rain » vkook

ten

i wake with a surplus of words dancing across my tongue, and i shiver with excitement - all the more palpable because i can address taehyung instead of the concrete jungle.

then i look around. sit up, rub my eyes.

he's gone. his blankets and damp clothes are still here, but there's no note or anything at all that suggests he was even here at all. i was a fool for thinking i could have the sky all to myself.

i was a fool for thinking i was enough.

he has to be here still. i don't know how i can face the truth, how i can stand without the support of deceit's clawed fingers hooked into my back instead of wings.

i tear through my apartment, throwing things, breaking things - losing feeling every time something shatters.

it must've been my words, i finally think as i stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. as i strip away layers of lies and careful half truths and see myself as what i really am. the sunken eyes, the hopeless gaze, the dull skin and uglyuglyuglyWORTHLESS.

i couldn't find the right words to show him that i really did care, that my sliding gaze and inability to fucking function had nothing to do with him, it was all me; all defective me.

because i am not ernest hemingway.

i spin away from the sink like a planet out of orbit, out into the kitchen again, where my paintings of him are. and i can hear my breath sawing through my lungs and beating on the inside of my chest like it's a locked door - it's closed again. and i can see the world tilting and my paintings sliding off the table and there's silverware flying through the air and why won't anything stop moving?

i wrench open a drawer, see that there's still knives in it. i duck my way to the table and i tear into my paintings, watch them tear, rip, and bleed out. i watch the emotions leave and shouldn't they leave my head, too, since i painted to empty it? but they're still there, screaming, demanding to be felt.

all the paintings of taehyung are completely ruined, gone, just like him. because i could never paint reality anyway, no matter how many times the clock hit 11:11 and no matter how many eyelashes dusted my cheeks.

but that's not enough. i can't think or see clearly, but then again, when could i ever? and i grip my gore-soaked knife and destroy every painting i've ever created.

and as i sit surrounded by the carnage of my own self, i think, very clearly, like the eye of the storm, how fortunate it is that my studio has been locked for days.

and then the tears come. i stare at the shredded canvas and bleeding paint and dying colors and i sob because i am not picasso.

i am not picasso.

i am jeon jeongguk, and i could not save the person who so desperately needed to be saved.

i am the reason taehyung is gone.

and i hate myself.

i sweep the ruined paintings into garbage bags and walk to the dumpster across the street. the tears on my face have dried and i know there's cracks on my skin. no one sees me, but i can feel them all staring anyway. that's all they've ever done. the concrete jungle stares down at me, unforgiving and cold.

i hate it. i hate it because even now i don't feel at home in my own skin and i only recognize myself when i paint and i'm throwing the destroyed pieces of my soul into the dumpster and the sound it makes as it falls upon the other trash—

my shoulders shake once.

and then i turn

and walk away.

because you see, the thing is that i never had the savior instinct in me. not when my mother cried whenever the doctor talked to her about me in low tones. not when my childhood best friend couldn't stand me anymore and began to go out drinking and smoking with other friends. not even when i sat in the middle of my yard in the middle of the night and stared at the moon and wondered if maybe the only thing i'd ever do right was to die.

i never had the savior instinct until i saw taehyung for the first time.

"concrete jungle," i say, "where do you find someone that you let disappear?"

and the thing is, i still didn't save him.

a/n: OOPS I FORGOT TO UPDATE AND I HAVE NO EXCUSE BC I FINISHED WRITING THIS ENTIRE FIC A FEW DAYS AGO?? SORRY BOIS