Archive of Our Own ^beta

Come on, sorrow, take your own advice,

Hide under the bed, turn out the light,

Stars this night in the sky are ringing out,

You can almost hear them saying,

Close your eyes now kid,

Close your eyes now kid,

Morning's teeth are lit,

They are waiting,

Waiting,

They are waiting.

- "Magpie to the Morning", Neko Case

1 .

This is the razor-blade high-rise where they live. 

It’s so much steel and so much glass, polished to diamond shine. It’s carpets in the lobby and elevators with elegant scrollwork on the walls. It’s heavy doors and heavier windows, as if wealth comes with its own bending, breaking weight. It’s shimmering chandeliers in the hallways, glass walls that paint Seoul the way only the rich gets to see it: a necklace of lights, the Han a slash of dark, Namsan Tower in the distance glistening like an all-seeing eye on the city. 

They’re so high up that they can see the peaks of Bukhansan, craggy and ochre in the sunset. 

They’re so high up that the golden shard of the 63 building is below them. They’re so high up that Jimin thinks they’re closer to the stars than they are to the traffic and the subway python and the sheer bustle of life.

They’re so high up.

Taehyung is afraid of heights. Jimin knows this. He reaches for Jimin’s hand when they go atop cliffs, atop platforms, atop buildings. 

He has always reached. It’s how the two of them began, Jimin thinks, with Taehyung tight-lipped against that terrible, paralyzing fear and squeezing Jimin’s hand in his. Hands held and speaking each a quiet fears into a shared dark.

It’s how the two of them began. Gently. Wordlessly. 

Taehyung's afraid now. Jimin can see it in the nervous way he smiles, the slight giddiness in the bright of his eyes. He has his fingers to the gleaming glass (no doubt smearing prints), and he’s looking out. 

He’s terrified.

“If this glass disappears,” he says, jokey as he sing-songs it, “how long do you think it’ll take for take to reach the ground, Jimin-ah?”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke. It’s a doubt about physics.”

“You’re so weird sometimes,” Jimin says, although Jimin has thought about this. Jimin has thought about Taehyung thinking about this. When Jimin had said yes to this place, he’d been hoping that Taehyung’s love for the night and the lights would triumph over his fear of the height. Apparently not. "It's why I like you."

"We're so high up," Taehyung whispers now, soft awe in his voice. "So high up."

A flutter of nervousness sinks teeth into Jimin’s heart. “Don’t you think this building is really cool?”

"Yeah. It's beautiful."

Taehyung takes a few steps away from the window. Safe distance. His eyes do a slow sweep of the wooden floor, the creamy white walls, all the accent lights. 

The prints on the walls are all Taehyung’s photographs. The art is his, too. Jimin knows him well enough to know he’s wondering why there’s so little of Jimin here.

“Your bougie style fit this place better,” he says. Taehyung smiles a little, contemplative. “I’ve got a whole study, though. For all the books you won’t read.”

“I read books.”

“You read manhwa. There’s a difference.”

Taehyung pouts. “Books with pictures are still books, Jimin-ah,” he whines. “You know what Namjoon hyung used to say. Being highbrow about culture is intellectually lazy.”

“You’d know all about that, Mr. Opera-and-Trot.”

Taehyung wanders over to the sofa. He’s barefoot, which is expected, and Jimin thinks he likes the carpet by how his toes curl into it. He plummets face-down against the white leather of the sectional, spreading his arms and legs, wriggling a bit like he’s making an upside-down snow-angel. 

He inhales, loud.

“Why does the sofa smell like vanilla,” he says. “It’s so nice. Jiminie. How is it so nice?”

Jimin pokes his ass with his foot. Taehyung makes an exaggerated sexual sound. Typical. Jimin rolls his eyes and kicks him. “Bastard,” he whines. “You didn’t do a thing to fix this place up. I did everything. Look at you now, rubbing your face all over my sofa.”

“My beautiful face.”

“Your oily face.”

“My beautiful, oily face,” Taehyung rubs his foot lightly against Jimin’s arm. “Which you love.”

 “At least say thanks.”

“Thank you, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung sings, like a preschooler. His face is still buried in the sofa, and he tugs half-heartedly at a throw. “Ah, this is so nice. I’m never moving from here.”

Jimin perches beside him. “You like it?”

Taehyung’s fingers are so long. They dwarf Jimin’s hand when they twine with his. “This view is going to look so incredible once it’s fully dark,” he says. “I love it.”

“Really?”

“Really."

"You're sure?" 

"You don’t believe me?” When Jimin says nothing, Taehyung sits up a little. His tone becomes a little more urgent. “You know I’m bad with words, Jimin-ah, you know--”

“--you love me? I know.” Jimin presses his fingers to Taehyung’s wrist. To the place where his pulse should beat. “I know.”

Taehyung tilts his head a little to look at him through the curtain of his hair. It’s long, almost brushing his nose. “I’m glad you know,” he says, suddenly grave. “You always know.”

Then his smile gets cheeky and he flops face first into the sofa again.

“I think we’ll be very happy here, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin smiles too. Or something like it. His mouth makes the motion and he bites his tongue, but something in his face feels forever frozen. If he notices, Taehyung doesn’t say anything. Just keeps holding his hand tight. When he thinks Jimin isn’t watching, his own face loses the buoyant happiness, takes on a strange pensiveness.

Jimin ignores the disquiet dancing in his nerves. 

Taehyung likes it here, he thinks. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.

This is day sixty-two, since--

No. This is day one.

2 .

This is the sparkling dagger of the building where they live.

Taehyung feels like a child, let loose in a beautiful, expensive store. Sticky fingers capable of breaking things. Fast feet capable of tripping. 

For the first several days, he wanders the apartment in a fugue-state of confusion, walking as if on eggshells around the enormous bed, the glossy kitchen island, the wall of switches and consoles and wood. That wall holds the TV, a work-station, and their XBox inside of it like poems in a scroll. The remote-control feels like a riddle, way beyond his comprehension. Taehyung has tried looking it up online. It made him feel like an idiot. 

It’s snowing out. Taehyung pads over to the window, footsteps muffled in plush carpet. It’s early snow, strange in October. The city below gives him a sudden splash of vertigo, that giddy sensation of falling down and down and down without end. He backs quickly away.

We’re so high up, he remembers telling Jimin that first day. So high up.

The glass-wall can be covered with curtains-- sheer, opaque, or semi. The glass itself can achieve varying degrees of transparency. It’s like a magic trick, one that Taehyung performs in halting, unsure steps.

The snow disappears. So does the city. Faced with a blank wall, Taehyung makes a face at his reflection. A funny face, not a scowly one. 

He’s happy here, after all. 

He’s so happy.

He smooths wrinkles in the carpets. He brushes his finger over piano keys and jumps when he presses a strange, discordant key. He arranges various bath products in straight lines on the splendid sculptures that make up the bathroom’s counters.

There’s nothing in here that can break that we can’t fix, Jimin had told him. Everything is replaceable.

Taehyung doesn’t believe that at all. Everything looks-- feels --expensive. Even the air smells strange, rarified. He can’t explain it, except that it sort of reminds him of the basement galleries at the MMCA. Vast and controlled and sterile. Less real than the air outside.

The apartment hadn’t been a surprise. Jimin had been talking about it for a long time. 

Jimin had been talking, and planning, and purchasing. Taehyung- busy with his acting and his art and this odd, strange weight that he’d been carrying around in his body like a second person- had left it all to him. Jimin knew him better than anyone; knew what he liked, knew what he didn’t. Jimin could do no wrong.

The weeks before this move feel all blurry in retrospect, like Taehyung had simply stopped inhabiting his body. Still, when it was finally time for him to see the place, he’d balked at the address. At the building. At the newness of it; the richness.

It’s not like they don’t have the money. They’ve come a very long way since they first met in high school. They’ve been very lucky, the two of them. 

It’s just that this place feels so unlike them.

Taehyung can’t put a finger on it. He’s lived in expensive places before, stayed in hotels so opulent he’s felt like a terrible person. Their old place in Hannam-dong wasn’t any less expensive or exclusive. He’s used to winding green driveways and bowing security and shiny floors that your feet clicked loudly against when you walked. He’s used to the sweet incense scent of the hallways and the spotless blue of the swimming pool. He’s used to the attached township: cinema hall and convenience store and coffee shop.

He’s just unsettled.

(He’s so happy.)

It’s just because it’s new, he thinks. It’s just new. And you’ve never liked change.

He plays for a while on his Switch, and then lies on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. There’s a little web in a corner there, a crumpled spider dead and curled up at the center. It looks wrong. There should’ve been no insects this high up, he thinks. Nothing like that should have made it all the way up here. Not into this locked-tight, ornate jewel-box of a building.

Taehyung curls his legs up the same way as the spider. He imagines a giant, spooky web of light, spinning all the way from the center of him, all across the wide, minimal, lemon-yellow brightness of the living room. An industrious little construction, sticky and trapful, as beautiful as it is deceptive. 

He breathes. 

An unsealed crack somewhere lets in the sound of wind, a disconcerting whine that seeps into his bones. He thumbs through his cellphone, finger poised atop Jimin’s number, then decides against it.

What’s he even going to say? Jimin-ah, I’m afraid of the light? 

He wonders if the spider feels as out of place in this building as he does.

3 .

This is the dizzying insides of the glass-shard building where they live.

Taehyung had been dozing all afternoon. 

Or he thinks he dozes: because when he looks at the clock, after some time on the sofa, the time on it is just a bit after four. He’d meant to unpack some bags today, to put out his clothes and to clear some of their packing boxes. Jimin has been whining about having to navigate boxes in the dark. 

He’d meant to do something productive. Something so he'd feel less like a ghost. 

Instead: this.

It’s not snowing anymore, but it’s overcast. The lights at the top of buildings pulls the mist into tendrils of spectral cotton candy. Everything is bathed in a soft-light, kitten-gray. The view is breathtaking. 

Jimin would have loved it, Taehyung thinks, swallowing against his own galloping vertigo. Any normal person would have loved it. 

Taehyung can’t stop thinking of falling. 

There’s a noise from somewhere outside. This is what woke him. A grating, scraping noise, like someone moving something very heavy down the hallway. Then a strange, faint sensation like something gripping his leg.

He grabs a coke out of the fridge and then opens the front door, curious. There's nothing there. 

Had he imagined it? 

Inside, Taehyung walks the length of the living room, shivering in a sudden chill. The large dining table throws shards of light against the wall, a pattern he tries to break by making shadow figures. He's still on bird when the noise comes again. 

This time he whips around, trying to place it. Maybe someone's moving in, upstairs. 

Furniture rasping over the floors. Grating against the tiles. 

He checks the clock. Four thirty. Jimin should be home by five. 

In the living room, the spider's been joined by another. Taehyung pauses a minute, slack-jawed, staring. 

They're both dead. 

A chill starts from the base of his neck and travels down his spine. 

It's nothing, he thinks. There were always two. 

The grating comes again. This time from behind him. 

He turns his back to the spiders and realises for the first time since he's woken that the windows are transparent again. That rasping sounds closer now, and this time there's no mistaking where it's coming from. 

Outside. 

Just outside the window. 

His body gives a violent jerk, a slingshot tic of panic. Just a window cleaner , he thinks, but that doesn't make sense. There isn't enough light out. And now that he looks at it, there's something odd about the mist itself, the way it swirls and distills into shapes.

Like a spiderweb, only bigger. Growing faster and faster as if feeding on the morsels of his terror. 

Beads of sweat well up cold on the back of his neck. Taehyung thinks--stupidly, impossibly--of something many-legged and hundred-eyed climbing up the side of the building. 

Legs creaking against the glass. Body grating against steel. 

A hell-thing.

Come here, it says, knocking on the glass. Come see. Come see what’s real.

Once again - vertigo. 

This time instead of falling down he thinks he's spiraling up. Up, up and beyond the edge of the building, weightless. The world reduces to a sluice gate of light and dizziness. A faint, pain-tinged buzz starts behind his eyes. 

He thinks he can hear music. 

High. Familiar. 

Nessun Dorma. 

Taehyung sits down hard in front of the window, mouth dry as cotton, fingers clenched tight into his thighs. Looking down at the city laid out in spiky shards of crimson light.

It's where Jimin finds him, still cold and quaking, an hour later. 

4.

This is the shimmering mineral obelisk where they live. 

Jimin picked up treats on his way. Gingerbread cookies. Candy cane. The bakery across his agency was having a sale. 

Snow had delayed his car. At the lobby, a new couple was moving in. Their furniture sat in the middle of the large hall, all glossy mirrors and cream pouffes. A woman sat alone on an ottoman, red-eyed. Jimin threw her a sympathetic glance. She bowed, small and stiff, blinking wet lashes. Her mouth moved, hopeful. He didn't stay to hear the words. 

At their door, the turn of Jimin's key in the deadbolt had sounded like gunshots. He'd pushed it open, walked into the living room, and found Taehyung sitting in front of the window. 

Icy. Motionless. Jimin called thrice before he even turned, and when he did, it was like he'd been in a hypnotic daze. 

Later, Jimin will tell himself that it doesn't matter. That it's an adjustment issue. That they've only been here a week, and sometimes the quiet gets to Taehyung. It always has. 

Later, Taehyung will believe him. 

Now, in the red light of a steep sunset, they sit across each other on their bed, Taehyung nursing a mug of hot chocolate. His eyes are big; haunted. He keeps looking at the sliver of light from the living room, snaking beneath their closed bedroom door. 

"We can keep the curtains closed," Jimin says. He's holding Taehyung's other hand in his, tighter than necessary. Keeping him here. Keeping him together. "We can make the glass opaque, I showed you how-" 

"I did that," Taehyung says. "I did that, but then the spiders, and the noise, and the mist-" 

"The spiders?" asks Jimin, sharply. "What spiders?" 

Taehyung shrugs. He pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth, eyebrows furrowed, fingers still shaking in Jimin's grip. "Dead spiders. Two of them. In the living room."

Jimin frowns. "Baby, there can't be spiders here." 

"That's what I thought. But first there was one. Now there are two. Both dead."

Jimin presses his lips together. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

"And outside the window, there was- there was-" 

The mist. 

Jimin has heard about the mist. Taehyung had babbled about it for several minutes before he'd even come away from the window. 

"I want to see if it's still there." 

"Taehyung-ah."

"I want to see."

Jimin follows him. Off the bed, out the door, across the dining hall and into the living room. The sun is almost out now. Light pools in hapless red novae on the carpet. The cuckoo clock Taehyung had got Jimin on some long-ago vacation ticks with exaggerated loudness. 

Taehyung presses his hand to the glass. His fingers splay wide, nails sliding over the surface like he's determined to claw the truth out of the molten vista in front of him. 

"There's nothing there," Jimin soothes. "Taehyungie. There's nothing there." 

Taehyung's face falls into a sweetly innocent sulk. "But I-" 

"There's nothing there," Jimin repeats, and rubs the back of his neck just the way he likes it. "There's nothing there, Taetae. There's nothing there." 

Taehyung's eyebrows pull together. He touches his forehead and frowns. 

Jimin squeezes him gently around the waist. "You wanna play a game?" he asks. "You wanna help unpack some stuff?" 

Taehyung gives an uncertain nod. Jimin steers them back, towards the bedroom. The chandelier combines their shadows into something huge on the walls, a malformed being with many limbs. 

Taehyung tugs his hand. "Jiminie?" 

"Yes?" 

"Why do you have Christmas stuff this early?" 

Jimin looks from the gingerbread to the candy canes, strewn over the dining table. 

"Oh." He says. "Just a sale. Want some?"

5.

This is the boxes of ephemera that tell the story of their lives. 

There are albums that go way back, full of Jimin's Polaroids. There are boxes full of shirts they got each other, growing more expensive the deeper you go. There are cartons of gifts - a little rice-cake shaped plushie that had reminded Taehyung of Jimin, a dog-patterned tie from Jimin, ten years' worth of birthday gifts, jewelry, cards. 

There are stacks and stacks of letters, from the time they'd temporarily broken up, and Taehyung had thought he was going to lose his mind from all the thoughts swirling the drain. Still tear-stiff, from the day he'd finally shown Jimin. 

There's their old laptop, the one they'd spent hours in front of together, watching anime. There's that parka they'd bought, when they'd gone on an impromptu vacation to Hokkaido, only to be blindsided by a snow storm. There's a pack of cards that Taehyung got Jimin at some long forgotten bus stop, played with on so many journeys that the paper is all but falling apart. 

So much shared history. 

They've built a whole life from this, from the constellation of a few objects and their own bodies. 

There's a folded-up poster of one of Taehyung's early movies, and a flyer from one of Jimin's first solo performance. He looks unreal in it. Like no gravity on earth can hold him. Like the bones housed in his skin are lighter than birds.

There's a framed picture of their entwined hands, dated ten years in the past, dark words scrawled over the glass: I only have you. Let's go together for a long time. 

They've always been a little maudlin. A little too much. Hearts on sleeves where they're vulnerable, and words without dams to filter them. They've spent most of their lives carefully balancing the joy of being truly seen by someone else, and the fear of losing precisely that. 

"Remember this?" 

Jimin's holding up a snowglobe. A dancer stands within, the sparkle of her tutu long faded. The fake snow sits clumped along the sides of the glass. All the liquid has somehow leaked out. 

"I remember."

"We weren't alone on that trip," Jimin says, smiling, "But you got a gift only for me. Everyone teased you for days."

"You like winter," shrugs Taehyung, cheeks flushed. "And pretty things.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“I only thought of you."

Jimin smiles. "Most of my favorite things are winter miracles.” He twists the snowglobe in his hand. "Do you think we can fix this, Taehyung-ah?"

Taehyung, fiddling with a music box, doesn't look up. "No," he says. "I'll just get you another one."

Jimin leans over the edge of the bed, watching him. His lashes cast long shadows on his cheek, fingers deft as they turn the key. The music box trills a tune, soft and high. 

Nessun Dorma. 

Taehyung licks his lips. Leans his cheek against the steadying palm that Jimin offers. Jimin cups his chin, rubs the pad of his thumb along the cut of Taehyung's cheekbone. 

A shudder runs through Taehyung, slow and heavy, like he's shaking off a fever. 

"Jimin-ah." 

"Hmm?" 

"Where's all your stuff?" Taehyung asks, quietly. "There's my stuff and there's ours, but none of your things. Where are your things?" 

Jimin's finger rubs the corner of Taehyung's mouth. The smooth plush of his lower lip. "It's coming in a week, remember? The packers and movers didn't have any slots."

Taehyung nods. There's something glimmering in the shadows of his face, a steady haunting. Jimin hooks a finger under his chin. Turns him to the light, to the opulent bright. 

Taehyung blinks. 

"Don't worry," Jimin whispers. "You'll grow into this place. We both will."

“I know.”

"I love you," Jimin says. Puts all of himself into those three little words. Hopes that Taehyung hears. "I love you, Taehyung-ah. We're going to be okay here."

"We're going to be okay here," Taehyung parrots. He climbs up into the bed, and Jimin pulls him down over him, exhaling at the settle of his warm, gentle weight, mouth pressed to Taehyung's collarbone. "I love you."

Taehyung sighs, sweet into the crook of his neck. His hair smells like clean shampoo and the lavender scent that ghosts the living room. Jimin folds his arms against his back, soft pressure against the ridge of Taehyung's spine. 

In the corner of Jimin's vision, the key of the music box has stopped turning. The tune continues. 

He says nothing. 

6.

This is the dark hall of the knife of a building where they live.

Taehyung stands outside their door. It’s late, he thinks, although he doesn’t know the actual time. He’s here because he heard that grating again. This time from out here.

He feels a little braver with Jimin in the apartment, just a room away, asleep. Feels a little more real.

The gash of dark that makes up the corridor is shadowed with tasteful plants. The edge of it, where the elevator lobby spills pinkish ghost-light, looks like some other planet. Taehyung keeps seeing things out of the corner of his eyes. 

Things that aren’t there.

There’s another apartment halfway across the corridor, heavy door cracked half-open. Within it: dark. Hadn’t Jimin said there were people living there? Two men, a couple: just like them. This is not the kind of building where they ask such questions, Jimin had said. This is a different sort of place.

The grating comes again. Taehyung thinks it’s from the neighboring apartment.

He takes a shaky step towards it, and then decides against it. 

It’s not his business. 

It’s not his business at all.

But when he turns back, the door to his own apartment is closed. The apartment number--76-06--gleams menacingly from the middle of the door. Taehyung tries to push through, a slow lick of shame burning under his skin as he contemplates ringing the bell. He’s on a self-determined break from picking up any work, but Jimin isn’t. Jimin’s been working long hours, making sure he’s at his best. 

And he has these nightmares. Taehyung doesn’t bring it up, because he doesn’t know how to. But Jimin keeps waking up, shocked and terrified, and he’ll sit up for hours after just looking at Taehyung. Just watching.

He doesn’t want to wake Jimin.

He tilts his head. Stares at the corridor, and at the elevator lobby. Swallows against the dizziness.

He rings the doorbell.

It opens almost immediately. 

“I’m sorry, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung starts, and then clicks his mouth shut in confusion. “You’re not Jimin.”

The boy at the door blinks large doe eyes. “Taehyung-ssi?” he says. “You don’t remember me?”

Loud music blasts from the apartment, bleeding into the frigid silence of the hallway. Bright lights flash. Taehyung sees people--so many people --and smells food cooking, alcohol. Someone laughs, loud. Shadows twirl in dance. 

A party.

“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong door--”

“No, no.” The boy says. “I’m Jeon Jungkook? You remember me? I work with Jimin hyung. We met once, on one of your sets.”

Taehyung presses his lips together. “Right. Do you...do you also live in the building?”

Jungkook looks at him a bit sadly. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ve just...you’ve wandered a bit, haven’t you?”

Taehyung takes a staggering step back. “I’ll leave now,” he says. “I’m going to go now. I have the wrong door.”

“You don’t have the wrong door, Taehyung-ssi,” Jungkook says. “Look. I’ll prove it to you. Hyung! Jiminie hyung, c’me here!”

Taehyung stands, frozen, as Jimin comes up behind Jungkook. He’s wearing a strange feather boa around his neck and a sweater that hugs his body. His hair’s a different silver. He’s holding a bottle of soju, a trail of silver make-up glittering on his cheeks.

He’s different. He’s beautiful.

No, Taehyung thinks.

He’d left Jimin sleeping in their apartment. He’d left Jimin in his pajamas and touched the familiar dark crown of his head as he’d left, but now--

“Taehyung-ah?”

This Jimin’s staring at him. Mouth open, gaping. 

“No,” Taehyung whispers. “I don’t understand--”

“Oh my god. You can’t be here. You can’t.” Jimin’s words are a whisper. They’re both staring at him now. Their eyes are kind, and sad. So sad. “Look at you. You can’t be here. It’s not right.”

Taehyung looks down. There’s something wrong with his clothes, he thinks. They stick to him, dripping pink-water. The carpet in the hallway is all soggy, already. His hair’s wet, too. Wet and sticky. Something awful is hiding under the curtain of his hair, a secret gash beneath damp clumps of hair. Jungkook’s eyes keep going there. Taehyung puts his hand up to touch it and his fingers come away dark. 

There's wetness down the side of his face, dripping off his chin. 

Jimin makes a choked little noise. “You can’t be here,” he says again. His eyes gleam tear-bright. “This isn’t right. Jungkookie, please--”

Jungkook presses his hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, you have to go.”

Nausea swells at the back of Taehyung’s throat. He feels strange, unmoored. 

“No,” he says. “No, please, don’t leave me out here.”

But the door is already slamming shut. Behind his eyes, that same pain-tinged buzz from before begins up again, a hornet’s nest stirring somewhere in his skull. 

He rings the bell a couple times, calling Jimin’s name. It doesn’t open. Inside, the sounds of the party seems to pause, and Taehyung imagines a room full of revelers, all silent with fingers to their lips, trying to stay still and quiet so the unwanted visitor goes away. He imagines Jimin and Jungkook with their ears to the door, trying to listen in to the small sobs that wrench out of his chest, waiting to see when he’d give up and leave.

But Taehyung has nowhere to go.

76-06 stares at him, blinking. Reverberations build and run through his body, excruciatingly slow. Something feels like its snaking its way slowly up his leg. Black fingers. Thin wrists. 

Hell-things.

At the end of the hallway, that pink light from the elevator seems to grow.

Taehyung knocks on the door, desperate. 

The light reaches for him, spider-shaped, limbs all askew but dragging itself across the floor. The grating gets louder. He squeezes his eyes against it, making himself safe in the dark, and slams his fists on the door.

“Please,” he shouts. “Jimin, Jimin, please --”

When the door finally opens, the inside of the apartment is a primordial dark. Jimin gazes at him with wide, fearful eyes, hair mussed from sleep. 

“What are you doing out here?” he asks. His hair is dark again. He’s wearing pajamas again. “Taehyung-ah. What--?”

“Let me come in.” Taehyung says, half in a sob. His hand reaches out for Jimin, grabs a fistful of his shirt.  “Please. Please, Jimin-ah, let me come in.”

Jimin gives a terrified little squeak, looking out at the hallway as his arm slides around Taehyung’s waist to pull him in.

“I’ve got you,” he says, voice shrill. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, you’re okay. You’re safe.”

The door shuts behind them. There’s no party here, no people. Just him and Jimin. Taehyung touches his face again, frowns. No more blood. He’s clean again, clean and dressed in his sleep clothes.

Nothing makes any sense.

Across the living room, the window is bright again, purple light swirling against the glass. That light seems to punch through him, a nightmare-fist, pulverizing his bones and liquefying his organs. Settling in him with a steady, extraterrestrial weight. 

At the same time, it calls to him. 

Come see, it says. Come see for yourself. Come see the truth.

"Taehyung-ah."

Jimin shakes him. He blinks. 

“What were you doing?” Jimin asks, the whisper soft and pitched. “Why were you in the hallway? I woke up and you weren’t there, you were ringing the bell. Taehyung-ah, what if--?”

The words stretch like taffy around Taehyung, loses all meaning. He clings to Jimin and lets him pull them both towards the couch. Jimin touches his damp face, brushes his hair. Kisses him the whole time, so many kisses, enough that something in Taehyung gives way and he feels light again, bright. Like every press of Jimin’s mouth to his skin is like being fed a piece of starlight. Like Jimin’s the only thing keeping him here.

“Don’t go out there without me,” Jimin says, finally. Taehyung nods, falls into him like a stone into the water, lets Jimin kiss him sea-salt sweet. “Don’t scare me like that. I can’t lose you, I can’t.”

Taehyung licks his lips, breathes deep. He reaches up to touch his hair, and finds it dry. His clothes are dry, too. 

Vanished like in a trick. Like magic, but sicker. 

“Was it a dream?” he asks, and Jimin stares down at him, wide-eyed. “All of that? Just a dream?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jimin says, tight-lipped. He rocks Taehyung gently, but his fingers are clenched so tight into Taehyung’s sides that he’s sure to leave little lilac fingernail-moons behind. “It doesn’t matter, Taetae. You’re okay now.”

There are bloody handprints on the couch, the piano. They bloom crimson against the window. 

Taehyung hides his face in Jimin’s shoulder. Breathes in his scent. Ignores the faint twang of iron in the air.

It’s not me, he thinks. It can’t be me.

7.

He dreams of a thing from the past, which hurts most of all.

Some years ago, they’d taken a day-trip to Gyeonggi-do. Just the two of them. It was in the midst of busy schedules for both of them, and they’d had to scrounge to find a day that was good for them both. The trip was so out of the blue that they'd lost their way, taking the wrong Korail out of Seoul and having to traipse back to the starting point twice before they found the right train.

The bus that dropped them off at Pocheon was a rust-bucket. They wandered past the lake and the cookie museum and the picnic tables. Jimin made them stand in line for the monorail that went over the top of the quarry, below which a green pool reflected the craggy cliffs. Taehyung took a ton of pictures of the makgeolli igloo, only because it seemed to tickle Jimin so much. 

Then they went to the space museum.

It was for kids, clearly, the same way the COEX aquarium was. The artwork and the exhibits were child-like, catering to a Technicolor wonder that adults would have long since left behind. 

Not that that stopped it from being a dating spot. 

There was something to be said about experiencing the wonder of another world with someone’s hand held in yours. Something about the fragile ghost-light of aquariums, or the fairy-tale glimmer of far-off galaxies, that appealed so specifically to young lovers. 

Maybe it was the possibility of something more than the mundane. The cups of their routine lives spilling over.

Taehyung remembers looking away from the swirl of the Milky Way on the planetarium’s ceiling. Remembers the way light had settled on Jimin’s face. Violet and pink and gold dust across his cheekbones. A wash of constellations against his cheeks. A swirling field of stars in his eyes.

He remembers that Jimin had looked back at him, smiling.

But this is where the dream changes. This is where it becomes something else.  

“Taehyung-ah. You promised,” Jimin says. He looks away. “You promised we’d stay together.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung says, the word reverent in his mouth.

“I miss you,” Jimin says. He sounds suddenly angry. The cosmos in his eyes blur out, drip brightness down his cheek. “I love you. Where did you go? Why?”

I’m right here, Taehyung wants to say, I didn’t go anywhere.

But Taehyung’s  mouth is not his. 

His mouth is an empty slash, a dark wound. His mouth is sewn shut. 

I’m right here, he thinks desperately. Jimin-ah. Look at me.

And when the last of the galaxies fades, when the lights come on, Jimin sees him for what he is.

A thing with empty lungs and bleached bones. Eyes dark as burnt sugar. Blood in its crevices where it spills over, pressing its ugly truth in messy handprints all over the expensive counters of this beautiful house.

An unclean thing. An undead thing.

Oh my god, Jimin says, the same way he did the other night. You can’t be here, Taehyung-ah. You don’t belong.

It’s the soiled edge of this false memory that wakes Taehyung. 

That imagined look on Jimin’s face. His fear. His horror. That final, complete knowledge that Taehyung will never recover from this, will never be well. 

Will never be.

It’s what wakes Taehyung, because it’s so far into nightmare-territory, so out of the question of reality. 

In reality, he knows Jimin will only always gather him up into his arms, bone by bone, tender and sweet and delicate. In reality, he knows there’s nothing that can part them. Not even death.

8.

This is the snowglobe of the apartment Taehyung can’t leave.

Jimin begins keeping a diary, a record book of sorts. In it he notes down the various strangenesses that sprout from the apartment’s walls like particularly resistant mold. Lights. Spiders. Mist. Memory, like broken thread, unspooling from some crevice or another. 

He sees none of it himself. If it's happening, it's all happening at a frequency that only Taehyung is attuned to. If it's happening, it's all happening in the backwater tides of Taehyung's imagination. 

Some nights he comes in from a shoot to find Taehyung in front of the window, so close that his nose touches the glass, bright tears running down his face and fingers curled tight against the surface. Jimin can’t see anything out the window except the normal vista of the city. Taehyung will whisper about the mist if asked, but even he’s unsure what that actually means.

There are things out there, he tells Jimin once. In the mist. Don’t look at me like that, Jimin-ah, I’m not making it up.

Exactly what things? Jimin asks, but Taehyung has no answer to that. His mouth just twists, looking for words, trying to describe what lies beyond that wide expanse of traffic and darkness and people and light. 

You don’t believe me, he says finally, tired voice gravel on sand. You don’t see.

Jimin thinks about him sitting there for hours like that, staring into nothing. He tries to help by setting the glass to opaque mode and hiding the remote, but somehow, Taehyung finds a way to turn it back to transparency. 

Jimin hates it.

“The snow stopped,” Taehyung whispers one night. “It stopped. Looks warm out there.”

“It’s hot.”

“That makes no sense,” Taehyung says. He trembles. “How does that make sense? How did I get here? I don’t remember.”

“You’re just stressed. You’re just--”

“I don’t remember moving here.”

Jimin clicks his mouth shut. “Tae.”

“Why does none of our friends come see us anymore? Why don’t we go see them?”

“It’s a busy season,” Jimin whispers. “They’re just busy, Taehyung-ah.”

“No. They don’t want to come here. Something’s wrong here.”

He's stubborn about it, demanding answers Jimin doesn't have for him. Every question is a minefield. And because he’s Taehyung, because he watches and observes far more than anyone’s ever given him credit for, he also stops.

He stops when the questions get too much and Jimin can’t take it anymore. He stops when Jimin’s sight gets blurry, or his voice too reedy. 

When he isn't worried about the apartment, Taehyung is sweetly, wonderfully, himself. When he isn't thinking of the spiders or the mist or the weather outside, he's loud and funny as he is, willing to help Jimin with dinner even as he tries to microwave rice wrong, occasionally stopping all proceedings to simply cling to Jimin like an overgrown puppy. 

When he forgets to look out the window, he'll paint, or lie on his stomach on the carpet watching obscure pretty movies about love, or show Jimin the dark sky reserves in Japan where volcanic calderas act as natural planetariums. 

When he forgets about the spiders, they order cheap takeout chicken and cheaper soju and drink late into the night, together. When he forgets to be afraid, their lips touch, and they melt into each other like water through parched ground. 

Jimin loves him so much he thinks his heart will shear in two with the force. 

He has his own nightmares. Memories, distorted and passed up through a surreal filter. Every time he falls into a deep-enough sleep, he dreams of the same thing. 

Blood. Metal. Glass.

But there's no two ways about Taehyung's troubles with their living situation. One time, Jimin comes back to find all the mirrors blacked out. Another time, Jimin finds him hidden away in the bathroom, terrified of the carpet, beneath which he claims things have been moving. Hell-things, he calls them. They come out when you aren’t around.

Yet another time, Jimin comes home to find him standing in the middle of the room, dressed in one of the jackets from a long ago photoshoot, a thing of gauze and mirrors and light. His long legs are bare beneath the hem of the jacket, shorts all but swallowed up in the glitzy fabric.

"Did you dress up?" Jimin asks. "Where did you even find that thing?" 

Taehyung shrugs. "Inside," he says. "With some other things. I was unpacking."

"You said you were waiting for my things so we could do it together."

"It's taking long," Taehyung says, gaze shifting away. He doesn’t dwell on questions much these days, knowing there are no answers. "I found this in the pocket."

This is a little card, nothing more than a name and a number. Jimin recognises the name. He looks up at Taehyung, questioning. 

"I have met a Jeon Jungkook," Taehyung says, turning the card around. "I have, haven't I? I didn't dream him up." 

Jimin blinks. "Of course you have," he says, carefully. "He's my coworker, isn't he?" 

Taehyung swallows hard. "Were we - was I friends? With him?" 

"Yes. I suppose so."

"Can I talk to him? On the phone?" 

Jimin cups his cheek. "Where's this coming from?" 

Taehyung doesn't meet his gaze. Gives a spooked little shrug. "I don't know."

That music box is tinkling. In the evening light, Taehyung's clothes throw miniature star bursts against his pretty skin. Jimin bites his lip. 

"Is it because you’re alone here?" 

Taehyung rubs his eyes. "I have you."

"I'm sorry I'm gone so long every day," Jimin says. "I'm sorry I'm not here when you need me. Tae-yah, I'm sorry."

"But it's not your fault." Taehyung says. “It’s not. It’s the window, and the mist, and the--”

Jimin feels a tightness in his chest, quick to resolve into tears. "I wish I could just stay here with you, all day. Just stay here so you don't look out the window, or catalog dead insects, or dream up new terrors that can't hurt you. Just stay here so I can hold you and tell you that you’re okay.  I don't know how to help, Taehyung-ah. I really don't."

Taehyung shudders. His eyes are so big. So wide and scared, when he's like this, when he's afraid and small and folding his fingers into Jimin's jacket like that's his only anchor to reality.

"There's something wrong with this place," he whispers. "There's something very wrong here, Jimin-ah."

"Nothing is wrong here," Jimin says, as gently as he can. He needs Taehyung to believe that. "You're stressed. You've been all alone this break, in this place you don't know. It's just stress."

"No," Taehyung says, earnest. "Listen. I know how much you've put into this place. I know how much you wanted this for us. But everything here scares me. The window. The hall. Everything here is wrong, Jimin-ah."

"Nothing here is wrong."

"But the mist… " 

"You said you wanted to be together for a long time," Jimin says. It comes out accusatory, tearful. "You said it."

Taehyung gives a fitful nod. The mirrors on his jacket tinkle. He's shaking, Jimin thinks. He's shaking so hard he can barely stand. How is any of this going to work if he's so scared? 

"This is how we do that." Jimin says, voice tight. He thinks he's going to start crying. "This is the way we do that."

He leaves Taehyung standing there in the living room, still holding the card with Jungkook's number. Pretends he can't see the bare white shock on Taehyung's face. 

His tongue feels knotted with fear. It's not like they can throw this away, he thinks. It's not like they can just walk out because of these inconveniences that aren't even real. 

This is all they have.

Taehyung will just have to learn to adjust. 

9.

This is the hall of his nightmares where he's trapped every night. 

Taehyung dreams of webs all over the walls and industriously spinning spiders. He dreams of being dragged out of surreal parties. He dreams of the window’s glass disappearing while he's pressed against it, and hurtling all the way to the ground. 

He wakes with a start and stares at the ceiling. The recessed night-lights blink like stars in his vision. 

He slips out of bed, and stands for a minute at its foot. Jimin mumbles something in his sleep and turns around. Taehyung frowns.

Enough , he thinks. Enough of this . 

He’s going to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

It’s a bit like waking up: this new resolve. A bit like a slap across the face. His shirt is damp from nightmare-sweat, clings to his skin. His feet are cold. 

He’s awake.

Outside the apartment: that familiar grating.

His body feels like an engine. A gyre of metal and gasoline, spurring him towards the door. In the living room, shapes move wordlessly behind the TV, mirroring the window. It’s transparent again. Thick fingerprints glow in the moonlight.

On the TV console, a few of their photos sit. Mist-shrouded. Taehyung can’t tell if the mist has swallowed him or Jimin. Maybe both. 

A spider sits, curdled and dead, above the television. 

Taehyung slips out of the door and into the hall. Ice water puddles in his stomach. The other apartment has its lights on, now. Voices spill from it.

Taehyung runs the tip of his tongue over his teeth, letting it catch and scrape against a rough molar. The sudden salt-tinged pain grounds him. 

He strides across the hall, to the other apartment’s door. Raises his hand to the smooth wood of it, ready to knock. 

It swings open before he can.

The man who stands there is youngish, vaguely familiar. Maybe an actor. He blinks violently at Taehyung, the lovely pinstriped suit he’s dressed in clashing terribly with the flour-dusted rolling pin he’s holding. “You’re not Yoongi,” he says. “You’re Kim Taehyung. I know you.”

That slash of vertigo again. “I live in--” his words are slurry. Taehyung points to the apartment down the hall. 760-6. 76-06. He's not sure. “There.”

“Oh. Right. Of course. You just moved in. Yoongi said. Your boyfriend is a tiny dancer. Not tinier than Yoongi, though he won't accept it.” The man’s laugh is searingly bright in the gloom of the corridor. His eyes narrow. “You look white. Are you dizzy?”

Taehyung nods. His mouth is dry. Through the gap between the man’s body and the door, he can see the inside of the apartment. It looks similar to his and Jimin’s. Large window. Turned to opaque.

“Come in and sit down for a minute,” the man says. “Come on. I won’t bite. Yoongi’s coming up in a minute, our furniture keeps being delivered at odd times.”

Inside, their apartments are both different and mirror-like in similarity. The interiors are less quirky, more staid. The curtains are blacker.

“The windows freak me out at night,” the man says. “We’re so fucking high up. This building is beautiful, but all this distance between me and the ground…”

This building is a levitation trick, Taehyung has thought many times. Isn’t it strange how everyone just goes about their lives, suspended one above the other, several hundred feet above the ground? 

He pinches himself to stay in the present.

“Have I seen you on TV?”

“My name’s Kim Seokjin,” the man tells him. “I make food videos?”

Ah. “Your face looked familiar.”

“So does yours. I’ve seen a drama or two of yours, I think. Do you know most of this building is full of actors? And idols. And chaebols, I think, but don’t tell Yoongi I said that.”

Taehyung accepts a mug of something warm, folding his fingers around it and relishing the heat. Seokjin looks at him with a puzzled quirk to his eyebrows. 

“I was just shooting a video,” he says. “Dessert. I’m not very good at it, but it has strawberries. Do you like strawberries?”

Taehyung smiles. “Do I look that terrible?”

“Like a sweet bedraggled puppy in serious need of sugar,” Seokjin puts a hand to his heart. “Drink that. It’s tea. I’ll get you some cake.”

The tea is bitter, which makes him flinch, but feels good going down his throat. There are pictures on the walls here that Taehyung stands up to take a better look at. Most of it is of Seokjin with a smaller, paler man that Taehyung guesses is Yoongi: there they are, posing on the deck of a fishing boat; on holiday in Jeju; at some film premiere somewhere. Taehyung thinks he knows Yoongi too. He makes music. Although, there’s something about Yoongi he also knows. 

A slippery little thought that’s swallowed easily by the sinkhole in his mind. 

“How are you liking it here so far?” Seokjin asks. “Settled in okay?”

Taehyung makes a useless gesture. “I’m not sure, really.”

Seokjin makes a sympathetic sound. “It’s quiet, isn’t it? Quieter than most places. I knew it would be, considering the price tag, but I didn’t know how used I’d gotten to the sounds of traffic and people. You know?”

Taehyung gives a nonchalant shrug. “I feel like a ghost sometimes.”

Something in Seokjin’s face shutters. “Ha,” he says. “Yoongi used to say that, too. He likes it now, though. You’ll see.”

Taehyung’s chest tightens. “Do you hear strange noises at night, though?” 

“Like what do you mean?”

“Like a weird...I don’t know. Something scraping across the floor?”

Seokjin, pottering around the kitchen island, freezes. “From...below?”

“I can never place it.”

“A scraping sound?”

“I can’t really describe it.” Taehyung feels suddenly strange. There are so many pictures of a fluffy looking dog in the apartment, but there seems to be no dog, nothing that points to even the ghost of its presence. Taehyung frowns. “It’s loud. The noise.  It’s all over.”

“The apartment that you bought--is it in your name? Or your boyfriend’s?”

“Mine. Why?”

“Oh.” Seokjin places a little plate on the coffee table. His hand shakes. “Do you see things out the window?”

Taehyung takes the pastry spoon from him, pushes it into the cake. Watches the way the strawberries burst blood-red over the cream frosting. “Yes,” he says, finally. “Do you?”

Seokjin’s mouth pulls down in a frown. “Not me. Yoongi.”

“Can I speak to him?”

“He doesn’t see it anymore,” Seokjin shrugs. “It’s a light thing, the building super said. A reflection thing. He got over it. He just needed time to adjust.”

Taehyung nods. “That’s what Jimin says.”

“You should listen to him,” Seokjin says, a breeziness to his voice that seems at odds to the tight way he’s holding himself. “Don’t go looking for the source of your noises, Taehyung-ssi. They’ll go away on their own.”

Taehyung takes a bite of the cake. It’s sweet in his mouth, melting against his tongue. “Did you say that to Yoongi too?” 

“Mm-hmm.”

“Did he listen?”

Seokjin smiles. “Of course not,” he says. “He’s never listened to me a day in his life. But we got help. We’re okay now. Really.”

“He doesn’t see anything out the window now? No spiders? No noises?”

“Nothing,” Seokjin’s smile gets brighter. “Everything’s perfect now. Like it’s supposed to be.”

Taehyung doesn’t want perfect , he thinks. Taehyung wants answers. “Can I speak to him?”

“Eat your cake.”

The strawberries are very sweet. They make him feel slightly ill. 

“I just want to ask him what it was like. What he saw.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Seokjin says, firm but kind. “Not right now.”

“You said he was coming up in a minute.”

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

Taehyung squeezes his eyes shut. Disconnected images well up. 

The dreams. The blood. Jimin’s missing stuff. The Christmas goodies in winter. 

Lost time. Lost dogs. Lost memories.

“Taehyung-ssi,” Seokjin says, quietly, “I think you need to go back to your apartment.”

“I just want to-”

He pauses. 

Outside, that horrible noise has started up again. 

Something dragging across the floor. 

Someone .

Seokjin closes his eyes, rubs his lids. He says: “They’re looking for you.”

“Who?”

“The staff.”

Taehyung stumbles to his feet. He wants to run like an animal, down the stairs and out the glass doors of the lobby. He wants to run and run and never stop. There’s a spider spinning its web in Seokjin’s beautiful stained-glass chandelier, and he wants to smash it to bits. 

He wants to run.  

Instead, he goes out into the hallway. It’s empty. The door to his own apartment is still cracked open, just the way he’d left it, except for the wash of light from the window as usual.

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says, following him to the door. “I’m sorry I can’t help right now. Let’s meet some other time, okay?”

“No, please, I--”

“I hope you find a way to be happy here,” Seokjin whispers. “I hope the person who loves you is happy.”

The door shuts behind Taehyung.

He stands for a minute in the hall, jerking to life when the grating comes again. 

The staff , he hears in Seokjin’s voice. They’re looking for you.

He starts towards 76-06, then changes directions and walks towards the elevator lobby. One’s already waiting at their floor, doors sluicing open with a high-tech whir when Taehyung presses the down button. He steps inside. It smells like perfume. Operatic music spills from speakers.

 The row of numbers on the console go down as far as 25, but there’s also 0. 

He presses 0.

Immediately, everything goes dark. 

A paralyzing silence fills the small space. No music, no whirring of electronics. Just the dark and him, like within a coffin. That familiar sticky wetness drips down his chin again. His eyes water.

Something moves at the corner of the elevator. 

Something reaches out and curls around his ankles, holding him in place. In the dark, the fingers are long and thin, blackened.

A hell-thing. 

He’s too frozen to move. Against his skin, the cool flesh of those strange hands feel slick, clammy. 

The hell-thing has no face. No torso. Only hands. 

The elevator rattles. The console lights up, numbers blinking bright. 

Taehyung asks, trembling: “What are you?” 

Pressure, against his bones. He thinks of more fingers pushing out from the bottom of the elevator. A legion of monsters, from some other place. Some dead place. The dark of the elevator shaft teeming with them. Mouths attached to them, teeth, eyes. Thinks of the floor disappearing, and this building showing itself to him at its truest, most terrible form.

Maybe 76-06 occupies a delicate seesaw balance between the dead and the living.

Between the earth and the monstrous afterlife.

“Stop it,” he tells himself, the shudders that rock through him so violent he thinks he’ll fall. 

His voice echoes like a haunting.

There are shadows outside. Inhuman. Arguing. 

Fingers yank at the bottom of Taehyung’s pajamas. A cold lick of air curls around his neck. Been a little too curious, have we?

Taehyung whips around.

There’s nothing there.

Once again, from behind him: Look at you now. Is this what you wanted to see?

The elevator vibrates violently. The light flickers on again. The hell-thing gags him, sucks the scream from his mouth when he sees.

 In his reflection on the glass, Taehyung looks nothing at all like himself. 

The dark clots of blood aren’t him. The damp terror in those sunken eyes aren’t him. The hand that rises to smear the violent image away isn’t him.

It can't be him. 

He looks bloodless and tormented, quicksilver ghost, a discount extra in some dark movie. 

He looks gwishin, all haunted hair and crooked bones. 

His fingers are wet and dark. His mouth is a gash. Crimson-brown spackles his skin all over, the evidence of some ghoulish, long-forgotten past. 

The hell-thing's fingers are still clamped around his mouth. Muffling his fright. 

He pulls wildly at it, trying to get it to let go. The fingers only dig tighter into his chin, painful now. 

He shouldn’t be here. He should’ve stayed in the apartment, stayed inside. He should’ve never seen--

Outside, a familiar, panicked voice snaps, “Where is he?”

The elevator door slides open. A shadow resolves itself into Jimin, once more wide-eyed and sleep-mussed. Abruptly, the fingers around his mouth are gone, the scratching along the corners of the elevators silenced. The hell-thing melts through the floor, into whatever terrifying darkness it had come from. 

Taehyung sinks to the floor, a wave of misery folding down on him, an iron curtain. 

His hands are bloody. His hair. His skin--

A muted, high keen of sound wrenches itself out of his chest. Jimin flinches, but only for a second. Then he's kneeling down to hug him from behind, chin pressed to Taehyung's shoulder, mouth to his ear.

“There’s something in the reflections,” Taehyung says, gasping into Jimin’s shoulder. "Something in…”

"Sshh," Jimin rocks him, softly. “I’ve got you.”

“It’s not me . It’s not me.”

Jimin’s voice sounds thick. “Let’s go back, yeah? Let’s go back, and we’ll get all this...all this stuff off you. Get you warm.”

“You have to believe me. That's not me."

“I love you. I love you so much. You’re going to be okay."

Taehyung shuts his eyes. Lets himself be led back to the apartment. Lets Jimin wash the blood of him, slow, the coconut-scented shampoo and warm water lulling him into a strange stillness from which it’s difficult to wake. 

The bathtub turns pink in their wake. The drain clogs, strangely, with clumps of hair and blood.

That can’t be real.

Taehyung’s head lolls. Smacks against the bathtub. 

Feels like he’s unthreading.

“Jimin-ah,” he says, sometime later. Hours later. “Am I here?”

Jimin’s crying. He looks miserable. Taehyung hates it when he’s sad, hates it more than anything else in the world. Jimin is beautiful, prettiest when he smiles. True, they’ve cried together a lot. They’ve fallen apart in each others’ arms. 

But seldom because of each other.

Now Jimin is crying, and Taehyung is the reason why. Because Taehyung sees monsters where there shouldn’t be. Taehyung sees death outside glass where there should only be the jewel-like skyline of the city they both love. Taehyung loses time, and can’t look at mirrors.

He bites his tongue. Squeezes Jimin’s ankle. “Sorry.”

Jimin rubs at his eyes. There’s soap stuck in his brow. His eyes are bloodshot, mouth twisted into a slash. “It’s not you,” he says. “It’s never you.”

“Seems like it’s me,” Taehyung whispers. His lips feel numb. “Seems like it’s totally me. Like I’m not even real.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I have to," Taehyung's teeth chatter. "Seems like I’m not real.”

“Don’t say that.” Jimin gives a hard sob. His white shirt is pink with so much watery blood. “I only just got you back. It’s not fair.”

Just got you back.

Taehyung wonders faintly if Seokjin has had similar conversations with Yoongi. If everyone in this apartment building has. If the ‘staff’ goes looking nightly for those wandering the halls in search of answers. If the hell-things chase them down to silence.

When the water starts up again, warm and wonderful, he wonders what happens to those who do find them.

10.

This is the star-spattered ocean of their bed in the early morning light.

Taehyung takes time to fall asleep. He’s confused, Jimin can tell. Probably even in shock.

And so Jimin talks endlessly. About dance, about books. He tells Taehyung about the new coffee place that’s opened up near his agency, and how their old haunts miss them. He whispers about stars and the moon and all these other things Taehyung likes. He talks until his mouth is dry, and then more, and then more, until Taehyung finally stops looking too hard at the corners of the room for hell-things.

Sleep is restless. Taehyung keeps turning over to find Jimin, even in sleep, before seeming to give up altogether and simply throw all his limbs over Jimin. Jimin likes the weight. Means they’re both here.

He presses his palm to the steady rise and fall of Taehyung’s chest. Traces the fingerprint bruises on his chin from the thing in the elevator.

There’s worry coiling in his gut to the point of nausea. He can’t sleep. He keeps thinking of earlier. Of finding Taehyung in that elevator. Bloodied. Terrified. 

This isn’t supposed to happen.

There’s a card somewhere in the living room, tossed thoughtlessly into a drawer. It belongs to the real estate agent who’d helped Jimin secure this place. Maybe in the morning Jimin will call him. Maybe there’s a clause, a loop somewhere, that they’ve missed. Some sort of mistake.

Or maybe he’ll talk to Seokjin.

He has to thank him, after all. If Seokjin hadn’t called, the moment Taehyung had left their apartment, if he hadn’t woken Jimin and sent him running out into the hall, there’s no saying who would’ve found Taehyung. 

Who or what .

Jimin shudders and buries his face in Taehyung’s hair. His brows are furrowed in sleep. Maybe Jimin will move the dreamcatcher here. Maybe that will make these nightmares stop.

Or maybe it will get worse.

Maybe whatever terrible thing is playing out behind Taehyung’s eyes will spill out, into this bedroom. Some monstrous other from a world that isn’t this. A dimension that isn’t human. 

It’s not improbable.

Some months ago, Jimin would’ve thought this building was improbable. Out of time, out of place. The universe pausing outside the windows, seasons out of whack. Residents that blink in and out of existence. What use does the dead have for the rules of reality, anyway?

But now he walks through the glass doors and across the lobby every day. Now he climbs into an elevator and presses the button to an improbable floor. Now he learns to look straight: never at the corners, never beneath carpets, never outside windows for too long.

He’d kept his eyes closed in the hallway before. Until he found Taehyung, he’d kept his eyes closed. 

Best not to let the staff see you, Seokjin had said. 

Seokjin, who had experience. Who’s been here longer. Who’s made this work.

Jimin wants to scream. His throat feels like someone has scraped their fingernails across it until it bled dry. His tongue feels dead in his mouth. 

Taehyung mumbles in sleep and shifts. A pale arc of light shines off the tip of his nose. Jimin wants to both kiss and claw, despair and desire warring in him with equal measure.

“I hate this,” he whispers. “I hate it, Taehyung-ah.”

Taehyung’s skin is unnervingly perfect. In this light, he looks like a marionette.

But puppets don’t have feelings, he thinks, with a shudder. Puppets don’t cry or ask questions. 

Jimin looks at him till his sight blurs. He’s not sure when he falls into an uneasy doze, but he’s woken up by the house phone.

The ringing breaks the silence of the night. Jimin ignores it. It rings itself to a stop, and then starts again.

Jimin pads out into the living room and snatches the receiver off the wall. 

“Hullo?”

The voice that answers is the same voice that had first taken Jimin’s careful questions about this building. Boringly formal. Very much corporate.

“Good morning, Jimin-ssi,” it says. “Having some problems, are we?”

11.

This is the bright afternoon light of the magazine-pretty living room they currently own.

When Taehyung wakes, it’s still bright outside. He’s lying on the sofa. Jimin’s perched beside him, looking at him, a smile on his face. 

Taehyung wraps his hands around Jimin’s shoulders and pulls him toward him. He feels unmoored in this house in the brightest of light; needs an anchor. Jimin moves, carefully placing his knees on either side of Taehyung’s body, bracketing him in. it’s a position they’re used to; Jimin’s weight pressing him down, Taehyung pleased to have the solid warmth of him in his arms.

“You’re back early,” Taehyung says. He’s spent all morning looking at art online. There’s something wrong about every painting in this place. Like they all belong to someone else. “Slow day?”

“The cameraman didn’t show up.”

Jimin tastes like mint candy at first, then like something implacable. His hands slide under Taehyung’s shirt, flutters teasingly at his sides. Taehyung squirms, ticklish. 

“Why have you made all the windows so dark?” Jimin asks. “It’s daytime. Why have the lights on?”

Taehyung’s world is hazy and disorienting from his spot on the sofa. He lets Jimin’s lips graze against his, lets his teeth nip lightly against his jaw, before he says: “You know I don’t like the windows.”

“I know. You think there are monsters out there.”

Taehyung shivers at the way Jimin’s voice reverberates through his body. “There are.”

“Oh, Taehyung-ah. When will you get it? Nothing out there can hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt.”

Taehyung freezes. He feels Jimin’s lips touch his eyelids, one a time, and when he opens his eyes again, something has shifted. 

The light.

 It’s gone, and above him there’s no ceiling. Only a roiling wide expanse of black sky. 

Jimin’s fingers tangle harshly in his hair. “When will you see?” he mocks. “You’re so out of place here.”

He kisses Taehyung again, but this time he doesn’t feel warm. This time he doesn’t feel real. His lips are still soft but his mouth is cold, and his chest doesn’t rise and fall at all. 

Taehyung tries to shove him off. “Jimin--”

“And the more out of place you act,” Jimin continues, “The worse it’ll get for you.”

“Stop,” Taehyung moans. This has to be a dream. It has to.

A cruel gleam of amusement sparks in Jimin’s face. He grinds down suddenly, and a spike of sudden, terrible pleasure dislodges the screaming fear in Taehyung’s mind. His hands slide up Taehyung’s body, leaving a wake of fiery skin, the push-pull of terror and desire a dangerous undertow. His fingers are strange and long, black at the edges, like something that’s clawed its way up the kilns of purgatory. 

A hell-thing.

“You’re not Jimin,” Taehyung rasps. His tongue feels thick, heavy with dizziness. “You’re not--”

Jimin smiles. Razor sharp. “I’m only not Jimin as much as you’re not what you’re pretending to be,” he says. His thumbs press down lightly against Taehyung’s eyes. “Blind, stupid thing. Open your eyes.” 

His hips press down again, and Taehyung gasps, arches away. 

He wants to wake up now, he thinks. 

He wants to wake up, wake up, wake up. The surface of consciousness can’t be that far, can’t be unreachable. The hell-thing moves against him, laughing. Its skin ripples like a moth, sparks dancing along its veins, eyes like fireflies. 

Utterly inhuman. 

The ghostly echo of its teeth rents him apart. Hits his chest first and keeps his heart for the last. It shreds through him, strings him out into a web of red. It pirates his body and pulverizes his bones.

“Wake up, boy,” it snaps in his ear. “Come play with the ghouls.”

Taehyung jolts awake.

He wakes, and it’s dark. He wakes, and Jimin’s not there. He wakes, and he can still feel faint ghostly pressure against his eyes. Against his hips.

Jimin’s voice carries from the living room, agitated. 

“--you promised ,” he’s saying. “Only a few days, you promised, but it’s been weeks now. Weeks--”

Taehyung rubs the dregs of his nightmare from his eyes, gathers his shaky limbs, and moves quietly in Jimin’s direction.

“I don’t want to force it,” Jimin says. “I don’t care what the other residents did, I don’t want--I just want him to be okay. ”

Taehyung wonders who he’s talking to. Had there always been a phone here? Taehyung had never noticed. 

“I just want him to be my Taehyung,” Jimin whispers. He sounds so close to tears again, Taehyung’s heart clenches. “I know it’s difficult. I know. I know this is a gamble, that there’s a price to pay. But h-he...he can’t live like this. He can’t. This is a mistake, this is--”

Taehyung bites his lip. He stays quiet, just around the corner. It’s so early in the morning for phone-calls. But then again, everything in this building is strange. 

Wrong. Unreal. 

“--of course I know there’s no going back,” Jimin snaps. “But what if he never stops seeing through the cracks? What then?”

The grating. Something knocks on the door. 

“I don’t want him to be s-scared, I don’t want--oh. No. No, please don’t. No.”

From his hiding place, Taehyung can see Jimin freeze.

“Please, please, don’t,” Jimin says, in a choked gasp. His face is bright with terror. “I’ll make sure we--I--TaeTae?”

Taehyung retreats, as quiet as he can. He hears Jimin walk towards where he’d been hiding, phone in his hand, anxious exhales loud in the apartment’s stillness. 

Taehyung goes back to the bedroom, slides under the covers. The thing at the door knocks again, and Jimin hisses at it: go away. 

In the room, the hell-thing from earlier reaches long fingers from the corner. 

Taehyung doesn’t even scream. Just watches it, no fight left in him. 

Best not to be too curious, it says, matter-of-fact. Its fingers caress his elbow, press against the soft inner crook of it. 

It doesn’t look like Jimin anymore. 

It says: If you want to keep this shape, boy-thing, best not to ask too many questions. 

It says: If you want to keep your Jimin and not me, best try to be a sweet, dumb thing.

Its fingers dig into his skin. Taehyung curls up around his pillow, pretending to sleep. The thing laughs at him. Its fingers skim the top of his thighs. 

That’s it, it tells him. Good boy.

Jimin comes back in a few more minutes. If he knows Taehyung is only pretending to sleep, he says nothing of it. If he sees the hell-thing, he acts like he doesn’t notice. 

It sits in the corner, just like furniture. 

 12.

In the morning, Taehyung pretends. 

Pretends that he doesn’t hear the voices from behind the window, calling his name. Pretends that he doesn’t see that strange light, or the sky boiling over with crows. Pretends that he doesn’t see the mass of dead spiders scattered across their ceiling like warped constellations, or the carpet that heaves and writhes like something is trying to get out of it.

Apparently, his pretenses aren’t good enough because the hell-thing keeps finding him. Keeps reminding him. If you want to keep this shape, little ghoul. It sticks its fingers in his mouth. Tells him that this is what he’ll get if he gets too curious. If he tests the safety of the apartment too much.

Jimin stays with him, nervous. Tiptoes around Taehyung. Taehyung hates it, hates this pain that Jimin’s carrying around. 

He’s also completely terrified of what that means.  

In the afternoon, after a falsely-cheery lunch of ramyun and coke, Jimin finally breaks. 

“I know you heard me.”

“I’m not sure what I heard.”

Jimin rubs his eyes. He looks hollow, scooped out. “The building super called last night,” he says. “He thinks he might have a solution for us. To fix all this.”

“Fix all this,” Taehyung says, “or fix me?”

Jimin gives him a long look. “Taehyung-ah.”

“I know,” Taehyung folds his arms around his knees. “I’m the thing that haunts this apartment. I know.”

Jimin presses his fist to his mouth. His lashes are all clumped together with tears. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I tried. ”

Taehyung nods. “There’s no way out,” he says, quietly. “The elevators are a scare-house trick. The windows...we’re so high up. There aren’t any stairs.”

Jimin rubs his eyes, like a child. “There was no other way,” he says, the words tripping over his tongue with how fast he speaks. “You have to understand, Taehyung-ah. There was no other way .”

Taehyung’s nails dig into his thighs. His mouth is dry. “How many floors is this building, really?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many...souls?”

Jimin bites his lip. “When the agent met me, when he told me about this place... I didn’t believe him. I thought he was exploiting me, trying to diminish my grief. A glamorous new building with a very special offering? I thought he was evil, for even suggesting...for even intimating that I could see you again, touch you,” Jimin takes a hard, staggering breath, wiping furiously at his eyes before he continues. “B-but then he had me meet others, insiders, people who knew, people who were living here--”

“Seokjin.”

“And I learned that it was true, it was possible. I could get you back. I didn’t have to be alone, I didn’t have to live through a nightmare every fucking day. You were dead and I could get you back.I was desperate, Taehyung-ah. How was I not supposed to try?”

“You must have paid a lot.”

A sharp, bitter laugh. “Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have done the same thing, Kim Taehyung,” Jimin says. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Taehyung clenches his fists tighter. Looks at that hated window, the mist that pools against the glass. Looks at Jimin.

He’s right. The maddening, infuriating thing here is that he’s right.

Taehyung would have done no different.

“You should have told me. You should have said...I thought I was going insane.”

“You weren’t supposed to see these things,” Jimin says, “The agent said you’d have some trouble adjusting initially, but it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.”

“Ghostly teething problems,” Taehyung tries to repress a hysterical laugh. “Really?”

“Don’t say it like that.” Jimin’s face crumples. “Please. Please don’t say it like that.”

“What’s the fix?” Taehyung asks. He’s thinking of the hell-thing. He’s thinking of its fingers digging into his skin, rearranging his insides, fixing him up to be some perfect calcified thing made of dream and bone, a puppet of someone else’s desires. 

“I don’t know,” Jimin says. “But he says we can’t stay here any longer if we don’t take it.”

Taehyung swallows. “When’s he coming?”

“At night.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Kim Seokjin...he said the fix worked.”

“He did.”

“He said they’re happy now.”

“They are.”

“And you want--you want us to be happy here,” Taehyung says. “You want us to be happy. You think we can be--”

“Yes. Yes. ” Jimin’s eyes are bright with tears. “You weren’t there. You weren’t there, Taehyung-ah, you don’t know how it feels--how I couldn’t breathe . For sixty-one days I didn’t think I was breathing. I didn’t think I was living.”

“Every other apartment in every other floor of this building--”

“They’re happy, Taehyung-ah. We can be, too. If only you stopped seeing these things through the cracks, this hell--”

Hell, like unwanted mold on the walls. Hell, like an inconvenient roach infestation.

If only Taehyung was clean, disinfected, eyes closed and pretending, try to be a sweet dumb thing--

“Okay.” He says. “We’ll take the fix.” 

Jimin’s breath hiccups in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles again. “I’d do it again. I’m terrible. I deserve the worst. But I’d do it again for you. I would.”

Taehyung brings their hands together, holds tight. “I know,” he says. “So would I.”

13.

The doorbell rings at midnight.

They’ve been sitting on the sofa all day, the two of them. Curled up together like leaves after a storm. Jimin hasn’t eaten. Taehyung has realized he doesn’t have to ever eat again, not if he doesn’t want to. The hell-thing has skittered in the corners a bit, but kept its distance. Taehyung has wondered if it is curious. If it’s looking hard and deep for any signs that he’s not doing what it said.

When the bell rings, Jimin goes white as a sheet and cringes into the cushions. Taehyung keeps his hold tight. 

The door swings open.

Taehyung doesn’t know what he expects. A monster, maybe. Something misshapen. A legion of hell-things, all set out to take him apart and put him back together again. 

Instead, there’s a young man.

“The building super asked me to pay a neighborly visit, take care of some of your troubles,” he says. “Can I come in?”

Jimin’s eyes go round. “Yoongi-ssi?”

Yoongi nods. He’s short and pale, dressed in cozy black. His eyes, when they rest on Taehyung, look sharp and intelligent.

“Seokjin hyung said you stopped by,” Yoongi tells Taehyung. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you. He said you were having some troubles with the place?”

Taehyung feels his mouth stretch in a pained smile. “Yes. Cracks.”

“Understandable,” Yoongi says. “Happened to me, too. Lights? Bugs?”

Taehyung nods. “And things in the corners.”

“Do they talk to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do they...touch you?”

Taehyung shudders. “Yes.”

“That’s troublesome, then.” Yoongi’s tone is just like he’s come over to help fix some mold. “Jimin-ssi, if you could step out into the hallway.”

“What?” Jimin shakes his head. “No, I don’t--”

“It’s all part of the fix,” Yoongi says. “Hyung is right outside. He’ll take care of you. Go on.”

Jimin takes a shaky step off the couch. Taehyung continues to hold his hand. He tugs weakly.

“Let him go, Taehyung-ah,” Yoongi says, very quietly. “You’ll see him in a couple of minutes.”

Taehyung only tightens his hold, unwilling to let go.

Yoongi’s face softens. “Seokjin hyung said you wanted to talk to me. So talk to me. I won’t hurt you.”

Taehyung lets go. He’s breathing harsh, now, the spike of terror piercing right through his heart. Jimin stands right there, staring at him, his own face a rictus of misery.

“Go on,” Yoongi says again. “This won’t take long.”

Jimin gives a jerky nod and leaves. The door shuts behind him. Taehyung turns to Yoongi, shivering.

“You’re like me,” he says. “You’re…you don’t belong. Like me. In this world.”

“Yes.”

“You--you’re not freaked out by that?”

Yoongi shrugs. “I was,” he says. “When we first moved here, I had all the same troubles as you. All the same misgivings.

“And then?”

“Then I got better.”

Taehyung says nothing. All his words are gone, evaporated into nothing. He wants to sleep forever.

“It’s not so bad, you know?” Yoongi says, perching on the edge of their coffee table. There’s something comforting about the drawl of his voice. Homey. “It’s not very bad at all. All we need to do is stay. Stay. With the people we love. That’s not so bad, is it?”

Taehyung pulls a pillow to himself, clutches it with shaking hands. “But it’s a lie. This life. It’s a lie.”

“Does it really matter? You love him. He loves you. That’s why he’s here. That’s why he’s given them everything they’ve asked for. Every single possession worth anything at all. Is it so bad to just...stay?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “But I didn’t ask for this,” he says. “I didn't ask for any of this. Does that mean nothing?”

Yoongi’s mouth twists in a small smile. “I said that, too. You know? Agency, individuality--all that. But dead men don’t get to choose, do they, Taehyung?”

Taehyung’s breath sticks in his chest. He curls up smaller on the sofa, imagines himself as a tiny bird. Something that’ll fit through the cracks. Something that can just slip away, escape. Disappear. 

All he wants is oblivion.

But Yoongi continues. “Taehyung-ah. This is a beautiful building. There are others here, like us. You can meet them, you know? Once you’re better. Once this is all fixed. Once you stop seeing through the cracks, and making all the staff here worry about you, it’ll all be perfect.”

“The staff--”

“Should have been unseen and unheard,” Yoongi smiles. “It’s all just a big, messy mistake that happened with you. The management’s not very old at this, you know. Sometimes they mess up a little, bringing us back. You should never have seen any of that. If you hadn’t, you’d have slowly eased into living here. Your mind would have slowly learned how to phase out all the questions you have, and simply accept this place for what it is. A sanctuary. Without any of the unsavory bits, or the blood, or the bugs and all that.”

Taehyung shudders at the memory of the elevator. “I could have done without all that,” he whispers. “Did they explain all this to you, too?”

Yoongi’s smile gets brighter. “Oh. No.”

“No?”

“No. They tried to fix me, and I tried to run,” Yoongi says, and laughs a little. His laugh is low and grating, a gentle edge clinging to it like morning snow. “I was so silly. I thought they were being horrible and frightening-- telling me how beautiful the building is and how wonderful my existence here will be when the truth is that it’s a cage. It’s a prison. I thought I knew better, you know? Such hubris. So I didn’t do the smart thing.”

The cold settling in Taehyung’s bones feels arctic. “You didn’t?”

“I said I’d take the fix, and after they’d come and talked to me, like I’m talking to you, I tried to run.”

Taehyung buries the distress from showing up on his face. “And then?”

“Ah, they fixed me anyway,” Yoongi grins. “Made me forget why I ever cared. I’m so glad they did! It’s all perfect now.”

“Yoongi-ssi…”

“Don’t tell Jimin or Seokjin I said that,” Yoongi says. He’s suddenly radiant in the light: an angel, a ghost. “It’s a secret between me and the building. Best they don’t know how stupid I was. How silly. Don’t tell them, they’ll be so upset.”

Taehyung wonders what the Yoongi of before was like. If he'd always asked questions without being afraid of the answers. If he'd lived loudly and kindly and vibrantly. If the differences are why Seokjin had seemed so desperate to confirm how perfect they were, how happy.  

He wonders if Yoongi knows the difference. 

Or is he just parroting things that were once said to him?  

“Don’t be silly like me, Taehyung-ah. Take the fix. Don’t make the staff chase you and make you do it. They can do that, you know? And they’re not very nice." Yoongi's face takes on a sudden pall of terror, but only for a second. Then he's back to that unnerving, misplaced smile. "But I’m glad they weren’t! I’m so happy now. I know what I need to know. Nothing more.”

Taehyung wants to scream. 

He wants to splinter into nothing, cease to exist.

He doesn’t want to be perfect.

He doesn’t even want to be . 

He wants Jimin to survive. He wants him out of this building, living his life. He wants to stop seeing monsters and being this half-thing, this Frankenstein creature that's neither this or that. 

He wants peace. 

Yoongi takes something sharp and metallic from his pocket. “This,” he whispers, “will only take a minute. Trust me.”

Taehyung scrambles violently to his feet. “No.”

Yoongi gives him a puzzled look. “No? Didn’t you just hear anything I said? I already tried running, Taehyung-ah. It didn’t work.”

“No. Just take it back! Just--let Jimin go, and he’ll never come back, and--”

“Do you really think that’s how this works?” Yoongi sighs. “The cage is for both of you. Don’t they say it’s best to always net lovebirds in a pair? That way they don’t want to leave. That way they think the cage is their castle.”

Taehyung lunges around the coffee table, trying to get out of Yoongi’s range. Yoongi tuts and grasps for him, his fingers scraping Taehyung’s elbow as Taehyung sprints into the dining room. He makes a beeline for the living room, panic bitter in his mouth, but Yoongi gets to the door before he can close it.

“Doors don’t keep us out,” Yoongi says. “Taehyung-ah, I don’t want to harm you. I really don’t. I’m only doing this for your good.”

“You’re not even really you,” Taehyung spits. “You’re just this building. Just the--the mouthpiece for this whole thing. You’re not anything .”

Bright tears run down Yoongi’s face, but he keeps smiling. “If you cooperate, we can all just peacefully go home. We’ll all forget this ever happened. And everything will be perfect. ”

He kicks the door. Taehyung, caught unawares, screams. He spills backward, but something’s already there to catch him. 

The hell-thing.

Its fingers keep him tight in place. Its voice mixes with Yoongi’s.

They say: “Stop struggling.”

They say: “There’s no point.”

They say: “He loves you. Do it for him. He loves you so much. Enough to sign over every part of him.”

Yoongi’s mouth is a twist of pain. It seems like some small part of him is still in there, fighting. 

But it doesn’t matter. This place is too much for him. Hell is too strong against mere mortals.

Taehyung can’t breathe, the hell-thing is holding him so tight. Its tongue moves in a slick path up the side of his neck. 

They say: “Take the fix.”

He breaks away. It happens in a moment, a singular second where the hell-thing is too lax. He runs out into the hall. Behind him, Yoongi calls, in a pained voice that sounds most like him: “It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work, Taehyung-ah, I’m sorry. Sorry I can’t help.”

That terrible, grating noise is all around. The front door is locked. The window--

The window.

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking. Just that glass breaks. Just that glass breaks , and he needs a way out.

He grabs a chair. Outside, the sky is teeming with a murder of crows. Through the corner of his eye he can see Yoongi and the hell-thing, frozen in the middle of the living room, watching him.

At the first blow, the glass only cracks a little. At the second, a spider-web fracture-pattern spreads all over.

And then the crows come. The grating: their beaks on the window. The rasping: the flapping of a thousand wings.

One slams its head against the window. Then another. 

Taehyung recoils, dropping his chair. He backs away from the window. 

Blood lights up the spider-web of the broken glass. The crows' beaks splinter. Their skulls lose shape. But still they keep going.

“I told you,” Yoongi says, sadly. “Told you not to run.”

The crows ram their ruined beaks into the glass, over and over. The hell-thing laughs. The blood from the birds are an abstract painting now, channels of rivers and tributaries all over the surface. It spreads like a map of the circulatory system.

The deepest, richest crimson of it its center, the heart, grows darker by the second. 

"There's really nowhere to go," Yoongi says. "It's not so bad, Taehyung-ah. It's a better prison than most."

The crows fall silent. Their wings stop flapping. 

Taehyung holds his breath.

The window breaks, an implosion of glass and wind so strong that Taehyung’s knocked over. Shards land all around him. He screams, throwing his hands up around him, closing his eyes against the deluge. 

And then the crows rush in. Wings and beaks. Bloody murder. 

14.

This is their first anniversary in the new apartment they call home. 

The night is beautiful. Jimin tries to cook first, and Taehyung helps, chattering about some artist he's found on the Internet and distracting him enough that he gives up. They burn the sweet potatoes and laugh. There was supposed to be a cake, a big chocolate and strawberries confection, but Taehyung put too much baking powder in it while being helpful so now it sits forgotten, a weird dry husk. 

Maybe later they'll eat that, anyway. 

At about eight, Jimin throws up his hands and orders takeout. Taehyung wants fried chicken, of course, and they eat it with their feet up on the couch and the television glittering like some giant nacreous oyster, too lazy to put on anything except a screensaver. 

Taehyung puts his feet in Jimin's lap, his usual trick to make Jimin whine and complain, then reaches across the distance between them to kiss the tip of his nose. Jimin hooks his own leg around Taehyung's waist and pulls so Taehyung topples onto him, knocking the breath out of them both, and for a minute they just giggle, trying to settle. Jimin whines at how bony Taehyung is. Taehyung responds by pressing all those bones against every soft part of him. 

Eventually they fall quiet, Taehyung's head tucked just under Jimin's chin, his breath a soft fan of warmth against his chest. Jimin plays with his hair like he does, always, cups his cheek with his small hand. 

Taehyung asks, "Do you want to bet the hyungs are going to show up with cake?" 

"Of course they are," Jimin smiles. "I told Seokjin hyung we're going to attempt one. He looked offended that we'd even consider ourselves capable of such a feat."

"We're not playing Uno. Yoongi hyung cheats."

"And you don't? You hide the Draw 4 cards under your butt before ever single game. Don't think I haven't seen you."

"Maybe if you kept your eyes on your cards instead of my ass you wouldn't be so consistently in the last place."

Jimin laughs, slapping good-naturedly at Taehyung's back. Taehyung shifts to secure a tighter hold around Jimin's waist, face half smushed against his chest, breathing in the scent of laundry detergent and chocolate and the ghost of fried chicken. 

He lets his mind go quiet. It's easy here, in this gleamingly beautiful place. Easy, with the city lights spilling like an auroral tapestry across their floor. 

From the sofa, Taehyung can see the window. 

It's his favorite thing to look at, the city outside at night. The necklace of lights glimmering along the Han. The eye of the N-Seoul tower. The breathtaking height from which he gets to see it, suspended so many floors above the ground. 

He can never remember exactly how many floors.

Just that he's lucky. So lucky. 

"Some new folks are moving into the place next door," Jimin says, half in a sleepy mumble. "Did you meet them?" 

"I met one of them. Olivia. Sweet girl, seemed just a little upset." Taehyung sits up straighter. "She asked me something strange."

Jimin cracks open one eye. "Hmm?" 

"She asked if the apartment was in your name or mine. Isn't that a strange thing to ask?"

Jimin stiffens. "Is it?" 

"I said it was," Taehyung shrugs. "She looked at me a bit strange but said she hopes I'm happy. That the person who loves me is happy."

Jimin's face falls, just a tad. An edge of something painful creeps up on his eyes, so sudden that Taehyung leans instantly to press a kiss to his cheek. 

"Are you?" Jimin whispers, squeezing Taehyung's knee. "Happy?" 

Taehyung makes a face of mock affront. "How can you even ask me that?" he says, and then softens when he sees how serious Jimin is. "I'm happiest when I'm with you. You know that."

Jimin's answering smile is a little shaky. "I know."

The bell rings. Taehyung scrambles over to the door to get it, and grins at the great sigh of torment Seokjin lets out as he enters with a large cake-box. "It's been a whole year since my peace and quiet was destroyed," he says, sepulchral. "Hurrah."

Yoongi follows him in, more snacks in hand. His gaze goes first to the window, like it always does, like maybe he sees something there that none of them see. Jimin yells to ask if Yoongi wants a drink. 

“Wouldn’t mind one,” Yoongi says. His smile for Taehyung is gentle, curled melancholy at the corners.

Seokjin and Yoongi have both become steady presences in Taehyung and Jimin's lives. Both pairs coming and going in each other's apartment as they please. Another bout of luck, Taehyung supposes: What would he have even done in the day if not for the two of them next door? 

So now he helps Seokjin make food videos. And he helps Yoongi with his music. 

They keep him distracted.

"Congrats, delinquents," Yoongi grouses, quiet fondness in his voice as he sets down the snacks. "You made it a whole year here without setting the place on fire."

"A feat, if you ask me, considering you leave this one at home all day, Jimin-ah."

"Hey!" 

Yoongi gives a loud, exaggerated yawn and turns to Taehyung, holding his hands out. "Come here," he says. "It's been a horrible day figuring out music. I need to hold something."

Seokjin pouts exaggeratedly. "Hold me."

"Taehyung is softer."

Yoongi rarely, if ever, asks for hugs. Still, Taehyung goes, enthusiastically. Yoongi squeezes him once, gentle, then pulls back. There's a strange expression on his face sometimes when he looks at Taehyung. 

Like he's searching for something. 

"You okay, Taehyung-ah?" he asks. "Everything perfect?" 

Taehyung smiles, quizzical. "You always ask me that," he says, a little laugh bubbling out. "How come? You've asked a hundred times since I met you." 

Yoongi pats his shoulder. "I'll ask a hundred times more," he says, in an exaggerated grandfatherly voice that makes Taehyung laugh. "So you know who to tell at the first sign that it's not."

"I'm alright, hyung," Taehyung assures him. "I'm always alright."

Yoongi nods. That expression of disquiet fillets down to simply resignation. Taehyung will ask him another day, he thinks, why Yoongi looks at him like that. He always wants to. 

He just never remembers to actually say anything.

Not about the strangeness of Yoongi's question, and definitely not about the odd dreams he has at times. 

The odd things he thinks he sees at the edges of the rooms. 

The unnatural sounds of wings haunting his waking nightmares.

And why would he? 

He likes it here. 

Around him, the apartment gleams. No speck of dust. No scuffed corners. Every edge neat, every corner swept. The city shining outside like a precious, faceted crystal. 

It's staggeringly, almost impossibly beautiful. 

Almost unbearably perfect. 

This is the razor-blade high-rise where they live. 

Hundred-watt lights and pristine ceilings. Marble counters and gold-veined pillars. And the city outside, vast and shining and wondrous. Red in the sun’s dying light. 

Bearing steady witness.