a ticket to the sun ∙ myg ✓

20 ↝ not sorry

It only takes until Yoongi has 20 days left of feeling his heart thrum insistently in his chest for his resolve to break—for it to snap like a violin string in the middle of a symphony, sending the entire orchestra into disarray. 20 days, and a single trip to the private beach that they have gone to together for almost half of their lives, though not once in the past three years.

"Mother of God, turn the air-con on," she gasps the instant she opens the car door. Yoongi makes a similar sound of disgust as he opens the driver's side and feels the heat rush out of the enclosed space like an oven.

"Yeah yeah, don't melt on me now," Yoongi mutters as he jams the key into the ignition, keeping the car in park as he makes sure the dials are set to full-blast on the iciest setting possible. Warm, dry air blares directly into their faces for a few seconds, which they spend groaning and grumbling until the coolness comes to kiss their sweaty, roasting skin. "That's better," Yoongi huffs as he puts the car in reverse and backs out of his parents' driveway, all the while she presses her face right against one of the vents with a satisfied sigh.

They are two minutes down the road, waiting to pull onto the highway, by the time she is thumping her head against the headrest and cursing loudly. "Yoongi, we forgot our towels."

"Oh shit, we did," Yoongi lamely responds, hesitating for a moment as he considers whether he can be bothered turning the car around to go get them from where they were left stranded on the couch. Then he sighs, shaking his head and pressing down on the accelerator, driving into the low stream of traffic. "Fuck it, we can just sun-dry. It's hot enough."

"Lucky I remembered to bring sunscreen then," she mutters. Without even looking at her, Yoongi can hear the smirk in her words. "Otherwise your pale ass would burn as red as a tomato–"

She shrieks when he smacks her thigh, and then she socks him in the bicep with equal force, if not a little harder than necessary. Before Yoongi can voice an insult in return, she is reaching for the volume dial and twisting it until his words are swallowed by the sound of Rick Astley crooning about never giving his lover up. And while Yoongi grins at her theatrical mimicking of Astley's deep voice as she thrashes around in her seat in some horrific semblance of dancing, he has to tune out the lyrics that fire too close to home. Too close to his feeble heart and his ever-crumbling perseverance.

Yoongi's ears are well and truly deafened once he has pulled the car off the slim gravel trail and into the empty parking lot. Everything appears to be as it was three years ago, like a leaf preserved between pressed glass, if only with touches of wear and tear to the wind-battered bushes. Beyond their brittle, salt-covered branches, the deep blue is as flat as a mirror, reflecting the golden sunlight that pours unabashedly over the scene from the cloudless sky. And there, staring through the windshield in silence at the calm ocean and the sand—so white that it is almost blinding—the memories sneak up behind them and grab their hearts with sharp, melancholy-laced talons.

But not just the memories of when they were young and invincible and could only be harmed by the gravel that sunk into their knees when they'd fall off their bikes. No. Memories of the last time they were here rise up like a sludge in their throats and threaten to suffocate. Memories of torn knuckles on a father's door; of a smooth, bare body presented for the taking; of a movie acting as white noise as two souls behaved as though nothing had even happened. Memories that close up their windpipes and make their eyes water, like sucking on a lemon.

Before Yoongi can do something stupid, such as reach across the console and hold her hand—the one that had been bloody with anger—she says, "First in the water has to buy milkshakes," and she is out of the car like a greyhound.

"That's not fair, no head-starts!" Yoongi shouts at her through the wound-down window as he struggles with his seatbelt. She is already speeding her way through the bushes, laughing as bright as the sun above them.