a ticket to the sun ∙ myg ✓

4 ↝ lighter fuel

Fifteen. Five years too long to keep contained on her fingertips, so she counts the rest on the toes of her left foot instead.

Fifteen. When Yoongi decided coffee had replaced the blood pumping out of the crux that flutters in his chest, so maybe this is when the bitter flavour will run smoothly over her own tongue. When Yoongi took a liking to music that abandoned a typical pop tune, so maybe this is when she will find such a generic sound just as tacky. When Yoongi first inhaled the toxins of a cigarette to experience the oaky taste of smoke on the roof of his mouth, so maybe he will find her a thinly rolled stick of tobacco, and she can pretend that the smoke staining the grooves of her lips is left there by his kiss.

Fifteen. Halfway to thirty, but who even knows if either of them will make it that far.

But most of all, fifteen is three light taps against the window that filters moonlight into her room. Swallowing shadows into silver pools and outlining the past four years of her life, his nose pressed to the glass. It has only been her birthday for seven minutes.

"You're late," she grins once she manages to shift the window open, careful to avoid his nails that cling to the windowsill. A fall from this height would certainly not kill him, but it would hurt like bloody hell, and the rustling bushes would snag the sleeping attention of her father. "Midnight has already passed."

"Whatever," Yoongi dismisses in that way he does, where, underneath the thin veil of carelessness, he is apologising.

Limbs that are much longer than they were when they first met clamber through the window with the assistance of her hands curled around his wrists, hoisting him through. Yoongi jumbles—now a head taller than her—into her arms. He continues to lift her from her feet and spin until the air ceases to reach her head, and then he trips onto the unmade bed.

Yoongi looks beautiful among the snowcapped mountains of her sheets. But such thoughts are too impure, even for someone who clicked over to the fifteenth year seven minutes ago. Wait, nine minutes, now.

"Happy birthday," he grins like a wolf in the moonlight, pinches her nose like a kid, and the idea of having a kiss from her best friend as the wish of her special, cursed day vanishes to the back corners of her mind where it will continue to fester for years to come. The tips of his fingers move to pinch her cheek instead. "Stop staring at me like that, creep."

"Like what?" she challenges, and she swears there are rose petals dusting his cheeks. But the moon plays tricks; a magician that appears in the thick of midnight and pulls at the strings of her heart with sleight of hand.

Yoongi grabs her in a headlock like that will display the answer, and in some kind of way, it truly does. You are staring at me like you are trapped and maybe, just maybe, you do not wish to be free. Would it be so wrong if I want you to stay, too?

"Nothing."

He is honestly a man of many words.

Though she senses his discomfort, the kind of unsettling prickle that rushes across his skin, that allows her to know he is lacking anything more to say. Or, in fact, he has too many sentences coiled up in his lungs, but the words never come out right. Always jumbled and imperfect, so it is usually best for him to just leave them there to dry out and die.

She sits up and pins him down by the shoulders, grinning as if the Cheshire Cat has taken residence in her soul. Yoongi probably still thinks she looks beautiful, no matter if she is possessed by a fictional feline.

"Fine," she waggles her eyebrows. "Where are you taking me on this fine morning?"

"Where do you think?" he retorts, and if anything, she smiles wider. Familiarity settles home in her heart, and in memories of the past four birthdays shared with him. Because it is always, always the same place.