[Jungkook Ficlet] It's Just Love

It's Just Love

"I love you."

His gaze locked on the top of her head now trailed down on her face. She was so small, it was always too easy for Jungkook to ran his hands in her hair, to lift her body like she weighed nothing, to rest his chin on her head and feel her soft breath on his chest—and to say sweet things he never meant without actually looking into her eyes.

"...You know that, right?" Jungkook said when she just stared at the ground and stayed silent, "That I love you?"

Saying the words of 'I love you' was the easiest, it was always the easiest—living up to the words was what made it difficult, but Jungkook never had to do that—no one ever asked him to, words were always more than enough.

Love was just a word, anyway.

It was never really a big thing. He said that a lot and he heard that a lot, and not until now it ever changed anything.

"I..." her eyes trailed up from her feet to Jungkook's chest and soon Jungkook would be staring at her eyes—about goddamn time, Jungkook thought—but then—far from what Jungkook had waited for—her eyes just stopped at Jungkook's neck and stayed there for seconds that Jungkook didn't have the patience to count.

The first respond he could think of was to grab her chin and bring her face up to his—but he couldn't bring himself to do that. The close yet far distance between them felt both wrong and safe for him and his hands just refused to move.

But it still felt suffocating and frustrating—that he almost didn't realize he lost all the words he was about to say.

"I love you,"

(say it back, they are just words, and we can go back to what we usually are),

"I- said- I love you—"

And that was how he realized: he really didn't have anything to say other than 'I love you's.

He hated that.

And he also hated how he sounded so weak, so awkward and out of place.

"—I told you that everyday, every single time, don't you remember?" He gave up. His feet scooted closer and he linked his pinky finger with hers—because holding hand seemed like too much of a responsibility, but he needed something of her to touch, to reminded him of him and her and what happened between them. "I can say it to you again hundreds times, thousands times—whenever you want me to," Jungkook could do that, it was the easiest, "I can even..."

...show you.

But the thing was, Jungkook didn't know how.

He didn't know how to show things he couldn't even see, so he just let his words dangle on the tip of his tongue, before it evaporated—and Jungkook regretted it so much that he just let those words disappear that easily, although he knew for sure it was the nearest he ever came to trying a bit harder than he ever did in the past.

Because for all this time it was always just words, it was never more than that. It was just something that happened and ended, rotating in a vicious cycle. A moment that saved to be forgotten. A box wrapped in glitter, but had nothing inside.

Empty gifts, empty promises, and empty words.

And it's not like he didn't want to, it was just that he couldn't—no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find anything that he could grasp, he could feel, he could lean on to, a reason for him to give the words any meaning more than other words he knew.

It was always too complex at first and empty at the end, so he preferred to keep it that way—empty, because it would be so anyway at some point, why delay the inevitable?

Maybe he didn't know how and where to look, Jungkook thought as he grabbed her pinky finger tightly with all of his five fingers, stroking a pressured stroke by his thumb on her hand, because he was feeling a lot of emotions he could never understand and refused to keep even one of them—but he was so tired of searching.

He was too tired. He couldn't do this. It was so much easier for him to just gave up. Let the words stayed as how it always was for him.

So he did. He gave up.

It was never anything, anyway. It was just word.

He let go of her finger, stepped back, said sorry at the same time she said thanks in her smallest voice, watched her back as she walked away, unconsciously counted her steps until she was out from his sight, and cursed at himself with all the filthiest words he knew in silence—

—at the cocky-good-for-nothing-past-Jungkook who thought that he knew how it felt to be empty before all of this mess.