, impossible to reach because of his advancing father.

"I tuh-told you tuh-that a kid wuz a buh idea," he said as he lifted a hand and waggled it almost condescendingly at him.

"Not Aeyoung I'm-"

"Buh you wuh...nt listen cos yuh...you're a huh...whore." He was wrenching at the locks in his panic and breathing so fast that he was hyperventilating. "Whores suh...be puh...nished."

Taehyung gave up with the front door and instead darted to try and get around his father, to go around him and race out of the house but he just wasn't fast enough. He felt something slamming into him and he was sure that it was a shoulder, the suddenness of the blow making him trip over his own feet and stagger. One of his knees hit the floor and he almost recovered, hands scrabbling as he tried to stay upright, but then he felt weight against his back and he was being tackled to the floor. Taehyung's chin slammed into the linoleum so hard that his vision cut to black and then exploded in colour, teeth snagging his lower lip and biting so hard he felt them ribboning the gnawed skin. His ribs were aching from the impact and he thought that it was a miracle that he hadn't snapped one of them. He was on the floor and he tried to crawl but there was weight on him, his father was on top of him.

This was his nightmares all over again.

Taehyung didn't realise that he had started yelling in his panic, perhaps screaming more a more fitting word, and the sound of shrill noises echoing off the walls didn't seem to come from his lips. He could feel blood pouring down his face and then fingers snagging in his hair and wrenching hard, so hard he felt a searing all along his scalp. The man was still cursing about his mother in his drunken state, calling her filth: a whore, a bitch, a worthless cunt, and he just kept on wailing as he tried to get away. Taehyung knew that he was taller than he was, stronger now too, but his panic had turned all of that strength useless and instead had him wheezing and crying and trying to crawl like a goddamn baby.

He should have just stayed with Hoseok.

Taehyung's fingers scrabbled along the floor and he felt cold liquid against them, and then something sharp slicing against the pads of his fingers. He tried to snatch the shard of glass but he couldn't get a hold of it. Fingers too slick with beer and blood. Before he could attempt to get it again the weight lifted off him and he had enough time to register this before he was being wrenched by his hair, flipped onto his back. Then the weight back on him again, on his bruised ribs so that he found it hard to breathe.

He pulled in a pitiful amount of air and then the man's hands were clawing at him, his throat, the neckline of his tee. Taehyung knocked them aside and heard a tearing sound as he tore a strip of the thin cotton free. He knew that if he let his father get his hands around his throat then he was dead, but he couldn't fight back when he could barely breathe. He stretched up and tried to grab at the piece of glass, shoving at him as best as he could with his other arm. The weight on his chest eased enough for him to gasp for more air and then the man's hands were around his throat, lifting his head and dropping it back down onto the linoleum hard. It wasn't just the lack of air trying to get to his panicked brain, the pressure on his windpipe was so heavy that he thought that it would be crushed from his squeezing thumbs. Taehyung felt his legs kicking, his boots thumping on the floor, and he just stretched that little more and felt his fingers snatching hold of a flute, a bottle neck.

He didn't think and instead just thrust out desperately with his hand and then he felt the grip around his throat loosening. He opened his eyes as the pressure lessened and saw his hand right there, the massive chunk of bottle in his hand and the jagged ends buried deep in the fabric of his work shirt. Taehyung stared at the blossoming stain coming from the edges of the bottle and then he stared up at the man in horror.

"Tuh...Taehyung?" his father managed to say, brow furrowing as he looked down at the bottle. He felt hot liquid running along the back of his hand and he knew that it was blood.

Taehyung wrenched the bottle neck free and then he used the surprise moment to knock the man off him, pushing him sideways so that he slammed onto the floor beside him. He could see the door just in front of him and yet he didn't leap to his feet and run out of it. Oh no, Taehyung climbed on top of his father instead and lifted the bottle neck up high, fingers clutched around the glass so right it was a miracle that it didn't shatter in his grip. He plunged it down hard and felt the impact of the blow travel up his arm to make his teeth smash together, luckily not on his tongue. He thought about how Hoseok had told him that people changed and how his father had tried to strangle him to death the first time he had seen him in years. He thought about how he had replied that they just got worse and worse until they died as he plunged the bottle down over and over, finding that the impact jarred a little less every time and that he was gasping for breath between each stab.

The pained grimace on his face, teeth pulled up at the corners, might just have resembled a manic grin.

Taehyung had seen his fair share of terrible horror films, had seen the stabs and the slashes and the dismemberment that always looked so easy, so fluid. Knives sinking into flesh with no resistance at all as skin and muscle shredded. It was not really a surprise to him that it wasn't that easy, for sinking the sharp edges of the bottle down into his father's stomach was enough to make his shoulder ache. It felt a little like he was being punched himself. When he saw blood spurting out of the man's mouth it finally dawned on him what he was doing and Taehyung stopped with his arm cocked in the air. He saw something dripping down and landing on his shirt, not leaving a stain because most of the fabric was already soaked and slick, and he realised that it was blood dripping off the broken bottle in his hand. The sight in front of him didn't look right, didn't look real. There was just so much red and he stared at the mess that he had made. The white cotton shirt was torn to pieces so that he could stare at the gaping crater of flesh that had been his stomach. It was like that slash in Jimin's elbow, the one that the soju shard had created, but what looked like hundreds of them, sliced all over his stomach and rib area, deep and hideous. He was even certain that he saw the glisten of something that could have been intestine from within the slashes. Taehyung staggered to his feet and yet he couldn't seem to let go of the bottle for his muscles had locked tightly around it. He looked down at his father and saw that he couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, though if he was the former it wouldn't be for very long. Then he lifted his gaze to the wide open backdoor.

"I...I wanted to live," he rasped from his bruised and throbbing throat.