-ˏˋ YOONSEOK | FAVORITES ˎˊ-

This Is Enough (You Are Enough)

Author/ jellyprince
Word Count/ 1K
https://archiveofourown.org/works/5873476/
___________________________

"Name one hero who was happy."

I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.

"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.

"I can't."

—

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

"Name one hero who was happy," Hoseok says. His arms are draped over the desk, head tilted ever the slightest, eyelashes resting gently on his cheeks. From the way he looks half-dazed, cheeks starting to flush from what is possibly the early stages of a fever, Yoongi figures that Hoseok didn't mean to say anything aloud at all.

"What," Yoongi says, for lack of anything else to say.

"I asked," Hoseok mumbles out, pausing to realign his jumbled thoughts, piecing them together like puzzle pieces, "If you could name a hero who was happy."

"Why?" Yoongi asks instead, swiveling his chair to face Hoseok's.

"Just answer the question," Hoseok says. There is something in the way he says it, something different, like he's trying to make a point out of pointlessness. Yoongi doesn't know what it is, but it makes him want to give an answer.

"I don't know," he replies, "Maybe if it was a Disney hero."

"I guess," Hoseok says. He doesn't say anything more.

Turning back to the monitor, Yoongi slides his headphones back onto his head and replays the audio clip, mouse clicking every so often as he edits. Hoseok says nothing, choosing to watch him work from the corner of his eyes, head tucked into the crook of his elbows.

Every once in awhile, Yoongi can feel the echoes of his eyes roaming the landscape of his forehead, nose, cheeks. They roam with the undertones of longing, mapping out something they cannot have.

It's almost unbearable.

(Almost.)

"Why'd you ask?" Yoongi asks, once the silence between them becomes too much.

The question resonates throughout the room, lingering in the air. Yoongi bites the inside of his cheeks, waiting for a reply he doesn't know he wants. Maybe he should've kept quiet instead.

"I don't know if a hero can be happy," Hoseok says instead. I don't know if we can be happy, he doesn't say.

"I think happiness is what we make of it," Yoongi replies. I'll come the closest to being happy, if it's you, he doesn't say.

So many words being spoken, and so many words being left unsaid. It feels like an unintentional game, a round of telephone between them except the lines have been cut, left only with the spaces between their breaths to craft their love letters. It's painful, this game they play, and Yoongi can't decide if it's more painful in public or in private.

He rolls his chair next to Hoseok's, drapes his arm across his shoulders, lets his hand rest on the nape of his neck. Hoseok's skin is warm against his, and if he concentrates he can hear the blood pumping underneath, loud and lazy and filled with something that is entirely Hoseok.

Yoongi wonders when it became such a natural thing, having Hoseok under his fingertips and never wanting him to leave.

Hoseok leans into his touch, slowly lowering his head until it rests on Yoongi's shoulder, the strands of his hair tickling at his neck. He traces circles into Hoseok's skin, traces out the hickeys that he can never leave, the kisses that he can never give, the ring that he will never buy. He traces out his regrets, drenched in love and longing and lust, in words and vows that he will never be able to say in public, in knowing that their love is doomed and choosing to love anyway.

"I'm tired," Hoseok says, but it sounds more like a whimper instead.

"I know," Yoongi replies, head and heart heavy with the weight of heartbreak, "I'm sorry."

I'm sorry that we have to hide. I'm sorry that we have to live like this. I'm sorry that I make you cry. I'm sorry that I can't do anything more than talk.

I'm sorry that it had to be me.

Yoongi doesn't say any of these things, but he has a feeling Hoseok knows anyway.

"It's okay," Hoseok says, eyes fluttering shut as he nestles himself even further into him. Even under the clinical fluorescent lights of the studio, he is beautiful. "I'd rather fall with you than rise to the top alone."

They lapse into silence, Yoongi tracing circles while Hoseok's hand finds its way around his waist, clinging to his shirt like a drowning man clinging to life.

"You think we can write this into a song?" Yoongi says, lips twitching upwards in self-deprecating amusement. It's much easier to make a joke out of it and pretend that it doesn't matter, that it's something that doesn't haunt their thoughts every single day.

"Probably," Hoseok says, giggling a little. It's the kind of giggle that comes out when you don't know whether to laugh or cry. "Just throw a few 'girl's in there with the rest of the lyrics and it'll be a hit."

"And then what?" Yoongi asks. He's not asking about the song anymore, not really.

"I don't know," Hoseok sighs. The heat of his hand seeps through Yoongi's shirt, so hot he's sure it'll burn right through the cotton and leave a charred imprint right there on his waist, permanently inked onto his skin. "We'll live, we'll love and we'll hope it'll be enough."

"Sounds about right," Yoongi says, moving to press the faintest of kisses to Hoseok's forehead, memorising how his inhales and exhales feel under his chapped lips, "Don't really know about that hope bit, though."

"It's alright," Hoseok says, laughing wryly like he's reciting a morbid inside joke between him and fate, "I'll be your hope."

"They never let you be famous and happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."

"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.

"I'm going to be the first."

—

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller