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Jungkook is alone on the train.
Jungkook knows that trying to cram a sixth person on this bed is stupid and has opted for the moth-eaten loveseat shoved against the window, doing his best to tangle himself with Namjoon so they both fit.
There are too many elbows and knees for true comfort but they’ve done this before, Jungkook simply relieved that they’re booking motels this time instead of trying to camp out in Seokjin’s truck.
He sleeps with his cheek quashed against Namjoon’s shoulder, teeth cutting against the inside of his cheek.
Snow blankets the world from Jungkook’s window, obscuring
the minutia of the landscape that lies beyond
the arctic coach he’s sequestered in.
Stillness has twined in his muscles so deeply; he feels
as if his heart may follow his body too quickly, his heartbeat
a slow pulse in his chest.
Jungkook is alive.
Hoseok didn’t bring his toothbrush and Yoongi doesn’t like sharing, leaving the space in front of their motel bathroom feeling rather crispy. Jungkook laughs at them, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the air warms.
It had been a slapdash decision, the haphazard rush between Namjoon’s dead-end job and the train station, with half stuffed backpacks and half empty wallets. Jungkook isn’t even sure if Jimin had meant it when he said they needed to go to the beach – not the same beach as last time, but beach - but that hadn’t stopped them from winding up here.
Hoseok is trying to brush his teeth with a finger as Namjoon hunts for a spare outlet to charge his phone, huffing as he finds every single one occupied.
Silence wraps around Jungkook, heavy, oppressive; despotic in grip
and cruel in its actuality.
Jungkook is alone on this train.
Namjoon’s birthday is a lifetime away, but it’s still a great idea when Yoongi tugs Jungkook into a grocery and heads to the refrigerated goods. Hoseok requests silly string, but Jungkook thinks it’s far superior when he gets grabs several bags of chips as well.
He knows he made the right choice when Yoongi launches the cake halfway across the room at Namjoon’s face. It’s wild, the mess they made. They’ve made them before; Jungkook once spent a week picking down out of his hair. It’s how it should be.
Seokjin ends up enlisting everyone but Namjoon to haul everything covered in icing and cheese powder across the street to the rickety laundromat across the street, tucked beneath a streetlight that flickered and buzzed noisily.
Namjoon trails along anyway. Jungkook can hear him and Taehyung laughing on the other side of the glass, sharing something between the two of them and not with the rest of them.
The train twists along the tracks and Jungkook stares out into
the vacuum of the abyss that has come in the wake of the sun’s farewell.
He will remain on the train until the end
There is only the final destination.
He will reach it alone.
It hits Jungkook square in the chest, this ugly mass of unquiet. It steals his breath away, sends him spinning.
Where are they?
He skids his way across the motel parking lot, where the street lamp has finally died. Empty, devoid, wanting. It’s as if none of them had been there at all, as if they had left him. The only sound is the ragged cut of his own breathing, the only movement is the white puff of his breath in the frigidity.
The air around him feels forsaken.
Jungkook had hoped the despairing loneliness would
consume him.
Jungkook bolts to the laundromat. Not even a stray sock or an obnoxious pile of lint to assuage the terror that claws up his lungs. No forgotten phone cords or candy wrappers or polaroids.
Nothing.
Jungkook begins to hunt, thoughts tunneling into the singular and arresting need to find them. He can’t hear Taehyung’s laugh or the lilt in Jimin’s words. He can’t hear anything at all.
He thinks he hears the heavy footfalls of Namjoon’s sneakers, solid and real, and he searches for that.
Jungkook had once been happy.
Suddenly they were there, surrounding Jungkook, cackling and screeching. Hands rake through his hair, rougher with affection. Yoongi’s hand catches his for the briefest moment, while Hoseok warbles and squishes his cheeks.
He is suddenly warm again, their laughter freeing his own. Like a flood, they continue onward, spilling across golden lamplight and sidewalk.
A train flashes by, little more than a blink and a breath, but Jungkook remembers.
He remembers what it felt like to have them gone. To feel as if he’d never see them ever again. What it would be if things had not actually been okay.
The train screeches onward and Jungkook
remembers.
Jungkook had once been surrounded by special souls. He longed for them
now, more than ever.
The last train stop is coming, but he allows himself a moment to think about it.
About what life would be like if he could see
them again.
What it would be if things had actually been okay.