Yoongi remembers a time. A moment. So infinitesimal when held up against every other moment that this universe has witnessed. Yet so large in his mind and his heart, holding the weight of a deep sea anchor; the strength of an avalanche.
His bedroom, then, was swamped in the kind of darkness that only the hour before dawn can foster. Where shadows slink like creatures of their own mind, appearing thicker, as if cloaked in layers upon layers of onyx. Thieves of the night. Yoongi was not necessarily awake then, no. But he was awake enough to not have a single doubt about whether it was the soft edge of a dream, or a much more dangerous reality.
He was awake enough to tell the difference between a heart-wrenching tease of his imagination, and the sharpened tip of a knife cutting a fool's promise into his lower lip.
She was fourteen, exhalations coming out in quivering, conscious gasps. She was fourteen, a dagger poised on her trembling tongue. She was fourteen, and the fifteen-year-old boy curled on his side before her, eyes closed, was supposed to be held securely in the clutches of a world much kinder than this one. But the urgent alarm bells started wailing in his dreams the instant his skin registered the faintest breath, hesitantly skimming across his chin, like decaying petals in an autumn breeze.
There, Yoongi was cognisant, eyes shut tight, when she sampled the taste of his mouth with a fleeting ghost of a kiss. One that haunted each year succeeding it; each year that he went without taking courage by the reins, her face by his hands, and made her realise that his tongue holds more flavours than cinnamon. It tastes of black tea and blood and undying, guilty love for the lips that kiss him back.
He is certain her lips would have tasted of more than room-temperature anxiety.
The next morning, they had eaten sticky peanut-butter toast and sucked orange juice between their teeth. They had behaved like actors in a play, performing a scripted routine of Gin Rummy and small talk with tainted lips. A blight that only one of them thought they knew about. The one whose existence has been wrapped in a ribbon of curses. Long used to the crushing burden of them, so why not add to the load?
Yoongi's lips had felt heavy. Yoongi's lips had felt like they were being ruptured at the centre by a coldsore, and he liked it too much for his own good. Too much for her own invulnerability.
Once they did it for real, for improvised honesty, behind an oak tree that will stand longer on this earth than Min Yoongi himself, they were both too drunk. Too torn and desperate to comprehend the precise flavours. Vodka acted like a bitter mask on their tastebuds; their hearts.
So Yoongi, in this lifetime, has not kissed her once, but twice. The first, diaphanous and terrified in the soothing belly of an early morning. The second, dipped in careless intoxication and hasty movements, followed quick on the heels by angry heartbreak and three years of a missing person. Only for her to return with her fingers curled around a platinum key to a future potentially uninterrupted by a piece of paper, all the while Yoongi was still stitching his heart back together with narcotics and the thin silk of hope.
Only for it to be snapped completely over the sound of his mother's choked up sobbing through a phone speaker. Over the green envelope sitting in his hometown letterbox like a gun loaded with a single bullet; his name inscribed in the jacketed lead.
Yoongi, in this lifetime, will never know her true taste, and she will never know his own.
Yet he wonders if she will kiss the forehead of his corpse in the open casket, thirty-one days away. He wonders if her lips will come away blue with the chill of his vanquished love.
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Author's Note: hello!! thank you all so much for reading this far into the series. this story is very, very close to my heart. knowing that you guys are enjoying it, too, makes my day.
unfortunately, this will be the last of the chapters for a while. I finish up my uni semester in three weeks, and then I have two months of winter break. I would love to get into writing this straight away, but I need to finish my other story, the devil skates on thin ice, first. once that is done, I will get onto writing the final chapters for a ticket to the sun.
thank you all again for supporting the series. the upcoming chapters will be getting into the really angsty stuff, so prepare yourselves!!
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a ticket to the sun ∙ myg ✓
Fanfiction➵ r18+! dystopia au ∙ min yoongi ; in a world where your life is determined by a piece of paper on a monthly basis, love is practically impossible. but there's always an exception, and with that exception, there comes a price.
