Trying to behave

Chapter 22 final (3)

16 hours earlier

January 2016

Monday, the 11th, 7:39 am

New York, USA

Jungkook hates dreaming.

Once, a lifetime ago, dreams were all he had. His only escape from his broken household, from his feelings, from himself. He would look forward to closing his tired eyes after a day of straight crap, made brighter only by Taehyung, and just flying free. Everything was possible when he was dreaming.

Now dreams are his hell.

Because whenever Jungkook closes his eyes now, has closed them in the past three nights specifically, all he sees is pain. His torment, the torture. The fact that he's far, far away from home. Some times though, if he's lucky, he dreams of Taehyung. He dreams of home and of being held in the older boy's arms. And when he wakes up, it's somehow that much worse.

Jungkook hates those dreams a little more.

Which is why he hates this one particularly. Because it feels so real.

In this one, he's sitting in Yoongi's hotel room, on his side of the bed as he has for the past few days. He's propped up with three pillows and his body aches like nothing else, brain groggy with sleep. His black eye is slightly better and worse at the same time. Yoongi is beside him, and there is a laptop in front of them.

Taehyung is on the screen, on Skype, staring back at him with big shocked eyes. Hoseok is squatting beside him, barely in the frame, but Jungkook thinks there are tears on his grainy cheeks.

He really fucking hates this dream because he wants it to be real so bad.

'Jesus,' Taehyung repeats for what feels like the twentieth time in the past ten or so minutes they've all been sitting there in silence. It's the stunned kind that rings in your ears, a stark contrast to the shriek Taehyung had let out when Jungkook had first opened his eyes and settled them on the blurry computer screen. That had been the start of this dream, and since then the older boy has been quiet, occasionally mumbling to himself like he can't believe it.

Jungkook closes his eyes and whimpers low in his throat, letting the tears stuck on his eyelashes escape down his cheeks.

He just wants to wake up.

'Can someone tell me-,' Yoongi speaks up, his voice scratchy and thick with what sounds like emotion and confusion at the same time. '-what the fuck is going on here?'

Jungkook cracks an eye open just in time to see Taehyung snap his neck towards the older boy, startled, like he hadn't noticed him sitting there the whole time. He's so beautiful even in the shitty quality of Hoseok's-Hoseok's?-webcam, in the crap lighting, in his thin T-shirt that seems completely out of whack with the weather. His hair is longer than Jungkook remembers, his face more exhausted, but he's so, so beautiful.

Despite himself, Jungkook opens his mouth and says what he's been dying to say. He wants this dream to last.

'Taehyung,' his voice is scratchy with disuse, his mouth dry and aching. But nothing has felt better in his mouth. So he says it again and lets it trail into a whimper. 'Taehyung,'

Jungkook can't stop it now, the influx of tears that had been burning behind his eyelids, as the name he'd worked so hard to forget tumbles out with such familiarity. The waterworks come out in loud, ugly sobs and when he raises his bruised hands to his face to cover it, his fingers hurt. He feels the pain and remembers you're not supposed to feel pain in dreams.

The realisation that this is real, that this is happening, sends a wail spiralling out of Jungkook's throat.

'Hey, hey,' Yoongi sounds alarmed, running a soothing hand through his hair. 'Hey shh stop crying, don't aggravate yourself. It's okay, it's okay,'