Chapter Text
[Present. Voice Mail. 4:13 a.m.]
// There’s always two sides to the story and you’re not the one that I blame when I tell it. //
In the winter, when the temperature would drop low, the coldness shadowing between the streets was thought to be seasonal and would disappear once the spring day would come. But as the days passed and spring did come, the coldness didn’t transform into warmth and Jimin didn’t feel at home.
There was no soft in the chill breezing through the holes of his sweater, tangling his skin with cold.
The city held misery and loneliness, soaked into the sidewalk cracks. Everything was so damn shallowly and empty and Jimin wondered: how come, he never noticed, the hundreds damaged bodies and damaged minds.
But that was just because Jimin didn’t have the chance to really observe the people around him before, back then he was in love and city was a labyrinth of noisy, streets and alleys that he would walk through back to one of their apartments, hand in hand with his lover.
City was just marble buildings towering over the hordes of people. City was just a place that held monuments, like the bench where both of them sat with already cold Americanos in their hands or like that park where they kissed when the clock stroke midnight and the dark sky suddenly became so bright.
Nothing was as bad as it was right now or ever because even if Jimin never heard Yoongi say ‘I love you’ back, he was still there, unlike now.
[ 3 Months ago ]
That night Yoongi barged into Jimin’s apartment with sleepless eyes and bruised knuckles, the fake leather jacket drenched in rain.
Jimin craved Yoongi in the most innocent ways, he wanted them to lay under the pile of fluffy blankets with words dripping down from their lips like sweet honey. He craved to fall asleep to Yoongi’s heartbeat. He craved to love and craved to be loved.
But just like any other night what Jimin got was two sweaty bodies grinding against each other, moans and whimpers spilling from their swollen lips, the words being a result of their drunkenness.
One intoxicated with love and the other with alcohol.
Jimin debated which one was better, but somewhat he chose the latter because once the sun would rose, Yoongi would be sobered and gone, while Jimin would be still intoxicated, left laying alone, still making sure to stay on his side of the bed, in case Yoongi came back.
But he never did.
[ Present ]
Jimin held a glass with transparent liquid in it. It could’ve been water, but it wasn’t.
He swirled the vodka in his glass, listening to the chinking of the ice cubes, breathing in, trying to catch the scent of Yoongi’s cologne, trying to grasp into something that simply wasn’t there.
Hasn’t been there for a long time.
He brought the glass to his weather-cracked lips and let the bitter fluid sit in his mouth a while before swallowing. He closed his eyes as it burnt his throat and set his chest on fire, but then he remembered the time he saw him with some random male and compared to that, Vodka felt like sipping on lukewarm milk with honey in it.
This loneliness was a vice to his heart, squeezing it with just enough pressure to be a constant pain. It killed him every day just a little bit more. He cried slowly, with tears dripping down his temples and the soft hum of his own voice echoing throughout the room.
He was alive and he existed, but why was it so hard to breathe?
The rest of the city could be seen from his window, it looked like someone had taken a handful of glitter and thrown it as far as the eye could see. But he was drifting farther and farther away as teardrops kept rolling down his cheeks. They fell into his parted lips and stuck to his eyelashes. He could taste them, rolling down his parched throat. He was alone.
Everyone has different coping mechanisms, Jimin tried to force himself to believe that alcohol was his, but that was lies.
It was Yoongi, who was his coping mechanism, he coped by spending every night with him, he helped to take all his pain away even if he was causing it at the same time.
But he helped Jimin in a way no one understood.
[ 2 Months Ago ]
I love you ‘ s. What an unexpected match for the flaming argument. Three trashed and dirty words that means nothing nowadays, yet not that day and not in that room between two people.
Because sometimes things are just too much.
“Why can’t you just stay for once?!” Jimin yelled pulling the black t-shirt over his head with the last bits of dignity he has left.
“For the smart person that people call you, you sure say stupid shit” Yoongi scoffed “Haven’t you realized something, people like me, we don’t stay”.
Jimin’s laughter was like a gunshot, loud and unexpected. “Your type? And what is exactly that, Yoongi?” the coldness and oh so bitter irony made Yoongi stiffen “An asshole who craves the vulnerability to fulfill his meaningless life? Someone who plays others until they finally makes their heart bleed and eyes sting? A coward who makes others fall in love with him?” Jimin was so close to crying, so close to having a mental breakdown.
“I never asked you to love me” Yoongi muttered, trying to conceal all of his emotions.
“But you did!” Jimin yelled incredulously. “Every single time you came back, every single time you smiled and held my hand a little too hard, every single time you left the marks on my skin that held bigger galaxies than the universe itself. You made me fall in love you”
“Then stop loving me” the phrase from Yoongi’s lips slipped so easily and monotonously like it was a line he memorized in one of the books for his next assignment.
“I can’t! Not as long as you coming back!” Jimin shouted, heart breaking from the lack of emotions from the person in front of him. He rested his head in his hands “I fucking can’t”.
The air seemed to stiffen and Yoongi looked down at Jimin between turning around and walking towards the door.
“Then I’ll make sure I won’t come back”.
[Present. Voice Mail. 4:15 a.m.]
// I don't blame you when the sun is out, but when the night becomes too much to bare with I can't help it. I blame you for the way your name still chokes me. I blame you for the memories of your lips that left invisible patterns on my skin that still feels like poison in my veins.
How come I meant nothing to you and you meant everything to me?
It's not fair!
Why are you still gone.