#94phoenix

“that sounds so depressing.”

he wants to call back for summer like the lost boy he is. wants to call for summer like he used to call for his mama when he was thirteen. he wants the days spent in tiny rooms with sweltering heat making his skin sticky. he wants the nights spent loitering outside convenience stores, shoving candy sticks between his lips like he was smoking another pack of cigarettes. he wants and wants and wants like the little kids do. it’s irritating for him to know how much he keeps on begging for time. he’s always been the realistic sort. knows he can’t relive the days or find them sometime in the future. yet he hopes and begs and sobs on his knees, praying for a little bit of summer to come back to him.

“that sounds so fucking depressing.”

the second time he says, he’s tightening his fists and his lungs feel sore and he’s trying his best to stop himself from crying. rania has never made him feel good. she’s that sort of person that makes you question your worth and your sanity. jungkook, the dreamer and the poet and the stupid little kid from daegu– no matter how much pain he can take now, he’s always been soft at heart. soft for his mother and soft for daehyun and soft for rania.

he doesn’t want her to see him cry, so he pulls her close to him and hides his face in the crook of her neck. she’s warm, unlike the cold city streets and the never ending path of dimmed street lamps. their bodies are outlined by the red neon lights of a chinese restaurant. he doesn’t have the heart to let her go. 

suffocation comes in many forms; depression, hatred, love, rania.

it had begun with jungkook sniffling. no crying, no tears, no sadness– nothing of the sort. he was, instead, coming down with a rather bad cold that had him sneezing in the most inconvenient moments. it was, to the say the least, difficult to assert dominance in the presence of older men as he sneezed like a child– terribly loud and too cute for his age. then it continued on with him rubbing his palms together, head tipping forward so he could stare down at his thighs instead, with eyes that would sometimes glance at the tattoo peaking out from beneath his sleeve.

it had begun with jungkook reconsidering the way the world worked. he had known of cruelty at a young age. fairness was neither here nor there. gone along with the gentle, sweeping tide of forgiveness, he began to doubt the sincerity and kindness and happiness of those around him. he was beginning to suspect that he was undergoing some kind of change. nothing tremendous. just a subtle, quiet change in the way he would present himself to other people. his smiles came more often in the afternoon, around those he felt more comfortable and at ease with. he’d stand closer to the center of a room rather than pushed up against a wall. he would mumble jokes instead of spitting them out loud to close friends. worst of all, he would stop talking to people, one by one. whether they were strangers, old friends, or recent acquaintances– he would stop looking for social interaction, and instead, kept to himself.

he thinks maybe that’s why he’s here today, sniffling against his sleeve as he coughs up his lungs, and looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else than here. “yeah.” he looks up at daehyun, managing some half-assed smile. “that’s it.” then, as if he’d been waiting for this the entire time, jungkook pulls out a bookmark with the words ‘LIVE WELL’ scribbled on it, and holds it out. his hand is trembling, but he never backs down from daehyun’s gaze. 

“I know, I know.” she whispered, and by now, she could feel herself crying. And it wasn’t out of her own pain, it was because of his. How had she come to love someone so much that their own distress made her feel so lost? Holding him now, he felt fragile. Just like the little boy she rarely came to see, the times he would break apart before her and leave her wondering how much she really knew. She knew he liked Japchae, even though he constantly gushed about ramen— and how he loved boba, and that he loved his mother ( biological, and also beyeonce. ), and she knew who he loved, and she knew when he was angry, and she knew what to say to stop him from getting angry ( at her. ). But how much did she really know? Those were just the basics. And people could call him a kid, but she knew that he was so much more grown up than the half of them. How couldn’t he be, with what he’s gone through? He made some big choices from young ages, and she wasn’t sure many people could say the same.

But right now, he wasn’t the boy with the pretty smile and nasty fucking mouth, but he was raw and she didn’t want to touch him from fear of hurting him further. Her hands shook in the way his usually did, trembling as one hand rested on the outside of his thigh, whilst she sat between his legs. He covered his face, though his hair did that itself, head tilted down so she couldn’t see him.

She wiped away her own tears, prompted by panic, a finger placing itself under his chin to tilt it up. It was wet with what could either be tears or blood, she wasn’t sure, but she was thinking that the thing that hurt so much was not his body, but inside of him. Jungkook was a boy who could handle pain, most forms of it, as much as he might not like to. Nobody would. She just knew that Jungkook hurt a little more than most.

“I– fuck, Jungkook! I don’t know what to do, tell me what to do. I don’t know how to make it better.”

“I don’t know.”

the simplest, truest answer he could manage in a fit of panic. his thoughts seem to be faster than his mouth, and when he speaks, it’s low to the point that even he could not hear himself. either it was because of the softness of his voice, or the voice of paranoia humming like the steam of coffee in his head. he isn’t well, he knows this. he’s not sure if he isn’t well in the head or in the heart, but all he knows is that he was born with some kind of sickness. bad luck stapled to his spine, and tasting like apple seeds he catches in his teeth sometimes. it’s all bad bad bad, the way his hands shake when his mind goes blank, and how terrible his bones rattled in this fragile body of his, and how quick his heart beats for the few seconds of time he could save.

he’s a kid that made a mistake, and now he’s learning what it really means to run from home.

“I r-really don’t know.” he bites at his bleeding lip. his nose is broken and maybe the knuckles on his left hand are too and he’s sure that he’s got hand prints around his neck. he lives in guilt because that’s all he ever really feels. having a bad temper leads to bad situations, and he’s never been the one to back down from the strength of his heart ( he thinks he’s weak there-- but he isn’t, it isn’t-- the heart is the strongest muscle ). “i’m just tired. and it hurts. i’m hurting really bad. I don’t know, peanut. I don’t know.” his voice falls to a whisper, harsh against his lips. 

his hands, as usual, are trembling, and they reach out to grasp at rania’s shirt. she has the hold of a woman. soft and gentle, even though he knows that her soul is the opposite. he knows that he’s the cause of her pain, the reason she cries, and why her voice sounds so terribly broken. yet, despite his awareness of it all, he still feeds into his selfishness. he holds her close, his eyes searching far beyond them.

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