This ended up being a lot more angsty than I'd originally intended... but I actually like where it ended up going more than I liked how I'd originally thought it would end up.  Hopefully you enjoy... leave a comment or request! 

He knows better than to wander far from the dorm or the company building alone, he knows the rules probably better than anyone, especially when it’s dark and the weather is less than favorable.  The tension across his shoulders an easy symbol of the day he’s had; worry and doubt weaving heavy across the contracted muscles. He knows there will be a lecture long and boring and loud enough to leave his ears ringing and his cheeks flushed red at the disappointment that will be slapped there by words he still can’t ignore as easily as the others. It’s enough to put a slight skip of hesitation in every step, but it’s not enough to silence the thoughts pounding out an unrelenting rhythm against the inside of his skull.

So he roams the night streets alone, hands tucked deep into the pockets of his drenched sweatshirt, toes frozen inside the soaked sneakers as he sloshes through another puddle.  He wanders aimlessly attempting to get lost within the cover of darkness as he continues winding through the city roads at random, his thoughts a maze of misdirection he tries to navigate without a map. 

Wet bangs hang across his forehead, plastered against his temples obscuring most of his face and hiding the traces of tears lingering in the corners of his eyes.  All the thoughts he tries to halt seem to leak further towards the front of his mind, blinding him for scattered moments as he forgets and remembers how to breathe in a repeating cycle as his chest aches beneath ribcage. Something akin to doubt and worry is bubbling in the pit of his stomach, his lunch threatening to come up the more his mind strays into all the thoughts he knows better than to dwell on. 

He can see pictures in his mind, seconds smashed together to create this sort of moving story in the back of his mind as it slowly filters forward.  All the memories that when added up together equal the entirety of his relationship with Yoongi.  He can nearly see the emotions skimming the surface of existence as they dance across Yoongi’s face, lighting up the corners of his eyes for moments before slipping back behind a black wall. 

There are memories of warmth and cold and laughter and sadness.  Ups and downs and lefts and rights and ins and outs and complete circles that leave Jimin out of breath and grasping at strings of hope, throat clogged with questions he suffocates on.  A picture of Yoongi sits in his mind, the dead center point of everything. Yoongi is there, one hand out and one hand held behind his back, eyes bright with laughter but mouth curled down in a frown, cheeks flushed red and shoulders pulled up with tension.  The older boy’s figure within his mind creates this almost complete picture of confusion and contradiction, of equal parts acceptance and denial. 

Everything with Yoongi is so much one-sided give and one-sided take, which leaves Jimin standing in a corner with nothing left to call his own.  He feels locked up inside a box of grey, the color of complete neutrality, with no escape in sight. Lost within the shadows of Yoongi, he sits there waiting for the older boy to turn and look at him.  But Yoongi stares at the world with mostly closed eyes, blinders strapped to his temples as he leaps forward never looking to his side, never looking over his shoulder.  And those are all the spaces that Jimin gets lost in, all the in-betweens that Yoongi forgets about.  So the younger boy is left in the shadows, playing a waiting game that’s long since stopped being any fun.

And as time slips forward there is this giant pile of what ifs that only continues to gain height in the back of Jimin’s mind, everyday it seems like he is throwing more onto the pile and trying to lock them away. Building this wall and attempting to hide them from the forefront of his mind.  Only taking them out when he is completely alone and attempting to sort through all the things he knows better than to even think about.  All the things that should stay locked away and hidden.  But they are always there leaving a lingering doubt in the recesses of his mind, curling their way around his heart and squeezing the life out of him when he leaves them unattended.

But he is curious by nature, something he has yet to shaken away as he's begun to shed all the pieces of adolescence away.  And he just can’t shake off the feeling of inadequacy, in all aspects of his life, the feeling of not quite being enough weighs heavy.  It’s the reason behind the longer hours he spends in the dance studio until his legs give out, the more time he spends curled in the corner of the studio running through scales until his throat is raw.  Inadequacy has always been his driving motivation, more of an asset than anything else. At least until now, now it’s just this vicious cloud of dense smoke choking the light and hope from everything he wishes to call his own.

It isn’t often he is found without a smile, eyes curved into crescents and mouth curled into an almost dopey expression.  Maybe there is more effort than normal behind some of his smiles, laughter a little rough and raw and forced around the edges from time to time, but it isn’t often that he’s forced to choke back sobs threatening to physically rip their way out of his throat.  While sadness comes to them all in fleeting bouts of homesickness and exhaustion or injury, there is something vastly different about this lingering ache of sadness he can’t escape. It sticks to all the corners of him, melting