In the past when he was alone, all the lights were off and the planets were in perfect alignment, Hoseok would think that the universe was like water. He would think about how calm it lays, collected and still, until something - maybe a strong wind, maybe a branch falling from a tree or a rock plopping into the water - would come along and ripple it out. He would think of how that ripple would cause a chain reaction, disturbing the dirt and grass floating in it, putting it on a different path. And sometimes he would think about the occurrences where the wind was too strong, or the rock or the branch fell a little too hard and caused a ripple that disturbed the wrong thing. How that wrong thing would maybe cause an avalanche. Maybe cause a flood.

Lately, and perhaps a consequence of circumstances, Hoseok thinks about it too often. He’s thinking about it at this very moment as he shifts in his seat, wincing at the way his bones creak and crack with irritability. He presses a hand into his lower back, massaging it lightly and groaning quietly at the relief it offers,and also at the fact that still it isn’t nearly enough. He’d fallen asleep in this chair, so he’s likely to feel the stiffness in his muscles for at least the next few days. His eyes are already rolling.

One would think hospital chairs would offer just a little more comfort, either for the aching patient or the aching family of said patient. Clearly that isn’t the case.

With a yawn and a stretch, Hoseok reaches a fist up to rub the grogginess out of his eyes, squinting irritably at the brightness of the hospital room. The fluorescent lighting bounces off the white of the walls, the floor, and Yoongi’s bed sheets, amplifying the color from simply bright to practically blinding.

He doesn’t like the white, and never understood why hospitals insisted on draping it everywhere. Perhaps it’s a sanitation thing, or to give off a vibe of purity and innocence, or renewal that traditionally comes with the color white, but to Hoseok it only makes him feel cold. It’s too much and at the same time not enough, and the only splash of color in the room to offset it is the blue beanie resting atop Yoongi’s head, permanently glued there since he started chemotherapy about a year ago. He never takes it off.

From his chair, Hoseok watches him sleep. An IV drip is hooked up to his arm, and plastic tubes are plugged up his nose, giving him oxygen from the tank resting idly by his hospital bed. He was already small and pale - even before the cancer infected his lungs and slowly, selfishly drained him - but now, after a year of treatments and medicines that hadn’t been strong enough to cure him, he’s even smaller, even paler. Like a baby bird.

Above the covers, the rise and fall of Yoongi’s chest is just barely visible, so the only indication that he’s still alive is the heart monitor beeping steadily, a few milliseconds slower than it was last week.

When he thinks of before, of the Yoongi that was independent to the point where Hoseok sometimes felt like he was in a relationship with himself and Yoongi was just a bystander, and of  the Yoongi that was confident in his footing, his heart simmers. It burns when he thinks of after, in the months that Yoongi gradually deteriorated into the skeletal looking thing he is now, and Hoseok could do nothing but sit back and watch.

Hoseok's hands ball into tight fists. His jagged nails dig into his palms, but compared to the way his insides rip apart every time he looks at Yoongi helplessly lying  there, the white of his blankets enunciating the faded blue splotches just underneath the surface of his skin, the pain is a mere bee sting.

It wasn’t fair. Yoongi didn’t deserve this.

Across the room, Yoongi shifts in his sleep. His heart monitor speeds up momentarily, and Hoseok watches with a pain in his gut as Yoongi lets out a singular, shaky breath before settling back into the hospital bed. Tears prick at the back of Hoseok’s eyes, but they don’t fall. He stopped crying months ago.

However, he still can’t bring himself to look at Yoongi anymore, so he looks at the clock above the door instead. It’s 11:27am, 3 minutes until Yoongi’s doctor, Dr. Lee, said he would be back with the results of Yoongi’s blood test that would determine if his  treatment was still worth continuing.

‘Worth continuing,’ because medicine costs money, and why waste money on a lost cause? Hospitals, at the root, were a business first. Inconvenient truths.

His fingernails find a way to his mouth - an old bad habit picked up again in recent months - as he watches the clock tick. The hand marking the seconds seems to move slower than usual, like it is purposefully trying to make Hoseok itch, and it’s just shy of the three when the door below the clock opens with a click, and Dr. Lee walks in with his head down. When he looks up, his eyes are distant and emotionless.

And though Hoseok is an optimist, he isn’t naive. Given Yoongi’s condition, some part of him already knew what the status would be, and has been mentally preparing himself for this moment yet it still doesn’t stop the way his heart drops into the floor, or stop his tears that escape his eyes and cascade down his cheeks without his permission when he stands on shaky legs, and stares into Dr. Lee’s unwavering face.

Dr. Lee, takes an exhausted breath. “Mr. Jung…I’m sorry-”

“No,” Hoseok hears himself whisper. Dr. Lee looks on him with pity.

“We’ve... decided it would be best to pull the plug-”

“No!” Hoseok hears himself say louder. The word feels like tiny razors scratching the back of his throat. His lungs collapse inside his body, and suddenly he’s on the floor, doubled over with his head on his knees and all of his pent up tears from the last few months pouring down his face, like a dam that has finally broken after one too many cracks.

The universe is like water, relentless and unforgiving as he tries to keep his head above the surface, only to be dragged under by the waves roughly crashing against him again and again. He’s loud, and he shouldn’t be, because he could wake up Yoongi  and that’s the very last thing he wants, for him to wake up and see him like this, but his body is working on autopilot. His sobs physically hurt when they rip through his chest, and momentarily he wonders if this is what Yoongi’s chest feels like all the time.

A cold hand on his back rubs small circles in it, the cold perhaps a result of working in a hospital all day, but Hoseok leans into it regardless. Something is better than nothing.

Dr. Lee waits for him to calm himself down before he speaks again. “This is incredibly hard, I know,” he says soothingly. “I have done this so many times already, too many to count, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in this field for 20 years, it’s that when it’s someone’s time to go, it’s their time to go.”

Hoseok dry heaves. Dr. Lee presses his hand into his shoulder.

“Hoseok, listen,” he says, foregoing  formalities. They’ve developed a strange sort of friendship by this point, so Hoseok doesn’t mind. “You’ve been watching Yoongi fight for a year now. You’ve seen him go through treatment after treatment, and surgery after surgery. He's great at hiding it, but he’s been suffering a great deal. Don’t you think… don’t you think he deserves some peace and quiet?”

Hoseok lets out a shuddering breath. What Dr. Lee said was true, Yoongi is great at hiding his feelings, always unnervingly nonchalant when the conversation would fall to his cancer, his treatments, or the possibility of him dying. He’d simply shrug it off, probably say something along the lines of ‘it’s the hand I was dealt,’ as if he was talking about the weather. And whenever they got news regarding the progression or decline of his health, Yoongi would accept it with a curt nod and maybe an ‘okay.’

Occasionally, it drove Hoseok up a wall and he just wished Yoongi would ing talk to him, let him know what he was really feeling. If they hadn’t been together since high school he might’ve given up, but he knows Yoongi better than he knows himself sometimes, and this was just how he deals with things. He did the same thing when Yoongi was in his junior year of college and Hoseok his sophomore. It was a Friday. Hoseok was helping him pack for a weekend at his parents’ house, and Yoongi revealed quietly that he was going to finally tell his parents about their relationship.

That same night, he came back home with a bruise blooming on his cheek, and Hoseok had fretted and worried but Yoongi only shrugged and said it wasn’t a big deal, and that he hadn’t been that close to his parents for a long time anyways. However, a few hours later when they were cuddled up on Hoseok’s dorm bed, Yoongi’s whimpers in his sleep kept the younger awake. That was how he learned that the more stoic Yoongi appeared, the more he was actually feeling. Hoseok would always make sure to give him extra love and attention in those cases.

But now Yoongi dying isn’t just a possibility anymore. He's actually going to die, at the too young age of 23, and Hoseok can do nothing but watch.

“He deserves to live a longer life,” he whispers.

Dr. Lee presses  his thumbs into Hoseok’s shoulders and sighs. “All good people do.”

Hoseok throws Yoongi - who’s still sound asleep, miraculously - a helpless eye. He looks so content, his skin smooth despite the discoloration and free of any worry lines, so peaceful that Hoseok almost doesn’t want to wake him up. Doesn’t want to tell him.

But prolonging it wouldn’t make it hurt less.

Shakily, and with the help of Dr. Lee, he rises to his feet, and takes carefully placed steps to Yoongi’s bedside.

“Yoongi,” he says quietly, jostling  the elder’s shoulder. “Hyung, wake up.”

When Yoongi doesn’t wake, he shakes him a little harder. “Yoongi hyung, you have to wake up.”

With a grunt Yoongi rouses awake, eyes scrunched up against the fluorescent lighting, and lets out a brief, dry sounding cough. “Seokie, I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired,” Hoseok responds on instinct before slamming his mouth shut. Definitely not his best line, given the circumstances. “Um, Dr. Lee is here.”

“For what?” he asks. Hoseok goes to respond, but the words get lodged in his throat and he gasps softly and looks down, willing the tears to stay behind his eyes. Yoongi looks at him suspiciously, gaze shifting repeatedly from Hoseok’s broken face to Dr. Lee’s somber eyes, and his face morphs from confusion to understanding as it clicks. Slowly, Yoongi settles into his bed, eyes glazed over and looking at nothing in particular.

“Oh,” he whispers.

Hoseok chokes again, head turning to look at the wall instead. A clammy hand slips into his, his palm with the pad of his thumb. For a few moments it’s quiet, and if Hoseok closes his eyes he can pretend that they are at home, standing in the kitchen as he prepares lunch with Yoongi by his side,  his palm with the pad of his thumb. Yoongi would nuzzle into his neck, making sure his breath tickled right under his ear, and Hoseok would press his back into Yoongi’s front, basking in his warmth before Yoongi would pull away with a snarky remark like, “Watch what you’re doing before you burn it.”

Maybe in another life.

Yoongi continues giving his hand gentle , doing what he can to comfort Hoseok from his bed and Hoseok can’t help but think it should be the other way around. He's not the one who has just been given a death sentence. He should be the one comforting Yoongi, he should be the one caressing his hand and whispering soothing words into the quiet hospital room. It's amazing how Hoseok is still the one who needs Yoongi more than Yoongi needs him.

“It’ll be okay, Seok-seok.”

No, it won’t.

His neck creaks as he turns back to Yoongi. His eyes are turned down and he’s biting his lips. He looks up to Dr. Lee, who's still in the room, and asks a question that feels like a punch in the gut.

“How long do I have left?”

Hoseok reflexively squeezes Yoongi’s hand. The elder squeezes back twice as hard.

“I’d say about two months,” Dr. Lee says. “Maybe two and a half, if you’re lucky.”

Yoongi nods in understanding, outward appearance calm. He tilts his head to the side, deep in thought. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, yet steady.

“If I’m to…die, then, would it be possible for me to go home?”

Dr. Lee raises his eyebrows. “If you want to, yes.”

Yoongi nods. “Then I want to go home. I’d rather die in my own home, in my own bed with Hoseok by my side.” He pauses. “There’s probably someone out there who needs this room more than me, anyway.”

Dr. Lee nods with a deep breath. “Well, if that’s really what you want, I’ll get your paperwork ready for discharge.”

“Thank you,” Yoongi answers.

Hoseok waits for the click of the door before he breaks down again, but instead of on the floor, it’s on Yoongi’s bed, in Yoongi’s arms that up and down his back, and once again he finds himself thinking this should definitely be the other way around as he cries pathetically into Yoongi’s neck, clings to his bed sheets in desperation until his knuckles turn stiff and white.

The universe, he’s learned, doesn’t give a damn about anyone. The smallest occurrences cause the biggest chain reactions, taking what it takes and leaving behind the remnants for those left to stumble over. And now it’s taking Yoongi, his Yoongi, who is perhaps the most interesting soul he’s ever met.

It’s cruel, is what it is. It’s damn cruel.

Just like water.