Taekook Oneshots

Light Behind Your Eyes

(Kind of based on that game One Shot which has a protagonist w glowing eyes, if anyone's seen or played that? )

We all have our moments of clarity, the moments where things just click. There's always a second where something makes sense, where that little fact you always knew just reverberates in your mind with an echo that seems to last forever.

Sometimes, love doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't have to be defined as one thing or another, put in a box by people who could never understand the reality. Yes, sometimes it's nice to understand. Sometimes it's nice to have a word for the thoughts and feelings running through your brain.

Other times, the search for a label is pointless.

Kim Taehyung had something special, something that nobody else had. He wasn't aware of it for a long time, didn't know what was so important, because that special thing didn't appear in the mirror, or maybe he just wasn't looking properly. He was looking through himself, trying to become something better than what he was, always thinking he wasn't enough. And so he couldn't see what was on the surface.

For Kim Taehyung's eyes glowed, glowed like the body of a firefly.

Literally.

Sometimes, it was a dim ambience, only noticeable when the night began to fall, when he was particularly sad. It could be the brightness of a dying campfire, or the dull luminosity of the light that sat in his room to protect him from the dark when he was a child.

But sometimes that light was a second sun, beaming with impossible brightness, hard to ignore for anyone around him. It was beautiful, the shade of the start of a winter sunset, with all of the glory. When he was happy, when he was truly happy, he shone like a star in the galaxy of darkness surrounding him. The dull, lightless eyes of those around him.

He was born to ordinary parents, who didn't realise what was happening until they saw him smile for the first time when he was a few months old. They freaked out at first, were terrified of the way that it seemed like the apocalypse was coming from their own child. Maybe the Anti-Christ was borne to them.

But then, when they saw how it changed, they became enchanted by that little skill, drawn along into parental love by two stunning will-o'the-wisps, which blinked with innocent youthful glow for years. At least, until school started. And then things got a little out of hand.

The other children didn't really understand what was going on, didn't properly compute what it was. They thought he was a freak, that something so beautiful was a defect, something to be ashamed of. But they were wrong. They were always wrong. They just never saw it in the same way.

They pushed him around, painting purple on his tanned skin with their fists, open butterfly wings that faded into an ugly yellow over time. They jeered at him, making insults that felt discordant to his young ear, like church bells that were made in the wrong key, like a ghostly piano that was never tuned.

And yet the light remained the same.

He wasn't to know that he was different. He just thought it was something kids did, make fun of each other just because they were lonely themselves. He saw that projection, that jealousy, that negative energy, and hid it in the bottom of his heart, trying not to think about it too much. This firefly didn't want to stop glowing, didn't want to stop being himself in a world that was too old for his kind. Too young to understand.

He was taken to doctors, taken to professionals of all kinds. His parents even once took him to a priest. But every time, every single incidence, there was no clear answer. Some suggested a twist in the genes, some thought he was possessed, some refused to even hear their case until it became too famous to ignore. And then they cared. Then they wanted to know.