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In the midst of his renowned, anticipated, sold out world tour, Jeon Jeongguk’s eyes soften into blankness.
An hour after the show ends, there will be an article about the cons of teenage stardom, about the plague of cockiness in young singers.
His manager will book an emergency interview with the West’s sweetest talk show host as damage control.
For the time being Jeongguk looks into the crowd of roaring fans, an ocean of love, and feels absolutely nothing.
His eyes sting.
The crowd mistakes this for overwhelm and maybe yesterday it would have been that. Maybe tomorrow it will be that.
Today, Jeongguk lets the tears cling to his eyes because he feels hollow. Because the only thing he has to give to this crowd of unconditionally loving fans are his tears that fall from empty, empty eyes.
Backstage he changes into his last outfit for the day.
Backstage, not a single soul looks Jeongguk in the eye for a mere second to see the void that they’ve turned into.
The thick, thick, and large hoodie almost feels like the comfort of an arm over his shoulders and the comfort of a hug encasing his being. He can pretend that the bustling staff give enough of a fuck to give him a piece of warmth for running on through the show despite…
Despite.
He is so fucking cold.
His makeup artist materializes in front of him.
The frantic man is an inch or two shorter than Jeongguk, nothing that would warrant a stool or a step to reach the singer’s features.
Jeongguk’s lifeless eyes stare straight ahead as the man works his features closer to perfection. The blemishes and moles are hidden under a cushion tap-tapping over his face and Jeongguk wonders if the same magic can be worked over his blackened mind.
It can’t.
He would have inched his skin apart, broken through any mendable bones, carved out his sensitive nerves, and rewired them by now if he thought it worked.
A grip on his chin guides his head lower.
Jeongguk breaks his stare to look at the concentrated artist fixing sweaty strands of hair as best as he can.
For a second, Park Jimin’s sharp gaze drifts down Jeongguk’s forehead and lands directly at his gaze.
If Jeongguk was normal, his heart would accelerate at that.
Instead, he looks back with a stare half coated in death.
Jimin frowns in confusion and then in concern.
“Two minutes!”
Jeongguk walks away.
/ / / / /
When night after the show falls and he tosses and turns, it crashes down.
It sits on his chest like a weight he can’t get rid off. The weight is heavy and makes his chest and back ache from its pressure. His shoulders slump with its addition as it settles in like a natural and pushes down on him until taking a deep breath feels extensive.
That night he cries. Sobs and choked sounds bounce off the walls of his hotel room, curling around each other until the pain of those sobs is the only thing he can breathe in and the only thing he breathes out. He takes a fist and pounds at his own chest, scratching at his shoulders through the material of his shirt as he gasps at the thought of being burdened eternally like Atlas had.
Exhaustion blooms around him until his muscles start whining for sleep but sleep extends its hand and snatches it away just as quick, mocking Jeongguk for being unable to get a good grasp. When sobs stop racking over his body and the tear tracks on his cheeks finally dry down, his eyes water once again from the deep exhaustion clawing at him.
He picks up the hotel notepad and writes.
/ / / / /
There’s a knock on the door.
Jungkook feels a spike of nervousness rush through him. Did he lose track of time again? It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.
It’s an important interview meant to be a cover up for the aloofness that he can’t shake off even on stage when he’s doing the thing he loves most.
(On those nights alone in his hotel room, Jeongguk chokes and gags at the thought that the one thread holding his entire being together is slowly withering.)
Park Jimin has newly dyed hair when he walks in after Jeongguk's silence.
It’s an onyx black contrasting the previous golden blonde from days ago.
Jeongguk blinks. And that’s all the reaction he can manage.
He gets a smile in greeting. He slumps his head down and goes back to biting the chapped skin of his lips.
Sometimes when the venue is too small or when Jeongguk feels guilty about the amount of space he occupies – or when he feels particularly lonely – he requests that he and his staff share backstage rooms.
Today, he thinks he is lonely.
Jeongguk should unlock his phone, maybe swipe through the apps and pretend to look busy. He should not just stare across the room at Jimin who bustles in and out of the room at different intervals to drag in a stray bag or a forgotten blow dryer or racks of clothes.
Jimin smiles at him again when he looks over while arranging his brushes.
Jeongguk blinks and then looks away.
/ / / / /
The nights eat him alive.
They crawl over him like little ants and maggots, and pick his skin apart until he would sooner jump out of his skin than live for a second longer.
It’s 4:16 AM and his leg cramps up.
In 4 hours, his manager will knock on his door and coax him out of bed with a dimpled smile and sympathetic eyes.
Outside it rains.
The windows of the hotel shake and rattle. It’s a piercing drum that is so loud that it rattles Jeongguk’s entire being. He feels restless, unsettled, his heartbeat skyrockets when the wind pushes the rattling closer to the window. Jeongguk is afraid it’ll reach him. He’s afraid it’ll reach everything but him.
He turns his face into a pillow and screams.
He screams and cries and sobs and wonders if the pain in his chest is his heart finally giving out.
He forms a fist, finds his heartbeat, and lands punches at the spot. He squeezes his peck, squeezes the air, and tangles his hands into his hair to harshly pull.
The hands knock against his temples not too harshly but just enough to hope to alleviate the constant pounding.
The force of his sobs makes him gag. Bile rises up his throat and he slaps a hand to his cheek.
Get yourself together, he thinks with a deep swallow.
His throat and chest burn with every swallow.
His eyes burn with exhaustion. Eyelids grow heavy, heavy and he barely manages to blink to keep his eyes open. His mind lies awake though.
Jeongguk, resting on his back, tilts his stiff, sticky face to the side. His cheek is squished into a pillow. His mind lies wide awake.
He stares and stares at the wall. Shapes conjure and crawl up the wall. They shift and move to create a dance, maybe a play, on the solid surface. The one man audience watches it with dead eyes and his mind lies wide awake.
The rain dies down into a shallow drizzle. Jeongguk prays to a God to bring the storm back and take him with it.
/ / / / /
Jimin flutters around him.
His hands are anxious and restless as they move around him. From the vanity mirror, Jeongguk watches plush lips move in silent dialogue as the man mumbles to himself.
Jeongguk smiles.
Jimin pauses. He looks at Jeongguk’s smile, darts his eyes around all of the singer’s features and then frowns harder.
He picks up a concealer and looks almost offended as he works at the terrifying combination of dark circles and eye bags. By now, Jeongguk knows enough to know that Jimin will put a cute twist to the eye bags and make them play up the image of ‘innocent and naive’ that concert crowds have of him.
When Jimin gets to the rest of his face, his movements grow slow. Unthinkingly or unconsciously, he runs a soft finger over the skin on the top of Jeongguk’s cheekbone.
The skin feels tender and raw when Jimin brushes over it, it stings when a product is patted over it.
Jeongguk takes in a shuddering breath. He feels a little pathetic for the way his chest expanded at the brief second of contact, the way warmth had surged into his pores and then whooshed out when Jimin blinked his daze away and went back to doing his job.
He feels impossibly cold as the staff bustle around him to get ready for the curtain-lifting moment, Jimin retreating into the back of the room while sound engineers wire him up.
When the stage rights create a ring around him, when he parts his lips to let his voice carry his entire bring forward, he feels impossibly cold.
And yet, for the first time in days, he feels warmer than he has before.
The crowds of Manila whoop and yell when Jeongguk smiles. His teeth poke out and press into his bottom lip, it gives him that bunny look that his fans always scream about, he smiles wider when he sees someone in the front row burst into tears at his smile.
He almost does the same because maybe days like these are worth it. Maybe if he has one day out of twenty-nine in which he can manage to smile and feel half a degree warmer than usual, it’s worth it.
In his hotel room that night, Jeongguk hisses at the sting on his cheek when he rubs foaming cleanser over his face. He splashes water onto his face to wash the suds off.
When he leans into his reflection, he finds a winding line dragging across his cheekbone. It’s tender and pink, skin raised and irritated.
It must be from the night before when he clawed at his face, restless out of his mind at the banging of the rain.
It’s the same spot his makeup artist, Jimin, had caressed over before the show.
/ / / / /
Jimin bounds up a rooftop.
The days grow closer to a home show before they’re whipped away to another continent. The final, final encore shows are set to be announced at the Seoul show a month after Jeongguk and his team return to South Korea after their last lap around the Oceania leg.
The countless traveling merges every place into one and sometimes Jimin can’t even remember which country they’re in, let alone city.
He pities Jeongguk who has to go on stage, remember the city, and scream “make some noise.”
Jimin remembers the places by the hotels.
Each hotel has its unique quirk despite falling under the same umbrella company. Some are lavish enough to offer a free massage session while others don’t even have a fitness center for show.
Their last one had an underground hot spring that you had to hit ‘Basement’ on the elevator for.
This one has twenty-six floors and an accessible rooftop.
Jimin thinks that maybe the “accessible” part is only because they’re traveling under Jeon Jeongguk, sometimes he forgets to separate the wide-eyed, quiet boy from the superstar with the entire world at his feet.
The view from the roof is endless. It expands and expands until the sky and the ground meet at one point and then expands even further.
A climbing tower grabs his attention as soon as he opens the door to the roof.
They’re in Fukuoka, he realizes.
They were in Tokyo two days ago and next week they’ll pause in Seoul for the interlude of sorts.
When the tour first began, Jimin had befriended a huge chunk of the crew and would tag along with the most enthusiastic groups for sightseeing. His phone gallery is filled with the corniest tourist photographs as they began in North America and now it’s rare for him to even visit a nearby park
Sometimes he photographs Jeongguk.
The awe of traveling the world disappeared very quickly after they started pulling all-nighters to fight jet lag only to end up losing all the same. But sometimes, he stands off to the side of the stage and peers into the stage. Sometimes, he’s hit with a rush of awe so powerful and strong that it leaves him breathless.
Sometimes…
Sometimes, when it’s dress rehearsals and soundchecks, Jimin steps closer and closer to the stage and lets the music falling from Jeongguk’s lips fall into him. And it almost knocks him over. The sheer sincerity – the very being – poured into every word makes Jimin’s throat close up from the lump of emotion stuck there.
Somehow, it’s not surprising to find Jeon Jeongguk’s hunched figure here, leaning over the railing in a corner no one would even spare a glance at.
When Jimin’s eyes land there, Jeongguk’s shoulders are curled inwards as they always are. He looks more like the young baby boy his fans insist he is than an adult in his mid twenties. He doesn’t look like he’s only younger than Jimin by two years.
In response, Jeongguk is not surprised at finding Jimin’s figure mirroring his posture.
He gives Jimin an imperceptible look, tilts his head to the side, and then goes back to looking at the view.
Jimin shivers when he sees the look in his eyes, the look void of everything and anything. His heart sinks.
He looks at the view for a while, lets the wind sing to him and pretends he hears Jeongguk’s hum mixed in. Jeongguk has been obsessively, but absentmindedly, humming a melody for the past week and Jimin can’t get it out of his head.
It’s a new song, Jimin knows, because he memorized every beat of his songs already released.
A tower is lit up purple in front of them. It’s the color dedicated to Jeongguk’s fanbase.
Jimin starts in excitement. He turns to Jeongguk and sees his eyes fixed on a spot on the ground.
Because they’re huddled in a strange corner of the roof, the spot below them is just a slab on flat concrete.
Jeongguk looks at the spot with wonder in his eyes.
Jimin’s pulse begins to race, his hands shake because the look in Jeongguk’s eyes is the first sign of life he’s seen from the singer off stage.
Jimin looks beyond the tower and finds constellations trying to form through the clouds of polluted air.
“Jeongguk,” Jimin whispers, “Look up. Look at the stars.”
He looks up. His wondrous gaze doesn’t waver.
/ / / / /
Jeongguk sends a melody to an inhouse producer that practically lives in their company building.
By the time they circle back to Seoul for the initial concerts, the slightly nocturnal, slightly deranged, slightly genius, slightly feline looking man has arranged the melody and named it ‘Live’.
Jeongguk backspaces on the same and types ‘Survive’.
Min Yoongi frowns over the headphones covering half of his head. He types ‘Life’ and presses save.
They compromise on ‘Stay Alive’.
/ / / / /
Jeongguk likes black holes. He likes the color black. He likes the absolute void of anything because it makes the emptiness in his chest feel a little less abnormal. An emptiness created because it sucked everything in and became desolate with it.
He spends hours on a website about black holes and gets increasingly riled up at the theory of a white hole.
He tosses his laptop aside in a fit then grabs it again a minute later.
A website calls it an exclusive club – “while a black hole's event horizon is a sphere of no return, a white hole's event horizon is a boundary of no admission” they say. Jeongguk scoffs then cringes at the hoarseness of his voice. It’s the result of living as a hermit and surviving off minimal to zero human interaction in the two weeks of rest in which he’s meant to be catching up with his friends and family.
His eyes sting, it’s an ungodly hour but Jeongguk’s just discovered the hypothetical concept of a white hole and he’s pissed off.
He sends the article link to Min Yoongi with a series of ??? and gets back double the amount in response.
The melody of Stay Alive rings around his head.
He throws out the thought of white holes and drags back those of black holes – ha! – again. He thinks about black, about a void, about darkness.
A few days ago Jimin mumbled the word darkness in a tone that eerily resembled Jeongguk’s melody.
He picks up his phone again and searches for Min Yoongi’s contact. He hovers over the call button but surely if the man can respond to his text then he can respond to his call.
“Jeongguk-ah?”
He writes about darkness.
/ / / / /
Jeongguk watches every expression as it shifts on Jimin’s face.
Jimin falters when he notices Jeongguk’s unblinking stare but gives him a smile nonetheless.
The singer smiles back.
That night, Jeongguk doesn’t cry. He doesn’t grip at his chest and try to claw a pathway out to find the sorry excuse of a heart that takes up space in his chest and leaves the rest of its surroundings desolate. He doesn’t scratch at his scalp, at his face, or at his throat because he can’t breathe.
That night, he curls up on his side and looks at the wall.
His eyes lay wide, wide open, his mind is alert and looping the tentative lyrics of Stay Alive as he stares at the wall.
He thinks back to the wide-eyed, incredulous look Jimin had given at Jeongguk’s reciprocating smile and the cheers of the crowd that grew louder when he shared that same smile with them. And then he thinks about the darkness residing inside him like it’s a friend.
He feels the weight of it settling over his chest and pushing him further into the pillow.
An hour goes by like that, two hours, three hours, he keeps staring at the wall and falls deeper and deeper into the mattress and briefly wonders what suffocating feels like.
/ / / / /
During the day, Jeongguk thinks he can do it.
He can make it.
He can wake up again tomorrow and get out of bed and not want to kill himself.
He enjoys the days when previous nights don’t carry over with the rising sun. With the start of a new day, he can place blame on the ambience of a dark night and forget about it the next day.
The cafe he’s taken to on the first day back on tour, is small and quiet and perfect to maintain a low profile. The crew pile around different tables but still yell over each other to get the voices to Jeongguk who sits on a round table in the very middle of the shop.
They insisted on treating him to a belated birthday meal since it had passed during their break but Jeongguk wasn’t hungry. He doesn’t know anyone who would be hungry for a full meal at 10 in the morning.
Around him is his manager, his manager’s assistant, the assistant’s assistant, and Jimin.
Jimin nibbles on a muffin that’s larger than his hand. Jeongguk grins and ducks his head.
“What?” Jimin says. He’s frowning and looking directly at Jeongguk like he’s been watching him for a while.
“Nothing.” Jeongguk shakes his head.
“What?”
Jeongguk is about to insist again but the frankly terrifying look on Jimin’s face stops him short.
“Just…” Jeongguk lamely gestures to the big muffin and tiny hand like it speaks for itself. It doesn’t. “You have small hands.”
A pause. A loud, loud pause.
And then the entire cafe erupts in laughter.
Jeongguk startles, looking around him with uncertain eyes because was everybody watching him?
Jimin’s face makes a series of expressions that all morph into an indignant pout and really that’s not helping his case with the small hands and all.
“Unbelievable,” Jimin mumbles. He goes to take a bite of his muffin, looks at the ridiculous picture it paints with his fingers stretched wide to grip the thing and scoffs. “Unbelievable!”
There’s a rooftop again at this hotel.
Jeongguk walks up the flights of stairs after the darkness of his room had started closing in on him.
Below him there’s a swimming pool. It’s one of those luxurious hotels that has a rooftop and a swimming pool and Jeongguk hopes that someone from his team takes advantage of it at least because he surely won’t.
The water below is an unnatural blue, either dyed or reflecting the bottom surface.
When Jeongguk was a child, he’d always wondered why death by drowning was shown to be the most peaceful.
The imagery is often described like drowning was the equivalent of sinking into something that was bigger and brighter than yourself. It showed time slowing down as the person breathed and blinked and thought in molasses. They would let their body relax as some unknown pleasurable sensation overtook their entire body in that in between point of wakefulness and sleep.
Jeongguk thinks it’s bullshit.
He thinks that if he dived into the water, his body would fight. Reflexes would lock his body into something so tense and stiff that he wouldn’t be able to do anything but try to find the top.
He looks down and wonders what it would be like if their words were true.
Behind him the door opens, closes. There are footsteps and then Jimin stands next to him.
Jeongguk isn’t surprised, still in that weird haze of imaging the peace promised by the writers obsessed with drowning.
Sometimes Jeongguk looks down from whatever platform he’s climbed up on. He looks down and wonders what would happen if he fell. Would it feel like it always does, breathless and scary? Would he scramble to search for solid ground the way he does everyday only to find that he is on solid ground?
The sun is setting before them. It paints a beautiful picture and Jeongguk wonders if the sun too scrambles for solid ground. If it hopes to fall just so it can find a space to lay its head on.
“Did you eat?” Jimin asks.
He hasn’t. He spent a few hours twiddling his thumbs in his room after the half-celebration-half-team-breakfast thing this morning while yelling out lyrics to the wall hoping one would stick.
None of them stuck. They slid down the wall and fell to the floor with a splat.
He forgot to eat, didn’t even realize he missed lunch and missed late afternoon snack time and was on the way to missing dinner too.
He shakes his head.
“Okay. We can eat together.” Jimin decides for them. Jeongguk is too tired to refuse, doesn’t know if he wants to refuse.
He looks at Jimin’s hands gripping the railing after his easy defeat.
They really are small. He wants to see if his hand engulfs the other man’s hand.
He lifts his hand and rests the pad of his fingers on the back of Jimin’s hand.
Jimin turns his hand so that his hand is palm-up. Jeongguk flattens his hand on top of Jimin’s and finds Jimin’s hand disappear under his.
/ / / / /
Touring is…lonely.
When Jeongguk is in Seoul, he can pretend and pretend and pretend until it becomes reality.
He can visit his parents and siblings, visit his manager and his manager’s husband, visit his team of producers and friends. He can smile and laugh and socialize and pretend that he doesn’t feel loneliness looming over him like a perpetual cloud waiting until he’s out of sight until it can pour down on him.
On the good days, the excellent days, Jeongguk doesn’t even have to pretend.
Touring is different.
Touring is lonely because his safe place is so far away. When he needs to escape, he escapes into his hotel room and that feels more like a prison than an escape. The tiny rooms hear his screams and cries and only echo them back to him to taunt and mock him.
Every new city brings a sense of doom hanging over him. He flinches and panics over the smallest things. The least he can do for those who spend months and months to save up for concert tickets is have a warmed up voice so when his voice cracks in the middle of a song, he descends into something so nasty that even drowning sounds more appealing.
When his shoe catches on something and he trips during a dance break, he feels panic beginning to override any other rational emotion.
It gets worse with every venue and eventually, every show is preceded by a panic attack.
It’s only Jeongguk’s luck that Jimin finds him at the peak of one.
He doesn’t hear Jimin walk towards him.
There are many odd nooks and corners that come with touring. Backstage is a mess but they pretend to be organized so there are dozens of storage rooms and small closets that do nothing to minimize the chaos of being backstage.
Jeongguk shoves himself into what must be a costume room but they’re definitely not his outfits, what with the decade old style of ripped skinny jeans and denim jackets and pairs and pairs of Timberland boots.
It looks a lot like a 16 year old Jeongguk’s wardrobe but definitely not a 26 year old Jeongguk’s.
It’s a little dusty and definitely makes Jeongguk’s already heavy breathing go heavier.
Jimin walks in when Jeongguk is squatting in a corner and repeatedly tapping the heel of his palms to his temples.
He’d backed himself between two selves and cocooned himself from the rest of the world in hopes that the warmth from an enclosed space would calm him down.
It only managed to suffocate him but he’d already bent down in a squat and forced his head between his knees, he couldn’t move.
He can’t move.
There’s a series of sounds, words, voices (voice?).
Jeongguk’s head stays down. He switches to pressing his palms to the side of his head and presses harder. Harder, until it hopefully crushes his skull.
He doesn’t cry this time but he teeters on the edge of vomiting his insides out and part of him wants that. He wants to see the rotten excuse of organs that take up residence inside him and still make him feel hollow. He gags.
The rush in his ears lasts for minutes – or maybe hours – and very slowly do sounds come back to him.
First the distant voices of staff screaming over each other comes back, then the music playing to entertain the early crowd, then the whirring of the AC unit. It takes a while for Jimin’s voice to separate from that lump but when it does Jeongguk listens to the words being repeated over and over again.
Breath. You can do it. Just listen to my voice. Breathe. You’ve worked hard. That’s it. Just listen to my voice. Pay attention to me. It’s okay. It’s okay, you can feel it all. Just listen to my voice.
Jimin’s hand is outstretched. It’s limply hanging in the air before them like he’d held it out and forgotten to take it back.
Jeongguk’s trembling hands slowly reach out. He rests the tips of his fingers in Jimin’s palm and doesn’t find energy to do more than that.
He looks up at Jimin a bit helplessly.
Jimin smiles and carefully links their fingers together.
/ / / / /
A few nights later, there’s a knock on his door.
They’re in a frankly terrible hotel that doesn’t have a swimming pool or a rooftop or a proper gym. They have a small shed without windows that has two treadmills and a set of 10LB weights that Jeongguk was actually insulted by.
It had stunk of sweat and the manual maintenance board on the wall is dated back three months so Jeongguk runs out of there as fast as he can lest he catch some airborne disease that’s been breeding the room and looking for a prey.
Jeongguk locks himself in his room and pretends to work on something that requires his immediate and utmost attention. In reality, he has to remind himself to blink.
The knock startles him but he lays motionless on his bed, curled up on his side. The only indication that he didn’t imagine the sound is the picking up of his heartbeat but that happens so often that Jeongguk has learned to distrust it.
The knock comes again a few minutes later.
Jeongguk doesn’t want to get up. He wants to use his rare rest days to rest before the flurry of shows picks up and leaves him short winded.
He gets up.
Jimin stands on the other side of the doorway holding a pillow that belongs to the hotel but he hugs it like it holds more meaning.
Jeongguk blinks.
Jimin blinks.
See, Jeongguk knows that the rest of them hang out together. He’s heard their voices traveling down the hallway they currently occupy. While staying on the same floor – it’s easier to keep count that way – he’s heard the knocks on doors and the yells about being late and yells about not yelling when they come back drunk from their outings.
It would leave him with the feeling of a sharp pang in his chest when he wished to join them but made absolutely no move to accept their invitations.
He tells his manager it’s because he doesn’t want to invade their space as their boss but in reality it’s because he can hardly get out of bed most of the time.
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with Jimin standing in front of him like he expects Jeongguk to have the answers when he doesn’t even know what the question is.
“Wanna have a sleepover?” Jimin finally lets him in on the question. He sounds hesitant, just he expects Jeongguk to reject and shut the door in his face.
Jeongguk balks. He looks behind him like there might be someone else Jimin is addressing.
There’s an empty, lonely, dusty chair behind him. Jeongguk stares at it and gets a bit lost in his head.
He doesn’t know Jimin like that. He doesn’t open his door to anyone but his manager but that’s because no one bothers knocking besides his manager.
Jimin’s been materializing in the most odd places. Whenever and wherever Jeongguk’s eyes stray, Jimin is somehow always in the destination his eyes stop at. The makeup artist finds him in the corners he’s hidden himself in and slips into the half-seat beside him.
Jeongguk doesn’t know how to be lonely when there’s almost always someone sitting next to him now.
He remembers that he was being addressed and finds Jimn patiently waiting for him.
“Okay.” Jeongguk agrees, mostly because he’s scared to disagree. Mostly because Jimin perks up when he agrees, shoulders rising and eyebrows raising expectantly.
Like this Jeongguk notices the deep, dark circles the older boy must keep covered under layers of his own routine of makeup. His slumped shoulders only rise so much but there’s still a perpetual hunch that only goes away after a good week of rest. Jeongguk knows from experience.
Everyone’s a little lonely, he guesses.
/ / / / /
Stay Alive gets released as a surprise. Jeongguk performs it for the first time at his last song at the final encore concert in Seoul.
He’s exhausted, he’s tired , he’s pretty sure he cried so much that it got him sick but that doesn’t stop him from crying all over again the moment he hears the first keys as Min Yoongi accompanies him on stage.
He lets the crowd guide his voice and hopes that his entire soul can be seen through his voice.
His movements are shaky and so is his voice but for the first time, Jeongguk embraces that feeling. Because for the first time in a long time he’s found a way to voice his fears and his heart and his soul.
He cries and doesn’t feel like his heart is carving out pieces of itself so it can escape with every tear.
His fans cry with him and that makes a new wave of tears rush out because they cry like they understand him, like they too are friends with the darkness and they too want to be saved. It’s the first time they’re hearing the song but they cry like they’ve known this darkness their entire lives.
An hour after the show ends, Jeongguk will drive back to his home, his real home, and let the high crash down and leave him feeling like he’s drowning.
His manager will let himself in tomorrow when Jeongguk ignores all texts, calls, and knocks, and will sit him down until they come up with a schedule that’ll become Jeongguk’s only purpose for not killing himself.
For the time being Jeongguk looks into the crowd of roaring fans, an ocean of love, and sinks to his knees in a bow.
His eyes sting.
He stands up and lets his entire team form a line around him as he stands in the middle for the final bow. They all lock hands; Jeongguk looks down and smiles.
He looks at the face next to him and finds Jimin smiling back at him. His eyes are wet, his hands are shaking in Jeongguk’s hold.
The singer thinks about black, about a void, about darkness. He thinks about Jimin mumbling the word darkness and thinks that maybe everyone’s a little lonely.
And everyone will be a little lonely tomorrow.
And maybe that’s okay because right now, right in this moment, it doesn’t matter. It might crash down harder tomorrow and it might take weeks or months to get back up but the brief moment in which they turn to each other and smile makes it enough. It’s enough for now and it’ll be enough to wake up for tomorrow.
For now, Jeongguk feels warm and maybe even safe.
There’s no crowd behind them but as courtesy, the team turns around and prepares to bow again. No camera is showing his face – or at least Jeongguk hopes. He pretends to guide their hands up but at the last second, brings the back of Jimin’s hand to his mouth.
It’s a short, short second, but yeah. Yes, it’s enough.