the devil skates on thin ice ∙ myg ✓

16 ↝ the state of limbo

Pomegranate seeds are sugary little rubies on Yoongi's tongue. Child's teeth grind them, releasing their sweetness. The sun spills generously into his lap, warming the varnished decking beneath his bare calves. His small hands are tacky with juice and saliva, fingertips stained scarlet.

"I wanna be a figure skater," mumbles a quiet, innocent voice. Yoongi looks up to see the girl staring attentively at her pomegranate half, cradled by her tiny palms, as if the currant-coloured gems within its skin are telling her secrets he cannot hear.

He spits a seed over the lip of the decking, landing somewhere on the lawn. A treasure for the ants to find and have for supper. He asks the only sensical question that his eight-year-old brain can conjure.

"Why?"

And she, digging her thumbs into the pulp, letting its bloody sap ooze down her wrists and drip onto the porch, responds with, "Why not?"

Yoongi contemplates this, sampling it on the tip of his tongue like the pomegranate innards. He mimics her action of digging into the red shell of the fruit with his own thumbs, scooping out the glistening beads and carrying them to his mouth, loudly sucking his fingers. And somewhere along the line of doing so, he comes to a conclusion.

"Then I'll become an ice hockey player so we can always play together, even when winter comes."

He never forgets the smile she makes at that. It was as if, for a moment, the sunlight was caught between her teeth instead of the wooden slats of the decking.

❄︎

Faces hover above his own, tear-streaked. Don't cry, he wants to say, though he cannot tell whose faces they are. Don't cry for me. But his body feels submerged in a bottomless river, weighed down at his head by a giant rock. Water and algae fills his mouth.

He closes his eyes, escaping their agony, finding his own peace.

❄︎

Yoongi stands in the hallway, clustered in with the shadows. The entrance to the living room glows gold, like a miniature sun is trapped in there and it cannot help but pour its buttery light out of every available exit. He nears the lucent pool of yellow, close enough to hear the vexed, hushed voices within, yet remaining to be wrapped in the tenebrous arms of the black passage.

"... Not good for him!" he catches the end of his mother's voice, nasty as rotting fruit and hissing like a python. He can picture her belligerent expression, all taut at the edges like a strained wire. "She's nothing more than a distraction. I don't care if you're old friends with her father, he's a nice man, but she–"

"They're 14, for goodness' sake!" his father bites back, and Yoongi is certain that the fury would only be swallowing his eyes. The rest of his face would be as emotionless as a still lake. "___ isn't a bad influence, just because Yoongi prefers hanging out with her over training. She makes him happy. We're not depriving him of her friendship and company."

Yoongi thinks of when he last saw the girl, a handful of hours ago, standing before him at the end of her driveway. She did something crazy, something that made his heart pulse in his toes and his lips turn numb, but not with the chilly nuzzle of late October. No, what happened was her hands planted themselves on his shoulders like anchors, and she pushed herself onto her booted toes so that her chapped lips could brush against his cheek, leaving a lick of heat to linger beneath the flushing skin.