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It scares him sometimes, that Jeongguk still has so much power over him. He’s always there, at the back of his mind, no matter how Jimin tries to shrug him off from memory. He’s everywhere, anywhere Jimin looks; in the skyscrapers, in the clothes drying on the balcony, in the cold night air, in the Rolex on Yoongi’s shelf, in the ring he still keeps in his pocket even now. It’s disconcerting. Terrifying. And Jimin is so, so tired of it.
“Tell me what he did to you,” Yoongi prompts, at one point. “You don’t have to keep it all to yourself. It only makes it harder to heal, Jimin-ssi.”
They’re sitting opposite of each other, in the living room. Yoongi’s little trinkets are perched on the shelf at one side, harmless and innocent-looking, but Jimin tries to ignore them anyway. He thinks they’re kind of eerie, sometimes, and he can’t seem to shrug off the feeling.
“It’s… I… It’s really hard. T-To talk about it, I mean,” Jimin mumbles under his breath. He wants to close his eyes, to revel in the darkness and calm his erratically beating heart, but he knows he won’t find any peace of mind that way. He will only find Jeongguk, imprinted at the back of his eyelids like he’s burnt his way there.
“Take your time,” Yoongi says, voice gentle and reassuring, never intimidating. “I don’t want you rushing yourself.”
And Jimin does as he’s told. He takes a deep breath to steady himself, grips tight at the armrests that encase him in his seat, but he doesn’t close his eyes. Not even once.
Finally, after what seems to be decades in the making, Jimin opens his mouth to speak.
“He wasn’t like that, in the beginning,” he begins, softly, timidly. “H-He was nice, and we used to play together when we were younger while our parents discussed business deals and such. He was… He was younger than me.”
Yoongi waits, never saying a single thing.
“So at first I thought… Maybe it’s okay? It-It was inevitable, really, because our parents are such good friends. I knew it would happen one day, so I tried to get used to it and I thought that maybe, maybe it’ll be okay.”
And there’s a short silence before he speaks again, because his breath suddenly catches in his throat and Yoongi is leaning forward to steady him.
“But it wasn’t,” his voice quivers, and there’s a flash in the elder’s eyes too quick for him to catch. “It was awful. I thought it would be okay, but then it wasn’t, and it was awful.”
The words come easy after that, spills out of his mouth like a dam that’s finally broken. He tells Yoongi everything; the fear, the hunger, the dread, the pain, the bruises marring his skin and the moments when his life flashed through his very eyes, the sleepless nights, the burn in between his legs, the bloodied sheets on their bed before people came in to replace them, everything. Everything he’s ever known, everything he’s ever loved, that was taken away from him the moment the ring was placed on his finger, everything. And Yoongi listens, all the way through.
“Come here,” he whispers, after there are no more words left to say. Jimin stands up gingerly from his seat, trembling as he walks over to where Yoongi sits, and he collapses into Yoongi’s arms with the elder’s hands in his hair. “Shh, baby, you’re fine. He’s not here anymore, and you’re fine. I killed him, remember?”
Jimin looks up at him, and the words should be chilling, but instead they’re warm. It’s wrong. He’s supposed to be scared.
“I remember,” he sobs anyway, and he’s got hands clutching at Yoongi’s shirt as if it were a lifeline he couldn’t afford to let slip from his fingers. “I remember, but I… but I…”
“I know,” Yoongi whispers, sighs into his ear, and Jimin thinks it sounds a bit like security. “I know, baby, you don’t have to explain.”
“Until when are you going to stay there for?” Jimin’s mother asks through the phone one day. Yoongi’s gone out, off to collect more trophies, and Jimin is waiting for him at home when she calls.
“I don’t know,” he confesses, twiddling his thumbs. He hasn’t gone out in days, not since Yoongi brought him home. It’s nice here, safe and secure, warm and gentle even though it’s a bit eerie at times, and he doesn’t want to leave. Ever. The thought should concern him, should scare him and worry him, but instead he only makes up more excuses to stay.
He can hear his mother sigh loudly. “Jeongguk’s parents are asking for you, dear. They want to tell you some things, before his funeral. They know how special he was to you.”
Jimin winces, and something awry twists in his gut.
He wasn’t, he wants to yell into the phone, because her words make him so sick that he wants to vomit out all the food he had for breakfast. He was never special, you’re wrong.
“I can’t,” Jimin chokes out instead, and maybe if he’s lucky his mom will think it’s because of something akin to heartache. “Not yet, I can’t face them yet.”
“But they want to see you before the funeral,” Jimin’s mother insists, and all he wants to do is throw his phone off the balcony of Yoongi’s apartment. He can’t do this. Not now. Not ever. It’s too much.
“Please, Jimin-ah.”
“No,” he swallows, blinking back tears. Where’s Yoongi? I need Yoongi. “I’m not seeing them before the funeral, alright? I won’t do it. I can’t do it.”
Jimin’s mother sighs, and his phone beeps to signal the ended call. All the air comes rushing back into Jimin’s lungs, and it’s only now that he realises that it was never there to begin with.
He knows he shouldn’t be like this. The Jeons have been nothing but kind to him, almost like second parents, and it isn’t their fault that Jeongguk had turned out like that. They were there whenever Jimin and his father didn’t see eye-to-eye with things, when he’d lost confidence in himself and the goals he’d set out before him throughout his entire life, and they’ve supported him from afar. They were wise, pillars whenever Jimin’s mother and father weren’t, but he can never look past the fact that Jeongguk was their son.
He was their son, and they created him. They created him, and that’s enough of a reason to make him feel repulsed.
It’s the day before the funeral, and Jimin feels slightly sick. There is bile sitting at the back of his throat, threatening to spill from his lips, and he does all that he can not to scream. The sobs are loud, pounding in his chest and he can’t do this, he can’t.
“You’ll be fine, Jimin-ssi, okay?” Yoongi has a hand rubbing circles into his back, and it’s the only sense of stability he has left in his world. “He’s dead. I’m here, and he’s dead. Okay? Remember that.”
“You killed him,” Jimin says, and it’s become a mantra now. He says it religiously, whenever dread creeps up from the pits of his stomach, when snakes block his windpipe from taking in any more air, and for a while, it had been enough. “You killed him, he’s d-dead, you’re here, I-I’ll be fine. You killed him, he’s dead, you’re h-here, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
But he’s not fine. Jeongguk is everywhere, anywhere Jimin looks, at the back of his mind no matter how Jimin tries to shrug him off from memory, and he’s not fine. He can’t be fine, not when there are phantom hands all over his body that bruise and bite and mark and tear and rip his skin apart whenever he closes his eyes. He’s not, he’s not.
“I was only gone for a while, wasn’t I?” Yoongi is asking, hands stroking his hair so gently that it makes Jimin sob even more. “I brought back something new, I’ll show you later. Is everything okay? Did anything happen?”
“M-My mom called again,” Jimin answers, gasping for air. Yoongi’s chest is warm, incredibly warm, and Jimin can’t believe it because his skin is so pale but his chest is so incredibly warm.
“What did she say?” Yoongi pries gently, as he always does. It’s a nice change, a welcome change, from what Jimin is used to. “Baby, what did she say?”
It’s the day before the funeral. It’s the day before the funeral, and before Yoongi had gotten home, Jimin’s mother had called, and what she’d said was awful.
“Wear the ring.” The words are poison, fire on his tongue, and he just wants to wretch it all out. “Sh-She said… She said to… to w-wear the ring.”
“Oh, baby,” Yoongi whispers, carding through Jimin’s hair. There’s a flash in his eyes, too quick for Jimin to catch, barely there when he finally sees it, and he doesn’t know what it could mean. “You still have it?”
“I d-do,” Jimin says, but he doesn’t want it. He’s never wanted it, not since he found out it was never just a pretty ring to decorate his fingers with. Not since he found out that it was so much more than that. “I do, and it… I-I can’t, Yoongi-ssi, I can’t do it.”
“I understand,” the elder replies, and Jimin knows he does. “I understand, okay, but I’m here. He’s dead, baby, and I killed him. I stabbed him, again and again and again, until he couldn’t get up anymore. You saw it yourself, didn’t you? His Rolex is on my shelf, baby, it’s mine now. You’re fine. You’re fine, and you can wear that ring tomorrow because I killed him and it doesn’t mean anything anymore. He’s dead. I killed him.”
It should be sick, unnerving, disturbing and wrong on so many levels that Yoongi’s voice is so proud when he says it. It’s meant to be. It’s supposed to be, but instead it’s nice and reassuring and calming and relieving and Jimin doesn’t know why. Yoongi killed him. Yoongi killed Jeongguk. And he should be horrified, he should be scared and disgusted but he isn’t, he’s happy.
And maybe it’s enough.
“O-Okay,” Jimin mumbles, stutters through his uneven breath, and grips at Yoongi’s shirt tighter. This man is a killer, a part of his brain warns. He could kill you too, he’s insane, he’s not safe, but Jimin isn’t listening. His brain is wrong.
“Now look at me, baby,” Yoongi urges him, brings his hands to Jimin’s cheeks where they rest softly against his skin. Jimin brings his eyes over to match Yoongi’s gaze, umber and gold connecting with pure onyx, and in that instant, he doesn’t know what Yoongi is thinking. He realises that he’s never known what goes on in the man’s head, but for some reason it doesn’t really seem to matter.
“This is the first step to your recovery. You’re strong, I know that, so I won’t be going with you to his funeral.” Jimin’s stomach drops, and he’s about to protest before Yoongi continues. “I need you to trust me, alright? I’ll be just outside the cemetery, you can call out for me if you’re in danger, but you’ll have to go in there and face him on your own. I’ve already killed him, baby. All you have to do is stand there and give a speech.”
“But I… H-How will you hear me? T-The cemetery is… It’s huge.” Jimin has tears in his eyes, and he really can’t do this. How had he survived for so long a time without breaking halfway?
Yoongi smirks. It’s fascinating, the way his lips curl up, such a pretty pink colour that Jimin can’t help but admire. “I’ll hear you just fine, baby. I’ll be right there, you don’t need to worry about anything. All you need to do is wear the ring, look pretty like you usually are, go up on that platform and read out what’s written on your piece of paper. You can do that, can’t you?”
Yoongi’s eyes are onyx, beautiful in an indecipherable kind of way, and Jimin blinks. Look pretty? He swallows softly, confused. Like I usually am?
“Jimin-ssi?” Yoongi is saying, concern in his eyes like Jimin has never seen on anyone’s face before. He vaguely notices that Yoongi is calling him differently, by his name, politely like a doctor would his patient, and he doesn’t like it. He’s never noticed it before, not in the week he’s known him, not when Yoongi would flit from name to name as if it were second nature, but he does now, and it sounds wrong. He doesn’t like being called Jimin-ssi.
“Baby,” he corrects, and Yoongi blinks. “‘Jimin-ssi’ sounds so formal. Baby is fine.”
He can sense Yoongi studying him, the way he had while they were back at the hospital, when Jimin had asked him to help him get changed. Yoongi’s eyes flash again, too quick for Jimin to catch, and when he notices, it’s almost gone.
“Baby, then,” Yoongi smiles, soft and warm and safe in Jimin’s insides. “Can you do that, baby?”
“I can,” Jimin says, a little more confident than he was before. “I-I’m still scared, but maybe I can.”
Yoongi drives him to the cemetery the next morning, and the ring is on his finger. It’s pretty, still nice on his finger despite how he feels about it, adorned with priceless gems and engravings of Jeongguk’s initials. He feels that he might have liked it more, if he’d lived a different life.
“You okay there, baby?” Jimin hears Yoongi ask him, and he realises that the car’s stopped and that they’re just outside the sprawling cemetery. He swallows a gulp of air.
“I’m fine,” he replies, and he can’t wait to take the ring off. “You’ll be here, right? You won’t… You won’t leave, right?”
“Never,” Yoongi promises, and it’s enough for now. Jimin lets his shoulders sag in relief, places a hand on the car door and climbs out, lets the sun hit directly onto his face after two weeks of staying indoors.
He doesn’t give Yoongi another glance, because he has a feeling that if he does he’ll drag Yoongi along with him to where Jeongguk is supposed to be buried. Instead, he walks, and he walks confidently, something he hasn’t done in the past few years of his life.
The journey to Jeongguk’s burial site is short, and while he walks he feels powerful. Strong. He feels strong, even as he gives a speech with artificial words scripted on stark-white paper, even as Jeongguk’s mother sobs into her husband’s chest, and even as his parents give him a slight nod in approval. Powerful. Strong.
He steps off the podium, steps loud in the silence of the crowd, and it’s time to offer their prayers. Jeongguk’s casket is the colour of death, befitting the occasion, a polished black that bounces off the sun’s rays, and when it’s Jimin’s turn to place a flower at his side, his stomach clamps up a bit, before he remembers Yoongi outside the cemetery waiting for him. He killed him. He’s dead. Yoongi’s here. I’ll be fine.
The moment passes, and Jimin is okay.
The casket is lowered into the ground, buried with soil, and buried along with it are the monsters that used to run wild inside Jimin’s head.
“You’ve been strong,” Jeongguk’s father says to him, when the ceremony is over. Jeongguk’s mother is at his side, dabbing at her tears, and it makes Jimin feel sick.
“I’m trying to be,” he says, and it’s slightly easier than before. More like him, like the boy he used to be so many years ago. “My psychiatrist is helping loads.”
“How terrified you must have been,” Jeongguk’s mother whispers, staring at him with hazy eyes. “To see all that, why I couldn’t…”
“It’s hard, but I’ll recover,” Jimin cuts in, and he hopes it doesn’t sound too curt. The words are true, though; just not in the sense that the Jeons will take them to be.
“He loved you so much,” Mr. Jeon tells him, and he wants to laugh at the absurdity of the man’s words. “He used to talk about you every day, without fail, but he’s moved on to a better place now. I… We… We wish the best for your future, Jimin-ah. Thank you for taking care of our son.”
Thank you. It’s as if they’re saying their final farewells, and Jimin suddenly feels weightless.
Just a thank you isn’t enough, he knows. It’s never going to be enough, because his moments with Jeongguk were the closest to hell that he’s ever gotten in his entire life, were bleak and desolate and half-dead moments and gratitude will never override it.
Despite that, though, his smile is oddly sincere, and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because he feels free, liberated, like a heavy weight he’s been carrying on his shoulders for so many years has finally been lifted, but he can’t really know for sure. He just hopes that it’s the last he ever sees of their faces.
His eyes are deceptively bright as he wishes them good health.
“Oh, and before I forget…”
Jimin takes one last look at the ring, and it's still pretty. Nice on his finger. It shines in the sharp rays of sunlight, flashing vibrant colours as he takes it off, but he's had it for too long and he's never even wanted it. When he hands it to his ex-fiancé’s parents, his chest suddenly feels lighter than before, and he can feel the shackles break.
“There’s no need for me to have this anymore,” he says softly, placing it into Jeongguk’s mother’s palm, and it’s odd that his skin doesn’t quiver at the touch. “It only reminds me of him, every day. You should keep it.”
“Oh, I…” Mrs. Jeon blinks, can’t seem to think of anything to say, and Jimin takes that as his time to leave.
“Then, I’ll be going,” he bows to them, respectful like their son never was. “Thank you for everything.”
“How did it go?” Yoongi asks, as they drive away from the cemetery. Jimin feels light, airy, weightless, and the look in his eyes are genuine.
“It went okay,” he replies, smiling brightly. “I think I’m okay now.”
The tires screech wildly as Yoongi steps on the brakes, pulling over to the side of the road. Jimin blinks, surprised.
“You’re not okay,” Yoongi tells him, and there’s a shiver in his voice. “You’re not okay yet. You can’t be okay yet.”
“What do you mean?” Jimin asks, confused. “I feel fine, and I’m not scared anymore. I’m—”
“No,” Yoongi hisses, and his voice breaks. He gives Jimin a glance, and it’s unreadable, indecipherable, pools of onyx that Jimin can’t quite comprehend—and there’s that flash again. It glistens in the bright light, passes over his eyes a little slower than usual, slow enough that Jimin catches exactly what it is.
Oh. His eyes soften, and he giggles a little. I understand now.
“I’m really okay now, Yoongi-ssi,” he insists, insides warming up even as Yoongi gives him a glare so cold it’d outdo the harshest winter. “I’m all better now.”
“And you think you can just leave? You think it’s like that?” Yoongi looks straight into his eyes, and Jimin's tongue feels a little dry. There’s madness in there, that he’s never seen before, an edge in his gaze that has him gaping.
Yoongi leans in, close enough that his lips barely graze Jimin’s ear, and Jimin shivers. “I’ll chain you down, Park Jimin. I told you I would, didn’t I? At the hospital.”
And maybe he expects Jimin to scream, to call for help, to open the car door and try to escape, but Jimin knows better. He knows, and he smiles, because he’s all better now and Yoongi’s helped him be just that.
“And I’m fine with it,” Jimin replies, amusement in his words. “I told you I am, didn’t I? At the hospital.”
Yoongi looks over him, just for a moment, eyes flashing with fear and longing and madness and insanity and everything safe and secure before he pulls Jimin into his lap. The strength in his grip has Jimin keening, anticipating like he’s never done before, and it’s something he thought he could never feel for someone this dangerous ever. Yoongi’s an enigma, a puzzle to be pored over and solved, and he’s a danger to Jimin’s life but he can’t help but want him, now that everything is so clear.
“So you’ll stay?” asks Yoongi, their lips so close together that they’re almost touching. “Even though you’re all better now?”
“Yeah,” Jimin smiles, a full smile that takes over his whole face, and he’s never felt so free. So warm, so safe, so secure, so happy, and he’s not tired at all. The ring is gone and so is the man he was bound to in chains, and he can do whatever he wants. “Yeah, of course I’ll stay.”
Yoongi grins at him then, and it’s beautiful. Crazy, mad, sick, bright with glee and a different level of insanity altogether, and Jimin wants. He wants so much.
“Great,” the elder breathes, and he’s his saviour. He’s a killer, Jimin knows, and he’s killed enough to cover an entire shelf with miscellaneous items, but Jeongguk’s Rolex is one of them and that makes Jimin so happy that he can’t help it.
“I’ll treat you so well, baby,” Yoongi growls, and it reverberates in Jimin’s chest. “So well, it’ll be like he never even existed in the first place.”
“Oh god,” Jimin groans, and it’s the only thing he manages to say before Yoongi’s lips are engulfing his, before the whole world blurs out and it’s just them two pulled up at the side of the road, before Jimin is drowning, falling, drowning.
He's drowning, and he thinks he can taste bliss somewhere in the metallic cavern that is Yoongi’s mouth.