Genre: Comfort/hurt
You're grieving the death of someone you loved when Jeongin finds you breaking down.
Trigger warning: Death, grief, depression and anxiety surrounding death.
A/N: Sorry for writing about death and grief so much. Someone I knew died and I wasn't close to them, but it just made me slightly spiral because death is omnipotent and we're all dying some day. It kind of gave me an internal crisis and it came out in the form of writing.
There's so many questions I have about it and I'll never know all the answers until I die. I believe there's, at least, one more death drabble, but it won't be posted for a while. I'll cut you some slack and stay away from death for a bit. In the wise words of Peter Pan, 'to die will be an awfully big adventure.'
꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎ ꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎ ꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎
Outside the snow fell from the sky and drifted down silently. In the streetlights, it glistened like diamonds. Outside it was entirely silent. Not a car with a revving engine, not the loudness of another human, and not even the sound of a nearby animal.
You sucked in another mouthful of the icy air and exhaled. In front of you, your breath jutted out in a stream of hot air. The outdoors always felt fresher this time of the year. Something about the cold was refreshing for your lungs.
The burn as you inhaled and the steady exhale. You shut your eyes with your arms wrapped over your chest. Grief was so hard to deal with. It was too much to carry by yourself and you were crumbling.
You tried so hard to pretend like everything was fine. One of the best people you knew had just died and yet you continued to act like it was normal. At least, it was that way until tonight.
In the dead of a bitter winter night, you stood on your front porch with a frown on your face. You tried to put up a brave front. You tried to pretend you were okay because it was easier than to admit something was wrong.
Death isn't always kind to everyone. It snatches some people in their sleep and others as they burn in flames. It coaxes babies out of cribs and slips in and out of hospital rooms without anyone noticing until it's too late.
You weren't sure how you were supposed to feel at this point. You weren't depressed, but you weren't happy either. You were entirely numb to everything around you and that included your boyfriend.
When your loved one was ripped away, he was there when you got the phone call. When you uttered the words out loud that changed your life forever, he was there. His warm hand slipped into yours and he tried to make you feel better, but it wasn't enough.
The apologies from people, the pity, the mourning, all of it, you didn't want to deal with it. From that point on, you shut down. What else were you supposed to do? How else were you supposed to cope?
All the things that made life seem worth living slowly faded away and slipped through your fingers. Those hobbies you spent hours enjoying seemed senseless now. What was the point of enjoying anything when all you could think about was them?
How could you enjoy your life when death could rip you away at any moment? How were you supposed to live knowing that? Knowing that one day you'd have to leave the people you loved behind and it'd destroy them.
The overwhelming thought made you want to curl up in a ball and cry. Most nights, that's all you had been doing. You went to bed with Jeongin, waited until he fell asleep, and then let the silent tears fall.
It was so painful because it was unexpected. It wasn't like there was a death assumption created by a doctor. There wasn't time to cope with the idea of them being gone. There wasn't time to discuss how they wanted their body taken care of.
You were left with a numbed mind, an empty heart, and thousands of empty questions. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
You could scream at the sky and shake your fists. You could destroy everything in the house. You could sob until your throat was raw and your eyes were puffy and swollen while you choked on your own salted tears.
The truth was that they were gone and there was nothing you could do to bring them back. No amount of praying, hoping, and wishing could bring back the dead. Maybe you'd be able to conjure up an old memory or find an old photo or video, but it wasn't the same thing.
Pawing at your eyes, you smeared the tears across your cheeks. Your place and belonging in the world had been violently uprooted. Food didn't taste the same and getting out of bed had turned into quite the chore.
It took so much courage to get up and live. To go out there and try to make something of your life. To have adventures, to make friends, to cherish and create new memories while actually living instead of just merely surviving.
The remnants of your old life slipped through your fingers. All those memories were now one sided. You'd lock them in your brain and tuck them into your heart and hope they'd never fade away.
Lost in your thoughts, you didn't hear the door and screen door open behind you. Jeongin had tried to curl up into your body until he realized the bed was empty and the familiar spot of your warmth was missing.
He forced himself out of bed sleepily, so he could go find you. He knew you didn't want to be bothered. He was aware that you had been struggling, but you promised you'd find him and reach out if you needed to. He was trying so hard to give you space, at least, until now.
The roots of anxiety began to tangle around your head when it came to death. Would it happen again? Would you lose another person randomly? Would death be cruel enough to do it again?
Of course, it would. It is death, after all. The only thing that beats death is immortality and that's something we've yet to discover within ourselves.
It was so cold outside, the tears were beginning to freeze on your cheeks. You bit down into the velvet skin of your bottom lip. You wanted nothing more than to wake up from this never-ending nightmare.
Squeezing your eyes shut, you tried to get a hold of yourself, but you couldn't. This was so overwhelming and too much for one person to handle. Beneath the black starless sky, you were lost and trapped in a void.
A choked out sob fell from your lips. Your fingers dug into the cotton fabric of your t-shirt. The only comfort you received was the wind brushing up against your bare body. It cut through the paper thin t-shirt and drifted over your bare legs.
The t-shirt and shorts weren't much protection. You didn't even consider putting on shoes before you stumbled outside. You were lost and confused and so overwhelmed.
It wasn't fair. Death wasn't fair. None of it was ever fair. You were forced into this life against your will and a person you loved had been ripped away. And the worst part? It'd continue to happen.
Maybe not now, but maybe in another few years. Death would catch up again before you died because it always did. It shattered lives and it ripped apart families. It left ruins of friendships and it tore apart lovers.
Unspoken words were never said. Actions were never finished. Pieces of people were scattered around everywhere if you looked hard enough.
Art in sketchbooks and leftovers in the fridge. A forgotten hair somehow stuck to the wall of the shower. Dirty clothes in the laundry hamper that would never be worn by their owners again.
How cruel it was to love something that could be snatched away in mere seconds. Sometimes there was no screaming. There was no begging for mercy in the eyes of the grim reaper. Once you were picked, there was nothing you could do about it.
You tried to suck in a breath, but it didn't work. Jeongin watched you silently from behind. You didn't realize he was behind you until your knees wobbled and you collapsed.
Your knees buried in the fresh layer of snow, you screamed. You screamed for the loss of life. You screamed because you'd never see them again in this life. You screamed because all you were left with was fresh memories that hurt too much to think about. Everything was too raw, too much, and too real.
You screamed and you screamed and you screamed. You dug your hands into the freezing snow and threw a handful of it. You packed a wet handful up and chucked it at a nearby tree.
You screamed until it hurt to make any noise and when it felt like your lungs would give out. The unbearable aching of your throat mixed with the numbing of the cold snow. Utterly defeated, you collapsed into the snow.
You didn't care if you froze to death. Dying seemed like a better option than dealing with all this grief. You curled yourself into a ball and went back to sobbing. You didn't care about hypothermia or frostbite. You didn't care that your organs were begging for warmth. You didn't care about anything anymore.
But Jeongin cared about you. From behind, tears silently trickled down his own cheeks. There wasn't much he could do to comfort you in this state. He couldn't bring back your loved one. He couldn't save you from this grief.
Someone had ripped his heart into shreds. You were the love of his life, but watching you lose yourself destroyed a part of him. He was supposed to protect you from things like this. He was supposed to save you from heartbreak.
It took him a moment to gather himself together and wipe away his tears. He leaned down and gently placed a hand on your shoulder. You were so out of it that you didn't even register him.
You stared off into the distance of the falling snow. It felt like you were in a snowglobe. Someone had shaken it and snow was trickling down, down, down. Left in a sombering silence, you finally went quiet.
Jeongin wasted no time squatting down, carefully placing his hands beneath you, and lifting you up. He didn't utter a word as he took you back into the warmth of the house. Your body was so cold that you were shivering. Your teeth chattered together, but you didn't realize it.
He relocked the door and carried you back towards the bedroom. All the screaming and sobbing had left you exhausted. There were so many things he wanted to tell you, but now wasn't the time. You didn't need to be verbally comforted right now.
He laid you on the bed in the middle of the comforter. It was the same one that the two of you picked out together. You let him tug your wrists until you were in a sitting position. He took his time shifting you and wiggling you from your wet clothes and placing you in new ones.
When he laid you back down, your eyes drooped. He took both ends of the comforter and wrapped it around you like you were a baby. He climbed up, shifted behind you, and gently tugged your body towards him.
After you snuggled into his chest, you closed your eyes. His fingers found your hair and he began to play with it. The soft touches of his fingertips were warm against your scalp. His body heat slowly began to warm you up.
Death had carved your heart out of your chest. It'd take a while, but Jeongin would work it back in. He coddle you and coax food into you. He'd do whatever he could to lessen this burden on your back because that's what people did for one another.
He leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of your head. His arms wrapped around your body and he tugged you back a bit more. Leaning back against the headboard, he let his own eyes shut.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Who will death come for? Nobody knows. In the meantime, what do we have while we all wait for our turn? Love. A whole lot of love for the people we love.