and yet-- it is not the same. he is not the same.

Legs swung over the side of the pavilion, you watch as the stone that leaves your palm plunks into the depths of the disturbed pond, immediately disappearing into the darkness. You throw another. Then another. You don't even bother to try to skip them when your chest feels like it weighs more than enough to drown the slowly diminishing stack of pebbles you hauled here from the dirt ten minutes before. You just needed to feel something solid in your grasp before it slips away again. Tenuous.

Behind you, the wood thumps with the weight of steps you would recognize anywhere.

The king sits beside you as the last bits of sun slide into the horizon.

You are both silent as he watches you throw, the steady rhythm not enough to dissipate the tension that now falls over you. It is thick and viscous and begging to be acknowledged, but you hesitate to do so because it has never been your place to speak on such matters. Not then, and not now. Despite the shift in your relationship... You have always known some things to be inevitable. All this time you've shared together has always been the silken petals of a fragile spring flower — never meant to last. And just like that, your fingernails scrape wood and you look down to find that you've depleted your pile, the distraction you were relying so much on.

Still, you don't want to look at him. Afraid that you will break a little more if you do.

"They want me to marry the daughter of the Minister of Agriculture."

You give a small start. You weren't expecting him to bring it up first. Not when last time, he—

"I don't want to."

A slow warmth buds in your veins.

The pavilion floor creaks when he shifts, as if he's nervous. "Nor... do I want you to hear much more from the others. Not when— Not when you deserve an explanation for the rumors I'm sure you have been forced to listen to. You should have an explanation from me, that is."

"No, jeonha." You continue to refuse to acknowledge the burden of his gaze on you. (You know already that it will be unbearable.) "You don't have to. You— You never have to do this." Your words are muttered into the pond, dropped and let go like the rocks as if your fates could ever be released as easily. "I already understand. This is how it has to be."

"Don't say that." His reply is sharp. Instinctual, though you don't dare to think what that could imply. "Don't say that."

"But it is the truth. And no amount of saying or unsaying can ever change—"

His palm engulfs your shoulder, suddenly squeezing. "Look at me."

You shake your head in direct defiance of your king.

You cannot.

You cannot look at him because you remember Beom-su too damn well and some wounds may not still bleed, but they remain painful all the same.

"Look at me," he tries, again, this time with something more naked in his voice. But when you, stubborn you, only continue to stare at the wind-rippled water simmering beneath you instead of heeding his call like you have countless times before, he finally sighs your name. Your real name, instead of your title, which he hardly ever uses but it feels so desperately right in his sotto voice that you... give in.

Your first wish is that you could decipher what his eyes are trying to convey with that ardent look. Your second is forgotten when he catches your wrist.

Deliberately, delicately, he guides you to his cheek.

There, he lets the pad of your thumb brush against the faded scarlet of his scar and you forget to breathe, when you learn just how deeply his wound truly runs. You feel the hard grooves under your skin, the hardened callous of a mark that he has carried alone for so long and now... He permits himself to sink into your palm, though only by the slightest of pressures, and you... You trace his hurt. Understand him a small measure more.

When he speaks again, he does so carefully, with his tone hushed as if not wanting to shatter all that is suspended between you. "I do not want to marry her. I will never want to marry her." His fragile eyelashes brush the darkened skin beneath his eyes, the look of exhaustion that always puts worry in your mind. "Ignore every rumor. All the politics and the ministers... Their squabbling... All of that shit matters damn little to me because I— I could never, ever put you in that position."

And when he leans in, when he meets your mouth, your heart stirs at the brief, intimate gesture before he trails down to leave a line of kisses down your chin, across your jaw. All these places are ones he has captured before but he retakes hungrily now, craving this confirmation only you can give. And when you are gathered, pulled in almost completely flush against his body—

"Do you... trust me?"

It's a low whisper, soft lips pressed against the stuttering pulse in your throat. But you think, or maybe you hope, the implications are trying to delve much deeper into your heart. Regardless, your answer has never wavered.

"Yes."

Your quiet truth is as gentle and as certain as the heartbeat you think you can feel pounding firmly, sturdily against yours. It is one of the few things in this life that has long been woven into the deepest seams of your very being; it will remain there long after this, all of this, has come to its end. Yoongi tucks his nose into the bow of your neck; his delicate fingers linger over your spine, carving his touch into your bones themselves while you can only exhale an entirely too honest and ever lingering, "yes."