((A/N: Holy you have no idea how exhausted writing this made me like I legit got so confused omfg

Urgh my head hurts

The things I do for you guys

Urgh

Lol anyways enjoy))

            “Why are you following me?” My voice was barely above a whisper, but in the late-night silence, I was pretty sure he could hear me.

            He didn’t answer, and instead I found myself joined by an unwanted companion, our hands knocking together in the process.

            I sighed. “Glad you were willing to make your presence known instead of trailing behind me like a stalker.”

            “I’m surprised you’re even capable of lighthearted sarcasm.” It’s the first thing he’s said since I started walking home, and I’m not surprised it’s about something irrelevant. I had to admit, the guy was smarter than I’d thought he was. Better at keeping secrets.

            “Somewhat.” I had nothing else to say.

            Apparently, neither did he, so for a few moments we walked in silence, our breathing and the light sound of our footsteps filling the air.

            Eventually, I couldn’t bear the silence anymore, which was a first, and spoke up. “Isn’t someone going to worry about you?”

            I knew that was not true. Call me cruel, but seeing as he was being incredibly resistant, I wanted to experiment with his boundaries, see how far I could go before crossing the line.

            And once I did that, I would be able to completely, abruptly, absolutely destroy him. And then I could go back to how it was before, alone, peaceful, walls unbreached.

            “I know you know about my past,” he said quietly. For the first time tonight, I glanced his way. His expression was unreadable – or maybe it was just the angle. “And I know you think you can use that to experiment with my limits. So, for your sake, I’m just going to pretend that affected me, okay?”

            I halted in my tracks, anger and fear surging through me.

            He was much better at this game than I’d thought he was. Maybe better than me. Never in my conscious life had anyone ever spoken to me patronizingly, much less in a way that rendered me absolutely speechless. And never had anyone come even close to making me feel this helplessly furious.

            Two weeks since this had all started, and he’d already read all of me. He’d figured out my trigger before I did. I realized, then, that I had been completely, absolutely, utterly wrong.

            I didn’t have the upper hand here. I never had.

            For the first time in forever, I felt absolutely transparent.

            “How did you find out?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know how he did it, how he had someone’s soul in a layout within moments of meeting them all while maintaining that naïve façade.

            The horrible and amazing things he could do with that kind of ability terrified me.

            “I could tell you,” he said, in a quiet, almost harmless way. “And you only need to do one little thing.”

            “And what’s that?” I resumed walking, this time with a little less confidence in my steps.

            Jimin stopped beside me, grabbing my arm and forcing me to cease walking as well. I met his eyes, and found a deadpan stare much like the one I forced on everyone else contained within them. But his look was different – softer, kinder, more trustworthy. And more trusting as well.

            We came from similar paths, but while I’d pushed everyone away, he’d pulled them closer.

            “Let me stay the night,” he said quietly.

--

            I sat in the corner and waited for Jungkook to come back with the sleeping bag, mulling over our conversation.

            The fear I’d seen in his eyes, beneath all that anger – that was for real. He thought I was some mastermind hiding underneath a naïve façade, quietly withholding enough manipulation power to do both terrible and great things.

            I buried my head in my hands. Why was it that, whenever I wanted to help someone, I always ended up making them afraid of me?

            It was always the pride. That constant need to impress, to show that I was better than them in whatever they were skilled at, that had haunted me since I’d been conscious.

            I was no mastermind. I was a coward ruled by fear, making wild guesses about people by their demeanour and acting so confident that they actually believed what I said about them. It was clear Jungkook had never been chided, or put down, or insulted by anyone his entire life. He had a certain way of carrying himself – egoistic, proud, yes, but also unsure.

            He pretended to be strong, but he was weak. That was something in common between the two of us.

            I sighed, rubbing my eyes. When had this become so complicated?

            “It’s a little bit dusty.” Jungkook’s voice broke me out of my thoughts, and I looked up to see him crouched before me, laying a pale blue sleeping bag on the floor.

            I smiled gratefully. At first, I hadn’t thought he would agree to my proposal, but apparently he had a lot more sympathy in him than he let on. Nonetheless, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to sleep on a dusty mattress stuffed in the corner of my tiny apartment again tonight. “It’s alright.”

            He straightened up, locking eyes with me for a second before looking away. “Will you stop doing that?”

            “Doing what?” I was genuinely confused.

            “Looking at me like you know everything about me,” he snapped, sitting on his bed. “I let you stay out of pity. That’s all.”

            I raised an eyebrow. That was obviously not true. He was careful with me – something I was, unfortunately, used to – doing his best to avoid my stare. If anything, he was afraid.

            Afraid of letting someone in again. Afraid of getting hurt again.

            Afraid of me, and possibly afraid of himself as well.

            Jungkook sighed, pulling his shoes off and throwing them to the other side of the room. “There it is again. You do realize I could kick you out at any moment, right?”

            “Yes.” I tilted my head. “But you won’t.” I’d done this countless times before – made myself sound absolutely unwaveringly confident, so he would believe me.

            He scoffed, peeling his socks off and tossing them as well. “What makes you so sure?”

            I chose not to answer, instead standing up from my spot in the corner and making my way to the sleeping bag laid out on the floor next to his bed. “Why did you put it here?”

            “Why can’t I? Is there anything wrong?” He looked at me for a hesitant second before pulling his shirt off over his head. I looked away, turning red. I was never one for , even if it was only halfway.

            “Can we just stop playing games with each other? I think we’re both sick of second-guessing everything that’s said between us.” I pushed away a strand of hair that had fallen into my eyes. Taking my shoes and socks off, I put them carefully against the wall, socks tucked into shoes.

            “Why should I? I’m not the type to just give in, Jimin. I think you know that already.”

            I sighed. I knew he was going to be like this. Despite his grand, cold demeanour, he was really quite predictable. “If you’re not going to trust me, I guess I have no choice but to just blindly trust you.”

            “That’s not a very smart move,” he said bluntly, turning off the bedside lamp and plunging the room into darkness.

            “I know it isn’t,” I said quietly. “But I’m going to do it anyways. Because I do trust you, Jungkook.”

--

            I lay awake, listening to the almost maddening ticking of the clock mounted above my head. I’d never been able to sleep easily – my imagination tended to conjure up images in the dark – but tonight was worse than usual.

            I sighed, rolling over and squeezing my eyes shut. The stifling, heavy air in the room didn’t help, either. I slipped out of bed, carefully stepping over Jimin’s sleeping body, and made my way over to the window to let some air in. I opened the blinds, and lines of pale white moonlight cut across the dark room.

            It was beautiful. And it would keep my imagination from haunting me. I decided to keep it like that as I cracked the window open, breathing in the crisp night air. Outside, crickets chirped, a shrill heartbeat pulsing through the air. The sky was absolutely clear, and next to the harshly glowing moon a few stars shone.

            The first stars I’d seen since moving to the city. I leaned against the window, pressing my nose to the glass, and wished I had something to wish for.

            “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen stars in the city.” Jimin’s voice made me jump, and I turned to see him sitting up in his sleeping bag, looking at me. He wasn’t squinting – he must’ve been awake this entire time.

            “The artificial light drowns them out,” I said quietly, moving to the side as Jimin joined me at the window. “I kind of miss them.”

            “You came from the countryside?”

            “I used to live in a cottage near the beach. It was much quieter there, and there wasn’t any light pollution.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this, but I figured there would be no harm in him knowing. It was just a piece of my past, after all – another shard of the broken glass I never bothered piecing back together.

            “That sounds amazing.” Jimin’s face was lit up in slashes – his forehead, his eyes, the tip of his nose, his bottom lip. “I’ve always wanted to live like that.”

            I sighed. Sometimes, when my breathing began to be labored – not because I was ill or anything, but because I’d always felt like I was in way over my head – just taking a deep breath made me feel lighter, more carefree. Although it was just an illusion, something that lasted only a fleeting moment, it was enough for me to push through. “It gets lonely. Not because there are no people around, but… it’s more of a place to settle down in rather than grow up on. Do you know what I mean?”

            “I think so.” Fingertips grazed my arm. Surprised, I looked over at him, only to be met with a soft smile. “Do you live alone now?” He asked this only when I looked away.

            “No.” I was beyond used to getting this question. “Ever since my mom died, my dad’s devoted himself to work. I don’t see him much. And my sister…” I laughed bitterly. “Who knows where she is. What about you, huh? How’d you grow up?”

            His voice sounded like it was fading when he spoke, after a long pause. “It was obvious. My parents’ deaths, I mean. They always loved each other more than they loved me. They never intended to have a child-”

            “Not that part of your past,” I interrupted. “You, of all people, should be sick of others asking about your childhood and only expecting the dark parts. The parts they already know. Tell me something else.”

            I was answered with a weak chuckle. “You’re right. I guess I’ve gotten too used to it. My… childhood, the other aspects of it, weren’t too interesting, I guess. I grew up in a suburb, and there was this group of kids I hung out with… They’re my only good childhood memory. It didn’t matter what age or gender you were, whether you had a single parent or you were the oldest of too many children, whether your family acted like strangers around each other or abused each other… everyone was allowed in. There was this giant tree, and we would just hang out there. Everyone had their own spot on the tree, and no matter what time of day you went, someone was always there. We knew each other, we knew each other’s secrets… it was wonderful. And whenever someone moved away, we gave them a stone painted with everything they were to us.”

            “What happened to it?”

            He shrugged. The movement was heavy with sorrow. “One by one, everyone’s lives kind of just fell apart… And a lot of us moved away or was taken to Witness Protection. I was one of the last to leave.” He laughed again, humorlessly. “I went back to my old neighborhood once. It’s a landfill now. They cut down the tree. I remember I went back home and cried the whole night. Not because my neighborhood was gone, along with the only good part about my childhood, but because they cut down the tree. The world had destroyed the only part of my past that I still let myself reminisce about.”

            A warmth slipped into my palm, and I looked down with surprise to see that I had actually taken Jimin’s hand without even knowing I had done it. Before I could pull away, and mutter some sort of apology, he squeezed my hand and tugged it.

            “That was our secret handshake,” he explained before I could ask.

            I was about to pull away before something glimmered in the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and realized that Jimin was crying. Fresh tears, liquid moonlight, coursed steadily down his cheeks, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed thickly.

            I suddenly didn’t want to pull my hand away. It seemed as if he was using our intertwined fingers to stay upright, to keep from completely breaking down.

            “I’m okay,” he said, although I didn’t ask. He was probably used to comforting people this way.

Comforting other people because of his tears. The thought filled me with an aching sympathy.

“No you’re not,” I said, letting go of his hand so I could guide him to my bed. I could take the floor for one night. Maybe sleeping from a different angle would help the nightmares my imagination twisted out of darkness go away.

But, the moment our hands parted, Jimin collapsed.

He let out a choked sob before his knees buckled underneath him, and I caught him out of reflex before he could hit the ground. He was heavier than I thought, though, and I ended up simply slowing his fall, crumpling to my knees with him.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. His head was now buried in his hands. He was ashamed to be crying. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing his back in a way that I hoped was soothing as he slowly but surely calmed down. Outside, the crickets seemed to have stopped chirping. Like Jimin’s tears had silenced them. I looked up, and realized with a strange sadness that clouds were now covering the stars.

Some time passed as we waited in semi-silence, listening to his breathing even out.

“I can’t believe I just started crying out of nowhere,” Jimin mumbled, ashamed. “And I’m the one who’s supposed to be figuring you out.” He laughed, looking at me with damp eyes.

The realization came to me so clear and absolute than for a moment, my head spun.

That’s it.

Jimin’s one weakness. The one thing that he lived for, that he needed.

He needed to be the stronger one. The one with the advantage. He needed to have the upper hand. He needed to be one step ahead of everyone. Or, at least, he needed for everyone to think so. He needed to appear powerful, with a mind that could do powerful things, when he was really just a person making wild guesses and pretending he was confident.

I realized what his flaw was, and yet I couldn’t find it within me to use it against him like I’d intended to all along.

--

            He’d figured it out.

           I could see it in his eyes. He knew how I worked, how flawed I truly was. He knew. My mind scrambled to grasp an idea, something, anything, that would put me one step ahead.

            That’s your problem, Jimin. You always need to be one step ahead.

            I sighed, realizing then just how tired I was. Not physically, in fact, I was wide awake. I was emotionally and mentally drained. My soul was tired. I wanted to keep my word this once, when I said that I would trust Jungkook blindly.

            “Jimin.” Jungkook’s hand was on my shoulder. I looked up.

            With the moonlight softly illuminating his features, filling his eyes, carving out the planes of his face, he really was beautiful. The sight almost made me want to love him.

            “I’m okay.” Embarrassed for seemingly no reason at all, I stared at my hands, at all the lines and scars on my fingers. Even though Jungkook was so close to me, for a split second I felt alone.

            “Can you stop saying that?” He sounded exasperated. “Let’s go back to sleep. You can take my bed.”

            I shook my head. “It’s okay. I prefer sleeping on the floor.”

            “I do, too,” Jungkook chuckled. It was quiet, but it was there, raw, low, a sign of content, of humor. “Maybe we should both take the floor? You can have the sleeping bag, though.”

            “Then you’ll be cold,” I found myself protesting.

            He shrugged, standing up. “I’m used to it.”

            I stood, too, and couldn’t help but watch as Jungkook grabbed his pillow and put it beneath the window, beside the sleeping bag, the muscles of his bare torso flexing with every movement.

            He sat down, cross-legged, and patted the sleeping bag. “You coming?”

            It was the first time he’d ever used improper grammar when speaking. Dumbfounded, I stepped around him and lay down on top of the sleeping bag, my clothed body not needing any more warmth. Jungkook settled down, too, and we eventually fell into a palpable silence. Outside, the crickets had resumed their chirping, and the ticking of his clock didn’t seem too maddening anymore.

            “Do you mind if I sing?”

            “No, not at all.”

            He took a deep breath, and started singing.

            All at once, everything that had happened tonight rushed at me, and I realized with a sort of calm horror that now that he’d seen me cry, now that he’d figured out my weakness, Jeon Jungkook was fully capable of destroying me like he’d probably intended to all along.

            And then, as suddenly as I’d remembered everything, I forgot.

            As suddenly as everything had come rushing at me, everything fell away until there were only the crickets, Jungkook’s low, sweet singing, and the stars, still obscured by the clouds.

((A/N: Comment, upvote, subscribe? Or I just might not post the last segment keke XD

Jk jk- wait why are you pulling out jars of jam))