Chapter Text
The first things Yoongi sees when he opens his eyes in the hospital are an unfamiliar face and an unfamiliar ceiling. The face doesn't belong to a doctor, Yoongi thinks, but as he tries to focus his eyes on something, anything , he becomes less sure. He can’t make himself focus, his head feels fuzzy and his arms aren’t cooperating properly. His mouth is dry and as he attempts to speak it hits him that it feels like he’s been asleep for a long time.
“Oh my god,” Yoongi hears a voice say, faintly, as if it’s coming from down the hallway, but he knows it’s coming from right beside him because he can see a mouth moving. “Oh my god, he’s awake.”
Yoongi’s hand is being grabbed. He doesn’t know who’s grabbing it. He looks up and realizes that he doesn’t recognize the people around him. Any of them. There are three people by his bed, one furiously pressing the call button to get a nurse, one grabbing his hand like it’s a lifeline and the other looking like he’s seen a ghost. Yoongi works to coat his tongue with saliva, to get words out and it takes time. It takes up until there’s a nurse in the room and she’s ushering the people around him out and Yoongi is finally sputtering out half-formed words desperately.
“Who are you?”
-
The doctors tell him he has amnesia. They tell him it’s 2017. That whatever he remembers last was from almost six years ago. They tell him he’s 25, will be 26 very soon. That he’s forgotten so much. So much that he may get back, eventually.
They also tell him that there are things he might never remember.
Memory is fickle. There are so many things that Yoongi thinks he remembers distinctly. Things that feel like they happened just yesterday and yet…
“So… can you tell me about what you do remember?” the guy who had been holding his hand when he woke up is asking. Seokjin, Yoongi’s mind provides.
“I remember graduating high school,” Yoongi says, voice bitter and cold.
They’re sitting in what is apparently Yoongi’s apartment. It’s a harsh contrast to the room he remembers occupying in his parent’s house.
They’d stopped talking to him when he was 20, he is told, he’s had the apartment since then.
The people around him keep telling him of things that have happened in his life they just… neglect to explain to him exactly why they happened. He doesn’t press, it’s obviously hard enough for… Taehyung. And Namjoon. And Seokjin. His friends. Right.
The thing about being told about your life as if it were a story that everyone but you knows, is that it is hard to take everything at face value. Yoongi doesn’t know what’s true and what’s false. What he’s being lied to about. He’s never been a very trustful person, and being sat down by complete strangers isn’t helping anything.
The room is tense. Taehyung is pacing back and forth in the kitchen and Namjoon can’t look him in the face. The only one who seems calm is Seokjin and really… Yoongi thinks he needs that.
“I remember being 19 and buying alcohol for the first time legally,” Yoongi sighs. “I remember coming home to my parent’s house after being away at college for months and celebrating Christmas. I remember—“
Yoongi cuts himself off. He doesn’t know what he remembers after that. Nothing is clear, really, he can’t tell where his old memories end and the new ones begin. He remembers being surrounded by his family and feeling so, so wonderful and light and happy and… what happened?
His parents had called the day after he had been released from the hospital. It had been a short, tense conversation where they gave little to nothing away. They said they were glad he was okay. That he should have been more careful. That he can come home now, maybe, one day.
There is no explanation for the way they act. Yoongi wanted desperately to understand but he could tell from the tone of their voices that nothing he could say would make them reveal anything to him about their falling out. So… as he thinks about Christmas and his family and his fucking amnesia , he asks Seokjin.
“What happened?” His voice sounds strained to his own ears. “What happened between me and… my family?”
Seokjin’s face betrays very little as he looks toward Namjoon. They make eye contact and Namjoon nods subtly as Seokjin relaxes back into his chair. Yoongi thinks they may be together, he can’t tell. He does know he saw Namjoon crying into Seokjin’s broad chest, after he woke up. He won’t tell them that, though.
“Well…” Seokjin begins, sounding less okay than before. “You remember being at college, yeah?”
Yoongi nods.
“Do you remember Jung Hoseok?” Seokjin ventures, voice deceptively light.
Yoongi tilts his head, the name sounds familiar. He may have heard it in passing at the studio but…
“I’ve never met him. I heard from my friends about him though,” Yoongi shakes his head. “What does he have to do with this?”
“You um… You and him were sort of together,” Seokjin sighs, this looks like it’s difficult for him and Yoongi feels only a little guilty. “Your family didn’t really approve, or so I’m told.”
“Oh.”
It’s Seokjin’s turn to look guilty and Yoongi can tell he’s looking for a way to put things into words but before he can—
“Your parents are fucking awful,” Taehyung is saying, loudly from the kitchen. “They were the worst and they made you and Hoseok hyung feel like shit. I don’t know if he ever stopped blaming himself for what they did to you. It wasn’t his fault. It was theirs. Don’t be mad at him he… He would be so sad if you were mad at him now.”
“I’m not mad at anyone but them,” Yoongi says, trying to calm Taehyung down because it looks like he might burst into tears at any second and Yoongi doesn’t know if he can handle that.
Taehyung’s body language becomes more relaxed, then. The anxiety from before melts away from him a little. Taehyung cares about Hoseok, Yoongi thinks.
“Where is he now?” Yoongi asks. “Hoseok, I mean. He’d know more about this, wouldn’t he?”
There’s a moment, then, where Yoongi’s lack of memory hits him because his “friends” are looking at each other and not at him and they look so heartbroken and Yoongi can tell they’re hiding something from him. He wants to ask what but he doesn’t know if he can, especially when he doesn’t know anything about his own life yet.
“We’ll explain later, yeah?” Namjoon speaks up finally, after they’re all done looking sorry for him. “Right now, I think you need to rest a little. We’ve been over a lot today; we can look at… The last six years of your life specifically tomorrow if that’s okay with you.”
And Yoongi is relieved. That’s very okay with him. Things are strange now, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself anymore. Doesn’t know how he is supposed to act. He’s so disconnected from his own life now, it almost feels like everything he’s hearing is all a story that happened to someone else, someone who isn’t him.
He does rest, after Namjoon and Taehyung leave. Seokjin stays, and that’s okay because Yoongi needs help finding things and Seokjin apparently spends a lot of time cooking in Yoongi’s kitchen.
Seokjin makes them dinner and Yoongi would say something nice but—
“Your cooking is mediocre,” Yoongi comments instead, can’t help himself from pointing it out.
“Why, thank you,” Seokjin says dryly. “You said that all the time before. But you can’t cook so you’ll have to live with it.”
“That sounds like me,” Yoongi furrows his brows and looks down at his bowl of noodles.
A pause.
“Are you older than me?” Yoongi almost whispers.
Yoongi glances up to see Seokjin smiling wide.
“Yes! I am. You can call me Seokjin hyung, if it makes you feel better. I’d prefer that actually,” Seokjin’s smile wavers. “It’ll make things seem more… normal.”
“Sounds good, hyung.”
-
Taehyung and Namjoon are back the next day, bringing with them “get well soon” cards and many, many bowls of different foods.
The looks on their faces say not to question it.
But he wants to. He wants to so bad. All Yoongi has is questions and no answers yet but… Maybe he’ll understand more today.
Once everyone is settled and some of the food is heated up they begin again.
“You graduated with a degree in music composition,” Taehyung says around a mouthful of noodles. “Piano mostly. You rapped some, underground stuff. You went by Gloss? Do you remember that, hyung?”
“I remember rapping and piano,” Yoongi says. “Those were hobbies before… It’s nice, I guess, to hear that I’m doing something I love now.”
Seokjin and Namjoon exchange a glance and Yoongi feels so, so small.
“Well, you weren’t really doing anything with your music degree,” Seokjin says. “It all ended up being more of a hobby than anything. You uh… You DJ at a radio station now.”
Oh , Yoongi thinks. It’s not bad, per say, it’s just not what he saw himself doing with his life, he supposes.
“Neat,” he forces himself to say instead of really? Nothing else?
He spends some time after a short crash course on the last six years of his life looking through his drawers, trying to find familiar pieces of clothing or trinkets he remembers.
He figures he left a lot behind when he moved to Seoul, though, because there’s so much that’s new. So much he can’t remember buying and even more that he… never thought he would own.
“What the fuck is this?” Yoongi scrunches his nose in distaste at one particular shirt as he turns around to face Namjoon, who has been watching him from the doorway for some time.
The shirt is… it’s something. Green, yellow and red letters glare up at Yoongi telling him to “Keep One Rolled.” There’s a marijuana leaf on it for fucks sake. Why would he ever own something like that?
Namjoon’s face grows impossibly pale at the sight of the cloth in Yoongi’s hands.
“Wow, I know it’s ugly, but it’s not anything to lose your lunch over,” Yoongi laughs as Namjoon sputters and tries to get words out.
“I— It’s— I mean—“
“It’s not yours,” Seokjin enters the room smoothly after hearing the panicked tone in Namjoon’s voice. He pats him on the shoulder as he slides in and goes to sit on Yoongi’s bed.
“It was Hoseok’s,” Seokjin says, hands tight on his knees, knuckles white and face a little red.
“Was Hoseok’s?” Yoongi questions, trying to get a good look at Seokjin’s face, but failing miserably as the elder desperately looks anywhere but Yoongi.
“Yeah.”
“Did we have a bad break up or something?”
“No.”
Frustration is bubbling up underneath Yoongi’s skin, making him feel restless, helpless, and so, so lost.
“What the fuck, then?” he snaps. “I can’t just guess at everything, what happened, hyung?”
Behind him, Yoongi can hear the faint sound of Namjoon turning and walking away. He thinks he might be crying, not that he's paying much attention to anything but the pounding of blood in his ears as he gets himself worked up.
“Sit down, Yoongi,” Seokjin’s voice is back to the pitying tone that Yoongi is getting so used to hearing.
He’s starting to hate it.
“Hoseok... You two have been— Had been together since you were 20, I think. He was 19 at the time. You met him in studio one day when Namjoon brought him by. You hated him for a while. He thought it was because you liked Namjoon, actually,” Seokjin laughs, but it doesn’t sound genuine. “But, one night… I don’t know what happened exactly, I just know that after that night you two were best friends. And it went from there. I think you knew each other for four months before you started dating and you’d been together ever since.”
“What happened to us?”
“It’s not so much what happened to you as much as…” Seokjin takes a steadying breath. “As what happened to him. Two weeks ago, you... He was headed over to mine and Namjoon’s place, actually, and he… He was hit by a car, Yoongi.”
There are tears rolling down Seokjin’s face now and this all feels so alien to Yoongi. He’s hearing this from someone who knew Hoseok well; someone who’s grieving for a loss of a dear friend and he… he doesn’t feel anything but confusion and shock and… emptiness. Yoongi drops his gaze to his hands. His fingernails are so long, when did that happen? He focuses on chewing off the parts he decides he doesn’t need. It’ll help , he thinks absently.
“You were there, somehow. You… saw it happen, I think,” Seokjin’s voice breaks and it is then that Namjoon reenters the room with two mugs of hot chocolate and a tear stained shirt. “He died before any of us got there. You were there the whole time. You loved each other so much. I’m so sorry, Yoongi.”
It’s not that the apology is empty it’s just… How do you mourn the loss of someone you don’t know, don’t remember, but apparently loved? The grief Yoongi feels, he guesses it’s mostly because he really, really doesn’t remember any of this.
Yoongi doesn’t know what’s worse: the shock he feels or the look Seokjin’s giving him. It’s a look like he expects more from him, like he expects some sort of reaction, something that isn’t shocked silence. Yoongi wonders blankly if Seokjin expects for him to cry.
He doesn’t.
“Holy shit,” Yoongi breathes out before he lays down on the floor and stays there for a long while.