Pretty | Yoonmin (DISCONTINUED)

fifty

Yoongi didn't stay long. Despite the pleading hand Jimin ran along the frosted over notches of his stiff spine and the wary glance Jin sent his way as he stood, Yoongi couldn't stay there any longer. It was no fault of Jimin's friends. No, they were lovely. Much more thoughtful than most glassy eyed, vacant chested people Yoongi met, who came to him with the sole purpose of devouring his quivering form and feasting on the scar tissue of his bleeding heart, eager to appease their own unmerciful appetites. No, Jimin's friends were almost as warm as the boy himself. Gawky and awkward sunflowers sprouting in florets of obscuring tentativeness within floral pockets of melded eyes. Lazy, estival grins to match estival tans, sweet and slow as the dredging late afternoon under a lemon drop summer sky. Had Yoongi not been trapped in the perpetual hell of a brutal and endless winter, he might have allowed himself to bask in their exuding light, to absorb their feverish hope and tangible aspirations, and he might have entrusted just a sliver of his genuine trust in their shaking, fatigued hands.

But the web of intertwined gossamer fog spread like thick, old film over his gritty eyes and showed him only madness. A crouched figure wrought with shivers of utter despair in the cranny of blossomed orifices, a smear of sickened red tinging the corners of sun blessed irises and honey pools. And now, he couldn't help but think of those weathered hands run rough by the river of time shoving upon the glass bends of his frail shoulders, raining down upon his curved back with the force torrential hail, and he began to wish he was still in bed, curled against his mattress in a helpless furl of aching limbs, protected, at least from uncertainty, by the locked door.

So, he ended up excusing himself with an absent-minded sign and fleeing to the living room, swallowing the condensed burn of guilty coal lodged in his throat by Jimin's concerned eyes. His bones hurt, residual tension all slicked in anxiety induced bile coiling tight in the sockets of his joints and the crevices of his crumpled skeleton. All his marigold comforts leftover from his vaguely pleasant awakening had sunken heavy to the pit of his stomach, shriveling under the pressure of a fever-like ache. He curled up against the sofa cushions, helplessly sad and unsure as to why that was.

Then he heard light footsteps treading across the carpet.

"Um...Yoo—Yoongi-ssi?"

Jungkook.

Yoongi only just managed to stifle his surprise at the faint, strained voice. He lifted his eyes and found the younger standing at the arm of the couch, arms pulled tight to his chest and mouth twisted into a puckered pink lily blossom, paled after brutal deprivation of sunlight. He'd been struck with the same thought last night, that Jungkook was so young, and his eyes even younger. Wide and round and curious like a child, dulled only by the entanglement of abandoned shadow that made those star-blessed eyes its stolen home. His innocence was almost tangible, his newness to the world almost devastating, for the genuine befuddlement behind the pain of his face was childish in nature, and therefore heartbreaking.

Jungkook, he signed warily, pushing himself back into a sitting position. What is it?

Jungkook shifted on his feet, and Yoongi's eyes subconsciously flickered to his thin hands as his fingers twisted and turned over each other.

"I didn't get the chance to say it yesterday," He mumbled, oh so softly. "But I just wanted to..."

He loosed a sharp breath through his teeth, that glassy sheen to his irises gleaming painfully beneath the living room lights.

I wanted to thank you for allowing us to stay here. He finished in sign. Yoongi was a little surprised by the abrupt switch in communication, but he easily adjusted to it. Jungkook seemed so tense at the moment, just as he had at the breakfast table. He shrunk in on himself in a manner that was all too familiar to Yoongi, hunching his shoulders tight against his raw, abused lungs and minimizing himself to take up less space. Perhaps the quiet lack of speech had left them in was something Jungkook needed right now, a silence that asked for nothing, expected nothing, with a person who understood that. He forced his tired lips into a half smile.