you were my warmth, my will to live. without you, life is pointless to me.
"aish, hyung! that stings!"
"yes, yes. i know, now shut up and let me work, damn it."
yoongi spent the next fifteen minutes cleaning jungkook's cuts. there were so many of them, he didn't know where to begin when he first saw them. turns out the cuts and bruises extended to his chest and shoulders.
"if you don't want people to notice this," yoongi muttered, sealing another bandage in place. "you'll probably want to wear a lot of long sleeves for the next couple of... weeks."
jungkook nodded. he had gotten rid of his gum and was attacking a bag of cashew nuts that he had stored in his backpack. the food made yoongi realize that he was hungry, but he couldn't let that happen. he had to make the food jin gave him last, because he didn't need his hyung going through the effort to feed another mouth.
"so, why were you late to class today?" jungkook asked, picking through the bag. "i mean, you were earlier than usual, but you usually aren't so distraught going into class. you always sleep through it, but today you just kept staring off into space."
yoongi had almost forgotten where he was earlier. the memory of the cold graveyard stung the back of his mind like an angry hive of bees.
"i..." yoongi set down the roll of bandages. for a moment, it seemed like nothing at all happened. but he couldn't ignore the fact that something had.
"i went to go see him."
jungkook blinked. "you... you did what?" he asked.
yoongi stared at the floor in front of him. "i went to see jimin."
"o-oh. oh..."
"yeah, um..." yoongi struggled to find the right words. "jin encouraged me to go. it had been a while, so i figured... yeah."
jungkook seemed to have trouble figuring out what to say as well. "i mean, that's good isn't it? at least, you know... you went to see him."
"sure. i guess." yoongi left it at that.
to be honest, he was never over jimin. he would never be. that kid... he had something in him that could never fail to bring out the best in yoongi. whatever it would be, whenever he was with him, he would always want to make him proud of him. whenever jimin was around, yoongi would just feel this warmth inside him, a feeling of adoration and just pure love for his friend, which was odd. his few friends knew that he cared about them, but yoongi rarely showed it. with jimin, he wanted the kid to know how adored he was. maybe it was just who he was. or maybe it was his situation that made yoongi more insistent about paying more attention to him.
yoongi sighed, a heavy weight on his shoulders. jungkook could tell there was something wrong with his hyung. struggling, he shifted closer to him and placed a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.
"if you don't want to tell me, that's okay, but i don't like seeing you like this. if there's anything i can do anything to help, let me know, okay?
yoongi felt all resistance leave his body almost instantly. he practically collapsed back down on the couch, slumping into the grungy pillows. jungkook's brow creased with worry. he leaned forward, slipping his shirt back on carefully as to not tear any of the fresh bandages.
"y-yoongi?"
"i can't understand," yoongi blurted out."i can't understand how a person so...simple and unique could make me feel like a whole new human being, who was so important and worth it, like he said." yoongi hesitated, placing his head in his hands. "he gave me stars, he gave me his all, and i tried to do the same for him. now... look how that turned out."
the feelings inside yoongi burned him from the inside out. he felt so lost. with jimin, he was unpredictable and changed everything yoongi thought he knew. jimin revealed so much he didn't know existed about himself. and now that he was gone, a part of yoongi was also gone.
"he didn't only make me feel complete,
he completes me."
for a moment, the entire room was silent. yoongi couldn't even hear himself breathe. all he heard was jungkook's shallow, uneven breathing. even jungkook didn't know what to say to that. he knew that yoongi was hurting the most out of them, but he didn't know that he felt such strong emotions towards jimin, especially that way. yoongi suffered quietly most of the time, but when he did speak about his experiences with jimin, jungkook thought it was the most touching thing.
sadly, jimin would never be able to hear of it again.
jungkook blinked, trying to swallow down the growing lump in his throat. "...yoongi, i can't say that i know exactly what your pain feels like. you were always closer to him than the rest of us. but we lost him too. we're all still hurting. you can't just pull away from the rest of us like we didn't have the same experiences. trust me, going through something alone is never the right answer."
yoongi didn't look up. deep down inside through the cracks of his heart, he knew jungkook was right. but he didn't want to accept it. his best friend was gone, and it was his fault.
"jungkook."
the younger boy looked at him. "what is it?"
"it was my fault, you know."
jungkook was confused. "what are you talking about? of course it wasn't your fault! nothing about it had anything to do with-"
"jungkook. it was all my fault," yoongi insisted, his voice growing more strained with every word. "the whole reason i'm in this mess to begin with, and the whole reason that jimin is dead-" the word dropped like a stone, cold and unforgiving. "-is because i was careless with my dream. i dragged him into it, and now look what happened! he is dead, because of my stupid mistakes!"
"hyung, that's not it at all-"
yoongi stood abruptly, swiping all of the materials from the table in front of him onto the floor. they crashed to the floor, startling jungkook. glass smashed into tiny bits of sharp crystal, even jungkook's bag of cashew nuts wasn't left unharmed as it spilled its contents everywhere. the look on yoongi's face was unmistakable anger, but there was something else in his expression that took the younger boy aback.
before jungkook could say anything, yoongi cried out, flipping the table itself. all of the remaining contents that were saved from his previous attack flew in the air only to collide with the ground as quickly as they had gone airborne. and as if that hadn't been enough, yoongi began kicking the table mercilessly, grunting with every kick.
"yoongi!"
he didn't stop. his efforts seemed to get slower as he progressed, every kick even more sluggish. but jungkook realized that yoongi hesitated after every attempt, as if unsure if he was doing the right thing. as if he were trying to consult an unseen source about his behavior.
"yoongi."
he turned to the younger boy with a strained expression. tears were streaking down his face quietly and steadily. his breathing was uneven and haggard. when he met jungkook's concerned gaze, he immediately broke down, falling onto he floor in front of him.
without a second thought to his bandaged wounds, jungkook rushed to help his hyung, hugging him tightly to his chest. yoongi sobbed into the crook of jungkook's neck. he closed his eyes tightly, trying to forget. finding some kind of way to forgive himself. jimin was dead. jimin was dead. jimin was dead. how could he have done such a thing to his best friend? how could he have given up so quickly? how could yoongi, left with nothing else to give him motivation, be so selfish?
jimin was dead.
for a while, yoongi remained in jungkook's arms, sniffling and wiping his tears away. jungkook had no words. he knew right now that words couldn't console yoongi. he had been repressing so much for the longest time, not speaking to any of them about jimin's passing, not even mentioning a single word of him since he died. it was almost as if... he had never died at all.
or if yoongi had died along with him.
finally, yoongi stirred. he looked up at jungkook, who said nothing. all he did was take a deep breath, looking past yoongi to the broken table behind him. chips of glass strewn across the floor somehow gave the place yoongi called home a darker atmosphere.
jungkook stared at yoongi for the briefest moment. his puffy dark eyes, red from crying and matching the glass on the floor. the pale wash of his skin from undernourishment. his lips, parted and chapped and pink from the cold. it was hard to believe that just a few months ago, he truly was someone of a different caliber, someone who made life what they wanted it to be- alongside their best friend.
"your bandages."
jungkook blinked, realizing he had zoned out. he found yoongi staring back at him with a lost look in his eyes.
he pointed at jungkook's arms with a shaky finger. "your bandages," he croaked, attempting to clear his throat. "they're loosening."
the younger boy looked down at his shoulders himself, only to find that yoongi was right. the fresh bandages were shifting and sliding down his arm.
jungkook was going to tell yoongi that he could fix them himself, but one look at his hyung made him realize that it wasn't going to happen. in that moment, what yoongi needed the most was reassurance that he would be able to continue. even if it was fixing his friend's bandages.
jungkook nodded. "we... we never speak of this again. agreed?" for some reason, his voice was a lot shakier and uncertain than he wanted to come off.
yoongi let out a breath through his nose. he looked amused for the briefest second before morphing back to his expressionless demeanor.
"agreed."
he sounded a lot more sure than he really was.