Smoke Song

Confession

"Jungkook?"

Jungkook looked up, then back down, scuffing his foot on the carpet. He had come to the seventh floor to hide for a little while, but he should have known his luck wouldn't last.

"Kookie?" Taehyung said softly, coming to stand next to him. "Yoongi-hyung said he found you in the studio last night. Are your hands alright?"

Jungkook held them up for him to see, watching dumbly as Taehyung took each hand gently in his, coming to stand straight in front of him. Taehyung massaged the palms of Jungkook's hands with his thumbs, just like he used to do after Jungkook had been working for hours, but Jungkook felt nothing.

"I wanted to talk to you," Taehyung said.

Jungkook tensed, biting his lip and looking away.

"Why are you avoiding me?" Taehyung let out a soft breath. "We're supposed to be friends."

It was so unfair. Jungkook couldn't even clench his hands. He just stared at his feet, breath hitching.

"It's not even since your voice left," Taehyung said. "You've been avoiding me since the rescue. What's going on?"

When Jungkook didn't respond, Taehyung gently took his chin in one hand and tilted it up, keeping him from turning away. Jungkook closed his eyes, tension radiating along his shoulders and through his arms.

"Is it because of what they did to you?" Taehyung asked.

Jungkook stepped away quickly, pulling his arms back against his chest. Taehyung followed him, backing him against the wall and kneeling beside him when his legs gave out.

"Please," he said. "I know I'm gone half the time. I don't want-- what if this were our last interaction? Things are getting crazy out there, Kook. I don't want this to be your last memory of me."

Jungkook bit his lip, forcing back the tears. What did Taehyung expect of him? He couldn't talk. He couldn't even write. He was useless.

"Please, Jungkook," Taehyung said. "I don't want to lose you."

Jungkook's breath hitched. Taehyung cupped his face in both hands, leaning in until their foreheads touched. Jungkook shrank beneath him, closing his eyes, and his friend kissed the space between his eyebrows, sighing softly.

"I love you."

Jungkook started to cry.

It was useless. Everything was useless. Jungkook sat in his room, staring at the blank wall, a large black marker lying on the sheets in front of him. He'd managed to get its clip hooked over a bandage and smuggled it up to his room under his sleeve, and now he sat, frustration and pain and anger surging inside him.

He couldn't stay. There was no way he could stay.

Not when he couldn't even say the words he'd been waiting to say his entire life.

Tears poured down his cheeks, hiding the marker from view, but he still fiddled with it until it was stuck firmly in the bandages around his hand, then uncapped it with his teeth, spitting the cap on the bedding and standing clumsily. The letters he wrote were large and clumsy, and he knew there was little chance of their being understood. But he didn't care. He needed to write on the wall, almost as badly as he needed someone to tell him his voice would come back, that everything would be okay, that he didn't have to fight after all.

I'm useless, he wrote. I don't deserve anything other than death. Don't look for me.

Then he shook the marker out of his bandages and left.