wheat, honey, and dreams.

interlude: dream, reality.

Seeing Taehyung covered in blood without being covered himself feels different.

His arms are clean, hair damp against his forehead. Face blank, chest tight where his heart beats, but overall, he feels better. If only slightly.

Jeongguk walks quietly down the stairs, having dressed himself in old sweats and a black shirt. Wearing a white one right now seems like testing his luck, especially when he gets halfway down the stairs, and sees Taehyung's own, stained with splotches of red everywhere, brown hair flattened against his face with it.

The floor is almost clean. Yoongi lies on the couch in the living room, his feet visible from where Jeongguk walks. He sees that Taehyung put a towel under him. Yoongi had little to no blood on him, but was probably tainted when Taehyung had to pick him up. He's thankful that Taehyung helped him, that he did what Jeongguk couldn't do.

And yet, Jeongguk isn't looking at any of that.

He's looking at Taehyung. His eyes, and the red that surrounds them. The red that covers him. It coats his skin like paint, spread everywhere, like it's all Jeongguk can see. In his hair, all over his arms. His clothes are soaked with it, black fabric that will likely have to go in Jeongguk's washing machine. He's worse off than Jeongguk was, having been underneath Will when it all came to a height.

And in Jeongguks heart, he feels sorry, but in this moment, he feels shocked, and he can't stop staring. At the way Taehyung looks, almost in his element somehow. Like, as concerned as he feels, and as much as he's helped Jeongguk, he belongs where he is. Bloodstained.

It contrasts against the way his skin glows, nearly hides it. It's hard to find the person who's hands held him less than an hour ago, who rubbed his back while he threw up, who gives him beautiful things that sweep him away from the terrors of reality, just two boys in a field of wheat, honey logged brains in the midst of a dream.

But, as is, most of that is gone, covered. Snuffed out by death, by the red sky Jeongguk fell into. Right now Taehyung reminds Jeongguk of that sky, a solid color of terror hanging above his head.

Taehyung looks like a vampire. Jeongguk can really see it.

That sounds weird, but until now, Jeongguk has seen the man that speaks in kind words, who's saved him twice now, and yet he refuses to let him thank him, he feels the sliver of blood that courses through his veins, the dreams in his head. He caught a glimpse of Taehyung like this before, in that clearing, but Jeongguk had been in a daze.

Now, everything's clear.

The way the blood coincides with his skin. How natural he looks right now, as if nothing happened at all. As if his fingers don't stick to each other while he smooths a rag over the floorboards, collects even more of the thing that drives his very existence. Like he was born this way, and he died this way too, completely drenched in something uncontrollable. Like he might be uncontrollable himself.

And Jeongguk's lungs stop working. The moment Taehyung's eyes meet his. Suspended between them, neverending is the following silence, the cease of the light squish the rag made as it cleaned up all that it could. The black, the brown, that's entirely different from the color that threatened him when Will had been there hours earlier.

And then Jeongguk breathes, and it all comes back. And Will's still there. In the back of his mind as he reaches the bottom of the steps. As Taehyung quickly rises to his feet, a small upturn of his lips settling onto his face as he sees Jeongguk. The upturn slowly turns sad, and Jeongguk resists the urge to bloody himself again. To sink carefully into Taehyung's arms, and ignore the fact that they don't know anything about each other. Just that the same blood that's on Taehyung's face is owned by both of them in a way, their joint burden to carry.