Chapter Text
they say you aren’t supposed to look at the sky while skating, but they also say you’re supposed to look both ways before crossing the street.
why? jungkook had asked when he was still young enough to.
they told him he’d get hit by a car, like it was a promise.
if you don’t look both ways you will die.
he always wondered why not listening to his parents, his teachers, anyone who could look down at him, wondered why not following their every word always meant his instant death.
knockout, game over, blood on the concrete death.
he would argue that some people need to get hit by cars so they can be published as a statistic anyway. they need to become one of the numbers in those textbooks they made him read in school, the ones that are supposed to sway children away from drugs and alcohol, away from sex and feelings because there are just so many feelings, apparently.
from a high school standpoint, jungkook thinks he must be one of those poster children, those examples of people other kids shouldn’t want to be.
he doesn’t look both ways and he likes to watch the sky bleed while he skates. cloud white blurring above his head over the blue. he likes playing video games and he likes getting high. but he doesn’t like staring at pixelated images while stoned because it makes his head hurt.
he likes lazy sex, when he gets to pass out after. he likes drinking on mondays when everyone else’s one centimeter into the week.
it makes him feel like the only person in the world.
he likes biting the straws to the juice boxes taehyung gives him under the counter, when he’s been skating all day and forgot to bring water. dehydration is a bitch, but that doesn’t mean jungkook wants to head home any sooner than he has to. plastic between his teeth, all bent out of shape, out of use, the juice stops coming out, and he can skate without worrying about it dripping onto the concrete.
from a high school standpoint, he should’ve already been hit by the car.
maybe it’d do him a favor.
sometimes his bones feel all fused together, stiff.
he would argue that breaking them would feel good. maybe even right.
⊙
the clouds look like 2006.
flip phones and knee pads and paper brown bags stuffed into his backpack.
sometimes clouds get wispy and thin, but the ones today, as he skates downtown, are so distinct jungkook could draw animated lines over their borders.
when he was younger he used to write cartoon plots for the clouds he saw. ones with the bad guy always beating down on the good guy and the good guy always beating down back.
it never got old.
back then, jungkook would lie on his back in the grass imagining worlds where there was just sky, and he was just a kid, and nothing mattered.
he could stare up at the clouds for hours and not miss out on anything.
⊙
“what do you have for me today?”
the convenience store across town has a hot bar with chicken and mozzarella sticks and eight pack juice boxes.
taehyung doesn't let him take the hot food, but he gives him a juice box if the sun’s going down.
the first time jungkook asked if he could take one, taehyung just shrugged and said they were expired.
jungkook took one of the red lychee drinks feeling like he hit the jackpot.
final boss, highscore, fire to the sky kind of luck.
and if they really were expired, it’s okay because he’s always felt a bit rotten anyway.
it’s a family owned convenience store, and taehyung says he has nothing better to do. since it’s family owned there aren’t official hours, and so during the week he closes down when he feels like it.
read: when the sun goes down.
jungkook thinks taehyung’s too cool to be pressing buttons all day.
to that, taehyung would argue that jungkook’s too young to daydream about getting hit by an eighteen wheeler just to see if death feels like how clouds do.
and to that, jungkook would throw his head back and laugh, the kind of laugh that gets people staring. and he’d take his juice box and yell some nonsense because that’s what he’s been doing since he was eleven. since he learned he’s supposed to look both ways and not just charge forward.
taehyung’s different though. he’s the kind of pretty boy that could be photographed. it’s something jungkook’s told him a few dozen times.
you look like a vcr home video. all static and pretty and forever taken.
what does that fucking mean.
taehyung acts unamused, but he still sends jungkook surfing videos every few weeks because the younger once mentioned thinking the ocean was trippy.
you look like a billion dollar budget hollywood movie. all red wine fine dining.
what are you smoking?
taehyung’s a reserved person. jungkook doesn’t even know his birthday and consequently has to guess his astrology sign. definitely a fixed sign. but he’s good company and doesn’t comment when jungkook skates around the parking lot for three hours.
plus, he’s the only person jungkook knows who can wear his hat backwards and still look cool.
that’s why he’s friends with him.
jungkook would argue that cool people are hard to befriend, but once you do it’s ten times more likely they’ll bend the rules for you.
because they’re cool.
obviously.
“you’re getting fountain soda today.” there’s a cup already waiting for him on the counter. ominous white and grey, plastic cover, bubbles not pressed down.
“what? why?” jungkook had been getting used to riding with the juice box straws between his teeth.
“because i’m pretty sure there’s battery acid in it.”
jungkook doesn’t say anything for a moment, simply stares down at the mixed drink, contemplative.
then, as if it just dawned on him, he peels the cover off, lifts the cup up to his lips and starts gulping down.
throat bobbing, taehyung watches as the younger swallows it all without pause.
when he’s done, jungkook peers at the bottom of the cup feeling lighter than before. a bit dazed. hazy. all staticy, like he could run laps around the parking lot suddenly.
“you good?”
head tilted back, eyes lulled closed, “mmm...acid.”
taehyung punches his shoulder and then shoves him from over the counter. “go break your ankles on your scooter—”
“skateboard.”
“—i’m done looking at you for the day.”
jungkook stumbles toward the door, laughing. “hit my line, dude.”
“get home tonight, bro.”
taehyung’s cool and pretty and he actually listens to the music jungkook sends him.
he’d argue that it doesn’t get much better than that.
⊙
jungkook could skate from one end of town to the other with his eyes closed. he has every sidewalk crack, every curb, every slight incline, memorized.
sometimes he wishes someone would stop him randomly and ask him to draw a map of his suburban town just so he could show that he could.
he still remembers when he first moved here—back when he was younger and wore weird clothes.
he’d ride his old orange paint-chipped bike to school and his classmates thought it was funny, but it was him who didn’t have to panic every morning over where to sit on the already crowded bus.
jungkook’s never been good at making space for himself, or asking for it, or wanting it enough.
he’s much more likely to run away.
when he first moved towns, he’d skate down every street, around every corner, past every dead end, as if memorizing every bend and break could somehow make him part of it.
if he could recite the best way to get downtown without having to take a left turn then he somehow deserved to be there, too.
⊙
jeon jungkook is a man of routine.
he wakes up, cracks his knuckles, cracks his neck, cracks his ankles, checks the weather while brushing his teeth, pushes his hair off his forehead while making a song queue for the road, tells himself he’s going to be okay while draping a button up over his shoulders.
it’s going to be a good day. it’s going to be a good day. it’s going to be good.
and then he skates downtown with his laces double knotted.
downtown—where his old school is, and kim taehyung, and his job.
if he’s with friends he calls it his piece of shit job, but, honestly, it isn’t that bad.
on paper he’s an outside street promoter, in reality he hands out flyers.
it’s a humbling workday, especially when most people aren’t interested in most things most other people have to say. they brush past him, avoiding his hands, avoiding eye contact, avoiding anything that has to do with him.
he doesn’t mind it much.
jungkook would argue he’s lived his entire life like that anyway.
now he gets paid to.
“want to try this new brand of soda?”
most of the time it’s a no, but sometimes someone will stop and take a bottle and make a face because it tastes how soda should never taste. that’s why we’re giving it out for free. then they go on with their day, new note in mind not to take free drinks from strangers.
maybe they should’ve already known that.
it’s like one of those universal laws—look both ways before crossing the street and don't take free drinks from people on the street.
sometimes people ask him out while he’s working. jokingly, but also not jokingly at all. jungkook thinks it’s less because they like him and more because he skates around with his shirt half buttoned.
it gets hot once the sun’s over the trees. it’s not his fault.
and the day’s been so good, why not smile? why not laugh when they say something that’s supposed to be funny? why not give them ten minutes of his time because ten minutes is not a long time when he’s been existing for far too long already.
he doesn’t consider it wasting his time, even though he says no whenever it happens.
jungkook’s bad at dates.
bad at small talk.
bad at the short pauses and long sentences.
bad at ordering food when he knows he can’t afford it.
bad at telling himself he can.
bad at getting to know someone.
bad at letting someone get to know him.
but he doesn’t consider it a waste of time even though he already knows what’ll become of the interaction.
any time spent with someone else is time spent in someone else’s world, not just his own.
he’d argue that, in the end, to get out of his own head is to be alive, really truly alive.
and that isn’t a waste.
when he skates to see taehyung he’s alone.
the divots in the sidewalk drum a steady beat under the wheels of his skateboard. thrump. thrump. thrump. jungkook closes his eyes and pretends it’s an earthquake. pretends it’s the end of the world.
taehyung’s standing on the sidewalk when jungkook gets there, hat on the right way, pretty in the setting sunlight.
you’re like a ghost camera docu. all soft and glowy and scary as hell.
get out of my store.
“it’s not even 7 pm.” jungkook tries the door. locked up for the night, it doesn’t budge.
“you see the sun?”
“nearly.”
taehyung lifts the hat and runs a hand through his hair, eyes blank as he stares at jungkook in feigned distaste. or, jungkook at least tells himself it’s feigned.
“let me skate you home.”
he rides a lopsided circle around him and shadows warp around taehyung all disfigured like a hand puppet show with no plot.
when the older starts walking, jungkook just skates a wider circle. the shadows take more time to move across him, slow motion and lagged.
“gonna beat up bad guys for me?”
“can’t fuck up my knuckle tattoos.” jungkook's voice comes out airy and thin at first.
he’s dehydrated.
though, he doesn’t mention it. he thinks it’d make taehyung indirectly feel bad, which is dumb because it’s him who didn’t drink anything all day. taehyung’s a nice guy, a tragic flaw in all the ancient roman epics.
“plus, i should be protecting the bad guys from you. i’ve seen you kill a fly without moving your head!”
taehyung doesn’t react to his voice getting all shaky shouty. taehyung doesn't know he isn’t high, either. but he never comments on it. always just indulges him.
for that, jungkook thinks he could skate figure eights around him forever if it really came down to it.
“are you the fly, jungkook?”
the younger laughs loud and bright and all encompassing like all laughter should be. he reaches an arm out to punch his shoulder, but taehyung’s too used to his antics and side steps it.
“not fair.” he smiles. if he doesn't think about it, it’s a genuinely pleased smile. “buzz buzz? how can i not sound like a fly when you ask me like that?”
“maybe don’t open with buzz buzz.”
taehyung doesn’t live that far from the store. jungkook likes that. the conversation’s never long enough to get awkward.
and, if it hypothetically did, taehyung’s cool so it doesn't even matter.
the kim residence is two stories of cement and flower boxes overflowing with enough leaves and petals and stems to be a garden.
when jungkook doesn’t immediately leave upon arriving, taehyung stares at him as he kicks his shoes off under the doorframe, hat stuffed into his pocket. “don’t you have your own house to get to?”
the younger gets the message, kicks his skateboard down and smiles at the other boy. then, tongue in cheek when it shouldn’t be: “it’s not mine.”
⊙
some family in his neighborhood sets off fireworks every once in awhile.
not enough to get complaints but enough for jungkook to realize the small explosions always come from the same direction.
now, he isn’t a paranoid stoner.
he wouldn’t even consider himself a stoner.
getting high just helps him sleep at night.
he gets kinda anxious when he’s lying in bed, you know?
he’s a little more human than he should be.
so what.
fireworks get to him, though.
they’re so loud.
and they come from the left side of his brain.
and it’s always at night, when he’s most vulnerable and most likely to have his mind melted into the floorboards, thoughts liquid neon everywhere they aren’t supposed to be.
the noise shakes the windowsill and he can’t even see them from his room. what a scam.
sometimes he thinks his room is under open fire. other times he thinks the aliens finally came down from the moon.
they’re about to beam me up and i didn’t empty the fridge, fuck.
other times, he wonders what the hell there is to be celebrating that requires the entire world to have to hear it, to have to see it, but not be invited.
sometimes he texts taehyung.
jeighkeigh: boom. boom. boom.
tae hyung x2: don’t serenade me, lover boy. i’m sleeping~~~
jeighkeigh: WYM
⊙
jeon jungkook is a man of routine.
that’s why, when he wakes up and finds he slept through three of his alarms, he manages to only crack one knuckle before he’s a mess of himself, t shirt and torso on the floor, neither having to do anything with the other.
when he skates to the park he forgets to tip back on a sidewalk curb and ends up bailing, three loud slaps of shoe sole on the concrete.
it’s such an amateur mistake, he considers heading back and abandoning work.
one thought stops him though.
if you go home it’s not going to be a good day.
which, he has learned the hard way, means: if you go home you’re not going to be okay.
so he picks his skateboard up and avoids every bump, every weed sprouting between the cracks, every possible fuck up.
when he gets to the park there’s a group of people around his age, early-mid twenties.
“shit.”
he has the flyers in his backpack, but it’s hard taking them out sometimes.
it’s just his job, but when there are people his age everything sticks to his hands. he shouldn’t be insecure, he hasn’t been insecure in years, but there is a certain doubt that takes shape when they look at him.
it’s like they know he shouldn’t be there. why the hell is he handing out flyers to people who couldn’t care less? he should be in school. he should be across the country. he should be living the high stakes life, the one where you lose yourself but gain everything. he should be the one watching not the one being watched.
it’s just his job.
it’s just his job.
when he’s half way through his shift it starts to drizzle, drops of water across the expanse of his shoulders down into his shirt.
nobody wants to hold stray pieces of paper in the rain. it’s like looking both ways in a ghost town, on a street with no cars, no people, no death, nothing.
a waste.
jungkook’s a man of routine. he should’ve known from the three missed alarms that it wasn’t going to be a good day regardless of whether he was out or locked in his room.
he feels like a polaroid photo, shaken up and blurry, and when he skates to taehyung’s his hair is flat and his socks are damp. he fights the urge to lay down on a crosswalk, arms splayed out, waiting in the time between the light turning from green to red.
when he gets to the convenience store he pretends everything is normal, everything’s alright, and he might just be okay.
jungkook circles around the hot bar, peeks under the counter for the expired juice boxes, finds the now half empty carton of lychee, and brings it to the cash register.
“same old?”
"yes."
taehyung has no hat on today, and he spares jungkook only a second’s glance before returning to counting coins from the register.
everything’s normal, everything’s alright, and he might just be—
“min yoongi’s back.”
the name breaks any semblance of ‘okay’ he had built. the entire day like pinpricks in his eyes.
he doesn’t think he’ll cry, but there is a chance taehyung won’t recognize him, like that, when he’s less than the person the older boy is familiar with.
“what?” his voice comes out nothing like his voice. taehyung might not notice, but jungkook does. and it isn't him. it isn't the him he wants to be.
“that boy you were always with?” taehyung presses two coins with his pointer finger down and meets jungkook’s eyes. “in high school.”
“high school?” the word, so simple, so elementary, brings him back down.
“yes, jungkook.”
“we went to high school together?” he pushes the red straw through the juice box hole, lifting it to his lips in the same breath.
taehyung gives him a steady look, quiet but somehow unbelievably loud, and then he smiles. “i was in the year above you. too cool to notice?”
to that, jungkook laughs, and it’s more genuine than it is pretend. “i was fucking weird in high school, you wouldn’t have liked me. i would run around the parking lot with creased nikes and then try skating down the school steps. i dislocated my jaw once when—”
“what about you and that boy?“
he stops mid sentence, eyes wide.
taehyung always shows interest like that. subtle but then so straight froward.
“yoongi?”
“yeah.”
“oh.” jungkook brings the juicebox down from his lips. “we didn’t do possessive things.”
taehyung doesn’t say anything.
“i wasn’t his. he wasn’t mine.”
“didn’t you guys kiss?”
“you saw?”
“everyone saw.”
taehyung’s leaning across the counter. casual and cool. like a netflix original film, the ones that people watch in bed.
“but you really weren’t dating?”
“okay maybe i’ve always had a little bit of a crush on him, but we never dated.”
“always?”
“i mean...probably, i don’t know.” this time jungkook’s smiling. it’s a grin that’s a bit too dopey for a version of himself that isn’t actually high. “it’s just the way of the universe. the sky is blue, the black tar is hot, i’ve always been a little in love with min yoongi.”
jungkook begins to wonder how oblivious he was in high school if people in the grade above him knew about his life and amateur gay crushes.
then again, he was a bit obnoxious back then. loud and demanding and bright. with neon orange shoelaces and duct taped backpack straps and half buttoned floral shirts, his peers always thought he was fun.
it became jungkook’s only beginning and end.
to them, he crossed the street without looking both ways because he was carefree not because he thought it’d be the most fitting way for him to die.
“does he know?”
min yoongi was the only person who really cared to get to know him, and maybe that’s why jungkook’s always been a little in love. “he knows i smoke a lot now.”
“yeah?”
“i don’t know. he didn’t seem disappointed when i told him. he just nodded his head like i changed, but that was years ago.”
“you gonna stop?”
out of all the things that could’ve gone wrong, off schedule, unorthodox, like riding into the sea from the edge of a pier, kim taehyung talking to him about min yoongi is by far the most out of place.
he supposes it’s the perfect day for it.
if yoongi’s back then he’ll want to see him.
not because they were ever in love or because he missed him in a profound way. not because they used to kiss and fuck and laugh after or because jungkook still has a chip in his tooth from when he tried licking into yoongi’s mouth upsidedown on monkey bars.
no, yoongi will want to see him because there was once a time the younger was in pieces, a wrecked fragment of himself, torn at the seams with nothing bleeding though because there was nothing left inside.
“probably not,” he answers taehyung’s question.
maybe yoongi thinks he’s already been hit by the car.
“i like being able to sleep.”
⊙
(“get down from there.” it’s a command, but yoongi’s laughing behind it.
jungkook hooks his feet under the jungle gym's bars, hair sticking up at odd angles upside down, shirt riding up.
“you’re gonna get hurt.” yoongi reaches out and holds him by the waist, pale fingers on tan skin.
he always thought him and yoongi went together like two opposites meeting in the middle. two polarities meeting in the space between silences, in the space between two mouths, two hands, two hearts and souls and wandering fingers.
“i won’t be able to catch you.”
jungkook loosens his legs and lets himself fall a few centimeters.
it’s a joke, and they both know it.
yoongi’s grip tightens on him anyway, large hands having a talent for making him feel small—safe, even.
“oh no, hyung.” jungkook pretends to blindly reach out for him, fakes his limbs being in a mess just to tease the older. “hyung, you need to kiss me. oh no. i’m going to fall.” he twists in his hands, back and forth, back and forth. “kiss me. you need to save me. this is horrible. i need someone to save me. hyung—”
no amount of blood rushing to his head could compare to the warmth that fills him when yoongi’s lips meet his.
he likes kissing min yoongi, even if they aren’t dating, even if the older will never know just how badly jungkook wants him.
he could kiss him forever, he thinks.
it’s like a game that keeps getting better and better and he can only ever win.
highscore, infinite lives, fireworks exploding into their own type of cloud.
yoongi’s barely kissing him, just a tentative press against his mouth and soothing strokes against his tongue.
jungkook breaks away for a second. “you’re being too sweet.”
the older laughs, a grin that’s everything jungkook wants spread across his face. he leans in again, guiding jungkook by the back of his neck.
far too fluently, yoongi sucks his tongue between his lips and jungkook’s entire body goes slack.
one moment he’s hanging upside down, the next he’s hitting the ground.
eyesight blurry, tooth chipped from the impact, the first thing he sees is yoongi’s panicked expression and blood smeared down his lip.
“jungkook—”
but the rest of the sentence gets lost.
it is then that jungkook remembers how incredibly, foolishly, blindly in love he is. (if he dare call it love.)
seemingly, yoongi’s bleeding. but he can’t tell if it’s yoongi’s blood or his.
he wants to lick it from his lips, even if his head is still spinning and his smile will never be the same.
jungkook wants to wet his tongue over where it hurts and find out what he tastes like in his aftermath.
he likes yoongi so much.
it’s going to get him one day.)
⊙
jungkook never felt good enough for yoongi.
that’s all there is to it.
that’s why they never dated, why he never told yoongi how he felt, why he didn’t object to the older boy moving away for university, and then for his job in some high stakes recording company.
there’s no need for further explanation because in the end it all comes down to that.
whenever the topic of min yoongi arises, jungkook doesn’t like to dwell on it too much because he already knows everything there is to know about it.
he’s never been good enough for him.
it was a cluster of feelings that’d often spiral him down the drain of a gas station sink because, even in high school, he hated being home.
jungkook didn’t grow up numb to his own feelings like how he often convinced himself all his peers were. he grew up feeling everything, and he knows what it’s like when it’s getting bad. so he stops all thoughts regarding min yoongi and reduces them down to not being good enough for him.
if he spends too much time on it, he only spirals from bad to worse to worst, and then it’s not just being good enough for him, but for everyone and everything.
so he gets high and calls it a fucking lousy day.
those days have become fewer and lesser recently.
yoongi used to say that meant he was too high too often.
jungkook just thought it meant he was finally doing better.
⊙
two rings.
“yo.”
“has the day finally come that jeon jungkook calls me?”
“what the fuck. i always call you—”
“if i remember correctly, i told you not to call me unless you’re dying.”
jungkook almost laughs into the speaker, but he holds his composure to add to the dramatics. “maybe i am.”
“no way.” there’s a smile behind it, he can see it like a flick of a brushstroke across a painted face. “if you were really dying you would call some shithead i have never heard of who’s somehow a specialist in however you’ve injured yourself.”
“people change, hyung.” he blows a breath of air between his teeth in an almost sigh. “i guess you’ll just have to find out.”
⊙
park jimin’s a fast skater.
and, even worse, he can pull it off.
he gets to the park three minutes before jungkook.
once the younger spots him across the empty lot, he watches jimin practice his ollies (not that he needs to). even from a distance, jungkook can hear the roll, slide, slap of the board beneath the older boy’s blue hightop converse.
the story of him meeting park jimin is hardly a story.
you could say they both ran in the same circles, but less to do with circles of people and more to do with the fact that there are only so many decent places to skate.
jungkook was a nobody when he first moved, even when he could run from one end of town to the other. even when he ate shit in front of the library and several people asked if he was okay. it wasn’t because they knew him and cared. it was because it was pathetic. to see someone who is more nothing than something, and, even in that state of being, making a mess of it.
he got a scar on his cheek from hitting a board slide on a handrail too hard. blood down his face, parallel lines down his chin and neck like a bad halloween costume. trick or treat. trick or metal edged slashes in his skin.
it’s things like that that made me notice how sharp handrails are. afterward, every time his hand grazed against an edge of one he thought of the designer and how they must’ve had a vendetta against people like him.
from a high school standpoint, they did it to sway kids away from trying to ride down them. it’s dangerous. it’s stupid. it’s not how you’re supposed to use the railing. why can’t you just walk down the stairs?
what they didn’t consider was that the kids grew up in a world where they’re supposed to look both ways before crossing the street and they’re choosing between feeling the impact of a car windshield or feeling the impact of cement against their already bruised bones.
at least this kind of danger is their fault.
there’s no waiting for the truck to hit.
jungkook met jimin that way.
his ankle had been wrapped from not landing a heelflip, and park jimin watched him try (and fail) landing the very same heelflip on a random thursday, friday, saturday. he got through eleven attempts before the shout “are you trying to break your board!?” stopped him.
chest heaving, sun swallowing him because it was summer at the time, jimin sat down on his board, black hair parted on his forehead, striped elbows on denim knees.
“you’re landing way too hard.”
“my ankle’s fucked.”
“so you’re trying to fuck it up more?”
he shrugged.
“don’t make me mad, dude.”
this was three years ago, back when jungkook wasn’t as accustomed to his routine.
he just brushed off the comment and then proceeded to try the heelflip again, footing even worse than the last eleven attempts. he had already felt the telltale ache of an injury before it turns into white pain before his wrapped foot stomped down on the board. so when it did, his entire leg gave out.
with a smile across his face, he landed on his side and then rolled over onto his back. the black tar was hot across from park jimin who was still staring at him, mouth agape having watched the fall.
“i knew there was a reason i never came here.” jimin reached a hand out to him.
that moment, sun still swallowing him whole because the summer’s always been unkind, jungkook thinks he’ll remember it forever.
“you’re crazy.”
“jeon jungkook.”
“that didn’t mean introduce yourself.”
the younger had laughed, one of those unrestrained laughs that says more than what he’s willing to, but it escapes like a breath before he can stop it.
that was three years ago.
now, jimin rolls his eyes when he sees him. it’s all for the dramatics, of course. his hair’s blonde now, a shade that’d make him seem unapproachable.
that was probably the older boy’s intent, but jungkook’s a bit of a sucker for ignoring social cues.
“so what’s wrong?”
“what?” jungkook asks.
“you only call me when something’s wrong.”
“i thought we could hang out.”
“oh, like ride around town and then i watch you almost get hit by a honda civic.”
“that was a one time thing.”
“almost getting hit or almost getting hit by a honda civic?”
jungkook rides a circle around him. “obviously the honda civic part.”
he has a feeling jimin thinks he has a crush on him, and that’s why he feels obligated to answer every time jungkook's caller ID appears on his phone.
to be honest, jungkook doesn’t even know if it’s a crush.
it probably always was.
it probably never was.
“ride with me to taehyung’s?”
jimin usually skates with headphones in, but when he stands he pulls them out of his ears. “alright, yeah.”
⊙
the clouds look torn apart. like two people had been fighting and then tapped out once it got bad.
or, maybe, they were in an embrace and had to let go. arms still reaching out for the other, blood and guts and gore connecting them in strings as they pull apart because it’s hard to be whole without them.
once, when jungkook was high, he thought about starting a podcast where he talked about the clouds.
he has a lot to say about them, and they never fail to give him something to say.
if it was more interesting and less abstract, he’d say his thoughts while looking at the clouds was his favorite thing about himself.
he gave up on the podcast idea, though. remembered that hearing his voice replayed back to him was a little bit too much like hearing his answers replayed in a court case. or job interview. or therapy session.
for someone who stares at them a lot, jungkook doesn’t know a lot about clouds.
except that they feel heavy before it rains.
feel, not look.
he couldn’t draw a soon-to-be-raincloud for you, but he could tell you about the feeling.
it gets heavy, you know. like someone’s pushing down on your shoulders and you have to slow down and wherever you’re going is too far away.
a random kid at the skatepark once told him if he skated fast enough in the rain, his body would make an air pocket behind him, like a suction. his clothes would be drenched like one of those old dunk tanks, but the side of his body that’s behind him would be less drenched, maybe even dry.
back then jungkook’s shirts were too thin to be able to tell the difference, but for some reason he never doubted the logic.
he used to always tell yoongi how one day he’d ride fast enough so the older boy could stand behind him and stay dry. he just had to get better.
he just had to get better.
⊙
there’s a routine to everything he does.
most everything, at least.
step one: make sure the sun is in the sky.
if it isn’t 100 percent there, the entire process won’t work. taehyung will have already locked up for the night.
step two: swing the door open.
jungkook personally likes to yank it hard enough it stops on its hinges before closing behind him. he likes to pretend the doorframe is barely big enough to fit him and his entirety. he likes to pretend he takes up all that space, too much space, even if he never will.
step three: shout something unbelievable in greeting.
you look like the last scene of inception.
what the fuck.
if he does this, taehyung will know he’s okay. he’ll know he’s him.
step four: walk along the right side of the store to the back where taehyung keeps the expired juice boxes.
jungkook doesn’t like to walk on the left side because then he’ll directly pass the hotbar and, inevitably, be bummed to see the mozzarella sticks knowing he won’t be able to eat them.
step five: pick a flavor.
this usually goes over pretty easily. jungkook’s drawn to color not taste, and so he picks the box that hurts his eyes the most to look at. it’s the same reason he used to relace his shoes with neon.
step six: put up a front of cool-ness while approaching the counter.
taehyung’s already cool. jungkook needs to not look like the least cool person next to him. he needs to look like he belongs there, and that he deserves the expired juice box or else he’ll panic like he used to in high school. he’ll leave the drink on the counter and skate away until his bones are heavier than the clouds.
because, in reality, it’s hard for him to take up space, hard for him to make it for himself, to want it enough. he’s much more likely to run away.
step seven: talk to taehyung. let him know you hate how he looks cool even when his hat’s backwards. make sure he does that thing where he looks down to hide his amusement. he might be having a bad day.
the last step needs no explanation.
of course, this whole process doesn’t work if he isn’t by himself.
park jimin ignores step four and immediately goes to the counter to talk to taehyung.
it makes jungkook want to yell cut and start the scene over again, but that’d be a little too out of the ordinary so he can only go with it.
jimin and taehyung aren’t really friends, only ever seeing each other when jungkook drags jimin to the store. but by how they can fall into conversation with practiced ease, it’d have jungkook fooled.
when his tattooed hand falls on the counter like a lone beat to a song, taehyung smiles at him. and jungkook’s breath almost catches.
he often wonders how kim taehyung ended up working sunset shifts at a run down convenience store when he could’ve been a star in one of those movies jungkook used to watch on sunday. the ones that play back to back to back because they’re just that good and the characters with their smiles are just that memorable.
“it’s your lucky day.” taehyung’s eyebrow is raised, perfectly cinematic. “some of the chrysanthemum tea just expired.”
he wants to liquify taehyung’s expression and pour it onto thirty-five mm film to watch it again when he’s high and the fireworks are going off and he's wondering if anyone will remember his name.
“you’re too big for the big screen.”
jungkook decides hollywood doesn’t deserve him, then.
taehyung looks away.
“honestly, i prefer when you just say ‘thank you.’”
before jungkook can respond, jimin beats him to it. “expired?”
“tastes sweeter.”
“you shouldn’t give him expired drinks.” jimin turns between the two of them, blonde hair golden as the sun goes down. “they’ve gone bad, he could get sick. he’ll get sick.”
while taehyung’s expression turns dumbfounded, jungkook can’t help but look down.
he notices, then, that his laces are white, too white, because he bleaches them now. there’s a certain sensation he feels in his gut while staring at bleached white against tarmac black. when he finished high school, he would tell yoongi how neon hurt to look at and changing to the black & white polarity felt like being clean, being better.
jimin’s supposed to be talking about expired juice, but he’s not, and jungkook can only look down.
this is what happens when he doesn’t follow his routine.
it’s like his entire life, now, is trying to make up for his entire life before that moment. trying to make it better. “it’s not like that, hyung. it’s just juice.”
jungkook hears the words leave his mouth, and to himself he sounds so much younger.
but not nostalgic younger, not 2006 younger. he feels like the younger version of himself that needed to skate to the edges of the earth just to convince himself it wasn’t worth it to fall.
the younger version that needed to smoke until he threw up just to fall asleep.
“jungkook has a stomach of steel.” taehyung glances between the two of them, socially aware in a way few know what to do with. “i’m more worried about him skating in the car lanes.”
jungkook laughs at that, and maybe it’s a bit forced, but he would’ve laughed at it at any other time.
he’s just trying to be the right person again, the good one. “hey, my motto in life is: safety first, safety second.”
“you don’t use a turn signal.”
“how am i supposed to use it if i don’t know when i’m going to turn?”
jimin shakes his head and taehyung lets out an exhale too nonchalant to mean anything but quiet amusement, and it is the present day again, and he is okay.
⊙
in the parking lot, shoelaces double knotted, juice box left on the pavement, jungkook follows jimin with his phone as the older boy works on his frontside heelflip.
it was jimin who suggested they post videos online about a year ago.
bored and trying to change his life, jungkook agreed.
the roll and slap of the board against the black tar is so repetitive it sounds like a beat to one of those songs he’d send to yoongi. jungkook would always lie in bed pretending to listen to the song for the first time to see what it would be like from yoongi’s perspective to hear it through his headphones
the beat stops, and jungkook blinks up at jimin who’s already staring down at him.
“taehyung’s kinda cute.”
the younger stares in disbelief. “you’re fucking with me.”
“what? he’s cute?” jimin pushes his hair off of his forehead.
“you already know he’s cute? you’ve known him for four years.”
“we’ve never talked except when i go to his store with you.”
“his family’s store.” he stops the video-recording. “it isn't his store. i’m pretty sure he hates working there.”
jimin’s mouth presses into a line for a moment, eyes traveling across the angles of the other’s face. “i think you’re focused on all the wrong things, jungkook.”
“i think you’re focused on being gay in front of me,” he shoots back. “what the fuck.”
“you’re gay.”
“yeah, so go be all flirty, gay, taehyung’s kinda cute with other people.”
teasing, “oh, i didn’t know you liked him.”
that sends jungkook into an unwanted stupor. “well it’s not…i do like him. but it’s not…”
“like that?” jimin skates to one end of the lot and back again. “because it’s never like that with you, right?”
“what does that mean?”
“does it really count as wanting to date someone if you never tell them?”
“hyung, i’m in my official ‘better’ era. don’t bring me down.”
“you’re so dramatic”
“i don’t want to date him.”
jimin just skates ahead of him again, figure shrinking and growing with the distance. “all the wrong things, jungkook.”
the sun’s setting, orange, and the shadow of his expired juice box draws out like one of those scientific time lapse documentaries they make you watch in class.
“all the wrong things.”
⊙
(“it’s sad.”
yoongi’s voice comes out all staticky over the phone. jungkook likes to put him on speaker and rest his head on his pillow, white cotton to his cheek, as he stares out at the wall with nothing but the fireworks to flood his mind.
fireworks and the deep hum of a boy’s voice.
it’s not just any boy, but jungkook doesn’t trust himself to admit that.
the song he sent is one of the more obscure ones. all sound and feelings. sometimes he thinks he’s the only one who knows what that means.
but then he’ll send it to yoongi, and yoongi will call him with his thoughts, and the older boy always just gets it.
he always just gets it.
quiet, “only sad?” jungkook asks.
“there’s so much distance in the lyrics. incredible things are happening in the world.” yoongi speaks slow and calm, like he knows jungkook’s been trying to sleep for the past three hours. “they don’t specify if it’s in their world. they say there are incredible things happening, but even they seem to have trouble believing it.”
jungkook lets the words settle around him, under the floorboards, on the ceiling, in between the blink of his eyes. “do you believe it, hyung?”
“i think there are incredible things happening in the world.”
“what about your world?”
there’s a pause, and jungkook imagines a commercial break over it. a moment to let yoongi gather his thoughts, because, certainly, what he says next will tilt jungkook’s own world on its axis.
yoongi always effortlessly does that.
that’s how jungkook knows he likes him and how it’s more than an elementary school crush.
“i have my miracles,” yoongi says.
it’s nearly whispered.
then, after another pause, louder:
“jungkook?”
the younger boy stares at his phone as if by some impossible feat yoongi will be there next to him. the thought makes him smile. “i have my miracles too, hyung.”
“jungkook, are you okay?”
his head feels so heavy, then. weighed down by the kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot heal.
but you can only say you’re tired so many times before people start getting tired of it.
this was back before he’d get high to fall asleep—it was a broken attempt to fix something that was wrong because it always had to be him.
the pamphlets at school were no help. his parents were no help. his friends were no help. running to the edge of the earth was no help.
“jungkook—”
“i thought it was a happy song.” he wishes the older boy was there with him. “maybe the distance was the point. even if it’s not in your world, there are still incredible things happening.”
and he himself doesn’t completely believe what he’s saying, but there’s a part of him that has to.
at this point in his teenage years, jungkook doesn’t like scaring people. he doesn’t like being a problem. he doesn’t like crossing the street not caring if he makes it to the other side.
he sent yoongi the song because he thought it was happy.
happy enough.
for the past three months, jungkook’s been trying to find music that makes him want to live.)
⊙
the clouds look like a boiled over burner.
when the stovetop’s too hot and you forget what fire does to water.
white trails out across the sky like an eruption, an explosion, a collapse of a city.
but slower.
jungkook’s thinking about aglio e olio and the fall of the roman empire as he skates home.
he can’t think about anything else.
vaguely, he remembers that this is how it feels when he’s getting bad, but it’s a thought so faint, so quiet, so light in his mind, he just continues skating.
jungkook had a name for his cloud podcast.
MAD
it stood for ‘making a diary’ because he thought creating something others could listen to would be a way to confirm his own existence in the world.
growing up, he never got around to keeping a journal, writing down his thoughts until they were real, but maybe he should’ve. maybe things would’ve turned out differently.
the cloud podcast idea would’ve been a second chance to exist.
MAD—because it’s hard to convince himself he's there when there’s no traces of him in the dark.
but also because he often finds himself mad, all caps.
the clouds are spilling over themselves, a mess, he would say into one of those cheap microphones. but i don’t think it’ll rain.
he also didn’t think he’d get this bad this soon. this quickly.
it’s like skating with a head full of cotton and eyes full of salt.
when he was younger it was white hot anger and aggressive throes of throwing himself down the half-pipe just to feel the crash.
no helmet because everything inside his skull was rotten anyway.
jungkook had a bad habit of getting mad at everything in the world, but, even more so, everything inside of him. every part that made him him. his thoughts, his emotions, his words, his bad ankle, wrist, the way he always wondered what min yoongi tasted like even when they were just friends.
because all of these things existed, but they didn't exist enough to make him feel like a person.
then he started getting high, mind shot through the ozone layer like a rocket that never comes back home.
but, living like that, so far away from his own life, other things started looking like home. the gutters that run along the street, the stop signs, the telephone wires hung up above his head, the boys, their smiles, their lips pulled back, the clouds and the clouds and the clouds.
it’s what fire does to water.
⊙
he breaks his routine to stay locked up in his room for three days because he knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t.
if he goes to his job he’ll just sit against the park fountain in an attempt to blend in with all the university students.
if he goes to taehyung’s, the older boy will immediately know something’s wrong and it might change the way taehyung smiles at him in the future.
it’s hard for him to not be okay in front of people because of things like that. sometimes he wishes the world was responses and not reactions. people smile at you differently when they realize you aren’t all that you were made out to be.
he remembers the way his parents looked at him when he first said he didn’t want to play football anymore. anxiety’s bad for the lungs.
if he goes running, like he did when he was younger, he’ll remember that specifically.
and if he goes skating he’ll start skating in the wrong lanes. the car lanes. then the wrong car lanes.
they say you should look both ways before crossing the street, but they never tell you which way to look when the headlights come colliding anyway
jungkook sighs.
hood over his head, head on his pillow, arms crossed over his stomach because any other position would feel like taking up too much space.
the fan makes a whirling sound from next to him, blowing hot air around his room in the illusion of providing some sort of relief. if he’s being honest, jungkook likes when it gets too hot. the heat makes it hard to think and easier to feel exhausted.
it becomes i’m tired because it’s hot instead of i’m tired because i’ve been thinking about who i’m not for my entire life and it’s getting harder.
there’s a stack of index cards on his windowsill. scrawled across each one are words for when he forgets how to pronounce the word ‘better.’
he’s not exactly getting better by staying at home. but it only would’ve gotten worse.
see, if he didn’t stay home he’d be out, and if he was out he’d stay out until he crashed.
scar on his chin, blood on his knuckles, road rash on his elbows because he never got around to learning how to tuck and roll without slamming his entire body weight onto his arms.
after fracturing his wrist in his second year, all he knew was how to land on his arms, elbows, shoulders, side.
hands are terrible at breaking falls—it’s the sort of thing he wishes they taught him in school.
if only they taught him something in school.
he reads off the index card in his hand. “look around, don’t look ahead.”
three days isn’t a long time if you’re looking around.
it is if you’re looking ahead.
that’s why jungkook misses 2006. he misses the star stickers on the backs of his hands and the sun on his face as he laid in the grass staring up at the sky. there was nothing to look forward to back then. just the clouds and the way the wind through the blades of grass would brush against his forearms.
it’s tuesday and he should be working, but there are marks on his wall. there are holes the size of tacks from the different calendars he’d hang up back when counting down the days was fun.
countdowns to vacations, birthdays, concerts, seeing yoongi again.
now calendars remind him of how behind he is, and he’ll forget what he was counting to. crossing out days becomes crossing out entire months when he realizes he’s in the wrong season.
“look around, don’t look ahead.”
he repeats it again in a sigh.
if he presses down on his wrist he can feel the protruding bone from it healing wrong.
well, not exactly wrong, yoongi once told him there was never a wrong way to heal.
only better ways.
and then better ways.
with his shattered wrist, the radius and ulna had fused back together all crooked. it's like they wanted jungkook to remember, forever, the way they broke.
broken things don’t stay broken.
but, sometimes, they heal in a way that makes it impossible to remember them any other way.
“look around. don't look ahead.”
but it's so hard.
ahead, behind, anywhere but where he is.
around two years ago jungkook stopped throwing himself down the half-pipe. from the very start it had been an ill attempt to disguise self destruction as skateboarding.
around two years ago, it had gotten harder and harder for him to stand back up afterwards, easier to just stay down with the fall.
he’ll argue that the hardest part wasn’t throwing himself down, though.
and it wasn’t standing up after either.
the hardest part was not doing it again.
arms crossed over his stomach, hot air blowing in his face, jungkook remembers that.
the hardest part is not doing it again.
⊙
in school they tell you the best ways to stay alive.
eat three meals a day, brush your teeth fourteen times a week, say sorry for a number you can’t count on your fingers so everyone knows that you’re really, genuinely, truly sorry for the space the shape of your body takes up.
they’ll teach you that matter can’t be created or destroyed, and then they will use you as the test subject.
with needles and thread, they’ll inject you with oxygen and hydrogen and anger, so much anger. they’ll lace up the skin of your back with words too long to pronounce and they’ll fuse your broken bones with neon blue.
you’re just a kid who likes staring up at the clouds as they pass over your head, but they will make you hate even that, even that, about yourself.
they’ll make you something you weren’t before, something you aren’t, something you never would’ve been, and then they will explain to you, again, how matter cannot be created or destroyed and that you were always like this.
you never stood a chance.
they’ll tell you the best ways to stay alive.
read books written by dead people, write essays about books written by dead people because they can’t defend themselves. count to one hundred and then count to one hundred with your eyes shut. count to thirty five years old and realize it’s more effort to stop when you’ve been doing it your entire life.
numbers make more sense than anything inside of you, anyway.
they’ll teach you about human anatomy and why the heart has four chambers, but they’ll never explain why it aches something beyond your bones every time you see him
why his smile is like getting lost in the clouds.
why it’s so hard to ask him to stay.
and you don’t ask him the first time and so you don’t ask him the second, third, fourth, because matter cannot be created or destroyed.
you’re matter.
your matter.
you never stood a chance.
⊙
when he looks back on the crash, it’s really no surprise he ended up there, that bad, that broken, back at the end of high school.
he couldn’t even ask the boy, who he thought was his forever, his soulmate, his person, he couldn't even ask him to stay when it came down to it.
how could jungkook ever find enough pieces of himself to ask for help, back then?
when you’re young it feels like the entire world is against you, and it was easier for him to join the world than fight for himself.
he didn’t even know what he would’ve been fighting for, anyway.
it’s different now, years later. because matter may not be able to be created or destroyed but it can make you want to destroy it.
sometimes he thinks that that’s just the same thing.
that’s why he calls him.
because jungkook doesn’t want to disappear anymore. he doesn’t want to crash and he doesn’t want to live with the person he becomes after his blood and guts are left on the concrete.
if it keeps happening, he thinks there’ll be nothing left to live with.
it’s already hard enough.
three rings and a click.
the phone’s on the pillowcase next to him because he doesn’t think he’d be able to hold it steady, and everything’s all over the place, like his skull is already smashed through the cement and all the thoughts, all the bad, is thinning out through the drain pipes of a city that’s never felt like his own.
“hello?” the voice sounds like 2006.
“i know…” jungkook trails off, breath heavy as it escapes between his teeth. “i know i’m not supposed to call unless i need to.”
and it’s ridiculous to open with that because it wasn’t yoongi who set that rule. it was jungkook, back when he wasn’t better.
“but i heard you came back and—”
the word gets caught in this throat.
“and—”
he tries to think of the clouds, of floating, but all he can remember is how his entire life has been getting dragged back down from everything.
“hyung, i miss you so fucking much.”
⊙
in school they tell you the best ways to die.
don’t look both ways before crossing the street. eat expired foods. stare at the clouds while you skate. stare at the clouds while you sit in class. stare anywhere but five years ahead of you and wonder why you’re not there yet.
they’ll tell you about sex and drugs and alcohol, but not about the boy you stare at as he talks about a song he likes. his cupid’s bow, the mint chapstick he put on earlier, the way it glistens with every word.
and maybe it’s his fault for letting you stare.
but you keep staring.
you’ve never wanted to be present more than when you’re with him.
why?
you couldn’t explain it to someone because it doesn’t make sense in a hypothesis format.
if, then, because.
if you fall in love with him then it’s going to hurt because—
because.
you don’t learn that in school.
just that you start in the clouds and will only get dragged down until you’re six feet under.
⊙
the hum of a car engine is all too familiar.
it’s the beginning sequence of his favorite memories.
an old beat up 2006 hyundai azera and the windows rolled down, a reoccurring event from high school. he wouldn’t say it was repetitive because every time it happened, every time yoongi pulled up to his house, it felt brand new.
the thing about min yoongi: he could drive.
not only that, he had a car.
back then it was this grey broken down thing with rusted wheels and fake stickers. now it’s a sleek black convertible driven back from the city.
jungkook saw it once before when yoongi came home after college. he had just gotten his new job and things were going well for him on the other side of california.
the thing about min yoongi: he got out.
not only that, he got out enough that he comes back.
he comes back.
that’s the only thing jungkook can think of when he sees him.
he comes back.
the top’s down, and yoongi’s black hair is sleeked back behind sunglasses even though it’s 11 pm, and music’s streaming out from the speakers, and jungkook suddenly doesn’t feel any better than he did six years ago.
yoongi’s on his phone, probably sending jungkook a text.
he doesn’t need to text.
jungkook’s been waiting.
he’s been waiting since the last time yoongi left him there.
“do you pick all your dates up like this?”
yoongi looks up, then. older. mouth in a straight line. eyes impassive.
they say cities change a person, but the moment he makes eye contact with him, the years melt from yoongi’s face.
and then a smile.
“no, just you.”
⊙
(the thing about min yoongi: he got out.
when jimin first realizes this he has a whole interview of questions for jungkook. it seems everyone who means something in his life knows about his forever crush on min yoongi.
and they all doubt it.
because, certainly, there’s no way you can be in love with someone for half your life and not do anything about it.
“do you really love him?”
“probably”
“you haven’t seen him in over a year. and you said the last time you saw him he just bought you lunch. jungkook, you’re talking about being in love with him and you don’t even talk to him. you don’t even text him.”
“i’m the one who put all those rules in place. if i talked to him everyday i wouldn’t be in love with him. i’d be obsessively waiting for him to love me, too.”
“if he loved you—”
“that’s where you got it all wrong, hyung. it’s not about him. it doesn’t matter if he loves me back, if he texts me back, if he wants to kiss me back. because i love him.” his voice breaks with the word ‘because.’
if, then, because.
because.
when jimin first realizes yoongi went off to university, finished his degree, and got a job at a high stakes recording studio, he only narrows his eyes, making connections any other person would make.
“do you love him or do you just want what he has?”
jungkook’s world stills and he thinks, at that moment, that he'll only ever live his life criminally misunderstood.
“hyung.” his voice doesn't crack with the word this time, because to him there is nothing broken about being in love. “don't ask me something like that again.”)
⊙
it’s a six speed.
not that it matters, but jungkook likes to watch yoongi’s hand shift the car gears. quickly at first, and then slower, ringed fingers wrapped around the stickshift tapping a beat against the leather.
min yoongi’s hands are good at holding things, good for holding things. jungkook would know.
“miss me?”
the car’s in drive, and it feels like escaping.
he listens to the wind against the glass.
yoongi’s smiling, “no.”
“bullshit, you missed me.”
a laugh. “i did.” a pause. a breath. “are you high?”
“no.”
yoongi’s smiling still, and jungkook’s suddenly back there again.
at the playground and his back is on the dry mulch and his arms are at his side like a morgue. yoongi’s above him and there’s blood in his mouth and he doesn’t want it to be his. he doesn’t want it to hurt because it already hurts so much.
back there again.
at the skatepark going a million miles a minute and leaving everything behind. leaving space and emptiness and the entire fucking world behind him. and he’s imagining yoongi’s standing on the back of his skateboard and it’s raining and if you go fast enough he’ll stay dry. jungkook just needs to get better. he just needs to get better.
back there again.
at the bottom of his bed. this time his arms are crossed over his stomach because it’d feel too much like dying if they were over his chest, his heart, his throat. and his phone is next to his head and yoongi’s talking to him about musical words, pretty words, and there are fireworks going off on the left side of his brain because incredible things are happening in this world . even if they’re not in his.
back there again.
at the place where his skin meets the floorboards and his head falls back against the ground with a thud. there are no star stickers on his knuckles and there are not enough clouds in the sky anymore.
and maybe a part of him didn’t want to be okay.
maybe a part of him wanted to be weak.
weak enough to ask to see him again.
if you love him then it’s going to hurt because—
the words are all jumbled and the letters fall apart and jungkook doesn’t know why it hurts still.
it’s going to hurt because—
because.
“you have a lot on your mind.”
jungkook tears his eyes from yoongi’s hand, and he can’t stand it.
he can’t stand anything about it—the life he’s so unceremoniously found himself in. not the one that you happen upon but the one that happens to you.
and he shouldn’t have been so passive and he shouldn’t have been so absent and he shouldn’t have cried when he first moved towns in 2006 and he shouldn’t have ran when the police sirens were at his front door.
he should’ve looked both ways and should’ve stayed and he should’ve asked him to stay.
he should’ve asked him to—
“jungkook.”
“why…” his mouth parts, and it’s so strange. being there again. “why do they teach you that in school?”
yoongi already knows what he’s talking about.
perhaps he’s the first and last person who’ll ever know.
“they want you to care about your life.”
⊙
(the reason they never dated, the reason jungkook never asked yoongi out, was because he knew he would say yes.
he wasn’t ready for that.)
⊙
at some point, jungkook falls asleep.
he doesn't remember when.
just the lull of the car engine and the music seeping through the speakers and into his bones.
at some point, yoongi pulls over and calls taehyung. jungkook isn't awake.
they talk on the phone for a few minutes. he had driven into 2 am with no destination in sight, and now it's the other side of the world and there's a boy asleep in his car.
but it's not just any boy.
the thing about min yoongi: he remembers the first time this happened. and he remembers every single time after that. he remembers the time jungkook told him he was not not okay, he was laughing the entire time, completely sober. he remembers the crash and he remembers the way jungkook never let him touch his wrists. he remembers coming back home right after graduating, and he remembers the smile on jungkook's face that was so bright it hurt to look at.
he remembers at some point he fell in love with him, and, at some point, he learned to simply live with it, like any terrible thing.
⊙
(“i’m putting distance between myself and the person i used to be. i’m putting books and movies and aimless two hour walks between us. the me who let you down? he’s the distance of seven novels behind me. he’s seven beginnings and seven ends away. seven protagonists on the brink of their minds. seven failures, seven tries, and, if they’re lucky, seven victories. they’re gone, hyung. he’s so far away from me.”)