Rapscallion ll 18+

Chapter-24

Angst warning ⚠️

Yoongi sat propped up against the hospital pillows while the pale blue patient gown loosened around his shoulders. This was the time Namjoon usually walked in but today, the door had stayed silent. Yoongi’s gaze drifted downward, following the faint tug on his hand. And there she was……..Annie, was on the small chair beside his bed, leaning forward with her head resting on the edge of his mattress. Her hair had fallen over her cheek while a loose strand brushed against his blanket.

But what caught him the most was her hand. Her fingers were wrapped around his as if afraid he might disappear the moment she let go. Yoongi’s lips curved into the smallest, fondest smile and a quiet chuckle slipped out of him, barely more than breathing. He gently tightened his hold on her hand, careful not to wake her while his thumb brushed over her knuckles with the kind of softness he rarely allowed himself.

Slowly, he reached out with his free hand, lifting the stray strand of hair off her cheek. Her face was relaxed in sleep, warm and peaceful, her eyebrows no longer drawn with worry like they were when she was awake. “She didn’t ask me anything…….not about where I was, not about the situation I’m in. I always imagined you throwing tons of questions at me……..like you always did. But I wonder……..Why didn’t you ask me anything this time”

The room was too quiet until the sudden, sharp ring of a phone sliced through the calm like a blade. It didn't jolt Yoongi but took him out of the soft haze he’d been drifting in. His arm slipped away from Annie only enough to reach toward the nightstand. The device wasn’t his, his phone had been lost months ago but he recognized the familiar blue case immediately, it was Annie’s phone. The screen glowed harshly in the dim room and he silenced the ringtone with a swipe, intending only to stop it from waking her……but his gaze caught on the caller ID. It was Jungkook.

For a fraction of a second, Yoongi’s expression went blank…….as usual but then something old, something unpleasant, something he thought he buried long ago…... .awakened. A slow, heavy tightening unfurled in his chest. He knew this feeling, feeling he hated, a feeling he thought he had outgrown. It was a same feeling he had the first time he realized his heart reacted to Annie and the first time he discovered her connection with Jungkook.

A quiet, poisonous sort of unease, it was a quiet pulse of jealousy he thought he’d burned away. A dark annoyance that curled hot and sharp under his ribs. He glanced down at Annie and she was asleep, deep and peaceful, completely unaware that her past was flashing on her phone in front of her present. His eyes moved back calmly to the screen with poker face as the call rang until it died on its own…….only to start again immediately. Another after another call.

Yoongi’s grip on the phone stiffened while his eyes grew colder, warmer emotions disappeared from their depths like someone blowing out a flame. “How close have you become, to call her at this hour……and not just once, but repeatedly?” His thumb hovered for a moment, then he rejected the call with a decisive tap. And because he didn’t want to see that name flash again, he held the power button and turned the device off.

The room fell into silence again but inside him, nothing was silent. Yoongi placed her phone back on the table with slow, deliberate movements, then leaned back against the headboard. His eyes drifted down to Annie sleeping as he stared at her with an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

After marrying her, every dark feeling had disappeared. Everything between them was soft. Pure and Healing. Even though a part of Annie still hadn’t fully moved on from Jungkook, Yoongi never let it bother him. She never contacted him, never tried to reach for her past. She was with Yoongi fully and honestly.