chapter twenty-six ;; i'm scared
jeongguk's perspective
°☆.。.:*・°☆

The warm car finally neared the cliff, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if we kept going at full speed. It's not a suicidal thought. I have no desire to find out for myself what it would feel like. It's merely my mind going back off into a world that most would find dark and daunting. Out of exhaustion and displeasing thoughts for my own good, I rest the side of my head onto my hand that's propped up by my elbow. The car radio remained off, putting a fog of silence across Taehyung and I.

Taehyung's hand loosely gripped the steering wheel, making me feel a bit uneasy. He turns the wheel slightly, and the car parks in a makeshift spot facing the lapping ocean. Taehyung grabs onto the parking break to put the car in park, and none of us move at first, finding that moving would ruin the comfortableness of the moment.

Taehyung's eyes do trail over to me after another few moments, looking with eyes so soft and hesitant, like he was having a battle behind the gleaming orbs. I had no idea if he had plans to move or to just stay here in the car that continued to cast warmth across mountains of people. It made my mind-boggle, how only two hours before we were happy over Taehyung's victory and hanging off of each other. Now, there was a set distance as the atmosphere felt noticeably more and more grim the more time continued through the infamous silence which always seemed to hang.

Taehyung had brought me to a cliff, a high placed cliff with a deadly bottom of jagged rocks. It scared me. I thought of how he must've found this place and why he'd go here. There was no way to hide the depressing vibe emitting from the ocean spray crashing down below. A few hundred meters are the only thing keeping from life and death. It seemed like a tempting fate, maybe. This was not a family place to bring children, meaning that Taehyung must've found it on his own, and for some reason, that made me shift in my seat, awaiting words to be spoken.

"This is the cliff I used to go to everyday after my family died and I was still in the orphanage..." Taehyung's voice is barely over the heater's whoosh while staring out into the darkened sky, "I'd sneak out after dark and come here, sit on those rocks over there." His hand lifts up, a coarse finger pointing at a set of smooth stones even more elevated off of the ground, "I thought about jumping for the longest time, and, for a while, it sounded like the best option..." His voice threatens to crumble, "until I reminded myself of something." Taehyug's fingers begin to run across the steering wheel in deep thought.

"Wha-What is it?" My voice was shaky and similar to his, almost as shaky as the hands I concealed in between my legs. They were now frozen with the rest of my face due to the car shutting off on its own.

He doesn't look over at me, but I don't know if I really want him to, "That there must've been some reason as to why I, Kim Taehyung, was left to stay on this planet while the ones I loved most were gone, stripped away from me," I allow the small tears to roll down his face, my own face daring to dampen as well, "and I convinced myself that I had a purpose." He takes in a deep breath, flexing out his fingers before gripping the steering wheel tightly once more, leaning forward placing his forehead onto the leather, "That purpose was for me to help another, someone that was undeniably more deserving of help than I ever was," a deep inhale sounded from him, "and I feel, deep down in my gut, that you're the person. You're the one that deserves to be helped, more so than I. You're- You're the reason why I'm still here. My mind is strong in the idea of 'everything happens for a reason', no matter how cliche it sounds."

I stay seated. It was a scary thought to disrupt Taehyung's fleeting thoughts.. It was intimate, leaving me dazed at the tone of his voice and the dark, twisted meaning behind the words sounding so pretty and lethal, but after Taehyung does nothing more to speak again, I take that it's my turn to speak instead, "My mom," it was a large leap for me into the unknown, but I was going to take it, "she died of cancer when I was fifteen." Taehyung's view continues to be trained on the steering wheel, lips pursed in deep thought, "When she died, my whole world died. Everything dried out of color and wonder and want...It was painful to watch everything change with such a rippled effect.

First, father began to drink alcohol, an elixir that makes people tell the truth, do things that they wouldn't do with a sober mind. He was a raging drunk with a book of truth in his hands. He no longer had to pretend and love me falsely. His words were slurred and hateful, and his actions were no better, if not worse. I'm a fag. I'm a disgrace for a son. I'm the reason why my mom died, she wanted to get away from me.

That's what father told me, and it's...it's sad to say I believe him. He said them so many times, so many fucking times, so of course they're true, right? A- A br-oken liquor bottle in his hand r-really brought hell down one unsuspecting night of shouts and- and cries made in terrorized pain. It hurt so fucking bad. The pain, I- I thought I was going to die that night. I really did. There was so much blood, Tae. It was so-" I cried with shaking shoulders and knew it was impossible to continue. My airways were closing too tightly, and a fetal position in the seat took hold, but I tried my best to push back drowning memories,

"A family of three souls were pulled apart: one dead, another damaged, the other mangled." I spoke my words in a whisper, cracking and breaking off with shimmering eyes hidden behind tightened eyelids that accompanied a contorted face. Taehyung was now staring over at me with saddened eyes reminding me of a dog's, dilated and wide.

"Jeongguk, you- Those words he said weren't true." Taehyung was so desperate to reassure me, looking with an unreadable expression screaming solemn words of silence trapped behind a beautiful mouth, "Alcohol is not a liquid of truth, it's a liquid of lies for a troubled heart." I listened closely, although I didn't show any signs of it, "You...You're not a disgrace, and what your father said wasn't true. What he did was fucking sick. He's a twisted man that doesn't deserve a son like you, doesn't deserve the time you used to spend together."

"But he's the one paying my bills." A sad laugh passes my lips, a sound of a mangled soul too afraid to accept help. It was a gamble to trust, a gamble that I never played.

"Then live with me!" He shouts, words animated but forlorn, "Let me take you home with me. Let me be the one to hold you in my bed. Leave that disaster of a man behind, and spend your time with me. Let me-" a sniff comes from his side of the car, "Let me kiss you under my roof."

"I- I don't know." A loss of words, that's what I was currently at.

It sounded so persuasive- like heaven -but it seemed too big of a burden. People may see me leaving and entering his house on my own, then Taehyung really couldn't conceal what we may be. But the way he said the last sentence almost brought me to tears once more, sounding so desperate and scared to allow the words to pass his lips.

"Jeongguk," Taehyung calls my name, so I listen and glance over at him for the time being, "what...what are we?" I looked away at the question, not knowing how to answer.

All this time, I thought that my mind only desired to be with the one sitting next to me. I'd conjured up fantasies of us together, but now that I was put on the spot like this, I didn't know what to say, how to respond. My whole being was helpless under his awaiting gaze wanting to know so badly, lips slightly parted.

Of course, being with Taehyung sounded great in my head, but as I uncomfortably shift around in the plush car seat that my body occupied, I was second guessing everything. I wasn't good enough. I couldn't support him or myself. The idea of putting my trust and whole self into a relationship seemed daunting, even if it was someone like Taehyung.

Jimin was just the same way before everything crumbled; he became careless, to the point of him physically hurting me. Same thing goes for father, the kind and caring person I called dad willingly disappeared with my adoring mother that never leaves my mind. Taehyung, the one who made my chest knot with admiration and cries could do exactly the same thing, snap with a blink of an eye, turning the soul m we shared for a relationship blank and dry.

"We're a pair of humans." Is all I can make myself say, all that I can come up with for the time being at my own expense of dignity and a moral compass. I feel most human now. I feel the instinctual weakness and fear coming from the bones outwards.

He lightly sighs, letting his head fall back onto the seat he currently slouched in, seatbelt taken off just like mine while starlights and moonbeams seeped through the windows. It felt like complete deja vu, "Why can't you just...trust me?"

I don't dare to look over at Taehyung, instead looking straight ahead at the ocean which crashed into waves down below. Only a long walk would bring me to it. A long walk down a short cliff for a pier with freezing water underneath could kill all, "Because I'm...I'm scared that you'll lie someday against your current promises."

"Everyone has lied!" Taehyung shouts, abruptly sitting up and leaning over to get a look of my hurt face I hide by looking in the other direction. I was in no mood for being dictated this very moment, "You've said so yourself! Pretending is lying, Jeon Jeongguk, you thanked me for doing it."

"I know what I said and did, but I also know that I'm a hypocrite that contradicts my own thoughts and says false statements just to sound smart- just to sound right!" I shout with a prominent cry, still not meeting his eyes, "And I also know that you can become a different person so- so easily and I- I don't know." Heads fall into hands, letting out heavy breaths of confusion and deep thought.

"Of course you don't know. You know all of the wrong things. You know how to speak, but you don't know how to use words. You know how to write, but you don't know how to use skill. You know how to look so beautiful, but you don't know that other people admire it. You know how to control my thoughts and my life with a flick of your eyes, but you don't realize the effect you have on me!" His hands connect with the steering wheel for a forceful impact that makes me rivet.

"You haven't even ended things with Seoyun!" I scream at him in pain, "The cheerleader that always shouts your name the loudest, the one that you'd always sneak around with. I'm not stupid, Tae!" I fight back, not listening to his words that were directing all of my thoughts to saying yes and get rid of the tight tension that could suffocate all.

"But you're wrong." Taehyung reverts with pleading eyes, "I did end things with Seoyun, you have to believe me on that. What you saw last week- that was it. I promise-" He became more of a beggar than a teller with each passing word.

"It was after you kissed me. It was after you took me out on a date. It was after you practically promised a relationship. You could do the same thing in a million different ways at a million different times, impacting my life, impacting me for who I am and what I stand for. I will not allow you to control my feelings like that. I will not allow you to dictate my life, because goddamnit, you scare me down to the core!" My chest jolts up and down with pain, a mental pain that reaches my helpless soul with its fat hands that grip tightly, and my eyes meet with the elder's, "I'm utterly petrified of you and what you can become, what you can do to me. I've seen too many people change to think you might not do the same."

Taehyung bites his lower lip in thought, eyes shimmering with salty dew just like mine, my own bulldozing down my cheeks and leaving defined trails of soddened flesh, "Please, don't be scared of me...Please, allow me to care for you-"

"How can I trust you when you could be lying to yourself, convinced by your own words of infamy that hold fantasies and glory, just like the songs about California?" I knew I was being difficult. But the banging in the back of my head screaming 'useless' at myself were hard to silence.

"Fuck it." I don't think I was meant to hear, "I'm not asking you to trust me anymore...I'm asking you to take a chance." He whispers, looking down and holding onto the steering wheel set in front of him. Taehyung's knuckles were turning white with the grip he held, "Yes, we're humans, and humans make mistakes, but we also make beautiful discoveries. Humans can be pure, just like you. Humans can be undeniably dark and threatening, but that's not who I am. That's not who I desire to be, and I will fear my own self if I ever hurt a hair on your head or a tinge of your soul." Taehyung's voice was low, articulate, intended, helpless, all of the above, "The last thing I want to do is hurt a human as broken and pure as you, Jeongguk..."

I slowly lean over and wrap my thin arm covered in red dots around his back, placing a soft kiss onto his unsuspecting cheek that's soddened. The screams were being silenced the longer I held my nose faint against his neck and breathed in the boyish cologne, the tightness of my throat slowly relieving so I could finally breathe. I matched my breath with his easily in that moment, and I don't think I could hold back the true desire anymore.

"I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that my essence is undeniably infatuated with yours..." My ghostly voice runs across his neck, and I feel him slightly shiver under the soft touch, "I would be undeniably stupid for saying no...and I don't want to be a stupid person anymore."

Lips softly yet urgently meet, my back slowly and firmly meeting with the seat as Taehyung gracefully climbs over the console with practice. Two bodies now occupy my seat as arms cling and grasp. Fingers calmly run through Taehyung's hair obtaining the fading green highlights that I'd miss, and I felt myself relax into the touch becoming less and less urgent by the second, finally quenched with the move of two teenager's lips.

I was still confused out of my wits, but right now, I was okay with what I'd chosen, even though it made my heart quiver and knees weak. As I lick openly into Taehyung's mouth and whimper loudly against him, the elder runs his hand gently across my clothed stomach.

Lemonade: I finally decided that it's my favorite flavor.

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i don't even- i lost my happy happy fluff fluff streak soz everyone

song -- I Exist I Exist I Exist by Flatsound