Blood Ink ✔️

68: Rich Man, Poor Man

[A/N]
Possible trigger warning, I guess? A little bit of violence and blood.

You think you die for a second.

You're stuck somewhere between existence and oblivion, floating bodiless in a field of nothing. Strangely enough, you feel conscious - you're perfectly capable of, in this state, canting back onto the nothing and thinking about how strange it is to have all physical orientation removed from you.

You can think - the problem is you can't remember.

Why are you here again? And how did you get here?

And where is here?

Then you blink, and you're suddenly back in that dream home, curled up on the couch with Jungkook beside you and your son asleep in his crib a few rooms away.

"Jungkook?" you whisper. You reach out and touch his face, which is so realistically warm beneath your fingers.

Something nags at the back of your mind, but you shove it away. Nothing is more important that this moment.

You're happy here, with him.

Letting your eyes run over his face, you admire the strong line of his jaw, and the way it cuts squarely underneath his round cheeks. His black hair is a little long, fringing around and tangling with the long lashes around his eyes. His lips, fuller on the bottom as thinner on the top and ringed by his piercings, quirk at your in-depth perusal.

"What is it?" he whispers in amusement.

"Nothing," you say. "I just love you."

He grins, smile lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes, and rests his hand over yours.

"Shh," he says gently. "Don't talk too loud. The baby's sleeping."

"The baby?" you frown at that, trying to remember that incessant detail that keep tugging on the tail-end of your thoughts.

Jungkook laughs a little, scooting closer on the deep chocolate couch and letting his thumb trace along your cheekbone. "Where'd that pretty smile go?" he murmurs.

You can't smile as you look at him. "Something's wrong."

"Wrong?"

He says the word, and that instant you're sucked out of that dream and into the next.

Now you're all the way back in the vanilla-wreathed bakery, with a plate of brownies in front of you and an un-tattooed, un-pierced Jungkook sucking chocolate off of his thumb.

"Is this better, Princess?" he asks in his lullaby voice.

In the background, Taehyung's laughter mingles with the voices of the others.

It isn't better.

"No, no," you mumble, pressing a hand to your forehead. "Something is wrong. I don't...I can't remember."

The urge to run away is an abrupt reality, pressing into your lungs and taking your breath. Something about this is so stomach-turningly unnatural that you can't focus.

Jungkook wipes his peanut-butter-smeared hand on a napkin and leans toward you. With a soft bump, he leans his forehead to your, resting with your noses touching and your breaths intermingling. "You don't have to remember," Jungkook soothes. "Nothing's wrong, Y/N. I'm here."

Quite suddenly, you realize that his presence is the exact thing that's so wrong about the whole situation.

Memories come flooding back to you, gunfire and shouting and blood.