When Namjoon ended the call the house fell quiet, so quiet in fact that Hoseok could hear only the sound of his own heartbeat, his friends' soft breathing, and the ticking of the clock on the wall above the hissing TV. After a few seconds Jimin shifted to pick up the remote and turn it off, cutting off the static noise and light. He mentally thanked him because it had been getting under his skin for quite some time, but the downside was it made the house that much more close to silence. There was a tension in the air that longed to be broken and yet none of his friends seemed to be able to do so. Hoseok just studied the phone on the coffee table as he fiddled with the cuff of his jacket, fingers pulling at the black denim because if he didn't then they would shake uselessly in his lap. At least snagging handfuls of the material allowed him to use them, to hide that they were shaking even though it was rather pointless. He knew that he wasn't the only one shaking, in the fingers or physically shivering with nerves, so he wasn't sure why he felt the need to pretend he wasn't.

For quite some time now Hoseok had been thinking about what Seokjin had said to him, had said about Taehyung retreating to a safe place. Both he and Namjoon had meant his thoughts of course, which he had disagreed with immensely. Taehyung wouldn't go into his thoughts to feel safe and secure. Their friend had never been able to trust his own thoughts, sober or drunk, because his mind had a terrible habit of turning on him. Hoseok could visualise his lover's thoughts like an unpredictable dog, happy and content one moment and then whirling around to clamp him between sharp teeth. They had all seen it happen often, and beneath the surface he knew that it was a constant thing. Taehyung couldn't trust his own thoughts and therefore he wouldn't be safe with them, which meant that he needed somewhere else. Somewhere he felt physically safe.

"If he doesn't call us back," Jungkook said as he shifted to lean his weight back on his wrists. "What do we do?" Hoseok glanced up to study him, finding it weird that he wasn't wearing his uniform right now. Seeing him in his everyday clothing without an armful of books was a jarring sight that he hadn't seen in some time. Whenever he usually had enough time to see the boy it was right after they had both finished classes, but not tonight. Jungkook moved his eyes over them all. "Do we go looking for him?"

"Yeah," Yoongi replied with a firm nod. "Yeah we go and get him."

"From where?" the boy asked, raising his eyebrows at the question.

"Wherever the fuck he is."

"The...the house?" Jimin suggested uncertainly. "Do you think he's in still in the house."

"No," Seokjin shook his head. "No I don't think he is, or I hope that he isn't."

Hoseok stared at the phone on the table and he tried to block their voices. There was a thought at the back of his mind and he was trying to pull it to the front but his friends were distracting him and he couldn't seem to do so. Something to do with a safe place. In time of need sometimes it wasn't the most obvious thing, like a bedroom in which someone could lock themselves up in. Hoseok knew that Taehyung didn't have many positive memories associated with bedrooms, whether or not he directly said it, and he was only slowly helping him create some. If it wasn't a house then it was something else...somewhere that Taehyung physically needed and-

"He's in the trainyard," Hoseok said suddenly, voice low because he was talking to himself more than anyone else: his thoughts slipping out of his lips. Jungkook stopped talking, trailing off as he looked at him with a blank face. He dragged his eyes off the phone and looked over them all slowly. "The trainyard, that's where Tae is."

"How do you..." Namjoon paused before letting out a soft noise under his breath. "Shit, you're right. Tae will totally be there."

"Why would he be there? That's blocks down from his old home that would be..." Jimin furrowed his brow and then it seemed to hit him.

"Tae needs somewhere safe, somewhere warm like a shelter. It's the trainyard," Hoseok shifted to sit upright. "We all went there, it was the one place we had to escape from everything, right?"

"He's at the trainyard," Seokjin agreed, and when he did Hoseok saw that the others took his opinion for fact. His friend nodded at him vigorously. "It was practically Tae's home at one point, it will be his sanctuary too."

"Should we go-" but before Jungkook could finish Hoseok felt his phone vibrating in his pocket and he jerked before frantically pulling it free. The sudden sound caused most of them to jump in surprise, muttering breathy curses as he answered the call.

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

"I need you." The sound of his voice, finally on the line so that he could listen to him, was enough to make Hoseok's heart plummet down into his stomach and then jerk right back up again to the back of his throat. Taehyung was talking, he was somewhere across the city and he was alright. Maybe not mentally or entirely physically but he was alright and that was all that mattered. Taehyung was reaching out for help instead of shutting them out, no longer repeating his actions of the last year. "I just...I really need you guys right now."

"Oh-OK Tae," he managed to reply. "We're here for you, just talk to me."

"Tuh...trainyard," he said in that same husky voice. Hoseok gestured at Seokjin to get his attention, mouthing at him to let him know that they had been correct in their assumptions. He saw Yoongi reaching over to tap Seokjin's arm, gesturing between them both and then moving his hands in the unmistakable charade of driving a car: both hands up as he mimed twisting a wheel.

"Just us two?" Seokjin asked in a low voice, barely above a whisper. He nodded at the question and then Hoseok watched the eldest pull his car keys out and dangle them at him. He understood what he meant by this: let's go get him, just the two of us.

"I'm uh-in the trainyard," Taehyung added, letting his breath out in a heavy sigh. Hoseok almost felt the sensation of his breath on his cheek, as if he was beside him rather than miles away.

"OK, OK, me and Jin are coming to get you so-"

"Don't hang up, don't-" Taehyung cried out, voice cracking as he did and then he took several whistling breaths, "just tuh...talk to me."

"I won't I won't," Hoseok explained as Seokjin helped him to his feet, feeling his legs shaking unsteadily and threatening to spill him back to the floor. His friend kept hold of his forearm as he crossed the room and pulled him into the hallway. "I'm still here and I won't hang up on you." Seokjin opened the door and so he followed out behind him, reaching behind himself to slam the door shut. On the phone he heard a little whimper, that of relief. "What do you want me to talk about, huh?" The front path was only short and his friend pushed the rusted, creaking gate open but he decided to climb over the low wall instead, clearing it like a stubborn hurdle.

"I...I dunno," his lover said in a low voice. He sounded confused and scared. "Just tuh-talk and let me huh-hear your voice."

Hoseok knew that right now he shouldn't talk about what had happened. As he dived into the passenger-seat beside Seokjin and dragged the door shut behind him, the sound like a gunshot in the silence of the area, he knew that he needed to make sure that Taehyung didn't think about anything negative, anything that would upset him more than he already was.

"Tell him about something like..." Seokjin started the engine which a quick twist of his wrist. "Tell him about Soobin, something that will make him happy." Soobin? That was a good idea but he wasn't certain that the mention of her would be the wisest. Taehyung might think about her foster parents and that might cause him to think about his father again.

Hoseok didn't bother with the seatbelt because that required him moving in the seat and he didn't seem capable of doing that. He was frozen in place, hand holding the phone to his ear and the other pulling on the neckline of his tee. On the phone Taehyung was still breathing audibly and though only a few seconds had passed it felt like an eternity, longer than he wanted to make him wait.

"Tae...you're in the trainyard. So let's talk about the trainyard." Seokjin twisted the wheel hard and the car rolled into the road. "Remember the first time Kookie stayed out late to piss his parents off, when he was eleven, and he fell asleep on the tracks-"

"So I shone on tuh-torch on his face and muh-made noises like a horn and he nearly pissed himself," Taehyung finished, before adding. "Such a fuh-fucking bully..."

"We all goaded you on," Hoseok argued as the car rolled down the street at a steady pace. "It was funny, even now looking back it's still funny. Kookie still thinks it's funny."

"Can you ruh-remember the first time we ever wuh-went to the trainyard? I can't really seem to remember," Taehyung sighed. "It's buh-been such a long time." Hoseok shifted to look at Seokjin and he raised an eyebrow at him, quietly asked him if he could.

"I remember," Seokjin said with a nod and so he pressed the speakerphone option for him. "It had only been closed for use for about...six months, something like that. It had still been in really good condition, no graffiti, the boards on the station still had all of the nails in it and it hadn't been kicked to shit." Hoseok studied his friend's face as he spoke, finding that he could faintly remember it just not as clear as Seokjin. It was blurred somewhat, like an old photograph. "It was summer...or the end of May I think, can't recall but I remember it being warmth and sunny that day."

"Sunny..."

"Yes, like it was this morning, nice and sunny. Back then it was me, you, Yoongi and Hoseok, and Namjoon had been just new to the gang and he hadn't been able to go out with us. A summer afternoon, a few hours spent investigating the old trains and climbing all over everything. I remember..." Seokjin paused for a moment before laughing. "I remember you climbing up onto the top of one of the freights and shouting "I'm the king of the fucking world!" and you must have been...six."

"That was the first time I had ever heard a curse," Hoseok said suddenly before making a soft noise. Yes, it had been he knew that it was. He had heard Yoongi mutter "goddamnit" and other slightly blasphemous things under his breath but never a proper curse, and after Taehyung had shocked them all the older boy had broken them all out without a single care.

"Really? I duh-did that?"

"You did," Seokjin confirmed with a nod. "And Yoongi refused to climb up because he was scared of heights like a little baby."

"Huh-Hoseok?" He turned the speakerphone option back off and held it against his ear.

"Yes?"

"Do you...you remember our fuh-first kiss?"

"...Yes, I remember it."

Hoseok could remember it perfectly clear even though he liked to pretend that their first kiss was actually shared on the adventure, inside of the empty train carriage pinned against the corrugated wall with Taehyung's breath against his cheek. Thirteen years of age Taehyung had been, high on life and several shots of lemon soju that had made Namjoon scrunch his face up tightly and nearly choke. The others had all been darting along the tracks chaotically because Yoongi had grabbed the empty bottle and had claimed that he was going to hurl it at a passing truck for fun: seventeen and starting to smoke enough cigarettes to put hardened smokers to shame. Hoseok had been fourteen and very much not thinking about romance or questioning sexualities because that had been right at the back of his mind and not at all important. He recalled that he had watched them all run along after Yoongi, hollering and drunk and wanting to see if actually did what he had boasted he would do. He and Taehyung had been sitting on the very edge of the carriage and he had been about to jump down and run after them when the boy had grabbed hold of him. Taehyung had twisted him around hard and then tried to kiss him, really by just pressing his open mouth against his in a slobbering attempt that he had probably learnt from watching terrible films...or porn; Taehyung catching him by surprise so that he had had his mouth open and caught in the middle of a laugh, so that he had felt a wet tongue jabbing between his lips.

Then he had heard the sound of the bottle shattering as Yoongi had tossed it and missed a passing truck in spectacular fashion, drunken reflexes too slow; the sound of their friends bursting out into hysterical laughter and ribbing him for days afterwards. Neither of them had been able to partake in the jokes however, because they had missed it.

"You definitely improved," Hoseok remarked and this made his lover laugh. The sound wasn't very happy but it was better than nothing he supposed. "Do you think that even counts?" Taehyung made a noise in agreement and he recalled all of the other sporadic attempts that had happened over the years in the trainyard, of drunken fumbles and strange sensations in the pit of his stomach.

"Every kiss counts," he said after a moment of silence, breathing a lot even than it had been. "Every second counts too, when I'm with you and the others."

The streets outside of the window seemed to stretch forever without break, the stops at traffic lights unbearably long in a way that made him wriggle uncomfortably in his seat. Hoseok became strangely aware of time as an actual tangible substance in the same way that he had the night of Jimin's accident. He had never really counted seconds before yet now he was counting the time between each second, fractions of time that lasted less than a blink. Seokjin remained silent as he drove the vehicle to the location, intense concentration on his face and hands never leaving the wheel once. He wondered what the others were doing right at this very moment and what would happen when they brought Taehyung back. He tried to figure out what exactly the next day would be like and yet he couldn't possibly imagine.

Seokjin didn't take the usual route so that they ended up on the long stretch of road beside the hill, rather he decided to take another one so that he ended up down on the old dirt fields at the ends of the tracks. This meant that he could drive the car most of the way down towards the trainyard before stopping beside the tunnel. Otherwise they would have had to have ran down the slope to get into the old trainyard, not a smart or practical idea at all. His friend didn't kill the engine but rather kept it running and he shifted in his seat to look at him.

"Together or alone?" Hoseok hadn't expected this question and he froze with his hand on the handle, in the act of popping it open. After a few seconds Seokjin looked out the front window. "You get him, I'll stay here. Don't want to crowd him, right?"

"...Right," he agreed before shoving the door open and stepping out of the vehicle. "Tae I'm right by the old tunnel OK? I'm going to hang up now, but I'll be there in just a few seconds."

"...OK," his friend replied, voice back to that hoarse croak once more. Hoseok ended the call and shoved his phone into his jeans pocket. He hesitated on closing the passenger-seat door but decided to leave it wide open instead and he hastily cut across the front of the car to go into the tunnel. Not far in he started jogging because the pitch black darkness made his skin crawl, and by the time he emerged on the other side he was running. Wherever he was inside the area Taehyung would have heard the engine rumbling as loud as thunder, so at least his friend would know that they had arrived and wouldn't be scared by the crunch of his footsteps on the tracks. Hoseok considered cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out his name but when his gaze settled on the first row of freight carriages he paused, eyes running along until he saw the wide open maw that signaled one had been left open. So he stepped off the tracks and darted along the stretch of dirt until he reached the right one: one that looked to be yellow in the faint light of the rising sun that bled over the tops of the slope.

Hoseok stopped in front of the carriage and he folded his arms up onto it for a moment as he glanced inside. Just a few feet away in the corner he could see the vague shape of a body in the darkness and he knew that it was Taehyung; his lover sitting slumped back against the steel sheet wall with his legs open and straight in front of him, hands in his lap. He couldn't see his face because he was holding his head low, so he took a moment to study him before shifting to pull himself into the carriage. He didn't get to his feet but rather crawled forward slowly to get closer. As he did he detected the scent of dust, sweat and something rusty that he knew was blood, but he tried to ignore. It turned his already unsettled stomach just thinking about it.

"Tae..." Hoseok said in a soothing voice, seeing him move slightly from the sound. "I'm right here, like I said I would be. See? Here's my hand, I'll hold it out to you to take hold of." He shifted his weight onto one wrist and stretched his other hand out to him, palm covered in dirt just like their clothes would be. His arm hanged in the air for a few seconds and then he heard a slight rustling sound: Taehyung moving. His eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness yet so he felt his hand touching his rather than see it clearly. The contact made his fingers twitch.

Taehyung didn't say anything but he heard a loud sniffing noise and so Hoseok shifted to get on his knees and then his feet. His lover needed pulling upright rather roughly because he didn't seem capable doing it on his own. It probably wasn't a good idea to do so but when he finally got him standing Hoseok cupped his face with his free hand and lifted his head so he could look at him. Taehyung avoided his eyes but he could see well enough in the darkness to see that his face was a mess. His lower lip was torn up badly, just like how Jungkook's had been the night he had gotten into that fight, and there looked to be a massive blossoming bruise on his chin. A punch or slamming it onto the floor, he couldn't be sure. Similar looking blemish around his cheekbone where it had been presumably struck by the back of a hand. His skin was covered in dried blood and still slightly damp from tears and clammy sweat.

"Let's go somewhere else, OK?" His lover asked him where in a hoarse voice. Now he was here, hearing him in person and not distorted down the line, he thought that the hoarseness wasn't from crying alone and he wouldn't at all be surprised to see more bruises around his throat. "Yoongi's house, that's where everyone else is. Except Jin, he's in the car outside the trainyard waiting for us."

"Juh-Jin, is he-" Taehyung shifted to try and knock his hand off his face. "Is he muh-mad, are they mad?"

"Let's just get out of here, OK?" Hoseok suggested, still using a soothing tone as if he was talking to a child. But it worked for after a moment of thought he let him gently pull him across the carriage towards the open doorway. He climbed down first and then held his arms up to offer assistance, watching Taehyung shift to sit down. He grabbed hold of his waist and helped lower him down, boots thumping on the dirt ground with a loud thump, and that was when Hoseok saw a glint of light reflecting off something in his hand.

There was the broken remains of a bottle clutched in his right hand and it seemed that Taehyung wasn't going to let go of it. The fading moonlight was dancing along the jagged shards and Hoseok stared at it and knew that it had killed someone; this bottle had been used to kill his father, driven into his body over and over by his lover; the young man who's other hand was holding onto his tightly.

After a quick study Hoseok decided that that wasn't important right now, what he needed to do was get him into the car. So he started walking along the tracks in the direction of the tunnel, guiding Taehyung as he did. His lover put up no resistance, tightening his hold on his hand painfully so when they stepped into the tunnel and making whimpering noises under his breath until they emerged on the other side, and when he saw the familiar sight of Seokjin's car he tried his hardest to hide behind him. Hoseok just dragged him over to the back, opening the door for him. After a temporary hitch, in the form of Taehyung not seeming to want get inside, he managed to get him to relent. He got back in the passenger-seat and slammed the door shut, seeing Taehyung flinching from the sound in the rear-view mirror. He glanced over at Seokjin to see that he was staring at the broken bottle still clutched in his hand, and then he shifted his eyes to look at him. He could see so many questions in their wide depths and yet he didn't have a single answer to give him.

Hoseok had never been in the bathroom of Yoongi's house for he had only really been on the ground-floor, and it had never been longer than a couple of minutes waiting for him to collect something before leaving again. He had been to his old family home many times in the past and had even stayed in it overnight but not his and Jimin's currently shared house. When he stepped inside of it he saw that it was only rather small. The toilet was directly facing the door with the sink to the right, and on the right wall was the tub and shower fixture on the wall. White porcelain and tiled floor and lower walls, upper section a soft blue. It looked like pretty much like every other bathroom yet there was one thing inside that made it drastically different to the rest.

Taehyung standing beside the tub, covered in blood shivering terribly.

When he and Seokjin had finally gotten Taehyung into the house it had been the result of soothing words and firm grips around his upper arms, not forceful but certainly not gentle. Their friend hadn't cried or shouted or screamed in defiance but had rather just went wide eyed and pressed his lips together, had dug his heels into the paving flags and tried to make himself as stiff as possible so it was harder to move him. But eventually he had caved in from a mixture of things, mostly exhaustion from what he had been able to tell. He had just given in and let them get him through the front door into the hallway, but any closer to the others had been impossible. At that point he had forcibly shrugged himself free of Seokjin's grip and grabbed onto the door frame with one hand, fingers holding on so tightly that his muscles had gone taut and tendons stuck out under his skin. So Hoseok had given up trying to get him into the room and had instead moved him upstairs into the bathroom, where he was currently residing: mute and shivering.

"Tae, let's clean you up OK?" he suggested, getting no reply like he had expected. After waiting a few seconds Hoseok shifted to his knees and unlaced his boots for him, lifting each legs and pulling them free. Then back upright to his clothes, which he eyed with sick fascination.

In the dark trainyard he hadn't been able to notice but his clothing was quite simply ruined. There was blood all over his loose tee and jeans, staining the yellow material from the hemline up past the ribs in a strange reverse bib, the jeans with great patches of the dark substance on the knees and upper thighs. Luckily the night darkness had hidden this and allowed him to run off from the family home without being caught, but had this have happened in the daylight hours then they wouldn't have been racing off to get him from the trainyard; he would have been locked up in a police station cell. The worst part was that he could see so much blood on him and yet he knew that that was nothing in comparison to what was all over the floor of his family home; maybe just a single pint. It was on his clothing, his bare forearms and hands, up his neck to his lower face and even some had gotten in his hair, had dried tacky. The trajectory of the spray seemed to hint that whatever had happened had been forceful, had been repetitive. He could picture Taehyung being lower than his father, tackled to the floor perhaps, trapped with no way out but the broken bottle still in his hand. It was a mental image that he greatly wanted to force away.

Hoseok placed his hands on the waistband of his jeans, looking up at Taehyung's face as he did. He was looking down at the floor but his eyes looked alert and awake, rather than distant and clouded over. He unbuttoned the top had then moved along to the zipper, hands shaking as he did. He couldn't believe that just a bare few hours ago he had been lying in bed with him, asleep and completely oblivious to the world, and here he was in Yoongi's bathroom helping undress so he could wash blood off of his skin. It made no sense to him and yet he had no choice but to accept it, so he pulled down on the jeans and watched the material bunch around his ankles. No underwear, he had been too distracted earlier to bother with any it would seem. Hoseok grabbed the lengths of his tee and wrenched it up over his head only to hit a stumbling block. The bottle. Taehyung wouldn't let go of it and getting him out of the tee was a hell of a lot harder than it should have been. When he finally got him free of it he could see his throat a lot more clearly and this meant that he saw the already forming bruises on his flesh, the unmissable ring of fingers going around the side and the strong darker blotches where his father had pressed his thumbs down on his windpipe and tried to choke him to death.

Yes, now he could see what had happened so much more clearly and yet the sight of bruises around his neck were not new to his eyes at all. Hoseok dropped the bloodstained tee to the floor and then twisted to turn the shower on. The water came on hard and splashed against the porcelain and Taehyung jumped from the sound before crossing his arms across his chest. Hoseok saw an edge of the bottle nicking against his upper arm and then a bead of blood roll down to disappear into the crease of his elbow, yet his lover didn't seem to even react to it. He reached out to seize hold of his arm and pull him closer to the tub and at least Taehyung got the message and stepped inside of it so he didn't have to try and awkwardly lift him up. He stood under the stream of scorching hot water for a moment and then his shivering shoulders stopped and seemed to relax. Hoseok watched the rivulets run down from his wet hair, down along his back to follow the curves of his body, and he saw that it started to get tinged red around his feet.

"Tae..."

Taehyung moaned lowly in response, lowering his arms from his chest to drop them to his side instead. He didn't move to try and clean himself up with any of the washes placed on the shelf beside the fixture, just stared at the wall of tiles in front of him instead.

"Tae, give me the...the bottle," Hoseok held his hand out to him but his lover didn't move to give him it. He kept his hand out just in case yet nearly ten seconds passed and he didn't do so. "Tae, please just give me it so I can get rid of it." When he got no response he leaned forward and attempted to grab his wrist so that he could remove the bottle. He didn't expect Taehyung to let out a strangled sound and lash out at his hand. Hoseok saw the bottle blurring, water rolling off the sides and cascading down into the drain, and then he felt a stinging sensation on the back of his hand. As he stared in dumb confusion he watched blood bead in a long thin slice from the knob of his wrist bone along to the curve at the bottom of his thumb, and that was when it started steadily pouring out of the gash. Hoseok blinked slowly at the sight of wound and then he lifted his gaze to look at Taehyung. His lover still had the bottle clenched in his grip and he could see horror imprinted all over his features. He tried to grab his wrist again only for him to let out that yelping sound and try and fight back.

"Tae, stop fighting-" Hoseok narrowly avoided another deep slice to his arm and he managed to snag hold of his wrist. Taehyung backed away and slammed his back into the wall, trying to twist free and pulling his upper body under the stream. Hoseok felt the shower water soaking into his jacket and through to the next two layers, into his hair, and then he managed to pry his lover's fingers off the bottle neck. He dived back and dropped it on the floor before bringing his foot up and stomping his boot heel down on the remains of the bottle. There was a crunch and he felt the impact jar up his knee as he grounded his heel down and ground the glass to dust with his weight. The sound of it being crushed to powder was a wonderful sound to his ears and when he was satisfied that it was destroyed he looked back at Taehyung. His lover had hunkered down in the shower and he had buried his face against his knees so that only his eyes were visible and staring at him. The shower water streaked down his face and obscured them behind a dark curtain of hair.

Hoseok let his breath out in an unsteady sigh and then lifted his hand to study the slice. It wasn't very deep at all, looked to have only been the top layers of thin flesh, but it was still stinging and bleeding, smeared blood all over his hand and fingers. He wriggled them experimentally and felt the stinging get stronger as a result. Then he lowered himself to his knees to get on eye-level with his lover.

"Tae, I wasn't going to hurt you. Why did you fight me?"

"Duh-didn't," Taehyung's voice was muffled against his knees and he couldn't watch his lips moving. "You tuh-touched me."

"Yes, I touched you because you wouldn't give me the bottle. I touched you back in the trainyard too, so did Seokjin, and I helped you undress too," Hoseok held his hand under the shower stream and winced at the sensation of the hot water getting into the slice. "Why did you attack me?" All he got in reply to the question was a series of choked moans. "I'm not mad at you, it doesn't hurt at all," he lied, "but you did know that I wasn't going to hurt you, didn't you?"

"Huh-huh-" Taehyung's shoulders started jerking up and down and he realised that he was starting to cry again, hoarse broken sobs that seemed to be wrenched up from the pit of his stomach. "I'm suh-sorry." Hoseok told him that it was okay and then he shifted to turn the shower water off. He hadn't tried to clean himself up so it was pointless leaving it running. Then he shrugged his soaked jacket and shirt off, tee underneath only slightly damp, and he leaned over the side to pull Taehyung into an embrace. He didn't fight back this time and instead just curled up against him, arms hugged against himself rather than go around his ribs. "I duh-dunno wuh-what I'm duh-doing." He gasped between sobs. "I wuh-was juh-just so suh-scared I-I-I-"

Several minutes later Taehyung was seated on the floor beside the tub, towel tight around his waist and another around his neck to catch the water dropping from the ends of his soaked hair. Hoseok was seated crossed-legged in front of him lathering soap onto his hands to try and shift any stubborn traces of blood still trapped in the grooves of his palms and the lines of his knuckles. This would require more than soap, it would require scrubbing with a brush and maybe a nice dose of bleach but right now the soap would suffice. His lover didn't say a word and just watched him work, and Hoseok was relieved to see that there was clarity back in his eyes at least. He was with him, in the bathroom, and not trapped in his thoughts.

"He tried to kill me," he eventually said to break the silence. It wasn't a whisper but rather just quiet because he was talking from his bruised and battered throat. Hoseok looked up from his hand, still in the act of drying it, and he studied his face to see no emotion flicker across it. Taehyung was as blank as a slate and he didn't know whether that was a good thing or not. He slowly rubbed the white cotton against his knuckles and waited for him to continue. "I was in the house...I was about to leave. I thought it had been abandoned 'cos it was a fucking ruin, and I went in and saw it was empty. Barely anything inside 'cept a broken settee and a bunch of old fucking beer bottles. So I was gonna leave but then...then he stumbled in."

"He was out drinking," Hoseok said this as more of a statement than a suggestion. His lover nodded and a bead of shower water flew off to land on his forearm.

"He came back and he was...was drunk just like always, like he was the last time I fucking laid eyes on him. How he was still..." Taehyung swallowed hard. "How a person can drink like him and live so long is a fucking miracle, y'know?" It was Hoseok's turn to nod and he did so slowly. Personally he had often wondered this about Taehyung too but he had finally kicked it, but not before week-long alcoholic binges that had seen him in a permanent state of drunken stupor. His body was probably going to suffer in the future from it all but the future was so far away that it wasn't worth thinking about at this point. A minute was too far in the future for him to imagine. "So I uh...I freaked out y'know? I really fucking freaked out and he got me cornered. He...was so drunk he thought that I was my mom."

Hoseok stopped and lifted his gaze to study his face. He saw the first hint of an emotion appear, on the corners of his mouth as he pulled them in tautly and gnawed on his lower lip. His lover was watching him wipe his hands but that were mostly dry at this point. He could see the dark lines of blood still trapped under his fingernails, the scent and colour of rust.

"He was saying her name "Aeyoung" over and over and mumbling nonsense and then...then I tried to leave through the front door but it was locked, the old fucking lock jammed on me so I couldn't unlock it. He started advancing on me and I-I panicked. I tried to run past him to get out of the back but he grabbed me and-and-"

"You don't have to tell me, you don't have to go through this I understa-"

"He caught me by surprise and I tripped, I hit the fuh-floor and then he was on me. He was chu-choking me and I," Taehyung pulled his hands free and placed them around his own throat, not tightly but rather just in a weird display of charades. "He said he was gonna kill me and he was on top of me just like-like," a raspy breath. "There was the broken bottle on the floor, I had to use it I had to. I was going to die."

"I know, I know you had no choice Tae."

"I stabbed him," Taehyung continued, dropping one hand and miming thrusting his hand out. Hoseok felt his knuckles brushing against his lower ribs. "Once. He stopped strangling me. I pushed him off. I could've ran but I didn't. I carried on stabbing him." His lover moved his hand more aggressively, lightly punching his stomach now. "Over and over and I saw blood all over the floor and coming outta his mouth and I kept doing it."

"Tae," Hoseok breathed out as he closed his eyes. At least he stopped mock stabbing him and dropped his fist back onto his lap. His head was spinning and he could feel his heart starting to beat unevenly in his chest.

"I kept doing it."

The bottle of pills in Yoongi's hand was all white, a pop up lid rather than a twistable one, and he could see that they were cheap sleeping pills: the kind that one would find on pharmacy shelves rather than have to get a prescription for. He knew that they would be uncoated and started dissolving on the tongue almost instantly and he eyed the bottle with distrust and also disgust. But his own personal feelings were irrelevant to this situation, and right now Taehyung greatly needed something to knock him out. Something strong enough to dope him dreamless and allow him rest after what had happened over the duration of the early morning hours. The rest of them might just need to pass the bottle around too, share them like they had used to share liquor shots and cigarettes.

"Stopped taking these a few months back," Yoongi explained as he turned the bottle around in his hand, eyeing the label and no doubt checking for an expiration date. "Seemed kinda pointless 'cos I started sleeping normally again. Perfectly fine to be taken, all natural shit apparently like...black cabbage." He furrowed his brow and let out a confused laugh. "Maybe I read that wrong but uh yeah, herbs and shit."

On the settee right now was Taehyung. He hadn't wanted to sit on it yet everyone had practically demanded that he did, clearing the space. He had no clean clothes on hand so he was currently wearing one of Seokjin's packed tees and a pair of underpants he thought belonged to Namjoon but he wasn't sure. Over his lap there were three thin winter blankets that Jimin had dragged out of a closet and the cushions had been shoved behind his back to make a thick pillow-like wall. The tee was too large on the shoulders so it hung down and showcased his collarbones, his bruised throat that everyone had stared at silently when he had walked into the room. Taehyung had swept his damp hair back off his brow and for once he wasn't hiding his face from view. He looked strangely naked with his entire face on show, and so very small with the tee slipping down and the bumps of his knees visible under the blankets.

Everyone else was placed across the room. In the kitchen area Seokjin and Namjoon were at the counter, currently sharing a pot of cheap coffee and huddled on the stools. Jungkook was perched on the old windowsill across the room with his legs cocked up so he could hug his knees to his chest, and Jimin was sitting on the opposite side of the coffee table on the floor, arms folded on the low piece of dark wood and his chin balanced on top. Hoseok was perched on the edge of the far right settee cushion, by his lover's feet, and the position was rather uncomfortable.

"Do you want one, huh Tae?" Yoongi asked as he popped the cap and looked at the inside. His nose scrunched up at the bitter herbal scent. After a few seconds of thought Taehyung softly nodded so he tipped the bottle to get one. The rattling sound of the pills crashing around inside was enough to make Hoseok bite down on the inside of his cheek. He got one of the pills out and it was a blue coloured circular tablet, uncoated like he had imagined. Yoongi shifted to hold his palm out to him and Taehyung accepted it before popping it into his mouth. Then he got the tall glass of water off the coffee table and took a sip to swallow the pill. He didn't scrunch his nose up at the taste and instead just put the glass back down. Hoseok saw a chip in the rim and he eyed it before looking back at his lips. Had he had caught his mouth on it he would have risked slicing it on the chip but that hardly mattered when his lower lip was already a mess, a shredded and raw chunk of flesh that had been torn up from his teeth snagging on it.

"Anyone else?" Yoongi asked as he lifted the bottle and waved it around. "First hit's free." He joked, causing slight smiles for perhaps two seconds before the house went glum again.

"I'll take one," Jimin said and so Yoongi handed him a pill, which he dry swallowed with a grimace.

"I think I'm gonna need a little help too," Namjoon remarked as their friend crossed the room to give him a pill. "Don't think my current combination will work but hey, why not?" Hoseok watched him take the pill with a gulp of coffee and then Yoongi was opening a drawer and dropping the bottle inside so that it was out of sight. Not having it visible made him feel a lot better and his tense shoulders finally relaxed. Right now Hoseok felt like a sleeping pill would greatly aid him but he couldn't ask for one, not in the company of his friends. No, he had learnt to combat headaches and muscle pains with compresses instead, with herbal alternatives rather than chemical-laden pills. He didn't even feel good taking a single aspirin for a migraine so he couldn't just down a sleeping pill because of what had happened today. It looked weak, looked dependent, and Hoseok didn't need them seeing him taking pills when just last year he had been overdosing on Xanax and popping pills like candy.

"So uh...there's just a single bed so," Yoongi reached up to roughly mess with his bleached hair. "I guess that Jin, Joonie and Kookie could share it. Me and Minnie can sleep on the floor and-"

"I didn't agree to this," Jimin interrupted but there was a soft smile on his face that showed it was an obvious joke.

"I'll stay with Tae," Hoseok said, shifting his gaze to look at their friend. Taehyung had already settled down on the settee and he had rolled onto his side so that his face was pressed into the pillows and he had his back to everyone but him. His eyes were closed and his breathing was slow and steady. Hoseok didn't think that the pills had worked so fast on him, rather he had slipped into sleep from exhaustion and the pills would just keep him asleep for hours.

"Is he...?"

"Asleep, yes I think so."

The wide room fell silent for a minute and Hoseok just waited for someone to break it, for the flurry of questions to turn into a rapid avalanche. He just prayed that Taehyung really was asleep and not just childishly pretending because he might just hear some things that could upset him. He didn't look around the room but rather studied the glass of water on the table and eventually there came the soft creaking sound of leather from across the room; Seokjin shifting on the kitchen stool.

"At least he's safe," their eldest friend said as he fiddled with his mug of coffee, span it around the counter top with his fingers rather than lift it and take a sip. "That's really all that matters to me. Does that make me a bad person?"

"No," Yoongi replied without missing a beat. "Fuck that shit you're a good person, and I'm sure nobody here gives a shit either."

"I don't," Jungkook agreed from his perch on the window. "Fuck anyone that tries to hurt my friends, they do that and I'll kill them too."

"You're not supposed to admit to that," Namjoon said over the rim of his coffee mug.

"Well it's true."

"He's safe," Jimin added after a moment. "On the outside maybe but..." He paused for a few seconds. "I think that he's in shock right now, I've been in it before I think, I can't remember but I just know that I was awake but it didn't feel real." Hoseok looked at Yoongi to see that he had gone silent, staring at the wall rather than look at any of them. "I'm scared that he's in shock too and tomorrow he'll break out of it and everything will be so much worst."

"Don't think that's possible," Hoseok muttered under his breath.

"Hey, what's that on your hand?" At Jungkook's voice he looked up and then dropped his gaze to his hand. Whilst in Yoongi's bathroom he had covered the bottle slice on his hand with a dressing he had found in the bathroom medicine cabinet. He hadn't thought anything of it and he had thought that maybe no one else would but of course the keen eyed youngest hadn't missed it. Hoseok studied the dressing, faint drops of blood having soaked through the thin cotton pad, and then he shifted his gaze to look at Taehyung. Still seemingly asleep, one arm curled under the pillow and the other against his chest to hold a handful of Seokjin's tee tightly. Should he tell them the truth or should he lie?

"Tae cut me with the broken bottle," he finally explained. "In the shower, I tried to forcibly pull it out of his hands. He got scared by me grabbing him and he tried to get away and cut my hand." He looked over them all quickly, nothing more than his eyes running across the room before dropping to his now bare feet. "I got it off him and I crushed it to dust. The remains I flushed down the toilet." Once again the room fell silent but after a moment Namjoon broke it.

"You disposed of a murder weapon."

"I did," Hoseok agreed with a curt nod. "I'm also guilty of several other charges, including not filing a report to the police and aiding and abetting a fugitive."

"We're all guilty of that..." Jimin said in a low voice, shifting to lift his head off his folded arms. "Shit, we're all guilty of sheltering him from the law."

"At this point I don't even care," Hoseok said as he rubbed at his temples. "If Tae can be punished for years of abuse and I'm supposed to feel guilty for that piece of shit then I'll happily be punished for refusing to let that happen."

"...I couldn't have said it better myself," Yoongi muttered under his breath.

"Is what happened technically murder?" Seokjin asked, thinking of the smart answer and bringing them back to the main subject before they got sidetracked cursing the dead man. "Is the situation not applicable to say...self-defense?"

Taehyung had admitted to getting into a bad situation with his father, a drunken assault turned into an attempted murder. What he had done, had he have just stabbed the man and fled, would have possibly have constituted to self-defense, perhaps a lesser manslaughter charge had the man's drunkenness in anyway worked in his favour. Yet Taehyung had not injured him mortally and ran away to escape, no, he had admitted to him that he had stabbed his father a dozen or so more times than necessary to keep the self-defense plea valid. What he had done had been murder, plain and simple, and he knew that the courts wouldn't go so lenient on a young man like him: one with countless minor offences already to his name and a police station file the same thickness of the bible. What it meant was that Taehyung was quite simply fucked and there was nothing they could do that could change that fact.

"It could have been, at one point," Hoseok explained. "Two, maybe three blows might constitute as a fight for survival, but Tae didn't stab him three times, he stabbed him about thirty-three times." At this he felt the temperature in the room plummet by several degrees; icy cold in the air that seemed to settle down into the bones. "Tae lost it, he lost control and no, I think it went beyond any semblance of self-defense. It's just murder now."

"The bruises?" Jungkook suggested.

"The bruises show that Tae might have been attacked and he might've died," Namjoon argued, "but like Hoseok said it's not self-defense after a certain point. Especially when he had the chance to escape and he didn't take it, when he should have called the police and informed that he had been attacked and he had stabbed someone to get away."

"You have to do that?" Jimin asked incredulously.

"If you want to be cleared of charges rather than risk being arrested for murder, yeah."

"...That's fucking stupid."

Hoseok let his breath out in a weary sigh and he eyed his sleeping lover to see that at least he looked peaceful right now. A nice big dosage of drugs would do that to anyone, and that meant that he could reach over and run his fingers along his brow softly. Taehyung didn't even whimper or react in anyway, no quivering lips or twitching brow. Did he even have a clue about any of this? He thought about what Doctor Lee had told him just two days ago, about how she thought that Taehyung had development issues that had sprung from a great many problems. How would the others react if he told him that he had had a psychiatrist tell them that Taehyung had the mental age of a late child, an early teenager at oldest? Would they find shivers running down their backs at how eerily accurate it sounded? And would they then look at the sleeping young man on the couch and think about how he had stabbed his father to death? The same person, so young and yet falling apart at the seams from wear; corrupted youth personified.

"I mentioned his parents," Hoseok said quietly as he carried on running his fingers through his hair. "I mentioned them to him when we were with Soobin, said that he should check up on them. He said he didn't want to, that he hated them and he wouldn't go near that fucking house again and then a few hours later...this happens."

"...If you going to blame yourself then don't," Seokjin said before he could even attempt to do so. "Don't blame yourself from a tragedy none of us could have even imagined Hoseok."

"Well I feel like it's my fault," he argued, twisting to look over his shoulder at him. "If I hadn't have said it then he wouldn't have went to the house, I know he wouldn't have."

"The only person responsible for what happened tonight was his father," their eldest friend said sternly, fingers tightening around the mug as he did. "And he paid the price for his actions." He held his gaze for a moment and then he saw his fingers loosening, shoulders going back down as he replaced his hard expression with a softer one. "Right, sleep. We all need to sleep, tomorrow is still a long time away so let's worry about that when it comes."