Chapter Text
Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling.
Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can’t tell where it hurts.
They can’t calm down.
They can’t ever stop howling.
- from THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood
After exams - anxiety, anxiety, apathy, a vicious cycle, self-care when he should be revising - there’s a week spent with Seokjin and Namjoon.
Seokjin had burst in early Saturday morning, declared the place unliveable, and ushered Yoongi out, hastily packed backpack under his arm and a trashbag of laundry in Seokjin's tight grip: that's how Yoongi ends up at Seokjin and Namjoon's.
And mostly, it goes ok.
Sure, there's an awkward moment, right at the start, when Seokjin leaves to dump Yoongi's bag in the spare room and make the bed up and Namjoon comes out of his studio. (Seokjin gave him the space even though he'd rather have had a second spare room, because he knows Namjoon needs somewhere to lay out all his music shit, somewhere to be alone sometimes, and relationships are about compromise, Yoongi.)
(Yoongi wonders why people always tell him things he already knows.)
Their gazes meet before Namjoon breaks it to nod at the black bag of dirty laundry, “You need to wash that?"
Yoongi wills the surge of anxiety down, nodding mutely in response and following when Namjoon gestures at him, shuffling to the laundry room. Namjoon tuts when Yoongi tries stuffing it all in one wash - "If you're using our washing machine you might as well wash two loads. Separate your lights and darks, Yoongi, come on" - and Yoongi swallows down the hurt. He wonders why his well-intentioned actions are always seen as superficial or stupid. Maybe it’s because he’s superficial and-
They're about to leave the utility room when Namjoon coughs, awkwardly. When Yoongi looks at him, he's drumming his fingers across the washing machine, breathing deeply. In. Out. Then he looks up at Yoongi sharply.
"You know I just want what's best for you, right?"
Yoongi wants to scream 'that's not an apology, Joon!', but he knows Namjoon doesn't think he owes Yoongi an apology. Has probably forgotten the circumstances under which they stopped talking. Probably thinks Yoongi is hateful for dragging this out so long.
He wants to scream 'I'm mentally ill and what you think is best for me is so far removed from what I really need', but he doesn't want to burden Namjoon like that. He can't burden Namjoon like that. Not when he burdens Namjoon so much already.
He wants to scream 'If you care so much why are your eyes always so full of disappointment', but he thinks perhaps it's not Namjoon he really wants to be screaming at.
Maybe Namjoon just reminds him too much of his parents. Maybe that's why Yoongi finds himself trapped in this vicious cycle with him, where Namjoon does something so entirely Namjoon that Yoongi remembers why they became friends in the first place, and then they get close again, so Namjoon starts meddling in Yoongi's life again, and then Namjoon echoes something yelled at Yoongi years ago from other mouths, and then Yoongi melts down and. Here they are.
Yoongi doesn't think it's healthy.
"Yoongs? I care about you, y'know? I got mad because I." Namjoon sighs heavily, runs a hand through his hair, fixes his gaze on the wall. But the sigh is directed at himself and not Yoongi and somehow it makes Yoongi stand up straighter. "The night before I phoned you was awful. I was having a bad day and I came home and Seokjin spent all of dinner worrying about you and I just. I hate it." He looks up again, face open in a way that Yoongi doesn't think his parents' ever have been. "I hate that you're so unhappy. I hate that that worries Seokjin. I hate that I get jealous over it."
Yoongi blinks. "I'm not unhappy."
The tension flushes from Namjoon's posture and he seems suddenly like the boy Yoongi met back in their high school music club.
"We love you, you know that?"
Yoongi's throat closes up. "I- yeah. Yeah, I know." His heart pounds in his ears. "I love you too."
The moment holds, then breaks when Seokjin pokes his head round the door, smiling benevolently. It's such perfect timing Yoongi’s sure he was eavesdropping. He doesn't really mind. "Lunch, anyone?"
And they go on.
Yoongi is convinced they have the place under a magic spell because it's so imbued with purpose and productivity. Yoongi can't help but absorb it every time he visits, all that motivation osmosing through his skin and making energy spark at his fingertips. That Sunday he finishes off two remaining essays and he doesn't once want to die throughout the whole process. He even feels energised enough to look up the things that confuse him and make extra notes.
Throughout the week, Seokjin takes him out every morning, running errands. Yoongi carries the shopping bags and Seokjin always smiles gratefully; Yoongi looks away, shyly, secretly saving that smile in his memory.
Every afternoon their guest room is immersed in sunshine. A light, almost-summer breeze squeaks the window on its hinges. Namjoon appears with a book at four o’clock every day, and they lie beside one another on sun-drenched sheets. The pages and spaces between them are golden. The wind lifts the heat from their skin and Namjoon opens his mouth to say something but closes it again. Yoongi waits for the itch of anxiety but it doesn’t come.
And when Seokjin calls for help in the kitchen, Namjoon pauses in the doorway to say he’s glad Yoongi’s here, before hastening to Seokjin’s side.
Every evening after dinner - Yoongi wonders if Seokjin is making a particular effort to cook Yoongi’s favourite meals - they sit out on the balcony to watch the sun, setting over the buildings, slipping out of view and leaving them with flowering skies. Rays of light glint off windows, refracting into rainbows over their feet. Namjoon’s plants bloom, filling the air with sweetness, and when the night ushers a chill with it, Seokjin throws a heavy blanket over them both and an arm over Yoongi’s shoulder. Under Seokjin’s wing, the sounds of the city around them, Yoongi feels safe.
Namjoon brews camomile tea and Seokjin’s look of fondness when Namjoon gives him his cup makes Yoongi suck in a sharp breath. Seokjin never asks why he looks like he’s seen a ghost. Namjoon offers him a cup and nobody gets mad when Yoongi says he’d rather not.
Yoongi goes to Namjoon and Seokjin’s apartment and something in him heals.
He thinks it’s his ability to recover.
The weeks in between then and now tremble and shudder as the wavelengths of his music, pulsing like a heartbeat monitor, shimmering like heat rising from the pavement. Mornings remain overcast and grey but, god, the way the sky opens in the afternoon! Spilling light through the window, edging his hands in gold, smoothing warmth into his skin.
It's so simple, this joy.
It's late spring in all its glory; unfurled blossoms and clouds whiter than the porcelain of his coffee cup, pillows batted through the air by the boisterous breezes that rush through his hair and tease at his bare skin. It's late spring, the burgeoning of hope like a fantastic bruise after the pain of winter, the flush of goodness, the breath of vivality. Yoongi breathes deeply. His lungs expand like the seas, swelling softly, effortlessly, everything raw and everything soft.
Never one for bookmarks, he finds his page easily.
He falls into the words.
He waits for the family to vacate his spot in the sun, the armchair, then he swoops in like a falcon, swift and wanting.
He places his palm on the hot, cracked leather of the armrest and it feels as intimate as touching a lover. The window is a curse and a blessing. The Sunday streets are quiet.
His joints reknit themselves into something beautiful. His hands shake, slightly, as they always do. He lets his tummy blob out, just over the waistband of his jeans, and he tells the fairies dancing in the air that he loves his body. He almost believes it.
This morning he had an anxiety attack in bed, curled up and crying, every muscle tense, every nerve spark, spark, sparking. Within moments of sitting down, the sunlight has burnt the anxiety right out of him; just like that. He exists in stillness, a safe harbour. Magic.
(Taehyung used to do Tarot readings; Yoongi wonders if he still does. He touches on the memories like a butterfly flicking over lilypads, floating above the deep, heavy lake of his nostalgia. He does not sink.)
He laughs, a soft, quiet thing, just for himself. His book is funny and fierce and all he could desire.
He skips a song - too delicate and quiet for the book's climax - and the next up is exactly the one he was looking for.
Simple joy.
Yoongi exists and is glad. He exists, he exists, he exists.
The barista collects his empty cup, his empty plate and Yoongi smiles and hooks his legs over the armrest and everything is the sun and the story.
Plot twist! He throws his head back, mouth open in a shocked grin, a wild thing. He hits the books lightly against his forehead; caught up in the revelations, in the delicious taste of fantasy, dark chocolate and mint, bursting open on his tongue. His teeth gleam with it.
He buys a milkshake when his mouth dries and the sun's heat makes him flush pink, and he doesn't feel guilty. He might do, if he lingers, but he doesn't let himself get that far. He switches the traintracks. He splits the spine and licks the words from the pages. He's always been a fast reader.
Outside birds flit over the shops, over the flat-roofed buildings; their shadows chase each other over his thighs, and his knees, bare where his jeans have ripped from over-use.
He finishes the book. His hands are trembling, a little. He wants to play, his hands over the keys, solid and cold and whispering potential. He wants to compose, to pull the blood thread from his chest and stitch it into a song for his book-reading playlist, a song for the ages, a timeless, drifting melody with layers and layers, masks over masks, stripped down to the bone. He wants to write, to regurgitate the words he's devoured into inspiration, into poetry.
Yoongi strokes his thumb over the corner of the pages lovingly. He imagines Jimin's jaw under his hand instead, Jimin's mouth against his, Jimin's heat for the sun's. He imagines Hoseok's softness, Hoseok sitting in the chair opposite him with his own book cracked open in his lap and his boots coming up to poke at Yoongi's thighs.
The Other Book nags at him. It nibbles at his earlobe, soft and seductive and full of promise. He started it before winter came, in the final burst of autumn sunlight but he hadn't finished it in time; it was a book for sunny days. Too fragile for winter. It was a book for the armchair and the clouds parting like the Red Sea around the sun. He’ll finish it next.
Yoongi wonders why he can only read his books outside his room. Maybe it's because his room - his spaces - are noxious, poisoning that within them. The walls of his self-made prison exhale despair. The sheets of his bed are corruption. The mess on his desk mirrors the mess of his mind. He can't do that to them, to his precious things. Maybe that's why he prefers to visit Jimin than have Jimin visit him. Something in him catches at the thought. No, Jimin is stronger than that. He's had to be, to hold Yoongi's hand for so long. Jimin is a special kind of uncorruptible. He thinks of the bright spots of hope across his bookshelves, each book, opening them up and them unravelling into love around him. His books are probably strong enough to withstand, too. There's only one thing in his room that is truly fragile.
Yoongi stands abruptly, pushing himself out of his head and out of his chair.
Outside, green lines the pavestones. Sunlight filters through the trees. A group of women in pink, training, no doubt, for a race against cancer, pant past. Yoongi tips his chin up, at the bright new leaves and the blue beyond, clouds white and graceful.
The wind is warm for the first time in centuries.
Yoongi flirts with the baristas, stutteringly, as always; bursts of confidence and mute when he over-thinks. His heart beats achingly with the weight of the Book in his bag as he ums and ahs over whether to get a hot chocolate or a milkshake. (It’s still that knives-edge time of year, where the temperature flip-flops between hot and cold.)
It's a pretty small book.
He finds sunlight, seeking it out like a cat, and he rewinds. He's not ready to finish the book, not yet, so he re-reads chapters, and cries when he comes across passages that hurt him the first reading. He cries over other passages too; after all, he’s different now than he was last autumn.
(He’s still trying to work out if that’s a good or a bad thing.)
Green lines the pavestones. Sunlight filters through the trees. As he leaves the café, Yoongi drinks in the world around him like a starved man. If the author can pay loving attention to the quiet, deteriorating corners of the world and find beauty in them, then so can he.
A group of women in pink - training, no doubt, for a race against cancer - pant past. Yoongi tips his chin up, at the bright new leaves and the blue beyond, clouds white and graceful, and breathes in deeply.
Sometimes self-harm isn’t razors. Sometimes it’s not nails, or the scratchy edge of your shampoo bottle dragged across soft skin: the underside of your arm, the inside of your thigh, the curve of your stomach. Sometimes self-harm isn’t starving yourself, nor is it eating too much. Sometimes self-harm isn’t poster-loud and secret-heavy.
Sometimes it is just this: listening to your music too loud.
Yoongi turns the volume up, again. TOO LOUD. He thinks of his mother screaming at him that he’ll go deaf if he keeps this up. He turns the volume up. The sound beats against his skull, rattling through his eardrums ferociously, as if to tear his brain apart, each neurone sparking in desperation before spluttering, dimming in death. Usually it helps numb him a little, helps smother the intrusive thoughts. Today, it fuels them instead.
He flies over the pavements, dives across roads with barely hesitation for cars, swift and graceful and unbreathing. Somebody walks too close to him and he startles, heart racing even faster, stupid, stupid! To be scared by such a thing! Yoongi feels, briefly, like throwing up.
He resists the urge and speeds up, instead, watching his reflection through his sunglasses in the shop windows, starting to sweat even though he forwent a jacket. He does not focus on the diameter of his thighs. He doesn’t flinch when the roar of a motorcycle two streets away breaks past his music barrier. He doesn’t.
Usually, he holds it together better than this. Usually, by the time he gets to the café, the walk there has cooled him off. Especially in this weather: oh, such glorious weather! He should be happy in this weather, shouldn’t he? Wasn’t that the contract he signed, in blood no less? Was it only Depression who agreed to that?
After all, today it is Anxiety who screams, and screams, and screams. And it is Yoongi who has been crying all afternoon.
(On and off, waxing and waning. Tears bubbling hot in his chest and cold as they slip down his cheeks, one by one. His reflection above the sink, ugly, ugly, ugly; his face blotched white and red, his eyes bloodshot, his skin peeling and dry and acne on his jaw. He mimes stabbing himself in the stomach, extracting his cephalic vein, pulling his hair out. He thinks about bashing his head against the wall. He wails silently, mouth open, drooling, gross and aching.
His brain sends him confusing messages about the song it needs to hear to calm down, the line warbled and jolting, a faint headache forming. His ears ring instead with the text message Hoseok sent him this morning, about meeting up with everyone this Saturday. At the end of this week. Everyone. Yoongi gasps for air. He doesn’t have any tissues; he uses a shirt from the pile on the floor in the corner and hates himself for it. Hates himself for a lot of things.)
There’s an open stretch of pavement just before the street where the café lies and it’s covered with chalk. Yoongi’s step falters when he connects the hearts, the smiley faces, the words ‘love and peace’ with recent terror activity around the world. His lip quirks upwards without his bidding, a tight, painful thing. Too much. Too loud. He blinks rapidly and sprints across the road as the green man flickers.
Before he enters, he notices his armchair is free. He prays it remains so, fervently, feverishly. He’s overheating. As he stands in line, Yoongi curls his hands into fists and feels his nails bite into his skin. With every crescendo he pushes them more, tightens his hand more. He won’t draw blood - what are these book people doing, really, to draw blood from such an action? - but he will hurt. And then he…he doesn’t know why he does it.
It’s a kind of surrender.
(Always, Yoongi lives in fear: of anybody finding out and of nobody finding out.)
He focuses on the pain in his fist and gets through his order fine, smiling, even. Light-hearted.
(Always, the stigma and the memories - his mother’s hand gripping his wrist tight enough to hurt, tutting, “Yoongi, nobody hires people who cut. Pray that doesn’t scar.” - glue his lips together and fix a mask over his face. Masks and masks and masks and masks. Yoongi’s afraid to let one slip in case they all do; that’s why he doesn’t cry in front of others.)
Then the other barista arrives.
(He never cries, and yet, and yet-)
At 5 o’clock the café isn’t busy, but even if it were, the barista would talk to him. Yoongi knows she would. He hasn’t been coming here religiously to be ignored.
“Hey, babe, how are you doing?” she asks, smiling, a little tired but a lot caring.
And Yoongi breaks.
(He keeps his phone on silent so he can’t be reached, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing the messages, the ones he hasn’t replied to, the ONES HE HASN’T REPLIED TO! YOONGI! YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT REPLY! YOU’RE ONLY ESCALATING THE SITUATION!)
(This morning he awoke to: yoongi-hyung!! hoseokie told me you're coming this saturday!)
(This Saturday, oh God. Oh God. It’s Wednesday already. If he thinks about it, he panics. If he doesn’t think about it, he can’t prepare. It’s Wednesday already. It’s Wednesday already. Where does the time go? What is time, anyway?)
(is he telling the truth? are you really? pls tell me he wasn’t lying? ily hyung…jiminie)
“I’ve just-“ he chokes up. Oh, he’s going to cry. The barista looks at him so gently, so gently, with an edge of shock like she, too, didn’t expect this. “I’ve just had a really bad day.” His voice cracks on the word ‘bad’.
“Oh, honey. I’ll get you that milkshake, ok? You go sit in your seat.”
In his seat. He wants to cry even more at that; his vision blurs as he pays. What is he doing? What is he doing? Her hands are soft as she gives him his change.
It takes a chapter before his pulse calms and the crescents in his palm stop pulsing. He's already drunk half his milkshake; necking it down as if inhaling liquids could stop them from falling from his eyes. Half of him wishes he was drinking something stronger. The other half acknowledges it's probably best he isn't.
It's the first time he's been able to drink something cold without regretting it once it hit his system and cooled him too rapidly that it left him freezing. It tastes like comfort and it tastes like change and Yoongi is terrified.
Some time later the barista skips over, ponytail swinging just a little, smile slightly tentative but warm.
“Hey.”
Yoongi twitches his lips up into a smile.
“Feeling better?”
Yoongi hesitates, takes stock. “A little.” He raises his book, “This is helping. And…” he’s saying too much, “Being here.”
The look she gives him is so fond, Yoongi has to stop himself tearing up again. She turns to go, hesitates, then turns back, “Would you like a pastry?” A…what? “We’ve still got some left.” Does she mean a free pastry? Is she going to-? “Wanna come and look?”
Yoongi nods mutely. She slips behind the counter as he peers at the pastries, and there’s one Chocolate Twist left, and Yoongi points at it, feeling tiny and vulnerable.
“I’d go for the chocolate one, too,” she smiles encouragingly, plating it, and it hits him, then, that she’s sneaking him a free pastry, all with this soft, soft look on her face and Yoongi’s whole body floods with relief and the feeling, the feeling…
The feeling of being loved.
Yoongi sinks back into the armchair and picks up the Book again, and eats the Twist with one hand and powder sprinkles down over his shirt and he smiles, just a little, just this tiny, private thing.
He doesn't want to lick the pastry powder from his fingers; he wants it on his skin, always. A reminder of being loved. That's was this is. His cynical nature does not have a place here; after all, he doesn’t tip them extra when they were nice to him. He just laughs, easily charmed and endearingly charming. He just keeps returning and the staff and the walls and the armchairs keep making him feel safe.
Against his wishes, Yoongi eats it even faster than he drank his milkshake, and with each bite his elation builds until his veins are shimmering with it, hot and desperate. He blinks rapidly and thanks the summer for letting him hide behind sunglasses.
Summer? Is it summer yet? He doesn't think it can be; he doesn't want it to be. Summer is too close to autumn and autumn is too close to winter. Time loops around his neck and strangles him. Yoongi licks at one white-powdered fingertip and breathes again.
Love.
Yoongi’s vision blurs.
Outside, everything is soft. Muffled somehow. Gentle. The sun through the trees. The wide pavement and the cracks on the walls. The dirt in the air. The heat.
Inside, the café is safe and fragile and home.