sinner. kth x myg

14. like a flower and its petals

i hope i'm not annoying you guys by linking so many new songs/covers i record lmao, but here's another one. give it a listen if you want to!

to yoongi, taehyung was like a flower.

like a flower, he needed care to survive. he needed water, sunshine, soil... he needed love (maybe not quite love from others, but rather love from himself).

so taehyung was dying.

he was deprived.

he was alone, isolated, and nothing but a bed of soil with a withering, dried flower bud.

yoongi was watching taehyung's petals fall, one by one, carried to the ground by gravity and landing softly, but pulling away from the flower painfully. taehyung cut away his own petals, pulling them apart and dropping them to the floor, by slashing at his stem and refusing water and sunlight. taehyung was destroying himself in the simplest of ways, and yoongi was watching it unfold. the flower was dying.

he watched taehyung leave his side and walk into his apartment building as he waved goodbye. oh how he looked so fragile. his lithe frame slid through the doorframe and disappeared, and yoongi stood outside for a bit before leaving.

he had once been in taehyung's place, refusing help, in the lying belief that he was just fine, despite the stark red on his wrists that stood in contrast to his pale skin; that was what he had told namjoon and hoseok: i'm fine, and i'm not sick. i don't cut a lot, so it's not a big deal.

he heard those same words leaving taehyung's pink parted lips. they were lies, complete lies that only pulled the boy farther down and closer to death, and taehyung either didn't know or didn't care. yoongi worried that it was the latter, that taehyung was just waiting for the day he died.

yoongi fell asleep that night thinking of taehyung.

* * *

monotonous.

life was monotonous to taehyung.

it was repetitive and predictable, a constant repeat of pain and suffering over and over again like some sick, endless cycle of eternal misery. it had been that way since his bleak, damned childhood. he had spent everyday as a child in fear and pain and continued on into adolescence and adulthood, living life from then on in some desperate attempt to resist the overwhelming urge to end his life and be free.

he had missed out on so much of a normal childhood, all because of his mother, perhaps his father, if he were to choose to place the blame on the man that had left them. taehyung decided that he blamed his mother; with a father or without one, she could have raised him with love and care. how she chose to care for him had been in her hands, and she had taken the idea of love for her child within her palms, smashed them together until the prospect of it became nothing but crumpled paper, and thrown the pieces onto the ground to be stepped on and disregarded for the rest of her time on earth. taehyung had gotten down on his hands and knees and desperately tried to pick up the pieces. he had never managed to gather up all of them.

taehyung had been waiting tables until he stumbled a bit on his way back to the kitchen, and seokjin had fussed, chiding him about how he looked too pale.

taehyung was now sitting miserably in the break room with no lunch in front of him, three pairs of concerned eyes directed straight at him and his empty hands.

"stop looking at me, will you?" taehyung said. "i'm a person who's not eating lunch, not an exotic animal in the zoo for you to ogle at."

"yeah. exactly," jimin returned. "we keep telling you to eat something, and you just won't. what the fuck is going on?"

taehyung exchanged a knowing look from seokjin with a defeated look from himself.

"it's not a big deal."

"then what's going on? seokjin's always looking at you like... like you're going to disappear any second, and you're never eating and just giving us stupid excuses all the time," jungkook countered. his youthful brown eyes suddenly looked too grown. "it's starting to scare me, tae. i feel like we've had this conversation so many times already, and you just never tell the truth."

taehyung looked away. "i'm just not hungry and... i just..." he trailed off, pulling himself to his feet. "i'm going back to work."

"seriously? you're going to leave it at that again?" jimin said. "why the hell won't you just be honest with us? anyone with eyes can see that you're not okay." his voice was at the very edge of anger, pent up frustration making its way up his throat.

seokjin bit his lip, guilt eating away at him for being so helpless, so useless. what did he need to do to get taehyung to save himself? his only plausible option at this point seemed to be picking taehyung up and carrying him straight to the hospital, because the younger boy was obviously set on figuring things out for himself.

taehyung looked at each of them, helplessness etched in every angle of his gaze, before he left the room.

* * *

"you know, you remind me of a flower."

taehyung smiled at the comment. "yeah? how?"

"it's just... i don't know," yoongi said. "but i think you're withering."

"am i?"

yoongi nodded. "yeah. you are," he said. "do you know that you are?"

"peripherally, yes," taehyung replied. his hair hung over his eyes like the clouds in winter covering the sun. "but i can't seem to do anything about it."

the empty cafe at night had become their place. it was designated for them, and them only. no one was even out in the streets by nighttime. the outskirts of the city died at night, and the cafe held two living, but dying, people.

"my friends are so frustrated with me," taehyung murmured. "they're worried, but they're also getting really angry that i'm not getting help, and i... i don't know what to do."

"what do you think it'll take you to start seeing someone?"

"see, that's the thing. i don't know," taehyung said. "right now, i'm just not sick enough for help. i'm not dying. there are people dying; they're the ones who need help, not me."

"i used to say that too," yoongi said. "don't rely on that idea. it's best to get help before you're dying, isn't it?" but you are dying, that's the thing, yoongi thought. you are a dying flower.

taehyung smiled, and even his smile seemed shattered, as if every forced smile plucked away another white petal from him.

he was a flower.

but a dying flower.

kim taehyung was a withering flower, and yoongi was watching the flower die.