Whatever Hoseok may say, Yoongi isn't a stalker.

He doesn't even leave his room, for god's sake. Save for the few classes he has to attend this semester, and those are few and far between. Most of his coursework right now is project work, and Yoongi can manage most of that from his room, with occasional escapades to the music department studio. The desk in his room is positioned right next to the window, for no particular reason, so when he looks away from his screen he looks outside.

And when he looks outside he happens to see people. That doesn't make him a stalker. Half the time, Yoongi has no clue who he's watching, except that they're probably a complete waste of his time.

Half the time, he isn't even looking at the people, and is just staring for the sake of some direction to point his eyes in.

It's like this that Yoongi learns the little he does about the students in his area. He'd watched Kim Seokjin stomp through the street in the dead of the night for half a year before they became friends. He watches drunk kids throw up in the bushes, the overly sincere ones go out jogging in the early hours (when Yoongi is starting to consider sleep), and the more annoying ones run around the building whooping for no reason except that they're alive and think they have to.

Some people have noticed him staring, but that doesn't bother him. He has hundreds of horror stories about him, most of them ending with and then he died and haunted his room, and his rotted body was found a decade later. No one wants to bother or 'get to know' a corpse.

Well, no one except for Jung Hoseok. To be honest Yoongi can't remember much about how they became friends besides that Hoseok was just suddenly there.

It's raining today, raining like the world is freaking ending, and Yoongi finds it hard to pay attention to his screen. His headphones are on full blast to block out the sound of the rain, but the mood gets to him anyway, and the track he's working on, which he'd been trying to make melodic, is starting to sound like the calm before the storm.

At a particularly loud roll of thunder, Yoongi sighs and pulls his headphones off, standing up to stretch his limbs and stare out the window.

The light reflects too much, and he has to switch it off to get a view of what's happening outside. There's at least an inch of water on the streets, the worse parts of the road forming muddy puddles. Some poor kid is walking through it all without an umbrella, and it takes Yoongi a moment of squinting to recognize him as Jeon Jungkook. It isn't too hard - the kid has probably worn the same black hoodie his entire life.

He's spoken to the kid maybe twice before, and never more than a few sentences. He seems worse off with people than even Yoongi. But he does have friends - it's hard not to notice them, since they never come up to Yoongi's floor without a dramatic cry of Jungkookie - and recently Hoseok's taken to him as well.

What Hoseok has for the socially awkward, Yoongi doesn't know.

He watches the first year make his way through the rain for a moment, feeling the slightest bit of pity - if he's from the Engineeering department, that was one hell of a long walk through the rain - but then his mind starts turning, thinking. Something about the rain, static, the cold in your fingers and the world so much bigger and so much darker.

He turns back to his computer, the smallest idea in his head. Not the calm before the storm, this should be the warning. The weather forecast.

He plays with sounds for about half an hour - he needs to get the static just right. He tugs off his headphones and turns to the window again, just to get an idea of what he's looking for, and is completely thrown when he sees that Jeon Jungkook is still there.

Yoongi stands to get a better look.

Jungkook is standing with his face turned up towards the sky, hand raised to shield his eyes. He doesn't move. Did he freaking freeze in place?

Yoongi glances at the time on his screen. 10:20. Jungkook has been out there for more than half an hour.

It isn't his fault, or his business, but Yoongi is a bit worried that the kid has no idea that he's there, in which case he really will freeze to death. Yoongi doesn't want that on his conscience. He knows he's going to hell, but he'd like to go with style.

He grabs two umbrellas from his coat rack and his slippers and steps outside, rushing down the stairs. Passes absolutely no one, since everyone is huddled safely inside their rooms like sane people. Unlike Jungkook.

He hisses at the wind and cold when he steps out of the building, his sweat pants already starting to get drenched. The kid is near the end of the street, still in the same position Yoongi had last seen him in.

"Jeon Jungkook!" he calls, and doesn't get a reaction. Sheesh, is he even alive?

He is. When Yoongi is close enough to reach to him, shouting all the way, he looks at the umbrella like he's freaking going to cry, and it throws Yoongi off for a moment that he stops his rant of stupid, stupid, possibly dead idiot.

"Thank you," Jungkook says, like Yoongi's saved his life. Drenched isn't the word for him. His bangs were always a bit too long, and gave Yoongi this irrational urge to swipe them out of his face and stick them up his forehead with cello tape, but now they completely obscure his eyes. He looks so lost, defeated, his fingers shaking when he takes the umbrella, and Yoongi is about seventy percent sure that he's going to end up with a fever.

"Let's get inside," he says, turning to lead the way. There's something growing in the corner of his mind, the previous static swirling darker and darker. Yoongi holds onto it but doesn't dwell - he can focus on the music once he's got Jungkook out of this situation.

Jungkook is quiet on their way up the stairs, and he can't tell if this is natural - because he's barely ever seen the kid talking - or if he's still lost in whatever world he'd disappeared to. Yoongi doesn't know if it's okay to leave him alone. Really, though, the freshman is none of his business.

"Where are your friends?" he asks.

"Out," Jungkook says quietly. Yoongi feels a pang of irritation despite himself.

He sizes Jungkook up - he still looks pretty out of it. Yoongi doesn't quite trust him to feed himself. He still has left overs from what Seokjin gave him for dinner. He supposes he can heat it up.

He finds it a bit amusing how the kid doesn't argue. Hoseok keeps telling him that they're the same, the very same, but to be honest, Yoongi has seen no resmblence so far save the inability the function in society.

Maybe that resemblance is enough.

He's semi-okay with the existence of Jeon Jungkook, because the kid never bothers him. He never even falls in his line of sight. Yoongi only ever sees him coming home at night through the window, and, when he goes over to the restrooms after midnight to wash his face and keep himself awake, there's sometimes someone in the shower with an Iron Man towel slung over the door that Yoongi has learnt to recognize as Jungkook's.

He's semi-okay with his existence, but he is not okay with one Park Jimin's.

"I know you're in there," the voice outside his door slurs, clearly drunk, and Yoongi grits his teeth. Where do these kids get the gall to do this to him. What happened to his rights as a senior. What happened to his reputation as a corpse. "We only want to be friends, but you only ever talk to Jungkookie."

Try drowning in the rain and I'll talk to you too, he wants to snap, but he can't, because he's pretending he can't hear him.

Jimin knocks on and on - Yoongi thinks he's forgotten what he's knocking for, now he just seems content to tap out different tunes. He doesn't know what he's doing here without the members of his trio, and maybe he doesn't want to. Some part of him wants to call the warden and complain, but the larger part of him, the part that is talented at not giving a shit, is too turned off by all the drama that would follow.

Instead, he turns up the volume on his headphones and lets Jimin do whatever the heck he wants. When he tries lowering it, an hour or so later, Jimin is gone.

Yoongi sighs, resting his head on the back of his chair. He's so tired. He's scrapped this track six times already and the seventh try doesn't look any better. It's eating away at his nerves and his patience and sort of making him want to blow a hole in the roof.

He spends a solid moment imagining that - the ceiling exploding, the falling debris, the immense sense of satisfaction it would give him. When the knock on the door starts again, he doesn't think, doesn't breathe - he grabs the closest thing he can find and burst out the door, ready to freaking kill.

He freezes, homicidal urges vanishing abruptly, when it's not Jimin at the door.

Actually it's barely Jungkook either, seeing as the kid has jumped about six feet away already. He's staring at Yoongi in a terrified, I knew it all along sort of way, and the lack of faith the general public has in his violent tendencies is truly incredible.

The last time he burnt something up was last year, okay. And that group of teenagers was asking for it.

"Came to return your plate," Jungkook says, like he's still waiting for Yoongi to grow fangs.

Yoongi takes it from him. "Sorry. Some drunk kids have been knocking on my door all day. Thought it was them." To be honest, he hadn't really thought at all. He'd acted on instinct. That was probably bad.

Jungkook inches away from him, slowly, like Yoongi won't notice. It amuses him a bit.

When he goes inside, he finds a pack of cookies in the paper bag, and that amuses him even more. Of course this strange kid, who can't bear to be in the same room as him for more than five seconds, felt the need to buy him cookies. He kind of gets why Hoseok likes him.

But whatever it is, the food Yoongi gave him wasn't his, and the cookies are an unnecessary gift. He rummages around on his table for something that isn't expired (ends up throwing half the table's contents into the trashcan across the room in the process) and finally happens upon a pack of chewing gum he'd bought earlier that week.

It would do.

"You should join me here more often, Yoongi-ah," Hoseok says. Seokjin is already asleep - practically the only person Yoongi knows with a decent sleep schedule. Hoseok used to be like him as well, until he started working at that lame excuse for a department store.

They're both sitting on Hoseok's bed, Yoongi on his laptop, Hoseok spread out on his back with his arms under his head. Yoongi doesn't come here often. He works best in his own room. But Hoseok's place is closer to the music department and Yoongi was in no mood to walk the extra distance home, so he crashed here instead.

He doesn't respond to Hoseok, opting instead to squint at his screen.

"Hey," Hoseok says, tilting his head up a bit. "You okay?"

Yoongi tosses him a thumbs up and doesn't turn to him.

The way he sees it, his work isn't good or even decent until he's had at least one existential crisis in the middle of it. He's starting to see it as a necessity more than an obstacle, but that doesn't help him deal with it at all. Staring at his screen still makes him want to throw it across the room, and no matter what he does the beat is off, the tone is off, and the song doesn't say what Yoongi wants it to say.

"But it's good," Seokjin had said, when Yoongi showed it to him earlier. But good doesn't matter. He'd written it to communicate something and he freaking isn't able to get that point across.

Hoseok sits up and levels a look at him. "Why are you only intense for all the wrong reasons," he says.

"What even."

"Come sleep. Your music will still suck in the morning, you can sulk over it then."

Yoongi has already been cut off from coffee about two hours prior, so he resolves to just listen. He presses save and closes his laptop, slumping down next to Hoseok. A decent guest would offer to take the couch, but Yoongi is not a decent guest. Or even a guest, really. These people sort of adopted him a long time ago.

Hoseok is quiet for a long while. They lie there, staring at the ceiling in the dark, Seokjin just barely snoring at the other side of the room. "I heard you tried to kill Jungkookie," Hoseok says suddenly.

Yoongi snorts. "Misplaced attempt."

"And then gave him shampoo?"

"In my defence, he gave me Tic Tacs."

"It's hard to get him to stop talking about you," Hoseok admits. "He's trying to connect the guy who likes pineapple flavoured chewing gum to the guy who raps, and honestly it's pretty funny to watch."

Yoongi blinks slowly. "We don't even talk," he says. What could he even be saying about him?

Hoseok shrugs. "Probably the only reason he hasn't run screaming," he says, and Yoongi smacks him, even though it's true.

"He wanted to do music," Hoseok continues.

"Hm?"

"Jungkook. Apparently he sings."

"And he didn't because...?"

"He says he was too scared."

Yoongi scoffs. Classic excuse. It's what basically every student who wanted to do music, wanted to do art, but noooo, what would their parents say, what would society say had ever told him. "Like no one else is," he says, because sheer terror is part of the job.

Hoseok is quiet again. So quiet, that Yoongi almost forgets they were having a conversation.

"Not everyone can face the world like you do," he says at last, and there's something in his words, something in his tone, and Yoongi thinks that's what his song was missing all along.

He hates going to class for no solid reason except that it requires him to, occasionally, follow a freaking schedule.

He's used to waking up whenever he wants, going to sleep almost never, and passing out when and where he sees fit. Seokjin brings him food almost regularly, throws out his trash, and, if he's feeling particularly pissed about Yoongi's lifestyle, even cleans his room. It's Yoongi's job to sit at his computer, tune out Seokjin, and forget he himself exists in the face of the blinking lights of his monitor. With the occasional trip to the bathroom, of course.

But on the days he has to go to class - on those days he's expected to do things. Like take a shower. Find a decent pair of jeans. Like actually sleep, so that he doesn't start snoring in the middle of the lab. All things that he finds a complete waste of time, but has to do because college gives him a damned schedule.

And on too many days of his life, his damned schedule involves sitting through a two hour lecture by a guy who probably hasn't figured out which class he's teaching yet, or if indeed he's even teaching a class, and this would be fine with Yoongi if it weren't for the fact that he thought Yoongi was a good kid. Like, what.

The only reason he ends up in the first row in the man's class is that there's always a fight over any seat behind it, that Yoongi is too late to class to partake in. The only reason he stares at the professor's face is that it's interestingly lopsided and sort of hard to look away from. The professor, however, thinks he's actually listening to him, and this gave him special interest in him, interest that's fine when, say, Yoongi needs an extension for an assignment, but not so fine when the man takes it upon himself to tell Yoongi that music needs to have more heart.

He knows that. He pours his blood and soul into his music. Just because his 'heart' doesn't sound like anyone else's doesn't mean that it isn't one.

Or maybe it does. Who the hell knows.

He kicks a rock on the sidewalk. It does an awkward series of jumps and skitters into the road.

It's seven in the evening. His classes ended an hour ago, but his professor had kept him back to talk to him. Seokjin, the traitor, the backstabber, the fake friend, has just texted him to get his own food. On a normal day this would be enough incentive to skip, but today he's starving. Actually getting out of his room and walking to class can do that to a person.

He finally reaches the place he's been looking for - a small cafe, cosy and warm, with a sign on the door that says we sell better coffee than...probably someone, which is their sad idea of a joke, but Yoongi forgives them for it because their coffee is suitably mediocre and inexpensive. They don't get many customers, either, which is the main reason he comes here. The one thing Yoongi hates more than blasted schedules is having to wait in line for his turn.

He orders a black coffee of abnormal size and a sandwich - not an ideal meal in any means, but who cares.

He turns around, scanning for a place to sit, when a familiar black hoodie catches his eye.

Jeon Jungkook is in the corner of the shop, books spread out over his table, head hanging dangerously low in his sleep. Yoongi watches for a moment, then quietly takes a seat near the opposite wall.

His coffee is, as expected and advertised, mediocre. The sandwich is a mild disaster which looks like two halves of two different sandwiches stitched together and painted.

He looks back at Jungkook.

Their 'gifts' to each other under their doors have quickly degraded into things that barely pass as waste. Silica gel. Old stationary. Stickers from instant food that if Yoongi gets any more of, he's going to break into the kid's room and burn all the instant food he sees. If you can't cook your own food you should leach off of someone else, not eat noodles all your life.

Last night, Jungkook had left him a pencil with the word pencil carved on it, alongside a series of intricate designs. It was pretty and delicate, and now Yoongi feels like giving him bubble wrap, as he'd been previously planning, is sort of an underkill.

He finishes his sandwich and his coffee, heads back to the counter, and orders a cup of tea. Then he fumbles through his bag for a set of post it notes, writes thanks for the pencil, sticks it to the mug, and goes back to Jungkook's table. The kid's books are covered with the kind of alarming math that Yoongi finds in Seokjin's notebooks - they're doing the same course after all - but are terribly neat, unlike Seokjin's.

He sets the mug gently in front of him.

He doesn't expect Jungkook to wake up, but he springs up the moment the mug touches down. For a moment he stares straight at Yoongi like he doesn't know where he is or what's happening.

Yoongi points at the cup, raises a hand in farewell, and turns to leave. He can feel Jungkook staring after him, and gets the usual tingling that comes with one-upping someone at, well, anything. Not that buying someone tea is supposed to give you a rush of victory. Maybe his professor is right about him after all.

The thought of his professor pisses him off all over again.

His phone pings - probably Hoseok - and he takes it out to check - it is Hoseok, asking him if he can drop by the studio later that week. Yoongi types in a what for and stuffs it back in his pocket.

The cafe isn't too far from his dorms, but it takes him about ten minutes to get there. When the familiar building starts to come into view, he hears running footsteps behind him. His hands tighten into fists before he's even checked to see if there's a real threat or not.

He turns, and Jungkook is running down the street, backpack hanging off one shoulder. When he sees Yoongi looking he skitters to a stop.

There's an awkward moment where they just stare at each other, Jungkook breathing harshly and Yoongi trying to figure out what the heck is going on, did the kid run all the way here, what is with him and these frankly terrible ideas?

"So...?" He starts, raising his eyebrows.

Jungkook rummages in his backpack a bit and pulls out a carton, cool water condensing on the sides. He holds it out to Yoongi, not meeting his eyes. "Banana milkshake," he mutters.

Yoongi just stares, realisation slowly dawning on him.

"You ran here to give me banana milkshake." This kid is even worse than he is.

"...yes."

"You couldn't have waited till later?"

Jungkook shakes his head. "It, uh... wouldn't have fit under the door."

Yoongi snorts. He takes the carton, staring at it simply at a lack of what else to do. "Thanks, kid. Though now I owe you again."

"You don't," Jungkook insists. "You gave me food the first time. I returned it, and debts sealed."

Yoongi shakes his head. "That wasn't my food."

Jungkook looks thrown for a second, but he picks himself up quickly. "But it was still for you, right?"

It's the most number of words he's ever heard from the kid in succession. Jungkook is watching him earnestly, and he isn't relaxed, per se - his fingers are still doing that restless tapping against each other, but he isn't running away, which is always a start.

Yoongi runs a hand through his head, thinking. He's no longer concerned about paying the kid back - nothing he could do at this point would beat running this far to give him a milkshake. Yoongi can't trump that. He doesn't have the energy.

Jungkook takes his silence as dismissal, and is already pulling away. He starts to offer some sort of so I'll just be going, but Yoongi doesn't want that just yet.

"Hoseok says you like my music."

Jungkook is thrown. "I don't," he says by reflex. Then he panics and tries to correct himself. "I mean, I don't think it's the kind of music you should like? ...it's good though? You're talented?"

Yoongi grins at him. "It isn't the kind of music you should like," he agrees.

"But," and Jungkook seems to be grasping for words, "I mean that it gets the point across? I think. If the point I got was the point you meant."

"What point did you get?"

Jungkook is silent for a moment. Yoongi waits, absently touching the spots of condensation on his carton.

"I don't know," Jungkook says at last, and he looks a bit upset with himself. "Sorry, I'm not good with words, it just...sort of sounds like the colour black. Eternal black. Black no matter what other colours you mix into it."

Yoongi tilts his head, considering. It's a good thought. He's never thought of it like that himself, but...he gets it.

He gets it.

He waves a hand at Jungkook, gesturing for him to follow. "Come on," he says. "I want to show you something."