Tell Me Without Telling Me || Sope

Chapter Three

He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and turns on the torch, holding it high as Yoongi gets off the bed.

"You can't go out in that," Yoongi says again, his back to Hoseok as he rummages in his roommate's desk. "Sleep here if you have to, but going out in that is insane."

Hoseok doesn't say anything. He wants to go. He wants to stay. He doesn't know what he wants. He wants to be held, but his body physically won't let him do that. And he doesn't understand why because it's never done that before. Jungkook and Seokjin used to hold him all the time. now, if he sees them again, will he even be able to hug them? Why is he high in a strangers room, seeing into a strangers life that sounds better than his life by miles?

"Oh, hey," Yoongi says softly. He sinks to his knees on the carpet in front of Hoseok. "Hey, what happened? Is it the power-cut? Scared the shit out of me too."

Hoseok nods, sniffling. Somehow it's less embarrassing to pretend he's a twenty-five year old man scared of the dark than to admit the truth. That he's scared of everything else. And that Yoongi being so nice to him is beginning to feel overwhelming, along with everything else that usually overwhelms him. And he's high and he thinks it's making him dizzy now. He wants to be alone, he doesn't want to be alone.

"Wait out the storm here, okay?" Yoongi says, lifting a hand like he's going to place it on Hoseok's knee, then retracting it. "If it's not over in the next hour, you can stay in Namjoon-ah's bed tonight. Please don't walk back in that."

Hoseok rubs his eyes with the heels of his hand, one by one. "Thank you. S-sorry, this is so stupid. I-I just..." He drags in a wet breath, another tear rolling down his cheek, "sorry. I'm sorry."

"It seems like you've had a very stressful evening," Yoongi says. He's not looking at Hoseok anymore, he's tearing open a packet in his lap. Whatever he got out of his roommates desk. "When I have panic attacks, I spend the whole week afterwards an emotional wreck. It's normal. And it's okay. And eventually you get used to how up and down everything is--well, you learn to recognise why it's there."

Something cracks. Orange light flares. He hands Hoseok a glow-stick and begins cracking the others. There are twenty in total.

Hoseok laughs wetly. He's not entirely sure any of his current emotions are to do with his panic attack, so much as they are to do with his life in general, but he likes all the glow-sticks and the fact Yoongi hasn't waited even a minute to see if the power will come back on before getting them out and using every single one.

He lights Yoongi's way as Yoongi deposits them in various corners of the room, between the tiny trees in tiny pots, hanging on the pegs on the back of the door, balanced on textbooks.

"Mm'okay," Yoongi says, plopping back onto the bed and picking up what was left of the joint he'd stubbed out. He lights it, blows out smoke. "Get comfy. Turn off the torch."

Hoseok does, accepting the pillows and the blankets Yoongi pushes towards him. But now, with his phone in his hand, finds himself checking his messages. Both Seokjin and Jungkook have replied with a bunch of party emojis. Jungkook has told him he should 'get some action' because he's 'sexy and he knows it.'

He smiles, snorting softly into his knuckles, and types back that if Jungkook's trying to hit on him, he should know long distance relationships never work out. He considers telling them about Yoongi, but he isn't sure a panic attack is the type of action Jungkook meant.

He turns off the torch and puts his phone away. And looks up to see a room barely illuminated by all the colours of the rainbow. Maybe it's because he's high, but it makes him feel like he's sitting on a giant version of his bookshelves with the fairy-lights.