Archive of Our Own

If there’s something Yoongi has learned after an eternity of pure misery, it’s how to find joy in the most fleeting of moments.

Rather, the closest to joy a thing like him is capable of feeling. 

It’s not that he doesn’t love what he does — or at least, he loves it as much as something like him can love anything, which isn’t saying much — but sometimes, bringing down the hammer just doesn’t light the fire under his feet like it used to.

Not that the ground he walks on wasn’t already a river of barely-formed magma that would burn his feet clean off if he had a real body. Not that he can actually feel physical pain. It’s just the principle of it. 

Yoongi has never particularly enjoyed humans — their screaming alone was nearly enough to make him transfer departments, let alone the stupid mess of bodily fluids he’d always have to clean after a session — but he always liked something about them.

Or, at least, he felt the closest thing to “like” something like him could feel. Which, again, isn’t saying much.

The little stubs at the end of their legs, tiny little wastes of flesh and bone that Yoongi later learned are called toes, always fascinated him. They seemed completely useless to him, but then again, so did everything about everything that wasn’t part of his procedure.

Yoongi has such a soft spot for toes that he always saves them for last.

Then, of course, he pries the nails off one by one, and they wail and beg for mercy and give Yoongi a wicked headache. But he always saves the toes for last, because they’re dumb and unnecessary and there are times when he wonders what it would be like having pointless vestigial traits instead of being a streamlined and uber-efficient torture machine.

He never wishes, but he wonders.

He doesn’t have much room for wonder anymore. He’s been in this job the longest of anyone, so when he isn’t torturing, he’s training. New recruits gawk at him because they’ve seen him in their storybooks shrouded in darkness and flames and skulls and other things that humans are scared of, for some reason. He can’t remember what fear feels like, but it’s what keeps him in charge, so he doesn’t complain. 

The newest recruits feel remorse for a while. They gripe incessantly and their faces screw up when they beat their first human piñata with a meat hammer. They still have a hint of humanity left in them, which is a massive weakness in this line of work. Of all the fragments of life Yoongi has pieced together from his subordinates and recruits, he thinks remorse is the most human thing he can think of.

Of course, they get used to it. Eventually, they just become grateful that it isn’t them on the chopping block. They repress their humanity until one day, it vanishes altogether. 

Yoongi doesn’t remember what beauty is supposed to look like, but he figures that transformation is the closest thing to it. He doesn’t congratulate them, though, because he’s forgotten what a celebration is.

In fact, he doesn’t remember the feeling of any human emotion, even though he used to be one. 

Every other Reaper has at least something. For Jungkook, the ferryman of damned souls, it’s a memory of sunlight warming his skin, but not enough to melt it clean off his bones. His neighbor Namjoon can remember breathing actual air, and sometimes puffs out his chest to demonstrate. Jin, one of his trainee acquaintances in the Psychological unit, swears that he can recall the taste of something that isn’t blood, but he can never quite describe the flavor.

It’s pathetic. Obviously. He’d rather stick himself with a hot poker than ever think twice about a human, much less purposefully try to remember when he was one.

But there are fleeting times when Yoongi wishes he could recollect something, even if it’s just a name other than his own or what those twigs at the end of human arms are called.

———

Yoongi’s afterlife goes perfectly to protocol, until the day when it doesn’t. 

He returns to his post after taking his protocol-ordained break in the Fields of Asphodel, which is pleasantly scream-free compared to Tartarus. All of the humans shake like insects in the wind and bow when he arrives. The fear is so potent that it hangs humid in the air, smelling of burnt rubber and rancid meat. If Yoongi could bottle the aroma and keep it, he would.

When he comes back, there’s someone — some thing — at his station, a prickling flash of color against the ashen field stretching towards an endless horizon. Yoongi stops dead in his tracks because this is not protocol compliant. The intrusion is eerily still in the sea of writhing souls, like a belly-up fish in a teeming tank of 100 more living ones. 

It’s only when smoke starts to rise around his feet does Yoongi remember that the floor is literally lava, so he trudges through towards his station. He can already feel a headache threatening to burst behind his eyes. I don’t get paid enough for this.

Yoongi’s about to devise a plan for figuring out if he gets paid at all (and if so, how much and in what currency), when the trespasser turns slowly.

Yoongi realizes a few key facts in the first few seconds of seeing this creature:

1. It appears to be human in shape, to his dismay, but then he looks closer and sees a brilliant orange flame in the pits of its eyes and a long, charred tendril that seems to swallow its pallid skin whole. So it is decidedly not human, which is somewhat of a relief.
2. There are not one, but two human-like bodies that seem to inhabit the same aura, not quite physically breathing like Namjoon demonstrates buthumming with something untouchable and forbidden that Yoongi figures must be life.
3. Yoongi doesn’t know what human beauty is supposed to look like, because all humans are equally atrocious to him. But an ancient, paper-thin voice deep inside of him rustles, whispers in his ear, tells him that they are the most beautiful human-like creatures that he has ever laid his eyes on.

Yoongi doesn’t feel fear, because he doesn’t feel anything, but if he could feel fear, he imagines he would be feeling it right now.

“What’s the meaning of this? Is this something sent down from the Big Woman Herself? Don’t you Upperworlders know that without me working the whole cosmic order goes to shit?” Yoongi’s voice creaks like an old door swinging on its hinges. He hasn’t used it in a while. Sometimes he tells humans who hate the dentist to OPEN WIDE! so that he can give them a root canal with a hornet’s stinger, but otherwise, he’s more efficient without saying a word at all. 

Both halves of the beautiful creature shake their heads simultaneously. “We are not Upperworlders, but we are not here on Si-hyuk’s orders either,” one of them begins with a voice so melodic that Yoongi might actually prefer it to silence. 

“Then why the fuck are you here? You don’t look like you’re from down here.” Yoongi tries to grab his keys from behind them, but they take an identical step to block his path. A truly exquisite migraine starts to unfurl in Yoongi’s temple.

“There’s been a change of leadership. Si-hyuk has been replaced,” the other continues, its tone much deeper yet equally rich as its partner’s.

Yoongi doesn’t feel surprise, but he imagines if he could, he would be feeling it right now.

“The fuck do you mean , ‘change of leadership?’ Si-hyuk’s been the boss since before I got here. I’m like a fire ant compared to him. And if I am a fire ant, that makes the two of you flecks of worm intestine between my teeth.”

The two strangers say nothing. They continue to regard him with a gaze that is distant, yet smothering at the same time.

“I am Jimin,” the being croons pleasantly before motioning to its partner, “and this is Taehyung. We are liaisons representing the new King of Hell in order to ensure a smooth transition. Do you have any onboarding forms on file, or should we bring down fresh copies?”

Yoongi blinks at them both warily. He assumes this can’t be some trick to make him fill out his paperwork, because Si-hyuk makes Yoongi look like a stand-up comedian. He doesn’t know why he would choose right now to take up sketch comedy. 

“This is so against protocol that I don’t know how the fuck you two are still here in front of me and not the product of nuclear fission by now,” Yoongi deadpans, looking between the two of them for any sign of nuclear meltdown. It doesn’t come, their faces perfectly still and annoyingly symmetrical.

“We just told you, there’s a new King,” the one called Taehyung says, “which means that there’s a new protocol, effective immediately. Since you are one of the most talented Reapers in this dimension, the new King has personally sent us to tell you that you require sensitivity training. He believes you have the most potential of all your peers in the coming era.”

New protocol sounds oxymoronic in Yoongi’s brain, and he spends a good few seconds trying to wrap his head around the concept before giving up entirely. “Shithead, I don’t need potential, I’m already the best at what I do around here! They aren’t my peers, I’m their superior. Why do I need training? If anything, all of my subordinates are the ones who pussyfoot around torture techniques. I tell them over and over, you have to starve the giant scorpions before locking humans in their cages with them, but they never listen! I do my job well, so there’s no reason to change anything.” Yoongi tries again to grab the key to his cage, but Jimin and Taehyung seem to know exactly what he’s going to do before he does it. Jimin swiftly grabs Yoongi’s wrist and Taehyung takes the other. Yoongi growls and tries to pull away, but their hands seem to bear otherworldly strength.

“We’re sorry you feel that way,” they say together, not sounding apologetic in the slightest. Their eyes flash and their voices combine in a way that sends an errant vibration through the ground and up Yoongi’s spine. “But we think you’ll truly enjoy what this new era has in store for you.”

He’s about to correct them because I never feel anything at all, but then the hands on Yoongi’s wrists start to spit sparks. The entities in front of him split the sky, exploding into a kind of supernova that he didn’t know could survive in a damned place like this. 

He tries to blink away the light, but then it slips away altogether and he’s plummeting into a darkness the likes of which even he hasn’t witnessed. 

If he could feel fear, he would. 

——— 

Day 1

——— 

Instead of the screams of thousands of damned souls, Yoongi wakes up to a song. 

It’s on par with the music from the Mental Torture department: loud and whiny and full of misplaced adlibs and odd instrumentals. The singer’s a man, but he has a decidedly nasal tone, one that makes Yoongi’s teeth rattle and his hands itch to throttle someone.

Yoongi clamps his hands over his ears, but the singer is relentless. The torturous excuse for a melody bleeds through and digs into the space behind his eyes. He wishes he could just go back to sleep.

Wait a minute, he remembers with a jolt, I don’t fucking sleep.

He shoots up in a bed that isn’t his own, taking in as much of the landscape that can fit in his bleary field of vision. He sees spots of color even through the dimness, but there are no hints as to who actually lives here.

“Fucking Christ, will you shut the fuck up?” Yoongi uses his most threatening tone (one that he usually reserves for new recruits who forget to light their arrows on fire before human target practice) to no avail. He’s about to find this singer and show him a brand new form of torture that will surely earn him employee of the month, when he sees it.

Directly next to his head on the pillow, there’s a flash of green in the lowlight. It’s too bright, too loud, and when Yoongi scoots closer to examine it, he realizes that it’s a box of light. He recognizes the symbols on the front as human numbers from the inmate tags his victims wear. They weigh down their stupid necks, their only distinguishing feature in a sea of souls equally miserable as them. When they get their number, they cease to have free will, which makes Yoongi’s existence considerably better, but these numbers seem insistent on pissing him off.

At one point, the numbers change, reading 7:31 instead of 7:30. Yoongi reaches out tentatively and runs his fingers over cold plastic ridges. When he doesn’t feel anything sharp or tooth-like, he yanks the box and throws it as far as he can. It hits a hardwood floor with a satisfying crunch. The singer stutters into silence and the light flickers one last time before the room goes dark once more.

Yoongi breathes heavily for a moment and massages at his temple, assuaging the inevitable pain that prods at his skull. He inhales, exhales, does it again for good measure.

Wait. A fucking. Minute. 

I don’t fucking breathe.

He splutters for a moment, clutching at his chest and feeling it rise and fall of its own accord, just like Namjoon’s. He tries to stop, but when he does the air violently fights against his insides until he has no choice but to let it out. And then he’s looking down at the floor and there they are — ten tiny little vestigial wastes of skin and bone, attached to his own little body. Which, as he takes in the rest of the room as a reference point, is pretty little. His whole body feels denser when he moves, and then he realizes it’s because he has actual skin weighing down his skeleton.

This is very wrong, this is absolutely not fucking happening because it’s impossible and completely outside the realm of Yoongi’s imagination. Which, granted, isn’t saying much. 

But then again, I’m not the product of nuclear fission. 

Yoongi remembers the beautiful beings that grabbed him, exploded into white hot sparks, and left him here, in the dark, sleeping and breathing as if he were — 

“Jimin! Taehyung! Whoever and whatever the fuck you are,” Yoongi raises his voice again, but this time it’s less of a bellow and more of a squeak, “this is not fucking funny and I am not doing any training! It is frankly insulting that you think you have the right to make me… this creature and in the name of all that’s unholy I demand you set your superior free or you two will be my inaugural foray into a kind of torture that involves lots of uncomfortable penetration—”

“Did I just hear penetration? Yoongi, you sly devil!”

A strangled sound that Yoongi’s far too familiar with is wrenched from his throat as another voice chirps from across the room. It’s still too dim to see anything, but he can make out a darker shape against the yellow-orange dawn coming in through the window. Something pounds in his chest near where he breathes and shoots electricity through his whole body, shaking him and reminding him that he is painfully alive.

“Well, Yoongi, don’t leave me in suspense! Who are Jimin and Taehyung and why didn’t you tell me you’re gonna be penetrating them? At least invite them over for dinner first!” The voice takes on a tone that Yoongi’s unfamiliar with, one full of bumps and slides and hiccups of excitement. It reminds him of the rivers that flow through the Fields of Asphodel, their easy flow cut up into a babble by rocks in the waterbed. He lets the voice wash over his ear, unsure if he’s supposed to like it or not but floored by the sheer newness of its cadence. 

Yoongi’s sure that if it were in Tartarus, this voice could soar over an eternal plane of misery to warm the feet of the humans on Earth. But not enough to burn.

Too bad Yoongi likes the smell of melting flesh so much.

“Who the fuck are you and how do you know my name? Is this my first training exercise? Turning me human and torturing me with insufferable music? This new King has some nerve, and that’s coming from someone who does spinal surgery with swordfish.”

There’s a beat of silence save for that incessant rhythm of blood against his bones. Then, with only a brief click in warning, the world flashes white around him again, but the darkness never comes.

Yoongi groans, the sudden color staining the inside of his eyelids. He opens his eyes in the light for the first time, and if he wasn’t missing Tartarus before, he is now.

The whole place is pleasant and put together and not at all like any torture chamber he’s ever seen before. Instead of the portable bandsaw that Yoongi always keeps handy, there’s a hairbrush on the side table, laden with silver strands bearing a disconcerting resemblance to his own. Instead of a bed of rusty nails, the mattress holding him up is soft and cushy and it squeals slightly when he rolls out of bed as if it doesn’t want him to go. Yoongi even has fucking fur-lined slippers neatly tucked under the foot of his bed and a bathrobe hanging on a bathroom peg. And they match.

For fuck’s sake. 

“Are you drunk? I sure hope so, because I am kind of concerned that my Facebook roommate is an actual psychopath who curses at the sky about kings and torture and… swordfish? And… that part where you insinuated that you hadn't always been human. That is also concerning.” 

With the light on, Yoongi can see his so-called “roommate” for the first time. This is the first human Yoongi’s ever seen that isn’t in multiple pieces, which is maybe why he seems more solid than the rest of his victims. But there’s another dimension giving this human shape and strength that Yoongi hasn’t even seen in Si-hyuk.

He’s posted up against the doorframe, all leisurely and calm when the mere sight of Yoongi brings tears to any Underworlder’s eye. In fact, the human doesn’t even look at him. He’s much more interested in picking flecks of nail polish off one of his hands and tapping at a small light box in his palm. Yoongi tries to trick himself into thinking he looks like every other wormlike human he’s ever tortured, but he finally meets his gaze and that same voice stirs in the back of his mind, so hoarse that he could mistake it for rolls of parchment rubbing together. 

If his thoughts were written with a pen and ink, this one would jump off the page entirely. 

Yoongi doesn’t know what beauty is, but inexplicably, a forgotten appetite curdles the pit of his stomach.

For fuck’s sake. 

“Ah, Yoongi? Are you okay? You’re looking a little, um...ghostly.” The human is still lingering in the doorway, close enough now that Yoongi can smell his freshly-laundered striped silk pajamas and body spray. The only kind Yoongi’s familiar with is Axe (not from his personal use, of course, but from dousing his victims with it. It’s one of the most popular torture methods in the entire dimension). This is definitely not that.

“Are you my captor, or are you a prisoner too?” Yoongi asks gruffly, noticing how the human’s eyes widen and lips fall apart at the mere suggestion. “Alright, you can kindly cut the shit. I know what you’re here to do, but trust me shithead, I can do whatever you do a thousand times worse once I get out. As your superior, I demand you tell me your precinct and badge number immediately.”

The pajama-d human regards him with what Yoongi figures is a mixture of confusion and amazement, one of his eyebrows quirking as Yoongi taps his foot impatiently. After a second more of befuddlement, he shakes his head and lets out a noise like the bells atop Jungkook’s ferry. Except when those bells ring, the sound doesn't bounce off anything or dance on the air; it just stretches uninhibited towards the untouchable horizon. This sound hits every inch of solid ground in the room, including directly between Yoongi’s eyes, and vibrates through the empty space between. Yoongi grumbles outwardly, missing the times when he could just cut out someone’s tongue when they were being too loud. 

“Ooooooooo kay big guy, I’m gonna put some coffee on, because wow, you are still belligerently drunk! You stay right here, champ! Don’t move a muscle!” The human seems to shoot him with an imaginary gun with his fingers, but his face is still wearing that stupid smile that makes Yoongi’s blood boil. I guess I fucking have that too, now, he thinks, grimacing when he notices deep blue veins protruding on the underside of his arm. 

The bells chime again as the annoying human makes his way further into the chamber, chattering like an incessant parrot. Yoongi doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but clearly it must have been something truly unspeakable.

Yoongi peeks out past the door expecting to find the lifeless slate of gray that’s been his domain forever, only to be surprised once more. 

Or rather, surprised as much as something like him can be. 

Much like the bedroom, the common space is decorated like an Ikea catalogue (he knows what those look like because he makes humans build the furniture without an instruction manual). It’s infuriatingly color coordinated and so pop-py that his eyes start to ache just standing there. Light streams in through perfectly rectangular holes in the wall, showing a different landscape altogether. The sky is bright and blue like the streams in Asphodel with clouds hanging like unhurried smoke. He sees the points of what he thinks must be buildings cutting through the skyline, but these aren’t like Si-hyuk’s palace. They’re all unique and pointed, like the jagged teeth of a hellhound. Yoongi doesn’t understand how this could possibly be appealing, but then again, if he really is in the human world, it would make sense that such grotesque structures are considered beautiful. It’s the only thing humans know. And they consider me the barbarian. 

“Do you like it black or with cream?” the roommate calls out, bustling over a massive stove that doesn’t appear to have body parts roasting on it. Yoongi huffs, thoroughly unimpressed with the lack of brutality. It’s like they didn’t even try. 

He stands there studying the landscape for so long that a bird flies directly in front of him and lands squarely at his eye level. He startles, jumps backwards, and decides he likes the indoors better.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he gulps, trying to catch his breath inconspicuously. “I’d appreciate it if you can just drop the act so that we can just be transparent with each other, demon to demon.”

The human seems to choke on whatever he’s drinking before turning back to face Yoongi. The apples of his cheeks are slightly pink, probably from the steaming drink in his hand. He lets out a nervous attempt at a laugh before pushing the mug over at him. “Here… just take mine. You need it more than I do,” he says warily, looking at Yoongi like he’s just sprouted a horn. 

Yoongi peers at the substance. It reminds him of chocolate, the substance that Jin seems to remember as the absolute joy of his human life. Just the thought of it makes Yoongi sick. 

He reaches out tentatively and lifts the hot mug up to his lips like he saw the roommate do. He takes a mouthful of the bitter liquid, not expecting it to sear his mouth. He splutters and drops the mug with a yelp. He isn’t expecting it to explode, but it shatters against the counter with an ear-splitting crash. 

His roommate jumps and hisses something under his breath. “Oh no… was it too hot? Don’t move, you aren’t wearing shoes, let me grab the broom… ” The human breezes around the kitchen until he returns with a trash bag and a brush, but not like the kind with Yoongi’s hair in it. He quickly sweeps all of the shards into the bag with his lip pulled between his teeth, carefully tiptoeing around the shimmering fractals that pepper the floor. “I’m really sorry, Yoongi. I like mine hot enough to melt the sleepiness clean off. In about 10 minutes, it should be at a normal, non-masochistic temperature.”

Yoongi scoffs, but subtly rubs his hand across his singed throat. “Don’t insult me with your pleas and remorse. It’s pathetic. If you’re going to torture me, at least fucking own it.” 

The roommate stills by the trash can, the space between his eyebrows furrowing. He doesn’t quite meet Yoongi’s eyes, but he can still sense some misery, the only human emotion that he’s fine-tuned to recognize. “Uh… okay… I literally have no idea why you keep talking about torture, because I thought these first two days have been pretty good, but forget I said anything at all. You’re welcome for cleaning up the glass, by the way. And for my favorite mug, which is now shattered because you don’t know how hot drinks work.” With that, the human storms by, throwing new shadows across the brilliant interior. The door to his room slams pointedly, and there’s silence once more.

Yoongi smiles to himself, because clearly he has just mastered his first task. “Okay, what’s next?” he yells at the ceiling, “You might have made me human, but I can still wreak havoc with the best of them. Bring the fucking pain on —” 

— some higher power plunges the world into darkness, but this time it feels like less of a threat and more like a promise.

——— 

Day 2

——— 

Yoongi wakes up slowly, then all at once.

The warmth under the covers seems to wrap around him like an extra blanket, holding him snugly in a way that should feel like a trap. Still, something inside of him seems to crave it with the way he subconsciously pulls the comforter up over his chin.

But then there’s the rest of him that is royally pissed off, because if he has an innate urge to cuddle a fucking pillow, he’s still human.

“You’re really funny, aren’t you? I hope you got your kicks in, because as soon as I find a flamethrower, this whole bed is tinder,” he shouts at the ceiling, throwing the covers off his body and shaking free. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and shudders when a sudden coolness meets his skin. 

Then he hears it again, and he knows that he must have truly committed the worst sin known to humankind to end up here.  

Yoongi positively roars, flinging the light box with impressive force at the wall. He seethes with a kind of rage that hisses in his stomach, sending tendrils of heat throughout his body. He growls there for a moment, feeling momentarily larger than his tiny human form. 

For a second, it’s like he’s back at his post with a broken spine under his favorite spiked boots. But of course, all good things must come to a fucking end, Yoongi thinks when the door flies open on its hinges.

His roommate is back, wearing the same silk pajamas as yesterday but with a different expression on his face. That’s what worry looks like, Yoongi presumes. His eyebrow cocks as he scans the room, the tiny lightbox still poised in his hand. When his glance falls on Yoongi, he feels a shudder come from the floor, traveling on his skin until it makes the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up. For fuck’s sake.

“ Someone’s having a bad morning,” the human notices loudly, his concern giving to a dazzling smile that makes Yoongi’s blood beat louder in his ears.

“Don’t fuck with me. My whole reason for existing is for making mornings bad. So you got me a new sound machine to torture me, I see. Little do you know, I got resistance training eons ago, before your atoms even existed. So keep at it, I know who’s gonna be the last one standing.”

There’s that wide-eyed, rage-inducing look on his face, same as yesterday. Yoongi rolls his eyes and pushes past him into the common space. A baby blue blanket is tossed over one of the armchairs, and even though he tries to fight it with every fiber of his being, Yoongi shivers in the morning air. He begrudgingly throws it around his shoulders, cringing against the wool that feels even softer than it looks.

“All right, uh, well, that’s a lot to unpack!” the human chirps unsurely, creeping around Yoongi as if he were infected with a deadly disease. “First of all, the alarm clock is yours. I haven’t seen it before yesterday, when you moved in, so if anyone’s torturing you, it’s yourself. You know you can change the station so that song won’t be on when you wake up tomorrow, right?” Yoongi pointedly ignores him, studying an airplane painting the sky outside a hole in the wall. “Not that it matters, because I think you KO-ed the one you already have, but for future reference, I guess. Do you like it black or with cream?” Yoongi notes how his voice squeaks at the end, a kind of happy-seeming sound despite the fact that Yoongi just yelled at him in the tone that makes souls in Tartarus evaporate. He chances a look out of the corner of his eye, and finds the human’s laughing into his coffee mug, not phased in the slightest.

Damn. This guy’s good.

“Well, I already destroyed the one from yesterday, so I hope you have a steady stream of soundboxes. You’re gonna need them. And I’m not falling for that shit again, keep that liquid fire away from me.”

Silence, finally . Yoongi turns back to the wall hole, feeling almost like he’s in Asphodel until a bird lands right in front of his nose on the other side of the ledge.

He yelps, throwing the blanket at the wall hole and scrambling away. He’s never lost his eyes before and with the way the humans scream when the pigeons are let loose on them, he isn’t keen to today.

“Gosh, Yoongi, are you okay? What happened?” The human runs over and kneels down to Yoongi’s level, his eyes wide with worry again. 

Yoongi’s never seen a human this close before. Where the souls in Hell are made of hollow screams and gray flesh and sharp angles, everything on his roommate’s face is curved and colored by brilliant emotion, all shiny eyes and rosy cheeks and a mouth full of words that sound more like music. He doesn’t remember what art is supposed to look like, but Yoongi figures it looks like him, soft and striking at the same time, so full of life that he could leap off the canvas. If he could frame him, Yoongi would.

Yoongi forgets that he asked him a question until he raises his eyebrows expectantly in his direction. 

“ Um, yeah, the… the bird… the bird scared me. Just like yesterday…” he trails off, because he knows that human time passes linearly, so it must just be a coincidence. “ But I saw it coming, as I will continue to see everything with my eyes because they’re still in my head, but good try.” Yoongi can’t quite muster the same bite in his tone as earlier, but the human is surprised nonetheless.

He doesn’t move. Why isn’t he moving?

“Where’d you say you were from again?”

“You know where I’m from,” Yoongi manages with scoff.

“I know your Facebook says you’re from New Jersey, but last I checked they have just as many birds as we do here.”

“I don’t know what book you’re referring to, but that’s not true,” Yoongi says, feeling cold again but unable to take five steps to go get the blanket.

“Well then, enlighten me,” the human continues, and he still isn’t moving, his gaze glinting with an emotion that Yoongi doesn’t know yet, but sends a thrill through his fingertips.

Yoongi wants so badly for this conversation to end, but the longer his roommate peers at him, the more relaxed he feels. He feels a smooth, unhurried sensation trickle over his body as if someone had cracked an egg over his head, sending tingles in its wake. Sometimes he’d encase humans in freshly molten liquid, but this is anything but excruciating.

This is probably just some dumb magic. Jimin and Taehyung are probably looking in and laughing at how moronic he looks, but his roommate isn’t laughing.

If this is a training exercise, Yoongi can’t possibly hope to pass.

“I’m from… F-Florida,” Yoongi chokes out after racking his brain for the name of any human place. He doesn’t know where it is, but Florida is where the real whackos come from. There’s a special spot for it on the Tartarus entrance paperwork.

“Florida, eh? No wonder you’re so fucking weird,” the human deadpans, chewing his lip. “So you’re afraid of birds, but not alligators?”

Yoongi wants so badly to be enraged to the point where the human’s head explodes just from looking at him (it’s happened before), but the fire in his belly has gone out altogether, leaving him helpless and small. He knows he should just break something else and stalk back to his room until tomorrow, but something about the way his roommate gazes at him prods the words out of him before he can shut his mouth.

“Um, yep, guess so. Alligators are pretty great for amputations. Not from personal experience, obviously,” Yoongi clarifies when the human’s mouth falls open. Why the fuck did I say that? 

“You Floridians are a different breed. But, I must say, your spring break parties are unmatched. Please tell me you’re from Fort Laudie so we have an excuse to go visit sometime.”

Did he just ask to go on break… together? 

This should be an easy answer. Yoongi should just say yes and then the human will finally leave him alone to drink his black lava. 

But then, Yoongi remembers that none of this is really happening and he’s just here to be trained, though for what he’s still not sure. There is no break, not to Asphodel or wherever Fort Laudie is. This is just another test that he has to pass in order to get back to do the same thing he’s always done. The same thing I’ll do forever.

He ignores the way his human heart shrinks pitifully in his chest.

“I’m from…. Floridaville?” His voice turns up nervously as if he’s asking a question.

Why the fuck am I saying any of this shit? 

His roommate studies him for a second before the bells in his throat ring again and he leaps to his feet, the joy loud and obvious as he goes to pour out a drink.

“Floridaville. Very original. Give a medal to the genius who thought that up.”

He figures this human must be funny with the way he laughs at his own jokes.

Yoongi thought that humans were made to suffer, their petrified faces chipped out of cold marble, but his roommate is made of something soft and effervescent, unpredictable in a way that makes Yoongi shiver even under the warm blanket.

His roommate sips the steaming liquid without even blinking, which reminds Yoongi that they’re still in Hell somewhere and absolutely none of this is real because if a real human drank that, they surely wouldn’t have a voice left to even scream with, let alone laugh with. 

Let alone laugh in such a beautiful way. 

“Not a coffee drinker, Yoongi? I don’t know how you function. I need three of these to get through a day at the office.”

The chimes finally stop reverberating in Yoongi’s brain long enough for him to snap back to reality, because now we’re getting somewhere. 

“Your office , huh?” he says with renewed confidence, that sticky feeling that made him spill all those thoughts that he obviously didn’t mean swiftly fading from his head. “What quadrant? Are you in psychological or physical?”

It all makes sense now, Yoongi thinks. He’s obviously not a real human, he’s testing me. Seeing how I can deal with difficult superiors without causing World War 3. I just have to play his game, and he’ll let me out.

He can’t imagine why anyone want to avoid such an enticing possibility as mass violence, but if it’ll get these gross urges out of his head and these stupid organs out of his meatsuit then he can play along. 

His roommate looks at him straight in the eye, his mouth curved curiously, and Yoongi can feel his confession on the tip of his tongue.

If only I could get in his head like he can get in mine.

“For about the fifteenth time, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, you little weirdo. But I’m an architect, if that makes sense in your weird Floridian language!” His roommate shoots him a grin that sparkles in the sunlight, and something deep within Yoongi snaps in half.

Yoongi feels his eye twitch before he swiftly slaps himself twice across the face as hard as his tiny human muscles can muster. 

Turns out, he’s much stronger than he looks. A dull, prickly pain blooms over the side of his cheek, and he can see a red mark already starting to sear his pallid skin in his reflection on the table. A thick, iron-y fluid fills his mouth and drips onto the carpet below. Despite the fact that his teeth are barely dangling in his mouth, he feels himself grin.

Yoongi’s stupid human senses are a bit muffled from the blow, but he can feel a presence hover behind his shoulder.

“ STAY BACK! ” Yoongi means for it to come out as a growl, but he really just sounds dizzy and pitiful in typical human fashion. “If I’m really human, then that means I can die, and nobody can resurrect humans, not even Si-hyuk or the Queen of the Upperworlders. If you don’t let me out of here, I will beat myself until I’m a fucking vegetable, and Tartarus will be down its best Reaper.” There’s a desperate grip on his shoulder that he swats away with difficulty. 

His roommate might have said something, but Yoongi really can’t hear anything besides crumpled parchment in his ear. 

“Ah, fuck it, the universe is better unbalanced anyways,” he mutters, grabbing the closest thing his short arms can reach. It’s a vase full of bright flowers that don’t know that they’re about to get a lot more colorful. 

Yoongi doesn’t even feel the third blow, but the darkness hits him just as hard. 

———

Day 3

———

Yeah, you got that yummy-yum

That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy

Yeah, you got that yummy-yum

That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy.

Yoongi’s eyes shoot open before the rest of his body wakes up. He can’t fully tell where he is, but if that fucking song is playing then it is not where he wants to be.

He bolts upright, looking wildly to his right. Something that he supposes is surprise twists the pit of his stomach as he sees them. Flashing green numbers like the angry eyes of a viper.

He scrutinizes them intently, ignoring the pressure building in his temples. They’re stuck at 7:30 for what seems like an agonizing amount of time, but just as he’s about to smash it, they change.

7:31, the clock tells him plainly. Light a match, get litty, babe, the singer whines.

He reaches out like he did on the first day, letting out a breath when the material is firm and unbudging under his skin. Yoongi thought for a moment that he might have been imagining it.

But, then again, he’s a Reaper. His imagination is limited only to coming up with new ways to make humans wish they were never born. He knows that he couldn’t have possibly thought up a magical singing alarm clock that reassembles itself every morning just to bring Yoongi to the precipice of agony.

Maybe smashing the clock is what makes this cycle flow, Yoongi thinks woozily. So I just… won’t smash it. 

Yoongi balls up his hands, his nails biting into his palms as he pointedly pulls the covers back and steps into the crisp morning air. He’s stretching his tired joints when suddenly, some kind of openmouthed, silent scream rips through his body like a tidal wave, leaving him powerless to do anything about it.

What. The fuck. Was that.

Yoongi’s wide eyes dart around, trying to see if any Reapers appeared while his back was turned to pull his soul through his mouth. But he still seems to be alive and breathing.

What. The. Fuck. 

I’m alive.

“I’M ALIVE?!” Yoongi howls, running for what he supposes is the bathroom judging by the squat clawfoot tub in the corner and the sharp smell of ammonia in the air. He’s taking in more air than his lungs can carry, an ominous sensation making him squirm in place as he peers into the mirror.

Yoongi’s throat lets out a noise like invisible hands are strangling it out of him. But, there obviously aren’t any, because he looks completely untouched.

He didn’t even know his eyes could go as wide as they do when he runs his fingers through his silver hair. They don’t come off bloody when he feels the spot where he smashed his head in with the vase. They move down to ghost over his smooth, unbruised cheek. There isn’t a trace of redness to be seen. In fact, if anything, he looks even paler than usual.

Yoongi doesn’t know much about human pain tolerance, because by the time he gets his hands on them they’re already dead. He guesses that a human could have survived the blows, but that doesn’t explain his pristine appearance. Or his ability to stand and think coherently, for that matter.

“I’m alive,” he mutters weakly, the thought of it all at once exhilarating and terrifying. “I’m human, and I died, but I’m alive .”

Everything’s exactly the same.

He bolts to the common room, noting his roommate getting the coffee ready on the stove. Same striped pajamas.

“G’morning, Yoongi!” He grins, completely unaware of the wild look in Yoongi’s eye and his panicked movements. “Do you like it —”

“ BLACK OR WITH CREAM!” Yoongi interrupts loudly with a gasp, every last detail swiftly falling into place.

“Uh… right, but you didn’t answer?” 

Yoongi figures his roommate is looking at him with that punchable expression that he’s given him countless times over their multiple interactions, but he doesn’t have time to check for sure.

He settles down in front of the hole in the wall, his hurried breaths fogging up the glass. Right as he lets his guard down, the bird lands directly in front of his nose, making Yoongi shriek even though he’s seen it twice before. 

“Gosh, Yoongi, are you okay? What happened?” His roommate asks in the same concerned tone as yesterday, but Yoongi can’t hear much besides the very fabric that holds the universe together ripping in half.

One huge question still stands unanswered in his mind. 

Only one way to find out, he thinks, and makes his way to the knife block.

———

Day 4

———

For the first time, the alarm clock’s song doesn’t sound like a requiem. 

Yoongi pants excitedly under his covers. He doesn’t waste a second before darting through the lowlight into the bathroom.

He pulls up the sleeve of his pajamas, blanching when he sees it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No angry scratches or scars, just a long, blank slate of flesh with the occasional vein winding through. Uncut vein, he amends with amazement.

Something rises within him as Yoongi turns his arm around in the light, examining it just in case he’s missed anything. He makes a sound that he didn’t even know he was capable of making as his face twists into a grin. His cheeks hurt with the motion, his muscles unused to this kind of expression, but after a moment it feels oddly natural.

For the first time in his damned existence, Yoongi giggles, actually giggles, the glee that’s tearing through his insides stealing the sound from deep within him before he can take it back.

If he weren’t so fucking giddy, Yoongi would probably be annoyed and blame Jimin and Taehyung for this uncomfortable development, but instead he just lets out another string of wheezes, happiness tickling his unmarked flesh. 

“I can’t die.” 

It’s not like he hasn’t already been sentient for hundreds of years, but that was in Hell. This can’t be Hell, because living humans aren’t allowed down there, and he isn’t the product of nuclear fission right now. Immortality used to mean nothing to him, it was just part of protocol, but he can’t remember the last time a human has been allowed to have eternal life. 

Maybe it’s because he has all of these strange human emotions running through his brain that magnify everything a hundred fold, but this feels impossibly thrilling. Change wasn’t even a concept in Tartarus, where protocol was the very force that held his atoms together. But as he starts to run his fingers across his healed skin, Yoongi’s new body starts to feel less like a prison and more like a gift.

Yoongi still has no idea why he’s here, but he knows the new King is trying to tell him something. For the first time, Yoongi wills that ancient voice in the back of his mind to show him what to do, but all he hears is running water through the drywall. Figures.

He wanders out to the common space, repeating those three words over and over, obsessed with how they feel on his tongue. He stills when he spies his roommate, perched over the stove, his hair tousled in the exact same way as it has been the past three days.

“Hello,” Yoongi chances, his voice half as loud and twice as meek as he means for it to be. The other human looks up, his gaze sparkling despite the sleepiness sticking his eyes together. “G’morning, Yoongi! Do you like it —“

“I don’t drink coffee,” Yoongi interrupts smoothly, sliding into one of the puffy barstool chairs near the kitchen. 

His roommate cocks his head to the side and shrugs. “I don’t know how you function. I need —”

“Three of these to get through a day at the office, I know,” Yoongi huffs impatiently.

The human’s pleasant gaze turns into a stare. “How…”

“Not important. I just need for you to tell me what happened yesterday.”

The human chews the inside of his cheek and crosses his arms unsurely. “Uh, welp, we texted. You moved your boxes up the stairs, and you barely said a word to me the whole time. Sound right?”

Yoongi lets out an incredulous breath. “So… nothing else happened. Your flower vase didn’t meet an unfortunate end? I didn’t yell at you about a broken alarm clock or spill coffee everywhere or… get your knives dirty? Floridaville? Anything?”

One of his roommate’s eyebrows folds inwards as he sets his mug on the counter furthest from Yoongi’s reach. “I thought you didn’t drink coffee?”

“Uh, I don’t.” 

“Hmm, well, I definitely don’t remember any of that. Maybe you dreamed it? Overactive imagination?”

Yoongi scoffs, rubbing his sore eyes with his pajama sleeve. “I fucking wish .”

“No worries, man, I totally get it. Has work been wearing you thin?”

Yoongi lets out a tired laugh from behind his hands. It still feels strange, but each time he does it, it gets easier than the last.

“You have no idea. I’m kind of in this training session right now. There’s… been a change of leadership.” Yoongi studies the human’s face for any sign of understanding, but he simply nods and stirs some white powder into his coffee.

“Damn, I know how that goes, man. New bosses can make life a living hell.”

Yoongi chokes a little, but hides behind his too-big pajama sleeves. He sends a quiet fuck you to Jimin and Taehyung for that one, wherever those little fuckers are hiding.

“ Soooooooooo… .” Yoongi’s about to call him by his name like he does with his subordinates, but his mouth hangs open dumbly when he realizes that he doesn’t fucking know it yet. 

The human looks up from his coffee, a light blush coloring his cheeks as Yoongi struggles. “You don’t know my name. We just moved in together and you don’t know my name.”

Yoongi winces, an unprecedented feeling of shame wringing out his insides like a washcloth.

“It’s been a slow morning. But, um, what I wanted to ask was, do you ever feel like every day is the exact same?”

The human seems surprised at the sudden change of topic, but his features are as soft and smooth as ever, not a hint of anger creasing them. “Sure, Yoongi. We’re twenty-somethings who just entered the workforce. Doesn’t everyone?” The side of his mouth twists in an easy smile, and there’s that sticky feeling oozing over his head and Yoongi figures that if this guy were a Celestial, he would be the polar opposite of a Reaper, like a golden being tasked solely with growing fields of flowers just with his chiming laugh and pretty mouth.

Fuck this.

That voice rustles against his ear again, but Yoongi can’t make it out when his roommate checks his small light box and jumps. “Shoot, I’m gonna be late! Nice talking to you, Yoongi, but please learn my name before I get back!” As quickly as the room was bursting with his presence, it’s hollow again as he dashes into his room and slams the door. Yoongi doesn’t know quite what to do now, the silence that he used to treasure bearing down on him like an unanswered question.

He finds the answer after absentmindedly rummaging around the common space, at the bottom of a laminated pamphlet called The Atlantic. 

It’s printed in six identically shaped dark letters standing out against a patch of white. 

Just a few moments later, he comes careening out of his room, but still finds a split second to flash Yoongi a grin from the front door frame before he vanishes altogether.

Yoongi’s goodbye only comes after he’s already gone, but he says it anyway.

He supposes it’s because of these dumb human feelings and some divine intervention from those fuckers Jimin and Taehyung, but he says it over and over again. 

Yoongi tells himself that he just does it to pass this training exercise, because this is definitely just another task in the rat race. But deep down, he loves the way it slides air across his tongue, filling his lungs in a burst before swiftly emptying them altogether.

It doesn’t really matter if he dies again, because he knows Hoseok will be there tomorrow morning.

———

Day 10

———

Yoongi’s tried to leave through the front door every day for the past five days.

He makes it about four steps before a swift blackness paints the blank hallway, and he wakes up with a worse migraine than the day before.

On day 10, he stops trying, because those assholes didn’t let him pack a fucking bag before they shut him here, and there isn’t a single pill of Advil in the place.

If the goal is to torment Yoongi, someone in Hell is going to get a raise.

———

Day 18

———

Hoseok never makes it home. 

Even on the days when Yoongi decides not to kill himself out of sheer boredom, the day resets back to 7:30 at some point during the afternoon, once a dull ache starts to fill his stomach that he doesn’t know how to get rid of. 

Today, Yoongi actually takes Hoseok up on his coffee offer. He takes it black before realizing that’s an awful mistake, shuddering when the bitterness spreads across his tongue. He spits it back into the cup discreetly and makes a mental note to scrap the battery acid and start making humans drink this shit. 

Hoseok takes it with not only cream, but with a heaping spoonful of sugar too.

It’s become clear that torturing or outlasting Hoseok is not the goal of this training simulation. He thinks about killing him sometimes, just to see what would happen, but something always stops him in his tracks before he can follow through. 

Even if Yoongi snapped and cut him up into chunks before he left for work one day, he suspects Hoseok would be in one completely oblivious piece the next day. So he doesn’t bother. It would be a waste of time. 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway. He conveniently ignores the fact that every day is the exact same, because there can’t be another reason he can’t bear the thought of Hoseok dying.

All he has is time.

———

Day 30

———

After Hoseok leaves for work every day, Yoongi sets about memorizing every nook and cranny of his chamber. Soon, he has the title of every book on his shelf memorized even though he’s never heard of any of them. He has memorabilia of men running and catching a brown sack of some sort, all emblazoned with an obnoxious red and blue G. There are three green plants on his desk that don’t wilt when he touches their leaves.

Yoongi assumes he must like music based on the extensive collection of records that he has stacked in an untouched box. He figures out how to use them one day and is overcome with relief that his taste sounds nothing like the Yummy song. 

He figures out that he has a little lightbox of his own that unlocks when he fits his eye to the camera. It’s a kind of communication machine that responds to his fingers when he taps on certain symbols. It reminds him of the remote controls for some of the fancier torture machines that corporate rolled out every few cycles, but Yoongi never used them. He always preferred doing his dirty work himself.

He discovers that Facebook is a message board full of capital letters and opinions that Yoongi knows will earn the writers a spot in Tartarus one day. He sees a tab labeled Friends. He tries to figure out what that word means, to no avail.

His messages are full of loudmouths that he can’t imagine ever speaking with. The person he texts most frequently is someone called Steph, a woman by the look of the scandalous photos she sends to him. To his horror, he scrolls back far enough to discover that she wasn’t the only one sending pictures like that. 

Yoongi deletes her contact every day, hoping that it’ll stick when the day refreshes, but she’s always there in the morning.   

He finds the messages with Hoseok, messages that his fingers never wrote but eerily sound like him anyways. There are too many full stops and half-formed thoughts compared to the long lines of text that Hoseok wrote, punctuated by little faces and symbols that bring color to the gray screen.

Hoseok Jung 

So today’s the day! Yay! So excited to finally meet you in person, roomie

Let me know when you’re close. Mind coming up on the Brooklyn Bridge, it might look faster but it’s actually really crowded this time of day.

You know, I’ll just go stand outside and flag you down. I’m wearing the Totoro pajama set :) 

Me

are you gay or something

Hoseok Jung

Excuse me?

Would it matter if I was?

Me

just dont try and fuck any of my bros and we’ll be fine

they come over to watch the giants every game day

Hoseok Jung

Actually, I realized I have a phone call to take. Hope you can bring your stuff up yourself.

Me 

cool

what’s the address again

Hoseok Jung

… You’re moving in in half an hour and you don’t know the address?

Me

forgot

Hoseok Jung

Here.

Apartment 666

400 Morningstar Place

New York, NY

Me 

cool

Even though the messages are nothing but silent, emotionless letters on a screen, they send a horrible sensation shivering up Yoongi’s spine. He doesn’t recognize the feeling, but it churns his stomach and makes his skin shrink against his bones.

He’s impaled countless souls before, but he never gave any thought as to what it would feel like. He figures this must be close.

Soon, he memorizes those texts too, even though he wishes he could forget them entirely. 

———

Day 45

———

Yoongi spends a solid week playing Words with Friends, from the moment his alarm goes off until the day ends itself.

He thought he was getting pretty good at it, but then he realizes that he’s been playing the exact same clues every single time.

A bookend to the forehead seems like a fitting way to go.

———

Day 60

———

It takes Yoongi two full months to learn what food is.

Of course, the mouth is one of the most sensitive sites on the body to torment, but he never realized that humans actually need to eat things that won’t eat them back in order to survive.

The chamber is quiet, save for the tap of Yoongi’s fingernails on a new game that he found on his phone. Among Us. He keeps killing players whenever he pleases, so he doesn’t understand why he keeps losing immediately. 

A deep ache claws at the inside of his stomach. Usually, he just assumes it’s some dumb human growing pain and ignores it, but his body seems extra intent on tormenting him today. Yoongi groans in tandem with his belly and pulls himself off the couch into the kitchen, where he sometimes sees Hoseok putting food into a paper bag if he isn’t egregiously late to work.

He swings open the white coffin where Hoseok keeps his coffee cream, eyes widening when he beholds the myriad of shapes and colors and labels waiting in the too-cold interior. Yoongi doesn’t even know where to begin, but he doesn’t see any ingredients that are moving or razor-sharp, so he figures anything is fair game.

He gravitates towards an orange bottle at his eye level, recognizing the erupting volcano on the front as Mount Diablo near Si-hyuk’s palace. Yoongi wonders if it’s still there after Jimin and Taehyung exploded.

Is anything left?

Yoongi shudders at the possibility that the universe has shrunken so small that it only has room for him. He roots around for anything else that looks appetizing, even though at this point he would eat anything that wouldn’t cause him bodily harm. Yoongi decides on a large brown tub in the door, a clear glass jar full of yellow-green liquid, and a loaf of bread that was already out on the counter. The brown container holds a mixture of chocolate and hazelnut, which reminds him of Jin’s only memory from his human life. The green juice just looks particularly appealing to him.

This he knows how to make after watching Namjoon scoop out a human’s intestines and feed it to them on two nicely toasted slices of rye bread.

He squirts the orange substance until it coats one of the bread slices, paints the chocolate substance over the other with his finger, and starts to pour the juice until he realizes that there’s a solid substance in there. He fishes out five tiny, slimy, green slices, shrugs, and arranges them on the chocolate.

Squishes them together, plain side out. Takes a bite.

Suddenly, understands what the fuss about this food stuff is all about.

By the time the day’s over, he has six more Nutella, pickle, and hot sauce sandwiches.

———

Day 61

———

The first thing Yoongi feels is a rumble in his stomach.

He rushes to the kitchen, his mouth watering already, and throws open the cold white food coffin. He makes his sandwich and takes his first bite, wondering how the fuck he made it through 60 days without this. 

When Yoongi stops to take a breath, there’s Hoseok standing in front of the coffee pot, his mug frozen on the way to his mouth as if he completely forgot to finish his sip.

Yoongi stills. “Hello, Hoseok.”

“Hey there, bud,” Hoseok replies weakly, his eyebrows higher than Yoongi’s ever seen them as he stares at the sandwich. “What… whatcha got there…?”

“This is my favorite food,” Yoongi answers candidly, taking another huge bite. Somehow, Hoseok’s eyes go even wider.

Hoseok considers him for a moment. For a second, Yoongi expects to be laughed at or scolded, but there’s no meanness in his stare, only curiosity. “Can I try some?”

This time, Yoongi’s the one who freezes. If he ever found something this satisfying in Tartarus, he would’ve kept it to himself. 

But that was before he knew Hoseok. Yoongi’s finding it increasingly hard to say no to him.

He hands over the sandwich with less resistance than he expected. Hoseok appraises it for a second, gulps, and takes a sizable bite.

“ You …” — Yoongi holds his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop — “... might be something of a genius,” he responds after a few seconds of heavy chewing and swallowing. To Yoongi’s shock, he takes another bite before realizing he’s incredibly late and rushing out the door.

Yoongi doesn’t know if this is what human food should taste like, but he supposes that if Hoseok likes it, it doesn’t matter anyways.

———

Day 70

———

Yoongi stops flinching when the bird inevitably lands on the other side of the wall hole, which he has since learned is called a window from one of Hoseok’s architecture magazines. 

He expects every event in the short term, every little detail seared into his brain with the hot brand of mindless repetition. 

What he doesn’t expect is what’s going to happen in the long term. 

The only way time is denoted in Hell is by how many humans each Reaper has tortured. That’s the only way Yoongi knows he’s been there so long. Nobody has his kill count. His memory doesn’t stretch back to the early days, save for Jin. And Jungkook, but he’s so childish that Yoongi sometimes forgets that he isn’t a new recruit.

But here, every day begins at 7:30 and ends too early. In the short term, Yoongi’s only made it about 6 hours into any given day. In the long term, time doesn’t exist outside of his little pocket of the universe.

Maybe this is all that’s left, he thinks when he wakes up on the 70th day. Maybe there isn’t a new King at all, and those beautiful beings who trapped him here simply exist to torment him for the rest of time. 

Cosmic payback for an eternal punisher.

Maybe he deserves it. 

He thinks back to those texts that fill him with an awful sensation whenever he reads them. Maybe he did send those messages, back in the time before his memory touches, before he was even a Reaper. 

I definitely deserve it.

But, then again, Hoseok doesn’t. 

Yoongi doesn’t know him besides the few minutes they share together every day, but the scraps of his huge personality he’s picked up little by little tell him all he needs to know.

Yoongi doesn’t even bother getting up today. Instead, he buries himself in his pillow until the stubborn oxygen in his chest stops pushing.

———

Day 75

———

“Do you like it black or with cream?” Hoseok grins wide enough that Yoongi can see all of his front teeth. They’re so idiotically straight and shiny that even if he were still a Reaper, he’d think twice about ruining them with a bleach cavity treatment.

I am still a Reaper, he corrects himself. None of this is real. It’s temporary.

“Cream. Thanks,” Yoongi says plainly, his stomach flipping nastily as a word he’s never said before slips out without warning.

He has never understood the purpose of human manners. They’re as vestigial as toes, relics from a time when being pleasant meant keeping your head. Yoongi laments the fact that public beheadings via guillotines have gone out of style.

Where Yoongi’s from, pleas for mercy only made him angrier. But here he is, groveling like the rest of the invertebrates.

He hopes that Jimin and Taehyung break their backs for that one.

Hoseok stirs in the cream with a flourish. He slides the full mug over to him, the same one that Yoongi shattered all those days ago. He knows better now, taking tentative sips and saving the rest to cool off.

“So, Yoongi, how do you like this side of town?” Hoseok chirps, looking directly into Yoongi’s eyes in a way that makes his hands sweat.

“It’s um. It’s fine.” He tries to grin, but with the way Hoseok’s face changes he figures it comes off as more of a grimace.

“Well, you only just moved in,” Hoseok smiles without any teeth this time. “Downtown is the place to be. It’s different from New Jersey, but I’m sure you’ll love it eventually.”

Yoongi nods stiffly, that heavy magical feeling starting to seep over the top of his head once more. It trickles down his body until it curls around the tip of his toes. Shit. Fuck. Not again , he begs, but once his tongue starts relaxing in his mouth, it’s a lost cause. 

“Well, I was wondering if you could, um, show me around.” His eyes bug out in horror, but he can’t stop. “I’ve never lived in this city, or any city actually, and according to Facebook you’ve lived here for a long time. So I figure, you know what’s going on. It would be just the two of us.”

Hoseok’s features contort more and more with every passing second, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Finally, his lips purse into a thin line and he sets his mug on the counter indignantly.

“Is this a joke? Is my sexuality really that bizarre to you that you think asking me out is a… a game? Does trivializing my life make you happy, Yoongi? ”

Piping hot regret slides down Yoongi’s throat as he senses genuine anger from Hoseok for the first time in 75 days. He rolls his eyes and unceremoniously dumps the rest of his coffee in the sink. “You know what, Yoongi, we just have to live together. I’ve tried to be nice, but we don’t have to be friends, so just don’t talk to me unless you’re bleeding out or something. Actually, maybe not even then!” With that, Hoseok shoots him a venomous glare and slams the door to his room so loudly that it plunges the entire world into darkness.

———

 Day 90

———

Yoongi’s been too scared to leave his room since Hoseok’s outburst, the bitterness playing over and over again in his mind. Even the fucking Yummy song can’t drown it out. 

He knows that if he goes out and sees him, Hoseok isn’t going to remember any of it, but even looking at him fills him with a certain dread that’s nearly unbearable. 

Out of all the dumb feelings that he’s been subjected to while he’s been here, this is that one that he’s steered clear from. The very last emotion that still clings to Reapers when they’re forced to betray their human nature.

After 15 days of solitude, remorse has completely engulfed him, from the moment he wakes up to the moment the world goes to sleep. He thinks back to when he would lock the really nasty souls in a chamber of ice-cold water and drown them over and over again until they forgot where they were. He figures that felt something like this.

The days have been getting shorter and shorter. Yoongi knows because he checks his alarm clock, committing the flashing numbers to memory when he feels the darkness creep along the wall. Yesterday, it happened at 7:45. 

Someone is trying to tell him something, whether it’s the new King or those dolts that trapped him here or the universe itself, but he figures he needs to listen. 

———

Day 91

——— 

Yoongi takes a steadying breath, slipping on the irritatingly comfortable slippers that are placed under his bed for good measure. He trepidatiously makes his way to the common room, not bothering to turn off his alarm clock.

“G’morning, Yoongi! Do you like it black or with cream?” Hoseok coos. Yoongi hopes he doesn’t look too relieved to see him, but that feeling is bubbling up inside of him and making him more goo than human and it’s been 15 days of loneliness.

Even in Hell, he was never alone. Damned souls make crap company, but they were company nonetheless. 

“2 spoonfuls cream, 1 spoonful sugar. Erm, please.” He manages a strained smile. Hoseok returns it, and fetches his favorite mug.

“Hey, I do the exact same thing! You have good taste,” he says, and something within Yoongi’s chest squeezes.

“Thanks,” Yoongi mumbles, studying Hoseok over the lip of the mug, because it’s been 15 days of loneliness but he’s none the wiser.

“No problem. You have work today?” Hoseok is careful with his coffee today, taking delicate sips compared to the careless glugs he usually takes to wake up.

Yoongi shakes his head. “I’m actually… out of a job, right now. Kind of.”

A frown appears between Hoseok’s eyebrows before spreading to the rest of his face. “That sucks, Yoongi. I hope you find something soon. I saw some of your albums, and I’m sure any label would be happy to have you on board with your music taste.”

Yoongi doesn’t have to try to smile this time, it comes naturally. “Thank you. What do… you do?”

Hoseok’s posture stiffens as his lips press into a thin line. “I’m an architect. I’m just starting out and it’s a brutal job, but I’m working hard enough that I better make partner at my firm before too long, or I will definitely die an untimely death.” His easy grin looks more like a grimace as he cuts his eyes quickly from Yoongi’s. That’s new.

“Speaking of, I, um, gotta go,” he stutters, not nearly as panicked as he usually is. If anything, he seems relieved, his long lashes fluttering when his watch shows him what he wants to see.

He hates talking about himself beyond his coffee preferences, Yoongi realizes, watching him stride across the room and slip through the door gratefully. 

He was taught that personal connections would weigh him down, slow his productivity, tarnish his record. He’s taught that to thousands upon thousands of recruits on their very first day.

Yoongi has a feeling that he’s about to turn from teacher into student.

———

Day 91 and ½

———

Hoseok comes home.

The days have been getting longer again ever since Yoongi discovered how to assuage his hunger, and when he figured out how to use the massive lightbox that he learned is called a TV , he got an even better way to spend them.  

He’s right in the middle of watching some sort of sporting activity in which the players are passing a ball with their feet, the announcer jabbering rapidly in a language he doesn’t know, when the front door swings open.

Yoongi lets out a shriek despite himself, clutching the blue blanket tighter around his form like a useless shield. But it’s only Hoseok, so he relaxes the tiniest bit.

“Woah, you good, man?” Hoseok stops in his tracks, regarding Yoongi with a quirked eyebrow. Yoongi just pants, his eyes unused to seeing him weathered by a day at the office, exhaustion bending his form slightly towards the earth. He might look a bit tired, but fuck, he blooms in this golden afternoon glow like one of those flowers in the vase and that syrupy feeling instantly washes over Yoongi just at the sight of him.

“Uh, yeah, yes , I just was really engrossed in this… toe ball,” he says, blinking rapidly to make up for all the time he’s spent gawking.

Hoseok giggles, setting his briefcase down on a barstool and rummaging around the pantry. “You jocks and your idioms. That’s one I haven’t heard before! I took you for more of a Giants fan than a soccer guy,” he chirps, cutting up a sickly green legume and scooping out the soft green insides.

Yoongi gulps thickly. “I think I actually prefer, um, normal sized people.”

Hoseok meets his eyes fleetingly, his gaze steely and deadly serious, before letting out a brilliant ream of laughter that makes Yoongi’s teeth chatter. “With the season they’re having, I don’t blame you in the slightest.” He motions to the concoction he’s mashing in a bowl. “You want some guac? I’m starving because I didn’t get to eat today. I’m always happy to share, especially if it keeps me from pigging out too much.”

After carefully peering in the bowl, Yoongi sees no hot sauce, pickles, or Nutella, so he’s automatically a little turned off. But then, his body is disobeying his brain and he’s nodding. Hoseok brightens and scoops a brittle thing into the soft dip before pressing it into Yoongi’s outstretched palm. 

If he squints, he almost thinks it looks like pickle juice, which is good enough for him. He bites in, startling at the new texture in his mouth.

Holy fuck.

“Holy fuck,” Yoongi says rudely, eagerly reaching for another one before he’s even swallowed the whole thing. “ Holy fuck , that’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Hoseok raises his eyebrows, but wears a self-assured smirk. “The Tasty Snapchat stories always have me covered. I’ll have to send the recipe to you.” Yoongi doesn’t answer on account of his full mouth, just nods and nods and nods.

“Hey… while I have you all buttered up and happy, I just want to let you know that I’m having some friends over for some wine and hors d’oeuvres later. You’re… welcome to join us…” Hoseok trails off, watching Yoongi wolf down more dip in record time.

He chokes mid-chip and looks up at Hoseok incredulously. “People? Humans? Other humans? Coming here?” 

Yoongi figured that this self-contained pocket of the universe only had space for the two of them, but then he realizes that there’s an entire city outside the window. There’s gotta be… at least a hundred humans who live out there.

Maybe people come over every day, he just finally unlocked a training module that gives him access to it.

Maybe it means nothing. It probably means nothing.

“Yup,” Hoseok deadpans, his lips popping on the harsh syllable. “Other humans. I just assumed that since you’re gonna be having your, erm, “bros” over to watch football, I can wine and dine with mine on the weekends. Is that okay?”

This is a dilemma. Yoongi can:

1. Grab the closest knife, make the day start fresh, give himself some extra time to think.
2. Tell Hoseok no, live with piercing guilt that is sure to throw him into another multi-week depressive episode. 
3. Go along with it. Most likely make a fool of himself. See new faces after 90 days of seeing only one besides his own.

Frankly, option 3 is irrelevant because Yoongi can’t see himself caring about any other faces besides Hoseok’s, but it also has more human food and less depression.

That, and he can’t shake the feeling that if he says no, Hoseok will never come home again.

So, he says yes.

———

Day 91 and ⅔ 

———

So, Yoongi regrets saying yes.

He’s curled up on the couch next to the window, watching a new half of the day unfold that he’s never gotten to see. Paradoxically, the city seems to wake up as the sun dips below the horizon. Fluorescent lights are thrust upwards by manmade shadows into the heavens. Ripples of fuschia across the green glass sky are woven with gold streaks like an ornate tapestry.

Yoongi regrets saying yes, because all he wants to do is stare at this for as long as he can, commit every ray of sun and shade of color to memory in case he never gets this far again.

He’s learned that architects are the ones who create all these buildings. They’re impossibly tall and humans are so miniscule that Yoongi doesn’t understand how they did it without magic.

“Hoseok?” he asks before he can think better of it. 

“Yeah, Yoongi?” Hoseok huffs behind him, bustling around the kitchen to make up for lost time in his typical tardy fashion.

“Did you… I mean, you’re an architect, right,” Yoongi stammers, “so did you build any of these buildings?”

Hoseok takes a brief moment to follow Yoongi’s outstretched finger before cracking up. “That’s funny. I might have a higher degree from a fancy school, but that doesn’t mean shit in my world. I’m basically a glorified coffee runner. When I’m not doing odd jobs around the office, my work is stolen by my bosses and presented at conferences under their names. I can’t even do anything about it, because it’s completely legal. It’s thankless at best and soul-crushing at worst.” He leaves his cooking for a moment to join Yoongi at the window, the light in his eyes dimming around the edges. “It’s beautiful when you look at it from afar, right? You don’t see all the sleepless nights and politics and unfulfilled potential. Everything looks better from further away.” 

Some things look better up close, Yoongi thinks quietly, trying not to peek at the curve of Hoseok’s face as they survey the city together.

“Except when it snows.”

“Huh?” Yoongi knows vaguely what snow is from their creative uses of Zambonis in Tartarus, but he can’t quite picture what it would look like when it isn’t already on the ground.

“The first day of snow is my favorite day of the entire year,” Hoseok finds a smile. “I know you aren’t from the city, so I’ll just explain it like this. It’s like… all those sharp edges and angles get coated by this soft powdery stuff that can melt in your mouth and it makes me forget about all that bad shit that they hide.” He steals a sideways look at Yoongi, but he pretends that he doesn’t notice. “Ah, look at me, ranting to someone I barely even know! Sorry, I’ll just, the deviled eggs are probably over-deviled by now—”

“Don’t apologize.” A surge of confidence echoes from deep within Yoongi as he turns abruptly to Hoseok. “This isn’t gonna make any sense to you, but I know you, I really know you, even though you don’t know me. I know that everything you do is to help others, and you’re super fucking underappreciated. I knew that even before you told me all that stuff just now. I also know for a fact that it’s all that’s gonna pay off one day, even if it isn’t… during your time on Earth.”

Hoseok gawks at him like he just started speaking Russian, his lips slightly parted without any words spilling from between them. Now it’s Yoongi’s turn to feel sheepish, but the feeling never comes.

“I… don’t know if I believe in all that afterlife stuff,” Hoseok says with a shy laugh, “but… thank you. That’s really, really nice.” His lip slips under one of his teeth. “Maybe I was wrong about you.”

Yoongi’s heart escapes from his ribcage and starts hammering in his throat, his ears, the tips of his fingers. Right as he’s about to ask him what he means, a low chime rings throughout the apartment. Yoongi startles, but Hoseok’s face just screws up in exasperation. “Oh! Geez, I completely forgot —” He retreats back into the kitchen, a pink flush coloring the tips of his ears. “Ah, darn it. Yoongi, do you mind letting them in? I haven’t even assembled the bruschetta pinwheels yet.”

Yoongi nods even though Hoseok’s back is turned to him. His fingers curl around the metal doorknob, surprised to find a pleasant heat there as if a hand is warming it from the other side.

He opens the door only to immediately fall flat on his ass in shock.

“Oh brother, did someone already crack open the wine?” 

“Looks like your roommate’s a little tipsy already, Hoba!”

“Hey babes!” Hoseok calls out happily from the kitchen, waving them inside. “Yoongi, you okay?”

Yoongi is not okay, he is anything but okay, because the infinitely powerful, terrifying celestial beings that imprisoned him here and collapsed the balance that holds the universe together are standing right in front of him wearing matching scarves and pom-pom gloves. 

“You must be Yoongi! It’s so nice to meet you,” Jimin beams, offering a tiny mittened hand to help Yoongi off the floor. It’s bizarre seeing him in such a small body when Yoongi remembers him as a 20 foot tall behemoth that flung him out of Hell like he was a rubber band.

He cringes away from his hand, scooting further away on the floor. Jimin stays bent over him for a moment, everything about him remarkably stunning and otherworldly even though he’s clearly supposed to be human. He’s dressed in a flowery pink shirt under his light green pea coat, little bits of jewelry glinting all over his body. There’s purple and blue powder dusted on his eye socket, but it doesn’t look like a bruise. In fact, he looks more striking than any human Yoongi’s seen. He doesn’t move, pinned under Jimin’s glare like an ant under a magnifying glass. There’s a couple more seconds of stillness until even time joins in. 

The warm look slips off of Jimin’s face in an instant as he grabs Yoongi’s shoulder and pulls. He flies off the ground and lands squarely on his feet, astonished by the strength packed into such a short limb.

“W-What the fuck —” Yoongi stutters into awed silence when he notices that Hoseok is hunched over the stove, completely paused like something on TV. The hash that he was tossing on the stove is frozen mid-air. Yoongi is fairly certain that Earthly physics don’t allow for that kind of thing, but he isn’t really in a position to nitpick right now. “What the fuck are you doing here? Nah, fuck that, what am I doing here? What happened to Tartarus?”

Jimin’s grip is unyielding on Yoongi’s shoulder, and he brings him around to stare him levelly in the eye. “Consider this a progress report. The King told us to come and check on you. Make sure you and your little human friend are getting along.”

Taehyung, who was still hovering in the doorframe, steps over the threshold in shiny black boots and a matching leather trench coat, looking like Jimin’s equally ethereal shadow. Dark kohl underlines his eyes, making his glare even more menacing than it was before. “You better impress us tonight. This is a pivotal point in your training. If you succeed, you’re on a fast track to getting out of here.”

Yoongi gawks at them both, his shock curling into fury in his stomach. “ How the fuck am I supposed to succeed when I don’t even know what the fucking task is?!”

Jimin smirks, his eyes glinting with something secretive that makes Yoongi’s blood boil. “I think you know already. You know that little voice that murmurs in your ear? Have you ever thought that it might be important to trust that?”

“Was that… was that you all along? I can’t fucking believe this,” Yoongi grumbles, trying and failing to wrench Jimin’s hand off his shoulder.

“I never said that it was us,” he deadpans, his voice annoyingly calm and smooth. “All I can tell you is that the new King wants you to find something that you’ve lost before you can come back to Hell. Listening to your human instincts is the first step.” 

Yoongi groans, dull frustration rubbing against him like sandpaper. “You really can’t say fucking anything that isn’t obscured in secrecy? Christ, you sound like HR.”

“That’s pretty much who we are,” Taehyung says, coming over to wrap a long arm around Jimin’s waist. “The King is very meticulous about his personnel. We all represent him, so he needs everyone to be properly sensitized so that they fit his image. That means being professional. There will be no more of Si-hyuk’s barbarism,” Taehyung scoffs, his face screwing up at the very thought of Yoongi’s boss. “Our King is a benevolent one, but he is also growing impatient.”

That last part sends ominous chills up Yoongi’s spine. “W-well, what’s going to happen if I run out of time?”

Jimin shrugs. “Outside of Apartment 666, your tie to the universe will cease to exist. Eventually, you’ll forget that you were ever a Reaper. You’ll probably be caught in this loop until the humans’ sun burns out,” he says casually, as if he were just recounting the weather instead of the end of civilization.

For the fifteenth time in the past five minutes, Yoongi’s blood turns from hot to cold. “How… how much time do I have?”

He’s not sure why he even asked, because of course, all they do is shrug in tandem. “We don’t know a precise time,” says Taehyung, “but you’re wasting what you have left of it right now by asking stupid questions.”

“Well, Christ, at least answer me this,” Yoongi begs. “If I have to ‘find something I’ve lost,’” he mocks in a whiny tone, “then why the fuck is Hoseok here?! I’ve never seen him before in my life!”

The side of Jimin’s pretty mouth turns up arrogantly, and Yoongi’s fist shakes with the effort of not punching him. “If you’ll humor an analogy, your innate humanity is the lock, and Hoseok is the key.”

Yoongi blinks. “I will not humor an analogy, you motherfucker! I want an answer instead of sugarcoated bullshit, is that so fucking hard?”

“Like we said, we’re HR. Sugarcoating bullshit is in our job description. Now play nice. The King is watching as we speak.” Taehyung winks and snaps his manicured fingers. 

“ I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE FUCKING KING!” Yoongi screams, his fury finally reaching terminal velocity.

“ Yoongi, what is wrong with you?” 

Yoongi stills, his jaw dropping as Hoseok turns from the stove, very much unfrozen and, from the look in his eye, horrified. He quickly drops the finger he shoved in Taehyung’s chest and jumps away from him. “I, um, wow, we were just, um, talking about—”

“Basketball!” Taehyung interjects swiftly, the overly friendly look already plastered across his face. “Yoongi doesn’t care much for LeBron. I disagree with him, because clearly he’s the GOAT and brought eternal glory to the Land, but Yoongi’s more of a Giants fan anyways, aren’t you?”

Yoongi doesn’t say anything, his eyes darting between those two assholes and Hoseok. Jimin gives him a look, and he quickly remembers that this night is the deciding factor between him going home or meeting the core of a collapsing star.

“Ha, yeah, I get passionate about… sporting activities,” Yoongi nods earnestly, “but did you see that Toe Ball championship? Wow , those guys really know how to knock around a ball!”

There’s a moment of heavy silence, until Yoongi realizes what he forgot to say. “I’m sorry, Taehyung. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry at someone that I’ve… just met.” He flashes him a begrudging smile and prays that he’s back on track.

To his relief, both Taehyung and Jimin burst into laughter, clapping Yoongi on the back and giving him hugs that squeeze the air out of his lungs. “Can you believe this guy? Thinking he has to apologize just for getting a little touchy about sports? If I had a dime for the amount of black eyes I’ve gotten during game night at BW3’s…” Taehyung shakes his head as the other two chuckle along. Yoongi gapes at the unrecognizable personality across from him, making a mental note to go into HR if it’ll teach him how to keep his souls on their toes.

That is, if I can ever escape. 

Yoongi gulps at the thought, and joins them at the dinner table.

———

Day 91 and ¾

——— 

“And then I told her that before she wants to go around raising eyebrows at me , she should reconsider getting Botox!” Jimin howls, his eyes sparkling after finishing his fourth glass of a deep red drink. Taehyung’s giggling, the sound strange coming from his mouth, one of his legs thrown over Jimin’s thighs on the couch. Hoseok’s stretched out on the sofa, his head dropping off the end so he’s upside-down. His face is beet red and shining in the candles that he lit earlier. His infectious laughter is a fifth person in the room, taking up more space than the four of them combined. 

Yoongi watches all of this unfold in his armchair by the window, quietly eating his sixth deviled egg. Looking anywhere but Hoseok’s beaming face. Or Hoseok’s deep white v-neck that exposes most of his chest. Basically anywhere in Hoseok’s general direction is a no-go.

Yoongi’s not sure why they’re all acting loopy. He supposes the drink must have magical properties. He refused it because it reminds him too much of blood, but the others swallowed it down eagerly. Now they’re all over each other, especially Jimin and Taehyung, who can’t go two seconds without biting each other’s ear or running their fingers through the other’s hair. Even though Yoongi has witnessed their infinite power, they look incredibly delicate, breakable even, when they’re wrapped up like this. 

He wonders if this is real or just part of the act they’re putting on for Hoseok. Either way, it’s enough to stir something inside Yoongi. He remembers Jimin’s advice and tries to listen to whatever it is his instincts are telling him, but all he hears are the friends’ anecdotes that can’t he contribute to because he’s never been outside these walls. 

“Ugh , stop it! You guys are too cute together, I can’t be here,” Hoseok wails, grabbing the nearest pillow and burying his face in it. 

Jimin reaches over and plucks it from his hands. “No, you stop it! You’re the hottest one here, it’s only a matter of time before you find a lucky guy who inevitably won’t deserve you. Don’t you agree, Yoongi?”

Yoongi specifically took this seat to avoid attention, but then there’s 6 big eyes on him and it’s his turn to break the silence. 

“Yeah.” That’s good enough, fucking stop there, he begs himself, but the part of himself that he can’t control speaks louder. “I mean, yes, absolutely, you’re kind and joyful and beautiful too,” Yoongi says earnestly, shuffling insecurely under his blanket. 

I said that for the training, he firmly reminds himself. But then there’s Hoseok’s twinkling gaze on him, spinning his head and sending heat into his cheeks, and he’s not sure anymore.

Jimin and Taehyung look genuinely taken aback, their eyebrows shooting up past their bangs. Yoongi purses his lips and shuffles in his chair. “Sorry, that was… weird. I should probably go to bed anyways—“

“Please don’t go,” Hoseok breathes, flipping himself right side up with difficulty. “Please.”

Yoongi lets out a shaky exhale, but, like with everything else, he can’t deny him this. 

“So, Yoongi,” Taehyung says, sounding a bit strangled, “are you seeing anyone?”

“I… I’m seeing you three, right now,” Yoongi says plainly. The three of them exchange a look before cackling again. 

“He means if you’re dating anyone,” Hoseok hiccups. 

“ Oh.” Yoongi’s seen a few TV shows about this. Two humans meet, always with symmetrical faces, court each other, and inevitably fall in love. It’s stupid and gross, but Yoongi figures that to humans, it’s desirable. “Nope, definitely not doing that sort of thing.”

“How many people have you been with?” Jimin asks with an impish grin. Yoongi should probably just say zero because he’d like to think that he’d avoid such a humiliating ritual. But there are those texts on his phone. Not only with Steph, but with other women, he realizes abruptly. He honestly doesn’t know what the fuck this version of himself has been doing. 

“Um… I can’t remember,” he blurts out, scratching the back of his head nervously. 

“ That many?” Taehyung gawks openly at him before receiving a pillow to the face from Hoseok.

“Don’t shame him! If anything, he’s living his life better than any of us,” he rambles, turning his unfocused gaze back to Yoongi. “I mean, look at him, it’s no wonder that he gets so much action.”

Yoongi’s eyes widen, realizing this must be a compliment but not quite understanding what action means. He’s never wondered if he was attractive or not because all he knew was that he wasn’t as beautiful as Hoseok. That kind of thing would have smacked him in the face.

But if Hoseok thinks he’s beautiful, then he supposes it must be true.

Jimin and Taehyung’s jaws actually drop as they look between the two of them, but for the first time, they aren’t the focus of Yoongi’s frustrations. Christ, I wish I knew what the fuck any of that means, he curses, making a note to look it up in the morning. “Thank you, Hoseok. You deserve all the action the world has to offer.”

Hoseok chokes around another gulp of his drink, spilling it on his shirt from Yoongi’s nightmares. “Oh no, I love this shirt!” he pouts, setting his glass back at the middle of the table. Jimin and Taehyung seem to snap out of their trance and rush to help him get cleaned up. 

“Don’t worry, Hoba, I don’t go anywhere without my stain stick!” Jimin says triumphantly, helping him into the bathroom. 

Yoongi looks over at Taehyung, but keeps his distance in case he decides to turn back into an explosion. “Did I say something…”

“Oh you said something alright,” says Taehyung, his tone dripping with satisfaction. “Congratulations. You passed your progress review. We’re very impressed, and I’m sure the King is too.”

Yoongi feels a smile break out on his face before he can even process the news. “Oh, thank Satan. Can I leave soon, then?”

“How about this,” Taehyung says calmly, shifting closer to him. Yoongi tries not to feel cornered, but it’s difficult when that pair of eyes is staring down at him. “If you really want to leave, you can walk out with Jimin and me, right fucking now. But if you leave, you’ll never see Hoseok ever again.”

Yoongi’s heart stutters in his chest. He should’ve expected this, Hoseok probably isn’t even fucking real, but he can’t accept the idea that the insufferable human feelings that are tearing his insides apart aren’t real either.

“If this is some more vague bullshit meant to confuse me, you’re doing your job wonderfully,” Yoongi groans, but his answer isn’t vague at all.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it.” Taehyung slips away to take another handful of mixed nuts, popping them into his mouth one at a time.

“Hey, Taehyung?” Yoongi asks. He seems surprised that Yoongi is talking to him of his own volition, but he doesn’t shy away.

“Are you… you know, human? Right now, at least.”

Taehyung’s eyes crinkle at the edges as he smiles. “Yup.” He breathes deeply to punctuate his point. “There are no deities in this dimension, except for Angels. Anything from our world that crosses over becomes mortal. I could only stop time because I’m on the clock right now. This was our last bit of work before our weekend off. After we leave here, we’re going straight to Florida.”

“Don’t!” Yoongi interrupts. “ Go anywhere but there. Trust me.”

Taehyung’s brow furrows with concern. “Noted.”

“Uh, so why would you rather be human when you have those fantastic magical powers in Hell?”

“Good question. I think you’ll learn that there are certain… perks that come with being human,” Taehyung says coyly, his lips twisting with mischief. “Eating food is nice. Getting drunk on expensive wine is even better. But you know what’s the best?”

Yoongi shakes his head quickly. “ Pleasures of the flesh.”

Yoongi blinks, his face completely blank. The only thing that’s pleasurable about his flesh is that it’s always free of cuts and burn marks from the previous day. To be fair, Taehyung’s flesh is perfectly tanned and smooth and stretched over an even more perfect body, so he can understand why he’d find pleasure from that. Jimin too, for that matter.

“I know you don’t know what that means, but I won’t ruin the surprise for you. You’ll figure it out soon. I can feel it.” Before Yoongi can press him further, Jimin saunters in, screwing a bright orange cap on the top of a little plastic stick.

“Crisis averted. He passed out after sharing many personal thoughts with me,” he murmurs, his catlike gaze quickly cutting towards Yoongi. He looks away so fast that Yoongi almost thinks he imagined it. “Anyways, it is officially our weekend off, and our flight leaves in an hour. We might need divine intervention to make it on time.” He raises an eyebrow at Taehyung, who winks back.

“I think the King will be okay with me using a little extra horsepower off the clock. I’ll just say we worked overtime.” They both look up at Yoongi expectantly, an unsaid question hanging in the air between them.

“Oh. Right. I think I’m gonna… hang out here… wouldn’t wanna impose on your guys’ travel plans or anything,” he stammers, a hot blush filling his cheeks yet again.

Jimin and Taehyung share a look that seems to speak volumes before making their way to the door. “Good. Now you’ve officially passed the progress report,” Jimin says cheerily. 

Yoongi glares at Taehyung, who throws up his arms defensively. “Hey, don’t look at me! I’m just following orders.”

“ Riiiiiight . So am I actually on the right track, or was that a lie too?” 

“Oh hush, you curmudgeon,” Jimin scolds him, brushing some dust off Taehyung’s jacket sleeve. “We were very happy with everything we saw tonight, and so is the King. Just keep trusting your instincts. To help you out a little bit, you’re gonna be starting a new phase tomorrow. We’re both going to have little weekend getaways, it seems.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow, unimpressed with their vagueness. “So I shouldn’t expect any other information that would actually be helpful, should I?”

“Nope!” Taehyung says in a singsongy tone as he ties his boots.

“Figured,” Yoongi huffs dryly. “Have fun in Florida. I told Taehyung to change your plans, but I’m starting to think that you guys would actually fit in perfectly .”

“Hey, why so sour?” Jimin pouts. “We just gave you the biggest gift of your 90-day-long life. We’re rooting for you, Yoongi. Seriously.” 

Yoongi probably shouldn’t believe them because they’re HR reps for the King of the Underworld, which is a massive double-whammy. But then again, if Hoseok’s friends with them, he supposes they can’t be that bad.

“Well, thanks, I guess. I’m still pissed at you, but I’m glad you came. Now I know at least 6 new foods.” He gives them a weak smile that he hopes portrays his sincerity. 

“Goodbye, Yoongi,” they say simultaneously in a way that makes his skin crawl.

“Alright, the moment’s ruined. Get out of my sight before I change my mind about liking you fuckers.”

“Next time, try the wine!” Taehyung calls from down the hallway. Before he shuts the door behind them, Jimin stops and turns to Yoongi one last time. 

“Before I forget. Hoseok told me to tell you that he says goodnight, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite. In that order.” His eyebrows wiggle suggestively, but, in typical Jimin fashion, he vanishes before Yoongi can get any clarification, bringing the entire world into darkness along with him.

———

Day 92

———

Yoongi’s been so caught up in the fifteen-year-old tabloid he’s been reading that he doesn’t even notice how late the day is getting. He only looks up when he realizes that the bird landed on the sill a while ago, but there’s no Hoseok to be found. His brow furrows as he checks the time — 9:30 already? 

Hoseok could have escaped while he was reading all about someone named Jennifer’s 57 best hairstyles, but as looks around, there are no signs that Hoseok was here at all. No kettle on the stove. No watery rings on the counter from where their mugs sit. No buzz of his hairdryer bleeding through their shared wall.

Even before this training simulation, Yoongi was a creature of habit, thriving off Si-hyuk’s strict protocol. And that was before every day was a carbon copy of the one before. He tries to distract himself by engrossing himself in Tom and Katie’s divorce fiasco, but the part of him that is wound like a stopwatch starts sending anxious ticks throughout his body. 

Another 15 minutes pass without a single sound save for the magazine pages scraping the air. Jimin never specified where we would be going, Yoongi thinks nervously, turning the pages before he’s done reading them. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be learning here. We could be going to the hospital. He gulps, almost to the end of the magazine. Should I be expected to know how to provide medical care to a human? 

Yoongi huffs, sweat streaming down his neck as he tiptoes by Hoseok’s bedroom door. This is the only room in the apartment that he hasn’t committed to memory. In fact, he’s never even seen what the inside looks like. He feels uncomfortable going in, but he can’t just do nothing. As a compromise, he folds up on the floor and peers under the door.

He doesn’t know what he expected to see, but all he can make out is a carpet like his and a bed pushed in the opposite corner as his. In Hell, he would have no reservations about spying, but something about Hoseok’s room seems forbidden. Even seeing just a sliver of it feels like he crossed a line somehow.

He’s about to move away when he gets his comeuppance.

There’s a searing pain that cuts into him at an angle, making him cry out and roll over to his back. He thinks that the day is about to cut to black, but he clings to the last fragments of daylight he has left and pushes himself to his knees.

“ Oh my god!” Hoseok’s voice floats hazily around his head, not quite making it down Yoongi’s ear canals fully. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I had no idea you were… wait, what were you doing right there?”

Yoongi struggles to his feet, his center of gravity in a completely different universe. “Um, sorry, I was just, uh, looking for my phone. Sneaky little guy always slips away from me.” Hoseok looks at him with an eyebrow quirked, and Yoongi realizes that he’s been holding it this entire time. “Found it!” he says weakly, rubbing his face. There’s a door-shaped indent running across his face like a canyon. I deserve that.

Even though he’s in a lot of pain, seeing Hoseok alive fills him with even more relief. He rushes to the freezer and pulls out a pack of frozen vegetables that Yoongi’s never had the guts to try. “Here, this should help.” Yoongi almost tells him that he doesn’t want any food that isn’t at least ⅔ sodium near his body, but he’s surprised when Hoseok doesn’t try to feed him. Instead, he places a long finger under Yoongi’s chin, tilting his face up towards the ceiling. Then, he gently sets the frozen packet on his face, holding it in place until Yoongi replaces his hand with his own. 

He doesn’t know if he shivers more from the ice pack or from Hoseok’s fingers touching him with such care. He treats someone he’s just met like they’re so much more than that.

“Do you think we need to go to the hospital? I can drive,” he offers earnestly. Yoongi can see his eyes studying him, rounding with worry around the ice pack.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It… probably won’t even be there in the morning.” Yoongi tries to smile, but a jolt of pain shoots through his face when he tries. “Thanks.”

“Oh my god, don’t thank me, I’m the one who did it! My friends like to call me the God of Destruction, and I guess you’re my latest victim,” he laughs. “You’re sure you’re gonna be okay?”

Yoongi takes off the ice pack and flips it to the other side of his face just to have an excuse to look at him a little better. His hair is more tousled than normal, which makes him look impossibly soft to the touch, sleepiness emanating from him like waves lapping a shore.

“Yes. I’m absolutely positive,” Yoongi says, and he actually believes it.
“Well, as long as you promise you won’t move out before rent’s due!” Hoseok winks, and Yoongi almost drops the ice pack entirely.

“Don’t worry, I’m kinda locked in.”

“Good. So, I was waiting to buy some new pillows and table fixings until you moved in. I don’t know if you care for design at all, but if you do, you’re more than welcome to come to Crate and Barrel with me to pick stuff out!”

That’s new.

“ Waiiiiiit a second, don’t you have to go to work? Aren’t you like… crazy late?” Yoongi asks.

Hoseok shakes his head. “Nope! It’s Saturday, the day that I force myself to catch up on sleep and not feed my workaholic tendencies.”

Saturday. “It’s Saturday. And you don’t have work,” Yoongi reiterates, his mind scrambling to try and figure this out.

“Uh, yep?”

“Remind me, when did I move in again?”

Hoseok turns from the stove, where he’s started to make his coffee. “Um, yesterday. How hard did I smack your head…”

“No, I’m fine, I’m great, I’m fanfuckingtastic,” Yoongi beams, the ache already fading into the ice pack. “I would love to go to Crackle and Basket with you.”

Hoseok regards him with a repressed giggle. “I’m going to hope that’s a New Jersey thing and not a concussion thing.”

“Actually, it’s a Florida thing.”

Hoseok nods solemnly and doesn’t ask any more questions.

———

Day 92 and ½

———

Yoongi was right. There are at least 100 people who live in New York City. In fact, he’s starting to think that there might even be a thousand. 

He and Hoseok walk through throngs of people out shopping for Christmas (Yoongi knows what that is because he sometimes has souls trampled by a Black Friday stampede). But this is anything but wild. Even though nobody says a word to each other, they all move in the same fluid direction, as if they are all a part of the same hive mind. If Hoseok’s arm wasn’t firmly fastened in the crook of his elbow, Yoongi would’ve been swept away and his remains would’ve had to be scraped off countless pedestrians’ shoe soles. 

“The weekends leading up to Christmas are a mad dash around here,” Hoseok explains while they’re stopped at a street corner. Even when the light changes and they start to walk, Yoongi almost gets plowed over by a yellow cab because he was a few steps behind anyone else.

“Christ, how many brushes with death does it take to go to a fucking store?” Yoongi says out of genuine annoyance, but Hoseok laughs to his side. 

“You’re funny!” is all he says before pulling him into a massive department store. Yoongi thinks that he’s one of the least funny souls in the universe, but if Hoseok thinks he is, then he figures it must be true.

The store is the polar opposite of Tartarus, decadent and frilly and splashed with bright colors and free of any rotting carcasses. He recognizes some of the pieces from their own apartment sitting in meticulous displays, but he still likes the way Hoseok decorated better.

After navigating through a labyrinth of throw blankets and wall tapestries, they enter the heart of the home decor section. Even though there are so many things to look at that Yoongi’s starting to get dizzy just standing there, he’d rather watch Hoseok work. Even though he says that this is for fun, he takes to this task with singular focus, swiftly shuffling through a mountain of fabrics and picking apart shades of pink that all look the same to Yoongi. He always asks for Yoongi’s opinion, but all he can do is nod dumbly. The only thing he vetoes is a nesting doll set whose unblinking eyes follow him because it reminds him too much of Jimin and Taehyung. Those assholes.

Yoongi has never liked not being in control, but he could watch Hoseok wander and ruffle through this stuff for months, years even. If Jimin and Taehyung decided to put him in another time loop that was only this that lasted for eons , he wouldn’t mind.

But, a human day doesn’t last eons when you aren’t Yoongi. Hoseok eventually makes their selections and they wait in a long line full of disgruntled humans who all seem to have somewhere to be. Yoongi offers to pay for half of the items with the credit card that he found in his jacket pocket with his name on it, but Hoseok refuses with a wave of his hand. Since he didn’t pay, though, Hoseok tells him he’s on bag duty. 

They step out into the open air with three gigantic bags of stuff that Yoongi knows will vanish once he wakes up tomorrow.

At least they have today.

———

Day 92 and ¾

———

Yoongi suggested that they catch a ride back to the apartment because he’s starting to lose feeling in his arms, but Hoseok says that they have to make a pit stop first.

They’re walking down the sidewalk, flowing with the crowd and trying to ensure that none of their new pillows are snatched, when abruptly, Hoseok stops in his tracks. Yoongi’s finally adjusted to the rhythm of the city walkers, so he almost doesn’t notice and continues on. Hoseok grabs his arm to stop him, and they’re the only ones standing completely still on a block teeming with energy and movement. 

“I don’t understand,” Yoongi yells over a passing car horn. Hoseok grins and points to a cart so tiny that Yoongi didn’t see it over the heads of all the pedestrians. There are slices of what Yoongi recognizes as pizza from his magazine’s list of Top 51 Cheat Day Foods That Will Make You Want To Cheat Everyday.

“I know every pizza joint claims that they have the best pizza in New York, but they are the only ones who aren’t lying,” Hoseok says confidently. Yoongi lets him order for the both of them, but he secretly slips the vendor his credit card when Hoseok isn’t looking. He’s not sure why, but it felt like the right thing to do. The look on Hoseok’s face when he finds out proves him right.

Hoseok scrutinizes Yoongi’s face as he takes his first bite. He’s never had pizza before so he has nothing to compare it to, but like every other human food, it makes him wonder how he went without it for so fucking long. 

They don’t have much time to talk as they dodge rogue businessmen and drunk college kids going clubbing, but for the first time in a long time, Yoongi isn’t worried about tomorrow. 

———

Day 93 and ½ 

———

Even though he was thoroughly stuffed after that massive piece of pizza, Yoongi’s mouth waters when he wakes up to the sweet smells wafting in from under the door.

Like yesterday, his alarm clock didn’t go off, but his internal clock didn’t either. 

He pads into the common space to see Hoseok setting up an entire buffet on the table. He recognizes bacon and pancakes and scrambled eggs from his magazines, coffee of course, fruit salad from a Crate and Barrel exhibition, and an orange drink in a thin glass flute. He’s even taken care to ring the lip of the glass with a pink flower. 

“Oh! Hi Yoongi!” Hoseok chirps from the kitchen, where he seems to be scrutinizing two different patterned tablecloths. 

“Hello Hoseok… what’s going on? Did you go to Crate and Barrel without me?” Yoongi takes a seat at the barstool, taking care not to move or touch a single fixing. 

“What? No,” Hoseok gives him a confused look as he shakes another bottle of stuff, this one full of shimmery liquid. He finally gets the top off of it with a loud pop that makes Yoongi jump. He rushes to the sink when the liquid starts to bubble over. “I-I’m sorry, I meant to text you, but this all happened, like, very last minute and basically one of my bosses is coming over. It’s something we do to network and climb the ladder in this business. It’s really weird, I know, but this could be really important for my career. You don’t mind if he comes over for brunch, do you?” He flashes Yoongi a pleading look as he towels off the excess liquid. 

Truthfully, Yoongi’s blood ran cold as soon as Hoseok said the word bosses. He’s inviting over one of the guys who steals his work feeding him his food after he’s kept him after hours and starved him. 

Yoongi’s used to being in charge. He always knew best in Tartarus, and what he said went. If one of his inferiors tried to pull some shit like this, he’d scream at them and light them on fire for good measure. 

But. That was before Hoseok. 

Even though he can’t shake the ominous feeling that’s nagging him, he can’t say no to him. 

“Yeah. I mean, yes, of course, this is your place and I’m just living in it,” Yoongi chuckles nervously. “Do you… do you need any help, or anything? You’re handling a lot of food for just two people. ”

“Well of course I made enough for you, too!” Hoseok hits him lightly on the shoulder, an action that Yoongi has come to know as friendly and not a challenge for a duel. 

“Oh. Well, thank you. It all smells delicious,” Yoongi says, his stomach grumbling gratefully. 

“Of course. What kind of roommate would I be if I didn’t? But, since you asked, can you pretty please put the tablecloth on the table and start setting everything out? He should be getting here…” His eyes widen comically when he checks his phone. “Any minute, geez, I have to get dressed! Thanks again!” He rushes into his room as if it were just another day and he spent too much time talking to Yoongi about his favorite TV show (something called Schitt’s Creek ). He sets the table quietly (which apparently is what makes him “such a Stevie” in Hoseok’s eyes). 

Hoseok emerges from his room right when the doorbell rings. Yoongi nearly spills the syrup boat all over the tablecloth when Hoseok steps over to him wearing skin-tight blue jeans and a deep purple dress shirt that shows more of his skin than he’s ever seen before. He’s wearing earrings, which Yoongi didn’t even know he owned, but now that he does, he’ll never be able to stop thinking about them. He’s decked out from head to toe, except for the fact that his feet are still shoeless because Hoseok is a stickler for clean floors. “How do I look?” 

“Uh, great,” Yoongi says plainly, his eyes focused directly on the bookshelf behind Hoseok’s adam’s apple. He chooses to look through him instead of directly at him in fear of saying something dumb right before the evil dragon person enters. 

“Thanks,” Hoseok sighs, not looking convinced. He fixes his hair even though every single strand of it is perfectly set in place. 

Yoongi can’t see the door from where he’s still tweaking the table arrangements, but he hears shuffling shoes and small talk and the rustle of fabric on the coat rack. 

“It’s so great to have you! We have all this food, so I hope you came hungry,” Hoseok chirps.

“ Oooh, yikes, that’s not going to work. Actually, I’ve started on a new diet. The only things I’m eating are sugarless juices and assorted nuts for plant-based protein. Surely Miranda told you that?” The boss sounds ridiculously self-assured already, his tone dripping with condescension even from across the room. Yoongi’s fist clenches a little harder around the fork he’s setting in place, but he makes himself let go. This is for Hoseok’s career. He bought the Crate and Barrel yesterday. 

“Oh! Ha, that’s funny, um, she actually didn’t tell me that! I’ll have to, uh, catch up with her sometime,” Hoseok says, and Yoongi can hear the grimace in his tone. “Um, would you mind taking off your shoes? I just got the carpet cleaned,” he asks meekly, his voice barely traveling into the kitchen.

“Oooh, I would, but these are the new Dior, and all they had was a size 8 and I’m an 11, so these attached to my feet for the foreseeable future.”

Finally, this boss man rounds the corner into the kitchen, ugly shoes and all, and Yoongi’s glad that it wasn’t him answering the door, because that guy’s face would be a little more dented right now just on principle. 

His face is what Yoongi supposes is handsome, sharp and chiseled like all of those buildings outside their window, but he isn’t beautiful by any means. His skin and hair are so icy white that Yoongi thinks he could be made of marble, cold to the touch and hollow on the inside. The only way Yoongi knows he must be human are his beady blue eyes that rake over Yoongi’s form. His lips curl up, but only at the ends. The smile doesn’t reach his pointed gaze. 

“Hoseok! You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend to share this adorable little place! Wow, it’s a miracle that you two even fit in here! How… snug,” Marblehead appraises with knitted brows.

Yoongi and Hoseok share a brief, mortified look. “He’s not my boyfriend!” They both say at the exact same time. The hush that falls over the place is nearly unbearable, and the smirk on that fucker’s face is not helping matters.

“He’s my roommate. He just moved in yesterday,” Hoseok says quietly, his pained smile faltering the tiniest bit when their gazes meet again. 

“Uh, yeah. I’m Yoongi,” he grumbles without extending his hand.

“And Yoongi is straight,” Hoseok mumbles more to himself more than anything.

“Well, judging by the look of him, it’ll only be a matter of time,” Marblehead hisses, his tone making Yoongi’s blood temperature jump ten degrees.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Yoongi says levelly, biting the inside of his cheek to keep any edge out of his tone. “But Hoseok worked really hard on this brunch for you, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste, don’t you think?”

Marblehead cocks a penciled-on eyebrow at Yoongi, who doesn’t budge.

“Yoongi, it’s fine. Drew, don’t even worry about it, it’s just food, I have an entire fridge full of it!” Hoseok squeaks, flashing Yoongi a look that is exasperated and grateful at the same time.  

“No. Your little ‘roommate’ is right,” he drawls, moving for the large flute of orange juice sitting at the end of the table. Yoongi’s surprised when the liquid inside doesn’t freeze over just with his touch. “ Please tell me I hired someone smart enough to have some alcohol to go with this?”

Hoseok nods and scrambles to retrieve the bottle from earlier. The way he fills Marblehead’s flute without looking into his eyes reminds Yoongi of how his subjects used to bow to him, so terrified of offending him that sometimes he could only recognize them by the tops of their heads instead of their faces.

I was never like this , he assures himself, but then there’s a deep sinking feeling in his stomach like he’s seen this all before, maybe even lived it. 

Marblehead sips the concoction with his thin lips, openly shuddering at the taste but not commenting on it.

“Hoseok, darling, can you please tell your little friend to leave us? We have some sensitive business to discuss that cannot be breached to the public under any circumstances. Starting with some recommendations about where to get your champagne.”

“ I’m standing right here,” Yoongi growls through clenched teeth, but he gladly takes his cue to leave. He grabs his blanket and a plate of food and retreats into his room without another sound.

The last thing he sees before he shuts the door is Hoseok sending him a silent, doe-eyed apology.

It’s enough for him.

———

Day 93 and ⅔ 

———

Hoseok and Marblehead have been in the parlor for nearly two hours, their errant smalltalk bleeding under Yoongi’s bedroom door no matter how loud he turns up his headphones. He doesn’t even know what he’s listening to anymore, but regardless, it’s not enough to keep his paranoia from chattering his ear off. 

This is for Hoseok’s career. If it’s important to him, it’s important to Yoongi. But if that guy has a similar effect on Hoseok as Yoongi did to his subjects in Hell, he doesn’t want them within a mile radius of each other.

His suspicions start to pique when their conversation falls silent, but he doesn’t feel Marblehead’s tip-tappy shoes through the floorboards. The door doesn’t swing on its hinges either. Maybe they’re taking a silent phone break, Yoongi thinks, his foot tapping against the ground nervously. Humans do that, right?

He tries to watch a YouTube video about the Top 7 Anime Betrayals, even though he doesn’t know what anime is, but he finds that every ten seconds he’s checking the time. Soon, seven anime betrayals have been described and eleven minutes have passed. 

He should really give Hoseok his privacy, especially if they’re talking about sensitive stuff. The last thing he wants is for him to get in trouble.

But then again, Yoongi can make it up to him tomorrow. All he has is time. 

He tries not to walk too eagerly as he takes his plate into the kitchen. He looks over out of the corner of his eye to see a pair of socked feet and a pair of shoes hanging off the same end of the couch, facing opposite directions. He can’t see them over the back of the couch, so he figures they must be pressed chest to chest. Marblehead’s icy countenance is probably melting under Hoseok’s warm breath on his cheeks, Hoseok’s warm smile on his mouth.

Despite the prickles traveling up and down his spine telling him that this isn’t right, he ignores them and moves further to grab some more food. Maybe this is how all meetings go. Maybe this was Hoseok’s plan all along, but then, finally , certainty cuts through the maybes. 

“I thought you wanted that promotion, Hoseok? You’ll have to prove how badly you want it.”

“No,” Hoseok pleads, his speech clearly slurred and panicked. “Don’t — I don’t want it, stop, please… ” 

Yoongi stops cold, his plate clattering noisily to the floor. The movement on the couch doesn’t stop, though, and now Yoongi can feel something sinister in the floorboards, some sort of undead heartbeat finding a new vessel in his living flesh. 

The ghost of his home claws through him like hot coffee, and there’s no human reasoning that can bring him back to Earth now. 

Yoongi blinks and finds his hands full of the champagne bottle. He blinks again and they’re covered in glass fractals and blood that isn’t his own.

Marblehead’s milky white skin is stained, a deep crack in his stony facade weeping crimson tears when the rest of his face is eerily still. His stupid shoed feet slip off the couch as he rolls to the ground with the blow. Hoseok won’t like the dirt on the carpet, a faraway voice reminds him. 

Yoongi finally gets his hands on Marblehead’s skin, and he finds that he was right. His flesh is reptilian, cold to the touch.

A high, broken scream hits every inch of solid ground in the room, including directly between Yoongi’s eyes. Hoseok has a knack for making Yoongi feel like a target.

“ W - what did you do?” 

“I trusted my instincts,” Yoongi mutters, the other half of the shattered bottle slipping from his grasp. He sends a mental fuck you to Jimin for that brilliant suggestion.

Yoongi’s tortured countless humans before, but none of them were alive. Neither was he. 

He never thought that would make a difference, but here he is, stealing breaths that belong to another human. His living organs seem to rebel against him, slowing his heartbeat and silencing his thoughts until he doesn’t feel any more alive than the vacant vessel below him.

“Check his pulse,” Hoseok whispers, but Yoongi just shakes his head. He shakes his head when Hoseok does it himself, he shakes his head when a pathetic sound is wrenched from the time before his memory touches, he shakes his head when tears flow down his cheeks in an attempt to flee the scene.

He shakes his head because he can’t even blame them.

Soon, he just shakes, like an insect in the wind.

———

Day 94

———

Yoongi shouldn’t be surprised that the day starts over just like any other. But he is.

The loop runs like a Swiss watch, so he should expect to wake up in his bed without a single detail out of place. He should expect Hoseok’s beaming face to greet him in the morning, he should expect bitter coffee and the same fucking shows to appear on the TV. 

But if the King is really a benevolent one, he expected to fail this test after yesterday.

When he wakes up in his own bed instead of a prison cell, he realizes that Jimin and Taehyung must have been lying all along.

———

Day 99

———

Yoongi has slept for nearly five days straight. He feels Hoseok’s light footsteps darting around through the walls, completely unperturbed by the images of Marblehead’s face that haunt Yoongi every time his eyelids touch. 

The days have started ending earlier and earlier, but Yoongi can’t bring himself to give a fuck. 

The only thing that brings him solace is that, in this version of today, Marblehead is alive. Fuck, it shouldn’t even make him feel better, I did the world a fucking favor.

He might have done the world a fucking favor, but nobody will ever know the difference. 

———

Day 100 and ¾ 

———

Yoongi’s tenth Saturday starts with a knock. 

He doesn’t even know if it’s considered “starting” when it’s this late in the day, but Yoongi hasn’t left the confines of his blankets yet. He hasn’t even looked at the clock or his phone, instead just watching the sunlight bleed across the wall. It vanished altogether about an hour ago. He thought Jimin and Taehyung would’ve plunged him into darkness hours ago, but they must want him to wake up today. 

If it were any other sound, like a mug shattering or a muffled voice from the TV, he’d just pull his pillow over his head. A knock, however, is just enough to get him out of bed, because a knock means Hoseok’s hand is on the other side. 

He only cracks his door open. Yoongi lets out a sigh of relief when he sees Hoseok, but he can’t bring himself to open it all the way yet.

“Hey, Yoongi, I hope I didn’t wake you,” Hoseok says. Yoongi lies and shakes his head.

“Nah, I’ve been up for hours. What’s up?”

“I just… wanted to check on you. You haven’t made a peep all day. It would be pretty traumatizing if my brand new roommate died on the second day,” he manages with a weak smile. 

“That’s nice of you to check,” Yoongi murmurs, inching the door closed subtly, “but I think I’m okay. I’m just coming down with something, that’s all.”

“Oh! I have just the thing to cure any and all ailments. My grandma created it.”

Yoongi cocks a skeptical eyebrow because he’s fairly certain that nothing in the human realm has that kind of magic. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Sangria made with the finest $5 wine and semi-fresh fruit that CVS #659 has to offer,” he says, and Yoongi recognizes the tone enough by now to realize that he’s making a joke. For the first time in a while, he smiles along. 

“I, um…” Just say no, he begs himself, but it’s fruitless because even though he’s literally a murderer now, those huge doe eyes seem to override any of his self-destructive tendencies. “Okay, sure.”

Plus, Taehyung told him to try the wine. If this advice pans out, then maybe he can find it in his heart to trust them again. Fuckers.

“Great! I’ll start getting it ready. I also made some chicken parmesan, and I made a little extra for you because you haven’t, erm, eaten today. Sorry,” he flushes, tucking a stray curl of hair behind his ear self-consciously. 

“Why… would you apologize for that? That’s like, a super fucking thoughtful thing to do.” Yoongi asks sincerely. Hoseok purses his lips, and Yoongi can tell he’s repressing a grin.

“I dunno, a lot of people don’t like to be… monitored and I just met you yesterday and—“

“Well then, a lot of people are fucking idiots,” Yoongi says boldly. “I mean, if they get chicken parmesan, why would they complain?”

Hoseok can’t fight the giggles anymore. “Can’t argue with that, honestly.” 

Yoongi watches him plate the chicken beautifully, dousing it in tomato sauce and grating cheese over top until he tells him to stop. Of course, it tastes fucking delicious, and they talk about how he’s liking New York and it’s almost nice enough to make Yoongi ignore the lingering pale face staring at the back of his head. 

“So, how —“

“Fanfuckingtastic,” Yoongi says eagerly, feeling stuffed to the brim but simultaneously wanting more. 

“Oh thank God. You want something else, too? It’s been a busy day, and I haven’t had much besides 4 cups of coffee and a banana.” Yoongi sighs with relief, because of course Hoseok seems to know exactly what he wants even when he can’t voice it himself. 

“I’ll have some of whatever you want. Thank you.”

They settle on some leftover chocolate-covered strawberries that Hoseok stole from a work convention. For some reason, his cheeks flush a deep red when Yoongi agrees on that as their snack, but he forgets to ask why when the flavors hit his tongue. 

“Are all of the foods in your fridge gifts from God herself?” Yoongi mumbles through a full mouth. 

Hoseok’s laugh is garbled by his bite. “Hardly. And… you think God is a woman?”

“I don’t think so. I know so,” Yoongi says cheekily. 

“I like the way you think,” Hoseok grins, popping another into his mouth.

“No. I mean, really. I know,” Yoongi reiterates, deadly serious this time. “I’ve met her.”

Hoseok quirks a dubious eyebrow. “You’ll have to tell me all about your near death experience later. I’m intrigued.”

“Oh. Um. That’s not really what happened. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. You wouldn’t believe me anyways,” Yoongi gulps, watching Hoseok’s pristine teeth flash as they sink into another strawberry.

“I’m holding you to it to try me. Once I get some of that $5 wine in me, I’ll believe anything,” Hoseok challenges. He licks some of the sticky juice off his finger, and here comes that feeling like warm honey down Yoongi’s neck, crystallizing him in place even though there’s a part of him that wants to run. 

He hopes he’s not staring. The stars of all of those embarrassing human TV shows always gape hopelessly when they’re smitten, so obvious that even an emotionless Reaper could point it out. 

Well, maybe an emotionless Reaper could. He wouldn’t know, because he isn’t one anymore. 

“Speaking of… work has been murder , and I want to celebrate my apartment being twice as fun now that you’re living here too.”

Yoongi chokes on his bite as a flash of pale marble stains the inside of his eyelids. Hoseok asks if he’s okay, but he doesn’t answer even after he’s swallowed.

This time, Yoongi drinks the red elixir. Even though it reminds him of blood, he knows that at least it isn’t the blood of the person he killed. So it can’t be that bad.

It slides sweet down his throat with a tinge of medicinal bitterness. 

It tastes just like 100 days of lonely afternoons mixed with unlonely mornings.

———

Day 100 and ⅞ 

———

Taehyung said there wasn’t any magic in this dimension, but he clearly didn’t take alcohol into consideration. 

Yoongi sways on his feet, gravity feeling like a mere suggestion as he floats over to the couch. The glass in his hand only gets lighter on the way to his mouth, and he empties it for the lost-count-th time. 

If his body was openly rebelling against him last week, it subtly ebbs against him now, like a riptide that’s slowly pulling him into a whirlpool. Yoongi doesn’t know what that storm will bring, but he figures he’ll find it floating at the bottom of these glasses.

“So, wait, you’ve never had alcohol before?” Hoseok gasps even though that’s the fifth time he’s asked Yoongi that question in the past twenty minutes. He sits directly next to him, even though there are three empty seats further away. His cheeks are shiny and almost as red as the drink perched precariously between his fingers, his long fingers that Yoongi can’t stop gawking at. 

Now I’m definitely fucking staring, but he left his insecurities in a different plane of sobriety. 

His answer to Hoseok’s question comes in the form of a sudden wave of dizziness. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth until it passes, just like Hoseok told him to. He cracks up, every other bubbly giggle cut through with a hiccup. 

“So, Yoongi, can you tell me about… meeting God? ” Hoseok leans in so close that his whisper piques the hairs on Yoongi’s neck. He’s acting overly secretive, as if someone could be listening in. Little does he know that exactly two motherfuckers are definitely doing that right now. 

“Hoseok.” Yoongi starts off with the only word his brain can pronounce no matter how intoxicated he is. “‘M telling you, it’s too crazy. It’s so crazy that you wouldn’t even believe me now, when you’re all charmed by this elixir.”

Hoseok cackles wildly and flings himself into Yoongi’s lap with glee. Normally, Yoongi would be panicking, but he’s drunk and has the motor control of a human soul who just got their spine pulled out through their mouth. “Come on, Yoongi! I can’t live through a year-long lease without knowing about this mysterious, religious side of you.” 

“It’s not religion. It's a fact,” Yoongi hiccups, staring as Hoseok walks his fingers up and down his chest absentmindedly. “So… there are Heaven and Hell, but only, like, the best of the best humans get to go to Heaven. They become Angels and their main job is to kinda watch over humanity, guide their future counterparts so that they make the right decisions while they’re still alive. Nepotism is a big thing in the afterlife.” He takes a second to chug the rest of his wine as Hoseok goads him on. He’s definitely shivering because of the rush of bittersweetness down his throat, definitely not because of how much of their skin is touching. “Of course, they do a shit job of it, because the human world fucking sucks. I think they only come down here to feel the wind on their wings and find braindead humans who will worship them.” 

“Oh, come on,” Hoseok whines, “you’re too cynical! They’re Angels. How bad can they be?”

Yoongi scoffs, rolling his glass and watching the leftover drops slosh around inside. “That’s what they want you to think. They’re no better than us, they just don’t have to get their hands dirty.”

“Well, I dunno about that, ” Hoseok says. “I wouldn’t say I’m a saint by any means, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my hands particularly dirty. Except when I worked in a cafe and they made me tear rotisserie chicken apart without gloves.” His face splits into a silly grin that makes his eyes curve like crescent moons. Yoongi swallows down a gulp of something that wasn’t in his cup, something that doesn’t have a texture or a taste but makes his stomach flip nonetheless.

“ No no no, ” Yoongi exclaims, waving his hands exaggeratedly, “when I said ‘us’, I wasn’t talking about… humans.” 

Yoongi realizes he must have said too much when the carefree smile drops off Hoseok’s face, leaving him looking like a lost puppy.

“So. Um. There’s the other side of the equation. The supposed opposites of Angels. That’s where I come in.”

Hoseok eyelashes stick together when he blinks. Shadows fall into the dips of his face, his perfect face that Yoongi supposes he’d call angelic if he didn’t know any better. 

Yoongi should be fucking terrified of saying the wrong thing, but right now, wrong and right are just words. They don’t stare directly into his eyes, they don’t brush against his thigh with a socked foot. They aren’t the snow dusted on top of jagged skyscrapers or the hot wine rushing in his ears. 

He can’t feel right or wrong, but he can feel the torso across his lap and an ancient, forgotten longing itching the tip of his tongue. 

“So, like, 99.9% of humanity ends up in Hell. There are different tiers. The best of the lot that aren’t good enough to be Angels end up in Elysium. The majority of people go to the Fields of Asphodel, where they aren’t tortured outright but there isn’t much to do there besides… I dunno, watching grass grow. But then, there’s, um…” Yoongi brings the glass to his lips before remembering there’s nothing in it anymore. 

“There’s what, Yoongi?” Hoseok prods, propping his chin up on one hand. His gaze is closer than it was before, not entirely sober but still focused on him like he holds the secrets to the universe. Right now I guess I do. 

“N-nah, you don’t wanna hear about that.” Yoongi panics and reaches for the pitcher to top himself off. Even from six stories up, a riptide pulls at his feet.

“What did you mean when you said that you come in where Hell is involved,” Hoseok asks slowly. 

This glass tastes different from the rest. Where the others were fruity and flavorful across Yoongi’s tongue, this one tastes like the existence Yoongi left behind; tasteless, but persistent on his tongue anyways. 

“I-I can’t tell you,” he stammers, the pitcher shaking in his hand even when he grips it tighter. “It’ll ruin everything and I’ve had the best evening of my life and this can’t be another thing that I destroy. I’ve done enough of that already.” Yoongi’s hit with an errant pang of nausea that’s remarkably tangible, striking the parts of him that aren’t numbed by drunkenness. He’s about to either throw up or reach for the knife drawer and start over, but then there’s a hand rubbing silent reassurances into his back. 

“Hey, we can stop talking if you want to. I’m sorry if this was too much or if I was too pushy, I tend to do that sometimes. I mean, if you’re a Satanist or something, I can work with that! I’d just prefer if we kept the animal sacrifices in the apartment to a minimum —”

“Why are you so nice to me?” 

Yoongi’s voice is crumpled and small, like a whisper trying to be heard in the middle of a big city. The thing about a whisper, though, is that it’s only intended to be heard by one other person.

“I… I don’t—”

“I was mean to you over text. I blew you off and I… trivialized your sexuality. I don’t even fully understand what that means, but I felt so fucking bad about it for so long, and I just can’t wrap my brain around why you’re so fucking nice to me all the time when I treated you like garbage.”

The multicolored flecks on the carpet start swimming in Yoongi’s vision like the dimmest stars in an urban sky. He’s cried before, especially after Marblehead, but this is different. Those were short bursts of stress, whereas this is a slow burn finally bursting into flame. 

He hasn’t felt anything like honesty before. It scrapes at his insides until he feels hollow and useless, like one of those stupid nesting dolls that’s missing all its smaller counterparts.

“That’s easy. You and I are different people.”

Yoongi laughs while he cries. The most infuriating part of human emotions might be that he can feel two at once. “Trust me, I know.”

“I don’t mean like that,” Hoseok chides gently, shifting upright to put his arm around him. “You just told me about your afterlife views, which in my experience tells a lot about a person. You think that everyone falls into a category and that all people are either good or bad, with barely any room in between. I’m not the same way. I think there are pieces of good in pretty much everybody. So, I always try to give people the chance to show me their true colors. Yeah, you started off with a mistake, but I want to believe that that’s all it was. A mistake. And I think I’m right, yeah?”

Yoongi didn’t realize his heart stopped until it starts hammering faster than ever before, thrumming so hard that it might break free of his chest. “No, you don’t get it, I was made to create chaos and misery, I’m so fucking good at it and I’ve been trying to figure out why I haven’t gotten it in return. I’m trying to figure out what I did to deserve… you.”

“You aren’t listening, Yoongi. You aren’t all bad or all good. As long as you’re capable of change, bad and good are just… words.”

Yoongi realizes that the heat on his cheeks and heaviness on his back isn’t just from the wine. There are arms around his neck that aren’t his own and toes brushing his calf that make him finally realize why they were invented in the first place.

“You… you’re on top of me,” Yoongi remarks dumbly.

He expects Hoseok to apologize, jump off of him, flush bright red, but he doesn’t move a muscle. 

“Drunk Hoseok is touchy, and hugs are my love language. Is that okay?”

“Y-yeah. I mean, yes, absolutely. It feels nice. You feel nice.”

They sit like this for a while, inhaling together, exhaling together like two lungs until the sadness evaporates into the air. After a while, there’s a voice that tiptoes through the empty silence.

“You feeling better?”

“Yeah, but can you stay?”

Hoseok chuckles. “As long as I don’t feel trivialized.”

“Hmmm, I dunno, does this seem like how bros hang out on game day to you?”

Hoseok pulls away so he can give Yoongi a smug look. “Huh. Crazy how much difference one day can make.”

“Yeah, about that.” Yoongi twists around, his instincts screaming so loud that they transcend those eons of misery to ring through his skull. “I know I should probably quit while I’m ahead, but youuuuuuu… are stroking my hair.” He trails off as the perfect fingers he’s gaped at from afar ghost over his scalp, his forehead. Tangle in the long hair at the nape of his neck. Yoongi shivers, the action feeling strangely familiar even though he’s sure that he would’ve remembered something like this.

“Drunk Hoseok,” he explains simply, but his eyes are more sober now than they were ten minutes ago. 

“Yeah. M-makes sense,” Yoongi gulps. “So, back to what I was saying. This isn’t gonna make any sense to you, it barely even makes sense to me, but you unlocked something within me that I didn’t know existed altogether. You don’t know me, but I know you more than I know myself, and I know us both well enough to know that I love you.”

He expects the words to rebel against him, stick in his throat like Nutella, but they come with practiced ease, as if he had said them all before. 

Instead of freaking out, Hoseok just laughs, his eyes welling up until they’re as shiny as the rest of him. “Took you long enough,” he sighs, scooping Yoongi up again before his brain can hope to piece together what that means, because he’s only known me for two days .

There’s exactly one moment of pleasant confusion before the apartment combusts.

The cozy furnishings and cute table fixings start to crumble away like ashes in the bottom of a fireplace. A gale of wintry air wraps them up as the walls vanish in the blink of an eye. Yoongi doesn’t realize his feet ever left the carpeted floor until he feels a smooth, glassy brick of obsidian slam into place under him. He watches in awe as countless others fall into place all around him, sending puffs of mortar dust floating in the air as far as the eye can see. He’s trapped in a suffocating darkness until little spots of light start dotting the cylindrical walls, stretching so high that Yoongi knows a human architect couldn't have possibly designed this place with Earthly physics in mind. All at once, everything settles faster than it began. 

The change was almost instantaneous, but Yoongi feels like he’s seen an entire eon of progress flash before his eyes. He always thought apartment 666 was a prison, but at least it didn’t look like this. All that’s missing are the screams of agony, Yoongi thinks meekly.

“No, there’s none of that here anymore.”

Yoongi yelps when the sudden voice echoes around the chamber eerily. He squints in the lowlight but fails to make out any other moving shapes. Like so many other sensations recently, he knows that voice, but can’t place it as it echoes around the tower. “What in the name of Christ just happened? Did I go back in time? Did I fail the test? Am I gonna be guillotined or something?”

“No, of course not,” the voice tuts gently. “You really don’t get it?”

“ Clearly I fucking do not,” Yoongi shivers, his teeth chattering without his blanket. 

“It’s me, Yoongi. It’s been me all along.”

“That’s awesome, but it would help my comprehension if I could fucking see you,” he seethes. 

He’s starting to change his mind about appreciating this whole being-a-normal-human-without-night-vision thing when the darkness melts away. 

It’s Hoseok. His Hoseok. Human Hoseok Jung, whose memory restarts every day and who only owns matching silk pajamas.

It’s his Hoseok holding a gigantic ball of spitting flames with his bare hand. 

Yoongi scrambles away as fast as he can on the slippery floor, his chest heaving with smoke-filled breaths. For his fragile mind’s sake, he squeezes his eyes closed, and does the only thing he’s really good at that doesn’t require a flaming hot poker. 

“ TAEHYUNG! THIS IS NOT FUCKING FUNNY ANYMORE, FIRST YOU IMPRISON ME AND THEN YOU SPIKE MY WINE? JIMIN BETTER GET HIS FUCKING PEEKSIES IN BEFORE YOUR PRETTY LITTLE PERMED HEAD ENDS UP ON A FUCKING SPIKE —”

“Holy hell, Yoongi, the years have really shortened your fuse.” Hoseok disappears into the inky night, only to spark up again right next to his cheek a second later. Yoongi shrieks and tries to squirm away, but his back hits a thick, frigid brick wall that soaks through his clothes. 

“I-I don’t understand — what are you? ” Yoongi’s never felt fear like this, even after inflicting it for ages. It makes him regret ever laying a finger on any human soul, even the ones who really, really deserved it. 

But then again, it’s Hoseok. Even through the flames and the confusion and the drunkenness, it’s Hoseok who’s warming him without his blanket, so whatever he is, he can’t be that bad. 

“I’m not a what , I’m a who,” he smiles kindly, bringing the hand that isn’t on fire to Yoongi’s cheek. It’s achingly soft on his skin, and Yoongi can’t find the fight in him to flinch away. “I’m someone from before. That’s all that matters.”

Even though Yoongi will never admit it to him, Jimin was absolutely right. The key finally fits into the lock, and twists.

He thinks about his colleagues’ mementos from before, Jungkook’s sunlight and Namjoon’s breathing and Jin’s chocolate. He was content with nothingness, but all at once, nothing bursts into bloom as something. 

There are flowers tickling between his toes on a grassy knoll. The only willow tree for miles weeps down to shroud them in a sweet-smelling curtain. The first breath of a late spring tosses his black bangs in his eyes, healthy hair uncombed by ghostly fingers. The nice weather sure took its time, but now that it’s here, he’s going to savor every second until the rough months of fall blow in again. No, they’re going to enjoy it, he whispers to the familiar body squeezed next to him in the only patch of shade left for the day. It’s tiny, but even if there were room to spare, they’d still sit close enough to touch. 

Flowery nostalgia brushes Yoongi's body like those low-hanging willow branches, begging for another to blossom with him so he doesn’t have to do it alone. 

Before he can scare himself from going through with it, a desperate hand curls in his shirt, then another in his hair, closing a gap that’s eons wide and thousands of tortured souls deep.

The first kiss is gentle, a lesson more than anything. Yoongi has no fucking clue what he’s doing because the closest he’s gotten to kissing is making souls give mouth-to-mouth to piranhas in Tartarus. But there's no pain or blood as they ebb and flow against each other, their rhythm almost conversational, two old friends catching up after far too long apart. Yoongi finds Hoseok’s hand on his shirt and loops his own fingers through his, just to feel what he feels. They smile against each others’ mouths, inhaling each others’ exhales. It feels like the first real breath Yoongi’s ever taken, filling his chest until he thinks he might float like a dandelion puff on the first day of spring.

“Did you really know the whole fucking time? Did the King set you up to this?” Yoongi whispers barely loud enough to hear himself, scared of what the answer will be. 

“Oh my God, you still don’t get it.” Hoseok laughs, but it’s kind hearted. All at once, the gloom splinters into a million pieces as another flare shoots into the sky, hanging near the top of the ceiling like their own tiny sun. Once Yoongi’s eyes adjust, he starts to recognize the place — it’s Si-hyuk’s throne room. Heat shimmers off the massive pit of hot embers at the foot of the throne that he keeps around for easy access in case any of his subjects disappoint him. The only elements that are missing are the throne itself and the feeling of imminent dread that hangs in the air like a new carpet smell. 

He feels incredibly small being here as a human, especially when he realizes that the wall he’s pressed up against is actually one of the steps to the empty patch of ground where the throne used to sit. He can’t even count how many times he’s knelt on these steps to grovel to that bastard. Yoongi knows that he must be gone because he isn’t a product of nuclear fission just for thinking badly of him. This new guy must be cool.

“The new guy is cool. The first thing he did was get rid of that garish thone,” Hoseok chirps, even though Yoongi didn’t say a thing out loud. His eyes widen as Hoseok kisses his forehead, takes a step backwards, and pulls something out from his back pocket. 

It’s a gigantic ruby ring that takes up three of his knuckles when he slips it on his finger. Right as Yoongi expects Hoseok is about to reveal himself as a pawn shop owner, it lengthens into a carved bone scepter with a glittering skull as the centerpiece that Yoongi’s kissed hundreds of times. The empty eye sockets flash menacingly at him, making his stomach drop even further. Hoseok swings it casually over his shoulder like a baseball bat, completely oblivious as Yoongi’s entire world hits the obsidian floor and shatters.

Holy fuck, my roommate is the King of Hell.

“ Holy fuck ,” Yoongi observes dumbly, his jaw dropping practically to the floor. “ Holy fuck, it was you the whole fucking time? You trapped me in the same day 100 fucking times? You’re the one who made me wake up to that horrible song every morning?”

Hoseok holds up his hands defensively. “I had to do something to make you think that you were being tested! I think listening to the first fifteen seconds of one song every day is a small price to pay compared to some of the fucked up shit your twisted brain has come up with over the years.” He taps the scepter on the floor and it instantly snaps back into a ring. He approaches Yoongi like he’s a spooked animal, taking care not to make any sudden movements.

“Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just tell me that we knew each other?”

Hoseok gives Yoongi a look. “Don’t you remember how harsh you were when Si-hyuk brainwashed you? I knew you wouldn’t give me the time of day unless you found your humanity on your own. I knew you had it in you, Yoon, because we were together for decades. The emotion you were capable of back on Earth… that can be covered up by eons and eons of horrible shit, but it can’t be erased altogether.” The fingers without his ring loop through Yoongi’s trembling hand. “There were some instances that concerned me. I almost ended the whole thing when you smashed that flowerpot on your head, that was terrifying. You did so well for a while, and then that… thing with Drew happened.”

Yoongi blanches, sweat jumping to his skin at the mere mention of his name. “Jesus Christ, you remember that too? Fuck, I’m — I’m so sorry, Hoseok —”

“Don’t be. That actually wasn’t part of my plan,” he grimaces. “He was some scumbag from down here who I turned down for Jimin and Taehyung’s job. I decided that he could be useful to play the part of that asswipe. That thing on the couch was, um. Unscripted.” He purses his lips, not as much looking at Yoongi as he looks through him. “You saved me from a piece of trauma that would’ve haunted me forever. So thank you.”

Yoongi’s so fucking endeared that words alone can’t touch what he’s feeling. Instead, he presses a kiss to his lips and hopes, prays that he understands. 

“I’m sorry if I made you feel like a prisoner or a lab rat,” Hoseok frowns, keeping his distance but daring to comb his fingers through Yoongi’s bangs. “The last thing I want is for you to have Stockholm Syndrome.”

Yoongi’s not sure what that means, but his instincts speak for him this time. “Yeah, I mean, I was freaked the fuck out at first, but being human takes practice and I hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. You were there the whole fucking time, even when I was a Reaper, I just couldn’t feel you. As soon as you had me again, I started remembering what it was like to want you, but I didn’t realize that I had felt it all before. If anything, Si-hyuk was my jailer, not you. He must have been seriously goddamn powerful if he managed to make me forget you. I want — I need to make up for all the lost time, I’m so happy you found me—” Yoongi cuts himself off with a deep, biting kiss that makes Hoseok squeak against his lips, but neither of them pull away. He slowly rememorizes the pattern of Hoseok’s lips with his own, traces his fingers along his veins, does whatever he can to map him out. 

Yoongi still has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s already done this once before, and it turned out okay. Sure, he was brainwashed to be heartless and coarse and unfeeling, but if there’s something he’s great at, it’s following protocol. 

“ This is gonna be protocol from now on,” Hoseok gasps into his mouth, “so get fucking used to it.”

Yoongi gulps, completely unused to hearing curses in his carefree tone. “How do you keep doing that?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Hoseok mumbles coyly against his cheek, dropping kisses lower and lower until he reaches his earlobe.

“Like… I dunno, reading my mind, I guess?” Yoongi bites back a whine as a wicked hunger curls in the pit of his stomach, deeper and darker than the pain from before he knew how to feed himself. If this is what pleasure of the flesh is, he might find it in his heart to forgive Taehyung.

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that,” Hoseok says, sinking his teeth into Yoongi’s shoulder just to make him squirm. “I’m the King of Hell. I can pretty much do whatever the fuck I want.”

“B-but isn’t that an Angel thing?” Yoongi manages without letting any embarrassing sounds slip out.

Hoseok just hums against his collarbone, sending a vibration buzzing through his torso.

“S-so you’re an Angel . The King of Hell is also an Angel.” Yoongi’s brain is incapable of productive thought, but then again, he’s rediscovering the peak of human emotion on his old boss’ desk. He gets a pass.

“I got bored,” Hoseok says plainly, slithering over to his other side. “You were right, Heaven is fucking stupid and overrated. So, I decided to fuck something up so that they would have to move me elsewhere. Plus, I missed you, but I wasn’t allowed to go find you.”

“So what—”

“Don’t look too deeply into Brexit,” Hoseok winks slyly.

“I have no fucking clue who that is,” Yoongi admits, writhing as Hoseok latches onto his neck, “but I love him. Or her, or whatever.”

“It’s actually an extremely complicated piece of legislation that basically fucked Great Britain til the end of time. But I’ll make it up to them once I get Boris Johnson in my clutches.”

“Uh, speaking of clutches, I am very much a fan of, ah, everything… happening right now,” Yoongi whimpers, “but I don’t want to spend my foray into pleasure of the flesh thinking about how my old boss used to burn souls on this very spot. Plus I’m cold.”

Hoseok finally pulls away to look at him fondly, and Yoongi thinks he looks even more beautiful with shadows hiding under his jaw. “You wanna go back to the apartment, baby?”

Yoongi chokes on nothing in particular, still not fully convinced that he lives in the reality in which he’s the King of Hell’s baby. “Uh, yeah, if that’s okay. If it’s, like, vanished into a black hole or something, that’s cool too.”

“Don’t worry. It’s right down the hall.”

Yoongi doesn’t have time to steel himself when the grand hall dissolves around them like it was made of nothing but loose sand. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a blanket tucked up to his chin and the familiar brush of silk on his body. Immediately, Yoongi relaxes, melting into the crook of Hoseok’s bare shoulder beside him.

“Welcome home, baby,” Hoseok beams, pecking him on the nose. “Better?”

“ So much better. Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like it here. I took a lot of time designing it. I think I’m actually gonna use one of the egg chairs in the common room as my new throne.”

Yoongi can’t help but cock an eyebrow at him. “The King of Hell’s throne room is going to be furnished by Crate and Barrel?”

“ Fuck yeah it is, and they’re gonna love the publicity.”

---

“So. That is pleasure of the flesh.”

“I-I think you made your point,” Yoongi wheezes, little tingles still shooting through veins. 

“I’m glad Taehyung didn’t ruin the surprise,” Hoseok teases with a peck to Yoongi’s sweaty temple. 

“But-but, when we get back to Hell… Reapers can’t feel anything.”

Hoseok’s face spreads in a satisfied smirk that would probably be cocky if he weren’t himself. “Remember what Jimin and Taehyung told you? I’m making changes. Being a Reaper is a state of mind, Yoongi. You didn’t feel only because you didn’t want to.” He wraps a ringed finger around a loop of his silvery hair. “I think I’ve helped you move on from that, yeah?”

Yoongi swallows with difficulty, but nods, pressing his forehead to Hoseok’s. “Yeah, I moved on. Definitely.” He tips his head up to close the space between them in a surge of confidence, sweet kisses quickly turning chaotic and messy. They break apart to gulp down unshared air, Hoseok’s hands wandering up and down Yoongi’s torso.

“You taught me everything I know. I didn’t even know I was learning the whole time, but I was,” Yoongi babbles, his eyelashes fluttering happily as Hoseok nestles into his neck.

“Wow, I’m impressed, baby,” Hoseok smiles, pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose. 

Yoongi reaches up and cups his face in his hands like he saw someone in one of his dramas do. “Thank you for waiting for me. I don’t know how long it’s been, but it must’ve been hell. I hope I’m not… different. Worse than I was before.”

Hoseok sighs. “Remember what I said about covering up, not erasing? You’re still you, the handsome, sweet, master chef that I’ve loved from afar for hundreds of years. The love of my after life,” he chuckles, his eyes shining with sincerity. 

Yoongi’s eyebrows shoot up with alarm. “I was a master chef? Me? I didn’t understand what food was until a month ago.”

“Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are,” Hoseok says matter-of-factly. “That first sandwich you made was terrifying.”

Yoongi scoffs and hits his shoulder. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

Hoseok blinks. “You honestly should’ve known I wasn’t human when I ate that without gagging.”

Yoongi’s about to argue, but Hoseok silences him with his lips. 

“Nevermind that, though… we have to finish our lesson on pleasures of the flesh,” he hisses, making Yoongi shiver. 

“There’s — there’s more?” Yoongi’s eyebrows shoot up as Hoseok giggles. 

“You have no idea, cutie. I’ll show you,” Hoseok winks, cradling Yoongi’s face in his hands and stealing his breath with a rough kiss. 

“Yeah… show me,” Yoongi sighs, his fingers twining with Hoseok’s to keep him close. 

Turns out, being human has its perks. 

——— 

Day 100 and 9/10

——— 

Hours later, Yoongi’s squeaky clean from his first time actually using his shower. He can't stop sharing lazy kisses with Hoseok, even as his eyelids droop lower and lower. 

“Yoongi, go to sleep,” Hoseok whispers into his skin. 

“N-no—” He fights to keep his eyes peeled open. “I’m still not entirely convinced that this isn’t just some batshit crazy dream. When I wake up, you aren’t gonna remember any of this . That horrible song will be playing and you’re just gonna ask me if I like coffee black or with cream and you won’t even know… it’s gonna be torture and Jimin and Taehyung said you’re benevolent, please don’t do this…” Even though he struggles to stay awake, his eyelids flutter closed of their own accord. His panicky tone grows feathery around the edges as his body succumbs to sleep.

“Then you’ll just have to woo me all over again, baby. You can do it. All we have is time.”

The last thing he feels is a knowing smile pressed against his lips.

———

Day 101

———

Hop in the Lambo', I'm on my way

Drew House slippers on with a smile on my face

I'm elated that you are my lady

You got the yum, yum, yum, yum

Yoongi’s been in bed for a minute longer than usual. He’s never actually gotten this far in the song without hitting snooze or smashing the clock altogether.

There’s nothing special on the ceiling, but Yoongi stares at it anyways, a resounding, sinking emptiness settling in his bones.

It’s 7:30 am for the 101st time, and Hoseok isn’t here. 

He’s about to stay in bed for the whole day because he doesn’t think he can bear the thought of seeing his oblivious face, all blissful and charming when Yoongi will surely be brooding for the next week. He definitely can’t see those fingers without wanting to take them in his hand, can’t look at his lips without feeling them pressed to his own. He’s going to have to avoid thinking about his mouth in general for the foreseeable future. 

He’s about to stay in bed for the whole day because of course anything remotely good to happen to him would only happen in a dream, but then he realizes something.

He was a Reaper for hundreds of years. His imagination was left on Earth the first time he was alive, and it hasn’t made a reappearance since.

Hope buzzes through his body like an electrical current as he slowly breaks free from his cocoon of blankets. He hovers in front of the door until the song finishes, taking every possible second to steel himself against the very real possibility that Hoseok’s just going to offer him coffee and rush off to be swallowed by the city. 

Eventually, though, he gets cold, and he knows that no matter what Hoseok remembers, his blue blanket will be impeccably folded over the side of the couch.

Instead of the thin, sleepy golden rays that barely fight through the shades on most mornings, the common room is flooded with a sharp, wintry glow that reminds Yoongi of the fluorescent lights in the hallway. The apartment is eerily still without Hoseok brewing coffee or fussing about the already-perfect wall hangings or laughing so hard that the vibrations live in the walls for hours afterwards. 

Yoongi wraps himself in his blanket and does a double take out the window. He’s so amazed by what he sees that he presses his nose on the glass, almost childish in his wonder.  

The rooftops that stretch on for miles and miles are covered in feathery whiteness, as if they’re just low hanging clouds. When Yoongi squints, they look like cobblestones in a white-brick road, the perfect footpath for Angels who think they’re too good to step on anything but air. The buildings in the distance fade into the icy sky instead of gashing it with their angled shadows. The city has never looked so merciful, which is a foreign concept to Yoongi, but a welcome one. 

He’s still not sure what beauty is supposed to look like, but he figures this vicious city brought to its knees is it.

“It’s my favorite day of the year.” A voice over Yoongi’s shoulder fogs up the glass. He can’t bring himself to turn away from the window, but he smiles against the pane. 

“I can see why. You really like the first day of new seasons, huh? First spring, now winter?” Yoongi traces his finger through the condensation left over from his breaths and lets himself be held from behind.

“We do. We always have," he says proudly into Yoongi's ear. "Congratulations. You officially made it to tomorrow.”

“Fucking finally, Jesus Christ. I think I would’ve started to hate you again if I were cooped up here for much longer.”

“You never hated me. Not really. ” Fingertips press into the divots of Yoongi’s hips, holding him up in case he falls. He leans his back up against a chest strong from carrying enough love for two for hundreds of loveless years.

“I’ll hate you less if you make us some food. Because apparently, I can’t cook, or something.”

“You can, you just have to relearn your old tricks. Although given what I’ve seen so far, it might take a few decades. Or centuries.”

Yoongi tries to hide the smile from his face, but it’s stubborn. His lover pecks his flushed cheek, but other than that, neither of them moves to the kitchen.

“It’s okay, baby. All we have is time.”