Oh Miss Believer | Vmin

21

Tired.

Every time Tae saw him, passing in the hallway with his blonde head ducked and chin tucked into his chest, gauging lips tinged red from blood, and ripped raw. Every time he saw him eating alone in the library, occasionally crying silently but wiping his tears away before anyone could see him falling apart. Every time he saw him rushing down the sidewalk after school, pastel sneakers scraping against the white cement, running to a house that Tae knew would never be his home.

He looked tired.

Dark, bruise like bags under his puffy eyes, and skin pale as a porcelain doll's, all washed out like he'd been forced into this painful, miserable cycle too many times and all the paint was dripping from his body. The memory of who he was, and who he could be was still there in an outline, but slowly fading, like a photograph worn with time.

He just looked so tired.

He was much too young for his feet to drag, for his bones to stick out so sharply, for his clothes to dwarf his body, for his shoulders to slump...much too young to look as though he were already dying, breaking more with each step, more pieces of his deteriorating heart slipping through the floorboards and crumbling.

He was so tired.

And Tae knew he was tired in a way that sleep could not fix.

He wished he could hold him, and trace patterns on his skin, and play with his soft hair, and kiss his plump lips, and soothe the burning wounds, and lace their fingers together and never let go.

But it was his fault that he couldn't do that anymore.

And he'd promised to give Jimin time.

So that's exactly what he did.

And later, he would realize, that...

Was a mistake.