THREE YEARS LATER
Yoongi is dying. An overdramatic statement, but he would not be surprised if it were the honest truth.
An earthquake is taking place in his head. Sandpaper has replaced the surface of his tongue. Sunlight that drips between the drapes like honey feels akin to daggers against his squinting eyelids, rather than drizzling sweetness. Draped across his bare stomach is an arm that holds no familiarity. Yoongi has little to no recollection of what happened after he lost a game of beer pong with Seokjin last night. Cue internal damnation.
When he subtly shifts against the foreign mattress, the aroma of honeysuckle and vanilla arises from the lithe body laying facedown beside him. Bird nest hair conceals her make-up smudged face. A shiver that is neither unpleasant nor welcoming irritates his skin. He wonders if that is the reason why he ended up going home with her last night. The perfume of his nightmares.
"Morning," croaks from beneath the midnight fluff, and Yoongi stills in his motion of exiting the situation. He fixes his eyes on the girl, vaguely concerned that she thinks this might have been more than what he was intending. It would not be the first time.
"You don't mind me heading out, right? Got things to do." Yoongi half-smirks. He spots his shirt draped over her desk chair and decidedly makes a beeline for it, stumbling when his hangover decides to drag his head by the nails down to Hell. "That was a lie. Jus' hate awkward morning after shit."
Yoongi almost gets down onto his knees to praise whoever is watching him from above when he discovers his underwear tucked nicely into the crotch of his jeans. He slips the both of them on, and then grabs his shoes.
"You and me alike," the agreement is followed by a chuckle, which quickly dissolves into coughing. It seems like her night was just as rough as his own. Her heaving lungs sound like cigarettes.
"Well, it was nice fucking with you," Yoongi says as a way of goodbye, and the girl, once her partial asphyxiation has calmed, half-heartedly lifts her hand in a wave. She does not bother to remove her face from the pillow and reveal her identity. He wonders if she even remembers who he is, too.
Thankfully, no other housemates are spotted on his Walk of Shame out of her room. All of them must either be still in bed, or in the same situation as he, but elsewhere. Yoongi, in a true streak of unbelievable luck in such an unlucky world, spots his cell phone upon the kitchen counter. Lighting up the screen, he discovers four missed calls from Seokjin, all sent in the earliest hours of the morning. There is a single message from Hoseok, received eight minutes ago.
Received [11:12AM]: Jung Hoseok
need me to come save u from some persistent hoe, damsel in distress?
Delivered [11:20AM]: Jung Hoseok
eat my ass
Received [11:21AM]: Jung Hoseok
oh baby don't tempt me
shake shack on 5th?
This is not an unusual morning for Yoongi. Truly, it is his every single Saturday and Sunday (sometimes Thursdays, as well) since branching out and making friends within his Engineering major.
Jung Hoseok, of chocolate brown locks and a billion watt smile, is the campus known partygoer. He is greeted to every frat weekend, and welcomed by every night club within a twenty-mile radius of their university with open arms. He is gifted all of the VIP tickets, he receives all of the free rounds. Duly crowned as the royalty of their university party life.
Kim Seokjin, on the other hand, hones popularity within his charm and phenomenal appearance of slicked back blonde hair and a physique refined by hours at the gym. He is the A-grade student who finishes his assignments weeks before they are due, while still having enough spare time on the weekends to get absolutely smashed. Well, until he is sobbing and calling Hoseok and Yoongi. Or, on the other hand, is waking up the next morning with three unknown figures tangled amongst his sheets and limbs.
There is another, Park Jimin, who has been Hoseok's best friend for the past four years. He can compete with a flute of champagne for effervescence. Since he majors in Theatre Arts, Yoongi only sees him amongst sweltering bodies while they are drunk or high, or both. But that is the thing about Jimin, with his misleading half-moon grin, and his jet black hair that frames a baby face. He is in the thick of the student body drug scene. All actors do it, Hoseok had once said, and Yoongi never questioned it. He is unsure if he has ever seen the guy without blown pupils or reddened scleras; a jitter to his voice and an incessant urge to be moving. Jimin is a nice person, nonetheless.
When Yoongi stumbles out of the apartment complex, he is not sure whether he should be concerned about the fact that his car is parked (albeit very crookedly) in the student parking lot, directly across the footpath. He is usually never prone to drink-driving. The boys always ensure that everyone catches cabs to their homes, or to their one-night-stand home-away-from-homes. But Yoongi must have managed to sneak around them.
Or, they were simply too intoxicated to even realise.
Delivered [11:27AM]: Jung Hoseok
I drank and drove
Received [11:27AM]: Jung Hoseok
fuckin idiot
Received [11:28AM]: Jung Hoseok
come pick me up then I'm at home lol
Ever the delight, that guy. Yoongi makes a mental note to cross Hoseok off the funeral attendance list for when his car bends metal around a tree trunk, or runs through a red light and finds its driver side crushed by an oncoming heavy-loader because he was too drunk on vodka or high on molly to swerve and brake.
Opening Google Maps on his cell phone, Yoongi is provided with three routes to get back home. He also notices that the campus he is currently on rings painfully familiar with a dream that was held by a girl deep in his past; never far enough to forget. The bitter acid that forms in the back of his throat at the memory is quickly swallowed down, burning less painfully in the pit of his stomach. He is beyond used to feeling flames eating away in there. The walls went numb long ago.
Driving back to his own college only takes ten minutes, and then another two while waiting for Hoseok to exit their apartment building. He, alike Yoongi, appears crippled by a hangover. Chocolate hair is mussed into a whirlwind; usually glowing skin dimmed down to neutral. The black shirt he wears is on inside out, the tag flapping beneath his chin as he somewhat skips over to the passenger side of the car, forever wrapped in delight. Even when the guy feels as though he has been dead for a century after a night like the last.
"You look like you made a pitstop at Hell and Satan fucked you ten ways to Sunday," is the first thing Hoseok comments as he gets into the vehicle with his bright smile. The kind that somehow manages to glare like real, golden sunlight, and encourages Yoongi to wince away from the luminosity. His head seems to be splitting down the centre.
"Likewise," Yoongi weakly mutters back, putting the gear into second and taking off. He ignores the indifferent comment made by Hoseok of: Wouldn't mind that. Bet the Devil has top dicking game.
The drive onward is silent of words with their hangovers thick in the air. Only the radio plays softly between them. Yoongi mentally attempts to piece the fragments of his vague memories from last night together.
It started at a frat party, held by the fraternity that this one overly nice guy, Wang Jackson, currently leads. He was also the guy that gave Yoongi two ecstasy pills, which he popped roughly twenty minutes before the game of beer pong that Seokjin insisted they both play. Normally, Seokjin is not one for such party games, but the exception was that they were versing two girls he wanted to fuck. From then on, everything was lost in murky rivers of being too drunk, feeling too high.
Yoongi wonders how on earth he was able to score a night in an anonymous girl's bed whilst in such a state. She was probably just as plastered as him.
Hoseok suddenly screeches when Yoongi almost rear-ends another vehicle as he distractedly tries to park in front of the restaurant. He swears to every entity that the sound makes the world end within his head. Aspirin and at least a week of sleep is required, pronto.
"I wasn't going to hit it," Yoongi grunts as he switches off the ignition, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Hoseok, as if to make the current struggle of living more of a damnation, slams the door with mild indignation. Glass shatters inside of Yoongi's skull, and he tries to not collapse into a ball right then and there on the bitumen. Hitting his head against the gravel and falling unconscious sounds like less pain than the pounding migraine that inhabits his brain right now.
"The fuck you weren't. Your headlight would have clipped the boot of that car if I didn't help you pay attention."
Normally, Yoongi would bite back until his point won. But his internal struggle to stay standing overrules all persistence to argue. "Whatever."
The restaurant is particularly full for a Sunday, mostly with college students, some that the pair can partially recognise from their own campus, other parties. Everyone, of course, is either deadbeat hungover or hitting their comedown. Just like them.
A girl seated near the counter sparks Yoongi's familiarity as one who he has been inside of beneath sweaty bedsheets. He barely manages a nod at her when they pass to make their orders, more out of pain than shame. Hoseok flirts ostentatiously with the young man at the till, offering a lewd wink that causes roses to blossom upon the cheeks of the employee. Yoongi wonders how on earth this guy has the energy to be so amorous when he is currently dragging his feet through a hangover. And ordering the greasiest meal on the menu.
As always, Yoongi skims past the words vanilla milkshake, ignores the gentle tug at his heart, and orders an iced tea. The three minutes spent waiting on the orders are ones of silent, slow-build regret as the hangovers claim their souls. Quicksand of the mind.
Once Hoseok grabs his tray of grease and Yoongi takes the perspiring plastic lidded cup of liquefied hangover cure, the pair find an empty table by the windows. Immediately, Hoseok launches into conversation, simultaneous with wrapping his mouth around the burger dripping with melted cheese.
"So, how was Seulgi?"
Yoongi cringes at his lack of memory, faintly assumes it may be the girl he abandoned no more than an hour ago to her asphyxiating lungs of smoke. "Who?"
"The girl you went home with last– Fuck, how can you not even remember that?" Hoseok drops his burger, throws his hands up in exasperation and then slams them down on the table. Yoongi swears something implodes within his head at the splitting sound. Probably his brain. "You really don't give a shit, do you? Just fuck and leave. Rinse and repeat. What about feelings, man? Ever thought about making a connection?"
"As long as it feels good, that's all that matters right?" Yoongi shrugs, sipping at his iced tea. "We're all dying anyway. No time for love in this world."
Hoseok blanks. "You're really depressing, y'know? A serious downer."
"Sorry that the sunshine doesn't shoot out of my ass like it does with you, pal."
"Maybe you should start learning from me."
"I'd rather die."
Hoseok slams his hands on the table once more, and Yoongi genuinely thinks about slicing them off. "There you go with death again. Do you really want to live your life being so miserable? Pessimism will send you to your grave sooner rather than later. It's a proven fact that optimists live fuller lives."
At that, Yoongi grins razorblades. "My one true wish."
"Okay, enough," Hoseok shivers, lips pulling into a pursed, triangular shape that flags down the end of the morbid subject. "Your obsession with ceasing to exist is going to start rubbing off on me. That girl who made you this way must have been a real shocker."
Yoongi, at those simply spoken words, blanches. Ice water rushes in a flood over his skin, halting his motion of lifting the plastic cup to his lips. "What did you just say?"
But Hoseok only blinks, wedges four crinkle cut fries into his mouth, speaks before swallowing, "The girl. ___? You told–" Then, he is choking on the fried potatoes, eyes tearing up before he determinedly drinks his whole glass of water to clear the airway. Yoongi, all the while, continues to stare in shock. "Fuck me, man. I almost died and you just sat there like–"
"What exactly are you saying?"
Hoseok, after a few laboured breaths, sighs. "Jesus, you really don't remember anything from last night, do you? It was after beer pong, right before you went home with Seulgi. When she walked past, you turned to me and started freaking out, blabbering how she smelled just like this ___ girl before you stormed over to her and began angrily making out with her against the kitchen table. She seemed pretty into it, so I guess that's how you ended up at her place."
Oh, shit.
The finer details are coming back to him now. The moment the girl, Seulgi, had strutted past was while Yoongi was attempting to control his rolling eyeballs from circling all the way back into his head. The aroma of her perfume, distinct honeysuckle and vanilla, had straightened him out within an instant as it wafted from her skin and into his senses. His dilated pupils had flicked back to attention. The drug and alcohol infused fog that was looming heavy around his mind had cleared for the faintest of seconds, because he was so sure that it was her, it was her, it was her.
The ocean of bodies had barely parted when he charged himself between the waves of limbs. Yoongi had pushed and shoved and waded his way to the home of the scent that his mouth watered for; that his every fibre craved. When he grabbed at her wrist, it was with the expectancy of her face. But when it was not her that was watching on with an oblivious, mildly curious expression, his heart had plummeted to the core of the earth. Shrivelled up and burning within molten lava.
Yet it did not stop him from taking her lips between his teeth. An unfamiliar kiss against his tongue that was dirt in comparison to the succulent heaven he knew, belonging to a girl he had bookmarked with torn red strings. He grimly wonders if he had moaned her name while he was fucking the poor girl, Seulgi the smoker, last night. That would not be another first.
Hoseok finishes wolfing down his chips and takes a large gulp of his shake. All the while, Yoongi is having this brain splitting revelation that makes death truly not sound all that bad right now.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Hoseok asks.
In response, Yoongi drops his forehead to the table with a bang that resonates around the restaurant. The sound catches the brief attention of the customers seated around them, until they realise he is just being dramatic. Unfortunately, not collapsed into an unforeseen coma. Or, you know, dead.
"I'm a great listener," Hoseok encourages, all sweet and singsong. Yoongi presses his forehead harder against the wooden grain of the tabletop. "I already know part of it from what you were moaning and groaning about last night. The love of your life, or some shit."
At that, in a quick movement that makes him lightheaded, Yoongi sits back up straight and lays his palms flat against the table. His gaze rests firmly on Hoseok, who suddenly pales, as if aware that he might have accidentally dipped his feet in poisonous waters. Ones that Yoongi would have no qualms about dousing Hoseok's entire body in until the acid disintegrates the bones of the sunshine man.
Suffocating golden beauty was his speciality, after all.
"We were the same. Morbid and sad. But she was lovely. Born in the Culling year and everything. We were best friends back home." Yoongi speaks quick in a mutter, nervously tapping his nails against the tabletop before running the same hand through his hair. The incessant pounding of his head has worsened, thumping in time with her name as it loops in a continuum through his mind. "But that's all she thought we could be. Anyway, don't mention her again. That was a mistake, she's not worth talking about anymore."
Hoseok nods, shrugs indifferently. "No worries, I get it. My lips are sealed."
The conversation stalls to make way for silent eating, and Yoongi allows himself the smallest of moments to indulge in the sober thought of her after so long. He wonders what she must be doing right now. She would have finished up high school, endured the blood and sweat of exams, earned a score that can become meaningless once the clock strikes midnight on her eighteenth birthday. She would be twenty years old now, three years aged from the seventeen-year-old girl that taught him curses are not all so bad. Especially when they taste like the sea on his lips, and can moan so beautifully just by the work of his fingers.
But she was much more than that. Greater than a feeling induced by numbness. She was delight singing off-key in the passenger seat of his car. She was comfort tucked beneath a blanket upon a vanilla-flavoured diner, with the moon to keep them company. She was love curled in a calm smile, in star-strung eyes that always searched for him in the crowds, where nobody else mattered but each other.
Yoongi loathes how they screwed up so badly. How they ruined themselves to a split second of lust that felt more driven by their hearts than their desire. That may have been to forget the momentary pain, though was in fact their bottled up feelings, spilling all over his bedsheets where they soon after lay. And it was there that they were able to dwell in it, mull it over, become consumed it by until they were convincing themselves that it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
For more than the hundredth, even thousandth time, he wonders what would have happened if they had never hit that kink in the road. If they were never set on that collision course. If he had reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could sprint into the shadows and out of his heart. If he had whispered don't leave me against her lips. If she were not so afraid of love in a world that suffocates honesty.
Too many if's that he wasted time on; enough to let her escape.
Knives slice through his back and drive into his heart. Here, Yoongi remembers precisely why he never thinks of her when his mind is not clouded by white dust on the tip of his nose, or the acrid burn that stays slick on the back of his throat. Maybe, that is why he is content with spending the later end of his weeks in a drug-and-alcohol-induced illusion, since he becomes numb and invincible to the blades and spears that the memories tainted with her bear. He can think of her without the agony that the pair of them lived within. He can remember her touch without feeling as though her fingertips will shatter him like glass.
Hoseok suddenly severs the reverie straight down the centre. Yoongi, for once, is grateful.
"Jimin wants to smoke weed at his place. Wanna join?"
Usually, Yoongi would immediately be up for such an activity. He has nothing to lose anymore. Nowhere else to be. He left everything behind in his backyard, within the shadows that the large oak created. Right where he tasted infatuation and honesty in the crevices of her lips. Right where he realised that love in such a godawful world would be completely worth it if he was spending such affection on her.
But today, something holds him back. Whether it be the desperation for a shower, or this murderous hangover, or the unnerving memory of her bloody knuckles amongst ocean waves, Yoongi is unsure. The straw poised between his lips loses the watered down taste of tea, and starts to suck at air and chipped ice.
"Nah, I need aspirin and fifteen hours of sleep," Yoongi huffs, dropping the empty cup and grinding the heels of his palms against the burn that thinly veils his eyes. "If I hang out with you any longer, I may fall into a stress-induced coma."
"I'm delightful," Hoseok quips, and Yoongi cannot help but twitch his lips. "You know what makes aspirin work quicker?"
"What?"
"Snorting it."
Yoongi barks out a short, fierce laugh. "Pessimism may kill me, but drugs are gonna bury you." There is no malice in his tone, no matter of care for wellbeing, just genuine fact. He stands up, jostling his keys. "And after the shit that went down last night, I don't think I will be doing lines ever again."
"Don't eat your words, man," Hoseok waggles his eyebrows, pushing away his tray and standing up. The pair begin their departure, but not without Hoseok blowing a kiss to the flustered cashier. "Ten bucks that on club night this Friday, you will have your nose pressed to a dirty basin like a cheap crack whore."
Yoongi, amid his head-splitting ache, manages to file away the mental note of ensuring he brings a ten dollar bill this weekend. He reaches out his hand to the deal and clasps palms with Hoseok, shaking on a bet that he has already lost. Both of them can see it from miles away.
"Deal."