He doesn't know much about grass stains but Jumin supposes it doesn't matter if he gets a few on his suit jacket. He has at least five others identical to this one and nothing can stop him from buying another if need be. V is never free anymore and Jumin's gotten used to having to call first if he wants to hear anything, so of course he didn't mind having Assistant Kang clear his schedule to meet his closest friend for probably the third time in nearly a year. Why V chose this place in particular, Jumin doesn't know. The grassy field wet with dewdrops between a road back to the city and a thicket of trees doesn't seem like the kind of place for two grown men to be lying side by side in silence, especially dressed like this.

"V…?" Jumin tries. Neither of them have spoken much since they got here, and V immediately starts apologizing.

"I'm sorry for wasting your time, Jumin. I… there was nothing in particular that I wanted to say. I just wanted to see you."

"You don't have to be sorry," Jumin answers, though he's admittedly a little surprised. Nearly all his interactions with V since Rika's death have been strictly business. "I'm glad that I could spend some time with you, too."

V smiles, eyes fixed on the sky, and Jumin realizes he's been staring. He turns his face to look up too, the sun making him squint, before he remembers V's vision and realizes that's probably why he can look up with such ease.

"Have you considered taking me up on my offer?" Jumin asks, and V shakes his head, smile not fading. Jumin purses his lips. "Well… it's still open, if you change your mind."

"Thank you, Jumin." It's quiet again.

"You aren't going to consider it, are you." It's not a question. V turns his head, as if to look at Jumin, and Jumin isn't sure how much of himself V can really make out.

"No," V admits.

"Why not? I don't understand it."

V is quiet, and Jumin's about to open his mouth again before he answers. "It's… difficult to explain the reason. I'm sorry, Jumin."

Jumin narrows his eyes, chewing at the corner of his lip. "Just tell me why."

It doesn't make any sense. V knows better than anyone that Jumin's help wouldn't inconvenience Jumin in the slightest—he's aware that he has much more money than most of his friends could even think of and spending it on them has never been a cause of hesitance. Besides Elizabeth the 3rd, there isn't much else for him to use his personal funds for. And this isn't a gift or a luxury, it's V's vision. Why is it that the only people who want Jumin's help are the people he doesn't care about at all? Zen refused him, and now V, his first and closest friend, refuses him too. "It doesn't matter if it's difficult to explain. I have time."

V shakes his head again. "Jumin, please don't worry about me."

Jumin huffs childishly, something he can never get away with at work, but which he doesn't mind doing so much around V, especially as right now V deserves it. "What happened to your eyes, anyway?" he demands.

"I was in an accident," V says softly, after a moment. "You know that."

"Why are you saying that?" Jumin's voice cracks and he feels a burst of anger with himself for showing weakness, but the words keep slipping. "People lie to me every day, V, I can recognize it, so don't tell me you aren't."

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing and answer me."

V fingers his sunglasses, thumb running quickly back and forth over the left temple. "I'm sorry." Jumin sucks in a sharp breath. "I'm sorry, Jumin. I can't tell you. I can't..." He lets go of his glasses and shifts, as if to sit up. "This was a bad idea, I shouldn't have come here. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

"Don't." Jumin bolts up, his hand coming down to clasp around V's wrist, heart racing. V flinches. "Don't go."

"I—"

"Why are you avoiding me?" He clenches his teeth. "Ever since—ever since what happened to Rika. I don't want to question you, V, but you don't talk to me anymore and you don't answer my questions. What have you been doing and why won't you tell me?"

"Jumin," V pleads, and Jumin's grip slackens. "I can't tell you… because you could get hurt."

Jumin's eyebrows furrow.

"I can't let you get hurt. This isn't about you. I should be the only one who gets hurt."

"Gets hurt…? What are you talking about?"

V doesn't answer, head rolling to face away. Jumin releases V's hand, falling back onto the grass with a thud that makes V flinch again.

"What really happened to your eyes?" Jumin asks again, quieter this time. "Please don't lie to me. I won't tell anyone."

V doesn't move.

"Please, V."

Moments pass in silence, the wet grass uncomfortable against Jumin's skin. Maybe V was right; this was a bad idea. In a way, he understands. Jumin was close to Rika too, and though he didn't allow himself much time to dwell on it, that's not how V grieves and Jumin respects that. The pain of losing someone you loved… it's not something Jumin knows—if he's ever felt that way toward anyone, it didn't matter and he doesn't remember it. But V's always been different in that way. Jumin's about to give up, bending his arm back to help him stand.

"… Rika did it."

V's voice is so quiet Jumin barely hears him over the small breezes, eyes widening. "What did you say?"

V's lips press together.

"Rika—?" Jumin repeats, to make sure he heard right.

"Yes."

Jumin's eyes search V's face, usually so expressive, but it's blank now, staring behind his glasses at nothing. It doesn't make sense, but—

Memories flood Jumin's mind. Rika had asked Jumin to come to her house one day, looking for understanding that she said V couldn't give her. She'd been angry, and questioned whether she and Jumin would've ended up together had she met him first. Jumin was uncomfortable with the question, not just because his feelings toward Rika were complicated, but also because—well, V is his best friend.

"Why…?"

"I told her she could," V says simply. Jumin folds his arms, and, perhaps sensing his friend's impatience, V adds, "To test my love for her."

"Test?" He feels like he's at a press conference with the endless questions that just keep coming to his mind. "She didn't believe you loved her?"

"I don't want to talk about it anymore."

V's lips are tightly split to show his teeth, his eyes closed and nearly touching his eyebrows in a pained expression, and Jumin turns his head up, closing his eyes. The sun makes everything behind his eyelids appear red. His feelings about knowing Rika was the one to blind V are surprisingly dull; once he'd recalled that single conversation he had with her it wasn't such a stretch of the imagination. He didn't know that Rika was so visceral in whatever anger she felt that propelled her to do something so violent to V, but violence wasn't such a new concept to Jumin and he didn't know Rika as well as V had. What's more surprising is that Rika didn't know that V loved her. Jumin has never been the best at discerning the emotions of others, but V's feelings for Rika were always very obvious. Not just from the way that V looked at her—the same way he looked at nature and the subjects of his photographs, with studious admiration—or the way he spoke of her, but from the way V would always drop anything he was doing for Rika. Would always try genuinely to understand Rika, kept up with the goings-on in her life and always wanted to know that she was all right. Even though lately V has been lying to him, Jumin knows that in general he's a very honest person, expressive in ways that Jumin could never feel safe to be.

He gives V another sideways glance, feeling another flare of anger. The lies V had told… it was probably because he didn't want Jumin to think poorly of Rika, wanted to preserve her in Jumin's mind as pacifistic and charitable, not as the kind of person who would hurt another over something like paranoia about love. Even after Rika had hurt V that way, taken his vision that he used for his photography, something so important to him… even with the option to reverse it, V doesn't want it. And for her sake…

Jumin's fingers curl into a fists, his fingernails digging painfully into his palms. "How could she not know," his voice is steady.

"Please don't resent her," V says. "That's—that's not the entire story, Jumin. I can't tell you everything else. It's not for me to tell."

"You're blind because of it," Jumin says incredulously.

"No," V says. "Stop—Jumin, please. It's my fault, not hers. Please think of her as you always did…"

Jumin presses his knuckles to his eyes, finding it increasingly difficult to contain himself. How could anybody hurt V? What could V possibly have done to deserve violence? Jumin can't even imagine V hurting anyone—even now, even now, he still protects Rika, still pleads with Jumin to keep him safe from who knows what threat.

"It's not your fault."

What could Rika have been thinking? To be loved by someone like V, and not know it. To be loved by someone like V, who'd lay his life down for another person, who'd let someone blind him because he cares for them so much. How could someone hurt a person like that. Jumin's mind goes immediately to Elizabeth the 3rd at the thought, and when Rika subsequently appears in his head he feels his stomach churn, turning his gaze back onto V. If it were Jumin… if it were Jumin being loved by someone like that, he'd want to preserve that person forever. To make that person happy. Not to hurt them in some kind of test to see how long they would stay.

… Or would he?

Jumin shudders, and it spreads from his shoulders to his feet, and perhaps V felt it across the small patch of grass because he reaches out a hand and places it on Jumin's shoulder, like when they were children, and Jumin hasn't been touched this way—with genuine care and attention—since… so long ago he can't even remember, and before he knows what he's doing he rolls closer to V and presses his face to V's neck.

"Jumin…?"

"I'm sorry," Now he's the one apologizing, and he should pull away but he doesn't want to, so he closes his eyes and concedes to linger for as long as V will allow him.

"Are you all right?"

V pushes up onto his side, his arm wrapping around Jumin to pull him closer. Jumin's heart races and he doesn't speak, unable to articulate his feelings even to himself. V is warm, perhaps too much so in this sun, and Jumin's jacket pulls uncomfortably because of the way his weight is distributed on it, and he finds his left hand coming up to stroke at the soft cotton of V's black shirt. V stiffens, and Jumin's hand trails upward to touch his friend's neck, his head pulling back a little to be able to see. V's sunglasses are askew but his eyes are still hidden behind them, his lips pulled in a line that gives Jumin no hints about what he's feeling. His thumb brushes V's pulse, and Jumin can't tell if the beating he feels is his own or V's. Like this, V seems so delicate… fragile, and Jumin leans forward to touch his forehead to V's—it's cooler than the rest of his body, though the sunglasses make for an irritating barrier…

"Please get the surgery," Jumin murmurs softly.

"I can't…"

"You can."

"I can't."

Jumin doesn't understand it, would never let someone hurt him that way and forgive them, but… But V's different. "You think she owns them, don't you. You think she owns you." His heart feels like it stops. "You let her own you, and you don't even mind…"

"I love her, Jumin."

Jumin doesn't know what to say—doesn't know anything about love to say anything. He doesn't know what he might ask of someone if he loved them, doesn't think he could be as selfless as V and isn't sure he'd be as selfish as Rika. He just…

He's felt this before, this confusing combination and this helplessness, but it's different this time too. Jumin had let the thought entertain him only briefly, the thought that he could perhaps love Rika—but he couldn't, so he pushed it away. There's no use in thinking about distracting feelings that will never go anywhere. That much is the same now—it's never been clearer, and perhaps it's for the best that Jumin will never know what it's like to be loved by someone like V. Rika thought Jumin could understand her, and while at the time the concept made him uncomfortable, now it makes him swallow down the bile in his throat. There's nothing to say, no point to saying anything more, so Jumin stays quiet. He's never been this close to V before. He's not sure he's ever been this far, either.

A/N: I wrote this because I couldn't decide whether the "I wish V had fallen for Jumin instead" or the "Jumin would probably only fuel all of V's unhealthy tendencies" part of me was stronger. I just want them to be happy (not that I'm helping by writing things like this). Thanks for reading, reviews are always appreciated!