Chapter Text
saturday, 2am
the night is calm.
at 2am, light spills from the bedroom window in an uncomfortable fashion that makes seokjin think of clammy limbs spreading all over the wooden carpet, white and yellow shiny arms flooding the floor with twisted fingers.
while filling in two cases with all of his stuff, taking his time with a particular mario's figure (not his favorite one, but one he treasures anyway), it’s impossible not to notice how easy it is to silently collect his things, take his socks out of the drawer and trade his own olive pair for yoongi's black with white pretty dots one, wrapping his shoes on black plastic bags and folding his lots and lots of ugly sweaters.
a calm song hums lowly on the speakers, some indie shit taehyung found on internet and told seokjin hyung, this really reminds me of you, so soft and so kind-hearted. it's called "rawnald gregory erickson the second", and it never fails on making seokjin smile for 2 minutes and 54 seconds when he tries some awkward dance steps and fails miserably on being respectable while doing so, even if the name of the album is "starfucker" and, really, he should have known better.
it should be hard.
there is this spot on the ground right where yoongi uses to sit with seokjin on the floor when it's past midnight and they're both tired and home, chamomile tea mugs in hands and sleep sticking to their eyelashes. seokjin stands there thinking for a little while. on these nights, they lean on the wall, side by side, to listen to the sounds of the city. then, sluggishly, calmly and painfully, yoongi leans his head to seokjin's shoulder and leaves it there without a word, and they breath.
they just breath. slowly, heavily. yoongi smells like the moment after a summer downpour.
you see, seokjin graduated three days ago. he never thought he would not, to be honest, but things are never as easy as they seem to be when talking about life, and he always takes this into consideration to build expectations. somehow it takes him to namjoon on table for breakfast, telling them do not let life disillusion you, guys over scrambled eggs, and sometimes he really thinks namjoon should listen more to his own advices. but he did it anyway, the graduation thing, and he gently places his cap on top of a pair of blue ripped jeans, the ones jungkook laughs at every single time (and it still gets seokjin out of guard, how even jungkook’s laughter carries a hint of something beautiful and wrong in its tone).
he sits down for a bit, not on his own bed, but on yoongi's. it smells just like him.
lights out, words gone, the door is closed and there's something pure about packing only under the lights that come from outside, about wandering around the bedroom in the dark. somewhere to his left, at some rooms of distance, jimin snores gently against a flowery pillowcase, legs entangled to taehyung’s ones beneath worn-out pink sheets that are too small for the both of them. some rooms to his right, he can almost listen to the song on jungkook's earphones, always so troubled, always so loud.
he lays down for a second. yoongi's sheets are soft under his fingers.
it should be hard, he thinks. it should be heartbreaking, but it feels just natural. some nights, nights like this one (when half of the house is asleep and half of the house is at the studio), seokjin has his own share of naps on yoongi's bed too, and for that he smiles.
he thinks:
there’s no denying the selfishness of leaving. no. but he has come to terms with his own humanity and all of the flaws that it implies a long time ago. so, you see, occasionally seokjin is really a selfish person, with a lot of terrible feelings.
and there's no problem on being like everybody else. seokjin is just real, just one more twisted thing. so he knows that sometimes you hurt people (and people hurt you, good people even), and that that's the thing about life that most people do not get. sometimes someone screws everything up. sometimes this one is you. and that's fine.
do not get him wrong, he is not a heartless little shit and he does not think that being a deliberate jerk is a good thing. he's only saying that it's okay making mistakes, being in the wrong once in awhile. and, please, understand, he has also got his share of reasons not to stay anymore, and he has got his share of reasons to maybe make these boys cry for a week or two, if he thinks it's for the best, and then let them move on, because that's just the way life works.
that's not so hard.
he steals one of yoongi's bath bombs, one from the orange heart-shaped box, and leaves behind the konkuk university red t-shirt, the one taehyung wears to sleep at least once a week. speaking of leaving things behind, he thought about it really carefully during the day, and, for good measure, he's not leaving a note, not even a goodbye. there's no reason behind it but his lack of capacity to collect the guts to give them his farewell, he's not good at it, and that's the same reason why he sneaks in the middle of the night like a cheap burglar.
it's not hard.
and seokjin is not ashamed of his own cowardice, he's okay with himself. if there's any regret in what he does, and he is mature enough to assume the outcomes of his decision, the fact that he knows there's no going back is one of them. they won't forgive him, and that's not what he's asking for. actually, he doesn't even know what is it he's asking for. but, if you come to think of it, really really think of it, isn't he the one who's losing the most?
he zips his bags up. turns off the music. a voice that sounds suspiciously like hoseok's asks something on the lines of aren't you forgetting anything?, so he looks at everything around him: the two beds of the bedroom are still pushed together. the window is open and he's able to hear the cars outside just fine. the rest of the bedroom screams yoongi all over the place, notebooks, speakers, bath bombs, headphones, kumamons, ridiculous pj's and all this shit that makes yoongi this little fucked up thing he is, and the only whisper of seokjin on the environment is the small mario's figure that he left on yoongi's pillow. so at 2am, he thinks that no, he's not forgetting anything. he thinks.
(sometimes he wishes he could put jungkook's laugh on a bottle, or taehyung's songs. or jimin's snores, hoseok's voice, namjoon's advices.
or yoongi's smell. definitely yoongi's smell)
his lips go still. perfectly so. the patterns on the carpet move gently and he thinks that maybe, maybe he is forgetting something.
it's 2am, and seokjin sends a message.
seokjin leaves at 2am of a saturday, when half of the house sleeps and half of the house works at the studio. when he waits for a cab with his bags on the sidewalk, he thinks it should be hard.
then he sobs loudly against the palms of his hands, sitting on the curb.
it should be hard.
it is not.
from: kim seokjin
to: big hit min yoongi
have some rest
until it is.