Ambivalence

All The Time In The World

you're not sure whether to laugh or to cry. you're holding him in your arms, on the bathroom floor of the dorm, blood gushing through your finger tips, and all that you can think is -

i'm losing him. i'm losing the most important thing, my world, and god -

why didn't you stop him?

why didn't you pull him aside, force him to stay?

why are you such a shitty friend?

(self-depreciating has been a word to describe you lately. worn out and torn, and yet all that you can think about is yourself. why can't you stop being so selfish for once?
why can't you be the person that you were two years ago, so full of light and innocence that nothing could shatter you? why can't you just suck it up, live it up, like you're supposed to?

oh, that's right. life gets in the way. things don't happen the way that you want them to, people get in the way, and this - this is what happens.

you just never thought that it would happen to yourself.)

you call the paramedics, watch as they take him away. wait until the other boys get home.

you cacoon yourself in your room, and you don't come out.

~

a week later, and it's almost as if nothing has happened. you're laughing and talking, watching as he shimmies his way into his tattered skinny jeans, throwing an oversized v-neck over his head.

his hair is blonde again, crisp and light from just being dyed the night previous.

you can still see the scars, little white slits, as he traces them with his other hand, seeming to have forgotten about them in the short span of time that they've been there.

(how do you forget about them? how does someone, who went through so much pain, just forget what they inflicted on themselves? no, he hasn't forgotten.)

maybe you take things too seriously. maybe he's fine, maybe this is all something that can work out by itself. maybe you don't have to be the strong one here.

(you want so badly to just pull him into your arms, lace your body with his, and keep him there for all of eternity. and in any other universe that isn't this one, you could've done just that.)

or well, you can in this universe, too. you can when the cameras are away, you can when the other boys are gone, you can when it's late in the dorm and you can feel his thoughts bouncing off of him like they are your own. you can when he's sober. you can when he's too tired to respond to any kind of affection, on the jusitifaction that sleep is one of the most useful things in this mixed up life that you both lead.

so you can, but you can't. not nearly as often as you want to, anyway.

you're off to some sort of interview, something that all seven of you are attending, and you can hear bambam and jinyoung in the hallway talking about something - can hear jaebum and youngjae laughing about a talkshow, you presume, and you can hear yugyeom join in the conversation, talking to his hyungs in a familar and comforting way.

that's what life is at the moment. familar and comforting.

now, only if it'll stay that way.

it probably won't, but you can hope, right?

you all leave the dorm shortly after, and it feels like you can properly breathe for the first time in months.

~

you're right.

it doesn't stay familar and comforting for very long, after that night.

nothing big happens; just a slip of the tongue, a patch of skin too exposed, but it catches the public's attention.