finding jupiter ° taekook

four

CHAPTER FOUR

The illuminating lamp is the only light source in the room when Yoongi walks in later in the night. All the walls around collapse to the ground when he sighs. His hair is ruffled, his state is completely disoriented. He is almost ignorant of my presence in the room until he raises his pale hand to wave at me.

"Oh, hey, Jeongguk."

"What's up with you?"

"Nothing."

He sits on his bed, rubs his hands on his jean covered thighs, and huffs. His eyes scan the room, as though he doesn't live in it. He's become a human transported to an alienated planet.

"Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to me," I retort, flipping a new page in my sketchbook and begin drawing Yoongi, in his in-another-galactic-neighborhood stance.

"I hung out with Hoseok today, that's all."

My eyes snap up to look at him. I begin to sketch his faded, blond hair as his hand rakes through it. There's probably a kabillion drawings of Yoongi and his hair that I draw every time he dyes it. He has never noticed though. 

"Did he come with you to fix your car?" He nods. "And that's all you did today?" Another nod. I look at the ruby flashing alarm clock, "for more than six hours?"

Yoongi purses his lips. His fingers are drumming a constant percussion on his thighs and I know his trip to this alien planet is becoming short-lived, it's a matter of time before he combusts. I begin sketching his jawline, his distended lips, his averted eyes that dart from one corner of the room to another.

"Fine," He murmurs so quietly, I almost don't hear it, "we went on a d-date."

I drop my notebook on the floor and leap onto my bed. I am jumping so hard, I could pogo stick to Neptune. I am a broken record, repeating 'I knew it!' until the blond boy is shielding his ears with a pillow, responding with an equally loud 'shut up!' He is burning up, collapsing sideways and hiding his scarlet face into the pillow. His groans are no surpass to my loud mantras and cheers, so loud, I expect the dean to walk in any second now. 

"Do you want to hear about it or not?" Yoongi half muffles into the pillow and half gazes at me. I launch myself across the room onto his bed, until I end up atop of him. I prop my head on my palms, glimmering my eyes at Yoongi before he pushes my body off of his. 

"Do tell me everything. I want nothing to be left out."

"You know, he isn't actually that bad," he says. No one said he was, except for you, I respond in my head and lock the retort there. "He offered to pay for the whole car fiasco by asking me to a date." Yoongi picks at the loose seams of his ripped jeans, smiling so hard, his face might break. "He kept apologizing profusely, saying it was all a dare, but at that point, I didn't care." 

I cock my eyebrow up at him. Oh, I so can't wait until Taehyung hears about this. Yoongi becoming so flustered over someone like Hoseok? Someone he's despised since the beginning of freshman year? I wouldn't miss it for the reincarnation of Picasso. He grumbles to himself and leans his head against the wall. The equivalence of a whole solar system is glistening in his eyes, he's completely lost sight of the fact I'm sitting next to him.

"I hate him so much," he remarks, but the glimmering deep in the caverns of his eyes claims otherwise.

°

"No way!" Taehyung breathed between chuckles, "dude, Hoseok would not shut up about him!"

I share my theory of our two roommates dating by the end of the year while we both sit, wrapped up by the cerulean sky. Taehyung is immersed in a realm of tranquil, his shoulders are slouching, the sun shinning its spotlight right on him. Meanwhile, I am sitting on the sidelines, admiring him as he works on his worksheet for his astronomy class. 

I toss a pebble into the pond ahead of our feet and watch the water trickle on Taehyung's white shoes. I realize I feel relaxed around him, too. I wish to be sitting in my dorm right now with him, or tangled on the floor, with my hands tangled  in his hair, his legs tangled with mine. My body is on fire. Were trees always this suffocating? There's so many of them.

"Hey," Taehyung intervenes next to me, for a second I forgot he was even there. "What do you want to do today?"

A smile is relief mapping onto my face. We're friends now. We can climb trees and have sleepovers in the stratosphere, because only people like him and I can do that. 

I shrug my shoulders in an attempt to seem as nonchalant as him but my lungs are aching. "Anything you'd like."

I catch Teahyung half-smile as we walk deep through the woods. The abundance of trees and hummingbirds surround the both of us and I make a mental note to draw the moment later.  We jump the creek and he begins to sprint. My eyes follow him in question before Taehyung yells out a 'come on!' and I follow short behind him. We run at the same speed, tree branches raking and splintering my bare arms, but I don't care, because we're falling comets. We race the clouds until we end up in the middle of the forest green.

My lungs burn, and the chestnut haired boy is leaning on me, his hand planting on my shoulders as we try to catch our breaths. He gapes up at me, a half-smile on his face. I swallow the wax ball forming in my throat. There's sweat beads at the side of his figure, his cheeks tainted red, and our chests are rising in the same motion. There's a rustling in the wind, the sun peeking through the tree leaves, splotching the ground gold. Taehyung stands up straight and I'm not even sure I'm breathing anymore. 

He grins at me, eyes sparkling like the millions of stars that glimmer above our heads in the daytime.

"You look so cute when you're flustered." Taehyung declares, his voice laced with honey and I'm positive that this time, the rest of the universe heard it too.

—

I tried to make popcorn but instead I burned it n now there's just a stench of burnt popcorn all over my room and I probably smell like it too,, k  m  s 

anywaYs

enjoy this horribly written chapter while I cry over my algebra homework friendos ° rion.