Chapter Text
the saddest thing, yoongi thinks, is that alcohol barely affects him anymore.
at first it was a welcome reprieve - no longer would he have to sleep on one side of the bed and try to feel around for the other, no longer would he have to see phantom visions walking around the apartment, footsteps that are no longer there. then the alcohol works its way through his system and the macabre silence of the apartment taunts him.
and at least in alcohol, when the kids were asleep, he could see jungkook one more time.
some part of him knew that it’s only a hallucination, a image fabricated from his mind, but yoongi doesn’t care. it’s worth it to see jungkook’s smile, lovely and white, his laughter ringing like wedding bells. yoongi gets to reach out for jungkook’s visage, as if he can touch the soft curl of his mouth as he reads a book or watches a video on his phone or simple rests, fingers tapping on the kitchen counter. then yoongi passes out, black drunk, slumped over with four or five bottles emptied.
his head always hurts in the morning, and he always wakes up before his kids do.
after a month, the doctor gives him pills. he’s so lethargic, so lost. he doesn’t know what to do around the house. the laundry mixes up and colors all their whites pink; he accidentally burns a pot; there’s a couch cushion ripped because he vacuumed it by accident. after each and every time, yoongi is left on the floor, gasping for breath and trying to hold back the breaking of his ribs so they don’t puncture his already sutured heart.
seokjin moves in for a while, taking care of things and trying futilely to teach yoongi about how to keep things in order. yoongi never listens; jungkook always kept things in order. jungkook kept yoongi together. now that he’s gone, yoongi is tearing apart.
hayoung is so small, so confused, so harried. she holds her baby brother’s hand and looks around each morning, mumbling, “daddy?” wishing for the man who would swoop her up into his arms, kiss her face silly, and ask her what she’d want for breakfast. yoongi only presses warm kisses to her forehead. she knows it’s not the same.
and hyunki, his sweet son hyunki, who cries for his daddy at night, wishing for his hold and his voice. yoongi tries so hard to sing him to sleep, using the same lullabies, rocking him the same way, but it’s just not the same. hyunki cries and cries until his little lungs give out and he goes to sleep. then it’s just yoongi left behind, words of a dead beloved on his lips, a prayer and a desperate wish. they never come true.
he never visits jungkook’s grave. he’s already broken in two, he doesn’t need to crack again.
and - he knows, distinctly, that what he’s doing is not moving on. drinking at night, never getting sleep, walking around like a man undead around his own home - none of it is moving on. it’s not even grieving, anymore. it’s like when - it’s like when jungkook died, he took yoongi with him. half of yoongi is gone, buried deep with a breathless body, and yoongi is left above ground gasping for air.
he finds that he’s suffocating most of the time.
his phone wallpaper is his husband, blindingly bright, beautiful, his sun and sky. jungkook smiles and his eyes curve like he’s sharing secrets and yoongi is left shaking because oh, he wishes, oh god how he wishes. his hands reach for a body that’s not there, on the other side of the bed; there is no footsteps around the house in the morning; hayoung eventually stops asking for daddy.
yoongi grieves. years can pass by, but he will still grieve. he can never stop.