so far away | yoonkook

sunrise : 23

the door to namjoon's bedroom shoots open and with enough force, it slams against the wall.

due to the impact, the contents on the shelf rattle a bit but they don't fall. yoongi wasn't intending for anything to be misplaced anyways.

"why didn't you tell me anything?" yoongi shuts the egress with a foot.

he strides to namjoon and shoves the younger lad hard enough to jolt him into his senses.

namjoon sits up and starts rubbing at his eyes. "I told you everything. what else did you want to know?"

"you didn't. you didn't tell me that-" yoongi plants his knee onto the mattress and leans down to bunch namjoon's shirt in his fist."-that jungkook gives his dignity away for money?" the words leave yoongi's mouth as if he was spluttering blood. horrible, toxic, vile on his tongue. he wanted to tear up but he couldn't. not in front of namjoon.

"jungkook, he-" yoongi's grip on the fabric starts shaking. either it was his fury acting up or his struggle from spiting his tears. "-he's a rent boy?"

he didn't want to say it, not ever, but it was the truth. and yoongi doesn't know if he'd ever be strong enough to accept it.

this boy, this beautiful, beautiful boy, he doesn't deserve to live like this.

yoongi's a mixed madness of disappointment, anger, and heartache. he doesn't want to believe what he's said but he's seen it with his own eyes.

last night, when jungkook came home with hickeys that looked more like bruises dirtying his neck. foreign colors burning against his skin, wretched marks laced with hunger and selfishness and damage and yoongi could only hope that these flames didn't blaze all the way through him.

jungkook can't be holding all these burns with him. jungkook shouldn't be carrying all these burns with him.

jungkook should be given blessings instead of blisters, daisies instead of daggers, love instead of lust.

if only yoongi could take all these bad things away. if only.

a palm comes down to hold the one yoongi had fisted around namjoon's shirt. "hyung, I tried stopping him."

yoongi swipes his hand away and almost hits namjoon's face from this action. "you told me that you're taking care of him, namjoon. is this how you treat a kid with a broken heart?" he tries to keep his voice on the low, aware that jungkook was still sleeping in the other room.

namjoon is shaking his head, "you don't understand-"

"dammit, namjoon, what is there to understand?" yoongi brings his leg down so he's standing near the edge of the mattress. "you fucking lied to me. you asshole. you said you were trying to prevent bad things from happening to him. you said you were helping him.

"is this what you call care? when you can't even convince him to live a normal life? can't even convince him to respect himself?" his hands come up near his head, gestures abrupt and uneasy.

"he will never be normal if he went through what he did, hyung. no one's the same after that kind of trauma and you might be right, I may have fucked up allowing him to result to this business but like I said, I'm just trying to be nice to him."

"jesus christ." yoongi pushes himself away from the bed, starts walking the other way as he scratches the back of his head.

"you're unbelievable." he snaps back up again. "do you even hear yourself talking? it's not about just giving him what he wants so he wouldn't feel sad. you do know you're just breaking him even more now that this is where he ended up in?"

he waits for an answer but namjoon hints no replies.

the younger bites down the words that urge to leave his mouth.

avoiding eye-contact doesn't help all that much when he knows yoongi's staring straight at him, practically boring holes into his soul.

"when I left daegu, I thought I'd feel less shitty about myself since I'd be far from everything I hated so much. and you know what? it worked. I get distracted from so many of my honest thoughts. I know that it's for my own good. but now..." yoongi breathes.

he's pacing towards the nightstand on namjoon's left.

he picks up a pen lying on top of the wooden surface, examines it for a while and directs his gaze to the floor instead. "it's worse than I thought. I feel like I'm being suffocated, like I'm slowly but surely deteriorating but it's not my life I'm leaving. do you get that, namjoon?"

the younger doesn't respond. he looks at yoongi for a moment then shifts his gaze to somewhere else.

of course he does. he gets it. he knows full well what this situation meant. because he's reminded of his wrongs every time, was familiar with the feeling for it rises up to overshadow all his other emotions every single day, every single night, every single time he sees jungkook or every single time he remembers what he's done.

namjoon wasn't cold-hearted and he sure as hell wasn't stupid.

but now a different kind of light's been shed on his reality and namjoon doesn't know if he could forgive himself for doing this to jungkook.

"we're killing him but we're the ones suffering from our actions too." yoongi's tone is even harder than before. he doesn't dare offer another glance at namjoon.

he throws the pen across the room and it hits one of namjoon's picture frames, knocking it down.

yoongi slams the door on his way out.

namjoon stares at the fallen photo of him and his family on his desk.