Bangtan Boys ~ A Compilation Of Short Stories 🎈

sleep | Rap Monster | feels

"I don't really know what to say..."

"Just... Speak to me."

You were having trouble sleeping. Namjoon had his chest pressed against your back as you were both lying in bed together. You checked the time.
1:34am.

"I just need a distraction..." You said. "Please, your voice helps..."

Namjoon chuckled.

"Alright, close your eyes... I'll tell you something. Something.. I wasn't going to tell you."

You closed your eyes, feeling his warm chest against you. He was always so honest, so poetic..

He took a breath.

"Yesterday, alone, I laid everything out on the carpet. Books, kitchen things, objects with specific purpose or none.. Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored. Out of context and then considered it; first the whole picture, then everything individually. Humming along.. At the deadest pace imaginable.. One object then another and then the next."

He breathed, squeezing you around the waist.

"..And I wondered what they meant there
If they meant anything still."

He squeezed tighter.

"Found notes, camping supplies, a book you bought in the desert.. “Identifying Wildflowers”.. Pictures from vacations.. From parties.. Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops on that road trip out West. Objects, everything itself.. And then memory."

He breathed, yet again.

"All of it laid out there, from the dining room. The living room, the hallway and the basement and the kitchen. From that room we called the office, but never used. Even the bathroom. Everything laid out there on the floor on the carpet out of context. And.. I sat there for hours..."

His voice broke. You turned around and held him. You felt tears in your shoulder.
"Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room.. Placed each thing carefully without reason or at least without one I understood or could describe. There on the table together and when I was done and stepped back I realized what I had made..Keepsakes. Pictures. Letters. Ordinary objects all collected there.. A memorial."

He sniffled.

"And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones. All the things you see there but don’t understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly.. Invoke someone’s reality when there together in that place in that way out of context, and I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw. Tomorrow.. I plan to put them all somewhere, those things.. In boxes. Side of the road.. Attic, maybe. All these things that push and pull me through history.. To places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going.. Postcards.. Ticket stubs from one thing or another.. A personalized coffee mug neither your name nor mine. Phone cards and old phones, a page from an old calendar I bought once at a thrift store and insisted on hanging.. That cycles of the moon print.. PhotoS.. Old boots of mine..."

His chest heaved. You let him speak, silently waiting, and held him closer.

"I'll.. Put them in boxes.."

He sighed.

"And I sat there for hours.. In the living room first. Then in the dining room, moving things around, picking things up and seeing where they took me.. To what place in history, what moment on our timeline.. Where we were, where I was, where I thought we’d end up; in this house or on the highway.. Driving somewhere near Christmas.. In the desert or anywhere else.. And I put them in boxes."

You didn't want to sleep. You placed your hand on Namjoon's cheek, pressing your forehead against his.

"I think we should revisit those boxes."

"I think so too.. Now sleep my love, and dream of me."

And it only took you another minute before you were asleep, in his arms.

~~~

*note*
The excerpts of speech are taken from a song called "Objects in Space" by La Dispute. I take no credit for the poetic writing, it only inspired me to create this.