writetomyheart | [team six] lead to

THOUGHT I WAS LATE BUT I'M ON TIME :D

The last time Yoongi had to go through that diabolacy, he came out seven hours later with a migraine and slept for two days straight.

Weather in a personal realm can tell a lot about a person. This isn't something he finds surprising, especially after five years of being around in the field. It's just that Yoongi could, like, do without the random-shift assignments. There are many iterations of 'warn a guy' in all three languages that Yoongi knows, that Yoongi knows Hoseok knows, and Yoongi has used them all - continues to do so, even, although Hoseok consistently (conveniently?) acts as if he never hears.

"Earth to Min," Yixing yawns, crackling over the speakers, and Yoongi wakes up.

"Fuck me," he says, brain on autopilot, then winces. Moments after regaining consciousness are not the times he is most eloquent. Not that he's eloquent anyway, but still. One strives to set a standard and keep it. He vaguely remembers the time he confessed to Namjoon, something about being the Rock to his Dwayne.

"While I'm sure there are many people who have been there and done that and perhaps come back for seconds because of the high quality of proceedings," Yixing starts, sounding a little wary, "I would not go so far as to s-"

"Yes," Yoongi says, sitting up despite his protesting brain and bones. "That'll be all, thank you."

"Yes," Yixing says, sounding relieved. "Good luck."

Yoongi is about to scoff about how he never needs it, has Yixing seen his track record - but then he takes a good look around him and has to stop himself.

Weather in a personal realm can tell a lot about a person. Every single case he's gone through before has had weather; Namjoon had had thunder but no rain, grey clouds always on the horizon but never moving, never budging from their perch over the mountains. He remembers Taehyung being more on the side of windy and bright blue, smoke rings from a volcano drifting fast across the sky. Seokjin had been rain, but it had brought, along with petrichor, the scent of someone else. Everyone's got weather, and a tinge of something telling.

This one - Yoongi's on a flat plane, almost clinical in its palour, and the sky above him is barely a sky. It's like someone shoved him through a computer screen and into a severely underdeveloped game level. There's nothing on it. No topology, no weather, no hint of life. Even a dead soul leaves aural remains.

Yoongi stands there, he doesn't know for how long, just trying to think. Usually he gets his starting point right away - one or two things off with the atmosphere, he has to coax out a solution from the land itself, and then he's good to go. But everything's off here. He doesn't know where to begin.

"Okay," he mutters to himself. "Standard procedure. If this were a regular place, what would you have done by now?"

He feels stupid, getting a mental checklist up with effort. He's been going through the motions so long they've become second nature. Until, of course, this point.

He takes a deep breath, tries to see if there's anything in the air.

Nothing.

He lifts his foot, then sets it down. No dust comes up around his feet. He's barefoot and in his banana print pyjamas, thanks to Hoseok's bullshitting, but he doesn't feel either out of place or in. The sensors along his skin don't seem to detect anything. It's as if he's floating in a sense of... just in a sense. Just floating.

He jumps, lands again, nothing spectacular.He's heavy as he always is, so this isn't a no-gravity zone.

There's an ache in his shoulder from sleeping with his arm pinned under him, so he rolls it around and flinches when he hears everything popping and creaking. Really should take his vitamins, or whatever.

"Okay," he says aloud, hearing closely for any echoes. None. "Long walks on the metaphorical beach, then."

Nobody's on communications for a long time. Yoongi's grateful. It doesn't sit very well with his pride to be so off course and lost in what's supposed to be his forte, by himself, let alone with a constant audience of either Yixing the pragmatic dictionary who silently judges, or Hoseok, resident shit-eater and walking mallet. Or even, God forbid, both simultaneously. The last time Yoongi had to go through that diabolacy, he came out seven hours later with a migraine and slept for two days straight.

Not that he's faring any better at the moment: Yoongi searches perimeters - usually rectangles, or irregular shapes, but here he seems to be stuck walking in perfect circles. And there seems to be no perimeter, no end. His feet just can't take him any farther away from the center, which he'd marked by setting his lighter down on.

He tries running, against his will, and still ends up the exact same distance. If he had to guess, it's probably around eight feet.

It's ridiculous. Which realm is eight measly feet? Did Hoseok send him inside some womb and project onto some two-week zygote? More specifically, did Hoseok have a death wish?

He stares irritatedly at the lighter, willing it to move farther away. He needs to be farther away. Yoongi isn't claustrophobic but he's getting pretty suffocated in this, whatever this is. Virtual zone the size of a prison cell, in severe need of an interior designer.

And then he blinks, because he swears the lighter really is farther away now.

He walks towards it, the plain red old thing he's had in his pocket for years. It looks just the same, an old scratch down the side, sharp glint of paint dulled with use, finger smudges, soot. He picks it up, weighs it in his hand, then puts it down again. Walks away in a straight line, counting his measured steps. When he hits the end - so frustrating, because it doesn't look like an end, the same way it doesn't look like there's space beyond it, or like anything at all - he's at twenty three.

Yoongi turns and looks at it, wills it away, far away. Then he walks back and counts his steps.

Forty eight.

im gonna make this longer ahhhh i hope i can turn this into a fic with, like, progress and resolution

tagging

laughingvirus! ♡