3000 Stars

Please Forget

Taehyung remembered it again that night.

It wasn't something he could talk to anyone about. He found himself coiled on the floor of his bedroom, with the door locked and his blankets spread around him, shaking and crying quietly. It had been so long since he remembered that he had forgotten the power of the memories. Now they crippled him, immobilized him, threw him to the ground. He curled his hands feebly in the carpet and struggled to breathe. He couldn't scream. He couldn't yell or throw things. His parents would hear, and they would send him back to that terrible therapist.

He couldn't go back there.

He wanted to move. He needed to move. He needed to fight. But it was just past two in the morning, he had school in a few hours, and the arenas were all closed until five. He wished he had someone there to hold him, to remind him there was a reality beyond the pain of the thoughts he could no longer avoid. But there was no one. His parents didn't know about the arena or the fight club. Hoseok and Namjoon didn't know his other identity. Yoongi barely knew him at all. Zen and Dreyk might have come, but he no longer had their numbers, and it was better that way. Better that he suffer alone than drag them back into the whirlwind that was his mind.

So he sat there, alone, as images of blood and cameras and angry people flooded his mind. Snatches of words came and went too fast for him to register. Only a few words, self-injuring insults, repeated in his mind with the pulse of extra heartbeats, pushing him down further and further until he lay on the floor, curled tightly into a ball to escape what was inescapable.

Panic.

He coughed, blinking sleepily, and felt himself start to relax, melting into the floor. The room was too dark for him to see anything, but he thought his phone might have lit up with a text notification, too far away for him to reach. He hoped it wasn't Jungkook. He was so tired of being taken advantage of like this. He didn't want to do it anymore. He just wanted to make Yoongi give up on the bet so he could quit the arena. He couldn't do it anymore.

He just couldn't.

***

It was hard to focus in class when he'd had so little sleep, but Taehyung did his best to manage. He never took notes, but that didn't matter much. His parents were used to his average grades. They never pushed him to excel in anything, perhaps out of some sort of grudging respect for what he had lost years ago. They just wanted him to pass classes. As long as he did that, they never mentioned his low marks and the teacher's comments about how he never seemed very focused. They knew better than to question it.

Sometimes he wished they would, so he had someone to complain to about how tired and lost he felt. But as it was, there was no one, so he just did his best to sit through each class and stay by Hoseok's side during their free time like a good friend, hoping no one would notice.

But Yoongi did.

The first sign was the way Yoongi kept looking at him. All through class and in the hallway Taehyung felt his eyes on him. At first it made him want to scream and shake Yoongi, but as the day wore on he got used to it.

The second was when, during lunch, Yoongi took extra care to make sure their hands didn't brush when he handed Taehyung a tray in the lunch line. It was one thing to shift hands back quickly, but watching Yoongi try to hand Taehyung a tray with one hand while balancing his and Jimin's trays in the other was... different.

Taehyung appreciated it.

The third came when, finally, Yoongi pulled him aside after school and asked him if he had slept at all, listing everything from his blank stare in class to his failure to eat most of his lunch. Taehyung told him he was fine, but it was so tempting to just break down in front of Yoongi. No one had noticed him like that since Dreyk. It was both unnerving and comforting.

Taehyung decided not to go to the fight club, or the arena. He was too tired and, though he hated to admit it, he was scared. He didn't know what he would find there. He could skip a day of the tournaments, he knew, so he logged onto his account as V and marked himself sick for the upcoming fights that afternoon, then wandered home and dove into bed, curling up in a ball and letting a few frustrated tears fall when the same images and impulses of thought that had kept him up so late came back to haunt him.

He had to do something. He had to go somewhere. He couldn't just lie there.

But he was so tired. His body felt heavy, and he didn't want to interact with anyone. He just wanted to be there, under his blankets, until he suffocated or got hungry enough to raid the fridge, whichever came first. He took a deep breath and flipped his phone over, wondering if there was a time-killing game he could use to get his mind off things, and saw the notification for FaceUpp-- a new message from Yoongi.

He frowned, opening it. What was Yoongi up to this time? He knew Taehyung didn't want anything to do with the arena. Despite what Yoongi had said before, about it being alright for Taehyung to have no interest, Taehyung felt suspicious. No one had ever said that to him and truly meant it. It was always a guilt trip meant to make him do what they wanted.

Yoongi: I hope you're resting.

Taehyung froze, mouth falling open. A wave of an unnameable emotion crashed over him, and he turned the phone off and tucked his head between his knees, letting out a soft sob. He did feel guilty. He was trying to disappoint Yoongi, and Yoongi was concerned for his health. He was so stupid. He had never changed, never gotten better. He would just continue to be the unbearable arena-hater-turned-prodigy his entire life.

He hated it. He hated himself.

But he couldn't let Yoongi see who he really was.