Work Text:
The droplets of rain hit the window gently, matching the pattering of Jeongguk’s heart. It’s hard to describe what hurts most, what weighs more—he feels everything all at once, and nothing at all at the same time. He knows it hurts—it meaning a handful of things, but he thinks it’s his heart more than anything else. He knows it weighs—his shoulders droop slightly, as if someone were putting all their weight over him, but also in his stomach, as a reluctant knot stays in place.
Jeongguk holds the air in his lungs for longer than it’s comfortable, and lets it out slowly in an exhale that leaves him numb. (Not weightless, not heavy, just nothing.)
In all honesty, he’s scared—terrified of what could happen. He’s lost all strength to produce any more tears after hours of crying just some moments prior, and he can’t help but feel lonely without tears to keep him company. It’s what unwanted loneliness does to you, Jeongguk thinks, you despise it so much that you grow to cherish the company of things that you should keep away—of people you should keep away.
Unwanted loneliness hurts; thoughts can get very loud sometimes, while somehow, it’s even scarier when they get too quiet, distastefully reminding you of your solitude once again. Jeongguk hates unwanted loneliness, yet he chose to be alone this time. Willful loneliness should be different, but why does it feel so stifling? Jeongguk breathes in deep again. He chose to be alone, but not because he wanted it, not because he needed it. It’s useless to cry when you’re underwater, he supposes, but his eyes (heart and soul) still sting.
The door of his apartment receives two dreadful knocks.
Typical of him to not use an umbrella, is the first thing that comes to his mind, but the hurt is still too prominent that it washes the thought away quickly, barely leaving a smudge of gray on its leave. Drenched in the cold, autumn rain, Yoongi stands outside of the door, looking right into his eyes.
Jeongguk chose this, but he’s still scared.
Sitting next to the one person you love the most in the world shouldn’t feel like sitting at the edge of a hill. Jeongguk stares resolutely at his own intertwined fingers, avoiding Yoongi’s strong glance, and wonders if they went past the point of no return—wonders if they missed their steps and unknowingly fell down the hill already.
His heart aches in a cry. He hopes not.
“Jeongguk-ah,” Yoongi’s low voice brings him back. Looking at Jeongguk with an open heart after who knows how long. “Let’s talk? Please?”
Talking was very blurry amidst the things Jeongguk was planning on doing when he called Yoongi to come over tonight. He knows they should—it’s the one thing they certainly need to do, but he is terrified of the outcome. He fears to lose all his resolve as he always does when Yoongi is concerned.
Jeongguk dares a look. “About?”
Noticing the pain, the utmost hopelessness in the youngest’s voice, Yoongi breaks down.
“Please, baby,” he croaks out, hands fisting to hide the way they’re shaking. Jeongguk notices it anyways. “Things haven’t been… good lately, and we both know we – we have to talk about it.”
“That’s a nice way to put that we have only been fighting for the past two months.” Jeongguk whispers brokenly.
Yoongi’s eyes shine with unshed tears, a mirror of Jeongguk’s own. They always mirror each other one way or another, even in the bad, broken bits.
“I- I am sorry. I hurt you…many times,” his voice breaks in tandem with his heart. “And I want, more than anything else, to make things right and—”
“What changed?” Jeongguk interjects before he can continue.
“Wha- what?”
“Why are you apologizing now? What is different now that you want to fix everything after you ruined them in the first place.”
Anger is such an ugly vine. It has a strong grip, and it will continue to grow lest you rip it away from the very root. Jeongguk has been letting it grow for a while now, mixed with pain and guilt, laced with want and yearn.
The truth is Jeongguk is no saint here. If the things are the way they are right now it’s because both of them made mistakes. The truth is that Jeongguk hurt Yoongi in his own way more times than he can count, and the guilt that sits uncomfortably in his throat gets released as anger instead. The truth is Jeongguk is still learning to deal with his emotions in a non-self-destructive way, and it’s proving to be harder than he ever thought possible.
The truth is Yoongi loves him more than he knows how to deal with it, and he ignores Jeongguk’s hurtful comment for his sake. After so long, selfishly or not, deserved or not—Yoongi puts Jeongguk first.
“Baby…” Yoongi’s pink, cold induced fingers reach out for Jeongguk’s hands. He’s too tired to pull them away. “I’m sorry.”
“Answer me,” Jeongguk begs, unable to meet Yoongi’s gaze.
What changed?
In this cold, drizzling night, they both know the answer to that question.
They might not have known it a few years back, when they spent their youthful, immature days sat at the dock watching as the sun set before their eyes. They might not have known a few years back, when they realized their individual self-destructive natures were going to destroy them together, and fought over an overwhelming love that was too big for their young hearts.
But in this night—after seeing how a small flicker of a flame could incinerate everything on its way, after witnessing firsthand how miscommunication and selfishness can ruin everything as a wave that crashes against rocks in the shore—now they know.
Before, they were too scared to admit the possibility of such thing, but after hurt and love get mixed together, it becomes way too evident—it hurts the same way you get too close to the flames to see the colors of the fire.
Now, they got burned and stare at their wounds with an empty gaze. They could’ve prevented it, but didn’t. They’re grown now, and grown ups deal with the consequences.
Now, they can drift apart.
Yoongi’s first tear falls at the same time he talks. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Because that’s what changed. That’s what they’re both aware and unfailingly afraid of—this can break them apart for real.
“I don’t want to leave you—I won’t leave you.” Yoongi continues, holding onto Jeongguk’s hands as a lifeline.
It’s funny, Jeongguk thinks deprecatingly, how even now when they’re barely hanging on, Yoongi still holds his heart in his hands. It squeezes in his chest with the same force Yoongi tightens his fingers.
“We can’t keep hurting each other,” Jeongguk murmurs, as his big eyes give up trying to hold his tears inside.
Is it getting colder, or is his heart just trembling alone?
“We’ve gone through rougher times, Gguk-ah, we can get through this.”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?!” Jeongguk cries, bare heart, bare soul. “We shouldn’t have gone through those times at all, hyung.”
Yoongi shivers, if not for the rain that drenched him, then for the fear of losing his one.
“Please don’t break us apart.”
Should it hurt this bad? There must be a step they’re missing here, somewhere along the road they must have taken the wrong turn, there is no explanation for the way their start looked so different from what it could be their end line.
In all the pages that make up their story, there are a few instances that make Jeongguk want to return to the roof of the building he went to a couple of weeks ago. Just to think this time, just to ponder over those excerpts that make their story just a bit more complicated, a bit more bitter than sweet.
Those bitter parts scare him, which is why he only brings them up now, for the first time. “Didn’t you want me to stay away from you, hyung?”
Yoongi pauses. His jet black, still wet strands of hair disrupt the look in his eyes. But no matter how many metaphorical or material walls there are between them, Jeongguk has always been able to look past them and into Yoongi’s core. There is guilt, hurt, sadness, love. There is fear, too, and Jeongguk is sure that one is the reflection of his own.
Thinking about the time they spent separated while still being together—the point in their relationship where lines were blurry and confusing, where none of them knew where the other stood, and only listened to their own respective feelings. The time they were selfish beyond repair.
There is no room for denying what is obvious; Yoongi closes his eyes in regret.
“I… I did, Gguk-ah,” he nods apologetically. “But back then – back then I knew that I’d hurt you if you stayed.”
“And how right you were.”
With parted lips, Yoongi stares at him with no words to fill the deafening silence. Before Jeongguk can say something else, Yoongi swallows the lump in his throat.
“I was,” He admits. “That’s why I wanted to protect you first. It didn’t matter how much I loved you—how much you loved me—there were too many holes in the cup, we were emptying ourselves dry.”
“But now… now we’re dealing with the aftermath. We are both hurt and we are both responsible for it. You decided to stay and I—fuck. Fuck if I wanted anything else than have you by my side even if it would hurt us more. So please… don’t go.”
Their relationship is (was?) made of two people. No matter how much Jeongguk tries to bury it down layers of self-punishment and helpless guilt, he is just as responsible for the way things turned out. He made a decision back then; when his ribs hurt not because of laughter but because of the hits he let himself receive, when his fingers trembled every second he spent alone dwelling on his own wrong-doings, and when his heart ached for how much he missed having Yoongi’s tangible, strong, reassuring presence next to him. He decided to stay, because the thought of leaving was unbearable. Maybe that was the first sign to pay attention to—the fact that he would rather keep hurting as long as he had Yoongi than not have him at all.
Despite everything, Jeongguk can’t find it within himself to regret his decision.
“I’m not asking for magic, I just want you, Jeongguk.” Yoongi croaks out. “I can’t promise for things to be okay in the blink of an eye, but I can do my best to not hurt you again.”
Jeongguk wishes it were that easy.
“Can you please stop pretending that I didn’t hurt you?” The words rip his throat.
“I-”
Jeongguk’s heart aches. It’s hard to forgive himself if he doesn’t have Yoongi’s forgiveness in the first place. “No. I hurt you and we both know it. It weighs so fucking much, hyung, I don’t know what to do.”
Yoongi intertwines their fingers together, and Jeongguk holds as tight as he can. “I know you have, baby. And I forgive you, I forgave you a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you ever say it?”
“You never apologized to me,” Yoongi whispers. “We both keep saying things to ourselves.”
And that—that makes Jeongguk’s tears fall so painfully slow, he closes his eyes.
Jeongguk has tried to say sorry so many times, and each time his throat would close around those words he desperately needed out. Yoongi must have done the same, Jeongguk realizes, having conversations with their own shadows while they faced away from the person who needed to hear the words the most.
So many things left unsaid, so many things left undone.
“I’m sorry,” Jeongguk sobs, heart entirely in Yoongi’s hands, and he can’t bring himself to take it back. “I’m so, so sorry, hyung. I- I don’t want to keep hurting you, I can’t bear this pain anymore.”
Yoongi cries silently, biting his bottom lip as the tears run rampant. Jeongguk keeps his head down, too embarrassed, too responsible for the tears that wet their cheeks.
“Look at me, Gguk-ah,” Yoongi asks, gently moving their hands apart so he can cup Jeongguk’s face. Jeongguk moves away. “Please, baby… don’t hide away from me, please don’t.”
“I don’t want – I don’t want you to see me like this.”
When I’m crying over my own mistakes, when I’m so scared to lose you it makes my head hurt, when I don’t know what could happen, when I’m lacking so much still.
This time he allows Yoongi’s cold fingers to find home in his tear stained cheek, thumb brushing softly under his closed eyes. “I’ve seen you in every way and you’re still—you are still the brightest star in my universe.”
Jeongguk has seen him in every way too; he’s seen Yoongi so happily exhilarated his gums show from smiling so wide and his ears blush just the perfect shade of pink, he’s seen Yoongi tired and withdrawn from the world, turning his thoughts into black tinted words written on paper, he’s seen Yoongi in love, smiling without even realizing and holding Jeongguk’s hand even when every bit of their bodies were connected already. He’s seen Yoongi when anger takes control of him and his mouth utters words he otherwise wouldn’t say, and he’s seen Yoongi sad more times than he wants to admit, with red tinted fingers from tugging at his cuticles just to feel something besides the ugly thoughts muddling his brain.
They’ve been together for better and for worse. Through hell and back, through attempts that they don’t want to talk about, through hugs that conveyed how glad they were to not have lost each other, through fists that met cheeks out of overwhelming love, care, and fear.
Jeongguk meets Yoongi’s eyes through a shivering breath.
I don’t want to leave either, I don’t want to lose you either, I don’t know what else to do, I love you, I love you.
“Can I hold you, baby?”
Jeongguk swallows. Yes, please gets stuck in his throat, forces it to stay there. He wants it so bad, but he’s scared he won’t be able to part ever again.
“Just leave, please.” He says instead.
Fear is even worse than anger. Fear is darker than pain. Fear paralyzes you, and takes over everything else you could, would, and want to do. Jeongguk has been afraid for a while.
“Jeongguk-ah,” Yoongi calls, voice dropping so low, so desperate.
Jeongguk can’t do it anymore. If hurting more will somehow diminish the pain altogether, he might as well try. Two wrongs make a right, don’t they?
“We’re not good for each other. I- I don’t know if I love you anymore, Yoongi.”
“You don’t mean that…” Yoongi objects weakly, but even his hands have lost their grip.
“Before I hate you – before I resent you forever… let me go.”
Outside, the rain has picked up strength. Jeongguk briefly wonders how will Yoongi get home when it’s raining so hard, and despite everything thinks about letting him stay. The things caring so much about someone makes you do.
Yoongi is shaking his head before he even finishes talking, taking shallow breaths to stabilize his breathing. Jeongguk takes advantage that he’s not looking in his direction to dry his own tears, to conjure a mask that can disguise how badly he wants to take the words back.
“You tried to end this once, now I’m finishing what you couldn’t back then.”
“Don’t break us apart, Jeongguk-ah, please.”
Maybe so many unheard pleadings make up the biggest of their problems. Little by little, they destroyed each other. Maybe it was meant to be.
(It doesn’t feel like it though. It doesn’t feel like it’s the way things are supposed to go, but Jeongguk is tired.)
“I can’t keep playing hero with you, hyung. You can’t keep depending on me to save you when you fuck up. I can’t keep expecting you to know and do what I want all the time. We both—” he sighs. “we both need to make things right on our own first. Or else… or else we won’t ever forgive each other.”
Yoongi stays in the couch, listening to the rain as it falls down heavily across the windows, mixed with Jeongguk’s tiny barely suppressed sobs. His hands have stopped shaking, but his heart is still heavy. He knows Jeongguk is right—hell, he has been knowing that breaking apart would be best months ago. Yet he kept holding onto Jeongguk, ignoring his own reason that kept telling him it would only hurt them in the long run. Jeongguk is a force of nature—Yoongi came to learn with only a few weeks after meeting him, wide eyed and eager for adventure, uncaring for dangers and bad companies—he is so valiantly strong in his vulnerability, so keen in his curiosity and ever-running imagination, so passionate in his all-encompassing love, and so unapologetically himself after he learned how good it was to be loud and to be heard. Yoongi was a mere mortal at his mercy, and Jeongguk was too good to be true. Love might have blurred his vision, or maybe it made it clear as glass and he simply chose to ignore it, but Yoongi idealized Jeongguk so much that he came to a point where accepting Jeongguk’s flaws and human imperfections became a mirror to face his own faults. It meant to accept that if Jeongguk wasn’t perfect, then nothing would ever be, since he was so far from it himself. When Jeongguk tried to come closer, Yoongi took two steps back, trying to keep his own lacking self away from Jeongguk’s blinding smiles.
But Jeongguk remained unfaltering, taking three steps closer, and filling Yoongi’s deepest, darkest crevices in his heart with sun-like warmth and light. He lost track of time, of mistakes, of long overdue apologies, and instead basked in the universal wonder that it was to be loved by Jeongguk.
Once, Jeongguk told him he felt so happy he couldn’t breathe, Yoongi thinks it shouldn’t be like that. They felt things too strongly, too overpoweringly that it made every other moment feel dull. They held onto happy moments so strongly it made their fingers bleed, and they drowned in the bad moments so deeply it caused their lungs to give up.
He knows that in order to love again—properly this time, without leaving pieces of themselves on the floor in the process—they need to work on their own. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t love without loving yourself first, or else this same scenario will repeat itself.
But knowing it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
He loves Jeongguk so much it hurts—he doesn’t want it to hurt anymore.
So he breaks his heart once again, and hopes this is the last time.
Yoongi gives a short nod, and Jeongguk’s breath hitches in his throat. “I love you.” He says, because if there is one thing he is sure of in this world, is that he loves Jeongguk, in every way.
Jeongguk closes his eyes painfully tight, silently asking him to stop, asking for mercy this time.
“They say sometimes when you love someone you have to let them go,” Yoongi continues, ignoring the way Jeongguk’s shoulders shake for the both of their sakes. “So, I will. Let you go. I just—I just want you to be happy, and to forgive yourself. I’ll do the same.”
Jeongguk thought about a dozen and more ways this night could have gone, and although none of them were particularly pleasant, he underestimated how badly it would hurt. He knows this is what he asked for, what he and Yoongi both need, but the reality is that he’s letting go of his dream; of the one who made him experience the happiest moments in his life as well as the most painful ones. He’s letting go of the first person he’s ever loved so deeply he doesn’t know how not to love him.
Does letting go mean leaving forever? Is this the end of their story? Will their end page be bitter as well? If Yoongi still loves him now, will he love him tomorrow when they’re not together anymore?
If the answer is yes—does he even deserve to hope? Can he allow his burning heart to keep alight for Yoongi?
Jeongguk wants to stop being so scared and uncertain for once. He needs to be brave; he needs to know. Because there is one thing he knows, and one thing he is not scared of, and that is that no matter who shakes this world, he will love Yoongi until the very end.
No one prepares you to let the love of your life go, so Jeongguk doesn’t know how to proceed when Yoongi gets up from the couch and heads to the door.
His heart guides him through, though, and he finds himself holding onto Yoongi’s hand before he walks away. Yoongi stops, and allows Jeongguk’s fingers to find home between his own one last time.
Jeongguk has had his heart on his sleeve the entire time, and Yoongi still took care of it, even when they’re saying goodbye. Jeongguk needs to know.
“Don’t you still love me?”
Outside, the rain stops.
Yoongi holds Jeongguk’s gaze, and with utmost sincerity, he answers.
“I’ll always do.”