Don't Call Me Angel || VMIN

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TW// mention of suicide attempt

"You can sleep wherever you want as long as you actually sleep."

Those words hung thick in the air around Jimin's head, taunting and teasing him while he sat perfectly upright, his back pressed against the wall. The cold of the wallpaper seeped through the top he was wearing, even though the material was extremely cosy, and it made his position all the more rigid. Oh, he would do anything to be able to listen to those words and abide by the simple request.

Several hours earlier, the dancer was actually tired enough to fall asleep standing up. He was drained in every possible way imaginable. Watching the exchange between Taehyung and the others from behind the window of the car had had him continuously on edge, to the point where he had given up frantically staring between the two parties and hidden away in the backseat. When the elder had returned, he had found the smaller hunched over with his head covered by his arms, shaking from the onslaught of silent tears that had attacked him the moment Jackson had drawn his handgun.

Relief was putting it mildly if one was to describe how the younger felt when he found himself staring into the very much alive eyes of the other and he had struggled to choke back the sobs that had come bubbling to the surface. He was a mess, a complete and utter mess, and he didn't try to deny it. So why was it now, when he had finally calmed down and cleaned himself up, that he didn't feel the slightest bit tempted to drift off? Wasn't it a bit late for the adrenaline to kick in?

Sighing through his nose, he glared at his faint reflection in the glass pane next to him and rested his forehead against the cool surface. Sitting on the wide windowsill was the last place he thought he would be at midnight, gazing down onto the muffled moonlit city below instead of being snug and warm under the duvet on an actual bed.

This was starting to get repetitive: the breaking down during the day, the anger in the evening over his inability to settle on a mattress, and the staying awake until God knows what hour because he couldn't perform the simple task of falling asleep. No matter how many times he tried, going anywhere near a bed sent his mind to a horrible place that took him ages to crawl out of. As a result, he had stopped trying after a while and accepted his twisted fate.

Those up above clearly didn't want him to function like a normal human being, they obviously got a kick out of watching him suffer. Well, screw the universe, he thought bitterly, but it didn't stir the same response within him that it had every other time, and he released a dry laugh. Is this what he got for spending countless nights tangled up on a bed with a stranger? Was this the price he was paying for the tiny mistake of signing one paper? 

That was one hundred percent utterly unfair. How many more nights was he going to have to put up with this?

The answer was four, four long and tedious nights. Going that long without sleep, and only managing to sneak the occasional ten-minute snatch of rest, had taken a huge toll on both his mental and physical state. Jimin could hardly do more than huddle over in the corner of his room furthest from the bed and let the hours of the day whittle away. Scarcely able to stand without feeling as though someone was pummelling the inside of his skull with a hammer, he had resorted to only getting up to use the bathroom and collect the plates of food left for him, at his request, by the door.

During this period of time, he had spent a fair few hours sitting on the same chair in Taehyung's office, watching him work and refusing every time the elder told him he needed to rest. That's where he was now, his head lolling back on the neck rest, counting the same section of forty-two tiles on the ceiling above him. It was a perfect rectangle made up of oscillating triangles that twisted in a way that meant he couldn't quite work out how they actually fitted together.