The sight of the phone in Namjoon's hand didn't seem real at all. Looking at it, Seokjin almost felt like he was still asleep and having a dream. Perhaps something closer to a nightmare considering the circumstances. He felt numb, cold even when the room was warm, and he was aware of the fact that he had started breathing shallowly, soft and fast breaths that didn't seem to fill his lungs at all. When he reached up to touch his throat he felt his pulse thrumming under his skin and that was very strange. He didn't really feel like he was there, in his body at all but he felt rather...distant. Floating almost. He wondered if this was what it felt like to faint and then a voice cracked down the line again. It was a static burst of sound: bad reception.

"Tuh-thought he was guh-gonna kuh-kill me."

Listening to Taehyung's voice seemed to drag him back down, grounded him so that he was no longer floating inches above his cold body. Seokjin almost felt the thump of his consciousness in his head and that was when his heartbeat finally started racing in his chest. It was beating so fast that he was still rendered breathless by it all, except this time it made his skin feel hot, gave him a sudden uncomfortable flush. On the other end of the line he heard Hoseok trying to speak, trying to get the words out to ask him what he was talking about and yet nothing would come out right. He was stuttering and saying the same thing repetitively like a broken record: "wuh-what are you...what do you...what?" over and over and over.

"I duh-didn't- I juh-just wuh-wanted-" Taehyung took a shuddering breath and it ended in a gulping hiccup. That meant that he had been crying, or perhaps wailing would be a better description. It made his voice sound like a harsh croak and yet he didn't think that that was all the result of crying alone.

"Tae?" Namjoon managed to interrupt, talking over the still broken Hoseok and their mumbling friend. "Where are you brother, what's going on? You need to talk to us, we don't-"

"I juh-just," a loud hiccup, "need suh-somebody right nuh-now."

"You've got somebody," Jungkook said, voice also a crackle of static because of the distance of the group call. "Talk to us Tae."

"Huh-he came at me. Tuh-tried to kuh-kill me." Taehyung started sobbing again but the sound was hoarse, almost as if he had cried himself dry of tears. "I huh-had to duh-do it muh-man."

Seokjin looked at his friend to see that Namjoon looked surprisingly alert and awake, unlike him. He didn't look like he had felt that horrible lightheaded sensation at all, and right now he wished that he could push all of sensations away: his racing heart, his flushed skin. It was making it hard to think when his fear was creating a sort of pressure on his body. Yoongi asked him who the fuck he was talking about, tone flat and devoid of emotion. The line went silent on their ends and the only sound they could hear was Taehyung breathing and then something faint, something like a blare of a truck horn that signaled traffic. Seokjin could picture waves coming off the phone, cold and black and heavy with dread. He realised after a few seconds that their friend didn't want to say, that he was stalling. That was not a good sign.

"Tae?" Seokjin asked, trying his hardest to keep his voice steady. The younger man was frightened enough already, he didn't want his own fear making him even worst. "Tae we understand but you need to-"

"My duh-dad is dead I fuh-fucking suh-stabbed him to duh-death with a buh-beer bottle."

Then the line went dead, cutting them all off without warning. The device emitted a low sound like a drone: whale song or that of hundreds of bees spilling out of a hive, before his friend moved his thumb and cut the call. The screen stayed lit up for a few seconds before going darker and then black, and then Namjoon turned his head to look at him. Seokjin realised that he was looking at him because he was waiting to see what he had to say and it hit him that suddenly he was the one in charge. He was the eldest, the one that was there for advice when needed just like he had always told them. And now...now all of them needed not only advice but also help.

"Joonie message..." Seokjin reached up to rub at his brow and he felt clammy skin against the heel of his hand. "Message Kookie and Hoseok for me, I'll call Yoongi." He shifted to collect his jeans off the floor and pulled his phone out, unlocking it with shaking fingers and nearly dropping it in surprise when he entered his pass code wrong and it vibrated angrily at him.

"Message them what exactly?"

"Hang on, I'll figure that out." He managed to unlock his phone and located Yoongi's number, pressing the screen with his thumb to call him. Seokjin held the phone against his ear, listening to the dial tone a few times. Namjoon was staring at his own device like he didn't really know what to do with it and so he reached over and snagged his free hand, holding onto it tightly and feeling it trembling within his. After a few seconds there was a static crackle and then he heard Yoongi's voice on the other line.

"...shit." Down the line there was a series of loud rustles and then a thudding sound that sounded like his phone being put down on a side table or maybe dropped onto the bed. "Jin, what the fuck is going on?!" Seokjin could hear something in the background and it took him a moment to realise that it was Jimin; that Jimin was crying almost hysterically. That was strange, for in his panic Seokjin had went rather numb and he couldn't feel a single tear welling under his lids.

"Yoongi, is everything alright?"

"Alright?" There was a sudden burst of laughter. "No, this is about as fucked up as I can possibly imagine." Yoongi shifted, rustling clothing or bed sheets, and then he heard soft sounds coming from him. He couldn't hear the words but he could tell that he was trying to calm Jimin down.

"We need to get together," Seokjin continued. "Not on the phone like this I mean face to face we need to-"

"Find Tae, yeah," Yoongi finished before making a series of exasperated noises. "Get the others together, come here I can't go anywhere right now."

"No, no stay there and keep Jimin safe, I can pick everyone up." Seokjin shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, pressing his phone against his ear using only his shoulder so that he could use both hands to try and get into his jeans.

"Please tell me that this isn't happening," his friend said in a quiet voice, barely audible over Jimin's hiccuping. "Please tell me this is a nightmare or something Jin. Not now, not after everything."

"...Just take care of Jimin, I'll be as quick as I can." Seokjin ended the call and dropped his phone on the bed, standing up to wrench his jeans up to his hips and fasten them. "Joonie, message them and tell them to pack a bag or something, to wait for us to come get them."

"You think this will work?" his friend asked, already rapidly typing on his phone. "What if Kookie's parents won't let him outta the house?"

"It's an...an emergency," he replied, pulling down on the ends of his vest to attempt to rid it of creases from his sleep. Emergency wasn't exactly the right word and they both knew it. Murder was more fitting yet neither of them seemed to want to say it aloud. "It's an emergency I'm sure they will understand. He doesn't need to tell them, Kookie's smart he'll think of something." Seokjin dropped to his knees to crawl under the bed and grab his old canvas bag, dragging it out and staring at it. It was strange looking at it right now, when he still felt a little like he was trapped in a nightmare like Yoongi had said. There was dust caught in the seams around the zip and he brushed it all away roughly.

"Jin..." Namjoon said his name and then stopped talking, going silent and still. He looked up from the bag to see that he was staring at his phone with a distant expression on his face. He made a noise under his breath to let him know that he was listening, unzipping the bag and checking the compartments. "Do you think we should call police?" Seokjin stopped in the act of unzipping a side compartment and his friend lifted his gaze to look at him. The apartment room fell silent for a moment and then he turned his attention back to the bag. It helped him give him an answer if he wasn't holding his gaze.

"No," he said as he felt something against his fingertips. It was paper from what he could tell and so he pulled it out to eye a coach ticket snagged between his thumb and forefinger, crumpled and faded but the print just about readable. Seoul to Anyang, one-way dated almost a year ago. "We don't call the police."

Yoongi hadn't really been asleep when his phone had started vibrating under his pillow and nearly gave him a heart attack. Rather he had been lying in bed simply drowsing because he had stupidly spent the entire day sleeping in Jimin's absence on the settee. It had made his neck feel all stiff and tight, having had his head balanced on his chest for hours on end, and annoyingly it kept him wide awake even when he wanted to rest. Even the warmth of Jimin's body and the weight of his head balanced on his chest wasn't enough to make his eyelids stay closed. He had just felt his body starting to give in first, a heaviness settling into his limbs that signaled that he would soon be blissfully unconscious to the world, but then the phone had sounded and now he was wide awake and he just knew that he wasn't going to get any sleep at all.

Despite what Seokjin had just told him he was still very much thinking that this had to be a nightmare. There was no possible way that he was awake and that the unraveling events of the last few minutes were reality. His brain couldn't process it, his brain was currently refusing to accept it all but deep down in the very recesses of his mind he was aware of that fact that it was all really happening.

It had been roughly around the time that Namjoon had called Taehyung brother that he had started to notice that Jimin's eyes had started to look glossy. But Yoongi had thought that it was the light of his phone screen combined with the fact they were open so wide that made them look wet. His lover had been staring at the device whilst he had been running his fingers along his collarbones. Had he been wearing a tee he would have had a handful of the material gripped tightly in his fingers. Jimin's lips had been slack and he had been so very still if not for his trailing fingers, but when Taehyung he started crying down the line head started to show a level of discomfort. When his fingers had moved up to his throat and started touching his scar he had started taking whistling little breaths and upon their friend's confession he had started making noises. By the time Taehyung he cut the call on them Jimin's lips had been wrenched back and low at the corners and whines had been escaping through his clenched teeth. It had been Yoongi saying his nickname to ask him he was okay that had caused Jimin to crumple and now he was nearly hysterical in his arms. Yoongi couldn't really move to end Seokjin's call because his arms were currently full, wrapped around Jimin's lower ribs. Jimin's arms were conversely around his neck so that he could barely breathe and he could feel how badly that he was shaking. It was almost as if he was having a seizure in his arms, every breath shuddering in his throat and making his entire body skip as he gasped for air. Yoongi didn't really know where this outpouring of emotion was coming from but he had a feeling that it had something to do with what Taehyung had said.

Jimin's fingers touching the scar on his throat that had been caused by a shattered soju bottle from their friend's hand, listening to Taehyung tell them all in a dead voice that he had just killed his own father.

Stabbed to death by a beer bottle.

Jimin's mind likely filling with images of the night he had had his own scrape with death whilst he had spoken: Jungkook and Taehyung screaming at each other in a shitty hostel room, fists swinging and all of them diving into the brawl to stop it from getting out of hand. Taehyung's arm cocking back and swinging with that fucking bottle in his fist, light glinting off the green glass like the flash of a camera before it had shattered into flying shards like shrapnel. Yoongi wondered if the thought had crossed Jimin's mind that had Taehyung been just that little more drunk, that little bit angrier, that he might have ended up with a stomach full of jagged broken glass. It could have been him. Taehyung had always had a mean streak to him when he had been drunk, nothing more extreme than spiteful words spilling out of his lips that he had barely even been aware that he had been saying; or throwing things at one of them and calling them shit. They had learnt to ignore these outbursts in the past for they had been uncommon, but there had always been that chance of him losing control.

And now he had lost control- presumably sober - and the result was a dead father lying in a puddle of his own blood across the city.

"Hey Minnie," he said as he turned his face and pressed it against his hair. "It's OK. It's OK I'm here, take deep breaths and-" Jimin attempted to answer this but all he heard was strangled sobbing noises, so Yoongi shifted so he could hold his face between his hands instead. He felt hot and wet cheeks against his palms, tears streaming down to drop from the edge of his jawline onto his bare lap. He had his eyes squeezed shut and his lips were quivering. "You need to calm down, OK? Look you're getting all hot and hysterical." He touched his brow to confirm this, felt his scorching skin almost baking his fingers. "You'll make yourself sick."

"Fuh-fuh-feel like I'm guh-gonna vuh-" before he could finish this he stumbled out of bed and staggered across the bedroom and Yoongi heard his footsteps pounding on the landing in the direction of the bathroom. A moment later he heard retching and the unmistakable liquid splash of Jimin vomiting, hopefully in the toilet bowl. Yoongi shifted to finally stop the dead line sound from coming from his phone, placing it back on the side table as he got to his feet and exited the bedroom.

He found Jimin half-sitting, half-lying against the toilet in a mess. He had luckily vomited inside of it rather than all over the floor or himself, and so Yoongi moved over to flush it before dropping his gaze onto him. His lover had his cheek against the seat and the swirling water climbed up the sides of the porcelain bowl to get very close to his head, and he was slumped to the side. Yoongi had seen this kind of position many times in the past, a position he had come to associate with the scent of cheap peach soju and his friends mumbling about how they were going to hurl their stomachs up: the falling down drunk position. Yet Jimin wasn't drunk, he was perfectly sober. He had finally discovered that it really was possible to vomit from terror, and for some reason he wondered if any other outcomes like pissing oneself were also possible. Yoongi hunkered down beside him and reached over to brush his hair back off his brow, feeling that it was sweat clumped against his fingers. His skin wasn't hot anymore but rather cold. Jimin's breathing was still unsteady but it was better than his hysterical gasping from a minute ago, and he seemed to be getting himself under control. He asked him if he felt better and after a few seconds he nodded, so Yoongi helped him get upright and over to the sink. Jimin swilled his mouth out to rid the taste of vomit from his tongue and then splashed cold water on his face, eyelids pink and slightly swollen from his crying.

"The hell did that come from?" he asked him as he gently ran his hand down his back, from his shoulder blades to the slight dip of his lower spine just above the waistband of his underwear. Jimin looked at his reflection in the mirror over the sink rather than turn his head. Yoongi watched a bead of water run down his nose and drip down to splash on the porcelain. After a moment he shook his head softly as if to tell him that he didn't know. "Shit Minnie, you scared me."

"Suh-sorry," Jimin said as he poked his tongue out and licked his damp lips. "I just...the bottle. He said a bottle and I just...I couldn't breathe and I started shaking." He raked his hair back off his brow and the water kept it stuck in place. "I felt all weird." He sniffed a few times and then offered him a pitiful smile in the mirror. "It's OK, I'm OK."

It sounded like lie to his ears and judging from Jimin's twitching lips he knew that it did too.

He watched Seokjin shoving things into his bag as he kept hold of his phone, thumb moving across the volume buttons on the side slowly. His friend wasn't trying to be neat and tidy, folding and ensuring that there was room inside the bag like he used to do, but rather roughly shoving things in as he muttered under his breath. It could have been a list, it could have been his thoughts or a load of nonsense and he had no clear way of telling because he couldn't hear him; could only see his lips moving ever so softly as he packed the bag.

There were so many thoughts flashing through Namjoon's mind and yet he couldn't seem to get a hold of a single one. They just raced around and around without stopping and made him feel a little dizzy. He had been woken up at nearly 3:00am in the morning to a group call with his friends, a call in which he had listened to Taehyung rasping and struggling to speak, listened to him tell them all that he had killed his father and then ended the call just like that. There were so many thoughts. What had happened? Where was he right now? How had he even gotten anywhere near the man in the first place? Was he OK, physically safe or injured rather than just mentally? He didn't know but he did know that the only way to find out was to get them all together and then locate Taehyung somehow, and only then would they know what was going on right now. But getting up from the bed and packing his own bag felt next to impossible for him.

Should he say something to Seokjin? Should he try and broach the subject and get him to talk to him? Yet he thought that it was a bad idea to do that. Considering how he had responded to the police question it didn't seem like he would get an answer to any questions that he did ask. Granted, Namjoon now thought that it was a rather stupid question to have asked him, but it had been the first one on his mind upon the phone call ending. His friend clearly had a plan in mind for he had reacted very quickly, but he had a niggling feeling that it wasn't a solid plan at all. He thought that Seokjin had decided getting them together and then locating Taehyung was step one, and he had yet to figure out what exactly step two was. In other words his friend was running on empty and Namjoon himself didn't have any ideas either. Having ideas required having his brain work and it was currently too busy chasing useless thoughts around.

The phone vibrated in his hand and he looked down to see an alert from Jungkook, the first few words loading on the screen. So he unlocked the phone and checked the full message.

"Kookie said he's getting ready, shouldn't take him more than ten minutes. He'll be more than ready by the time we get to his house."

"His parents?"

"Didn't say," Namjoon tossed his phone on the bed and then got to his feet. "Just that he'll wait for on the street corner and that he's a little freaked out right now." If Jungkook had admitted to being freaked out by something, the resident horror and gore freak enthusiast of their friend group, then it was a sign of how serious the current situation was. He might not have said scared but it was what he clearly meant. "I think we can all agree with him on that regard, huh?"

"I'm more than freaked out," Seokjin said with a sudden laugh. "I'm mildly terrified right now." His face didn't show it in the slightest but his shaking fingers were a dead giveaway. He had stopped packing for a moment and then he got to his feet and crossed the room to get to the desk, pulling open drawers and searching through them. "Phone charger, phone charger, where is my-" Namjoon pointed out that it was on the top of the desk beside the laptop and his friend paused before looking back up at it; just a few inches away from his nose. He picked it up and then seemed to hesitate over the camcorder, eyeing it as if he was thinking about something. Then he lifted that up too and weighed it between his hands.

"What? You gonna pack that piece of junk too?" he asked as he collected his own bag from the back of his wardrobe, having to bend down and shove his way through layers of clothing to reach it. When he struggled back out of the mess of coats and jackets he saw that Seokjin still had the machine in his hands and he hadn't given him an answer yet. Then his friend went over to his bag on the floor and shoved it inside along with several charging wires that he wrapped up and placed inside one of the compartments for ease. Namjoon thought about asking him why he had done that and then he remembered what they had been looking at not that long ago, the old videos of them all as a gang having fun and causing trouble without any regrets and bad shit attached to it. Perhaps it would make Seokjin feel better to load up the old recordings and watch them over? Perhaps it would make them all feel a lot better to see the old videos, therefore he shouldn't ask and instead just let him pack it. It wasn't like it was going to weigh him down in any way.

Namjoon checked his bag over to see that the last time he had used it he had broken the zipper, which was no big surprise to him. He went through bags rather fast for this very purpose, always wrenching the zipper or buckles too hard and breaking them by accident, but right now a faulty zip was the least of his worries. So long as it held some clothes in it and he could shove it into Seokjin's boot it didn't matter at all. His phone sounded from the bed and he looked over his shoulder to see his friend picking it up to check it for him. It was Hoseok, messaging back that he was getting ready and that he would wait for them, but also explaining that Taehyung wasn't picking up his calls. That was something that they could worry about later but right now they needed to get ready and leave to pick their two friends up, so Namjoon just concentrated on shoving random items of clothing into the bag and then grabbed a tee from inside the wardrobe to shrug it on over his head.

After hastily getting into a pair of jeans he carried his bag over to the bed and grabbed his wallet and phone charger to add them inside too. He hefted it onto his shoulder, keys and phone in hand and checked that Seokjin was all packed up and ready to go, and he confirmed that he was as he finished knotting his boots up. Namjoon didn't bother getting into his own pair of shoes but rather just grabbed hold of them. He could worry about tying them up when he was in the car and they were driving down the streets because he would take several minutes to knot the first one the way his shaking fingers currently felt. The ride down the elevator was hell and it seemed to last forever even though he knew that it barely took thirty seconds to get from his floor to the basement parking lot. When the door opened he wasn't surprised that Seokjin jogged across the lot to get to his car so he had to pick up his pace too. They tossed their bags into the open back of the 4x4 and then he was climbing into the passenger seat beside his friend as he stuck the keys in the ignition.

"You know," Seokjin said as he fastened his seatbelt over and snapped it in place. "Sometimes I think that I'll have a normal day without any trouble and then I remember who my friends are." He glanced out of the front window before turning to look over at him. There was a smile on his face and he realised that this was an attempt at a joke, a scarily accurate one at that. Namjoon just sighed as he leaned against his own seatbelt and struggled to get into his sneakers, not really able to bend down far enough with the taut material pulled over his ribs. As he knotted the first one he felt the engine rumbling through the bottom of the seat and then the car was backing out of the space to slowly drift across the lot.

"Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be normal?" Namjoon asked as he managed to get the second sneaker on. The belt was cutting into his chest annoyingly tight. "'Cos I do and I gotta say, I think it must be pretty boring." Seokjin twisted the wheel and the car rolled up and onto the ramp that led out onto the main road and he finally settled back in the passenger-seat. "Where to first?"

"Kookie, his house is closer."

"Jin...what the fuck do you think even happened?"

"...I don't know, I can't even think right now," Seokjin replied in a quiet voice. "I've tried thinking about it all but I just go blank. I think it's my brains way of stopping me from going crazy."

"His father," Namjoon said as he shifted to press the window button, letting it down a few inches to allow a breeze to come into the car. "Shit Jin, his actual father? I just..." He found that he couldn't finish this sentence no matter how hard that he tried. Just like Seokjin had said he couldn't seem to think about it all without going blank.

He could hear his mother talking from along the hallway and yet her words didn't mean anything to him. He was too busy fastening up his backpack clasps and making sure that he had everything that he needed before leaving the house. Namjoon might have messaged him telling him to just pack lightly in case, but Jungkook wasn't stupid. There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him that if he left his family home tonight that he might not be coming back for quite some time. It wasn't a planned adventure that he had ran off on without telling his parents, running away in the early morning hours and not even leaving a note behind to let them know where he had gone. This was a sporadic and frightening experience and he just knew that it wasn't going to be something as simple as crashing in one of his friends' houses for a few days before coming back home. Jungkook's fingers fumbled along the plastic clasp and he heard the two pieces snapping together to let him know that it had fastened securely, even when it looked like it was going to burst at the seams. He shrugged it up onto his shoulder and from outside he heard his mother's voice increasing in volume slightly.

"...think it's a good idea Jaesuk," she said and he could just picture her folding her arms over her chest like she always did when she wanted to get a point across, "because he's just settled down and started performing well in class. I don't think it's a good idea to let him go running off in the night like this." The soft sound of his father saying something to her echoed down the hall, telling her that it must have been his friends for him to act like this. "I know, I know it's his friends and we know what happened the last time he went off with them."

"He came back better, he came back and he started behaving."

"Yes, but what if he comes back this time and he's...he's misbehaving again?"

Jungkook felt the weight of the backpack and he recalled the sensation that he had been thinking about just two days ago, about how his school bag was almost as light as a feather. Right now the weight was substantial and it felt familiar in a way that he couldn't seem to explain. It felt like climbing onto a bike years after last riding one, feeling his feet slip into the pedals perfectly and his fingers curling around the rubberised handles tightly. It wasn't an anchor at all but it rather felt like a buoy, a life jacket perhaps, and he realised just how strange the last year had actually been for him. It had been a little bit like dreaming only to have been woken up by a hard slap across the face. Right now, the disorientation and the fear, that was his skin tingling from the blow as the heaviness of sleep was finally pushed out of him. He had needed this slap for so long that he hadn't started to go numb with fear, rather now he could feel something; could feel his heart skipping in his chest and his mind flooding with thoughts rather than mathematical equations and useless geography shit.

This was the new chapter that Seokjin had spoken about, finally open in front of him and just waiting for him to plunge down deep into.

His phone was on the side table beside a half-empty glass of water so he picked it up and checked his screen. No missed messages. He unlocked it with his thumb and hastily went through his contacts to get Taehyung's number up. He hit it and held the phone against his ear, listening to the dial tone and muttering 'come on' under his breath in a mantra that was punctuated by every ring down his ear. After a grand total of twelve such rings he was directed to an answering machine message and he ended the call and stared at his screen. Why wasn't he picking up? The line wasn't in use so it wasn't like his friend was already talking to someone and he couldn't get through. Taehyung wasn't using his phone and he wasn't answering it either and he didn't like the way his stomach got unsettled. Jungkook cursed and gnawed on his lip before shoving it into his jacket pocket, feeling the khaki polyester against his knuckles as he pulled his hand free. He patted down his jeans to ensure that he had his wallet, locating it in the left front pocket, and then he pulled the drawer set into the side table open to eye the contents. No phone charger because it was in the backpack. He did lay his eyes on the small pill container and he lifted it out and shoved it into his jacket pocket with a heavy sigh. If he didn't take his Ritalin with him and his mother went into the room to check after he had left he would be bombarded with hundreds of messages and calls telling him to get his ass back home.

He didn't know if any of his friends beyond Seokjin even knew about the fact he was on the pills. His mother had dragged him along for a referral right after returning home from the adventure because he had needed to 'talk to somebody' about his behaviour and he had rolled his eyes and played along only to discover himself being diagnosed with a case of ODD. Jungkook hated that term, ODD, because it was a joke within itself. Oppositional Defiant Disorder: odd in name and in nature. He had found it rather funny that there was now a term for pretty any fucked up thing and that bad behaviour had excuses that he wished he had been able to use a few years ago in middle school. But the doctor and his mother had not found it funny at all. They had found it rather worrying that he had ticked all of the boxes: easily lost temper, argumentative and caused trouble for the sake of it, refusing to follow clear set rules. And to top it all off he had a nice dosage of ADHD to go along with it. Jungkook finally knew what Hoseok had felt like with his own pills and why he had hidden them for so long. So here he was shoving the bottle of pills away because he needed to be doped up on them to follow orders like a good little boy.

"It's his friends Minji, you can't expect him to just go back to sleep and ignore them if it's something important-"

"You were the one that made me take him to the clinic in the first place," his mother argued back, voice now close to a shout. "You said that he was getting out of control and you were scared and now you're changing sides. Jaesuk it's 3am in the morning, what's so important that he can't wait until the morning?"

"Murder," Jungkook muttered under his breath as he sat down on his bed and grabbed his Timberland boots from under his bed. For some reason this made him laugh when it really shouldn't have. "Murder is important enough." When he was done with knotting them up he got back to his feet and crossed his room to get to the door, peering through the open doorway to see them both standing by their own room, father hovering in the doorway and mother opposite him with her back against the wall. She had to look up to hold his gaze and he could see that she was annoyed. He clearly got his temper from her but there was a slight different; she was angry about something important unlike his past outbursts. He was planning on trying to sneak past and get downstairs but it was useless for his mother held a hand up at him without even looking his way, telling him stop right there and he had little choice but to do so.

"What are you going out for dear?"

"My friends," Jungkook said as he looked between them both. "My friends they, uh, they need me right now."

"Why?" He could see that his mother was tired and angry and also a little frightened and nothing that he could say to her would possibly make her feel alright with this. He could tell her that he was just going to stand on the street corner to talk to someone and that he would be back in five minutes and she would still tell him that she didn't want him to go, so there was nothing that he could do at this point but try and not fan the flames too much.

"Mom, it's Tae." At the mention of Taehyung's name her saw her eyes harden and he thought that this might have been a mistake but it was too late to take it back. "Tae really needs us right now and I can't puss-back out on him like this. Not now, not after everything."

"Jungkookie, you know that that boy is trouble."

"I know, but not that long ago I was trouble too and-"

"And I'm scared that being around him again might just cause you to start misbehaving like you were last year. You remember how bad you were, don't you?" Jungkook thought of street brawls at 2am in the morning that ended in split lips and skinless knuckles, of being thrown over the hood of a car and shouting matches and soju bottles, and there was a lump in his throat that was hard to swallow. His mother had no idea whatsoever if she thought that bad grades, detentions and nights spent sleeping on park benches were the worst that he could get.

"I won't, I won't do anything bad I promise," he finally said after a few seconds of silence. Then, because it felt like the right thing to do, he crossed the hallway and placed his hands on her shoulders, lowering his head so that he could kiss her forehead. He heard her sighing from the contact and then he looked over at his father. The man studied him for a moment and then he reached over to ruffle his hair. "I know that Tae is trouble, that pretty much all of them are trouble but they need me. You understand, right?" Jungkook didn't know if his words would get through to them but it must have worked for his mother just reached up to rub at her eyes roughly with the back of her hand and sniff a few times.

"Just promise me that you won't do anything silly Jungkookie, that you'll stay safe and you won't get into trouble."

"I promise."

Five minutes later, sitting on the curb of the street corner with his legs cocked out over the gutter and his elbows folded on his knees, Jungkook slipped his pills out and looked at them. The bottle was maybe half empty, a week or two worth inside before he would need another prescription. He didn't know how long that he would be gone but he did know that he didn't want to have them around Hoseok. He didn't want him to see him swallowing pills, as silly as the thought sounded. It would be like pulling out a bottle of vodka and pouring out shots right in front of Taehyung, and before he could stop himself he was twisting the cap and letting them spill down through the cracks in the metal grate out of sight. He heard the faint pattering sound of them landing down below, in the gutters that ran below the streets like secretive labyrinths. Then he hurled the empty bottle across the road and watched it bounce off the tarmac.

Fuck Ritalin, he didn't need that shit.

Jungkook stared at the sight of the empty road in front of him, at the bottle lying on the opposite side of the street where it would hopefully be crushed by traffic, and he waited for the familiar sight of Seokjin's black car to pull up in front of him. He didn't need Ritalin and he didn't know if his friends really needed him right now but he did know one thing: he needed them.

He didn't keep track of how many times that he attempted to get through to Taehyung but he knew that it was in double digits and he wouldn't be surprised if it was in the triple digits. If he kept trying then his battery might just die and he lifted his phone to check the screen once more. Twenty-nine percent, no missed calls, no missed messages. Hoseok sighed and stared at his lock screen before putting it back down on his lap. This wasn't helping him in the slightest and yet he couldn't stop doing so, it was a compulsion that he kept coming back to over and over like a tongue poking the hole where a tooth used to be as if it would suddenly appear again, feeling nothing more than a raw wound instead. The temptation to bury his face in his hands was so strong that he actually did so, fingers folding over his eyes as he cupped his chin in his palms. Despite everything that had just happened his eyelids still felt heavy and he had to rub at them roughly to keep them open. He knew right now that he was operating on pure adrenaline and that he would crash soon, it was only a matter of time.

He had dressed for the night weather rather than the upcoming day, black denim jacket over an open checked shirt, a loose tee beneath. The weather was chill and he shifted so that he could rub his arms and keep himself warm. He was using his backpack as a cushion so that he didn't have to sit on the paving flags but it wasn't at all comfortable; the layers of clothing actually rather hard. Inside and folded within layers of clothing was his notebook. He didn't know why he had taken it but he had, and he had also grabbed something else too. Though it was heavy and awkward inside the duffel bag he had shoved the book in anyway; because Taehyung had been looking at it.

Hoseok had not been woken up in the morning to his alarm like always, or to the sensation of Taehyung shifting in the bed beside him and jolting him awake by accident. No, he had been awoken to the sound of his phone blaring and vibrating in his jeans pocket on the floor. He had been so surprised that he hadn't even registered the fact that the other side of the bed had been empty and had instead reached down to grab for his phone. It was only when he had answered the call and ran his hand along to feel nothing more than wrinkled sheets had he realised. With the empty bed beside him and his phone in hand, Hoseok had figured out that there was going to be trouble long before the rest of his friends had. He had waited and waited and when he had heard the sound of Taehyung's quivering voice he had known that he had fucked up, just not the way he had revealed in the end. Hoseok had expected that he had finally caved after a year of being sober and had ran off to hit up a bar, that he had drank himself into a mess and maybe...just maybe ended up in an alley with a stranger just like in the past.

He had not expected this.

Hoseok had not expected to have woken up in bed without Taehyung and have heard him sobbing down the phone about his father whilst he had stared at the wide open window across the room. Talking about his father after he had stupidly suggested he consider seeing them again. No, it had felt like a waking nightmare to him and right now he was still reeling from it all.

At the bottom of his bag like an anchor there was the photo album. After hearing Taehyung talking down the line he had noticed it open wide on his desk, right by the window so that the light from outside had fallen on the pages and had caught his eye. It hadn't been there when he had been awake so that had meant that Taehyung had pulled it off his shelf and had been looking at it before he had decided to escape through the window. So he had gotten to his feet and had eyed the open pages of baby photographs, gaze falling on one of him and his best friend from primary school. That was the reason why he had shoved it into his bag, because Taehyung had been looking at it and that meant that he needed to find out why. He needed to know that what had caused his friend to wake up in the middle of the night and disappear without warning, what had caused him to...to kill his father.

He was deep in his thoughts when the car finally pulled up at the curb and before he could even shift to get to his feet, phone clutched in hand, the back door popped open and Jungkook leaned out through the gap. Hoseok grabbed his bag and tossed it onto the open back and then he climbed inside the vehicle and slammed the door shut. For a few seconds the interior stayed silent and then Seokjin was twisting the wheel and rolling his car back into traffic. He wrenched on the seatbelt and snapped it in place and then he slowly looked over them all, the backs of Seokjin's and Namjoon's head, Jungkook in the seat beside him. Then he dropped his gaze to his phone and he let his breath out in an uneven sigh.

"I didn't think that I would be seeing you all again like...this," Hoseok said as he unlocked the phone and once again went to his contacts. As he located Taehyung's name Namjoon shifted in the seat to look back at him. Before he could even open his mouth and ask him he shook his head. "No, he hasn't been picking up. I've tried a hundred times and he won't answer me."

"I tried too," Jungkook said as he watched him, turned in his seat without the belt on, typical. "Just got to the answering machine and I never bothered leaving one. We know he never listens to them, what's the point?"

"Right now, I think Tae can't talk to us," Seokjin said suddenly, not shifting his gaze off the road once as he did.

"Can't? Don't you mean doesn't wanna?"

"No Kookie," he continued with a head shake, the car rolling down the quiet street. In the early morning hours too many people were in the centre clubbing or sleeping for work to drive around like they were. "No I don't think it's a case of not wanting to, I think that he can't. I think right now Tae's stuck in his own thoughts and he can get out. He's in shock, he's scared, he's retreating to a safe place."

"Tae's mind isn't his safe place," Hoseok muttered as he listened to the dial tones. "It's a fucking maze of self-hate, misery and anger."

"That might be the case but I think Jin's right," Namjoon shifted so that he could look back at them both. "I think Tae's terrified right now, just like us. He's done something... something extreme and he's scared about telling us about it. He knows if he picks up that he's gotta through it all over again." Just like he had expected, he didn't get through on the phone and so Hoseok ended the call with a heavy sigh. "Hoseok?"

"...I don't know what happened," he explained as reached up to rub at his brow, anticipating a headache to hit him soon enough. "I woke up just as confused as you all did. Tae climbed out of the fucking bedroom window when I was asleep. I didn't have a clue he had left, he didn't leave me a message to let me know where he had went."

"Has he been...alright?" Seokjin asked him as he slowed down at a set of lights, the only vehicle currently on the empty intersection. He knew what he meant by that, even when his friend didn't explicitly say it aloud.

"He's been sober," Hoseok shifted to balance his elbow on the window rest as he looked at the glowing lights of the skyline. "For a whole year he's been sober and I'm just praying right now that he still is."

When he got to the bottom of the stairs he could smell the unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke clinging to the air. It meant that Yoongi was in the sitting area with a thick cloud of smoke floating around his head, still and silent as the sticks smouldered up into nothing but ash between his lips. He had likely started smoking around the time that he had stepped into the shower and knowing his lover that could be as few as two or as many as five sticks. Judging by the thick scent that he could taste on his tongue it was more rather than a few. Jimin crossed the narrow hallway to go through the door to his right, raking his damp hair back off his face as he did. He now felt clean at least, so that was a nice sensation. Underneath the tang of cigarette smoke he could taste the strong flavour of mint mouthwash. He had needed to scrub his tongue and swill it out to rid himself of the vomit and the hot water had washed away the clammy sweat that had coated his skin. It was as if he was waking up of a morning rather than past 3am, as if the sky visible through the window was bright blue and lit up with sunlight and not a deep dark purple filled with clouds that covered the few stars still visible under all of the pollution.

Jimin stepped into the sitting area to see Yoongi on the battered settee, just like he had expected. Cross-legged, hands on his lap and cigarette stick pursed between his lips. He looked so small sitting there, shoulders slumped and eyes staring across the room at the TV. It was currently turned on but there was nothing but white noise on the screen, fizzing noise coming from the speakers whilst white and grey and black spots danced across the screen. The remote was on the coffee table in front of him, the one that he had fixed up for him rather than replace, and he knew that he wasn't watching it; Yoongi just wanted the noise to fill the house so it wasn't silent, the lights flashing and painting the walls with a harsh white glow.

"Hey," his lover said as he pulled the stick free and tapped ash over the arm and onto the floor. Jimin waited to see if he would say anything else but he didn't and instead just took another drag on his cigarette and let it out in a lazy ring that floated up to hit the ceiling and dissipated. He crossed the room and sat down beside him, reaching over to take his wrist and turn his arm over. No fresh marks there, it seemed that Yoongi had been so distracted with his thoughts to even stub one of them out of his skin for once.

"Do you think he's OK?"

"Tae?" Jimin made a soft noise as he traced up his forearm with his fingers, feeling the familiar bumps of scar tissue along his flesh. "I dunno Minnie, I really dunno anymore. I thought he was OK, for quite awhile I thought he was but now he's..." Yoongi sighed, the faintest tendrils of smoke coming out of his nose as he did.

Jimin watched his fingers rather than lift his gaze to study his face, up and along to his inner elbow where he rubbed his thumb in circular motions. He thought that there was a high chance he couldn't even feel the contact through the scar tissue but he liked to think that he could. Yoongi hovered the stick in front of his lips, and seemed to not even want it so he shifted to stub it on the table but Jimin reached over to take it from him. He took a deep drag on it and held it for only a few seconds before letting it out again, lungs and throat burning because he hadn't shared a cigarette in quite some time.

"You'll end up as bad as me if you start sharing again," Yoongi remarked as he watched him take a few more quick drags and then he stubbed it out. He could now taste tobacco over the mouthwash and before he could breathe the last lungful out Yoongi leaned forward and kissed him, stealing the smoke out of his lungs. "Don't copy my bad habits," he breathed against his lips, smoke escaping as he did.

When the vehicle pulled up outside they could hear the sound of the rumbling engine and the slamming of the doors coming in through the open window; voices carrying as loud as shouts even when they were talking amongst themselves. Yoongi got to his feet to answer the door and before he could get to it there was a series of loud knocks, then the sound of the lock drawing back with a metal scrape. Jungkook's voice sounded from the front step and a rally of questions were fired at him. Jimin just studied the stubbed out remains of the cigarette until a moment later the others were all piling into the house. The first thing that had happened was Seokjin came right over to him to ask how he was, to see if he was okay. He had probably heard him crying down Yoongi's phone, and he confirmed that he felt okay. Jimin wasn't really sure what he currently felt but it was better to say that everything was fine right now and leave it simple and clean.

"Any luck?" Yoongi asked as he followed them into the open-plan room. Hoseok explained that Taehyung wasn't answering his calls and that everyone went through to voicemail. "Did you leave a message?"

"No, he doesn't answer them," Jungkook said as he dumped his bag on the floor and rolled his stiff shoulder.

"Just try leaving one," his lover suggested, folding his arms over his chest as he looked over them all. After a few seconds Namjoon pulled his phone out and he shifted to sit by the coffee table. He gestured at them all to gather around, explaining that they should all talk and not just him. He placed the phone down on the table and listened to the dial tones, a sound they were all getting painfully used to.

"What do we say?" Jimin asked as he stared at the phone. "What do we say to him?" He glanced up and saw hard to read expressions on all of their faces, deep contemplation and nervous panic. After a few more dull rings Seokjin replied.

"We just...talk," their eldest friend said in a quiet voice. "Let him know that we're here for him. It's all that we can do."

The interior of the freight carriage was cold but at least it blocked the wind and saved him from more discomfort. He was already chilled to the bone, a shiver so deep set into him that he doubted that it would ever go away. It wasn't that he was cold but it was rather that he was trembling from something else entirely; something he knew was shock and fear. Every time a wave ran down his body he would feel his muscles clenching and then relaxing as his back teeth chattering together. There was two objects in his hand; in the right the remains of the shattered bottle. His fingers were still clasped tightly around the neck and he was very much aware of the fact that his muscles had seized up around it; locked in place. His fingers and wrist were aching and he had tried peeling them off to no avail. It was a mixture of things but mostly it was the tacky blood that had his skin stuck to the glass. The edges were jagged and the green looked black in the current moonlight, blood staining the sticker on the front. In his left hand, stolen from the family home, was the photograph. He had been staring at it for so long now that his vision had started to blur, started to make the faces nothing more than blobs of colour on the filmy page. On the back mostly there were smears of blood and he had gotten a few streaks on the front too by accident; across the bottom where the white hospital blankets were.

All of this for a fucking photograph.

On the carriage floor his phone vibrated once more. He had it on silent so at least he only had to listen to the loud vibrating and no blaring music. Taehyung shifted his gaze to look at the bright screen, watching it dance until it stopped once more. Dead. Then he looked at the photograph, ran his eyes over it. Where was his mother right now? He didn't know, it seemed that no one did, and all that he had of her was this single photograph. That wasn't fair at all, having just a photograph of his mother and the vivid recollections of his dead father on the family home kitchen floor to carry with him the rest of his life. Had she have still been in the house then that might not have happened. Had he have just stayed in bed with Hoseok, in his arms with his face pressed against his hair then this wouldn't have happened.

He would have woken up to another boring day in the house but it would have been a perfect. It would have been a dream. Now he was in a nightmare all because he hadn't been able to stop himself. He had never been able to stop himself.

Taehyung finally placed the photograph down with an uneven sigh and picked up his phone to look at the screen. Twenty-seven missed calls and a voicemail. He unlocked the screen and looked at the log, seeing mostly Hoseok's name and Jungkook placed between the numbers but then Namjoon's name right at the very top in the form of a voicemail. After eyeing this he caved and decided to play it. He didn't want to talk to them right now, have questions asked that he didn't have any answers to. But listening to them talk...that was something that he really needed right now. So he hit the screen and placed it back down on the carriage floor. After a few seconds there was a voice coming from the speaker.

"Tae, hey it's Joonie. I dunno if you'll even hear this but uh...I'm with everyone right now. We're all together but you're not here, you're somewhere else right now. It doesn't feel right, like there's a part missing."

"A broken circle," Yoongi suggested and there was a mumble of agreements at this.

"So we need to know where you are," Jungkook said. "So we can complete the circle."

"It's OK Tae," Jimin added. "We know that you're...you're scared but we want you to know they we're here for you, right?" Another series of agreements, this time louder than a moment ago. Taehyung could just picture them all huddled around the phone, cross-legged on the floor like a bunch of children. "We're here."

"We're here because we know that you would be here for us too," Seokjin explained. "If anyone of us needed you, then I know that you would come running to help. You always do Tae, you try and help no matter what so let us do that for you too. Please." The phone fell silent for a moment and yet he knew that the message was still playing because he watched the seconds count up on his screen.

"Tae," Hoseok finally said to break the quiet. Taehyung felt his breath leaving his lungs in a wheeze and he squeezed his eyes shut tight because they were burning again. He didn't even think he could possibly cry another tear and yet he could feel them stinging and welling under his swollen lids at the sound of his voice. "Whatever happened, you're our friend no matter what, OK? So talk to us, let us in. We can help and...I love you."

The voicemail ended just like that, perhaps thirty seconds of voices suddenly stopping so that the container fell silent once more. After a moment and several deep breaths Taehyung managed to open his eyes again and look at the device. There were smears of blood on that too, just like everything else that he had touched. Then he studied the bottle still clutched in his hand.

He was a murderer, an animal. He deserved nothing more than misery and yet the message he had just received seemed to say otherwise. His friends wanted to help. Help him, after everything that he had done. He didn't deserve this and yet...

Taehyung picked the phone up with his free hand and he got to the first name that appeared on his contact list: Hoseok. He pressed his thumb against it and then held the device against his ear. He held his breath as he waited for the dial tone, and it only managed to sound three times before his friend picked up.

"Tae, hey Tae it's me are-"

"I need you," Taehyung spoke over him, hand shaking so badly he didn't know how he kept hold of it. "I just...I really need you guys right now."