The Broken Dancer

Cracks in the Silence

The silence was unbearable.

It pressed against the walls of the private room like a living thing, thick and suffocating, clinging to the air with invisible fingers. The only sound came from Jimin's shallow breaths, quick and uneven as he pulled his discarded shirt back on, fingers fumbling over the fabric. His movements were rigid, mechanical, as if he was rehearsing something he had done a hundred times before. Each tug of cloth across his bruised shoulders felt like a closing curtain, sealing him off from the man sitting just feet away.

He couldn't look at Yoongi. No now. Not after this.

Shame burned in Jimin's chest, raw and corrosive, sinking deeper with every second of Yoongi's silence. He told himself he had known this would happen - that even someone like Yoongi, who had hovered in the shadows instead of leering, who had watched him differently, softer, would eventually reveal the same truth as every other man. In the end, they all saw the same thing.

Ruined. Stained. Unworthy.

"So that's it, then," Jimin finally muttered, forcing his voice into a brittle calm. He smoothed the hem of his shirt with trembling hands, as if the neatness of the gesture could disguise the humiliation boiling inside him. "You couldn't go through with it. I suppose I should be grateful."

His words were knives aimed at himself more than Yoongi, and he knew it.

Across from him, Yoongi froze. The sharpness of Jimin's tone jolted through him, but it was the words themselves that hollowed him out. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on Jimin with something dangerously close to panic.

"What?" The word slipped out in a whisper, hoarse with disbelief. "Is that what you think?"

Jimin gave a bitter little laugh, one that scraped raw against his throat. "Why else would you stop me?" He forced himself to keep speaking, even though every syllable tasted like ash. "It's not the first time someone's looked at me and realised they don't want to touch what's already broken."

His voice cracked on the last word, but he bit down on it, swallowing the tremor.

Yoongi's stomach lurched violently. He had expected anger, even resentment, but not this. Not the bone-deep conviction in Jimin's voice, as though this thought had lived inside him for years, festering like a wound that never healed. He saw the way Jimin kept his head bowed, his eyes fixed on the floorboards like they held the only safe truth. He wouldn't - couldn't - look at him.

"Jimin," Yoongi said, his voice trembling between horror and urgency. He stood, the chair scraping faintly against the floor. "That's not - No. That's not why I-"

But Jimin cut him off with a sharp shake of his head. His lips curled into a smile that wasn't a smile at all, the kind of brittle mask Yoongi had seen on stage too many times. "Don't," Jimin said softly, almost kindly. "You don't have to lie. Pity is worse than disgust. At least disgust is honest."

The words carved through the room like glass splintering under pressure.

Yoongi's chest tightened until it was almost hard to breathe. Pity. That's what Jimin thought this was? That his refusal, his desperate attempt to stop what should never have begun, could be mistaken for revulsion?

"God, no." His voice cracked like a fault line, sudden and sharp. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping hard enough to hurt. "You think I stopped because I didn't want you?" His tone lifted with a disbelief that bordered on anger, but not at Jimin - never at Jimin. At the world. At the father who had broken him into this. At every person who had taught him to see himself as nothing more than what could be bought, bruised, and discarded.