chapter nineteen ;; tell me something
jeongguk's perspective
°☆.。.:*・°☆

It was alluring, the way his soft lips moved as he spoke words of faintness. They formed organic shapes as wisps of chilly air fell out into the open. Water vapor was highly about, caught red handed in the night of it all. Orange and yellows danced across our stupid faces as we both laid on our backs. Black metal, that's what I felt under my white shirt. It was cold as always, being the amazing conductor of temperature the material was, but it felt colder tonight. The feeling hit my core and my essence, knocking me off of my usually smoothly ran train tracks.

The sounds Taehyung were making didn't quite form within my ears. It sounded like gibberish, casted aside as the orangey-yellow tinged parking lot lights continued to shine down, creating a sweet soul of some kind. For a moment, I imagined the condensation surpassing Taehyung's lips as he droned to be smoke, cigarette smoke. I imagined how his mouth must taste like with the revolting musk of warmth and ashes mixed with chemicals and tar, his lungs turning blacker overtime as alveoli became its own condensation of death smothered in addiction.

"You're droning." I quietly speak, my fingers twitching as they lay above my head.

"What do you mean?" His eyes look over in bewilderment, but I do nothing to look back, noting how his eyebrows begin to loudly furrow as lips pout.

"I hear sounds, words, sentences, but I hear no emotion. I see the actor without the role, the character without the personality. Your voice is like the Tinman without his heart, the Scarecrow without his brain, the Lion without his courage...Dorothy without Kansas." My own voice continues on, sorrowful. It must be a late time of an hour; my brain always seems to switch on into a semi-sociopathic and sadistic state. I was in no way myself, slowly unwinding into another as his eyes continued to stare, lips now pursed in thought.

"I still don't understand what you mean, Jeongguk."

"You're talking about nothing important. My mind drives on importance."

My eyes shift over to his, taking in a sweet gulp of his appearance that continued to floor me. Who knew that a creature of such little importance to the world could be so beautiful and important to me? Maybe I empathized him, understanding his feelings of wanting to be heard but not being loud enough, and that's why I found the beauty in the shell that tried so hard to fix itself with school tape instead of nails.

"Then what do you want to talk about?" He snaps, frowning and looking over at me with annoyance. It had been the first time that I'd annoyed Taehyung to the point of him clearly showing me. Other times, he'd try to conceal his feelings. It had also been the first time that I spoke out the way I did, trusting that he wouldn't hate me for it. My thoughts were now wavering with my set lips, "I have no idea what you want right now, so please, enlighten me on what you want me to do. What do you want to talk-"

"You." With teary eyes that glimmer like the stars held above in pure darkness, unknown that there are others just like it, cloaked by the black of the sky, unable to hear the admiring comments it receives nightly, I look up at him, "No more of me. We always talk too much about me. I want to know about you, Little Shell."

"I'm not Little." Taehyung mumbles, staring down at me with cloaked eyes.

"You are Little, to the rest of the world. We all are, failed experiments of an unknown power from above." I gulp, looking back up at the globes of plasma hung by an invisible string, "Do you think that if there was a creator, they would be satisfied with us and what we've done?"

"Who's we?" Taehyung dumbly asks, almost causing me to hold back a cocky laugh that'd be bound to set off more smoke alarms in the sky.

"The world, every being of all kinds."

"I..." he pauses, perplexed, "I don't know how they'd react."

"Little Shell," Taehyung looks over at me again from the name that I've suddenly made him belong to. I felt powerful, calling him little like he always did to me, "you do know, you just don't know how to express it. Tell me...what has happened to you that'd make you question answering yes?" At this moment, I didn't know if we were drunk or high. My words have never come out this way, so bold and well heard. Maybe Taehyung and I accidentally mixed alcohol with our drinks from earlier without realizing.

"Unwanted death." He bitterly spits, the words sounding like poison. It reminded me of a black widow. He was a black widow. It made his hands white while holding his fists, tearing brown orbs away from my own ones that were no longer teary but soft, empathy being revealed like no other.

"Nobody wants to die, even if they say they do, they don't. Human nature doesn't allow us to not fear death. It's a reflex of sorts, not a choice. We were made to fear death just like we're made to hold our breath under water." I thoughtfully explain, wistfully staring over at the boy who no longer held the usual confidence.

"Unsuspected death." Taehyung collects himself, doing the best he can to hide the evident yet small crack in his voice, "Unsuspected death causes me to question saying yes, because it is too hard for me not to." His voice had changed, turning into the kind a pissed off twenty year old girl would use.

"Why is it too hard for you not to?" I already knew the answer, but I wanted him to tell me himself, to explain. Taehyung was in no way droning anymore, and I liked it. I liked knowing that he himself could show vibrant emotion like myself.

He lets out a pathetic laugh, cutting through layers of tenderness. The sound tasted bitter, like a pungent metal taste in the back of your throat. A sniffle follows after, my outstretched arm now used as Taehyung's pillow. I would've used my other hand to be his tissue for tears, but my body was too afraid to disrupt anything, "My family." I understood, completely, "Unsuspected death took them all...leaving me to walk this Hell of an earth." Whatever cocky feelings that I beheld earlier fades away with the flick of his tongue that mourned to be understood.

My body was no longer afraid to disrupt anything, reaching over and slowly wiping away Taehyung's tears with my index finger. They had turned cold, mixing in with the world around on their journey of singular droplets. Salty dew, that's what they were. Nighttime dew continued to fall, giving me an excuse to run my thin fingers along Taehyung's face that was much softer than his hands.

"I have everything, so why can't I live with the fact that I was unintentionally abandoned to be cared for in the hands of an old stranger? My mind's stupid like that. I think that's why I enjoy the darkness. It reminds me of my past. A father, mother, son, and daughter on the ride home from seeing a movie..." Taehyung chews on his lower lip while he stares up at me. Our bodies were in close proximities, my own practically hovering over his in the moment. Five inches, that's how much of space my mind had calculated between our lips, "Who would've suspected that only one of them would make it out alive?" His voice continues, crumbling towards the end as his face screws up to let out a light sob.

Taehyung did it, he was doing it. Just like how I had promised all those nights ago, he was crying. Tears streamed down tanned flesh, soddening skin that didn't deserve the torture of. The gap between our bodies was nonexistent as I brought my face into the crook of his neck, his hands tightly holding me like I was a supply of oxygen for his quivering lungs that matched Taehyung's lips.

He did all he could to hold back the sound of crying currently emitting from his pouted lips with eyes tightly shut, ultimately failing in the end, and I didn't realize that I was crying too, not until my face slowly lifted and my eyes noticed a wet patch on his upper shoulder. Taehyung's hand is soon felt on my right cheek after watching it hesitantly and shakily reach up towards me. The same gap has returned once more, if not replaced by a smaller one. My own shaky hand clasps around his, pressing it into my now damp face to feel the warmth better.

"T-Taehyung," stuttering had returned just like the lessening gap between the two teenaged boys on the latter's car, "who do you live with now?"

His lips pull into a straight line for a moment before almost inaudibly speaking, "I- I...I live with Yoongi."

It made sense and everything clicked in my head all at once along with the feeling of Taehyung's supple lips of faint pink meeting against my own in a moment of serenity. I felt important, desired, and never had I felt that way before.

My brain continued to put the puzzle pieces together as our lips danced like sugar plum fairies. Taehyung's lips tasted of tea and lemonade, mixing with mine to create a concoction of cherry lemonade. His hands were firm on my hips as one of mine was awkwardly placed on the back of his neck while the other was used as my support to stay sitting up.

An explosion of colors shot through my head, and I couldn't desire anything more, feeling complete. Two boys, drunk in whatever this sublime feeling we felt being bestowed over our bodies. The closeness between Taehyung and Yoongi began to make more sense to me, no longer feeling the subtle jealousy I used to. They shared a house, a family, memories, and it made my heart melt with the kiss.

He licks up into my mouth, tongue warm and slick against my own. It somehow felt off, like an unbalanced teeter-totter, but still, he hummed. I hummed. We hummed against one another's spit covered lips whilst heavily breathing through noses. A large hand favor's my waste, pushing me closer so our hips can softly slot against one another, and I can feel the growing hardness under his jeans, as well as the desperation of his mouth and pain in his chest.

I pulled away at that, stilled on top of the elder boy and panted.

Shocks of adrenaline crash through my body like waves on a shore line. The same thumping that hummed through my body only hours before had come back once again, much louder and more well known. I was surprised that Taehyung couldn't hear it in the quiet world around, the only sound being our breaths that were already beginning to steady out. Blank faces stare at one another, but mine was prepared to meet the other once more, wanting to feel the exuberance that it once did.

That idea was shut down once Taehyung lets a light smile tug at his lips. I no longer wished to kiss the boy staring up at me. I instead wanted to clutch onto him and not let go. Through the rush of the moment, the sadness was still clearly there in my mind.

I'd always thought that I could live my life without another by my side, not wanting to be high off of the thoughts of possibly calling someone my own. I was still far too fragile, more than I showed, to have the strength to be on another's arm. It was all still too fresh for trusting, for adoring.

"Hey." Taehyung tenderly croaks, drawing me out of my thoughts, "I should drive you home now. It's really late." I dumbly nod to his words, sliding off of him as he sits up, now staring down at me.

The levels were reversed, but Taehyung did nothing more than send another light smile that made me feel uneased, but I brushed it off and slid from the hood after closely watching Taehyung do so. My mind was still catching up, going back to the vague story he had told me about what happened to him.

From what Taehyung had cried out, his family died in a car crash, the family consisting of a mother, father, and sister, and he was the only one to live. My heart wretched at the visual of young Taehyung waking up to see the ones he loved with widened and offset eyes, wailing sirens making ears deaf and bright lights blinding him.

This time, Taehyung didn't open up my door for me, so my unsteady hand hooks under the door handle, tiredly pulling and slipping inside the warm atmosphere that overpowered the outside. It was silent, but we didn't need to speak. The both of us understood what happened for what it was, Taehyung staring dead ahead at the winding road in front of him with clouded eyes of deadly thought and myself playing with bruised, dainty fingers belonging to me. Rain began to fall, allowing my thoughts to have a swim in its feeling

"Taehyung...?" No response came, so I left it at that, feeling something inside me bottle up once more.

----

this wasn't even supposed to happen in this chapter but i kinda like it okk

alsO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 3K ISTG THIS STORY JUST GOT 2K IT'S GROWING SO QUICKLY JFC

songs--

•U Make Me Want to Listen by Cyberbullying Mom Club

•After the Storm by Mumford and Sons