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moni-logues · 9 months

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Kintsugi 5

Pairing: Yoongi x reader

Genre: strangers-to-friends-to-lovers, non-idol!au, angst, smut, tiny bit of eventual fluff

Summary: In a fit of spiteful, post-break-up self-improvement, you sign up to a baking class. Yoongi, in a bid to appease his demanding girlfriend, signs up, too. Determined to make him your friend, you end up with more than you ever imagined.

Word count: 7.2k

Content: depression, self-harm (cutting)

A/N: first and foremost, please read the warnings; there's literally only two and one is a pretty significant one so plleeeeasssseeee take heed!!!!!! And let me know if there's anything else I should be tagging for it. Feels too flip for me to ramble in my usual way here given the content of this chapter, so just to say be safe, and I hope you like it! Thank you to my betas @amethystwritesbts @quarter-life-crisis2 @here2bbtstrash

Chapter Four | Masterlist | Chapter Six

Chapter Five - The other shoe

The sun was shining and birds were singing and you wished you were a character in a musical so you could burst into (tuneless) song and run across a field in a circle skirt. You hadn’t felt this good for a long, long time.

“Looks like someone’s in a good mood,” was Taehyung’s greeting to you as you plopped down in your chair next to him. “You get laid or something?”

You had, in fact, got laid last night. It had been even more anxiety-inducing than you had thought it would be, particularly given that Sungbin was a verified Greek god of a man and, well, your body had been through a little since the last time you were fully naked in front of someone new. You had put your body through a lot. The body keeps the score and it also shows the scars. You did not tend to keep them on display and you had hesitated and become awkward and flustered when you remembered them, when you realised he was going to see them, going to see what you had done to yourself.

He didn’t mention them. He didn’t make it weird. He didn’t avoid them nor did he bring extra attention to them. He acted as if they weren’t there at all. Then he made you come until you were seeing stars.

“That good, huh?”

It had been that good. Or maybe it had just been a long time. Either way.

“I think I’m going to fall in love with him, for real,” you said, all dreamy and moon-eyed, staring at your computer screen and seeing nothing but love hearts.

“Girly...” Taehyung’s voice had a slight warning note but you let it wash over you.

“I know, I know, but seriously. I feel happy, Teddy. Legitimately happy. I feel like I can see a future unfolding, a future I might actually want to live in.”

“With Sungbin?”

You shrugged.

“Sure, why not?”

He didn’t answer, not really. You could feel his reluctance; you could almost hear all the questions he wanted to ask. You let him think them. You weren’t going to let anyone burst this bubble.

“What are we doing this weekend, chick?”

You looked up from your desk and took the coffee cup in Taehyung’s outstretched hand. He sat down next to you.

“What do you mean ‘what are we doing this weekend’?”

“What do you mean ‘what do you mean “what are we doing this weekend”’?”

“What do you mean-”

“No, I’m serious. We always do something, but I haven’t seen you for weeks now.”

“Teddy, we are together every day. You’re seeing me right now!”

“That’s not the same and you know it! You’re reserving all your time for Sungbin these days.”

“That’s not true.”

Not entirely. He wasn’t being fair. It was true that you had seen Taehyung a little less over the past month or so but it wasn’t like you hadn’t seen him at all. You had someone else in your life now; you would’ve thought Taehyung would have been a little relieved to get some time back, to be honest.

“Well, what about you?” you asked. “You’re spending all your time with the barista.”

“Hyunjin. And I’m really not. I still have plenty of time for my other friends. For you.”

“Are you suggesting that I’m not making time for you?”

He shrugged.

“I know you’re really into Sungbin right now and things are going well and that’s great. I’m genuinely fucking stoked for you and I hope that it’s everything you want it to be, but I feel a little tossed aside, yeah. Especially because I’m the one who’ll have to pick up any pieces if it goes south.”

That hurt. Coming from Taehyung, that really hurt.

“Why do you think it’ll go south?”

“I’m not saying that it will but you’re honeymooning hard right now and it kind of feels like you’re putting a lot of eggs into one basket. You’re ditching me to spend all your time with a guy you’ve know-”

“I’m not ditching you!”

“I’m just saying you’re letting yourself be taken over by this. You haven’t seen me outside of work for ages. I know you didn’t go to therapy last wee-”

“How do you know that?”

“I know when your appointments are and you were posting on Instagram with a cocktail in your hand at the time.”

“What makes you think I didn’t rearrange the session?”

“Did you?”

No, you didn’t. You skipped that one. Just one. That would hardly hurt. And you were feeling so happy right now, the need for therapy had receded a little, dipping past the horizon, not entirely out of sight, but almost out of mind.

“That is exactly what I’m saying-”

“No, what exactly are you saying? Is this about wanting to see me more or is it about telling me that me and Sungbin are going to crash and burn?”

You could feel tears burn in your eyes and you desperately wanted not to cry. You always cried. All the time. It was exhausting and embarrassing and you were at work, right now – you didn’t have time for this.

Taehyung’s eyes softened and this made your tears well even more.

“I’m saying that I miss you and I’m worried. You are acting like he’s fixed you, like the only problem in your life was that you were single and now you’re not so everything must be perfect. But that’s not how things work and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not stupid,” you spat, your voice thick with unshed tears. “I don’t think he’s fixed me. I think he likes me. And I like him. And we are together-”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Have you had that conversation? Are you together?”

“Well-… What about you and Hyunjin? Have you had that conversation?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “We’re keeping it casual for now.”

You didn’t like the sound of that. You hadn’t talked to Sungbin about it because you didn’t think you had to. You thought you were on the same page. Isn’t that what dating was? You dated and then, if you kept dating, you were in a relationship. It was automatic, by default. Why would you date someone if you didn’t want to keep doing it? If you didn’t imagine a relationship with the person, what was the point?

You managed to blink your tears away but an uneasiness had settled in your stomach. What if you’d got it all wrong? Did Sungbin want to keep it casual? You didn’t. It was already too late for that. You were a goner.

Maybe Taehyung was right.

Was he?

You sniffed.

“Well maybe Sungbin and I aren’t.”

“Does he know that?”

Fresh tears. Anxiety. Your old friend insecurity crawling up your throat again. You should have known that this was coming, that there was a line you needed to acknowledge and either cross together or not at all. It hadn’t been like this with San because you had known each other so well before you got together, it really had been a foregone conclusion. This time, though... And there was so much Sungbin didn’t know about you, so much you knew you would have to share at some point and didn’t want to. The thought of revealing your ugliest self to him – to him, a flawless specimen of a man, inside and out, his parents’ pride, and the person you thought most about – was nauseating.

You stood and walked off to the printers, pausing there only long enough for you to realise there was nothing you could pretend to print. Then you carried on to the kitchen, making yourself another coffee, even as the one Taehyung brought you was sitting, steaming, on your desk.

“I’ve been thinking,” you began, sitting across from Sungbin at an outside table, running your finger up the wet glass of your iced latte. “What are you doing for Halloween?”

He looked a little taken aback.

“Halloween? In October?”

“Yeah!”

You held your palm tight against your glass, the discomfort of the cold playing distraction. You were trying to be casual about this. It was normal. Of course you’d make plans. Why wouldn’t you? You fought off the voice in the back of your head saying that you wouldn’t if you were just ‘keeping things casual’. That was why you had to ask.

“I... have no idea yet. It’s only August.”

“That is true, but I’ve been thinking. Teddy always has this massive party for Halloween and does costumes and everything and I would like, this year, to outdo him.”

The party thing was true. Taehyung did throw one every year. And he did always have a good costume... You also always had a good costume, because he planned and bought it for you, but Sungbin didn’t need to know that part.

“Wow, if he’s planning it this early, it must be big.”

“Oh, no, he’s not yet, but I want to get a head start. Like I said, this year I think we can beat him at his costume game.”

“We?”

“Yeah, there are so many good couple costumes out there; it’ll make more of an impact if we do it together, right? Two is more than one etc.”

“Right, yeah, uh... Sure.”

“We don’t have to decide right now, but get your thinking cap on. I am going to destroy Teddy this year and you’re going to do it with me!”

He chuckled a little and you thought this was good. Halloween was, as he suggested, months away, but he hadn’t said no. That counted for something. You ploughed on.

“Also, what do you think to a double date?”

“Oh. Um, who with?”

“Teddy and Hyunjin. They actually got together the night we met! Might be fun. Also, to be honest, I really want Teddy to meet you. It’s been long enough, haha; you need his seal of approval!”

“A test?”

“Yep. He’s my bestie so he has to approve.”

“Right. Yeah... Ok. You and he are really close, then?”

“Yep. And, besides, it gets to a point where someone’s seen you have enough breakdowns that you have to keep them close: he knows too much!”

There was a pause and you could see Sungbin considering his words. You fought the urge to move it on, to brush over it, to drop a hundred words a second to blow past it. But you also just had to... check, to let him know, to try to drip-feed him the information you, truthfully, didn’t want him to have but knew that he had to have, if this was ever going to be serious. It made you anxious, slowly revealing your brokenness to him, pushing him closer and closer to the threshold at which he might say ‘stop, that’s enough; I don’t want you anymore’. He hadn’t yet, but you’d barely begun.

“Breakdowns, huh?”

“Yep. Although, actually, while it was Teddy who held me together after the break-up, it was my ex who really did the heavy lifting before that.”

Sungbin nodded thoughtfully and you didn’t know if you imagined his eyes flicking down to your thighs or not. Probably imagined. But it wasn’t like the two didn’t go hand in hand.

“Sounds rough.”

“It was. Both times, haha.”

He nodded again.

That was enough, you thought. That had to be enough disclosure for now. You could feel it pressing on you, like the oppressive summer humidity; you felt stifled by your exposure, almost a little giddy with the force of your discomfort. If this is what it was like, revealing your darkness to someone, you crossed all your fingers, hoped, and prayed that this thing with Sungbin would last so that you would never have to do it again.

You went home with him that night and there was a background buzz of something in your head, this kind of vertigo-swirling of standing too close to the edge of a cliff, an unsteadiness of foot that Sungbin was able to kiss away but which came back two-fold when you were lying naked in his bed. You tried to look at yourself, discreetly, objectively; what did you look like to him? Was he looking at you differently now, tonight, armed with new knowledge? What did he really know? What had he taken from the things you had said? You didn’t want to ask him, didn’t want to talk about it more, didn’t want to have to explain and elucidate and make explicit things that you hoped he would infer.

He didn’t seem different, then, didn’t turn off the light or kiss you goodnight any differently from the way he had before. Maybe it was fine. Maybe your brokenness wasn’t fatal. Or so you could dream.

“Last day, baby!” you cried when Yoongi put his bag on the counter at your very last baking session.

“So it is,” he replied, cool as ever.

You shoved him.

“Be excited! We made it! We’re bakers!”

He rolled his eyes and grinned.

“A rather generous term for yourself, isn’t it?”

You shoved him again.

“How dare you? Do I need to remind you of last week’s triumph? Or should I say my triumph and your tragedy?”

You weren’t being entirely fair. Yoongi’s buns had failed because he had taken on the risk of your illicit ingredient, allowing you to follow the recipe correctly. It was gallant, really. He even said that his buns were alright, not that bad, kind of ok which you knew without having to try them was untrue.

“Should I remind you who is responsible for my tragedy?”

“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You grinned at each other and started unpacking your bags. It felt easy between the two of you now. Long gone was your anxiety that used to accompany Thursday evenings, that gnawing embarrassment and glowing shame that you used to feel in Yoongi’s proximity, sure that you were the worst person in the world and that he wanted to get away from you, desperate as you were for his friendship and approbation. You didn’t have to be desperate anymore, because you had it. You were friends. In the spirit of said friendship, you had agreed to celebrate your last baking class tomorrow, so you could get as drunk as you liked without having to suffer the consequences in the office.

“Generous term,” you scoffed, looking at your layered cake at the end of the session, assembled and decorated and still standing. “How very dare you. Look at what I’ve made! I’m a genius!”

Yoongi laughed quietly and swiped a finger through the buttercream frosting on top before you could swat his hand away. He put it to his mouth.

“Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“Not bad!”

You swiped a finger through the frosting on top of his cake.

“Yours tastes like shit.”

“Well, now you’re just being mean and I won’t let you have a slice.”

“Fine.” You turned your back on him to put some things in your bag and then turned back. “I didn’t want to eat your shit cake, anyway!”

“You had better be careful or I’ll bring this as dessert for tomorrow.”

You gasped.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Yoongi turned to face you head-on, a smirk on his lips, mischief in his eyes.

“Wouldn’t I?”

You mirrored his expression and crossed your arms.

“I won’t let you in my apartment.”

“Not even for the booze?”

You faltered. You didn’t buy the expensive shit that he did. You still fully believed that expensive alcohol didn’t give you such bad hangovers. You didn’t want to lose this spat, didn’t want to come out of the bit, but also didn’t want to say no to booze.

“You can leave the booze on my doorstep and go.”

Yoongi broke first and laughed loud, tipping his head back.

“You’re spoilt,” he said.

You sniffed haughtily.

“I deserve nice things.”

Then he gave you that smile that he did sometimes, warm and soft, that made you feel like a broken open caramel truffle, oozing and sweet and sticky, like the two of you were stuck together, sugary fingerprints on your skin and a brown sugar taste on your lips. It was like a secret smile, for special occasions; you wondered who else got to see it.

“Yeah, you do,” he agreed. “Which is why I’m bringing this cake to dinner tomorrow!”

You groaned and pretended to fall, dead, to the floor. Yoongi laughed again.

“I mean it.” He packed the last of his things in his bag. “I’m going to bring this and you’re going to eat it and like it.”

“Over my dead body.”

“If I recall correctly, I do, in fact, owe you a murder, so that can certainly be arranged.”

You both laughed this time and you could think of much worse ways to go, much worse last things to see before you died. Yoongi picked up his stuff and his cake and turned to leave.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“With bells on!” you called after him.

You had taken the Friday afternoon off, just to make sure you had enough time to shop and prepare and, gulp, cook dinner for Yoongi who you were expecting that evening. It was a celebration of your finishing the class but it was also a sign of intention, a new set-up for this kindling friendship that didn’t have anywhere else to meet. You’d take turns: one of you would cook and one would bring dessert and you’d alternate fortnightly. You weren’t sure whether you’d got the short straw to be tasked with dinner first or if you’d rather it were this way. You got the feeling Yoongi was a good cook and you didn’t want to have to follow that, but it felt like a lot of pressure being the first to host. You felt a little embarrassed of your shoebox apartment and cheap things and you knew Yoongi would never care—you knew he would understand completely—but it made you feel a little small, that this was all you had to offer.

Never mind, you said to yourself. He didn’t care and neither would you. It wasn't about the venue; it wasn’t even really about the food. It was about the company. It was about making a space and a time for you and Yoongi to hang out. It was about making a commitment to taking your friendship outside of its bounds and cultivating it. That was what mattered and that was all you needed to focus on.

You were scrolling on your phone, looking for recipes when a message from Sungbin came in.

Sungbin: hey I’m wfh today. I'm about to have lunch can you come over?

Obviously, the answer was yes. You did your best to make yourself look presentable in a rush and hot-footed it across the river to him.

“I ordered food, hope that’s ok,” Sungbin said as he gestured to the dining table where two bags of lunch had been placed.

“Sure! I’ll eat whatever.”

It felt a little strained, like the world had twisted itself into an uncomfortable position, but you put it down to the fact that you had never been to his apartment during the day before. He was also working; maybe he hadn’t shrugged off his focus yet. His job was still new and still stressful and this lunch was interrupting it. He was quiet as he sat down and you felt stifled. He ate a forkful and another. Then he put his fork down.

“Thanks for coming all this way. I really wanted to speak to you but work is really hectic so I can’t get away.”

“Yeah, no worries! I have this afternoon off anyway, so it’s no big deal.”

“Oh right. Good. Um.”

You thought to yourself that you were getting good at this: letting silence reign. Maybe it was all the time you’d spent with Yoongi; maybe it was all the time you’d spent in therapy. Maybe it was a sign that you weren’t letting your anxiety run your mouth anymore – even if you really, really wanted it to.

“I thought we should talk,” is how he began.

“About what?” Your guts twisted as you asked.

“I know you were talking the other day about all sorts of plans and things and I just wanted to be clear about... where we are. What we are.”

“Oh, right.” Your voice was airy and thin, even your lungs being squeezed by this cold-creeping fear working through your body.

“I really enjoy spending time with you and I’d like to continue that but, ah, I’m not looking for anything serious. I don’t want... a relationship, y’know? I just moved here and I’m still finding my feet and getting to know everyone and everything and I don’t want to, uh, settle into anything? And I get the feeling that... you do. I didn’t want, um, wires to be crossed or uh, I didn’t want things to get complicated or- I just thought we should talk before it went on any longer. I wanted to just make myself clear. I would like to keep seeing you but I think you want... more than I do. If I’m wrong, just tell me, sorry if I’ve assumed but I, uh, just, get the feeling...”

“Right.”

Your eyes were already blurry with tears. Here it was. The other shoe dropping. Taehyung was right. Sungbin didn’t want you. Not really. He knew who you were and he didn’t want you. You tried to tiptoe into it; you tried to slowly heat the water in the pan but you’d overcooked it. The frog was jumping out. You wanted more. Too much. More than he wanted. He didn’t want you. He didn’t want you that much. He didn’t want your broken parts. He didn’t want your ugliness. He saw your scars and he heard of your breakdowns and he knew that was ‘more’, too much. He didn’t want to carry you. He would have to carry you if you went on for too much longer. You had to be carried because that’s who you were: you weren’t enough, not even enough to lift yourself up. All your good parts, the shiny parts, the parts you thought you had in you somewhere... It wasn’t enough.

“It’s not-” Sungbin was trying to start again, to explain, to let you down even more gently. “I like you; I think you’re a cool person and we have fun. I just can’t commit to more than that. I don’t want to lead you on or pretend this is going somewhere it’s not. Y’know, I really appreciate you making all these plans and things but that’s just- it's really, well, it’s a bit too much for me right now. Do you know what I mean?”

You nodded and hummed and bit your lip to stop it wobbling. Your face was burning with embarrassment: that you were being dumped, that you were crying about it when this hadn’t even been real to start with. It had never been what you thought it was. It was just fun. You had pictured parties and holidays and walking off into the sunset but that was just you. It had never been that for Sungbin.

He didn’t want you. Like a woodpecker pecking at your skull, it hit you again and again: he didn’t want you. He didn’t want you. You tried to show yourself to him and then he didn’t want you. You took him to your water’s edge and he decided not to swim. You should have seen this coming. You should have heeded Taehyung’s warnings. You should have had this conversation before now.

You could feel yourself spiralling, crumbling, sitting at his table with an uneaten salad bowl in front of you. You couldn’t speak because you didn’t know what to say. ‘Please just love me’? ‘Can’t you change your mind’? ‘What if I were different’? ‘I can change’? Would anything make a difference? You couldn’t be different. Not really. It hit you at that moment: you would always be you. All of these things that you had been doing to try to change, to be better, to grow, to stop being such a mess all of the time. They wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. Couldn’t change who you were. What you were. You’d always just be... this.

“Yeah, I understand,” you whispered, your voice trapped in your strangled throat. “I have to go.”

You stood and whirled around, heading immediately for the door, shoving your feet in your shoes any which way, as long as they stayed on long enough for you to escape.

“No, wait, hold on!” Sungbin called, following after you. “Don’t just go, please. I want to talk- I don’-”

But you were opening the door and running down the corridor and he was calling, but not running, after you.

You wanted to break down, just fall to the floor in a heap and stay there until the ground ate you up but you had to get out of his building. The lift was stifling, a too small metal box with mirrored walls that showed you your red eyes and running nose and face contorted with the effort of trying not to cry, with the fact that you were crying anyway.

You had never felt so stupid. Humiliated. You wanted to scrape your skin from your body with the shame of it. Of course he didn’t want a relationship with you. A man who already loved you and loved you for years didn’t want a relationship with you anymore; why would Sungbin, with the world at his feet, settle for you?

You were crying on the subway again. You had sworn you wouldn’t do that. Not after the break-up. Not once you’d finally stopped crying over San. You weren’t going to be that person, that’s what you’d said. No one took any notice; no one said anything; everyone averted their eyes, but you could still feel their attention, were still so aware of the way they were not noticing you. You were a weirdo, a pathetic woman crying on the subway in the middle of a Friday afternoon.

When you got off the train, you considered throwing yourself on the tracks. You would never have done it. Too many people around. A traumatised driver. Delayed and cancelled trains. Compounding your worthlessness by ruining other people’s days? You hadn’t sunk that low, not yet.

You traipsed home, your feet feeling lead-heavy, your legs feeling weak and, as soon as the door to your apartment closed behind you, you dropped to the floor. You gasped in huge, choking sobs; you couldn’t see for your tears and could barely breathe. Your chest felt as though it were caving in on you, squeezing the life out of you. You dragged your nails across your skin to try to feel something else, something different, some other kind of pain and then a thought came to you, sharper than it had been for months, clear before where it had been vague. A directive, not just a thought anymore.

There was a reason you didn’t keep razors in the house but your nails certainly weren’t cutting it. Then you remembered the knives Yoongi had bought you, how he had impressed upon you that they were sharp, that they were good quality and barely used so they should still, now, be sharp. You dragged your body to the kitchen counter and ripped open a drawer. You picked one at random – it didn’t matter which – and sat back down. You shuffled to pull off your cycle shorts and there they were, your mosaic thighs, criss-crosses of light, thin lines and thicker scar tissue. You had always taken a weird pride in the neatness of it. You had always cut carefully and deliberately, as though you were creating something other than scars, other than a mess, other than something you had to hide from everyone. You went over them again, re-cutting all the old lines, each sharp slice of pain a relief, grounding, pulling you back from somewhere.

The relief made you feel hysterical, silly even, the strange, old euphoria of hurting yourself, of being in control of that hurt rushing through you and making you dizzy. It was like coming home. Your breathing came more smoothly and your heart slowed and your tears began to dry and you couldn’t stop, not yet. You had to see how far you could go. A little more. You needed just a little more. You had plenty of real estate; you could make more. You could expand the design, your bloody, little, monochromatic Mondrian.

You felt empty when you stopped. Drained. Exhausted. Sick to your stomach. You let yourself fall sideways, lying on your dirty kitchen floor. You had nothing left in you. You lay there, unmoving, letting your brain tell you whatever it wanted. You didn’t care anymore. About anything. You had nothing. You had nothing to give and no one to give it to anyway. If you blipped out of existence, well, that would be the best-case scenario. Like Buffy’s key in reverse. Blink, and you had never existed at all. That would have been nice.

It would still be nice. If you could just disappear off the face of the earth. You couldn’t bear to look towards the future – a future you didn’t want, that you knew wouldn’t be better than this. The thought of it made your soul shrivel, made you dig your nails into your reddened thighs, made you cringe and wince. When would it be over? Why couldn’t it be now?

You distantly heard your intercom ring but it felt as if it were coming from another world. You were gone. You were out of this world. No one missed you. Your apartment was a glitch, a tiny black hole where no one could go and no one wanted to go. It rang for what could have been a short time or a long time—you'd lost all sense of it. Then you heard knocking at your door.

Then more knocking.

Then something akin to thumping.

“Hey,” Yoongi’s voice rang cleanly through the wood and metal. “Are you in?”

Your phone started buzzing noisily on your side of the door, rattling against the floor bar in the entryway. Then there was silence for a while. You assumed he had gone away.

Your door beeped and swung open and there were footsteps, the quiet flomp of shoes hitting the floor, the rustle of a carrier bag. You remembered you had given him your codes in the interest of fairness -- you did have his, after all. You felt so detached from everything that you didn’t know how you felt about that. Yoongi quietly called out for you. You didn’t respond. Didn’t even feel like you could.

Your apartment was small enough that he could survey the entire space in a few small steps, so he would barely have to enter before he would see you. You knew the moment he did; you felt the way the air was sucked out of the room for a second. You felt him freeze, could hear the seconds tick by on the clock on the wall. Then he came into your line of sight, kneeling in front of you, saying your name.

“Fuck, don’t be dead,” he whispered.

He held his hand underneath your nose and felt you breathing. You felt the weight of the sigh that left him.

“Shit, fuck.”

He bent over, turning his head to try to catch your eyes; you could see him but you weren’t looking at him. You weren’t looking at anything. He was a blurry approximation of a man in front of you. He called your name for a third time.

“You, uh, are you alright? ... fuck, fucking stupid. No, obviously not. Fuck. Ok. Uh. I-. Can I... What can I do?”

You couldn’t give him an answer. It was as if all speech and movement had been taken from you. You really had nothing left. You couldn’t give him anything. You felt like a husk and that was all you wanted to be.

“Shit, what should I do? I.. I do-. Well. Ok. Can you sit up?”

You couldn’t even shake your head. You were aware of him continuing to mutter to himself. He stood up and disappeared for a minute or two; you heard the open and shut of cupboards, the rifling through of your jars and bottles and boxes. He returned with a light load.

“I have to-” he started. “I’m going to. You.. I have to- I'm going to touch you, ok? I have to lift you up?”

He hesitated as he came closer but was firm when he gripped your arms and lifted your body off the floor, pulled you sitting upright. You tipped your head back against the cupboard and a deep sigh pushed air from your lungs.

“I still have to- this might hurt. You don’t have much stuff. I, uh, yeah, ok. I have to clean this.”

You closed your eyes when he pressed a soaked cotton pad to your thigh. The burning sting of antiseptic made you feel a little bit alive but it was so short-lived.

He was muttering again.

“Fucking hell. I can’t. You don’t have anything useful. How am I-. What... This is... Fuck, this is going to need stitches. Is it?”

You’d almost never heard him talk so much, not like this, not to himself, not with all these half-finished, curtailed sentences, this stopping and starting. Yoongi was straight-forward, even when he was feeling chatty. This Yoongi was going around in circles.

When your eyes finally focused on him, he looked pale, paler than usual. A little grey possibly. His mouth was pulled in a taut, grim line when he wasn’t mumbling himself through the task.

“Still fucking bleeding? Shit, did I make it bleed again? I can’t- I...”

He sat back a little and looked at you; his eyes were sharp and focused and you couldn’t look at them. Yoongi took your chin in his hand, less gently than you might have expected, and he held you there until you looked at him.

“How can you not have a fucking first-aid kit? What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” The anger in his voice registered only dimly. “There’s a pharmacy on the corner and I’m going to go there.” He paused and his eyes were steely and his jaw tight as he worked his brain around how to say what he needed to. “I’m going to go and I’m going to come back and if I get back here and you’re dead, I am going to kill you, ok? I know I promised to kill you but I was fucking joking and you’re not allowed to be dead. Is that clear?”

His face softened as he waited for an answer. You managed to nod your head. He held you a few more seconds before he stood and walked out.

It could have been only seconds or it could have been hours until he returned—you neither knew nor cared—but he did return and he dropped a plastic bag on the floor beside you. He tipped it upside down and dumped its contents. He wasn’t looking at you now, not at your face, just at your legs, as he cleaned and tended and muttered to himself some more. He unwrapped bandages and folded over gauze and you let him lift your legs and place them back down. You let him do whatever he needed to, wanted to. It didn’t matter.

When he was finished, he sat back and sighed. He ran a hand through his hair and you saw his eyes alight on something to your left. You couldn’t read the expression that came over his face. Something like horror, something like disgust, something like despair. He leaned forward onto his hands and grabbed the offending object; he threw it into the sink with a metallic clatter.

He sat opposite you for some time. You didn’t say anything. Neither did he. You felt hollow. You could hear it, the wind howling through your empty spaces. You felt like you were all empty space. Just an echo of nothingness trapped in skin. Every part of you hurt, as if the pain were radiating out from your heart, filling the void inside you with a sharp, persistent ache. You couldn’t talk. You couldn’t bring yourself to do it, to have to hear yourself, hear your existence continuing in the world. It hurt. As long as you were silent, you could fade away, you told yourself. Just disappear. Yoongi would go and you would be alone and you could just disappear.

“Do you want to eat?” he asked. “You should eat.”

The thought evidently set him on a path because he stood and opened your fridge, opened your cupboards, looking for food. He stepped over you and then stopped, foot in mid-air. He turned back to you.

“If I’m going to cook, you’re in the way. Can you move?”

You blinked. You sighed. You looked down. Then you felt his arms wrap around you as he pulled you to your feet. It was an awkward drag and shuffle to the sofa, your feet tripping over themselves, Yoongi lifting but not really carrying you.

“Fuck, sorry,” he said on a heavy exhale as you dropped like a stone onto the sofa. “I’m going to cook now.”

He held a bowl out in front of you and, when you didn’t take it, he picked up your hands and placed them against the ceramic, lowering it all into your lap. Then he sat next to you.

“Eat.”

You looked at the food, steaming hot; it smelt nice. You wondered what on earth it was and how he could have found the right ingredients in your house. You were still not exactly domesticated, despite your efforts. Yoongi kicked your foot.

“I mean it. Eat.”

You sighed and continued staring into the bowl. Eating would mean conceding to living, to staying alive. You felt defeated but you also wanted to avoid this defeat. Everything about you felt wrong. Hideous. Like things were crawling beneath your skin. You didn’t want to continue that existence. You didn’t want to feed it.

Yoongi took the bowl from your hands and placed it on your coffee table.

“Fine,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Absolutely not. You shook your head.

“What do you want to do? I don’t know what to do. What can I do?”

You, again, fell sideways, lying on the sofa with your legs still dangling down. It wasn’t entirely comfortable but that hardly mattered. You couldn’t answer; you didn’t know.

Then Yoongi did something that you wouldn’t in a thousand years have expected him to. Just as you had, in his apartment, weeks ago, he crawled behind you and wrapped his arms around you. You stiffened, convinced for a second you might split and shatter. He was warm and soft and you could smell his hair and his breath tickled your neck and it hurt so much. It all hurt so much.

You breathed in deep and when you exhaled, you choked, crying again. You didn’t know you had more in you. You had thought you were dry, but just as there was no end to your sadness, there apparently was no end to your tears.

You lay there, letting him hold you as you cried, letting the sun lower in the sky, letting the stars come out.

“I’m fucking sick of it,” you gasped. “Sick of it, sick of it, sick of it.”

“Sick of what?”

“Everything. I hate it. I hate everything. I hate it. I hate being alive. I hate being me. I can’t stand it. I don’t know how people do it. I just want it to stop. I just want it to stop.”

“Life?”

“Yeah.”

“I get it. I don’t want you to stop being you, though. For what it’s worth.”

You couldn’t hear that kind of thing. Not now. You couldn’t take it.

“You just don’t know me,” you whispered, your voice hoarse from crying and thick from new tears.

“Tell me, then.”

“I fucking suck.”

“How?”

“Literally everything I am. Fundamentally flawed. I’m broken and stupid and I can’t be normal and no one can ever love me because I’m this. I’m just this all the time and I can’t get better and I thought that I could but it’s just me and my fucking broken head and I ruin everything. I ruin everything for everyone and always will and no one can stand me. No one can and I don’t fucking blame them. I can’t stand me either. It makes me sick to be such a useless heap of junk. I’m a worthless waste of space because what is the point of me? What do I do? I need people, I cling to people, I make myself their problem until they can’t take it anymore. I’m depressed and stupid and I will never achieve anything and never do anything and I might as well just die right now because who cares? Literally who cares. I tried and I fucking tried but I’m still me and I can’t run from it or change it and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be here. I don’t know what to do anymore. There is nothing for me. The future is black and it’s bleak because I’ll be there. I’m always there. I can’t get away from myself. I can’t bear it. I have to live like this? For years? More and more years? Twenty? Or thirty? Forty years of this? It makes me sick to think about. I can’t think about it. I can’t think about having to be alive like this for another day let alone any longer. I hate it. I hate being me and I hate being alive and I just wish I wasn’t. I wish I could just disappear. I’m a broken, useless, fucked in the head piece of shit and no one will ever love me because they can’t. I’m unlovable. I’m this and it makes me unlovable but I can’t change it so I will always be unlovable and I can’t do it. I can’t live like that. I can’t do it anymore.”

You took a deep, shuddering breath and Yoongi said nothing. He was quiet for long enough for your shame to creep back in, curling its fingers around the door frame and pulling itself in, unbidden and unwanted. You were embarrassed now, again. You felt stupid. Again. You felt pointless and petty and pathetic and you were about to shrug Yoongi off, to tell him to leave, to crawl into your bed and hide under the sheets when his arms tightened around you. You heard as well as felt him take a deep breath.

“Yeah, I understand.”

There was a pregnant pause and Yoongi cleared his throat.

“But I don’t think any of those things about you. For what it’s worth.”

Chapter Four | Masterlist | Chapter Six

#yoongi x reader #bts x reader #yoongi fic #bts fic #yoongi angst #bts angst #tw self harm #tw cutting

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