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"What're you doing here, kid?" A boy pops up from the rubble, nearly giving Jungkook a heart attack. He jumps, hand over his chest that’s so close to bursting, staring with wide eyes.
The boy continues. "Kid?"
"Oh," Jungkook starts, blinking furiously. Maybe something's still stuck on his lids after the recent bombing. "Yeah. Um. Hiding? Surviving." That's why they call them survivors, after all.
The boy cracks a smile, as crooked as it is sure. "They don't come here, don't worry," he comforts, and sounds genuine, but nobody has trust these days.
Jungkook can’t control his mouth, eyes narrowed, "And how should I know that you're not bitten and just luring me to my death, ink hair?"
"Ink hair," the boy echoes, leaping from the debris - there's a unique grace - and landing in front of Jungkook, ringing his grimy hands. "Intriguing. Should you be gold eyes then?"
Jungkook scowls.
"I'm not bitten." The boy smirks. "You can check, if you'd like."
The way red rushes up to Jungkook's face makes the boy chuckle, a beautiful sound like the sunshine that Jungkook hasn't seem break through the darkness in a long time, not so fitting to his cheeky kind of speech.
"Shy gold eyes," the boy murmurs, staring into Jungkook’s flecked irises deeply, too intimately. "Pretty. What's your name?"
"Names are dangerous things."
"Names are beautiful things."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"And fact."
"Why should I give you mine, then?"
"Survivors have to stick together don't we?" He laughs again. "Not much time left for any of us, gold eyes."
Jungkook takes hesitation. "Jeon Jungkook."
The boy takes none. "Park Jimin."
Jimin shuffles along Jungkook's side like a magnet to metal, scoots in parallel to him as Jungkook turns on the stuttering engine. "You old enough for this?"
"What do I look, twelve?"
"I wouldn't know, would I?" Jimin's eyes sparkle as he buckles his seatbelt, holed up but working. This arrangement is both unspoken and spoken, because survivors have to stick together. "Just met you."
Jungkook rolls his eyes, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. "My age is one thing I know about myself."
Jimin leans forward in his seat, staring at nothingness, because that's all there is to behold out there. "You know your name."
"Barely that too."
Jimin throws his head back in chortles. He laughs a lot, and it could be too much for some people at times like this. "Jeon Jungkook," he says softly, a test run or something along that outline, "Jeon Jungkook."
Names are dangerous things. Names are beautiful things.
Alliances are formed only when necessary, and seldom so, because nobody has trust these days.
It's a dreary effect of the wastelands, the grey landscapes that are rough and ragged with the bombings and the way they stagger across the floor, breaking off stone by stone with their journey. The monochrome of the pits and juts of the ground makes people anxious, because it seems too barren and open for them to not be vulnerable.
People build walls. They're good at it.
Sometimes big alliances happen. It's not common, but Jungkook's seen them. Survivors wander around until they meet each other, and then the pairs meet each other, and then the quads meet each other, and then it's a whole group. They sit around little tin cans and match-made fires, sharing their stories. They migrate with one another, walk around, sometimes see the crumples of paper or scribbles on the rocks reading 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, mom' - that type of thing - but those are nothing special.
They never leave each other, a bit like a pack of wolves or a murder of crows - those still circle around, lurking underground and in the dullness of the air. They never get bitten, but they're rogue enough already.
Jungkook's never been in a big alliance, but he had an ally once, sometime he can't count back to but something that he can always think back to. It was a boy whom Jungkook had met hiding behind one of the rotting willows, with a crafty look to his artisan eyes, a quickness to his limbs. Quick as he'd been, he'd never been quick enough.
Jungkook misses him, sometimes. Losses hurt like fire, burning in bone marrow.
Jimin's a small alliance, a small ally. "You have the pistol?"
"In the Rover."
"Get it. They're coming. Fast."
The wolves come out at night, and they are never bitten. They are quick.
"I know. Bombing's next."
"I'll go out. Stop with that face, you know that I owe you one for the last bombing."
Jungkook wonders if Jimin's ever lost anyone before, because it looks like a nightmare's replaying on his face when Jungkook pulls his lips away and turns around to the sky, pistol twirling in his hand.
Jungkook is quick.
The stars glint like fireflies, like something's up in the sky waiting for everyone. The stars are a solace, because when the stars come out, they don't come out to play. The world's a kitten-and-mouse game in this way, of twisted sorts.
Not like Jungkook's ever seen a kitten or a mouse in his lifetime. His father had said that he had owned one before, back in the good times, when they'd sat on the grass at stared up at the sky, eyes gaping like the sun, shining like twin moons.
"I used to watch the stars with my father when I was younger." Jungkook says, and Jimin shifts.
They don't talk about family - taboo. It brings back bad memories and images that resurface from a dark childhood tainted by wastelands and loss. Family's too easy to lose at this time of the world.
But there is a smile on Jimin's face. "I watched with my brother. He was younger, so he always had so many questions. About stars, planets, comets, novas.. Loved it." He pauses. "Could've been an astronomer."
Jungkook nods, and it sinks in like the ground around his own mother.
The past is where fools let themselves be lost.
"When’d you lose your brother?”
“He was ten. I was twelve. Shot, not bitten.” Bitten is the most painful to see, because the dawn takes a new light in the morning seeing them a part of the mass, the monstrous crowd. “Better for him. He’s better off. You?”
“I was six. All of my family.”
“You must’ve been pretty lost.”
“I liked stars the best." Jungkook drums his fingertips against the metal of the Rover. They won't come now; the dangerous times haven't arrived yet; the stars protect them. "Back then, I wanted to find a home on the best star."
Jimin laughs his laugh, as sweet as the constellations that drink off of his skin - what a feast it must be. "Which was that?" He asks with the rarest traces of sugar left on old, broken coffee mugs.
Jungkook wonders what coffee tastes like, because it looks sweet, but the stories say that it's not.
The stories say lengths about the world. They're liked.
Jungkook hums, stories beginning to unfold in his head, "North Star. I could use it to navigate, so I thought that maybe I'd be able to find my family. Maybe they wouldn't find me in the stars. It seemed so.. safe."
"I'll take you to the stars."
"Maybe you already have."
Jimin laughs. "But neither of us are safe, gold eyes."
"We can pretend."
Jungkook wakes up in the backseat of the Rover, the mangy leather sticky beneath the dirt and blood on his shirt. Jimin’s curled up against him, locks falling across his forehead, just shy of the darkness of the flashes fluttering in his sleep, chest rising up-down-up-down.
Make-up, wasn't it? The stories call it make-up, but it is a foolish thing, because Jungkook knows that Jimin does not have any flaws to correct.
Jungkook reaches out to a cheekbone, to a flitting lash, to that spot of skin underneath where Jimin’s hair ends near his ear. The sound is soft when he murmurs, sleep teetering at his unraveling ends, "Jimin."
Jimin’s lashes flash open like gunfire through the air on the dangerous days, a million times faster than the slow engine of their Rover - he’s never been a deep sleeper after all, because he can’t afford that.
He stares up at Jungkook - not a footprint of drowsiness, but a whole pathway of alarm - and Jungkook thinks that he should’ve called Jimin ‘ brown eyes ’ at the beginning, because Jimin’s irises are the richest shade of chocolate, saturated with too much beauty for Jungkook to take in. He’s never appreciated Jimin’s eyes enough.
Jungkook smiles, and it’s not a bad one, he promises to himself. “Hey, ink hair.”
Jimin’s lips quirk at the nickname - far more of an endearment by now - and the richness of his eyes increases by tenfold. "Hey, gold.." Eyes, that’s what Jimin’s surpposed to say, but his smile is gone and he’s saying, "Red."
Jungkook freezes.
Jimin nearly sits up, weight held on one elbow as he runs his hand down Jungkook’s face. “Jungkook, why are your eyes red?” He whispers, and he sounds afraid, not of Jungkook, but what it means.
Jungkook's afraid too.
Jimin's fingers cradle Jungkook's face, and they’re warm, like Jimin, and small, like Jimin, and strong, like Jimin. Jungkook knows a guy who’d had his whole hand blown off in the bombing years back. Small ally, dangerous times. Survivors, like Jimin.
"Jungkook, talk to me."
Jungkook swallows thick, deep. "I never said I love you, did I?"
"Jungkook.”
“You’re not safe here."
Jungkook’s fully sitting up, Jimin hanging half on his lap, hands shaking as Jungkook presses the pistol into them.
“Nobody’s safe, Jimin.”
Jimin shakes his head like it can stop the axis of the Earth.
Jungkook's not a ticking time bomb; he’s just dangerous.
Jimin keeps the pistol in one hand and lets the other hover just over the skin on Jungkook’s ribs, but doesn't let it don’t touch. Bitten, infectious. “You - you told me you were okay, Jungkook." Jungkook tries not to linger over how the tears fall only as Jimin says his name, because names are dangerous things. “You said they didn’t get to you.”
Some pictures flash by, of Jimin and the crowd, of Jimin being grabbed, of taking on something, of holding their pistol, of being grabbed and gripped by something. Bandaged up, the stagger back to their Rover, okay. Something along the outlines of that.
Jungkook wraps Jimin’s fingers around the handle, engulfing Jimin's left with his own clammy, cold one. Jungkook guides Jimin's hand to lead the pistol to Jungkook's temple, metal cold, and he can’t promise that his smile’s not bad his time, so he looks into Jimin’s eyes. "Survive for me, ink hair, North Star. Survive, Jimin."
Jimin nods.
"I love you more than the stars."
Jimin pulls the trigger.
Family's too easy to lose at this time of the world.