Fire On Fire [TK]

(5) Power to charm

"There's no sign of life
It's just the power to charm
I'm lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye"

-Modern Love, David Bowie

❀

- Jk -

The light blazed to life like an unwanted sunrise and Jeongguk grunted, scrunching his face and rolling over to the other side, burrowing deeper into his blanket. The sudden brightness felt like an assault - as if the world had personally chosen him as its morning victim. Why were they torturing him with waking up so early? It wasn't his fault he had lost track of time the night before. The game had gotten dangerously interesting, and anyone with a functioning brain would understand that you could not abandon a level mid-battle. That was a moral failing. "Wake up guys," Namjoon groaned from below, as if speaking aloud physically strained him. "We'll be late, and Sejin hyung will give us the glare."

"The one that doesn't work on any of us?" Yoongi asked from the diagonal bunk.

"Yep, that one."

Jeongguk cracked one eye open. Across from him, Taehyung sat hunched on his bunk, back curved like a question mark, hands rubbing at his eyes. His hair stuck up in every direction, as though he had wrestled with sleep....and lost.

"My body feels like lead," Taehyung mumbled, voice hoarse and thick with sleep, words slurring together like he was underwater. Jeongguk propped himself up on one elbow, then let his head flop onto the wooden rail of the bunk, staring down with half lidded eyes, his body not ready to wake yet. Just below Taehyung's bunk was Yoongi, who looked like a man caught in a liminal state between life and death-one leg hanging off the bed, the other still buried under his covers, face turned away from the light as if he were bargaining with it.

"We should get Sundays off," Yoongi muttered, eyes still closed, voice deadpan. Slowly, painstakingly, he slid his other leg to the floor, moving like someone assembling himself limb by limb."Ya, Hoseoka." Namjoon shook the dancing professional who remained conked out on the third bunk, face buried under the pillow. It was unlike Hoseok to ever sleep in, always sharp with his schedule, nagging Jeongguk everyday for his tardiness, yet this morning, he snored away, collapsed on his stomach like a fallen statue. "Wake up, come on, Hoseoka," Namjoon patted him again, while the other did not even stir.

I hope he's alive," Yoongi muttered, twisting his torso with a small wince as he cracked his back. He curled one arm around the vertical beam of the bunk and leaned against it sideways, like even sitting upright required a negotiation with his soul.

Waking up, Jeongguk had learned, was not a single action in this dorm.

It was a pilgrimage.

From bed to shower to breakfast to the front door, there were at least fifty tiny, reluctant steps in between.

A soft huff drew Jeongguk's attention upward.

Taehyung had flopped back into his pillows, burying half his face and mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like, "Five more minutes..."

A small, sleepy smile tugged at Jeongguk's lips.

Taehyung lay on his side, cheeks squished against the pillow, lips pushed into an exaggerated pout, like a steamed bun left out in the cold. He clutched one pillow to his chest, another wedged between his knees, and two more piled around him like protective walls.

Jeongguk had always wondered about that.

How could anyone sleep like that? Boxed in by cushions like a fragile artefact? If Jeongguk tried to sleep with more than one pillow, he'd wake up to find all of them abandoned on the floor... sometimes even the one under his head.