𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐒

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ⁷

My heart stops beating.

"What?" I ask, my voice sounding muffled and underwater in my own ears.

Jungkook sits up further on the bed, moving closer to me. His eyes are swimming with tears.

"Please, Tae. Just let me see your
wrists. You know I wouldn't be asking this if I didn't care about you"

I feel myself on the verge of having a panic attack. There's black spots in my vision, and I'm fighting to breathe normally. Jungkook can't know about this, he just can't. He's the one that has a reason to be sad, with his parents and everything. I don't. I'm just weak. And I really don't want him to know that.

"No" I say, my voice quiet and cracking.I say it again, louder. "No, you can't. There's nothing there."

Jungkook has actually started crying now; I can feel the sadness in his voice.

"If there's nothing there then we can just forget about this. Please Tae, I need to see."

I close my eyes as tears threaten to spill over. I know I need to show him, he'll never let it go otherwise. But there's still a little rebellious voice inside of me screaming no no no he can't know it'll ruin everything.

In spite of it, I sit up a little straighter and wipe the tears from my cheeks. Taking a shaky breath, I face Jungkook and roll the left sleeve of my hoodie up, exposing the forearm.

Jungkook gasps and a tiny sob escapes his mouth. He grabs my wrist and inspects the five red lines adorning the skin there.

"Tae."I can barely hear Jungkook as he looks up at me.
"Why?" I shrug, staring at the bedspread.

"I was just stressed. I won't happen again, I swear. It was just a one time thing, it didn't help"

Lies lies lies

There's a silence as I stare at anything that isn't Jungkook's face. He's looking at me intently, still holding my wrist in his hand.

I hate this expression on his face, it's like he's looking straight through all the walls around my soul and laying everything out in the open.

"Look at me", he says suddenly, very softly. I don't look at him.
He lets go of my wrist and uses that hand to grab my chin, turning my face towards his. I try to ignore the rush of electricity at the touch of his hand.

Jungkook's face is very close to mine. "Look at me" he says, almost harshly, "and promise me that that's all this is."

When my eyes meet his, I know I can't do it. I can't look my best friend and the person I'm in love with right in the eyes and lie to him. Even if I wanted to, he
would know right away if I was telling the truth or not.

"I can't" I whisper, and I can almost see Jungkook's heart break. Very slowly, he picks up my other arm and rolls the sleeve up. When he sees that there's nothing there, he sniffs and moves a little closer to me.

We're both still silently crying when he says, "Can you take off your shirt?"
It's almost funny, the irony of this
situation. l'd been dreaming he'd say something like that as long as I could remember, and here he was asking me to take my clothes off for an entirely different reason.

I don't even fight it this time, I just nod a little and pull my hoodie off. Then, I grab the hem of my shirt before tugging it over my head. I watch Kellin's face carefully as he assesses the damage I've done to my body.

~~~~~~~