The sound of the toilet flushing cut off suddenly and Yoongi shifted his eyes along the ceiling to track the shadows currently dancing across it. Though he wasn't looking at the bed he could hear the springs creaking slightly as someone moved on it. Possibly Seokjin because he had been sitting up when he had last looked across the room, staring out of the bedroom window with a blank expression on his face. It seemed that he might have been deep in thought or just half-asleep and Yoongi hadn't been able to tell at the time. It could have been Jungkook rolling around to try and get more comfortable, he just couldn't tell in his current position. Because of Jimin he couldn't really see the bed unless he sat up and risked disturbing him; lying on his side and practically hugging him to death. The sleeping pill had knocked him out and he was lightly snoring against his shoulder with his arms over his waist. This was good, for he wanted him to rest after everything that had happened over the past hour. He thought that they all needed rest but he had a niggling feeling that he wasn't going to get any.

"Coffee at 3am was not a good idea," Namjoon mumbled as he entered the bedroom, reaching up to run a hand through his hair roughly as he leaned against the door frame. Yoongi could see his upper halfway from his position on the floor but not his lower unless he lifted his head and craned his head, too much work for how he currently felt. On the bed Seokjin made a noise in agreement, still staring out of the window. Yoongi briefly wondered if he would stay like that all night before he heard the sound of him shifting to lie down with a sigh.

"Hoseok?" Jungkook asked out of the blue, the sound of the bedsprings creaking softly.

"Uh, last I saw of him he was awake. Tae was out cold. Not sure if he's watching over him or if he can't sleep like most of us." Namjoon stopped playing with his hair and lowered his hand to pull down on the ends of his tee. Like everyone else in the room he was wearing just his underwear and something on top. In Seokjin's case it was a white vest but both he and Yoongi were wearing tees. Jimin and Jungkook were wearing neither, just their underwear because of the current hot weather. How his lover was so happily curled up beneath a blanket he didn't know, but Jimin was too far gone with sleep to care. He could have set the blanket on fire and he probably wouldn't have woken up.

"But I hope he gets some sleep. Shit, after Tae he needs it the most," Namjoon continued in a quiet voice, not wanting their friend downstairs to overhear him. "Imagine waking up and seeing Jimin missing, or Jin you waking up and seeing me gone, in the middle of the night. And then getting a call like that. It's fucking rough." In his current sleepy state it seemed that their friend wasn't very poetic. Less philosophy and more blunt truths. Yoongi almost liked him more that way.

"I don't want to imagine it," Seokjin said in a quiet voice. "It's bad enough going through it right now, I don't want to relive it already."

"So long as Tae's mostly OK I'm sure that Hoseok feels a lot better," Jungkook said in a sleepy voice. "If Tae had just vanished on us all he'd have been," a loud yawn, "shit scared but at least having him with us physically is better."

"Even if what Minnie said is true?" Yoongi asked, the first thing he had said in quite some time.

"'Course," the boy replied, "he's gonna be a little fucked mentally right now. Who wouldn't after what had happened?"

"We would all be fucked up," Namjoon said as he walked across the room and vanished from his periphery. "But there's major differences for every single one of us. What we do when we've fucked up?"

"Cause shit," Jungkook retorted.

"Exactly," Seokjin agreed. "We all cause it in different ways. Tae needs to be monitored to make sure that he doesn't do it. What better time than to have a relapse on alcohol then after this?" He was right, and Yoongi mentally tried to recall if there was anything booze related in the house before figuring out that the answer was currently no, not unless there was a bottle of champagne hidden away somewhere. This knowledge made him feel a surge of relief and he let his breath out in a heavy sigh. "Any excuse is a convenient excuse for alcoholics, in times of bereavement and negativity the pressure is just this boring down on him. You do remember why Tae started drinking, right?"

Yoongi did and it was most certainly not to have fun and unwind like most people started. A couple of sips of beer or a shot over a party game for fun, everyone laughing and joking. Yoongi had started drinking purely for the sake of complete loss of inhibition, and he knew that his friends had done so too. Everything had just so much more better when they were younger and stumbling over and feeling like the world was constantly moving in a series of colours and faces was enjoyable. Now they knew differently. But from the very start it had been obvious that Taehyung had not wanted wobbly legs and blurred vision; he had wanted oblivion and complete numbness from the world. Their friend had started drinking to negate pain, not to have fun, and right now he would be feeling a hell of a sting that the burning sensation of soju down his throat couldn't chase away.

"So that's why we need to keep him...safe right now," Seokjin finished. "Alleviate that pressure on him and lower any chances of a relapse."

Yoongi shifted to sit up, disentangling himself from his lover's arms so that he could bring his knees up and balance his elbows on them. He turned his head to study the bed, seeing Jungkook lying in the middle on his back to stare up at the ceiling too. The boy looked exhausted but he was trying to hide it, eyelids flickering and closing for a few seconds before opening again, mouth slightly open had hands clasped on his stomach. Seokjin was lying on his side still facing the window, arms folded and looking very uncomfortable on the edge of the bed. But of course he wouldn't even voice this discomfort. Sometimes Yoongi couldn't figure out if his friend had the patience and countenance of a saint or whether he was just stubborn as an ass. It could have been either of these things. When Namjoon shifted to lie on the bed the youngest made a disgruntled noise.

"What?"

"Too cramped," Jungkook muttered. "Gonna suffocate in my sleep." This made Seokjin smile slightly. "Why is your bed so fucking small Yoongi?"

"It's a single bed," he explained in a flat tone. "That means it was built for a single body, not three fucking giants."

"Hear that Jin? We're fucking giants," Namjoon said before laughing under his breath. It looked like he was finally starting to succumb to his own sleeping tablet dosage even with the coffee added on top. For some reason it made Seokjin also laugh, though Yoongi thought he was laughing at the borderline giggling noise that Namjoon made rather than the remark. Jungkook wriggled on the bed and elbowed him rather hard in the chest. "Hey Kookie I'm gonna need you to not give me concussion in my sleep. Can you do that?"

"Don't breathe all over me and I won't."

"No I think I'm gonna-" Namjoon shifted to grab hold on his arm, forcibly entwining his through so that he couldn't shrug him off. Then he placed his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes. "Just fall asleep like this to piss you off." Jungkook groaned in faux annoyance, smile on his face even though he tried to hide it.

"Actually I think I'm going to get more comfortable too," Seokjin declared before rolling into his other side, also snagging the boy in a near wrestling move struggle just to hug his other arm. This made Jungkook do more than groan, he kicked his legs in childish annoyance. "This is so much better. Like a swearing, wriggling hot water bottle."

"I'm hot," the boy complained. "It's too hot in here for snuggling."

"Snuggling?" Yoongi asked as he raised an eyebrow at the boy, hearing him balk that he didn't mean it like that. He sighed and got to his feet, lifting the blankets up and getting up slowly as to not disturb Jimin. Not that he could have with him being so deeply asleep. He went over to the window and twisted the lock before grabbing the handle and shoving the partition open as wide as it could go.

"Still too hot..."

Yoongi couldn't help but feel a weird sensation in the pit of his stomach at the sight of the three of them sharing his bed. There were several reasons but the most strongest of them all seemed to be nostalgia and also confusion. His friends sharing beds was nothing new to his eyes for they had been doing so since childhood. Growing up he had been so used to the sensation of another warm body lying beside him that for the few years of his later teen and early adult life before the adventure it had felt strange not sharing. Yet because of last year he had found that he couldn't not think about rundown motel rooms and neon lights, dirty carpet under his bare feet and the dissonant rumble of traffic and thunder. That was the first thing that washed over him. The second was the fact that his friends were smiling and joking right now, after everything that had happened. He supposed it was a good way of dealing with it all, not dwelling on fear and stress and instead finding something that could distract them.

Looking at his friends like that, it was almost possible to believe that Taehyung hadn't murdered his father today.

"Stop wriggling I'm trying to sleep," Namjoon complained, finally letting go of the boy to roll onto his stomach with a sigh instead. Satisfied that he had freed himself on one side Jungkook turned his head to look at Seokjin, and a moment later their older friend released his arm.

It was not long after that that his friends started to fall asleep, one by one do that only he was left awake and staring at the ceiling, the wall, Jimin's sleeping face in turn. There was restlessness about him and he knew exactly what it was. He needed a cigarette. That was the first layer of the restlessness anyway, a layer that he could at least solve. The urge got so great that he actually relented and got up to get dressed, slipping into his jeans and grabbing his jacket from the desk across the room. As he slipped it on he went down the stairs and stepped into the other room to see that Hoseok was still sitting up but asleep. He had drifted off and so his head was slumped forward over his chest. Before he could stop himself he was crossing the room to get to the settee, grabbing hold of his shoulders gently.

"Come on, lie down," Yoongi said in a soothing tone as he helped push him down on the space on the settee. Hoseok's eyes flickered open and he muttered something under his breath before his head landed on the pillow beside Taehyung's. Yoongi brushed his hair back of his brow and his friend sighed.

"So...sorry."

"Shush, go to sleep. Stop talking shit." Hoseok's lips lifted at the corners for a second or two as he laughed breathily and then became slack once more. Yoongi studied his face for a moment before shifting to get a better look at Taehyung. He had one hand curled up by his face and his hair was already off his brow and drying on the pillow so he reached down and ran his fingers through it softly. Not a sound, or deep moan or a soft snuffle. "You better not be dreaming shit either," he said before shifting to get back upright.

Several minutes later he was on the streets of the city. He had just needed air, the age old excuse that Jungkook and Taehyung had once used whenever they ended up on the streets. Always without purpose, always a compulsion that drove the legs forward. This was supposed to a simple stepping outside to smoke and yet his feet seemed to take him wherever they wanted rather than where he was supposed to go; the end of the path outside his house so that he could perch on the wall whilst he smoked. It was as if they were disobeying his thoughts and instead following the worry in his chest instead, talking him down streets with wide roads but thin sidewalks, narrow side streets that snaked on and on deep into the darkness between buildings. His gaze didn't really shift from his boots and when he did look up it was only to eye the street lamps, misty fog floating around the fixtures and obscuring most of the dull orange glow. He kept one hand shoved into his jacket pocket and the other free to fiddle with the cigarette, pulling it out to tap ash off the end or simply just feel it between his middle and ring fingers. It made him feel calm in way he knew exactly why: it was because he was in control when he had the cigarette in his hand. He could choose to toss it down the gutter, or stub it out on his skin should he have wanted to do so.

By the time he reached the sloping hill above the trainyard he had nothing more than an inch of cigarette left and he dropped it onto the ground and crushed it under his boot before making his way down it to the bottom. The soil was treacherous and he felt himself slipping most of the way down but he managed to not fall. Watching his younger friends get down the slope they had made it look rather easy with the exception of Jimin, yet he found that it was actually pretty difficult. It was a little like standing on a ramp that tilted higher and higher until gravity pulled down and he pinwheeled his arms rather wildly until he felt the firm dirt ground beneath his boots once more rather than loose soil. Yoongi let his breath out in a heavy sigh, hearing how ragged it sounded and knowing that it wasn't all from his fear of falling. Quite a lot of it was because of the cigarettes shoved firmly into his back jeans pocket. He brushed his hair back roughly and felt it falling back in place seconds later, at least not getting into his eyes this time.

The tunnel was to his right and he twisted to look at it, seeing a gaping hole that seemed to stretch forever: a black hole. He could see no light on the other side and he wondered if entering it he would find himself stumbling about in the darkness without end. Taehyung had came here just in the early hours of the morning, had stumbled down the slope and through that tunnel on his own. Alone, afraid, plagued with thoughts almost as black as the inside of the tunnel. Just trying to imagine how he must have felt in that moment was enough to make Yoongi's skin feel cold even under the warm layer of his jacket. His tongue darted out between his lips and wet them before slipping back into his mouth, the taste of the cigarette still lingering. He had to go through there too, if he wanted to get into the trainyard. He would have to walk through the blackness for a few seconds that would stretch for minutes the way he currently felt.

"If Tae could handle it...so can I," Yoongi muttered, not exactly a battle cry but close enough. So he took a deep breath and started walking across the area to get to it. The soles of his boots crunched in the dry soil and as he got closer to the tunnel he saw deep tracks that signaled where Seokjin had parked his car. The tire marks looked like trenches to his eyes. He studied this before lifting his gaze back to the tunnel. It was like the gaping mouth of a huge monster but he stepped inside anyway. As he quickly made his way through he felt that same coldness sinking down into him and only when he emerged on the other side could he finally take a slow inhale of breath.

The interior of the trainyard looked the exact same as always, as if nothing had monumental had happened inside of it. It was like entering every other night, as if Seokjin and Hoseok hadn't had to collect a bleeding and messed up Taehyung from here and bring him back to his house. Despite there being nothing glaringly wrong about the area Yoongi couldn't help but feel something off about it at all. It was probably because of the chill on his skin but he felt an atmosphere clinging to the air, heavy and oppressive and almost as black as the tunnel. He kept telling himself that it was because he knew what had happened and nothing more than that, but the heaviness still wouldn't go away when he tried to push the thoughts away. The air seemed too thick to breathe in and he reached up to rub at his throat unconsciously, as if he could massage it back into working condition. Yoongi ran his eyes over the long stretch of track in front of him and then shifted his gaze to the line of freight carriages. He could remember all of the times that they had climbed up there in the past, even when he was scared of heights and climbing the ladders mounted on the side had made his palms slick with sweat until he had started to get used to the height. He could handle the distance from the tops of the carriages down to the ground but anything more than that, like the bridge back in Dangjin...

Yoongi cursed under his breath and then he dropped his eyes to the dirt. He saw faint prints left in it and so he crossed the track and moved to get closer to the line of freight carriages, trailing along the soil and past a pitiful patch of grass and weeds. His gaze stayed glued firmly to his feet until he nearly walked into a carriage. There was a mess of footprints in front of it, dusty mounds of soil knocked up from what looked like stomping feet. He had discovered where Taehyung had been last night, and so he looked up at the sight in front of him. Deep yellow container that could have been described as ochre, the door pulled so far back that he could only see the handle sticking out at the other end of the wall. The carriage was wide open and so he got on tiptoe and ran his hands along the dirty floor before clambering inside. Without a friend to help him he found it rather hard, slightly embarrassed by his height and lack of physical fitness for all of three seconds before he managed to get inside. He got onto his knees and dusted his hands off on his thighs and that was when he detected the scent in the air. The trainyard always smelled of dust and exhaust fumes but right now he could detect a scent that could have been mistaken for rust had he not known better. In the near morning sky there was enough light coming down for him to not need to use his phone torch, the inside just slightly dark. He followed his nose closer to the scent to see where Taehyung had been just a few hours ago, close to the corner of the carriage. He put his hands down and crawled over when he felt something tacky and cold against his palm and he froze.

Yoongi had just put his hand in a puddle of drying blood.

He felt his breath hitch as he shifted and pulled his hand away, resisting the urge to rub it on his jeans for fear of leaving a stain on them. He stayed still for a minute to let his eyes adjust to the temporary dark and then he eyed the patches of blood on the metal. Hand prints mostly, prints so perfectly formed that he could see the digits of each finger, splayed wide and thin. Strangely beautiful in the most chilling of ways, he could see how Taehyung had crawled along the carriage as if he were a baby, also leaving thick smears of blood from his tee where it had rubbed along the flooring. Yoongi couldn't stop himself from reaching down and hovering his hand over one of the prints. His hand was smaller, not able to splay as widely as the print, and he placed it down on the patch for a few seconds before moving his hand away.

Hoseok had gotten rid of the murder weapon, intentionally or unintentionally he did not know. He had crushed it to pieces under the heel of his boot to get Taehyung to let go of it, flushed down his bathroom toilet so that it was miles and miles away down in some sewer system across the capital. He knew that that meant nothing, because Taehyung would have left enough evidence in the family home to not need a murder weapon as proof of his guiltiness: hair and fingerprints and likely skin under the nails of his father's hands that had been clawed free during the attempted strangulation. But still...he saw those hand prints and he saw more evidence and that meant that he had to get rid of it.

He didn't know why the urge came over him but he jumped out of the carriage again and went over to the rather pitiful patch of grass, dropping to snag a handful of it and pulling hard. The blades were dry on his palms but the very ends that were against his fingertips were wet. Yoongi climbed back into the carriage, dragging himself up and flailing his legs as he tried to get up without any help. Then he crawled over to the puddle on the carriage floor and he started scrubbing at it. The slight dew and liquid spilling out of the torn ends of the blades got onto the tacky patches and then it was coming loose from his movements. It was frantic, a series of rough scrubs as he didn't really register what he was doing and then he was shifting to try and rub at the other patch even though it was useless. He didn't wipe it free, he just end up smearing it instead; across the flooring and onto his hands, soaking into the knees of his jeans as he crawled over it. After a moment of confused fumbling he stopped himself and he stared down at the carriage flooring before letting his breath out in a moan.

The blood was still there and his efforts had done nothing to remove it. The grass was a destroyed mess in his hands and the skin on his fingertips and knuckles felt sore and scraped from the friction with the metal carriage flooring.

"Fuck me..." Yoongi muttered under his breath as he tossed the grass aside and shifted to hunker back on his heels. A glance at his jeans showed dark patches sinking into the material and his fingers were covered in smears of blood and green tinged grass stains. Just looking at the patch of blood was enough to make him feel guilty though he had no need to do so, and that was what made him move to get back by the carriage entrance. He swung his legs over the side and saw how his feet dangled over the foot drop. It was strange, thinking that just a year ago he had been sitting in a train just like this one, except it had been moving along the tracks rather than solitary. Back then he had thought nothing could get worse than what had happened but now...now he knew how naΪve he had truly been.

If things could get worse then they would. That wasn't an adage, some bullshit that everyone claimed was true. Yoongi knew that most people would claim that things had to get worse before they could get better, but in their case it seemed that things had to get better before they could get worse. A year of peace and now they were right back to this, a fresh hell.

He reached behind himself and pulled his cigarette packet free. It didn't matter to him that he had smoked one just a minute ago, because he needed one desperately right now. It would stop his hands from shaking, would calm him down. So he thumbed at the packet and pulled a stick free with his teeth and then shoved the box back into his jeans to fumble for his box of matches. Yoongi lit the end, tossing the used up stick aside, and he let it smoulder before taking a quick inhale and breathing it out through his nose. Then he took a deeper one as he shoved the matchbox back into his jeans. After a few steadying inhales and exhales he reached up to pull the stick free and wet his lips.

Over the top of the slope he could see that the sun was rising, chasing the light pink sky away and replacing it with faded blue instead; pastels washed over the horizon. What were the others doing right now? Were they all still asleep like they had been when he had left? Were they starting to wake up from fitful nights of sleep and start to realise what had happened last night was reality and not just some horrible fever dream? Yoongi hadn't slept a single minute and a part of him, deep down past his panicked and confused thoughts, wondered if he was even awake himself. But the sunlight falling down over the slope and onto the toes of his boots was real. As was the burning cigarette smoke stored in his lungs and the dull ache in his lower back from sitting hunched over. He wasn't asleep no matter how much as he hoped that he was. Nothing could change his current predicament. He sighed heavily, faint tendrils of smoke escaping his nose as he did, and then he lifted the cigarette to go between his lips when he noticed something.

The white body of the cigarette was smeared from his fingers, blood and grassy dew all over it and just an inch from his mouth.

Yoongi eyed it for a few seconds before taking a drag off the stick; a drag he didn't really need but took anyway. It tasted bitter on his tongue and he grimaced as he held it in his lungs. What were they supposed to do now? That was the question that had plagued him for nearly two hours before he had left the house to go for this walk; this walk that had taken him all the way to the trainyard like a dog searching for a bone. The worst part wasn't that there were many possibilities and he couldn't decide from one, rather that he had no clue at all what to do. This wasn't a simple case of Taehyung doing something petty like always, stealing shit and finding every excuse possible to get drunk. This wasn't something that could be debated and discussed like an exercise from Seokjin's old philosophy textbook, this was something so serious that Yoongi didn't think that the situation had really sunken in yet. Had the fact Taehyung had murdered someone fully registered with his friends? A real death and not like something out of drama. He doubted it really had for most of them, and he also doubted that it had gotten through to Taehyung himself yet. That required getting through the thick and foggy layers of shock first.

Yoongi's first real experience with death beyond dead pets and ill neighbours that never came back from hospital visitations, and he felt a little numb to it all too. It didn't seem real, that sickening inevitability. Taehyung's father was just simply...gone.

"I hope he burns in fucking hell," he muttered as a chunk of ash fell and landed on the carriage floor between his open thighs. Yoongi didn't believe in heaven or hell but he was willing to let an exception slide with that man. Taehyung's father had crawled out of hell itself it would seem, he would accept this statement as fact and not even question it. The drinking, the verbal and physical abuse. He didn't think that any of them really had a clue about what it had been like for Taehyung either. Never mind death, Yoongi had a feeling that they were clueless about their own friend too.

They had seen the bruises, had witnessed the smacks and heard the screaming through the thin walls, but that was just the surface.

They had to delve much deeper than that, and all that he could recall was having Seokjin pull him aside one day when they had been down on the banks of Han River fucking around, asking him if he thought that the bruise on Taehyung's shoulder had looked like teeth to his eyes; Seokjin's own eyes wide so that his lashes nearly brushed against his brow bone as he glanced over at the boy. Yes, he could remember that day clearly even though it had been, must have been, a decade ago, and the shiver that ran down his spine was the same as it had been those years back.

Yoongi spat at the ground in disgust and felt his fingers shaking around the cigarette stick. Oh, how childhood seemed so much more sweeter when they had been living it and not reflecting back. Now he couldn't believe that they had all been so fucking blind to everything that had been happening in front of them. Here they were, mostly adults, and they were all acting so surprised by the shit that had happened. It was almost laughable, for Yoongi now thought that it was so fucking obvious that this was going to have happened at some point. This wasn't even pessimism anymore, it was honesty and he knew that the others would slowly come around to realise it.

Taehyung's father deserved what had happened to him. No one could tell him that he didn't, that it was wrong. If there was one biblical verse Yoongi would drag himself to agree with it was: an eye for an eye. Taehyung had put up with his torment for too long and so the boy had exacted it all right back on him. Yoongi almost wished that he had gouged the man's eyes out to further reaffirm this verse but he knew that it wasn't so. He doubted that his friends would disagree with him but he knew a great deal of people would, and said great deal would want to see Taehyung punished for his desperate actions.

Yoongi would fight until his last breath to make sure that didn't happen, because deep down he knew that Taehyung would do the same for every last one of them.

He took a final deep drag off the end of his cigarette and then he lifted the stick to study it. Stained and dented from the grip of his fingers, ends still smouldering but nearly used up. He eyed the bloody marking that had sunken into the white paper and then he stubbed it out in disgust on the carriage floor and jumped down, boots sending up clouds of dust as he did. There was going to be a long walk back to the house and he was going to have keep his hands shoved firmly in his jacket pockets just in case any saw him and noticed his blood streaked fingers and the backs of his hands.

The kitchen tap water had to run for a minute or so before it heated up and the sound of it hitting the metal was horribly loud in the silence of the ground-floor. Yoongi winced and looked up and across the room but Hoseok and Taehyung didn't shift on the settee; the former much too exhausted and the later knocked out on mild sleeping pills to keep him unconscious for a little while. That was a relief, for he didn't want to wake them up and be the first person they faced; forced and awkward smiles as he said 'good morning' through his teeth. No, it would be better for them to see Jimin instead, who would make a smile appear no matter what, or Seokjin because his presence just had a way of calming everyone down. He was apt to fuck it all up by saying something stupid, and the sight of his bloody hands certainly wouldn't help the situation.

Yoongi had almost expected at least one person to be awake even though it was just before 7am. He had imagined that even in their tired states their brains would have woken them up yet he appeared to have been wrong. Maybe he was the only one of them that seemed to handle not having a great need for an alarm clock for he always seemed to wake up before needed. Yet even with the summer sunlight falling in through the windows he could hear no sounds of stirring within the house, no creaking floorboards or voices through the thin walls. Good, they all needed the rest then and he thought that they deserved it, though he also wished that he could include himself in this statement. Still, even with his lack of sleep he didn't feel that heaviness and lethargy dragging him down like usual. He just felt a little numb around the edges and not much more than that.

The water streaming out of the tap had heated up enough to have steam lightly taking to the air and so he stuck his fingers under it experimentally. Scorching hot, enough to make his skin burn as he submerged both hands under the stream and watched it start to clean away the smears of blood and grass. His skin was pink underneath and the heat of the water made it get a closer shade to red. He rubbed them together and then got some dishwashing liquid onto his palms before lathering it into a thick layer of suds on his skin. He knew that the substance was antibacterial and so that would hopefully budge most of the blood. The blue liquid turned white and dropped down into the sink in thick blobs before being washed away by the water. Then he was rinsing it all off and grabbing handfuls of kitchen paper to roughly dry his skin. He turned the tap and plunged the house into silence again, eyes glued on the sleeping couple across the room.

What he wouldn't do to be curled up in bed with Jimin right now, arms and legs tangled together and no worries plaguing him. To feel as soft and light as his lover's breath on his cheek. But right now he couldn't have that so it was pointless wishing that he could.

Yoongi crossed the room to get into the hallway, stepping off his cast off boots and going up the stairs. The bedroom door was still open slightly bad he stepped inside to eye Jimin lying on the floor, curled up in blankets on a thick winter duvet rather than a mattress. He could see his dark hair fanned across the pillow and his face up to the very tip of his nose and then the rest of him was buried beneath blankets. The sleeping pill had knocked him out like a baby. The sight brought a soft smile to Yoongi's face. A quick glance at the bed however had he felt the corners dropping again.

Jungkook was not in the bed where he had been when he had left.

The middle space between Seokjin and Namjoon was empty, the eldest having scooted along slightly in his sleep so that one arm was rolled up in the free space. Covers down past his hips to show his vest had hitched up to show a flash of stomach and his navel, hair messy and currently over his eyes. Namjoon was lying on his stomach with one arm hanging over the side of the bed, face turned away from him so that it would have likely been against the back of the boy's head when he had been lying between them both. Yet Jungkook was not present and the space where he had been was nothing more than wrinkled sheets and a dimpled pillow. He eyed this in complete confusion, waiting to see if he would come stumbling in from the bathroom, eyes glued shut and dark hair a birds nest of tangles.

That was when he heard it, the softest rustling sound of something coming in through the wide open window. Yoongi furrowed his brow and carefully crossed the bedroom to get to the window, making sure to avoid stepping on Jimin or tripping over the blanket as he did. He got to it and leaned forward to peer down through the glass at the slight garden below. It was barely anything more than a patch of grass and a rickety fence, but a garden it still was. And in the garden he could see Jungkook as clear as day. The boy was pacing up and down the patch with a restlessness that showed him that he wasn't the only one plagued by his thoughts and worries. He watched him for a moment, noting his bare feet as he stepped through the grass, and he saw that he had a stick in hand. Every few steps he would swing his wrist uselessly or smack it softly against his thigh as if keeping a count or a beat of some kind in his head. It was a thin branch that split into two points at the end, a straggly leaf bouncing every time he moved it.

Yoongi could remember Taehyung picking up a branch just like that except his had been bigger, much more impressive looking when he had turned around and pretended that it had been a rifle. Taehyung puffing his cheeks up as he had mimed spraying them with bullets, shaking the branch like an action movie star and then blowing imaginary smoke off the barrel with a wide smile on his face. "Does a Lieutenant kill all of his men?" Seokjin had asked wryly, smile showing his amusement at the childish display that Taehyung had done.

In the end it turned out their Lieutenant had just killed his father instead...

Down below Jungkook wasn't wearing his jacket. It was still folded neatly on the desk beside him with the other layers his friends had been wearing, so Yoongi shrugged his own one off and added it to pile. The polyester made a rustling sound as it rubbed against the other materials. Then he looked at the boy once more. Shoulders low and head down as he walked and walked, completing miles in his head that could get closer to double digits if he had been doing this since shortly after he had left. He just knew that his feet would be stained from the grass just like his fingers had been, and probably the cuffs of his jeans too. He watched him for another minute and then the boy stopped walking and lifted his arm to study the branch, holding the ends in both hands. Then he brought his knee up and snapped it. There was a loud crunch that he heard perfectly through the open window. It was surprisingly loud, a crisp sound that echoed on the still morning air. Then Jungkook was attempting to break the now two halves up into even smaller fragments.

"...fucking pathetic and-" Yoongi heard him muttering under his breath as he watched the pieces splinter under his strength and drop into the grass. Angry curses, disgusted tone in his voice that didn't sound at all even. "Not gonna cry like a fucking baby, I'm not I-" Jungkook dropped the branch fragments and then hunkered down, hands going to head as if he was trying to hold it together, stop it from exploding. The first sob was a high-pitched whine as his fingers snagged into his hair and then he was crying fully. His shoulders started shaking and then he was burying his face against his knees to try and mute the sound. It didn't work for he heard the broken sobbing as clearly as if he was in the bedroom with him. Yoongi glanced over his shoulder to see that everyone else was still asleep, and then he looked back out of the window. Should he go down and comfort him? Should he let him have a moment and not intrude, just lie down on the floor and pretend to be asleep so that the boy could come back into the bedroom and curl up in the space and pretend that nothing had happened? Would Jungkook find his concern welcoming, a shoulder to cry on; or would he embarrass and anger the boy?

Yoongi felt like he was being torn down the middle, one side wanting to go into the garden and the other telling him to leave it alone. But when he heard Jungkook sniveling for breath and hiccuping he couldn't stop himself from crossing the bedroom to get out and down the stairs. Jungkook was his friend, and he wasn't going to leave him even if the boy wanted him too. What if they had decided to leave Jimin that night on the bridge that night, if Seokjin hadn't told him to chase after him? Comfort wasn't an option anymore, and Yoongi knew more than anyone else that the slightest amount could change everything. He went down the stairs at a fast pace, hand running down the banister rail shaking as he did, and then across the main-area to get to the back door. It was unlocked of course, so he pulled it open and stepped out into the garden. No porch, nothing more than a slight stone step. He expected the sound to make the boy jump in surprise but Jungkook didn't even react as he crossed the garden and dropped to hunker beside him.

"Hey Kookie? Hey?" Yoongi placed a hand on his back and the boy burrowed his face against his knees that little more. Through the thin material of his white tee he could feel how hot his skin was, just like Jimin when he had started crying last night. He ran his hand down his back and then up to rub at the space between his shoulder blades. "Hey, come here buddy." Yoongi reached over with his other hand and placed it on the side of his head, firmly moving him into another position so that he could drag him into something that he supposed looked like an embrace; Jungkook's head pressed against his ribs.

"Yuh-yuh-gi."

"It's OK Kookie, it's OK."

"Nuh...no it's nuh uh-OK, it's nuh-" Jungkook gasped and then let his breath out in a hard groan, "it's fuh-fucking muh-messed up." Yoongi pressed his chin down against his hair and moved his hand up his back to stroke at the back. His other arm was still holding him in place around his shoulders so that he couldn't curl up into a ball again.

"I know, I know it is but we'll fix it, right? We always fix it."

"I duh...shit, I duh-don't think we cuh-can this time Yuh-Yoongi." He felt the lengths of his hair against his fingertips, soft and silken. Only with him held against his chest like this did he fully realise how much Jungkook had grown. It wasn't just the obvious inches of height difference that could be detected by eyes alone. Now he could feel the differences in his frame too. He was taller, broader than he was even at just seventeen years of age. It was hard to remember this fact looking at him, but he was still just a fucking kid. Hell, Taehyung and Jimin were practically still kids even though it didn't seem that way. Why did they all seem so much older to him? Why did Yoongi himself feel like he had amassed many years when he had only broached twenty-two years in total?

"Hey, who's the pessimist here, huh?"

"Yuh-you."

"Yeah, and do I sound fucking pessimistic right now?" Jungkook made a noise in disagreement, gulping loudly as he tried to control his hiccuping. "So if the pessimistic asshole is being optimistic, what does that mean?"

"You're a fuh-fucking duh-dumbass," the boy said before snorting.

"Damn right I am," Yoongi retorted before getting him in a headlock. "Respect your elders you little punk." Jungkook laughed and tried to free himself, the resulting struggle unbalancing Yoongi and making him topple backwards to land on his ass. He dragged the boy down with him and Jungkook's head bounced off his ribs hard enough to hurt. "Shit, I'm not a wrestler kid."

"No, you're too short," Jungkook joked as he managed to get himself under control, breathing more steadier than a moment ago and eyes no longer leaking tears. They were still pink and his cheeks were damp but otherwise he seemed to stopped crying for the current moment. Yoongi just ruffled at his hair roughly and looked at the fall of dark hair on his tee. Jungkook shifted to curl up slightly, not hugging his knees but close to it. "Yoongi?" He made a noise to let him know he was listening, one that he likely heard in his chest before it even escaped his lips. "Where did you go?"

"For a walk," Yoongi replied as he studied the top of his head. "Wanted to clear my head, ended up at the trainyard. Didn't help, just got even more confused and muddled up." Jungkook didn't reply to this and he waited to see what he would say. But after a minute he didn't. "I went into the carriage. There was blood inside. I tried to clean it up, made a real mess instead."

"Blood?"

"Just a hand print," Yoongi explained, thinking of the dozen marks and thick smears on the dusty metal flooring.

"This whole...thing, it got me thinking," Jungkook said in a quiet voice, slightly husky from his crying. "What would I have done, you know? If I were Tae, would I have done that? And it got me thinking about if I could...could kill a person, and the answer frightened me."

"Why'd it frighten you?"

"...'Cos I know that I could."

The garden fell silent save for the low drone of early morning traffic a few streets down, a few birds tweeting and taking to the air with soft rustling wings that he couldn't see. Yoongi studied the boy, his hair and the slight hint of his nose that he could see on his current angle, and then he placed his hand back on his head and carried on stroking his hair.

"You dunno that Kookie, we all say that we could if we had to: to save someone or even ourselves. But I don't think that we can really know that unless we get caught up in such a situation. Fear does things to people, sometimes we do shit we didn't think we even could."

"I wasn't thinking about being scared," Jungkook replied in that same husky whisper. "I was thinking in general." Yoongi let his fingers curl a lock of hair tight and he didn't say a word in response to this. "That same old anger's out to fucking get me."

"If it was out to get you why haven't you been in shit, huh?" he asked as he shifted his gaze to look up at the sky. Nothing but the faintest vestiges of pink floating above him, ready to be banished and replaced by soft blues.

"...I was on meds." Yoongi felt his fingers snagging and he probably pulled on his hair tight but the boy didn't make a sound. "Ritalin. I threw them away."

"...Why'd you throw 'em away?"

"Dunno," Jungkook said. "I wanted clarity again, but with clarity comes the fact I'm probably gonna start causing shit." He loosened his fingers and felt the boy shifting, turning his head slightly so that his face was more pressed against his ribs. When he breathed out he felt that his breath was warm through his tee. "I don't need that shit." Yoongi asked him if anyone else knew. "Seokjin." One of Jungkook's hands started playing with the grass. Now it wasn't just his feet that would be stained but also his hands and clothing. White tee, grass was a bitch to get out, almost as bad as blood. Jimin had told them cold water removed blood, not revealing how exactly he knew that just that but just that he did, and Taehyung's clothing was currently soaking in cold frothy water in a plastic bucket in the bathroom. The stains would likely not budge but it was worth a shot at getting them out. If only the stains would wash out of their souls that easily.

"Your parents will kill you if they found out you tossed that shit. Why'd you do it?"

"Yoongi," Jungkook shifted so that he could prop his head up and hold his gaze, chin digging into his ribs. "What do you think's gonna happen now, for us all?" Yoongi took a moment to reply to this because he really didn't know what he was supposed to say. It seemed like the boy had his own answer yet he couldn't really give him one - or at least a satisfactory one. Eventually he quietly told him that he didn't know, knowing that he could trust the boy with this uncertainty. "I don't really know either but I kinda know one thing. I know that this isn't gonna be solved in a day or two, and I know that we're gonna end up on the roads again."

This made Yoongi's skin go cold and he was certain that he shivered. Had Jungkook felt it? Had the boy felt the trembling course right down his spine and saw his lips twitch at the corners? Probably, for he was still looking right at him. On the roads again? He hadn't even thought about it in his mind but now that Jungkook had said it he felt that it was very much a possibility. But this wasn't running away from home life and troubled future paths...this was running away from a crime; fleeing like a gang of fugitives instead of runaways with broken dreams and an unshakable grudge at the world.

"Think about it. What's the first thing we all did when Tae ended that call? What did we think about? We all packed bags full of clothes and cash and important shit. We all thought about the adventure. You can say that you didn't but I know you did 'cos when I looked you all in the eyes I saw it lurking there, right beneath the surface. It was like wanderlust." Yoongi started gnawing on his inner lip rather than reply. "We didn't need to pack those bags but we did, why? 'Cos deep down we knew that this was something bigger than us. Right?"

"Right..."

"That's what I think's gonna happen." Jungkook shifted to place his head back down on his ribs, damp cheek rubbing against his tee as he did. "We're gonna...gonna go on another adventure."

It was not long after this that the boy drifted back to sleep, head balanced on him as if he was a pillow. Warm perhaps, but most certainly not comfortable. No blanket to cover their bare arms with, just the dewy grass underneath them and the warmth of the early morning sunlight drifting over the fence onto their bodies. It was almost as if the branch incident hadn't just happened, the angry mumbling as he had snapped it into lots of pieces and then burst into hysterical tears. This sudden swinging in temperaments was something that he had gotten used to over the years with Jungkook, always drifting between moments of chill was only to swerve right into burning anger that could last seconds or spiral into violence. Jungkook, who much like Hoseok, had been taking pills of his own before deciding that he didn't want them anymore. What kind of effect was that going to have on him exactly? Yoongi didn't know and he wasn't surprised for it seemed like he didn't know a great many things these days.

Going on another adventure? Why did that sound synonymous with something much more worst?

Like going to hell.