Tea in the blue mug on the left, water in the glass on the right, rice in the yellow bowl dead centre, chopsticks also on the right but closer to the bowl than the mug.

Taehyung doesn’t even need to think about it anymore, like clockwork he wakes up at 6:30 every day and lays the table. He doesn’t know how much good it does but he’s heard that regularity helps, strengthening old neuron pathways with every repetition. Taehyung likes that explanation, scientific and convincing with a clear route to a cure.

Repetition, and again and again and again.

The stairs creak and Taehyung waits for Hoseok to make his way downstairs in his own time whilst he shovels his own breakfast into his mouth as fast as his hands will let him. He likes to make sure that when Hoseok is ready he can give him his full attention.

Footsteps hit the last stair and then make their way into the kitchen. Hoseok steps through the door with the same smile he’s been wearing for the past eighty years, making his crow’s feet so deep that his eyes get lost in them.

“Ahh! What a lovely day!” He announces and then laughs loudly, making his way to the kitchen door to peer out at the garden and the grey skies beyond. His hands shake a little as they come up to meet the glass, but there’s vivacity evident in his slim frame.

Taehyung smiles over his rice. Today might just be a Good Day after all.

“I’m starving, anything to eat?” Hoseok’s still smiling as he sets off to the dining room and Taehyung follows his delighted squark – “rice!” – with the morning’s paper tucked under one arm. If he’s as chipper as he seems to be, Taehyung will let him take a look. Hoseok has something of an overenthusiastic love affair with their local paper, but reading it every day can be…

Well lots of things are hard for Hoseok these days.

Taehyung pulls out a chair and sits opposite Hoseok as he eats, the slight tremor still present in his wrists. That’s natural of course, even Taehyung finds himself shaking sometimes. Natural like the way that neither of them really have any hair left to speak of, or the way that Hoseok’s back clicks painfully when he leans down too fast, or the way that neither of them can really keep their eyes open past seven in the evening anymore.

Then Hoseok stops.

There’s food in his mouth but he’s not chewing, his arm hangs awkwardly over his bowl from where he was about to take another bite. Taehyung feels his heart sink several inches lower in his chest.

“Hoseok? Are you o-“

“Kim Namjoon,” Hoseok announces, and just like that the universe is back on course. Taehyung follows his gaze and sees the picture of Bangtan they have framed on the windowsill. They have a lot of pictures dotted around their home, photos of friends and family and important places, photos from the two weeks they spent in America back in their twenties and their honeymoon in Thailand nearly forty years ago. They are surrounded by constant reminders of their life together, but that photo of the seven of them at the MAMAs in 2015 always seems to catch just a little bit more of Hoseok’s attention. Taehyung supposes that it's old enough for the neurons to have formed an unbreakable bridge between Hoseok's healthy and not so healthy brain tissues.

“Whatever happened to him?” Hoseok asks.

The paper falls to the floor, all chances of this being a Good Day are lost.

If you want to build pathways between neurons you need to keep up the great game of repetition. If Taehyung says it enough times the message will get through, the message has to get through.

“Hoseok-“

But he can’t make himself do it. He has told Hoseok that Namjoon lost his battle with cancer nearly seven years ago so many times that he would have thought the shock of it would have worn off, but even after all this time the thought of saying it out loud makes his heart pound and his vision cloud.

He feels like he’s been left with a photoframe filled with dead and dying friends. Seokjin’s heart beginning to give up the ghost, Yoongi’s short-lived fight with the sudden bought of pneumonia that killed him, Jimin practically slowing to a halt on his hip replacement, Jungkook vanishing without a trace at the age of thirty two…

Hoseok’s moment of recognition passes and Taehyung is spared the trouble of saying it all again. His eyes are glassy as he scans the rest of the photos, then the rest of the room, his smile no less broad than five minutes ago but with all the genuine emotion taken out. Eventually, his gaze falls on Taehyung.

Taehyung waits.

And waits.

And waits.

But there is no recollection in Hoseok’s gaze. He looks at Taehyung like he’s a stranger, because no matter how many years his brain has spent building the pathways that allow him to recognise the face he fell in love with, memory is so exhausting. So soul destroying miserable.

So Taehyung lets Hoseok finish his food before sitting him in the living room with some mindless television to keep his empty eyes occupied as he does the dishes. By the time they sit down for dinner that night, Hoseok will have remembered Taehyung’s name, and his favourite colours, and the girl he had a crush on back when he was seventeen years old.

And the photos on the windowsill will be gone.