#hate you

Heaviness clung to the air, to your chest. You couldn’t get enough air. Lungs leaden with the horrible anticipation of the pain that was about to set in. 

“I have to hate you.”

The words didn’t sting. Instead, they held your heart gently. Hands you trusted reached into your chest, into a piece of you that you had tried to hide for so long. A piece that Jungkook had sought out so fervently. The hands were familiar and strong. They were the hands that brushed strands of hair back from your damp cheeks when you got sick after nights out. They were the hands that traced ink lines and faults as if they were the same. Those hands, sacred hands, squeezed your heart into rotten smallness. 

A part of you was dying with his words. 

“I can’t do it—“ Jungkook’s voice cracked like the wicked sound of a torn violin chord, he said your name like a fervent prayer, “please look at me.”

You couldn’t. You couldn’t feel this pain. Couldn’t accept this consequence of your own silence. This is what happens when you can’t bring yourself to voice the hard feelings. You had pushed him away. You had caused this. This was your own fucking fault. You couldn’t feel this and look at him. You needed the partition screen of a confessional booth to soften the ways this was falling apart. 

Warm and salty liquid hit your tongue as you wiped your nose with the back of your palm. Oh. You were crying. The night was blurry as you tried to absorb the backyard you had grown fond of. A shared backyard. A place for you. A place for Jungkook. For Bam to play. For your combined love. Your easels and drying paint covered tarps. You couldn’t make out the details of any of it anymore. It just looked dark and fucking blurry. 

Jungkook’s breathing was becoming more staccato.  He was gasping for air. Did his chest feel like it was drowning too? Was the night killing him from the inside out too?

Your voice was calm. It sounded like rain soaked mulch. It was warm. It was a wall. A shield. “You can hate me, that’s okay. I think I would need that too— if I were you. I understand that.”

One peak. A quick glance to your left at your boyfriend. No; your ex-boyfriend. 

“No, no, please don’t do this to me,” He was whining, his voice was jumping pitches and octaves as he braced through the words, “please don’t shut me out.”

Blink. Blink twice again. Breathe. Imagine the air is cool and easy and light.

You looked at him. His back curved forward. His elbows rested on his knees. His head was cradled by a hand. The other hand covered his mouth. He always did that when he cried. He thought his mouth gave away his emotions. The downturn on his lips. You thought that was funny. How could he never realize it was his eyes? How did he not know that his beautiful eyes were breaking you. He was hurt. Crying. Trying to hide and still not able to. 

“You’re going to be okay, Jungkook.” You were speaking slowly. Cautiously. With intention and care. “You’re going to hate me for as long as you need and then you’re going to find someone else. You’re going to find this great person that lights up rooms. They’re going to be like you, Jungkook. They’re going to laugh and talk easily and they're going to be all flowers and beauty and you’re going to forget this.” You had been reaching out to touch his arm before you realized you were doing it. Consoling him was second nature. Putting your care into your fingertips and transferring it to him was natural to you. “Sorry,” you whispered with a weak smile as you pulled your hand away. 

“No, fuck you. Fuck you!” Jungkook’s voice was getting loud. He was standing, stepping away from your seat on the porch. His index finger was directed at your slumped form on your porch chair. “You don’t get to do this!”

You couldn’t help but smile. To nod. “See. You’re doing great already.”

“No, stop it! I’m fucking serious!” He was angry. Angry at you. Good. “You don’t get to sit there and act like you’re some third party in this shit. You don’t get to throw the fucking walls up and hide away in there and act like you’re okay just long enough to fucking baby me!”

Your eyes cut wildly to meet his. “I’m not babying you, Jungkook. I’m sorry I didn’t mean for it to come across-“

“It doesn’t matter. I know, I know you think you’re helping me. You think you’re being big and tough and saving me from whatever thing, whatever part of you you’re so fucking scared of. Well guess what? I’m not fucking scared of it! I never was! I’ll never get to be fucking scared of any part of you! I will never get to hate you because you do this shit! You don’t talk. Christ, you don’t tell me when you’re hurt. You don’t say anything when you’re mad. You go off alone and just hope that it passes or that you fucking die of whatever poison you’ve decided is there.” His words were flying like cars on a highway. Bullets at a target. Each one was hitting you with wicked precision. 

You had given him the roadmap to hurting you. He was reading the map from memory right now. The topography of your heart was second nature to him. 

“I’m not!” The words came out with fearful ferocity. You didn’t want to scream. You didn’t want to yell at him. You were doing exactly what you feared doing to him. “I’m not being big and tough. I’m being a fucking coward. But I cannot do this to you, Jungkook. I didn’t want this!” Youwere motioning to your own defense stance as you stood. You wanted to point to your fears. Your own aggression that was surfacing. “I don’t want to hurt you and you’re cornering me into it.”

He half scoffed, half cried. A slow nod. 

“That’s what you think, huh?” He was softening his voice in the opposite way you had before. He had already placed the knife in your stomach. He was twisting it now. “You think you’re absolving me from hurt when you hide the hard stuff. But you’re not! You’re confusing me! You’re leaving me in the dark to wonder what the fuck I did wrong because you’re too damn ashamed to talk about some stupid shit that made you feel abandoned. And then what do you do? You abandon me.”

The world halted. Turned on its side. Your heart dropped. Your pulse was in your ankles. Maybe in the apartment below your shared home. 

Sobs were racking your chest. Ugly and pained sounds were released into the night without your permission. You were yelping like a wounded animal. Air wasn’t enough to stop the sounds you hated. Your hands were over your mouth. Trying to cover the noises. 

“That’s why,” Jungkook whispered, “That’s why I hate to decide to fucking hate you. You don’t let me understand what I did to hurt you this fucking bad. I don’t know what I did to make you feel like you can’t even look at me when we’re throwing a party with our friends. I don’t know what I did to make you sit out here alone in silence on this stupid porch when all our friends are inside wishing me well on my tour.” Jungkook was picking up your potted bonsai plant. It was sailing into the yard. The clay pot shattered. “And I still can’t find it in me to not love you so fucking badly. I want you to need me. I want you to be mad when I do stupid shit— hurtful shit. I want you to cry because you’re going to miss me when I’m gone on tour.”

“You’re not the villain in my head,” He was speaking calmer again, “But the only way I can settle with losing you is pretending you are. It hurts a lot less to imagine some horrible mistake you’d never make. I wish you’d fucked my friend. I wish you’d screamed at me! Kicked me out! I don’t care anymore I just can’t be in love with you when you won’t show me all of you.”

You were stunned. Words were gone. A mystery. You didn’t remember if you ever learned to speak. In a way, you didn’t think you ever did; not in the way Jungkook wanted right now. 

You were fighting every fiber of your body to find the words. To take your panic, your need for him, your need for his friendship, his love and make it into words you could speak. Couldn’t you just hug him? Wouldn’t that make sense? Would he ever understand that? Would he feel your determination to change?

Jungkook was wiping tears from his face and taking deep breaths. “Stay out here for a while if you need to. I’m going out with Joon to a few bars. Don’t wait up for me.”

He was walking towards the door connecting the porch to the house. He was walking away from you. From your desperate clawing for words to fix this. To tell him how you felt. You stayed still. Stayed silent. 

You watched him grasp the handle of the door. You hung your head in acceptance.