Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Run, run, run!”

When things were normal, there were people who did running for fun. They would get up earlier than needed in the morning and go on a jog. Yoongi remembers scoffing at them as they would tell him that sure, running isn’t fun…for the first hundred kilometres.

Then, they used to say, it’s like a drug. 

Yoongi wonders what these people are doing right now. If these drug addicts made themselves get up and run when everything happened. When the world went numb.

Because Yoongi has never been a good runner, but on the night when the world burned he made himself get up and ran so fast he’s afraid now his running abilities are spent. He is spent. 

Because it has been a year of constant running, and Yoongi, to tell the truth, hasn't gotten any better at all. 

“Turn right! Right!” 

Yoongi barely catches himself on his feet as he rounds a right corner. His lungs burn, muscles whine. God, it would’ve been so nice to just stop right now and let yourself rest against the wall. Or drop dead on the ground. 

But adrenaline is high, and the desire to live for another second is even higher. 

“F-fuck,” Yoongi breathes out as he runs into the wall. He looks behind himself, at Hoseok hurrying after him, at all the sounds indicating that they are being followed. 

It is not a high wall. One of them can boost the other up, and the other can find a box to stand up and help hoist the first one up. 

Yoongi draws a map of Seongnam in the back of his mind. Right, this wall — it’s close to the Safety Tunnel. If only they had more time, they both could get over it and escape from the chase.

They don’t have more time. They’ve been too reckless on their scouting. They’re paying penance. 

If running hasn’t gotten better for Yoongi, then making decisions definitely has. It used to follow up alongside anxiety, all kinds of thoughts rummaging through your head.

Am I doing the right thing? What if it doesn’t work out? What if what if what if —

There is no time for it anymore, in the world which has seen the night burning. In the new world, you either choose on the spot, and stick to your choice, or you get beaten, eaten, and chewed out. 

Yoongi locks eyes with Hoseok, and points with his finger somewhere up in the cloudless sky. It’s a silent form of communication, a language they’ve been growing familiar with in the past year. 

Hoseok is not pleased with Yoongi’s decision, of course he isn’t, it’s all in his shoulders, his corner of the mouth, his knit eyebrows.

But he nods — unwillingly. Yoongi has made a choice for him, and he’ll proceed with it. It’s a trust they both have in each other, a trust they’ve been cultivating in one another for a year of constant running.

So Yoongi puts his palms in front of him, gets ready to support Hoseok’s weight — still groans as Hoseok’s foot lands in his palms, but Hoseok makes it over the wall and it’s all that matters. Yoongi staggers out of his backpack, limbs too shaky, too nervous. He throws it over the wall. The backpack lands with a muted thump.

“Hyungnim — ” Hoseok protests. He sounds distant, he must’ve begun to rummage the street for any box to hold him up to help Yoongi climb over the wall. 

Not happening. 

“Take my backpack, I’ll need the rest of my stamina to run. I’ll make a little detour.”

“But — ” Hoseok still tries.

Yoongi looks behind himself — dear God, he really doesn’t have the time to reassure Hoseok that he’s going to be fine. Especially since he isn’t so certain himself he’s going to be fine. 

“Bet I’ll be back in the house faster than you,” he smirks nevertheless — only his light teasing tone will calm Hoseok down now, he knows.

It is so tiring, to know.

“I’m off,” Yoongi says quickly. The sounds are too close. His corner of the eye catches the figures. Their rotten smell is all over his nostrils. 

The wall marks a long deep alley, and Yoongi contemplates only for another second of his life before he departs into the right direction. Now that the heavy backpack is gone from his shoulders, it’s a bit easier to run, a bit easier to breathe, a bit easier to think about what’s next. The map of Seongnam is unstable in his mind, but it’s there. Shaking and flickering, but it’s there. 

Yoongi has almost figured out how to get out of this labyrinth called town without getting infected when he catches sight of two other figures at the back of the alley. 

These figures, they move animatedly in a way that implies they’re alive. That implies they’re human. 

The figures freeze at their motions when they spot Yoongi in the distance. Yoongi can’t see them that well, but he thinks they have guns, or maybe cold weapons, in their hands. They put them up in the air. 

Yoongi’s heart goes numb despite the severe running he’s performing. 

There’s this thing about people. These days they can be more cruel and dangerous than decays. These days, if someone were to ask you who you would like to meet less, you’d say, Another human being. If it’s not someone you trust, if it’s not someone you know, you want to avoid human contact at all costs. You never know what this encounter is going to bring to you. You don’t want to find out. 

Yoongi doesn’t notice that at the sight of two people he’s been slowing down. He’s still thinking that he’s doing a relatively good job at running away when a hand catches him by his shoulder and his back is harshly met with the wall. 

Immediately, his vision is full of a wormy smell, his body is struggling against the decomposing grip, and his mind is occupied by a flyblown thought, pleasekillmedon’t— infect.

Yoongi has lied to Hoseok.

He won’t be the first to get to the house. He won’t be back to the house at all. 

If only he could reach his motherfucking gun —

A smell of a knife. Blood trailing to Yoongi’s hands in a red wavering line. An embarrassing gasp for air coming from Yoongi, like he’s just spent decades underwater and only now has been let loose. A guy, one of the animated human figures from before, to Yoongi’s right. 

He looks so young, almost boyish. A flash of black nest of hair; pale mouth, thin lines of his jaw, his body drowning under dark baggy clothes. He looks starved and gangly, but his posture is surprisingly stern. And he’s wearing black expensive boots, Yoongi’s mind recognizes the label on their tongue. 

The boots are dirty with mud and dust. Because mud and dust don’t care if the boots are expensive or not. 

Yoongi doesn’t know why he’s latching so much to his life saviour’s boots. 

“Thanks,” Yoongi rasps, heavy with an existence; whether it’s the running or just barely avoiding death.

The guy blinks that’s close to saying something like No problem. Maybe not. 

There’s this thing about people. You used to owe them money; and now you owe them your life and loyalty if they save you from death. 

Yoongi takes the gun out of the holster. He didn’t want to use it, but now he has no choice. He clicks the safety off, lets his finger slip onto the trigger, the familiar slope of it. “Cover for me?”

“Ok.” The guy’s voice is soft, as boyish as he looks. 

Yoongi shoots two decays from the first row, the guy sticks a knife through two others, those who have gotten too close. 

Yoongi catches with the corner of his eye the guy’s partner coming up to them, maybe he helps, maybe he doesn’t, maybe he’s one of those who haven’t learned how to butcher. Yoongi is too busy with wasting the bullets now that he can’t just run away to care about him. 

Soon enough, the whole of Seongnam must know a  good portion of decays has been eliminated. The bodies are laying everywhere around Yoongi’s and the guy’s feet, and they share an eye contact that is on the edge of something too gentle, like a bond.

“We should go,” Yoongi pants out, patting the guy’s forearm in a reassuring gesture. Good job. “The others must’ve heard the shots. They’re going to be here soon. If we’re fast enough, we can — ”

“Yeah, yeah, we should — ” The guy’s breathing out is interrupted by the choking sound.

Him and Yoongi whirl their heads around. Yoongi doesn’t think for too long: he shoves the decay off the guy’s partner, blindly finds its forehead with a gun’s muzzle and fires. The decay goes rigid in his hold. Yoongi drops it to the ground carelessly. He turns to check on the partner. 

“You okay — ” Yoongi tries to ask only to clasp his mouth shut when sees a prominent teeth mark on the partner’s neck. “Shit.”

The guy has come up to them. His pupils are shaking, and the knife that he’s been using so confidently merely a minute ago falls idly to the ground. Yoongi notices his red busted knuckles. When he looks down to look at his own hand, it’s all bloody and gore, too; calloused with the gun’s grip. 

This bite on the neck of the guy’s partner —

Yoongi knows what it means. It means he got too carried away. It means he couldn’t protect the innocent. 

“We should go,” Yoongi repeats sternly. No point in repenting now. No time for it.

When the guy grabs his partner’s wrist and drags him along with them, Yoongi doesn’t protest. He knows he would do the same, and he doesn’t blame him. He makes a change of plans — instead of running away, he chooses to hide. They get out of the alley and barge inside someone’s garage. 

Seongnam is all the same. It’s an alley after alley, blocks of little houses that were used mostly by the seniors, the garages that still hold a smell of pickled foods.

The garages are easy to barge in: you just need two people and some strength to pull the door up; some obscenity. 

The guy hurries his friend inside as Yoongi slides the door back to its place, shutting three of them out of this world. Here, it’s relatively safe. Yoongi would prefer to be in the Safety Tunel, but it’s not a bad place to sit tight, either. 

Yoongi takes his time to loot through the place. It appears yet to be unraided, and Yoongi wistfully thinks back to the rucksack he’s given to Hoseok. If only he knew something like this would happen, then he’d never give it up so recklessly.

Yoongi has to step over the body of the guy’s partner in order to continue marauding the garage. He’s rolling around and whining quietly under his breath.  

“You should kill him,” Yoongi says conversationally. He’s rummaging through the aisle the guy is leaning his back against. The guy has his doe eyes (dear God, their width makes him look so innocent) trained on the partner’s wailing.

“He’s dying!” the guy protests. His voice has lost its softness. “We should — I don’t know, we should — help him. ”

But he doesn’t make a single move, and it says something. Yoongi just can’t figure out what exactly. 

“We can’t help him anymore. We failed at helping him. He’ll transform in five minutes.”

Yoongi hates to know the exact numbers it takes to transform. The knowledge, his worst enemy; the infection on its own. 

The guy doesn’t answer. Yoongi straightens his back, goes from his pitiful burglar image to someone more authoritative. 

“You should spare him,” Yoongi pushes. “Don’t make him suffer.”

“What if it was your friend?”

Yoongi quirks his eyebrow, smiles crookedly. “What makes you think I haven’t done it before?”

The guy slams his scowling mouth shut. There’s a distress about him, the way his face is stoic but Yoongi can feel it, can feel the hurt. 

“Do it for me,” the man asks. 

“Look away,” Yoongi tells him, taking the gun out of the holster. The familiar weight in his hand suddenly feels two times heavier. “And don’t hate me after.”

The guy nods reluctantly, like it’s something he can’t promise not to do but is willing to try. Yoongi watches him turn away, watches his back, tensed muscles. And then looks back to the guy’s partner. 

He must be around the guy’s age, maybe a bit older. Yoongi can never tell anymore, all people look old to him these days, on the deathbed; like on that night they’ve gained another hundreds of years and never lost them. 

Yoongi pulls the trigger without allowing himself time to think. The sound is deafening. It bounces off the walls, bleeds into ears, goes as the body quakes. Yoongi’s hand holds the recoil. 

“Over,” Yoongi says. He wipes at his cheek, where the blood has splashed onto. It leaves a dirty trace behind. 

When the guy turns back around, his hand twitches as if to help Yoongi wipe it off — but at the last second, he remembers his place and never actually makes a move. They stand awkwardly, gawking at each other, because if they don’t look into one another’s eyes they’ll be met with the body, and none of them want that.

“My condolences,” Yoongi rasps, voice thick. Just to fill the silence. 

The guy sighs. It’s a sigh that’s on the edge of something more desperate, like crying. But men do not cry.

These days even women don’t. Maybe it’d be better to say, humans don’t cry anymore. There are no more tears left to spill. There used to be a ton of them; but they’ve all turned into sighs, into nightmares, into upset stomachs. 

“Take me with you,” the guy says. “I have nowhere to go.”

He speaks in a way that spikes interest in Yoongi. He has a ‘because’ after he asks for something; it’s grammatically incorrect, you don’t speak Korean like this. I have nowhere to go, so take me with you ; he should’ve said.

But he didn’t. So Yoongi takes him. They escape the garage from the door leading inside the house. Before Yoongi closes the door, the guy stops him. He stares at his friend, chewing on his bottom lip. Then, he sighs again, and they leave a clot of a crying body behind as if it didn’t exist in the first place. 

“Don’t hate me,” Yoongi reminds. “I don’t want enemies. What’s your name?”

The guy’s brows knit; maybe he doesn’t remember it, maybe it hasn’t been required for his partner to call him names. 

“Jeon Jungkook,” he says, eventually. He sounds unsure. “What — what is yours?”

“Min Yoongi.”

They don’t use electronic locks anymore. 

You used to come home and put the numbers into the smart docks, but all they have now is the reminiscence of the past, the doubt of ‘Did I dream the normal life, or was it true?’ and — actual heavy lock. 

However, when you wait for someone to return, you let all the doors wide open. Yoongi and Jungkook easily step inside the house’s yard, cross it without any resistance, go up by the porch. When they cross the doorway, everyone is already waiting for Yoongi in the entrance, excited and seemingly on edge, the relief at the sight of the familiar face you’d thought you’d never see again kicking in slowly and unsurely. 

“Hyung, tell me, for fuck’s sake, why every time you and Hoseok go scouting, everything I’ve planned goes to — ” Namjoon stops his blabbering in the middle of the sentence. 

Everything goes to hell, he means to say, though it doesn’t quite sound like something Namjoon would say. 

Yoongi never learns what Namjoon has initially wanted to say; his words drown in the clicks of the guns and rifles. Yoongi feels Jungkook next to him stiffening, tensing, bristling. He motions shortly for Jungkook to step behind him.

“Who’s that?” Taehyung asks. He’s been the first one to take out his firearm; he’s the quickest, the most cautious one, always. 

“It’s Jeon Jungkook,” Yoongi replies, an easy question. Even though Taehyung hasn’t asked for that, and he seemingly doesn’t like Yoongi’s answer. 

“Where did you find him?” 

“He saved my life,” Yoongi says. Again, it is not an answer Taehyung has initiated, but it is a reason Taehyung has wanted, has kept pushing and asking for. 

How can we trust him?

He saved Yoongi’s life. Yoongi is repaying the debt. 

The guns get lowered. Behind Yoongi’s back, Jungkook breathes out in relief. It’s short but it’s there, this sigh again. Yoongi shakes his head for the others to hold off their questions. Hoseok and Seokjin seem too eager and too disappointed, but they step back. 

Yoongi takes off his holster, gestures for Jungkook to do the same. He sees the reluctance — it’s not easy to give up on a weapon once you’re in a stranger’s house, Yoongi can understand, but it is also not easy to have a stranger in your home, so they’re even. 

They walk inside the house without taking their shoes off. 

Scandalous. Yoongi’s mother would kill for that, give him a good beating, make him rethink all of his previous life choices. Those boots have seen the outside, they’re dirtying the floor, they have mud and soot and road dust on them. But so does Yoongi — he’s covered in sweat and soil and blood. His boots are, perhaps, the cleanest part of him. 

The floor is as dirty anyway. They haven’t washed it in a while: there’s too little water, and they prefer to keep it for cooking and occasional washing up for themselves instead of wasting it on something as insignificant as the floor. 

Besides, having sneakers on is good. It means you won’t take up your already limited time fighting against your laces when you have to run away. 

“How long is he planning to stay?” Namjoon asks. He talks as though Jungkook is not in the same room as him.

“Dunno,” Yoongi says. He steps into the kitchen area, grabs two glasses from the upper cupboard, fills them from the water filter. “Haven’t asked. It’s impolite.”

Namjoon shoots him a look. Yoongi quirks his eyebrow at him as he blindly passes Jungkook his glass.

“I won’t stay long,” Jungkook says, and then takes a sip from water. “My friend was bit while I was busy saving your friend’s ass.” 

Again, his ‘because’ is after his request. My friend was bit, so I have to stay somewhere, he has to say, but he didn’t, he doesn’t. 

It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not a lie either. The truth is that they don’t know what actually happened. The truth is that they’re partners in crime now. 

“I had to kill his friend,” Yoongi says.

“I don’t have anyone else,” Jungkook finishes. 

Namjoon levels them both with his stare. His specs make him look a bit imposing.

If it was before, Yoongi would remind him to remember his place, to remember a year when he was born — there used to be a hierarchy that you were supposed to follow that is all meaningless now. Older brothers are marching under command of their younger, more intelligent ones. 

“Stay as long as you need to,” Namjoon finalises, swayed, turning away. He’s as bit of a grammar prick as Yoongi is; he must’ve noticed Jungkook’s weird speech, too. It must’ve been the reason he lets Jungkook stay. Namjoon’s back tells Yoongi, “Wash up, hyung. You look like shit.”

Yoongi wouldn’t spare the opportunity. If it was before, he’d stay a bit longer, introduce Jungkook to the others, make him feel welcome. But he’s done enough for him: he brought him into his home, he will share food with him, a roof, an illusion of safety; and it is more than enough for the debt.

His back holds the weight of Jungkook’s heavy stare as he goes to the second store. The bathroom they have is just a small room made of a built-in shower and a toilet. They don’t have the privilege to shower anymore — instead, Yoongi grabs two plastic basins, fills one of them with the water out of a tank, and sits down on a stool. He washes his face at first, then strips and washes the rest of his body. 

He doesn’t feel less dirty of it. He thinks the sweat and the mud has been stitched into him, but it is nice, to pretend. 

When he comes back to the first floor, everyone is there, around the table. Dinner time. Someone has brought the additional seventh chair for Jungkook to fit. He has to sit at the corner of the table, it wasn’t made for as many people as there are now. 

Yoongi squeezes Seokjin’s shoulder in a silent thank-you as the older passes him his plate with rice. They say rice expires in two years. They still have a year to go. Maybe longer. Maybe less. 

Taehyung prays for them and their food, thanks God for the food the same way he thanks Seokjin. Yoongi is curious what Jungkook thinks of that, wants to steal at least one peek at him, but Namjoon squeezes his palm so hard that there are stars behind Yoongi’s eyelids. 

They usually dine with a light conversation, talk about their day, their plans, pretend they’re normal. This evening is different. It’s silent. 

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Yoongi hears Jimin say, finally; and it’s a phrase that breaks everything. “It must be tough.” 

Yoongi likes Jimin a lot. It must do something with the way he hasn’t lost humanity in him, the way he’s still not rough on the edges but as soft-spoken, calm and kind as the first time Yoongi has seen him. 

It must surprise Jungkook — this genuine tone of Jimin, the way he is so gentle. Yoongi would definitely be surprised if he were in Jungkook’s place. 

But Jungkook’s face reveals nothing. He just gulps the clot of rice down his throat, and says, “Thank you.”

Jimin looks at him like he understands. Yoongi wants to tell him, Drop it. It’s not worth it. 

He doesn’t. He doesn’t like telling Jimin things that would upset him. Jimin has had enough. 

Namjoon clears his throat. Everyone turns their head to look at him. The candle’s fire reflects in his glasses. 

“I hope that we can count on you in our restocks?” Namjoon asks. He looks at Jungkook. 

“Of course,” Jungkook says. “I’m not here to live off you.” 

“Great. Have three days off, wear off the grief, and then we’ll include you in our schedule.”

Three days is too little. Yoongi would’ve needed years, months, weeks, five days at least — Namjoon is being too cruel with the guy, too unsympathetic, but Yoongi agrees with him and his tactics. It’s better to have your mind on something else other than death. 

Three days is too little but it is maybe a little too much —

“Not needed,” Jungkook dismisses. 

Oh?

“Alright,” Namjoon agrees, and it is the first time that Yoongi notices something else to his expression. Not respect, but close to it. Approval. Appreciation. It’s hard not to acknowledge hard work. 

“You’ve got a lucky catch today, eh, Yoongi-yah?” Seokjin jokes. 

Everyone around the table laughs reservedly. 

It is not something to joke about, but it is also something that is pointless to avoid — if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t let it out, it’s all just going to consume you and eat you alive. 

Yoongi glances Jungkook’s way, and frowns. There’s something wrong; in this tight thin line of Jungkook’s mouth, in his eyes, in his whole face. There’s something wrong. Something’s missing. 

He doesn’t smile, Yoongi realises. He doesn’t smile.

And maybe it’s a bit too human of Yoongi, a bit too Before, but it breaks his heart. 

Here's how it goes: Seokjin cooks dinner, Yoongi is in charge of breakfasts. They usually don’t have lunch because lunch is a waste. Better to stuff your stomachs in morning and evening than to suffer all day. 

Of course, they don’t let anyone starve. The snacks are always available. But they’re for bad days, for the days when your stomach can’t stop whining, can’t stop reminiscing the evenings spent at the bar of a convenience store, plastic glass filled with Sprite and ramyeon you boiled with the store’s microwave. 

Yoongi had his fair share of two bad days. Namjoon had one. Seokjin had none. Others had more; but they had never gotten to double-digit, and Yoongi likes to believe they’re all managing. 

“Morning,” Namjoon says as he comes down from the second floor. 

After him come Taehyung and Jimin; three of them share a room and wake up approximately around the same time. 

“I’m off,” Seokjin announces as he finishes his plate, pushing himself away from the table sluggishly. He’s been up all night, looking out for unwanted visitors — it’s a doubt they’ll come, Yoongi and Namjoon had eliminated all of them once the team found this alley and this house, had barricaded all the holes. 

But you never know. Better alive and sleep-deprived than eaten by a decay and dead. They take turns in night watching, it’s fine, they’re used to this. 

“Good job. Have a rest,” Hoseok tells Seokjin as they slip past each other on the staircase — one going up, one going down. 

Seokjin brushes him off, he’s tired, he craves sleep; they understand. 

“How was your sleep?” Yoongi asks, passing Hoseok his bowl with porridge. It’s a bit too salty. Yoongi was generous with seasoning today, somehow. 

“The kid snores,” Hoseok scoffs, mixing the porridge. There used to be times when they’d add kimchi to it, maybe some spicy sauce, or berries, sweet jem. Anything. But now they only have salt and water and rice. Sugar on the bad days. Hoseok adds with a roll to his eyes, “We should put him into Namjoon’s room.”

Taehyung and Jimin wear horror on their faces. “We can’t — ”

“It’s okay, I won’t stay here for long to move me anywhere.”

It’s Jungkook, he’s on the last step of the staircase. Nobody noticed when he’s appeared. He moves silently, like a shadow. 

“I’m sorry for your ruined sleep,” Jungkook adds. Today he looks worse — Yoongi can’t quite pinpoint what it is. His greasy hair, puffy face from sleep, or grief?

“’s fine,” Hoseok reassures him immediately. “I’m just joking. We wouldn’t put you into maknaes’ room, they adore our leader too much.”

Yoongi wouldn’t say adore. He’d say Taehyung and Jimin find comfort and safety in Namjoon that others can’t seem to provide. Yoongi goes out for restocks with them just fine; they eat Seokjin’s food and they respect Hoseok enough to listen to his commands.

It’s just — sleep is when you’re the most vulnerable, the most unprotected, and it is the thing they entrust in Namjoon. 

Yoongi scoops a portion of porridge for Jungkook. They don’t have an extra bowl for him, and Yoongi improvises with Seokjin’s used one. He doesn’t wash it — it’d be a waste of water. He hopes for Jungkook’s understanding. 

Jungkook doesn’t scrunch his nose, doesn’t huff, just takes the bowl and murmurs thank-you to Yoongi, so. 

So. 

So. 

Jungkook looks lost until Yoongi points at the free chair for him. 

“I’ll eat well,” he tells Yoongi. 

He’s very polite. For how weird he speaks with his ‘because’, in all other aspects he doesn’t come across as someone uneducated, nor unintelligent. He knows manners. He knows street rules. He is smart enough to be alive after a year of endless running. 

“How old are you?” Jimin asks.

Jungkook halts with a spoon mid-way into his mouth. It reminds Yoongi of when he’d asked for Jungkook’s name — the same confusion, like it’s something Jungkook has forgotten, has never expected to be asked for.

“I’m year ninety-seven,” Jungkook replies after clearing his throat. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, and Yoongi, for the first time, notices the bright mole on his chin. “How old am I, now?.. Twenty, twenty-t—”

“Twenty-three,” Namjoon calculates much quicker than Jungkook himself. “You’re twenty-three.”

“We have a new youngster,” Yoongi muses absentmindedly. He’s surprised to hear the smugness of his voice, the teasing. He exchanges smiles with Taehyung and Jimin.

“I’ve been waiting for this for years with no hope,” Taehyung says, clearly pleased. 

Jungkook blinks. He looks around the table, and it’s like he’s blinded with so much smiling in one room, in one moment; drowned with the weird joy of strangers. 

“Um,” he says.

“We’re year ninety-five,” Tahyung informs him. He points at Namjoon and Hoseok. “They’re ninety-four. Yoongi is ninety-three.” He gestures at Yoongi, and Yoongi feels Jungkook’s eyes shifting from ninety-fours to him. Feels shy of it, somehow, like Jungkook sees through him. “Seokjin is the eldest. He’s ninety-two. But he’s kind of a fake maknae, you know?”

“That’s, uh, great,” Jungkook says. His enthusiasm doesn’t match Taehyung’s, but it seems not to disturb him at all. Jungkook looks at Namjoon. “What time do we go out for restock?”

“As soon as you’re finished.”

Jungkook swallows the last spoon of rice, drops the bowl, and stands. His posture is steady, like the first time Yoongi’s seen it. “I’m done, then.”

“I’ll go with him,” Yoongi adds immediately, staggering to the entrance, the usual thrill of getting out of the suffocating house. 

“I’ll join,” Hoseok chimes in.

“No,” Namjoon dismisses. “I’ve had enough of you two.”

Hoseok and Yoongi share a look, and then whirl back to Namjoon, both pouting.

“Won’t work on me,” Namjoon tuts. He gets out of the table. It’s heavy, the way he moves, like once the world had fallen it was Namjoon who caught it, who accepted this weight. “I’ll go with hyung and Jungkook.”

“Then get your ass up,” Yoongi barks at him, already by the door, already armed, a holster on his hip and a knife in his boot. Jungkook is beside him, zipping his jacket up. Yoongi points at Taehyung, “Wash the dishes for hyung, eh?”

Taehyung flashes him an OK-sign. 

It’s not often that Namjoon goes out for restocks. He’s better at theory than practice, and the rest of the team likes to keep his brain away from decays.  But if he wants to — what can they say to object? He’s the leader. They follow him. He keeps them alive. 

And he’s the one to twist the door’s handle now, step out to the sun, throwing behind his shoulder a light, “ Later. ”

Namjoon always says ‘Later’, he hates goodbyes; they feel burdening to him. Later — till we meet again in the evening, or till we stumble upon each other in hell. One way or another, later. 

“Your plan for today?” Yoongi asks. They stride in the direction of the Safety Tunnel. 

“Water, as usual. And we should also visit something for tableware. Now that we have seven people under the roof, we’re clearly behind on our plates.”

“It’s not—” Jungkook starts. 

“It is needed,” Namjoon cuts him off, stern. “It’s not that hard to find. We’ll be fine.”

“Should we go for water first?” Yoongi asks.

Namjoon shakes his head. “Water is dead weight if we stumble into someone and need to defend ourselves. We should opt for tableware first. We don’t know if there are any guests who are waiting for us there.”

“Do you already have a place in mind? I doubt there’s anything left in Lotte Mart.”

It is one of paradoxes of apocalypse — Yoongi rarely catches glimpses of real, actual people these days, everything and every space seems so lonely, like humanity has gone extinct, but he knows it’s still there. People hide pretty badly: they leave footprints behind, emptied out shelves of supermarkets, their dead bodies. 

Namjoon hums. “Taehyung told me about one. Said an ahjussi sold his handmade stuff there.”

Ah, right. Taehyung used to live in this area — a bit further away, not as close to the centre of the Seongnam, but he was here, he grew up here, he graduated from the school here, the one they pass by when they go for scoutings. Taehyung is hurting and constantly reminded of Before every day. 

Not that the others aren’t. It’s just that the others, Yoongi included, are reminded of the routine they used to have, of all the places they used to live in. 

But they have fled from those places. They have found a new one. 

Taehyung, on the other hand, never moved on. 

“Lucky guy, aren’t you?” Yoongi sighs, flashing a soft smile to Jungkook. The guy looks at him with a frown on his face — he doesn’t get what Yoongi is trying to say. “To have your tableware handmade. It’s going to be pretty. We all have ours from the times when Lotte Mart was still full of goods.”

“Ah,” Jungkook says. He turns away, without returning a smile to Yoongi. 

It’s not that he owes Yoongi this smile, Yoongi reminds himself. And it’s not like Jungkook hasn't had his friend infected and killed merely a day ago.

They round a corner to the Safety Tunnel.

Safety Tunnel is what they call an alley decays can’t come through. None of them know why. They don’t have the privilege of answered questions anymore. They deal with the facts: when you run away from decays, once you turn into the Safety Tunnel, they can’t get you here. 

Yoongi has stood and watched these decays hammering themselves into space free of any barricade countless times. 

He is mesmerised every time.

He remembers mimes, these clowns, the way they used to pretend to be hit with an invisible wall. But decays can’t pretend. They don’t have brains for that. 

Is it magic? Yoongi had asked Namjoon once.

I don’t know, Namjoon had replied to him, as stunned and as shocked as Yoongi was, and they both moved on from this conversation, sealing a silent oath to never speak about it ever again. 

It’d be too scary, to admit how much the world has changed. How many unknown things are waiting for them outside the safety of the random house they’ve chosen. 

A couple of turns, several crossings of the alleys; all the same little houses and garages, and they are out to the shopping street of the small businesses. It looks so lonely. So empty. Yoongi had thought he’d get used to it, but each time it only hurts worse.

They find the shop in no time, stop in front of it. There’s a glimpse of someone inside. It might be just an imagination, a trick of the sick mind. It might be a real danger. 

When Yoongi is out with Hoseok, put into situations like these, they usually decide by rock paper scissors. But Hoseok is a different case. Hoseok feels to Yoongi as though they’ve been born the same year and month and day and time. 

“I’ll go,” Jungkook says, all of a sudden, his voice piercing through the empty street. 

Yoongi stops him. “No, I will. I’m older.”

Namjoon scowls. “You always fucking do that, it’s getting annoying.” Yoongi knows that his biting words are nothing more than a relief of not having to go inside. So Yoongi scowls back at him, and motions for the two of them to step back. 

There’s a reluctance of Jungkook’s eyebrows; but there’s also Namjoon’s hand that beckons Jungkook away.

Yoongi opens the door slowly. 

A decay is there, just existing, just rotting, just decomposing. 

The decisions you make in a second. Yoongi could use a gun, or he could use a knife.

He chooses a knife. He’s never gotten strong enough either, but he has enough muscle to keep this bitch down, to gag it, to push the steel down its throat. 

It falls on the ground, and Yoongi stomps on its head for a good measure — you used to stomp snow off your boots like that in winter; but now Yoongi’s boots only collect brains and blood. 

“All clear,” he announces, loud enough for Namjoon and Jungkook to hear. “Come on in.”

But when he turns around, Jungkook is already in the doorway, a crunched shadow, Namjoon’s hand clenched on his wrist, like the leader has tried tugging him away from doing something foolish, like — 

“Are you okay?” Jungkook asks, but it sounds so abrupt that it’s more like he blurts this question out, like he can’t keep it inside himself, like it is the only question that has been occupying his mind. 

Like, like, like, like — Yoongi can never be too sure with Jungkook, he can’t seem to figure him out. 

He raises his eyebrows, smiling dumbfoundedly, too softly for someone who has just murdered a thing. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” 

His question is left unanswered. Yoongi is more than okay with it. 

Jungkook and Namjoon step inside the shop, look around, take everything in. Yoongi has made a bit of a mess here, but overall everything is accessible and intact. Bowls, plates, cups and glasses; forks and spoons; everything Jungkook might need in his time spent at their home. 

He looks a bit dazed, his index finger collecting the dust on the aisles as he absentmindedly walks deeper into the shop. 

“You can choose anything,” Yoongi says smugly, resting his elbows on the register counter. “Hyungs will buy it for you.”

For a long moment, Jungkook stares — glares , even — at him, all kinds of weirdly; and Yoongi feels stupid for his words. But then Jungkook turns away, returning to strolling through the aisles, and this situation as if didn’t happen in the first place. 

Yoongi mostly watches the door from his standpoint, but he also makes sure none of decays decide to show up somewhere from the back of the store. Instead of decays, Yoongi catches Namjoon following Jungkook in his steps. As Jungkook picks out his tableware, Namjoon makes it double. 

No way, Yoongi thinks. No way.

But when Namjoon lifts his gaze from the aisles and the bowl he has just shoved into his backpack, and realises he’s been caught in his antics, Yoongi knows that yes, there is a way. He wordlessly raises his eyebrows at Namjoon.

Yoongi and Namjoon are not that good at this mute game as Yoongi and Hoseok are. It mostly has to do that in general, Yoongi and Hoseok spend more time with one another than with anybody else, and this thing as Yoongi’s and Namjoon’s incompatibility.

Namjoon is the type of guy to plan. He has to stop and think before making a decision. 

Yoongi is the type of guy who rushes into the hurricane, saying that he will figure everything out along the way. 

That’s why Yoongi is usually out for the restocks, knives into decays’ necks, marching under Namjoon’s commands, and Namjoon is usually at the back of the house, crunched over a map. 

They don’t really get each other, but they work.

Like right now — Yoongi asks silently, Is it what I think it is?

Namjoon nods his head yes. Yoongi absentmindedly nods his head, too, suddenly lost in thought. 

It is a good, sunny day. It is so good that it’s blazingly hot, which it rarely gets — or, rather, used to get — in spring, but here they are. The sky is as cloudless as it always is these days.

Seokjin is preparing the soil. They still have about ten or eleven months to go before the rice expires, but they need to be quick about it.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Yoongi asks. He’s in an Asian squat, just lazing around more than helping Seokjin. Today he’s not out for restocks; it’s a day for Jimin and Taehyung. The last time Yoongi saw Hoseok, he was disappearing by the back door with Namjoon. 

“No,” Seokjin pants. “Do you know where Jungkook is?”

“He’s probably at…” Yoongi trails off, frowning. 

God, where on Earth is Jungkook?

Yoongi has almost forgotten about him. The guy has a habit of making himself invisible. He doesn’t do any harm, and mostly helps others around with whatever they are doing. His favourite task is to go for water restock because apparently while others can carry a maximum of four bottles, he can handle a six pack, and once Yoongi saw him almost smiling about it. 

“Sorry, didn’t catch that?” Seokjin breathes, his head snapping up from the soil. Sweat shines over his temples. There’s a mud smudge on his cheek — Yoongi would wipe it off for him if not for the fact that he knows it won’t be any help. Seokjin is not finished with planting. He’ll get dirtier. 

Yoongi shakes his head. He pushes on his knees, rising to his feet. “I’ll go look for him.”

But it is not needed — immediately, as soon as the words leave his mouth, the fence door snaps open, and giggly Taehyung and Jimin barge into the yard, Jungkook calmly following them behind. 

When Jungkook is with Taehyung and Jimin, fretting around him, teasing him, talking to him, he always looks almost like he’s smiling. But then Yoongi fully turns to him, pays him his full attention, and every time it’s just a shadow on Jungkook’s face that makes it look like a tug on his lips.

It is a bit selfish, but Yoongi wants to see Jungkook’s smile so badly. 

Yoongi tries imagining him smiling. He likes to believe Jungkook is a pretty smile type of kid. It’s a thought based solely on the fact that Jungkook is a good-looking guy in general, behind all the dirt on his face; and that the smiles, in fact, can’t be ugly.  

“Hyungs!” Taehyung waves at them. “We bring sixteen bottles today!”

It is — more than usual. 

Yoongi comes closer, helps Jimin with his backpack. “I’ll take it from here,” he says, as usual. 

It is — heavier than usual. 

“We took it as a challenge,” Taehyung blabbers proudly as they make it inside the house. “And today Jiminie and I bring five bottles each. Jungkook still beats us with his six, but we’re gonna get better and break his record!”

Yoongi hums. “Is that so?” He sends Jungkook a glance as he unzips Jimin’s backpack by the chair, piling up the bottles on the table. The water is muddy. They’ve reused these plastic bottles so many times that all the dangerous bacterias there must have died of boredom.  

Either way, the team hasn’t gotten sick, and it is a win. Some sort of. 

“I’ve been looking for you,” Yoongi says, looking at Jungkook. 

By his chair, on the opposite side of the table, Jungkook stills. Yoongi might be imagining things, but he thinks Jungkook’s grip on the bottle tightens, and he gulps before pushing out a small, quiet, “Why?” He avoids looking at Yoongi, eyes trained on the backpack, on pulling out his third water bottle.

“Was wondering what you were doing,” Yoongi shrugs. “Didn’t know you were out for restocks.”

Fourth bottle. Jungkook shrugs. “Didn’t have anything else to do.”

It’s the truth. Jungkook doesn’t exactly fit into their schedule, they don’t know which task to give him; they’ve been a six for so long that the additional member feels like an intruder. It’s a bitter truth, because Jungkook could be helpful if only they knew what to do with him. 

“You could’ve digged the garden with me and Seokjin-hyung,” Yoongi offers pathetically.

Fifth bottle. “Didn’t get an invitation.”

“You don’t need to have one to come.”

Sixth. “Ok.”

“We could’ve also gone scouting. You and I.” Yoongi pushes, because he hates the way Jungkook’s voice has just faltered.  

There are no bottles left in Jungkook’s backpack, but his hand is deep into it, and Jungkook stares at his arm like it has betrayed him. Since nothing can keep him occupied anymore, his eyes finally rise up to Yoongi’s. 

“Then let’s do it tomorrow,” Jungkook says, a bit of a challenge in his voice. 

“Sure,” Yoongi shrugs, an easy motion, an easy decision — a choice you make in one second, like diving off a cliff only scarier. 

It takes Yoongi an evening to persuade Namjoon into letting him and Jungkook go. 

“We’ve scouted all the nearby areas possible,” Namjoon says tiredly. He massages his temples, like the conversation with Yoongi is starting to give him a headache. “We don’t need any scouting for restocks, either. Why are you so adamant with it?”

“With getting to know a stranger under our roof better?” Yoongi clarifies, and then shrugs, again an easy motion. “Have no idea. Must be my personal interest in him?”

Yoongi knows he’s right. It’s been two — almost three — weeks since he’s taken Jungkook into their house, and Jungkook is yet to open up. He’s just there, occupying the space, eating their soon to be expired rice, bringing six water bottles in return. 

They have to become close with Jungkook, to build a bond with him. If Namjoon is right, if Namjoon didn’t pick up all the tableware for Jungkook just like that, just for the fun of it, they need this scouting tomorrow. 

“And when he tells you he’s killed a person and is now on a run?” Namjoon asks. “Then what?”

“Then he’s killed a person and is now on a run. The government’s gone, Namjoon-ah. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

There are things that used to matter: being a diligent citizen, going to work, making money. There are things that matter now: getting enough water and food, not getting infected or killed, or killed and infected; and not going mad of loneliness. 

“He saved me,” Yoongi reminds. “And I killed his friend. If there’s someone that needs to be worried, it’s Jungkook.” 

Namjoon looks swayed. Only a little push.

“We won’t be gone for long,” Yoongi says. “And I’ll bring back some books for us.”

There are things that used to help you cope: movies, reality shows, music, comics…There are things that are left of that: books. 

Namjoon waves him off. “Alright, do as you want.”

Yoongi smiles at him, and Namjoon smiles back, reaching his mouth but not his eyes.

That leads Yoongi and Jungkook to the next morning, in the entryway, checking their backpacks for the needed things. Yoongi has his holster over his hip. Jungkook prefers to wear his near his heart. 

“Ready?” Yoongi asks. 

He can swear that at this moment, Jungkook almost smiles at him. Yoongi has to pretend it doesn’t catch his breath away. 

“Yep,” Jungkook says, jolting his jeans up. “Let’s go.”

They go scouting on the sunrise, before Jimin and Taehyung can even think about going for restock. They wave goodbye to Hoseok, who’s been on the watch that night. 

They go in silence. When making their trips for water restock, they go west until they bump into the Tancheon river. Today, they choose to climb north; each step bringing them closer to Seoul.

Yoongi has all these questions running through his mind, the questions he wishes to know an answer to; but somehow, for all of his yesterday’s outburst to Namjoon, he can’t speak up now. He doesn’t know where to start. 

He’s surprised when Jungkook speaks up first. He hasn’t seemed like a talkative type to Yoongi. “You and Hoseok come off close.” Jungkook dribbles a pebble with his foot. “You must’ve known each other for long.”

“No,” Yoongi says, voice found for a beat too late, a bit too abrupt. He clears his throat, repeats, shaking his head, “No. We’ve met each other only after everything’s happened.”

“Oh?” Jungkook’s head snaps up. His eyes round. The pebble is lost now, left behind. “Really?”

Yoongi’s lips tug upwards. “Why would I lie?” 

Jungkook scratches behind his ear. “You’re right. It was a dumb question, sorry.” He looks away from Yoongi again. 

“It wasn’t,” Yoongi reassures him. Now that the silence has been broken, he feels a bit braver. “Namjoon and Taehyung are my friends from before.”

“Mhm,” Jungkook says, but Yoongi feels like it’s not because of the lost enthusiasm, but because Jungkook genuinely doesn’t know what to add. “How did others come through?”

“Taehyung was friends with Jimin. Jimin was friends with Seokjin. Seokjin was friends with Hoseok. We’ve just — came around each other, I guess. I’ve seen each of them a couple of times before the gates to hell opened.”

Jungkook stops in his walking, so abruptly Yoongi almost bumps into him, barely catching himself, and turns to face Yoongi. It’s a bad place to stop, Yoongi wants to tell him. Jungkook has stilled right around the corner of the alley, it’s dangerous. 

But Jungkook is towering over Yoongi, eyes peered into him, and Yoongi is lost. 

“You said you’ve done it before,” Jungkook says.

Yoongi blinks. “Have done — what?”

Jungkook breathes out. He looks disappointed that Yoongi can’t pick up on his phrase in an instant, looks disappointed that Yoongi can’t read him. He has to specify, and he is disappointed about it, disappointed with Yoongi. “When you killed hyung, you said you’ve done it before. Were there others?”

There were many of us before we got used to the new world. 

“Jungkook—” Yoongi manages to say, but all he does is grab a gun out of the holster, take the safety off, and fire over Jungkook’s shoulder into decay.  

The blood splashes onto Jungkook’s backpack. Yoongi’s whole body holds through this recoil, and he stumbles into Jungkook, and Jungkook stumbles into him, hands suddenly found on Yoongi’s shoulders, gripping tight. Yoongi can feel Jungkook’s fingernails digging into his skin from the thousands of layers. 

“Hyung?” Jungkook says shakily, too quietly, or maybe it’s just the ringing in their ears from the gunshot that makes the whole world go numb.  They haven’t established such a close relationship for him to address Yoongi hyung , but at the same time Yoongi supposes it is inevitable when they save you, and then you save them, also killing their friend somewhere in-between these two events.

So Yoongi is hyung. An older brother. 

Jungkook looks over his shoulder, to the decay’s body. Yoongi had been watching it happen: the decay came out of the corner, reached out for Jungkook, wanted to claim him — Yoongi didn’t let it. 

When Jungkook looks back, he has his lips set in a tight lock, and his fingers dig even more painfully into Yoongi. 

It is the only sign Yoongi needs to guide Jungkook’s head into his shoulder and to whisper, “It’s okay, you’re okay, we’re okay.” It’s unfamiliar, to have Jungkook so close, to soothe Jungkook, to let him shake through this fear. Yoongi cards through Jungkook’s hair the way he’d card through Taehyung’s if something like this would happen to him — older brother-like, with this illusion of safety. “I’m always on your six. There’s nothing to be scared of.” Jungkook’s hair structure is foreign, too dirty, too oily and greasy; and now there’s blood mixing into it. 

He’ll need to wash it once they return to the house. 

Yoongi distances them, finds Jungkook’s cheek with his right hand — he realises it might’ve been a mistake as the gun’s barrel is now pushing against Jungkook’s temple. Jungkook’s eyes widen, and Yoongi is about to start splattering his apologies when Jungkook suddenly softens and evens out, nuzzling into the touch. Into the cold steel. 

“I killed it, okay?” Yoongi tells Jungkook, shaking his head slightly to send his point across. “I noticed and killed him. Nobody was going to hurt you, ever.”

Jungkook blinks. Then, his fingernails unclench and he drags them away from Yoongi, agonisingly slow, scratching at Yoongi’s nape before drawing out of his personal space completely and utterly. 

Yoongi hasn’t realised he’s been drowning when Jungkook is turned away and out of his reach, if the gasps for air he takes is anything to judge by. He has to calm his heart down before proceeding to trail after Jungkook. 

It’s an evening where all of them are gathered up in the living room. Hoseok and Seokjin are exchanging murmurs. Taehyung, Jimin and Jungkook play Uno — Jungkook keeps winning, and the other two keep whining. Namjoon and Yoongi are reading the books Yoongi had brought from the scouting. 

It's an evening, but the sun is still there, and they try to get the most out of it before the house will be suffocating in darkness. The pages flip over with an increasing speed. Yoongi’s eyes skip over the useless words; he needs action, the images are fighting over each other in his head —

Someone’s cold hand on his ankle jerks him out of the reverie. Yoongi blinks once, twice, before he realises that he’s not on Dune, but, in fact, still in Seongnam, in a living room, in a fucking zombie apocylupse. 

Jungkook’s doe-like eyes are fixated on his. He’s sitting on the floor, just as Taehyung and Jimin are.

Yoongi wordlessly asks him what he needs. It’s after a few seconds that he realises that Jungkook is an intruder to them, that he doesn’t know their silent words of gestures and little leaps and tugs of their muscle nerves.

“Can hyung read aloud?” Jungkook asks, and Yoongi doesn’t know if he’s surprised that Jungkook understood their silent languageor that Jungkook requested him to read a book. 

“It’s actually a good idea,” Hoseok whines from the other couch, stretching his limbs into the ceiling, yawning. “I’m bored.”

Yoongi finds Namjoon’s eyes. He could read aloud, it’s not a big deal, but he doesn’t want to disturb Namjoon’s reading time.

Namjoon folds a corner of the page he’s reading and puts his book aside on the end table. He fidgets, making himself comfortable, finds a lost pillow to cover his chest with, and closes his eyes.

Yoongi clears his throat. “Well, if no one minds it…” He tries not to look Jungkook’s way, because the guy had been blessed with the most irresistible eyes ever, and Yoongi’s afraid he’ll succumb to the curse. 

No one protests.

Yoongi licks his lips, and starts reading from the moment he’s been reading when Jungkook’s hand has set his skin alight. “ We Fremen have a saying… ”

He and Jungkook find a music store at one of many other scoutings they do these days. 

It’s empty. All they have to do to enter is open the door and walk inside. It is such a Before-moment, such a Before-space, everything too intact, too perfectly retained. Guitars hanging in the back of the store, keyboards put up in a straight line in the left corner, strings and picks and capos displayed behind the register counter…

Yoongi tries not to sulk as he softly rummages through the vinyl discs aisle. 

“Hyung looks upset,” Jungkook says in a passing-by-manner, sliding over to stand next to Yoongi. 

He doesn’t call anyone else from the team hyung. It’s both endearing and disappointing. 

“I miss music,” Yoongi admits reluctantly.

“Ah,” Jungkook says. He holds a vinyl disc in his hand, stares at it with his eyebrows furrowed. Yoongi wants to come closer and smooth out this line. “Me too. I miss music terribly.”

There used to be so many sounds before, but now it’s just — quiet. Not even birds are chirping in the sky anymore. And if you hear a sound now, it means that you better run.

Yoongi pushes himself off the vinyl discs aisle and wanders deeper into the music store. His index finger collects the dust off the aisles with music players.  

“What was hyung’s favourite song?” Jungkook asks somewhere from behind Yoongi.

“There were so many,” Yoongi says. He knows he’s avoided the question. It is not an answer.

“It is not an answer,” Jungkook says grimly; Yoongi’s thoughts as if transferred into Jungkook’s mouth. Yoongi more feels than hears Jungkook getting closer, his steps, the way his rifle clicks with each movement. “What song do you miss the most, then?”

Yoongi misses each song; he misses every melody he has ever composed.

He gulps a tight knot of memories down his throat. It’s a big knot; it isn’t swallowed easily, but eventually, he says, “Do you — do you know Eight by IU?”

“I’m not sure if I remember it correctly…” Jungkook sounds so unfamiliar as these words leave his mouth. Sounds pleased, or teasing — Yoongi can’t really distinguish, he’s not used to Jungkook being this way. “‘ Everything comes as they please and leaves without waving goodbye’. Did it go like this?”

Yoongi sucks in the air harshly. He whirls around to face Jungkook, and at that moment, he can swear the smile tugs on Jungkook’s mouth. It is quick to go, though, and then Yoongi is not so sure if he has hallucinated the smile or not.

“ ‘We dance under the orange sun, together with no shadow below us’ ,” Jungkook continues. “Did it go like this, hyung? Did it go like this? ”

His voice is rough, and yet — perfectly on pitch. There’s softness inside his voice, the boyishness of his looks and the kindness of his soul hidden underneath, like a warm layer of honey on the rice cakes Yoongi’s mom used to make. 

Jungkook isn’t loud with his singing, but when he finishes, the world appears to be numb again, deafening, suffocating in the absence of sounds. 

Yoongi selfishly wants to ask Jungkook to sing some more. He wants to see the world in colour again. He wants to see it bloom. 

Jungkook stares at him. Maybe he expects Yoongi to say something, to compliment him — but Yoongi is so mesmerised and startled that he can only stare back and feel his body slightly tremble.

He misses music so much. Jungkook has sounded so beautiful. Life used to be so sweet. 

“Sorry,” Jungkook murmurs, turning away from Yoongi. Are his ears red or is it Yoongi’s wild imagination again? “Haven’t sung in a while. I must sound horrible.”

“Jungkook-ah,” Yoongi calls out for him. “Thank you.” 

He has wanted to say, Thank you so much for bringing music back. 

He has wanted to say, You sound so beautiful I would cry in normal circumstances. 

He has wanted to ask, Can I — Can you — 

Jungkook’s shoulders move in a shrug, like an earthquake. “It’s no problem.”

They both fall into silence again. Yoongi slithers over to the guitar stand, and snaps one string. 

It makes a broken sound. 

“Does hyung know how to play?” Jungkook asks curiously. Yoongi tries to find where his voice is coming from — it’s the further corner of the store, quite opposite of Yoongi. Has he been gawking at Yoongi from there? 

“No,” Yoongi lies, and snaps another string absentmindedly. 

He knows, a bit. He had intended to learn more, but always delayed the process — he’d been busy, he was working, he was making money; when coming home, he didn’t have neither time nor energy to sit down and learn how to play a fucking guitar.

God, he wishes so badly now he had found time and energy to learn how to play a fucking guitar.

“Maybe we should take one back with us,” Jungkook suggests. There’s some booklet in his hands. “You can practice in the evenings. There are some book tutorials.”

Jungkook brings six water bottles, he likes it when Yoongi reads aloud, he sings, and he is thinking about Yoongi even in moments when Yoongi forgets to think about himself. 

He is so sweet. 

Yoongi smiles. “It’d be great,” he says softly. 

He is reaching out to take a pitched black guitar from the stand when he hears it.

Sounds. 

The world is supposed to be quiet. 

The street is supposed to be suffocated with silence. 

Everything drowns in noise. 

Yoongi whips his head, stares at the window, and — 

He’s almost sick at the sight. He walks with his back, eyes trained on the window. 

“Hyung?” It’s Jungkook, just behind his back; he’s come closer and is now radiating this heat. He must notice what is going on outside, because he lets out a gasp. “What should we do?”

Yoongi’s brain is about to break down with this problem. What should they do? How does he protect Jungkook? How does he bring both himself and Jungkook home? 

He needs to be quick about this decision, like he always is. 

They can’t run. They can’t just stand in the middle of the store, either: the decays are raiding the other shops as they slowly occupy the street. 

Yoongi looks around the store, suddenly claustrophobic with how small it is, nauseous at the smothering space. He looks around, Jungkook’s breathing heavy at his nape; decays are so close —

Okay.

Quick decision.

“Do you trust me?” Yoongi asks.

“Yes,” Jungkook says without any delay; says immediately; says without thinking. 

Yoongi pushes them both into a ‘Staff ONLY!!!’ room. It turns out to be a closet for cleaning services, and is too small for the two grown men like them, too stuffy and dusty.

Jungkook sneezes.

Yoongi smashes a hand against Jungkook’s mouth before he could really think about it, before he could dissuade himself that it is not necessary at all. His skin shivers at Jungkook's sharp breath-in, and then, it’s as if Jungkook stops breathing at all. 

They stand too close, Yoongi feels the heat radiating off Jungkook’s body, feels Jungkook’s hands on his shoulders, barely registers his other hand fitting itself against Jungkook’s ribs. 

Sounds, sounds, sounds. 

Yoongi hears the decays barging in the music store. Smashing the vinyl discs. Destroying the music that’s left in this world. He hears them knocking the guitars off, the broken dying sounds. 

He purses his lips, bites on his tongue, shoves all of his emotions down his stomach. He can handle it. It’s no big deal. 

It is not a big deal at all. It is such a small deal that Yoongi’s hearing gets muted and the destruction is easier to handle. 

Yoongi can’t understand if it’s his heart that beats so loud that he can’t hear anything else or it’s Jungkook’s that’s about to jump out of the man’s chest; or if it is simply that their heartbeats become one. 

Either way, someone’s heartbeat clogs the hearing, and Yoongi can’t pinpoint the exact moment that the danger passes. 

But at some minute, perhaps a second or an hour or days and years later, Jungkook’s fingers relax on Yoongi’s shoulders, and Yoongi trusts Jungkook enough to believe they’re safe now. 

Yoongi slips his palm off Jungkook’s mouth, his hand off Jungkook’s waist. He wants to take a step back, but there’s nowhere to go. He’s glad the room is so dark that he can’t draw the expression on Jungkook’s face and that his face can’t betray a hurricane of his embarrassment for his earlier actions.

“Um,” he says. “Okay, I guess, we should — ” He reaches out to the door’s handle at the same time Jungkook does, and their touch over the cold metal is blazing.

Jungkook jerks away first. Yoongi pushes the door open. 

Everything is just as Yoongi has imagined it to be. Music is all gone.

“Let’s get out of here, Jungkook-ah,” Yoongi says, like he’s not affected by the scene unravelled before him at all. He steps out of the music store without sparing it another glance.

“We can find another one,” Jungkook says behind his back. “I’m sure there’s another one. Undestroyed one.”

Of course there is. 

Yoongi nods. He doesn’t want to talk about what’s happened. 

“Does hyung want me to sing more?” Jungkook asks, out of breath, catching up with him — Yoongi hasn’t realised he sped up this drastically. 

“It’s all right,” Yoongi lies. “Another day, okay?” 

This phrase sounds incomplete even to Yoongi;  a sentence without the period, like there’s something else to be added. Yoongi should’ve said more, should’ve explained himself, or maybe he should’ve added ‘Jungkook-ah’ , or something similar to that, to make a sentence softer, kinder.  

“Okay,” Jungkook says. 

If tomorrow just happens to be a third bad day for Yoongi, no one speaks about it. Seokjin cooks breakfast instead of him. Namjoon lets Hoseok step up for restock instead of him. Two of the youngsters wear upset expressions on their faces. 

It anchors Yoongi, reminds him that without him the world would be going on just fine, but at the same time — it’d be a miserable place for some.

And then, there’s the third youngster. The youngest one. The maknae. The one Yoongi almost forgets about until he comes down from the second floor and blinks at Yoongi, confused and lost. 

“Hyung?” he says, voice deep, husk with dreams still lingering over him. He has slept in today, but it’s not a big deal. Nothing is a big deal these days. 

Yoongi chews on his inner cheek. He feels caught in crime by Jungkook, though in reality, he is only caught in opening the snacks drawer. 

A final creaking of the staircase, the last step of it whining under Jungkook’s feet. Jungkook is now standing in front of Yoongi, carefully observing the scene before him. Yoongi watches Jungkook’s adam’s apple bob; and then there’s a worried tug of his corner of the mouth, to the point of a dimple appearing on his cheek.

Hyung? Jungkook repeats, but it’s silent, this time. He’s been learning their gesturing language quickly and well. 

“ — Ramen?” Yoongi rasps. 

Jungkook is a smart guy; a sensible kid. He catches up on everything in mere seconds. 

He brings six bottles of water. He sings to Yoongi. He promises to find another music store for Yoongi.

And now he shakes his head no. “Can I just stay with hyung?”

“Sure.” Yoongi lights the portable gas stove, brings a pot to boil the water for ramen. He points with his index finger at another pot abandoned in the centre of the table. “There’s some breakfast left. You should eat up.”

Jungkook has always been on a thinner side, from the first time Yoongi saw him. They’re all on the thinner side these days, but Jungkook used to be as thin as a rake. He’s been gaining weight — his cheeks are not as hollow, and he’s been going from the skeletal to the lean and wiry. Yoongi likes this additional weight on him. It makes him look healthier.

Jungkook seems to search for something in Yoongi’s eyes. Unable to find it, he moves to extract his bowl and cutlery. Yoongi rests his back against the kitchen counter as he waits for his pot to boil. He watches Jungkook eating with nothing better left to do.

Jungkook puts a spoonful of rice into his mouth, chews on it. “It tastes…a bit different today,” he says slowly, carefully. A spoon leaves his mouth with a clattering sound. 

Oh god. 

The water has boiled, and Yoongi has an appropriate reason to turn away. “Seokjin-hyung prepared breakfast,” he explains, pouring the boiled water into the ramen cup, sticking a cover over it, and pushing it down with chopsticks. 

Anything but not to look at Jungkook. 

“It happens,” Jungkook says, quietly and softly and kindly; just the way he sang only a bit sadder. 

Yoongi finds himself barking a sad chuckle. “It happens,” he agrees, sitting down next to Jungkook with a cup in front of him. 

He opens the lid. The ramen smell occupies the kitchen and the living room; it’s everywhere. A stomach whines. Yoongi doesn’t know if it’s his or Jungkook’s.

He steals a glance at Jungkook. He looks hungry. Drooling. Yoongi studies the way his tongue slides over his bottom lip, the way it picks up a rice grain stuck to his corner of the mouth, pulls the grain inside. 

Yoongi sighs. He pushes the ramen cup in the middle of him and Jungkook. “It’s fine. We should share. I think we both are still shaken from yesterday.”

Jungkook smacks his lips. “Is that why…is that why hyung — ”

He seemingly doesn’t know how to question it correctly. Yoongi spares him from this pain. “Yes. That’s why I’m having a bad day. That’s why I’m eating ramen.”

“Because music is gone,” Jungkook confirms.

“Because life is so fucking shitty, Jungkook-ah.”

The first bite on noodles Yoongi has is heavenly. Him and Jungkook inhale the portion in pathetic minutes; they eat it like animals, like annoying flies on  a rotten dead animal, like decays on a fragile human body. 

Yoongi’s stomach is so full after the meal, it hurts and swells. Jungkook pats his belly and groans. There’s again a shadow of a smile on his face — but when Yoongi pays closer attention to Jungkook’s mouth, it appears to be nothing but a game of shadows as usual. Maybe he should become more used to this. 

He shifts his gaze from Jungkook’s mouth, the spicy broth splashed under his bottom lip, to the window leading to their yard. There, Seokjin is planting again, again sweaty and dirty and muddy. He’ll need a shower today, that’s for sure. Hoseok and Jimin are better off to get competitive with Jungkook and bring gallons of water. 

“Wanna go outside?” Yoongi asks conversationally, throwing away the ramen cup. 

Jungkook is here, just by his side, so abnormally warm. He’s washing the bowl, an empty pot left from breakfast rice, and the cutlery in an ugly-yellow plastic basin. It’s all soapy, they haven’t changed the water there for a while. Yoongi makes a mental note to do it before one of them gets sick. 

“Sure,” Jungkook says just as conversationally. He dries his hands over his jeans — they’re black, loose on him, and stained, with mud everywhere on them. Which reminds Yoongi —

“We should do laundry, too,” Yoongi adds. “Grab the chemicals and basins from the bathroom, will you, Jungkook-ah? I’ll get the laundry pile and water.”

Jungkook nods, quick to disappear to the upper floor. 

Laundry is something neither of them particularly enjoys. They forget about it more times than they remember to care about clean clothes. The sweat and the street’s dust had adhered to their jackets like a limpet; and all of them had made peace with that, had become familiar with it. 

Yoongi used to make his washing machine do his laundry regularly, used to go to places such as laundromats, used to enjoy softeners and nice comforting smells clinging to him.  

Now it’s just him, two plastic basins, his red raw hands full of soap, a and pile of clothes. There’s no shame in rinsing socks or boxers of others. They all share their clothes anyway. They’re all family anyway. If you trust a person to keep you safe from decays, you can as well touch their underwear and feel zero disgust. 

He’s sitting on the outside staircase. It’s a good, warm day but his hands and ass are freezing, nevertheless; cold with the water cooled down, cold with the concrete he’s sitting on. Jungkook had intended to help him with laundry, but as soon as Seokjin noticed them stepping outside, he demanded Jungkook to help him, and Jungkook couldn’t say no to him. 

Yoongi watches them from where he’s sitting; the way Seokjin shrieks occasionally, scolds Jungkook for half-assing the work ( ‘I fucking know you can do better!’ ), or laughs so loudly and obnoxiously, with his head tilted back that it gets Yoongi worrying that someone who shouldn’t might hear him. At the same time it gets Yoongi hoping that Seokjin’s antics are going to draw out a reaction from Jungkook, crack a smile, bark a laugh, anything. 

But Jungkook just keeps on digging, breaking the sod, murmuring under his breath illegible sounds. Those sounds are all the softest syllables, however, and so Yoongi doesn’t lose his hope that maybe, one day — Jungkook will grin, unabashedly and not holding anything behind, heart on his sleeve.

Sometimes Yoongi catches Jungkook on retrieving from his work and sneaking glances at him. Their eyes meet once, and Yoongi pretends he doesn’t look Jungkook’s way — no, he’s just blocking his eyes from the sun with his hand; and Jungkook pretends to believe him. 

“Stop slacking off,” Seokjin warns Jungkook, pointing with his index finger at him. 

“Or what?” Jungkook pants.

“Or I’ll tell Yoongi not to wash your socks, and you’re gonna smell worse than all decays around this city.”

Jungkook scoffs, resuming the digging. Yoongi huffs, and hides his smile behind the rinsing. 

Hoseok and Jimin come back from the restock. They bring water and toothpaste, the one that is still left in the stores. They leave everything they’ve brought up inside the house, and come back to the yard to bask in the afternoon sun. 

“Hyungnim,” Jimin says, squatting next to Yoongi, “your hands are all red. Let me help. You’ve done enough.”

You’ve done enough. 

How easy, Yoongi thinks, to take care of monsters. 

“Alright,” Yoongi says. He doesn’t want to put up a fight with Jimin. Besides, he’s been getting tired of tedious motions. “I’ll hang the washing out, then.”

“O-kay!” Jimin exclaims, English rolling off his tongue effortlessly. He winks at Yoongi, makes him move, and Yoongi scoffs again, standing up from the staircase. He stretches and groans.

It’s still a bad day.

But it’s a bad day that could’ve gone worse. 

After the dinner, Yoongi once again reads aloud. It’s become a tradition, some sort of. You used to get together with the family and watch an episode or two of a TV show in the evenings; but now the reading is all they have left of it.

Namjoon suggests that he does reading today instead of Yoongi, but Yoongi, surprisingly, finds himself reclining the offer. Maybe it’s because Hoseok has told Yoongi recently that Reading Time is one of the few things he looks forward to in the day; something he holds onto when it gets unbearable; that Yoongi is so adamant about reading himself.

He gets comfortable on the couch with the book opened on the chapter they’d left last night. They should be quick today — the dinner got out a bit late, they’ve eaten slower than usual; so the sun will be setting soon. Today, Jimin and Taehyung give up their designated places at the floor, and smash Yoongi into a cuddling sandwich. 

Yoongi both hates it and loves it. 

“Let me breathe, guys,” he laughs; but neither Taehyung’s nor Jimin’s limbs untighten. No, they’re going to keep Yoongi close to themselves, going to keep Yoongi warm and safe, going to keep reminding Yoongi they need him, they need him, they need him. And Jungkook —

Jungkook is going to keep staring at them from where he’s seated on the floor below Seokjin’s legs. Yoongi will try cracking up what his stare means, and he won’t succeed. 

“I think Paul is a dick,” Hoseok says when the reading session is over, and the sun is about to be gone. Only orange shadows linger behind. It’ll be dark in the house anytime now. 

Seokjin raises his hand. “Agreed.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook echoes quietly. 

“Actually,” Namjoon pushes his glasses up his nose, about to give a lecture on how Paul is a reflection on something that doesn’t matter anymore, on something that had been left behind in Before.

Yoongi would’ve enjoyed the discussion, but the reading has sucked a soul out of him. 

“I’m tired,” he says, and everyone takes a hint immediately. 

People leave one by one. Hoseok is the first to go; it’s been a tiring day for him. He was supposed to get a rest today, but he took all of Yoongi’s duties on his shoulders instead. Yoongi sends him a short smile, just a thankful tug of his lips, there’s nothing more than Hoseok wants from him; and Hoseok nods and squeezes Yoongi’s shoulder reassuringly, pushing past the sofa to go up to the second floor. 

After that, Seokjin lights a candle, and Taehyung and Jimin untangle themselves from Yoongi. If they didn’t know Yoongi’s boundaries better, they’d try to smother his cheeks with kisses — but they only give him puppy eyes, asking, Did we make it better? 

“Good night,” Yoongi tells them. What he really means: I’m grateful for your guys' existence. 

“Good night,” Taehyung and Jimin say.

Jungkook gets up with a heavy grunt, which is unusual and weird for him. He’s the youngest, somehow boyishly weightless and manly steady. He moves with an ease, almost like he used to be a dancer. Yoongi wants to ask him so many questions. It’s been an endless thread of them he’s been collecting ever since their first scouting. Ever since their first encounter.

Why did you help me?

Why were you so shocked I killed the decay for you?

Can I — Can you —

Yoongi studies his hefty shadow, confused and lost. He wants to ask Jungkook if there’s something he has to say, but the question dies on his tongue as Jungkook is suddenly reaching out to him, as if to touch Yoongi soothingly, as if to touch him as affectionately as Jimin and Taehyung did. 

Jungkook stalls in the middle with his reached out hand, never quite making it to Yoongi’s shoulder.

So Yoongi reaches out to him too, meeting him in the middle. His fingertips walk over Jungkook’s palm, squeeze it tightly, He draws out soon enough, fingertips sliding to Jungkook’s heart of the palm, then to his digits; and then it’s as if the touch didn’t happen in the first place.

“I’m gonna be okay,” Yoongi tells Jungkook. 

He doesn’t know why he does it. He doesn’t think Jungkook is that worried about him. But it feels like the only right thing to say, so Yoongi doesn’t resist the words rolling out of his mouth.

“I know,” Jungkook says. “That’s — that’s good.”

And when Jungkook leaves, and only Seokjin and Namjoon are left in the room, eyes wide and startled, Yoongi suddenly feels embarrassed and self-conscious on both his and Jungkook’s behalf, like they’ve just done something inappropriate in front of others — like they’ve just kissed, or have had sex; or worse — were stripped naked with their united grief. 

Nobody except Jungkook knows the reason behind the bad day.

Nobody except Jungkook misses the music as terribly as Yoongi does. 

It’s a hot day. That kind of day Yoongi loathes that as a zombie hunter, he always needs to be wearing additional layers of clothes, cover up his skin for decays not to get through.

It doesn’t guarantee anything, of course. The illusion of long sleeves safety simply helps to sleep better at night.

Yoongi looks up at the sky and wonders where the clouds had vanished to. If they ever plan to come back. Will it rain someday again? Or all Yoongi has left is memories of annoying shivers running down his spine, the curses he had let out when he realised he forgot his umbrella at home, raindrops on his face, the chill of them?

Today is not a good day, but not entirely bad either. 

“So,” Jimin sing-songs, gaining Yoongi’s attention. He has his boots abandoned on the shore, next to Yoongi, and his jeans cuffed to his ankles. He’s been waddling in the ford, basking under the radioactive sky. Yoongi didn’t have a heart to tell him they should go back to the house. 

There are so few real good days for Jimin. And he’s always taking care of the others so hard. 

They’ve collected the water already, their backpacks heavy with muddy bottles. If they return fifteen minutes late, nobody will notice. 

“So?..” Yoongi echoes Jimin. He squints his eyes at him — the sun is a bit annoying, Jimin’s figure is blurred.

Yoongi notices the way Jimin brattishly smirks at him nevertheless. “What is going on between you and Jungkook?”

Well, Yoongi would be lying if he said he didn’t see that conversation coming. It was inevitable that one day it would come up, with the way he’s treating Jungkook. Yoongi has brought him upon himself. He should be thankful it’s Jimin interrogating him. Could be worse. Could be Seokjin. Could be Taehyung. Could be — Yoongi shudders — Hoseok. 

“Who sent you? Was it Namjoon?”

Jimin scoffs. “I sent myself, thank you very much.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jimin gets out of the water, paddles to where Yoongi is sitting. He doesn’t let his feet dry, and pulls his socks on just like that. 

Yoongi would say nasty, if it was before. But now they don’t have a privilege of basking under the sun for long, and they have already spared their lucky hour on Jimin playing in water. 

Yoongi rises to his feet, dusts his jeans off as Jimin slips back into his boots. It’s going to hurt, Yoongi knows, with his socks drenched. It’s going to leave calluses and blood behind. 

“Sure you can walk?” Yoongi asks. 

“Not the worst thing in the world,” Jimin reassures him. He picks up his backpack, jiggles it, adjusting to the weight of four water bottles. “Let’s just go.”

So that’s what they do.

They just go. Yoongi picks a pace slower, at first; he wants to make sure Jimin is managing with his boots. When he notices that Jimin walks without any limp, he resumes stroding at their usual pace.

“Don’t think I let you go so easily,” Jimin says. “You and Jungkook.”

“We’re still on that?”

“We’re still on that.”

In all honesty, Yoongi doesn’t know what to tell Jimin. Him and Jungkook just are. 

The way Yoongi and Jimin just go, Yoongi and Jungkook just exist around each other, and it’s easy. Their touching, their conversations, their longing for music and for Before, their scoutings — it’s there; alive and so easy to break.

“I think he’s warming up,” Yoongi says, and it is not the answer Jimin has wanted to hear, but maybe it is the answer Jimin needs. “To all of you. Do you have fun with him when you and Taehyung go for restocks?”

Jimin hums. “I mean — I think I understand what you mean. Yeah, he’s an easy guy to be around. I feel safe with him. I hope he feels safe with me, too.”

Yoongi waits. 

“Sometimes he waddles with me in the water,” Jimin admits. “Or Taehyung would splash him, and he gets this offended glare for one second, like he’s about to drown Taehyung in his game — in a playful way, you know? But then it just…goes. And he turns away and collects the water and waits for me and Taehyung to be done.”

“You play Uno with him,” Yoongi adds.

“He’s cheating. I just can never catch him on it,” Jimin suddenly whines. “There’s no way he’s that good.”

Yoongi quirks his eyebrow at Jimin, smiling. 

Jimin waves him off. “Ok. Ok. I get it. Yeah, he’s warming up. I’m getting used to him.”

“Admit it, you’re already used to him. What are we going to do without him?”

Jimin doesn’t reply. So Yoongi continues, “I think it’s because I was the first one he’s seen that he has already warmed up to me. That’s why y’all think something is going on. Because he trusts me a bit more right now than you guys.”

Yoongi doesn’t talk about the time they both went rigid in a trinkety shack of a room, hiding from the decays; he doesn’t tell Jimin that Jungkook brought music back to Yoongi, even if it was just for ten seconds; he doesn’t say that Jungkook gets him, gets his bad days, and that he thinks he gets Jungkook, the way he shows his caring for the others. 

But there’s something he does say. 

“I can’t wait to see him smile,” he says, the stream of honesty in him; because if he doesn’t tell Jimin at least something he’s going to explode with his feelings.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows he has just blown his cover up; the cover he’s been building through the entire dialogue. He expects Jimin to tease him about it — but the man only smiles at Yoongi sympathetically, which means that Yoongi’s secret is dying with Jimin.

“Yeah,” Jimin says, “me too.”

They don’t bring it up anymore. 

“Do you think we can make a small detour?” Jimin asks when they’re half-way to the Safety Tunnel. 

Yoongi frowns at him. The last time he heard these words, him and Hoseok got into trouble and Jungkook appeared in their house. 

In all honesty, Yoongi doesn’t need additional Jungkook. Dealing with one is already feeling-consuming enough.

“What is it?” he asks nevertheless; can’t help it — he’s too soft for Jimin, has always been.

“Taehyung asked me to grab him some new clothes,” Jimin tells him. He’s reduced his pace, and Yoongi has unknowingly accustomed to his walking; they’re barely moving their feet now. If they want to go to the clothes shop, they need to turn round this alley.

Now or never. 

“Why can’t you do it when you and Taehyung are out?” Yoongi asks. He has stopped in his walking, faced Jimin. 

“You know how he is.”

Fine. Valid point. 

“You should try bringing Jungkook with you, then,” Yoongi says. “I think he can be helpful.”

“But then you can’t bring him a present,” Jimin pouts. Yoongi — stares at him. Jimin whines, in a tone suggesting that Yoongi is being a slowpoke, “Hyung, he’s barely surviving on two pairs of jeans and one jacket! C’mon, don’t be a dick. We should be good hosts.”

“We’re not hosts for him anymore,” Yoongi says, having already turned and walked further into the alley. He refuses to acknowledge the grin Jimin is wearing on his face behind Yoongi’s back; the way his steps speed up mischievously to catch up with Yoongi. “He lives there, too. He’s staying.”

Jimin scoffs. “Well, if you say so.”

“Not me,” Yoongi shakes his head wistfully. When Jimin opens his mouth to let out yet another snarky comment, he adds, “Namjoon says so.”

The silence speaks volumes. Jimin’s mouth hangs agape.

“Didn’t you see his things in Hyundai?” Yoongi says, effectively shutting Jimin’s mouth, answering all the questions that never got enough bravery to roll off Jimin’s tongue.  “Namjoon has brought them.”

They don’t talk about it. 

They get to the store in record time. Their backs whine with the weight of the bottles, the guns on their hips, but they walk fast and steady, busying their lungs so they wouldn’t have enough air to talk. 

Yoongi tries the door. It doesn’t budge. 

He frowns. It’s not supposed to be like that. He sticks his nose to the small frosted glass on the side, examines the situation inside, and then lets out a tired sigh. 

“Someone blocked the handle,” he explains to Jimin. “We should find another way.”

They both study the surroundings; the lower levels and the upper ground; again the annoying sun in their faces. 

Yoongi points at the window next to the door. It’s narrow, not too big, a bit too high. “Can you get there? I’ll boost you up.”

Jimin scoffs, slipping out of his backpack’s straps, plunking it onto the dirty ground. “Sure.” Of course he can. He’s flexible. He knows how to move his body.

Yoongi picks up a rock laying around. He gestures to Jimin to step back, and throws it into the window, praying that the rock would be heavy enough to break it.

It is. The glass scatters with a loud unnerving sound. Yoongi and Jimin still in their motions, freeze up in time and space, barely breathing. They wait for the other sounds to come, but there are none. What a relief.

Yoongi takes a position under the window, getting his hands ready to help Jimin climb up. 

“Be careful,” he tells Jimin, and the guy has a nerve to only huff at Yoongi like Yoongi has just said something completely ridiculous in its core, like they can never be careful anymore in this world, or like they can only be careful, to the point where being careful is a default. 

Jimin jolts on his feet a little, then there’s a weight of his limbs in Yoongi’s palms, on his shoulders, on his — 

“Fuck, not my head! ”

“Oops,” Jimin laughs from the other side, his voice muffled now that there is a thick brick wall separating them. “Going to open the door now. Don’t miss me too much.”

“Fuck you,” Yoongi spits. He runs his hand through his hair, getting the dirt from Jimin’s sneakers off it. “Motherfucker,” he mumbles under his breath, bending over to grab Jimin’s backpack from the ground. 

The door opens with an exasperated click, and Yoongi is presented to Jimin rolling his eyes, dusting the small pieces of glass that got stuck to him off his jacket.

“The things I do for Kim Taehyung,” he scoffs, and there’s a pause in the air that is supposed to be filled with Yoongi’s reply, quite the obvious one.

Yoongi silently pushes past Park Jimin into the store, dropping the backpack into Jimin’s hands. He wanders into the aisles, decides to go for t-shirts — it’s soon to be summer, Jungkook will need those. 

He is staring at two identical black shirts in his hands when Jimin decides to slither over and gawk at Yoongi’s dilemma. 

“Jungkook is around the same size as Taehyung, I believe,” he says in a passing-by manner.

“But he likes his clothes oversized…” Yoongi murmurs absentmindedly. He rubs at his chin with the back of his hand, then decides to fuck it and take both of them. He makes sure to double, just like Namjoon did on the second day of having Jungkook around. His backpack grows heavier.

Yoongi pretends the weight doesn’t bother him. With Jimin’s help, they choose three pairs of jeans for Jungkook, some long-sleeves, pullovers, socks, boxers; everything of black, just like Yoongi hopes Jungkook likes it. 

“Should that be enough?” he asks Jimin, following him around like a lost puppy while Jimin shops — should Yoongi put this word in quotation marks? — for Taehyung.

Jimin stops rummaging through the hoodie racks. He blinks at Yoongi. “You’ve just robbed the whole place down, are you sure you really need to ask?”

Maybe Jimin is right. Maybe Yoongi doesn’t. He tiredly leans against the aisle on the opposite of the racks, folding his arms across his chest. He watches Jimin, the way he skips through the hoodies, takes some of them out, without ever checking the price. You used to rummage through the clothes section and first thing you would do is go for the price tag lost deep into the piece of clothing.

Rob the whole place down. They don’t shop anymore. 

“What do you miss the most from before?” Yoongi asks, head tilted to the side.

He knows the answer. He just wants to hear it from Jimin.

“All of a sudden?” Jimin smiles, his crooked tooth on display. He had intended to fix it — two weeks prior the dentist appointment, the world went to hell. 

“Just tell me,” Yoongi breathes.

“Dancing,” Jimin says. “I miss dancing the most.” 

There’s no dancing without music. There’s no happiness without it.

“Ah,” Yoongi groans, his head getting a harsh hit from the metal corner of the aisle, a hit as harsh as the slap of reality was. “Sometimes I’m just — so angry about it, you know? The apocalypse was never in my plans.”

“I get it,” Jimin says, and Yoongi knows he does. It’s relieving, this feeling. Being understood. 

Jimin shoves the hoodie he’s chosen into his backpack — it’s tough on the space, he has to compromise. At last, he slips it back on his shoulders, and motions for Yoongi to proceed for the exit.

Yoongi doesn’t know what he’s thinking about when he steps out of the store without checking for safety first.

Liar. 

He knows what he’s thinking about, and he won’t be admitting it to Namjoon when later on the leader will ask for an answer. 

Tell me, how, for God's sake, our best zombie hunter gets his ass beaten by a decay?

He’s thinking about whether Jungkook will like the clothes or not, if he acted too carelessly with assuming Jungkook would be fine with wearing something Yoongi has brought him — when a decay sways him off his feet and they both fall to the hot asphalt. 

Yoongi is too busy fighting for his own life to worry about the pain flaring up in his back, the huge abrasion that whines and cries and howls. The decay’s teeth are so close to Yoongi’s unprotected neck; its fingers are strangling on Yoongi’s wrists; Yoongi is in a panic mode where he can’t think straight except kicking, swearing, getting this dead rotten weight off his chest.

Jimin’s boot flashes right before Yoongi’s nose. The decay rolls off, and gets up half a second earlier than Yoongi, jumping at Jimin now. There’s a clear foot stomp against its forehead, and this small inconvenience doesn’t stop the decay from attempting to scratch Jimin’s eyes out. 

Yoongi finds himself moving by reflex. You used to drive off the work like that: such accustomed motions, all the familiar turns and traffics that when you arrived home, you wondered if you even stopped at that red light or not. 

And now he gets up, grabs the decay by its shoulder, ripping it off Jimin. The gun is already in his hand, the rough square surface as familiar as the smooth round surface of the steering wheel. 

The safety is off — Yoongi pulls the trigger — Yoongi shoots. 

The decay falls on the ground, convulsing, and Yoongi shoots again, again and again, because this bitch dared to think that Yoongi would be dying today, that Yoongi wouldn’t be coming back to the house today; because this bitch hurt Jimin — 

“Hyung, it’s enough.”

Yoongi clicks again, but the gun only makes a blank sound, implying that the clip is empty. 

“It’s dead, hyung. It’s dead. It’s enough.”

The gunshots are still resonating in Yoongi’s ears, blood is thumping, the drums at the rock concert Yoongi attended once sounded exactly like that. He looks over at Jimin, gives him a small smile. 

“Sorry.” 

Jimin opens his mouth. Yoongi knows what is going to come out of his mouth; even with lost hearing, Jimin’s soft syllables of It’s okay are unforgettable. 

But Jimin never gets to finish his phrase. It dies on the faltering note and widening eyes. It dies on Jimin’s gun, on Jimin’s finger pulling the trigger, on the bullet rushing through the air, pushing through the layers of time and space. 

It dies in the decay’s head behind Yoongi. 

“Jesus — fucking — Christ ,” Jimin spits. He’s shakingly reloading the gun, Yoongi does the same. “Mine is on the right,” Jimin warns him. 

“Sure.” 

The remaining two decays are far enough in the distance for him and Jimin to shoot them with no following struggle. Then, they pick up their pace and run.

Yoongi has never been a good runner. With the back as badly hurt as it whines in him, he’s even worse. He makes himself go. 

It’s their fault. They shouldn’t have made a sound when Yoongi threw a rock into the glass. Yoongi shouldn’t have been so affected by merely avoiding death when he fired again, and again, and again. 

They get to the Safety Tunnel in time. 

There’s a shadow of some crazy man, pacing back and forth, like he doesn’t quite know what to do — his hands are clenched onto his head, rucksack on his shoulders swinging heavily, following his marching. Yoongi and Jimin duck for cover, still out of breath, before they crawl closer and realise that the crazy man is —

“Jungkook?” Jimin rises to his full height.

Jungkook freezes. His wide, panicked gaze flickers from Jimin to Yoongi behind his back. 

Jungkook takes a reluctant step forward. “I heard — gunshots.” 

Jimin and Yoongi take a step towards Jungkook, too. 

“We’ve just killed some decays,” Jimin explains, calmly, too calmly for a person who has barely avoided being infected some minutes ago. It’s for the better, Yoongi thinks, Jungkook doesn’t need to know what actually happened to them. Not in the state of mind he’s in right now. 

“But I — ” Jungkook sucks his breath in. 

“Jungkook-ah! Oh my god, here you are.” It’s Taehyung. He’s jogging from the house’s direction. “Why did you — ” Taehyung’s question dies on his tongue as he peers into Jimin and Yoongi.

The four of them stare at one another. The Safety Tunnel suddenly feels suffocating, short on air. None of them knows where to go, where to move, what to do. 

Why is Jungkook here? Why does he look so — horrified? Why does Taehyung have nothing with him?

This situation just doesn’t make any sense; until it does and breaks Yoongi’s heart.  

He reaches out to — touch Jungkook, maybe; the same motion people used to tame wild animals with. “Hey. It’s okay. Did you get worried about hyungs?”

Jungkook swallows tightly, looks away. He doesn’t correct Yoongi on the plural of the word ‘hyung’, and he doesn’t shake his head no nor does he nod his head yes . 

Yoongi knows the answer nevertheless. He can’t help his expression and voice softening. 

“We’re okay. You see? Totally fine.” Yoongi extends his arms, whirls around. The weird looks Jimin and Taehyung send him are nothing compared to the visible relief flowing out of Jungkook’s body. 

Except — Jungkook’s thumb halts in-between brushing Yoongi’s eyebrow. It never actually crosses the space, not enough to touch Yoongi, and Yoongi has to bring his own finger up, slitzer it over the eyebrow, collecting something similar to sweat but only red and gore. 

“You have blood,” Jungkook states, quite the obvious, but there’s something deeper to his words. 

“Not mine,” Yoongi lies, and Jungkook frowns. He doesn’t call him out on his lie, however. “I’m okay, Jungkook-ah, really.” The wound in his back wants to be ripped out of his body if it will help to stop the pain. 

“Promise?” Jungkook says. Normally, it’d sound childish — but somehow, it sounds maturely caring instead. Yoongi just doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says softly. “Take my backpack for me? We got some clothes. There’s even something else for you.” 

There’s everything for you, he doesn’t say, forever a coward with his words. 

Given a task, Jungkook scatters to help, easily accepting the weight, and Yoongi thinks his distraction works — Jungkook is not a crazy paced man anymore. He picks up the pace towards the house. Yoongi can swear he sees crimson red on the tips of Jungkook’s ears, but then Jungkook is too ahead of him, out of his sight, and Yoongi can’t say if he has once again deluded himself or not. 

“He heard the shots and immediately leaped out of the house,” Taehyung explains quietly. “He was so quick, I couldn’t even stop him and talk sense into him.” 

There’s a thought the three of them share. Maybe they’re all just too afraid to admit it, or maybe they all collectively decide that it’s pointless to say out loud if everyone thinks the same.

Jungkook is afraid to lose us.  

“What about his friend Yoongi-hyung killed?” Taehyung speaks up. Jimin and Yoongi frown at him — the sudden change from Jungkook to his friend doesn’t make sense to them. Taehyung has to elaborate on his thought, “I don’t know. I just — I feel like there’s more to it. He hasn’t mourned. He doesn’t miss him. He chose to save Yoongi-hyung instead of him. I don’t think he was afraid to lose him.”

He wanted him dead, that’s what Taehyung doesn’t say. 

Deeper into the evening, Jungkook watches Yoongi’s back be rubbed with an antibacterial ointment. He chews on his bottom lip, has his eyebrows knit. Yoongi assumes that the expression on his face is one of the disappointment that Yoongi has lied, or maybe it’s nothing more than simple worry; or maybe it’s both, which makes it twice as complicated. 

They’re in the kitchen room, scattered around the table. Yoongi is sitting on the chair, Taehyung standing behind him. Others have gone to sleep already, it’s late and soon to be completely dark. They’re getting the most out of the last sun’s strokes in the room.

Yoongi didn’t have the guts to ask why Jungkook stayed behind when Taehyung suggested he helped Yoongi with the abrasion treatment.

“Be gentler,” Yoongi practically growls at Taehyung when he presses too hard and Yoongi sees black and white behind his eyelids; the face of the decay again close to his neck. 

“Your fault,” Taehyung scoffs. “You should’ve been more careful.”

“Lesson is motherfucking learned. Now please — shit — ”

“And I am,” Taehyung smears another thick layer of both hurt and relief, “ motherfucking done.”

He steps back, wipes his fingers free of ointment on the first layer of cloth he can find which just serendipitously turns out to be Yoongi’s t-shirt. Yoongi regards Taehyung with a you-are-dead glare, and slips the shirt back on, ignoring the wet disgusting stain on its hem. It’s not the worst thing this t-shirt has had to endure; definitely not in the dirtiest state Yoongi has ever worn in this year. 

It’s just — the mischief and brattiness of Taehyung. Nothing else. Nothing more. 

“Can you pass me the hoodie, Jungkook-ah, please?” Yoongi grumbles, extending his hand blindly into the air, not even looking Jungkook’s way because he’s too busy silently fighting Taehyung. Next moment he knows, the fabric is gently put into his open palm. Yoongi raises his eyebrows at Taehyung. “You see? That’s what good dongsaengs do.”

“Dongsaeng? Really?” Taehyung says. His hands gesture in Jungkook’s direction, whose eyes, for how big they always are, grow even bigger with each word Taehyung lets out. “Hate to break it to you, hyung, but this good dongsaeng only does things for you because he wants to get into your — ”

“Bed!” Jungkook blurts. He doesn’t quite sound himself. Jungkook is usually quiet and calm; he has a bit of a cute lisp to his speech and a weird way of structuring his ‘because’. He’s a good listener and never interrupts when someone is speaking, prefers to stay silent. But now he’s loud, his voice bouncing off the kitchen’s walls; hysterical, almost, like he can’t let Taehyung finish his phrase or something bad will happen.

“Um.” Yoongi swallows a gulp of weird fuzzy feeling down his throat. “You want to get into…my bed?”

“Well, it’s not what I wanted to say,” Taehyung says. “I wanted to say that Jungkook wants to get into your — ”

“Bed!” Jungkook pushes, and peers with his doe gaze into Yoongi, pupils shaking. “I mean! I want to get into your bed because it looks very comfy!” 

But Yoongi’s bed is not even a real bed. It’s just a mattress. He doesn’t even have his own room. He sleeps behind the couches in the living room because the rooms upstairs suffocate him, because he dreams and then he panics until he’s selfishly gasping for air, because he gets too hot if he sleeps upstairs on the bed. 

He needs a solid solace of the floor. He needs to be cold, for the wind that creeps from the house’s creases to walk between his feet. He needs to be able to wake up in a panic without worrying others will hear him. 

He doesn’t know much about Jungkook’s sleeping habits, but maybe rooms upstairs suffocate him just as much as they suffocate Yoongi. 

Yoongi can’t blame him for that. 

“You can sleep in my bed,” he suggests, and both Taehyung’s and Jungkook’s mouth hung agape as if Yoongi has just said something shocking, unspeakable, when in reality all he means is — “When I’m on the night watch, you can sleep in my bed.”

“I give up,” Taehyung announces, loud and with a certain purpose, hands up in the air in defence. “Jimin was right. You two are hopeless. Good night.”

Yoongi and Jungkook exchange weird looks. 

This hyung is a bit crazy, Jungkook says. 

Sometimes, Yoongi admits, a smile on his face.

Jungkook speaks their silent language easily and with no resistance. He’s a natural, almost like he’s been with them since the beginning.

When the pause becomes too long, Yoongi shakes his head wistfully and pushes with his hands on his knees to stand up. He sucks in the air harshly when the lighting goes through his back, and somehow — Jungkook is immediately by his side, helping him, warm featherlight touches of his fingertips on Yoongi’s body. 

“I’m fine,” Yoongi reassures him softly, slipping out of Jungkook’s hold. “No need to worry, you see?”

“The last time you told me that, I found out you have a huge wound on your back.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a wound .”

Jungkook bites on the bottom lip. He lets Yoongi walk from the kitchen to the living room on his own. There’s an arched doorway separating two spaces, separating him and Jungkook, an invisible wall. 

Jungkook breaks it. He follows Yoonti to the living room, leans with his shoulder against the arch, hands in his jeans. 

“Something else you have to scold me for?” Yoongi asks, the smile heard loud and clear in his voice even though it’s getting too dark in the house and Jungkook has to be lighting the candle now, not watching Yoongi move in the dark.

Jungkook’s eyes sink to the floor. “No,” he shakes his head lightly. “Just wanted to say thank you.”

“For what?” Yoongi frowns.

“For the clothes. Thank you for the clothes. It’s very — um. It’s very kind of you to bring me them.”

“Ah,” Yoongi brushes him off. “It’s nothing much. Basic human decency. Did the clothes fit you alright?”

Jungkook’s whole body twitches — as if to hug Yoongi or something worse. He gets ahold of himself in the next second and never actually makes a move. Instead, he fidgets around, his gaze sliding up from the floor to the ceiling. He pinches his earlobe, tucks his hair behind his ear, and breathes out, “Um. Yeah. Do you want me — um. Do you want me to…?” he trails off.

“Do I want you to…?” Yoongi echoes him dumbfoundedly.

“Like, to show you…how the clothes look…on me?” Jungkook’s voice is tiny. “Since you brought them for me anda all.”

Yoongi — stares at him. The thought of Jungkook making a show for him is too much. He’ll think about all the things he shouldn’t. 

“No,” Yoongi barks, “No — no need. Um. Just. Wear the clothes well. Yeah. Uh. Good night. I mean — have a good night watch.”

Jungkook’s mouth makes a thin line. He pushes himself away from the arch, and this motion is heavy and grim. “Sure. Sleep well, hyung.”

“You need to shave and cut your hair,” Yoongi tells Taehyung at breakfast. 

“Lazy,” Taehyung pouts. 

“Yoongi-hyung is right,” Namjoon says. “Your beard makes you look hideous.”

“It’s the new trend,” Taehyung argues, stretching his hands behind his head. “I want to grow my beard to the point where decays would be the ones getting scared of me.” It’s a bit heavy, what his unsaid words imply.

I’m scared of decays.

Yoongi wants to tell him, Me too. 

“Not happening,” Namjoon argues, his chopsticks pointing at the ceiling swaggeringly. “Scientifically not possible.”

Taehyung cracks his fingers. The sound is as tremendous as his beard is. “Everything is possible until proven otherwise. I haven’t grown my beard enough yet.”

There’s a small quiet snicker, which sounds weirdly like Jungkook — except that when Yoongi looks over him, the guy has his face deep into the bowl, cheeks full, too busy with the food to bother with paying attention to the usual morning in the house.

Seokjin flicks Taehyung on the forehead. “Can you just shave, please? Listen to what your hyungs say to you for once?”

“Fine,” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I want Jimin to cut my hair, though. He knows what to do with my hair structure unlike the rest of you.”

“Bro,” Jimin smiles, reaching out with his fist for Taehyung to bump. “I wouldn’t let anyone have your hair cut except myself.”

It is such a childish thing to say. Such a childish thing to do. Hair structure. Worrying about your looks. It’s too Before but Yoongi thinks they need it. If they become too caught up in the nightmare around them, nobody is getting out of the bed in the morning.  

Though he has to agree that shaving has always been a pain in the ass with Taehyung. Even when things were normal, he was known for letting his beard get out of control if he didn’t have anywhere to go for several days.

Besides, shaving is a pain in the ass in general. Yoongi is glad now that he managed to get his hair removed with laser before the world went to hell. Otherwise, he’ll surely be on the same team with Taehyung. Seokjin must feel the same.

It doesn’t stop them from scolding him.

Older brother syndrome, dammit.

“Quit staring, Jungkook-ssi,” Taehyung says, out of the blue, and Yoongi is brought up back from his reverie. “Spill what you have.”

Jungkook’s lips make a thin line. 

“I’m amazed at this guy, truly,” Seokjin announces, pointing with his two hands at Jungkook. “He kills a decay like it’s a mosquito, but once it comes to something domestic, he’s all shy.” 

Everyone laughs; not unkindly. Jimin pats Jungkook on the back. Yoongi is surprised to realise that it looks like Jungkook is enjoying the affectionate touch. 

“That’s the way Kook is,” Jimin says, like a proud brother. He squeezes Jungkook’s shoulder. “Now tell us whatever there is.”

Yoongi feels Jungkook’s eyes finding his. He doesn’t know if that’s what Jungkook asks for, but he nods — encouraging him to speak up. 

“Um,” Jungkook says, voice hoarse. Yoongi would’ve never guessed he sings. “I need — my hair.”

“You need your hair?” Hoseok raises his eyebrows. He’s sleep-deprived and hasn’t been a valuable contributor to the usual morning nonsense, but that’s the way night watchers are. He’ll be fine once he sleeps it off. 

“Uh, yes. I need my hair —” Jungkook clears his throat. “I need my hair cut, too.” 

Yoongi has been thinking Jungkook’s hair is out of control and too long; but never said anything because he respected Jungkook’s choice. Okay, so this length is not a norm for him. Okay. 

Hoseok and Jimin exchange sly smiles. “Then it’s a hair salon this evening!” 

“You’ve gone soft on him,” Namjoon says, hoisting his glasses with his knuckle, but there’s no bite to his voice. 

You’ve gone soft on him, too — that’s what Yoongi wants to tell him. He decides it’s too early for Namjoon to be faced with the truth, so he stays silent.

“Yoongi-yah, it wouldn’t hurt for your hair to be cut, too,” Seokjin says. 

Yoongi pretends to think about it. He folds his arms across his chest, falling into deep thought. “Hm,” he says, his finger playing with his hair strand, curling it around. When he lets go of it, he can admit that it is, in fact, quite long. The hair is going to be falling into his eyes soon, and he doesn’t need such distraction. “Yeah. Ok.”

“Yes!” Jimin and Hoseok high-five each other. 

When Yoongi looks around the table, definitely not because he wants to see a specific reaction from a certain someone, Jungkook’s mouth is agape. 

Yoongi can only hope it is a good kind of shock. 

The day goes for them in the usual slumber. Taehyung, Jimin and Jungkook go for the water. Hoseok sleeps his night watch off. Yoongi is not allowed near the decays nor planting beds ( ‘It is very bad for your back,’ Namjoon said, and everyone — these fuckers — decided to agree, fretting around Yoongi), so Yoongi goes to help Namjoon around in the garage. 

“Seokjin and I want to go on a drive,” Namjoon mentions as Yoongi passes him a bag of clothes. “He wants to do some planting there, too.”

“Is here not enough space for him anymore?”

“No. He’s just paranoid.”

Yoongi clicks his tongue. “Maybe we all should be, too.”

He didn’t intend his words to sound so serious, but he finds Namjoon squinting his eyes at him in a deep thought. “Yeah. Maybe we should.” He closes the door to Hyundai. It’s overflowing with the bags and extra stuff they’ve been collecting from the restocks — they haven’t gone on a drive in a while.

Yoongi taps Kia’s hood. “The cars are in a good state?”

“Yeah. Hoseok has been watching over them well.”

“Good,” Yoongi says. “It’s good.”

“Yeah.”

It’s awkward, suffocatingly tense in the garage. Once they’re finished, Yoongi is more than happy to make an escape to the porch to watch Seokjin digging deep into planting beds again. He hates to admit it, but Namjoon looks relieved they’re over, too. 

In the evening, once the dinner is over, Hoseok brings out the scissors and Jimin sits people down one by one on the improvised hairdresser’s chair that is really just a kitchen chair. 

None of them is a professional, but Jimin’s fingers are the best if you want to get your hair clean after weeks of not washing it properly, leaving it greasy and oily; and Hoseok’s scissors get the job done. The haircut might be crooked, uneven, and slanted, but it is, essentially, a shorter hair and something new in their world of routine, and nobody complains. 

It is deep into the evening when the hair salon is closed, and they decide to skip on their reading time and go to sleep a bit earlier today. Yoongi suggests he takes a night watch instead of Jimin since he hasn’t been exactly helpful today.

“I don’t need my back to watch over the house, do I?” he interrupts all the protests before they can actually happen, and everybody scoffs but doesn't talk him out of it.

They understand. This desire to be helpful. To do something. To pay up for food and water and everyday’s sacrifices. 

Besides, being on a night watch might just be Yoongi’s second most favourite activity. The first one, against all odds, is zombie hunting. Yoongi’s never been the strongest fighter, but zombie hunting is about making decisions and a good aim. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

He lights a candle. The first store is drawn in all the shades of orange and grey in an instant. There’s a creaking of a staircase that follows after that. Jungkook. Only he can move like a shadow, and only he avoids the last step if he doesn’t want to announce his presence. Yoongi has learned all about his walking habits, can recognize him even in a semi-darkness.  

“Hey,” Jungkook whispers. His new haircut has turned him even more boyish, opened up his forehead and cheeks. Yoongi is glad there’s little to no light in the room. “Seokjin kicked me out of the bed because apparently, we forgot to apply the ointment to your back.” 

Yoongi’s throat goes dry. “Are you — going to — you know?”

“What’s wrong? You don’t want me to apply the ointment?”

Maybe Yoongi wants it too much. 

Maybe it’s not something Jungkook should know about. 

He shakes his head no, then realises his movements can barely be seen. So he clears his throat. “No. It’s okay. Please spare me from my pain.” He’s only joking because he doesn’t know how he is supposed to handle this situation otherwise. 

Jungkook sits him down at the entryway’s staircase. There’s a candle next to them, and Yoongi is fully exposed to Jungkook’s new haircut. He wants to reach out and card his fingers through Jungkook’s hair, but before he can even command his brain to do something, anything — 

Jungkook shyly reaches out to Yoongi and threads his fingers through Yoongi’s bangs. 

“Hyung looks good,” Jungkook whispers, eyes so wide, bottom lip caught between his teeth. 

Yoongi wants to tell him, You look beautiful.

Yoongi wants to tell him, You look so beautiful I —

Yoongi wants to tell him, Can I — Can you —

But all he does is guide Jungkook’s fingers out of his hair, a gentle pull on Jungkook’s thin wrist — Yoongi holds for a second, two, thirty seconds too long. “Thanks.”

Yoongi likes to believe that the expression on Jungkook’s face is just a smile that has reached his eyes but not his mouth.

“Take off your shirt, hyung,” Jungkook whispers.

Yoongi wonders if they’re whispering because they don’t want to wake up others or because they don’t want for others to hear. 

He swallows a gulp of delusion down his throat and complies with Jungkook. It’s colder without a shirt, the night is chilly, the wind prowling from the house’s corners. 

Jungkook’s fingers are blazing as they softly turn Yoongi sideways. Yoongi hears him opening the ointment’s jar. The next second, there’s a cold relief on Yoongi’s back, and Jungkook’s fingers massage the ointment into the abrasion. 

“It doesn’t hurt?” he asks quietly.

“No,” Yoongi lies. Jungkook is already being overly gentle, if he tells him it whines like a little bitch, he’s afraid Jungkook is going to touch him the way Yoongi won’t be able to control himself. 

“Okay, then,” Jungkook says. “Done.”

Jungkook’s fingers don’t draw out from Yoongi’s side. They’re burning, and Yoongi can think only about them. About the cold in the room, how suddenly the temperature has dropped several degrees lower and his nipples are hardening under the pressure and the goosebumps run all over his arms and Yoongi turns to ask what’s wrong, why hasn’t Jungkook moved away — 

Jungkook’s stare is everywhere but on Yoongi’s eyes. No, it’s somewhere lower, it’s — 

Yoongi’s heart speeds up. He licks over his bottom lip.  He suddenly worries that his mouth is chapped, that Seokjin added garlic to their dinner —

Then, there’s a loud thumping of the staircase, energetic elephant steps, and Yoongi and Jungkook jump out of each other’s reach. 

Fucking Namjoon . Only he walks like that.

The backyard door opens and closes. 

Fuck you, Yoongi groans mentally. Namjoon‘s bladder just couldn’t wait for another thirty seconds longer?

“Um,” Jungkook says, rising to his feet from the staircase, almost tripping over them in his sudden gawkiness. “I’ll — um. I’ll go, then. Now that’s. I’m finished. With your, um. Ointment.”

Yoongi tugs the shirt back. “Yeah,” he says grimly, thoughts still on cursing at Namjoon. “Good night, Jungkook-ah.”

“We’re off,” Namjoon says as he takes a food bag out of Yoongi’s hands. 

“Stay safe,” Yoongi says, his temple resting against doorjamb, hands folded across his chest now that nothing occupies them anymore, and Namjoon just — nods. Yoongi watches him crossing the backyard, to the garage where Seokjin is already waiting for him. 

Once Namjoon has disappeared from his sight, he tears his gaze away, to the porch, to his dirty sneakers. He pries the dirt off them, the rubber sole against the door’s sill. It comes off reluctantly.

“Where are they going?” 

Jungkook. Yoongi hears him shuffling in the breakfast pot, scruffing the remaining rice.

“They’ll be back,” Yoongi tells him, seemingly not here yet, still on the sneakers cleansing, and Jungkook drops the topic.

Yoongi sighs. The dirt has barely come off the sneakers. He pushes from the jamb, turning around to face Jungkook. He’s chewing on the food, cheeks puffy, hair messy, only out of bed. He’s a late sleeper, just like Jimin used to be; he wakes up unwillingly, you have to drag him out of the dreams.  Yoongi has this itch in him to ruffle his newly cut hair, or maybe do something less friendly.

He brakes his feet against the floor, stays in one place. “Good?” he asks, gesturing with his chin at Jungkook’s half-empty bowl. 

“You and Namjoon don’t seem close, even though you’ve been friends before,” Jungkook says, ignoring Yoongi’s question. Yoongi doesn’t mind it — it was a stupid thing to ask anyway. 

Of course the food is shitty. But Jungkook eats it so well, to the point of Yoongi’s heart swelling.

And now, at Jungkook’s question, Yoongi’s heart has stopped, has missed a beat. “You’re very observant,” he says carefully.

“I have been told that before,” Jungkook nods proudly. 

“ Curiosity killed the cat. Has anyone told you that, too?” Yoongi says. When Jungkook nods again, cheeks full of rice, Yoongi turns away, back to the backyard. His temple is once again rested against the door jamb. 

He has to fight the desire to crush his head against it. 

Should Yoongi tell Jungkook? Should he not?

“I am not a good person,” Yoongi says, as carefully as before. His heart is squeezed in his ribcage. 

He hears Jungkook scoffing. “All of a sudden?” Jungkook sounds almost like he’s smiling. “I am not a good person, too. Nobody is.” 

Should he? Should he? Should he —

“I killed Namjoon’s girlfriend,” Yoongi says on a faltering note of Jungkook’s teasing. That’s all there is. 

He doesn’t elaborate.

Jungkook is an observant kid. An intelligent one. He can put two and two together. 

What makes you think I haven’t done it before?

Yoongi doesn’t know what he expects from Jungkook. He doesn’t know why he even told him that. Maybe he wanted Jungkook to know that he’s fucked up, too. That opening up to him is like tearing his chest apart without anaesthesia.

Yoongi is not a good person. Namjoon can’t forgive him for that.

Yoongi doesn’t know what he expects from Jungkook, but it’s definitely not the tightest, the most understanding, the most comforting back hug Yoongi has ever received. Jungkook’s arms around him feel right, the way his weight is crushed against Yoongi’s body is right, and Jungkook is just so — fucking — careful  with this back hug, with Yoongi’s half-healed abrasion. 

“My condolences,” Jungkook rasps into Yoongi’s neck, his breath so warm, almost too hot.

My condolences for your friend. My condolences for your innocence. My condolences you’ve lost yourself when you killed a person. 

Yoongi sighs. Men do not cry. 

Jungkook gently turns him around. Yoongi is afraid Jungkook is going to make him look at him — but all Jungkook does is guide Yoongi’s head into his shoulder and embrace him again. 

“It’s okay,” Jungkook says, his chin on the crown of Yoongi’s head, rocking them two from side to side. “It’s okay.”

It’s not okay. It’s so not okay that this feeling is about to chunk Yoongi’s organs out. 

Yoongi sighs again. This time, the sigh is shuddering, heartbreaking. Yoongi feels this sigh resonating in Jungkook, vibrating through his chest, quavering. 

“The food you made — it was good,” Jungkook says quietly. He sounds like he’s been crying, but when Yoongi pushes himself away from Jungkook’s shoulder, his face is empty of any emotions. “It was good.”

It’s a relief. 

They don’t talk about it.