anonymityseaanemone

[anonymityseaanemone]

It shouldn’t have happened at all, under any circumstances. Patient confidentiality should kick in. Someone should have stopped him. People should care about things like that --- but thank god they didn’t thank god ---

Yoongi’s weak, medicated, idiot brain is ripped against the sidewall of his skull like a new driver without a seatbelt when he gets the call. Jin’s nervous words sending his feet over the edge of the bed and his panicked hands through his messy, unwashed bed hair ---a desperate cry leaves his lips at the searing pain at the contact, even through the bandages Jin must’ve replaced while he was out cold---. The bed behind the curtain is empty. No shivering, shaking mess of a man to interrupt Yoongi’s snoring to be found. He should’ve noticed. He should’ve been concerned when he drifted to wakefulness. He should’ve---

this is not his fucking fault

He inhales. Exhales. Jin’s panicked voice on the phone now yelling for an update. He’s on route to the hospital, but he lives 20 miles away. The staff are looking for him and have been for about ten minutes. Yoongi inhales again. Exhales. Thinks.

He picks up the phone from the floor where he’d dropped it in shock, gingerly, trying to avoid as much pain as possible.

“...know it hurts, but please, please answer me---”

“Chill, I’m trying to think---”

“---looked everywhere, we can’t even fathom---”

“---what about the roof?”

Nothing but a sharp inhale comes through the speaker.  

“Hyung, what about the roof?”

Yoongi’s running before Jin has time to answer him. The elevator takes too long so he bursts into the stairwell and hurls his body up two stairs at a time. The pain in his foot is becoming alarming and he feels a shiver run down his spine when he feels something shift, sickeningly. One level to go. He grits his teeth. His body remembers. He grits his teeth and--->

(---Hyung, look. We’re so high up.

...come down from there

---I don’t want to, it feels… real

...what if you fall

---I won’t, Hyung, I trust you---

...don’t)

<---bursts through the door at the top of the stairwell. His lungs gulp in air and his legs shake. He can’t feel his foot. Good. Well, no. Bad. Really bad. But for now, who the fuck cares. When his vision clears and his heartbeats stutter to a slower rhythm, he can hear the sounds of bare feet tapping the cement of the landing. He drags his body to the sounds, as quietly as he can manage and what he finds once he gets to the other side of the wall is…

Dancing.

The lunatic is dancing.

Yoongi gapes, disbelief running through his system like water out a faucet and then his legs finally give out and he falls.

“You gave me a heart attack today, asshole.”

The man --- Hobi --- stumbles, and it’s a little too close to the edge of the building for Yoongi’s poor heart to not beat violently out of his chest.

“...I’m sorry.” His eyes are tired. Maybe a little glassy. Like he’d been crying and the water had just collected there, permanently ready to fall.

“What the fuck are you doing up here, anyway?” Yoongi shouts between inhales.

“I… there’s an audition coming up,” he says, like that’s supposed to just wipe away any and all concern in this situation, “I have to be there.”

“There’s an… audition coming up.” Yoongi repeats dumbly.

They stare at one another.

Hobi runs a hand through his hair, slicking it back. He was sweating an awful lot. Or maybe it’d rained while Yoongi was snoring peacefully in a hospital bed a few stories below.

“Why are you on the ground?”

Yoongi remembers why he’s on the ground and laughter erupts from his chest. It’s not a good laugh.

“Because I thought you were going to leap from the hospital roof on my watch and ran after you on a broken fucking foot.”

Hobi stares at him, mouth falling open in shock.

“I-I… how did you know?”

Oh, fuck.

“Hobi, listen…” Yoongi hisses it out like a swear, forcing his body forward and using the wall as a support, on his elbows, on his wrists to drag his body to standing on his one good foot.

“Don’t call me---who told you---stop---” When Hobi backs up all the way to the edge of the roof, Yoongi stops.

Oh, shit. Oh, god. God. Fucking damn it all to---

“Why?”

Yoongi hates resorting to reason. It’s complete bullshit even at the best of times.

“What do you mean, why?” Hobi---whoever the hell he is---looks wound tight. Like a rope swing that’s been spun around one too many times and might snap in two if pushed any further. “After---after this whole goddamn---” he chokes on some emotion clinging to the insides of his throat, “---how can you even ask me that?”

Yoongi is dimly aware that his body is shaking.

“Yeah, okay. That’s completely fucking fair. But---but you still gotta tell me. You still gotta convince me. Or, I’ll… I’ll just have to fucking go jumping off after you.”

The man whose name Yoongi still doesn’t know halts. Then he looks furious.

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“I… after this year, man… how can you ask that?” Yoongi has no idea what he’s saying anymore. He’s just spitting out bullshit trying to keep the man from stepping backwards into the fucking abyss right before his eyes. “You know how it’s been, I mean… we… if we can’t count on each other, what can we count on? I know… I know we don’t know each other, but, it made me really mad yesterday when they looked at you on that bed and just… just thought you were… were…”

“Were just making shit up?” The man supplied, voice hysterical.

“I… yeah…” Yoongi nodded. “That…”

“I have nowhere,” he whispers, like it’s some big secret. “And nothing.” Then, with a finality that shakes Yoongi to his core, “and no one, at all, to hold me here. Except for this stupid audition.”

“You have me.” Yoongi says, voice thick with irrational, human passion. “And---and Jin.” Then, “And quite frankly, my goddamn hospital bill if all those stairs fucked me up anymore than I already was. Also I’ll sue your entire family for emotional damages.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“I’m Min Yoongi,” he somehow manages to say, vaguely aware that his face is wet with terrified tears and sweat. The man before him stares, his expression dead and unreadable. Eyes glassy. Mouth twisted. But he’s not backing up anymore, so Yoongi keeps going. “I’m a musician. I---I have no one here in the city besides Jin, the goddamn nurse on call, and---and Namjoon, and, and he’s got his hands full enough as it is. And…” Yoongi breathes, counts to three. “And honestly, I’m looking for a roommate.”

Yoongi Waits. Tries to have faith. Hears his heart beating in his eardrums.

“Wh---”

“Hey,” Yoongi exhales, half hopping, half limping. “No thoughts. No questions. Just---”

“Wh-what if, but---”  

Yoongi has to break into a laugh at the image in his head of this moment. Himself, one working limb, tumbling unsteadily towards a barefoot, suicidal stranger at the edge of this gray and sterile void of isolation.

“I said,” he huffs, gripping the man by the biceps for purchase. “I said---no questions. Just. Fuck this, okay? Just fuck this and come live with me.”

“I---”

Yoongi stumbles and the man, hilariously, catches him before he careens over the edge of the hospital roof.

At that exact moment, Jin and another very sheepish looking nurse burst through the door at the top of the stairwell and come rushing out to catch them both.

Jin looks like he’s about to collapse, face pale with fear. The other nurse, younger, looks more composed, but riddled with guilt.

“I---...okay,” the man says finally, in a small voice, his expression almost the threat of a smile. “Okay.”

“Oh, no…” he hears the nurse whisper sharply. “His hands…”

Yoongi’s vision is darkening as he grins in response.

“Good, that’s… that’s fucking fantast---”

And that’s all the warning they get before Min Yoongi blacks out and crumples to the hard surface of the roof right at his new roommate’s feet.

[anonymityseaanemone]

(---twidc---) ch1; point of attack discussion:

For chapter 1 of (---to whom it does concern---) I wanted to highlight two things:

1. Yoongi’s subtle reluctance to be treated

2. Hobi’s lack of presence in reality

As this is our point of attack in Freytag’s Pyramid, we begin somewhat after much of their trauma has already occurred and their psyches have been cracked wide enough to blindly accept one another into each (as will become clear in chapter 2). The point of attack does not actually start the slow-crawl towards teh climax, that would be the inciting action --- which you are free to argue with me about within the context of this story. There are several that would fit the bill, one or two occurring before the story even starts, and I do love a good healthy discourse.

I would also like to point out the bits of dialogue that occur periodically that are indented to the right as opposed to the rest of this chapter which is indented to the left like regular prose writing in the English language. This is to indicate Yoongi’s instability in some way or another here. Later it will show up more drastically and not always in dialogue form. Once or twice it will be memories or dreams. But it will always be Yoongi and it will always be a moment of instability.

Happy Reading---

(---be safe, wayfaring strangers---)

[anonymityseaanemone]

-----A-C-T--I-----

Sometime between passing out and the cops showing up to ask him questions, he gets dragged to a hospital. He’s not sure who took him and he’s not sure why and to top it all off, he’s honestly not sure how he’s even alive. So the cops show up. And they ask questions, some of which are thinly veiled threats. And he talks. But considering his memory is vague and blurry and useless, he figures it doesn’t actually matter if he talks since there’s nothing he can offer them that they could use to pin anybody down with.

His hands hurt like hell. And his throat is dry. And his foot might be broken or sprained from a bad roll off the curb or something so the evidence remains that for some goddamn reason... he is alive. And what little evidence he needs to feel such disappointment. He might even be cleared to go to work tomorrow, which. All things considered. He’d much rather slip gently away in the back of a police cab high off his balls on god knows what. He hears a cough to his right and looks.

A boy with bruises all up and down his neck and jaw is sleeping fitfully in the bed behind a half-hazardly drawn curtain that separates them. It dawns on him --- two things do, in fact, one being --- that he isn’t the only person in the world with troubles --- and the second --- that he also hasn’t seen another human being with a mask off in his presence in too long to think too closely about.

And maybe this is just the way the world ends for Min Yoongi, and maybe going gently was never a fucking option.

He passes out again, lulled by his mind supplying a dampened memory of the last time he'd been in a hospital bed, almost like a projector playing behind his eyes.

“No offense, but watching you go through this is making me not want to ever be in a serious relationship.” Yoongi snorts, but doesn’t look at him. “I just don’t understand how this even…”

“Joon-ah…”

“Right.”

“If I understood it, I wouldn’t be here.”

He reawakens to muffled whimpers from behind the badly drawn curtain. He watches for a bit, curious. He needs the distraction. The padding on his palms is secure, but he can still feel the fire. His foot hurts. He lets it. He’s not concerned. What he is concerned about, however--->

“S-stop.”

<---is that the man behind the curtain has begun to speak. And he seems to be in distress. And Min Yoongi is for some reason not fucking immune.

“Stop what?” Nothing. He tries again, knowing it will probably fall on deaf ears, “Hey. Talk to me.” The boy startles violently at Yoongi’s insistence and then chokes on a sob, eyes screwing shut against the light of the tv above his bed. Yoongi looks at the crutches by his bed and sighs. Someone’s gotta do it. “Okay…” he sighs, annoyed and not bothering to hide it. “Hold on just a second.”

He hobbles uselessly onto one foot and gets a crutch under one arm before the pain hits him like a tornado and he shouts with it in surprise. The other boy goes absolutely quiet. Fuck. Yoongi forgot about the call button. Jesus Christ he’s tired. He presses it maybe one too many times and crawls back under the sheets and begs in his mind to pass out from the pain so he doesn’t have to feel the heat of it fraying at the corners of his patience and his control in such an unfamiliar and sterile environment. It brings back too much of the bad and not enough of the pleasure to be a comfort.

A nurse comes running. Jin. He was kind. And tired. With dark bags under his eyes and a sadness that never quite seemed to leave his body. Last time Yoongi got dragged in here, he let him have some of his shitty Americano.

“What is it?” Jin’s yawning when he speaks, not bothering to follow code. If somebody dies on his watch, it wouldn’t be the first or the last in this day and age. “I need some earplugs…” Yoongi says carefully, too quietly, “...and I need you to turn the tv off for our friend over here.” Jin itches his nose under the mask and Yoongi wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“Get over it. You’re already exposed.” He sounds angry, but Yoongi knows he’s not. He's known him for too long to fall for it. “You didn’t even have one in a pocket when the EMT arrived.”

“Well, fuck me then I guess…” Yoongi says, trying to even out his breaths. “But I’m fairly certain our friend behind the curtain here is literally meeting God right now, so whatever he’s on is not mixing well with the media.”

“Ah. Hobi.”

“Hobi…” Yoongi tries, hard, to remember why that’s familiar. Why that’s important. But fails, so ultimately it’s got nothing to do with him or his life. By the time Jin returns from checking in with Hobi and turning off TV, he’s over it.

“We’re not sure what his actual name is.” Jin looks to the left as he speaks, voice low.

“Can’t you look him up?”

Jin shakes his head, eyes rolling back then closed in something of a defeat. He puts his hands on his hips and drags in a breath. Then looks back at Yoongi and exhales. “I think he’s related to someone on staff, so we should have everything figured out for discharge and treatment, but. He --- as you can see --- cannot come to the phone right now.”

“So… what’s the deal then?”

“Someone called in a consumption scare.” Jin tells him, casually risking his depressing career in order to talk freely to what Min Yoongi’s instincts can only supply, must be an old friend. “I think---I don’t know. It’s none of my business. I don’t run the drug tests. His heart rate was a failed apollo mission, but he seemed okay on the way here apparently. We were treating his… friend. Then he passed out in the hallway and we couldn’t get him to wake back up. That’s when his… friend… told us he’d had more than the rest of them.”

Yoongi doesn’t particularly care what he says, but he has to ask.

“What did he take?”

“Weed. Maybe mushrooms. But currently the consensus is weed.”

“Weed.” Min Yoongi lets his disdain for that assessment show in a snort quickly followed by a distrustful scowl.

“These things happen. I think they all just had a panic attack and someone called an ambulance.”

“You’re telling me Starman over here only smoked a blunt? Fat fucking chance.”

“Yoongi… it happens.”

“Okay, doc, whatever.” Yoongi rolls his eyes. Seokjin looks almost hurt by it, but he says nothing. Except ---

“This conversation never happened.”

“Obviously.”

“Let me check your hands.”

“No.”

“They’ll get infected.”

“Then they’ll get infected.”

Jin sighs and shuts the door behind him on his way out. Yoongi tries desperately to sleep through the panicked little noises Hobi’s making in the other bed.

“Hey…” Yoongi tries again. “Hey.” Hobi doesn’t answer him. Just turns, jerkily, to stare at him with wide, terrified eyes. “I’ve got you, okay? I believe you.” Hobi nods, then something passes over his eyes and he pushes the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and shivers.

[anonymityseaanemone]

This is chapter 1 of (---to whom it does concern---) an alternate universe covid19 fic about Min Yoongi and Jung Hoseok meeting in a hospital (they do not get the virus), clinging to one another for dear life, and plunging way, way too fast into each other’s hearts and bedsheets.  (More info & insight & ramblings & fun facts under the cut)----

If you have been impacted by covid (take care), are intrigued by sexual content written by a mostly ace individual (maybe it passes), or have a random curiosity for the original, rarely used construct of Freytag’s Pyramid in playwriting, you might consider giving this fic a read. 

It started as a way to process how the pandemic has impacted my life and turned into a deconstruction of a German playwriting scheme I studied in college and snowballed within that structure into a study of isolation, mental illness, and skin hunger between two boys who breathe the same air.  What is Freytag’s Pyramid?  I’m glad you (didn’t) ask[ed]: 

Freytag’s Pyramid: a theatrical framework created by a German playwright and novelist of the mid-nineteenth century theorizing that effective stories could be broken into two halves, a play and counterplay, with a climax at the center.

Therefore, the chapter titles will all be elements of this playwriting format and the story’s structure will follow that of the Pyramid. Just like in geometry, not all pyramids are equilateral. 

So how is a pyramid constructed?  Thank you for (not) humoring me: 

A pyramid is a geometric structure that has a polygon base and an apex connected by straight lines. How this relates to playwriting, and my fic, is a great question. In my mind:  There’s where the story starts (a corner of the base---not necessarily the whole picture. Not necessarily the starting point. But the point where the story begins. Also known as the point of attack). Then there’s the rising action (the straight line leading to the apex), where most of the story generally takes place, which leads into the climax of the story (the apex of the triangle, the tipping point, the part in a tragedy where things blow up if they’ve been getting better and the point where the story unravels in a farce and the point where the lovers confess in a romance). After this climax occurs, we have the falling action (another side of the apex of our pyramid, leading back to the base---in some cases, an unraveling of everything constructed to get us to the climax, in some cases, a mirror of what we’ve already built). Finally, we reach the final conclusion (the return to home base).  I have... two confessions to make: 

One: this is a tragedy. And two: it’s also not.  It’s going to be vague. A tragedy for them will be read as a relieving ending for us. It all depends on viewpoint. It’s all subjective. 

Please comment on the fic if you enjoy it, this means more than you could even know. And please do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions/concerns/intrigue of any kind. Or even to just say hello. I swear to you, dear reader, that despite the dark nature of the story’s narrative that I myself as a creature am the squishiest anemone you could possibly imagine, and therefore will never even try to be intimidating.  Happy reading! 

(---and stay safe, wayfaring strangers---)

[anonymityseaanemone]

A camel greeting his herder who was absent for a few days. 

(Source)