Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Every night, Thame crawls into bed, dials P’Po’s number by heart… and doesn’t call. He stares at the dimly lit display on the hotel room’s landline, tracing the edges of each number with his gaze, and wishes he could hear Po’s voice, even just for a moment or two. A single “hello” from Po, he thinks, might solve everything that’s wrong with his life.

But he knows that P’Po doesn’t want to hear from him, so he eventually hangs up and stares at the ceiling until morning, only occasionally slipping into a fitful sleep.

He doesn’t get any rest, not really, and he doesn’t call.

They’ve put him in a hotel a few blocks from the Oner building. Initially, when Khun Pemika told him that he couldn’t stay in the MARS house anymore, he wanted to go back to his own condo (which is probably coated in an inch-thick layer of dust at this point, given how little time he’s spent there over the past few months). But no—that isn’t allowed, either. His members all know how to get to his condo, and he has a hunch that Pemika is worried Po might have the address as well.

No need to worry, he wants to tell her. P’Po doesn’t know where the condo is, but even if he did, he wouldn’t come—of that, Thame is certain. He doesn’t want me anymore.

Instead, he’s been living out of this damned hotel suite, with a balcony he’s not allowed to use and a rotating detail of handlers from Oner’s security team who never allow more than a single closed door to come in between them and their charge, not even at night. They’re always just outside the room, checking in on him at regular intervals, close enough to hear if he cries himself to sleep.

He tries not to cry.

After all, everyone else is happy, right? Sure, maybe it’s not ideal, with Thame still leaving the group to go to Korea and with both his and Pepper’s relationships ended, but… At least everyone else got something that they really wanted. Oner is finally supporting his members’ other dreams, helping Jun to book bigger acting gigs and letting Dylan train under famous producers, allowing Per to shadow managers as well as MCs and giving Nano extra singing lessons. And Po—well, P’Po has been promoted to creative director, and even through his heartbreak, Thame is so proud of him, so glad that people are recognizing Po’s talent and allowing him the creative freedom he deserves.

They all deserve it—to be happy, to follow their dreams, and who is Thame to resent them for it? Who is he to complain about how things turned out? All the bits that aren’t ideal are his own fault, anyway. He failed as group leader to make MARS successful enough that Korea would take all of them. His carelessness is what got him and P’Po caught, which is why Pemika leaked Pepper’s photos instead of his and why P’Gam ultimately ended their relationship. Thame is the one who couldn’t find the words to convince P’Po to stay—not on the rooftop and not in his letter. He can’t fault Po for leaving, not when he was the one who couldn’t figure out how to be someone worth staying for.

Everyone else is happy, and they deserve to be. If Thame doesn’t like the outcome, he has only himself to blame.

Besides, isn’t he also getting to pursue something he’s always dreamed of? Debuting in Korea, becoming an international star, getting to share his music with an ever-larger crowd that spans the entire globe? Even if he has to go alone, shouldn’t he still find some way to enjoy it?

He feels stupid and selfish for wishing things could be different.

Sometimes, Thame gets so lonely that it hurts to breathe, his lungs full of sharp edges instead of oxygen. He goes days at a time without talking to anyone who isn’t Oner staff—his handlers, the choreographer, the vocal coach—and he can’t remember the last time he touched another person. His skin crawls with the memory of hugs he can no longer have, like phantom pains that prick against his limbs. He misses the smell of P’Po’s apartment and the sound of Jun and Dylan bickering. He misses having to be quiet when he goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night so as not to wake Per, who’s always been a light sleeper. He misses the way Nano drapes himself over whoever’s closest, always hanging onto Thame’s shoulders or flopping dramatically across his lap.

As the day of the concert draws near, Thame feels like he’s stumbling through a dark tunnel, not towards a light at the end but rather towards an even darker void, a hole that he’s bound to fall into the moment the concert is over. The world has narrowed down to this path, and despite fighting for so long to cling to other futures, other choices, he’s ended up here anyway, staring at a life he’ll have to live without any of the people he cares about most. If he tries to turn back now, tries to fight one last time, he risks destroying the fragile happiness that those people have somehow carved out for themselves in the midst of an otherwise shitty situation—and that on top of all the other ways he’s already failed them. How can he ask them to give up their dreams just to make him feel less lonely, less trapped?

He can’t, and he can’t cry, and he can’t call P’Po.

In fact, he doesn’t expect that he’ll ever see P’Po again, given the way Khun Pemika has Thame on such a tight leash right up until his departure for Korea, forbidden from going anywhere unaccompanied and forced to do as many of his meetings as possible via video call instead of in person. The company sends people to his room to finalize the concert costume fittings, and he does all of his practicing and photoshoots in event rooms rented from the hotel. Even when they start doing the blocking rehearsals at the venue, he knows that Pemika and her people will be there to watch him closely, keeping him from interacting with anyone outside of his carefully choreographed movements on stage.

But about a week and a half before the concert, representatives from the Korean company schedule a last-minute meeting with Pemika and ask that Thame be there, too, presumably to talk about branding and training and logistics. (Thame feels sick at the thought.) So, for the first time in weeks, he is allowed to physically go to work, accompanied by a pair of handlers as he walks the three blocks from his hotel to the Oner building.

And suddenly, there is P’Po, waiting at the crosswalk with several other pedestrians, only a few hundred meters away. He looks the same as ever, still Po—blue overshirt, brown canvas bag, headphones in, glancing down at his phone. Beautiful.

Thame’s heart constricts so hard that he almost trips and falls, just barely managing to keep himself walking normally. The pedestrian crossing signal comes on, and as P’Po glances carefully to either side, nervous as always, Thame desperately wants to run to him, take ahold of his elbow, guide him across the street. He wants to make Po feel safe, wants to care for him the way he deserves. He wants a hug, wants to know how Po could read his letter and still break up with him, wants to grab his hand and run away together forever.

He wants and he wants, but he already knows that the universe won’t let him have anything he wants, and certainly not P’Po.

By the time Thame and his handlers make it to the crosswalk, the cars are rushing past again, and Po is already nearly at the Oner entrance on the other side of the street, looking not back at Thame but forward, towards a future full of joy and possibility and choices.

Choices that Thame won’t ever have again.

The walls of the tunnel are closing in on him, making it impossible to breathe. If he waits for the crossing signal to give him permission to move, if he goes into this meeting to smile and nod at his new owners, if he allows himself to go down this path that Khun Pemika has forced him to take—alone—he knows that he will be doing so as a ghost of himself. He won’t be Thame anymore. He won’t ever breathe easy again, and he will dance and sing for his supper in front of crowds of adoring fans who will never know—and maybe never care—that he’s nothing more than a glorified puppet.

Thame can see it now: sleepwalking through his own life, working himself to death to fulfill the demands of an industry that doesn’t give a shit about him beyond the money he can make for them. He won’t have friends, not really, and he definitely won’t have a boyfriend ever again. He’ll shrivel up inside, his skin and his heart slowly turning into ice through years and years of isolation.

The future spreads out before him like some kind of nightmarish hallucination, and Thame knows he cannot do it. He can’t make himself go through that, and perhaps the universe has taken away all of his options to stop, to turn around, to go in a different direction, but he still has one choice left, the only one, really: to move first.

He doesn’t need to wait for permission, doesn’t need to hold himself back. He can just… take the first step, go of his own free will.

And so he does—stepping straight into Bangkok traffic. 

Chapter Text

Po almost doesn’t see it happen.

He’s just about to walk through the front doors of the Oner building when someone bumps into him, splashing her iced matcha all over his shirt.

“Shia!” the woman says as Po stumbles and spins with the momentum of the collision, cold suddenly seeping through the fabric of his clothes. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

Po steadies himself, glancing at the sopping mess of pale green dripping down his chest, and then looks up at the woman, his mouth half-open to assure her that he’s fine, when he sees a familiar figure across the street.

Thame.

Even from here, Po can tell immediately that something is wrong. It’s in the way Thame stands, shoulders hunched in on himself, looking for all the world like a paper skeleton about to blow away in the wind. He looks unconfident and sad and nothing at all like the Thame that Po knows. He looks broken.

Before Po even has time to feel worried or guilty, Thame moves, and the whole world seems to come crashing down.

He watches in horror as Thame steps out into the rush of cars in the street, and even though there is an awful screeching noise as several drivers swerve and stomp on their brakes, one still hits Thame with enough force to send him flying into the asphalt several meters away. The sound his body makes hitting the pavement is barely audible from where Po is standing, but he hears it anyway, and he knows it will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Someone screams; Po thinks maybe it’s him.

He’s already moving, running to where Thame is lying in a bloody heap in the middle of the road, his arm bent at an unnatural angle.

One of the men that had been standing beside Thame at the crosswalk gets there first—someone that, as he gets closer, Po dimly recognizes from MARS events as Oner security. The man is crouching over Thame and shouting something that Po can’t hear through the high-pitched whine in his ears. Distantly, he’s aware of people yelling and honking horns and climbing out of their cars to see what’s happened, but all he can think of, all he can see, is Thame.

The security guard tries to hold Po back when he gets close, but he shoves past, collapsing to his knees.

There’s blood everywhere. Thame’s clothes are ripped, blood oozing from jagged scrapes where the asphalt has shredded his skin. His arm is clearly broken, and Po has to swallow down bile as he realizes that the white thing poking out through Thame’s sleeve is bone.

He wants to check for a pulse, wants to cradle Thame’s head in his lap, but he’s terrified to touch anything, afraid that he’ll make it worse. You’re supposed to try and put pressure on a wound to stop it from bleeding, he knows, but what do you do if the wound is everywhere?

“Thame? Please, Thame, don’t leave me, just… hold on, okay?”

At the sound of his voice, Thame moans weakly and twitches his unbroken arm as if trying to move it, his fingers curling briefly in the damp hem of Po’s overshirt where it drags along the ground.

He’s alive.

Po finds himself sobbing with relief, and inanely, all he can think for a moment is that Thame is going to get cold matcha on his hands when he should probably be kept warm instead. That’s a thing after accidents, right? Keeping the person warm?

“Call… call an ambulance!” he croaks to the guard, his voice barely functional.

“Already did.” He tugs at Po’s shoulder. “You need to step back.”

“No, I can’t… I can’t leave him. Not again, I can’t…”

“Khun,” the man says, not unkindly, pulling him to his feet. “The paramedics will be here soon. You need to step back.”

Suddenly overwhelmed, his brain and body both too flooded with emotion to protest, Po allows himself to be pulled, letting the guard steer him towards the sidewalk and sit him down on the curb. He can feel himself shaking and wonders if he’s cold—he can’t tell any more. His stomach churns, and this time when the bile rises in his throat, he can’t stop himself from leaning over and vomiting up his entire breakfast.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there before the sirens sound in the distance, before the ambulance arrives and Thame is obscured from his view by a flurry of activity. He knows that he is surrounded everywhere by onlookers, can sense the wall of noise crushing in around him, but all of that feels like something happening to a person far away.

In the end, they won’t let him ride in the ambulance with Thame, and even though internally, he feels like yelling, begging, fighting his way into the vehicle, outwardly he simply nods and steps back, his body still stuck at a distance from his heart.

As the ambulance screams away, he walks back towards the Oner building in a daze, unsure of what he’s meant to do next. There are police around—is he supposed to talk to them? Tell them what he saw? Does he need to go inside and report to Khun Pemika? Or has Thame’s security team already talked to her? Po lost track of them in the chaos.

And if there’s nothing he’s supposed to do, then he should figure out how to do the thing he needs to do, the thing he’s desperate to do—follow Thame, make sure he’s okay—but aside from literally running to the hospital on foot, he can’t think of how to accomplish that task. His brain feels frozen, full of static, unable to think of the steps required to get from point A to point B, until…

“P’Po!” he hears from further down the street, past the police barricades. A familiar car has pulled up to the curb there, and Jun leans out, waving at him. “Come on, hurry up!”

Po doesn’t quite remember getting into the passenger seat, but suddenly, he’s there, buckling his seatbelt with trembling fingers, and Jun looks more freaked out than he’s ever seen him before.

“Which hospital, phi?” Jun asks, voice strained.

Po tells him, and immediately they’re off, weaving through traffic much faster than is really safe, but he can’t bring himself to care.

Jun doesn’t look at him when he asks, “Is he… I mean, what happened? How bad is it?”

“He’s alive,” Po whispers, his voice breaking instantly on a fresh wave of tears. “Or he was when they took him. He…”

Jun’s grip tightens on the leather steering wheel with an audible creak.

“It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

They come to a red light at a crowded intersection, and despite his best efforts, Jun can’t seem to maneuver them through it any faster, leaving them stopped. He slams his hands against the wheel and yells in frustration.

“Come on! Fucking move!”

Po can feel the seconds ticking away, and he probably shouldn’t say anything while Jun is driving, but he needs someone else to know, needs to share the awful burden of this knowledge because the more he comes back into his body, the more it’s starting to eat him from the inside out.

“Jun,” he murmurs, guilt gnawing at his entrails like acid. “Jun, he did it on purpose.”

“Did what?” Jun is still growling in frustration, still looking angrily out at the gridlock in front of them.

“Walked in front of the car.”

Time freezes, shatters, the moment falling apart completely as the knowledge settles. Po watches Jun’s expression cave in, collapsing in the face of an emotional sucker-punch, and he feels his own heart break all over again. He remembers the sound Thame made hitting the pavement…

Jun lets out an anguished sob and crashes his fist into the horn, sounding an angry, drawn-out honk that vibrates through Po’s skin.

Po curls into himself, staring at the dried blood and matcha latte splattered across his shirt, and wonders if Thame’s hands are cold, the way they were cold on the rooftop all those weeks ago.

I never should have let go.

Chapter Text

“Take a seat,” the woman at the hospital front desk tells them. “We’ll call you as soon as there’s news.”

Jun clears his throat, uncomfortably aware of the gaggle of teenagers who have already started taking pictures of them from across the room. “Do you think… Could we possibly wait somewhere more private?”

“Why?”

He jerks his head back towards the teens, and thankfully, the woman seems to pick up on the issue immediately, peering at his face more closely for a moment as if suddenly realizing she’s seen him somewhere before—on a billboard, perhaps, or the side of a bus.

“Right. Let me see what I can do.”

A few minutes later, a nurse shows them into a small room filled with hard plastic chairs. Jun has to help guide P’Po to one of those chairs and sit him down, because he still looks absolutely shell-shocked, just as he’d been when Jun found him, wandering in the street and gazing around at the world like he’d lived through a bombing or something. Eyes wide, expression vacant, his once-crisp blue shirt stained with bloody fingerprints at the hem.

“There’s vending machines around the corner if you want anything. A doctor should be by to see you soon with more information.”

Jun manages a quick wai to the nurse as he leaves, but P’Po doesn’t move. His hands are trembling, and at some point, he must have started crying again, his tears now slipping silently down his cheeks.

“Do you want some water? P’Po?” Jun has to tug on his sleeve and call his name several times before Po finally glances up at him and shakes his head.

Jun knows he should probably sit down as well, given how unsteady he feels, but he can’t stop moving, pacing in circles around the room while he texts the others, updating them on where to go. If he stops and sits and lets himself think, he knows he’s going to have to reckon with what P’Po told him—He did it on purpose, walked in front of the car—and Jun isn’t sure he can handle that right now.

His brain betrays him and thinks about it anyway.

If this wasn’t some random accident, if it was—he shivers, swallows hard—an attempt, on Thame’s part, to remove himself from the equation entirely, then… it means that it could have been prevented. It means that Thame needed someone, needed his best friend, and instead was stuck all alone while Jun tried to keep moving forward with his life as if nothing had changed. He could have tried harder to get in touch with Thame, or at least made sure he was okay. He could have…

“I’m so sorry,” P’Po says suddenly, his voice soft and crackly.

“What? Why?”

“This is all my fault. If I…”

“No, phi, it’s not.” Jun moves to sit in the chair beside him, wrapping his arms around Po’s wide shoulders. He squeezes, tight, and insists as forcefully as he can, “It’s not your fault at all.”

“But I… I left him. I’m in love with him and I left him anyway.” The end of Po’s sentence is almost lost in a sob, and he buckles a little.

Jun suspects that if he weren’t holding him up right now, Po would be on the floor.

To be honest, Jun isn’t sure how he isn’t on the floor right now, either, because Po might blame himself, but Jun knows better. It’s true that Thame was devastated about Po, but that wasn’t the breaking point. At least when Thame came home the night that Po broke up with him, he’d come back to a house full of his friends who could hold him and cry with him and make him shitty instant noodles. At least then, he hadn’t been alone.

The day after the breakup, Thame had pulled himself together and found enough willpower to fake a smile, go on a live broadcast, and face his fans as if nothing was wrong. He’d been heartbroken, but he hadn’t been shattered to the point of hopelessness, not yet. And even when Jun had seen him last, after Khun Pemika made her announcement on the livestream so they couldn’t fight back, after she’d revealed the truth about Thame paying off MARS’s debts, after everything imploded—even then, Jun doesn’t think Thame would have done something so drastic.

The change must have happened in the three weeks since that night. And Jun knows Thame, knows how much Thame hates to be alone.

Po might have broken Thame’s heart, but Jun is the one who should have known better than to leave him all by himself in the aftermath. Jun is the one who was supposed to be there for his friend.

He’s about to say so, tears leaking down his cheeks and onto the collar of P’Po’s shirt, but someone beats him to the punch.

“It isn’t your fault, Po,” says a familiar voice from the door, startling them both.  

Jun glances up to find Khun Pemika herself standing there—and if he doesn’t look at her face, she seems just as polished and sharp as always, in a black dress that’s really a long blazer, all pointy angles and gold accents. But she’s wearing an expression that Jun has never seen on her before, and although it’s hard to tell for certain from this angle, he’s almost positive that her mascara is smudged.

“I’m the one who pressured you to break up with him,” she continues, stepping further into the room and taking a seat across from them.

I knew it, Jun thinks bitterly. He and Pepper had suspected that P’Po only called things off because Pemika interfered, but Thame was already so upset, and they didn’t exactly have any evidence, so they’d kept quiet at first… and then they hadn’t been able to tell Thame anything at all, even if they’d wanted to. 

“I manipulated you,” Pemika adds, straightforward as always, as if she’s simply explaining an MV concept or walking them through a new marketing strategy. “I made you believe that you were selfishly holding back not only Thame, but all of MARS, from getting to go to Korea. But it wouldn’t have mattered if you said yes or no. The solo contract was already a done deal, and…” She hesitates, and Jun blinks in surprise when he sees shame—or something like it—shadow her expression. “And the Korean company didn’t know about you. Perhaps they never would have found out. The good thing about long distance relationships is that they’re easier to hide.”

Jun feels rage boiling in his gut, a fire that only grows fiercer when he looks over and sees the pain in P’Po’s face, feels the way his entire frame trembles where it’s still wrapped in Jun’s arms.

“You broke up with Thame because you wanted to do right by him and by all of MARS. You’re not the one who manipulated the group into thinking Korea was a possibility or who isolated Thame from all of his friends. You’re not the one who…” She swallows, pauses for a long moment. “You’re not the one who ignored reports from his handlers that he wasn’t doing well.”

Even now, she seems just left of normal, only slightly off from her usual, professional, matter-of-fact demeanor. Jun hates her for it, even as some distant, rational part of him recognizes that Pemika allowing even the smallest disruption of her CEO persona to become visible in the first place must mean that inside, she’s an absolute mess.

He doesn’t give a shit, because she knew and let it happen anyway.

“This was my fault…”

Jun interrupts before she can finish the thought, jumping to his feet. “You’re damn right, it’s your fault!”

She crosses her legs and stares up at him impassively, as if Jun is a toddler whose temper tantrum she can just wait out.

Now that he’s closer, he can see that her makeup is definitely smudged—and somehow, this only serves to infuriate him more, because who cares if she shed a few tears in private? Here and now, she’s trying to stay cool and aloof and put together, even as she’s admitting to all the ways she destroyed Thame. It makes Jun want to destroy her in return, make her crumble out in public where everyone can see.

Vaguely, he registers movement behind him as more people step into the room, but his anger has taken on a life of its own, and he can’t seem to rein it in now that he’s decided to let it loose.

“You’re the one who locked Thame up as if he fucking belongs to you! You’re the reason he tried to kill himself, you heinous fucking bitch!”

He’s moving, and he’s not really sure what the goal is—to punch her, perhaps, or strangle her, or maybe just to shake her until she somehow turns back time to fix things—but before he can find out, several pairs of hands are hauling him back.

Apparently, the rest of MARS has arrived just in time to witness his outburst. Fucking perfect.

“Ai Jun!”

It takes all three of them—Pepper, Dylan, Nano—to keep him from getting to Pemika, and Jun is gratified to at least see her flinch, her eyes widening as she physically shrinks back from him. In all the time he’s worked for Oner, he’s never once seen her flinch, not with angry clients or crazed fans or spoiled, selfish idols, but she does now, and it comes with a sour sort of satisfaction that he suspects he’ll probably regret later.

Good. She should be scared of me.

“Jun, calm down,” Pepper says, rubbing his back in a way that Jun knows is meant to be soothing but which only makes him feel more enraged.

He shakes them all off and steps away from Pemika, his chest heaving, fists clenched so hard they hurt.

“P’Jun,” whispers Nano, his voice sounding small and close to tears. “What… what do you mean P’Thame tried to kill himself?”

Jun makes the mistake of looking at Nano in that moment—Nano who is normally like sunshine in human form, Nano who he would give anything to protect—and seeing his nong’s terrified, wrecked expression is more than enough to break him.

“Ask her,” he snarls, jerking his head in Pemika’s direction, then storms out of the room.

He’s not really sure where he’s going. Some tiny part of him insists that he should be careful, that it wouldn’t be a good idea for people to see him wandering around the hospital like this… but the larger, internally screaming part of him doesn’t give a shit.

Ultimately, he doesn’t get very far, because tears are blurring his vision and his legs feel like they’re three steps away from giving out beneath him. He ends up by a pair of vending machines, leaning on them for support as he tries to catch his breath.

He wants to destroy Khun Pemika. He wants to watch her splinter, wants to dangle everything she’s ever loved in front of her face and burn it. Even if she’s technically already admitted that it’s all her fault, he needs her to say it again and again, needs to see her collapse under all of that blame—preferably in public, with a million cameras to record it for posterity—because if she takes on the weight of all this soul-crushing, inescapable guilt, then maybe Jun won’t have to bear it anymore.

But the more he tries to remind himself that this is completely and entirely Pemika’s fault, the more he feels certain, deep in his heart, that the only person he has to blame is himself.

“Jun?”

He turns and is surprised to find Dylan, of all people, standing there on the other side of the vending machines, watching cautiously.

“What?” he snaps… or tries to, wanting to rely on the force of habit to be as prickly as usual, wanting to keep everyone—and Dylan especially—from seeing him fall apart. But his voice comes out weaker than he intended, nearly cracking in half, as he’s unable to muster his regular levels of venomous confidence.

Dylan looks small, drowning in an oversized green hoodie, out of place among the blank white walls of the hospital. As stoic as Dylan normally is, Jun does have a pretty good sense of what he looks like when he’s upset—when he’s angry enough to throw things at Thame’s head or scared enough to let the whole group pile on top of him during a thunderstorm—but he’s never seen Dylan like this before. It’s more than upset, more than angry or scared or even sad, landing somewhere closer to haunted and empty, and the expression throws Jun for a loop, making it even harder to be prickly.

“What do you need?” Dylan asks, his voice softer than Jun’s ever heard it before.

Jun stares, not fully comprehending the question. Dylan… wants to… what, help him? Comfort him?

Even more confusingly, Dylan now appears to be getting taller, looming above him, and it’s only when Dylan crouches beside him and pulls him into a tight embrace that Jun realizes his knees finally did give out, buckling under the weight of his grief and guilt.

Dylan hugs him, and he can’t stop himself from crying in earnest now, sobbing into the soft green fabric of his friend’s hoodie.

“I should have been there for him,” he finds himself saying without really meaning to, the words escaping in a rush, muffled by Dylan’s shoulder. “I should have…”

“I know.” Dylan whispers the words into his hair, clutching at Jun almost painfully. “Me too.”

Jun hates that anyone has to hold him right now—and he can’t tell if Dylan is the best or worst possible option to do the holding—but given that he feels like a gentle breeze might be enough in this moment to scatter what’s left of his heart beyond repair, he doesn’t really have a choice.

He lets himself be held.

Chapter Text

Po has never seen Pepper so angry. Truth be told, he didn’t think Pepper could get angry like this—not just mad but bitter and cruel, too—because in the few moments when he’s seen Per get pissed, he’s always still been kind.

He didn’t think someone like Per was capable of being mean.

But now, Po watches him practically growl at Khun Pemika, his face contorted with a rage that doesn’t fit him well at all.

“Maybe I should have let Jun punch you,” Per snarls.

“I am sorry, Pepper,” Pemika says softly. “Truly, I am.”

Per scoffs and doesn’t dignify her apology with a response.

Po can’t really blame him.

Beside him, Nano sniffles and leans even further into Po’s shoulder, his tears leaving a small damp patch on the collar of Po’s ruined shirt. He’d practically collapsed into the next seat over as Pemika explained the situation, as if unable to hold himself upright any longer, and Po had instinctively wrapped an arm around him, squeezing him gently through the fabric of his fuzzy rainbow sweater.

Po thinks that if he has to watch one more person learn the truth about what happened to Thame, he might die.

At least this time, he wasn’t the one who had to say it.

“Why are you still here?” Per asks pointedly after a moment, sounding hostile. “Don’t you have a business to run? Deals to make, lives to ruin?”

Pemika’s mouth tightens, almost imperceptibly. “Not anymore.”

Po sees both Per and Nano glance up at her in surprise. His own reactions, however, still feel delayed, as if the input from the world around him is traveling through syrup to arrive in his brain. Pemika’s answer registers as unexpected in a distant, faintly interesting way, but real surprise feels beyond him at this point. He just listens, trying to focus on her words through the lingering whine in his ears.

“There will be a press conference first thing tomorrow morning to update everyone on the situation… and to announce my resignation as CEO of Oner. The board is already working to determine my replacement, and in the meantime, everything is being handled by other executive staff.” She pauses, letting her gaze fall away from them. “I wanted to wait here, to hear what the doctors say.”

Some part of Po thinks, distantly, that Pemika is probably worried sick about Thame and wants to be close by so she can know the moment there’s any news. He doesn’t feel any sympathy for her, although he’s not sure if that’s because he hates her or simply because he can’t feel much of anything at all right now.

Before he can figure it out, Pepper responds, his voice cold and cutting as he says, “Well I think maybe you should wait somewhere else.”

Khun Pemika’s face clouds over a bit, but eventually she nods and stands, moving towards the door.

“It doesn’t matter if you resign,” Per adds suddenly. “It doesn’t matter what you do. We will never, ever forgive you for this.”

For a long moment, Pemika merely stands in the doorway with her back to them, and Po feels Pepper’s bitterness wash over him like a physical wave of acrid anger. It’s a strange sensation, especially when he feels so incapable of producing any emotions of his own right now, let alone something so overpowering.

Finally, Pemika turns just slightly, enough to speak over her shoulder but not to make eye contact with them. Her voice is quiet, and Po thinks he even detects a bit of a waver as she says, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself, either.” 

And then she’s gone.

“P’Po,” Nano whimpers, his cheek smushed against Po’s shoulder. “Is P’Thame gonna be okay?”  

Po is vaguely aware of his own fingers drifting up to comb through Nano’s hair. It’s orange now, he observes, the thought floating through his head like a lonely balloon. He must have dyed it.

Before he can find enough words to string together a coherent sentence, Pepper cuts in. 

“If he’s not okay, I swear, I’ll make sure Pemika spends the rest of her life rotting in jail. Or maybe I’ll just let Jun murder her. Hell, maybe I’ll even help.”

Per’s words trigger a sudden surge of nausea, and Po closes his eyes to try and push it back down. Up until now, he’s managed not to completely fall apart into a sobbing, insensible mess, but only because of his certainty that Thame is still alive—bleeding and broken, but alive. Even just thinking of the possibility that Thame might not make it through this makes him feel like his stomach is turning inside out.

If something had happened, the doctors would have told us by now. He’s still alive. He has to be.

“He’ll… he’ll be fine,” Po whispers into Nano’s hair. He thinks he must be crying again, because the soft, neon strands feel a bit damp beneath his chin.

But as the minutes tick by endlessly, his certainty becomes more and more precarious, and he feels like he’s being swallowed up beneath an ocean of emotions he can’t fully process. A dark, devouring void that has been safely locked up inside him for almost a year is seeping back into his heart, and it only makes him feel worse knowing that Thame must have been touched by that same darkness, fighting through it all alone.

Jun and Dylan come back at some point—Po isn’t sure how long it’s been—bringing bottled water for everyone. He doesn’t really feel like drinking anything, but the boys insist, and trying to put up a fight seems like it would require more energy than he’s ever had in his entire life, so he dutifully takes a few sips.

Soon after, P’Mick arrives, too, bringing with him a couple that Po recognizes immediately, even though he’s never seen them before, not even in a photograph. He would know those beautiful, expressive eyes anywhere, even on this unfamiliar woman’s face, and the man who stands behind her so closely resembles Thame that it makes Po’s chest ache.

For a moment, he considers prostrating himself before them, literally falling to the floor to beg their forgiveness for breaking their son’s heart and pushing him to do something so drastic.

But as Thame’s mother asks if there’s been any updates—no, not yet—and greets the other members—they call her auntie—and then sweeps her gaze across the room, pausing at Po, the one unknown quantity… Suddenly, he realizes that he can’t apologize anytime soon. These people have no idea who he is, probably have no idea that their son was seeing anyone, let alone a man, and assuming that Thame makes it through this—he will, he has to—Po doesn’t want to take that decision away from him, not even to assuage his own guilt.  

Or maybe that’s just the excuse he tells himself because he’s too much of a coward to say the truth out loud, to their faces.

Always a coward, always frozen in place. The thought is bitter and all too familiar.

“Who’s this?” Thame’s mother asks, and the boys rush to introduce Po as their friend—as Thame’s friend—who works at the company with them.  

Po sends a wai in her direction and tries not to cry—or puke, or pass out.

“Did someone already talk to you? About what happened?” Jun asks quietly, cautiously, and to Po’s relief, they nod.

At least he won’t have to watch Thame’s parents, of all people, be destroyed by the knowledge in real time. They might not be particularly close with their son, but Po can’t imagine it’s easy to hear that your child attempted suicide, no matter how distant you might be.

“We spoke with Pemika on our way here,” his father explains. “She told us everything.”

“I am going to sue that bitch for every baht she’s ever made,” his mother adds, voice sharp. She doesn’t seem the least bit apologetic about her vitriol, not even when her husband lightly pushes at her arm in response.

It’s not long after that when a doctor finally appears to give them an update—a short, no-nonsense sort of woman who introduces herself as Dr. Sun.

“Thame is out of surgery, and his condition is stable,” she informs them, directing her words mostly at Thame’s parents but glancing every so often at the rest of them, as if trying to include everyone. “There was a lot of internal bleeding, but he seems to have avoided substantial damage to most of his major organs. The one exception is his left lung, which was punctured by a fractured rib.”

She goes on to list out all of Thame’s broken bones—fourteen in total—ranging from little cracks to the arm that snapped when he landed on it. Po feels as though he’s drifting in some kind of void where nothing can touch him, and yet somehow it simultaneously feels like each fracture on the list echoes with a sting in his own body, his bones aching in sympathetic solidarity with Thame’s.

“Your son was very lucky,” Dr. Sun adds, after she’s finished walking them through the rest of Thame’s injuries—scrapes and bruises, most likely a concussion. “It seems that the driver did manage to slow the vehicle down significantly. If he’d hit Thame at full speed, this could have been much worse. It will take some time, but we expect that he will eventually be able to make a full recovery.” She pauses, suddenly looking a bit more hesitant. “I mean, physically, at least.”

Po swallows a mouthful of bile, and the sounds of brakes screeching and Thame’s body hitting the pavement replay again and again in his head. 

“When can we see him?” Thame’s mother asks the moment Dr. Sun has finished speaking.

“You and your husband, as immediately family, will be able to check in on him this evening, although he probably won’t be fully awake until tomorrow at the earliest.” She sweeps her gaze across the rest of them a little sadly. “Everyone else will have to wait at least until tomorrow, possibly the day after. You’re welcome to stay here during visiting hours, but you’ll likely just be sitting around doing nothing. I’d suggest going home and getting some rest. As I said, Thame’s condition is stable, and we’ll inform your company immediately if anything changes.”

She pulls Thame’s parents and P’Mick out into the hallway to take care of some paperwork, leaving Po and the boys alone—Nano still tucked into Po’s shoulder, Dylan folded into a chair in the corner, Pepper sitting closer to the door, and Jun starting to pace again.

“Can we… can we stay here a little longer?” asks Nano, sniffling. “I know the doctor said we could go home, but…”

“Yeah, we can stay for now.” Per leans over several empty seats to rub Nano’s arm reassuringly.

Po is vaguely aware of something in his chest relaxing a little, unspooling just a bit, now that he knows Thame is going to be okay—physically, eventually, and stable for now—but it’s not nearly enough. He needs to see Thame, hold him, feel his pulse, and the thought of leaving this hospital before he’s able to do so is unthinkable.

He left Thame once—he’s not about to do it again.

Chapter Text

Baifern has been in the office for less than an hour when the first rumblings start online, her notifications quickly piling up as people tag her and message her to ask if she’s heard anything. Police have blocked off the street in front of the Oner building. People are saying there’s been some kind of accident. Someone maybe got hit by a car?

And then come the photos, snapped by someone in the waiting room of a hospital: Jun and none other than Po, both looking deeply worried, conversing with hospital staff and then being led away by a nurse. If she zooms in, Fern can see a stain on the hem of Po’s shirt—and everyone online is trying to determine whether or not it’s blood.

She calls him immediately, her hands shaking, and then calls again, and again, finally texting him instead when it becomes clear he’s not going to pick up. Are you okay? Who’s in the hospital? What happened?

Twenty minutes later, Oner posts a brief statement announcing that Thame was struck by a car while crossing the street, saying they’ll update everyone on his condition as soon as possible and asking fans to respect the group’s privacy.

Fern is in the middle of a weekly strategy meeting when the statement appears, so she angles her phone under the table to read it… and then has to excuse herself to go cry in the bathroom for half an hour, anxiety rolling through her until she’s trembling with it. Other fans—the ones who don’t have to steal time away from their full-time jobs to deal with the crisis—are trying to dig up more information, but it feels impossible at this point to sort out truth from rumors. One account claims that somebody hit Thame on purpose; another says he might need to have a transplant of some kind.

She calls Po again, then sends another flurry of texts when he doesn’t answer.  

Although she knows that Po is probably either busy trying to handle the situation or forbidden from speaking about it to anyone—or both—she can’t quite tamp down her mounting frustration, the kind of worry that comes from not knowing what’s going on and not being able to do anything about it.

Fern knows that, as the administrator for the official Sphere account, she needs to say something, so she manages to type out a coherent message of support, trying to gently remind her fellow fans not to jump to conclusions and to wait for more information. She also retweets some things about organizing a vigil in front of the hospital… but then one of her coworkers comes to check on her, and she has to set it all aside, try to focus on her work again.

It’s an impossible task, really.

After lunch, there’s another official statement, but it’s skimpy on details: Thame’s condition is stable and no longer critical, and there will be a press conference tomorrow morning to address the situation, including updates on the concert. The rest is the same as before: All other MARS events, including solo appearances, are canceled until further notice. We thank the fans for their well-wishes and support, and we ask that everyone please respect the privacy of Thame, his family and friends, and the other MARS members at this time.

She retweets the statement and then texts Po again, just in case, but she isn’t really expecting a response.

It’s just her luck that the one day she really needs to leave work early is also the one day she’s stuck late finishing a project that absolutely must get done tonight. No matter how much she longs to go and gather with everyone else in front of the hospital, to go and show her support for her kids, she has to stay in the office until everything is submitted—and it’s slow going. She can tell that she’s barely even useful at this point, and she feels bad that her team is having to pick up all her slack, but every time she tries to clear her head and focus, her thoughts just keep getting pulled back to how Thame is doing, how the others must be feeling, whether Po is okay.

When everything is finally finished, the sun is already low on the cloudy horizon, and she’s debating whether she should fight through the evening traffic to go all the way home first or just head straight to the vigil when one of the office assistants knocks gently at her door.

“P’Baifern? There’s someone here to see you.”

“Who?” She barely manages not to snap the question, frustrated at the thought that a client might have shown up now, just in time to keep her away from her boys on the one night they really need her.

The young woman swallows, looking strangely… hesitant, maybe even nervous. “I think… I think it’s one of those idols who’s been on the news all day. MARS, right? His friend was in an accident? He didn’t want to say who he was, but the front desk made him show ID… One of them is called Pavee, right?”

Baifern drops her phone in surprise, her mouth falling open a bit. Pepper… is here? To see her?!

“P’Baifern? Should I bring him in, or…?” the assistant prompts, then trails off, looking concerned.

“Yes, go ahead and show him in,” she manages to say, feeling a little lightheaded.

Get your shit together, Fern!

The assistant nods and disappears—to go retrieve actual, real-life PEPPER—leaving Fern with only about sixty seconds to pick her phone up off the floor, check her hair, straighten her shirt, and figure out how to speak coherently again.

When Per steps into her office—and how the fuck is this really happening?—he’s wearing a mask and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, but Fern recognizes him instantly. She thinks she would know his frame anywhere, no matter how much he tried to disguise himself, even from across a crowded room.

But there’s no crowds here—just her and Pepper, not even a meter away from her, standing in her office as if his presence there is completely normal.

He thanks the assistant and then, after she’s gone, pulls the door firmly closed behind him.

When he removes his mask and hood, Fern wonders for a moment if she might actually faint. He looks amazing up close, even if his posture is stiff and his expression is a bit sour, and the fact that her bias is here in front of her…

“Khun Baifern, right?”

The cold formality of his voice hits her like a bucket of ice water over the head. He sounds… angry. Is he angry? More importantly, is he angry at her?

She can only nod, frozen with panic while her mind runs away from her.

“I need your help,” he says, staring her down with an intensity in his gaze that makes her want to look away, uncomfortable.

“Of course. What… What can I do?” she stutters out.

He doesn’t answer right away, glancing around her office instead as if evaluating it.

Maybe he’s not angry, she reasons, trying to stay rational and composed and fully conscious. Maybe he’s just worried about Thame. Worry can look like anger sometimes, right? She mentally flips back through everything she posted today, everything she retweeted, trying to think if there was anything that might have been interpreted as disrespectful or offensive. Surely someone would have pointed it out by now, though, if she’d messed up. Surely…

Per probably just needs her to do something on the official Sphere account, help organize things, get the fans on the same page—although how he discovered her identity and why he would come here instead of having Oner staff reach out online like they normally do, she isn’t sure. Po must have told him where to find her, she figures. And Po wouldn’t have done that if he thought Per was angry at her… right?

“Is this about Thame?” she finally asks, when the silence grows to be unbearable and her thoughts are in danger of spiraling away from her completely.

Per swings his gaze back to her, and it’s hard not to feel like she’s under a harsh, hostile microscope.

“This is about P’Po.” He twists his mask around in his fingers, crumpling and uncrumpling the fabric.

Fern’s stomach drops. “Po? Is he okay? I’ve been trying to reach him all day but…”

“He needs your help,” Per interrupts. “But before I let you help him, I need to know if you’re going to be selfish again.”

“Selfish… again?” She can’t quite get the words to make sense in her brain, but… it does sort of sound like Per is angry. With her. Specifically. “I don’t… What do you mean?”

“I mean that letting you help P’Po involves telling you some things. Private things, personal information about MARS. And the last time you found out personal information about MARS, you put your own feelings first, without thinking about anyone else. You didn’t consider how your actions might impact me, or P’Gam, or the other members. You were selfish.”

P’Gam… Things are finally starting to click together, forming a picture in her brain that she’s not sure she likes the look of.

“I wasn’t… That’s not what I…”

The words won’t come.

“Oh, really?” Per’s voice sounds uncharacteristically bitter. “Then please, enlighten me. What was your reaction when my so-called scandal broke? Why did you rest the Sphere account?”

Fern feels suddenly very, very small, and the sensation of being under a microscope only intensifies. She doesn’t think lying is possible for her right now, even though part of her wishes she could.

“I just worried that… if you had a girlfriend, you wouldn’t… I mean, Sphere wouldn’t be first in your heart anymore. That maybe you wouldn’t… love us… as much as you used to. I felt…”

“Betrayed?” he finishes for her, the word dripping with acid. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Someone invades my privacy, posts personal images of me and my girlfriend without my consent, and the first thing you think of is how you feel betrayed.” He scoffs. “Before that moment, did you ever once see me at a performance or an event and think, wow, he doesn’t care about us as much anymore? In all the time I was secretly seeing P’Gam, did you or anyone else ever once suspect that I loved my fans any less? No, because that’s not how love works.”

Fern feels a sudden urge to crawl under her desk and curl up in a ball, overwhelmed by the onslaught of his words.

“In fact, none of you even know when I started seeing her, because I never let it affect my work,” he continues, his voice a little louder. “I never let it come between me and the fans. Being with P’Gam couldn’t possibly make me love Sphere any less… but you know what could? Fans acting like they own me, like I owe them every last corner of my life when I have already given so much of myself to MARS. I tell you about my personal life on stage, let cameras follow me around in my own home, spend almost every waking hour working to make my group the best it can be, for you, and yet apparently, it’s not enough. So if I have less room in my heart for Sphere, then it’s only because I lost the love of my life thanks to selfish fans like you.”

Per is breathing heavily now, and it almost looks like he’s about to cry.

Fern feels pretty close to tears herself. In all the times she’s daydreamed about getting to meet her bias one-on-one, she never once imagined he would be basically yelling at her, scolding her for being an awful, selfish fan. But even as some part of her shrinks away from his anger, there’s another part which sees her beloved Pepper in distress and still longs to comfort him, support him, protect him from whoever dares to cause him pain—even if that means protecting him from herself.

Because if she’s understanding him right, then Per and Khun Gam hadn’t only been in a talking stage that ended months ago, long before their pictures were leaked. Instead, it sounds like he’s saying that they were really and truly together, in love, and that they only broke up because of the scandal, because of fans’ reactions. His heartbreak seems fresh, and Fern feels a sudden stab of guilt at the thought that she played any part in it.

When the photos leaked, it seemed like such an obvious conclusion to arrive at: if Pepper were secretly dating someone, it would change how he felt about Sphere, about her. And perhaps in hindsight it seems less logical, but at the time…

Since the very beginning of MARS, it has always felt like she and Per have been standing together, supporting each other, even if he doesn’t really know her personally. He’s been there for her, in his music and his social media, in his videos and his livestreams, through the ups and downs of her life. She’s cheered him on and helped his group find success, streaming his songs and organizing food support, sticking by him no matter what.

Maybe it has kinda felt like Pepper belongs to her—and it’s certainly felt like her heart belongs to him.

For years, she’s felt so close to Per, despite never really getting to meet him outside of the occasional fan benefits session or brand event. But standing in front of him now, with nothing separating them—not the screen of her phone or a crowd, not security or a table covered in merch to be autographed—she’s suddenly never felt the distance between them so keenly. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t belong to him—and he doesn’t belong to her, either. He might as well be a stranger…

A stranger whose heart is broken because of her.

“You’re right,” she whispers, shame creeping up her cheeks in a hot flush. “I’m sorry.”

Per’s expression softens, just a little, but his voice is still fairly cold when he replies, “I don’t need your apology. I just need to know if you’ll put aside your own feelings to help your friend, or if you’re gonna be selfish again.”

Fern swallows, thinking of Po, remembering all the times they’ve been there for each other in the past, through impossible exams and bad breakups and rough days at work. She remembers how Po helped her when she got so sick that she couldn’t leave her condo for almost two weeks, how he always shows up with ice cream and a shoulder to cry on whenever she fights with her parents. She thinks about that godawful summer she spent interning in Europe during college, when Po’s voice on the phone was the only thing that got her through the worst few months of her life.

Even if Po were only a mediocre friend, she thinks, she’d probably still choose him over her fandom if push came to shove—but Po is the best of friends, and she would do just about anything to support him.

“I won’t be selfish,” she says, quietly but with as much conviction as she can muster. Pepper has to know what Po means to her, has to understand that she’s serious. “I’ll help Po, whatever it takes.”

He scrutinizes her for a minute, as if trying to determine whether or not she’s being sincere. Finally, he nods. “Good. Come on, then.”

Without waiting to see if she follows, he turns and opens the door, stepping out into the hall.

Baifern scrambles to grab her things, glad that she had already been on her way out the door earlier and had her bag ready to go.

When she catches up to him in the lobby, Per already has his hood up and his mask on, once again trying to fade into anonymity. He holds the door open for her and gestures towards a big, black SUV that’s idling by the curb. She’s seen MARS get in and out of identical vehicles hundreds of times on their way to and from events.

The inside is clean and luxurious, feeling almost like a limousine, except with normal rows of seats. Fern slides all the way across the first row, and despite everything, she can’t help but feel a tiny bit awestruck to be here, in a Oner car, with her bias buckling in only one seat over from her.

“Back to the hospital?” the driver asks.

“Yes, thank you, phi.” Pepper slips off his mask and nods at the man before carefully rolling up the privacy screen between his seat and theirs.

They sit in uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then, unexpectedly, Per says, “Sorry for going off on you back there. It’s… been a difficult day.” He doesn’t exactly sound warm and friendly, but it’s a vast improvement from him yelling at her, so—she’ll take it.

“It’s alright. I get it,” she murmurs in response—and she does, even if her ego is currently in tatters after his rant. She’s already mentally preparing herself to have a fandom-related existential crisis at some point later, when she can turn her shower up as hot as it will go and cry her eyes out in private. In the meantime, however, Thame is in the hospital, and Po… “Is Po okay?” she adds, her worry finally boiling over into words.

“What I’m about to tell you… You cannot tell anyone about any of it. Ever.”

She nods frantically. “I promise, I won’t. My lips are sealed. I just… I need to know if Po is okay.”

Per sighs, swallows hard, his fingers rubbing at his temples. “We can’t… We can’t get him to leave.”

“Leave… the hospital?” She frowns, lost.

“Visiting hours are going to be over soon, but he’s refusing to go home. We think he’s planning to stay all night in the emergency waiting room. But he… he can’t just stay there forever. He needs to eat something, and sleep, and change his fucking shirt.”

Per’s voice hitches strangely at the end there, tripping over something that is almost—but not quite—a sob, and Fern is suddenly struck by the memory of the photos she’d seen earlier, the ones of Po with something on his blue overshirt that looked suspiciously like blood.

She’s a little surprised to hear how much obvious concern leaks through Per’s words. She knows that Po has gotten to spend quite a bit of time with the members of MARS, just by virtue of the sort of work he’s been doing, but the way Per is talking, it almost sounds like they’re close to Po, like they really care about him—and in a deeper way than just the general concern they’d have for any random person on staff at Oner. 

But she’s also surprised to hear about Po’s behavior, because it doesn’t really sound like her friend. Sure, Po tends to give too much of himself, often pushing past the limits of his own energy to take care of others, but he’s nothing if not practical, nothing if not a people-pleaser. Trying to stay in a hospital waiting room all night long instead of sleeping and showering, refusing to go home when it sounds like the rest of MARS is desperately asking him to do just that… It’s not like Po at all.

“Why does he want to stay?”

“He blames himself for what happened.”

He… what?

Fern is struck by a sudden, horrible thought. “Wait, did… Was Po the one who hit Thame?”

Pepper glances up at her sharply, and his expression is enough to let her know that no, thank goodness, that’s not what happened, even before he replies.

“What? No, of course not!”

“Then why…?”

Per stares at her, opening his mouth to say something but then shutting it again and remaining silent—not just once, but several times in a row. His expression seems so conflicted, and Fern can’t help but be confused… until all at once, it clicks.

“You still don’t trust me, do you?”

He shrugs, only a little apologetic. “Can you blame me?”

No, I can’t. Because really, if the positions were reversed and she were an idol struggling with some kind of heavy secret, would she feel comfortable telling it to the person in charge of her biggest, most well-known fanbase account?

Per has no reason to trust her, no sense of who she is beyond her past actions as the Sphere account admin. For a moment, she wishes that she could just let him into her mind, allow him to see her motivations for himself. She wants to explain that Po is worth everything to her, that she would give up all of her clout and access within Sphere in a heartbeat if it meant helping her best friend, but she doesn’t know how to do so in a way that Per would believe…

Oh. Of course.

It hurts to consider it at first, but when she thinks about Po, thinks about everything he’s been through in the past, all the ways he’s been there for her, then… the choice is easy, isn’t it? What Po needs from her right now is someone who can be trusted, someone who can put aside her own love for MARS in order to go behind the scenes and do what needs to be done.

And she can’t really do that if she’s also running the fanbase page.

She grabs her phone, scrolls through her contacts, and presses call before she can change her mind.

Jan picks up on the second ring.

“Hello, P’Fern?” she says, her voice watery as if she’s been crying. “Are you coming to the vigil?”

“I’ll try to be there later. Listen, Jan, I have a huge favor to ask.” She’s keenly aware of Per watching her, his gaze caught somewhere halfway between curious and suspicious.

“What is it, phi?”

Fern smiles fondly as Jan’s voice immediately perks up at the prospect of having a job to do for her senior. Jan has always been eager to do whatever she can to help, ever since she became the backup admin—and Fern’s right-hand woman—for the fan account last year. She’s smart, level-headed, and passionate—exactly the kind of person Sphere needs at the helm.

“My situation has changed at work, and I’m not going to be able to focus on MARS stuff for a while. I need you to take over the account, the shared drive, all of it. Can you do that for me?”

“Wait, but… now? With everything going on? What about Thame, and…”

“That’s exactly why I have to do this,” Fern says firmly, cutting her off. “Our boys deserve an admin who can give them her full attention right now. Someone who can coordinate support and donations. Someone who can be there for Thame. And I… I can’t do that, not without losing my job.”

She winces a little at the lie, but… Po is worth it.

“Are you sure, phi?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I promise. And Jan?” Fern closes her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. “Can you… Could you go in and change all the passwords? Like right now?”

She hears Jan’s sharp intake of breath on the other end.

“But…”

“I’m afraid that if I can still access any of it, I’ll be tempted to go back in and try to help. Especially with Thame’s accident, I… I’m worried it will be just too much for me to resist. So I need you to kick me out, make all new passwords, okay?”

Jan takes a moment to respond, and when she does, it’s soft, hesitant: “Okay, phi.”

“Can you do it now?”

There’s a small, affirmative hum by way of reply, followed by the muted sound of Jan tapping at her phone.

It takes a minute or two, and Fern deliberately doesn’t look at Per during that entire time. She can tell he’s still watching, but her eyes are already getting a little misty, and she’s afraid that if she tries to meet his gaze while Jan shuts her out of the digital home she built for herself, she’ll start crying in earnest.

“Okay, phi, it’s… it’s done.”

Fern lets out a shaky breath. “Thank you, Jan. I’ll see you at the vigil later, okay?”

When she hangs up, she immediately pulls up the main Sphere account on her phone and refreshes it, just to make sure.

It takes her to the login screen instead, asking for a password she no longer knows.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…

“You’d really give that up? For P’Po?”

Fern finally manages to look up a little—although still not directly meeting Per’s gaze—and finds that his expression has softened considerably.

She nods, trying to summon up every ounce of surety she has left in her. For Po.

“Today, I’m not Sphere. I’m not a MARS fan. I’m just Po’s best friend.”

For the first time since he arrived in her office, she thinks she sees Per smile—just a little one, to be sure, but it’s a smile all the same.

“So… can you tell me now why Po thinks that the accident is his fault?”

The smile disappears immediately, replaced with something pained and heavy.

“Because it wasn’t an accident,” Pepper says eventually, his voice tight.

Baifern’s mind reels, because out of every possible answer that she’d considered, she’d never in a million years expected him to say that.

Maybe there’s some truth to those rumors, then, she thinks, remembering how some people online had claimed that…

“Do you mean somebody hit Thame on purpose?” she squeaks out.

Pepper shakes his head, and Fern suspects, even before he opens his mouth, that what he says next will change everything, turning her world upside down in the worst possible way…

“I mean that Thame let himself get hit on purpose.”

…and she’s right.

Chapter Text

When Pepper agreed that they could all stay in the hospital for a while, he’d meant for a few hours or so at most—until they got hungry enough to feel it over their collective anxiety, or until Nano started to fall asleep sitting up, or until the thought of processing this situation in a semi-public place for even a minute more became unbearable.

But Po, he realizes now, had different intentions.

No matter what they do or say, P’Po seems dead set on staying in this tiny, uncomfortable room for as long as the hospital staff will let him, and then going only as far as the public waiting room by the emergency entrance when they finally kick him out.

Their first attempts to convince him to go anywhere—even just down the hall to get some food—are interrupted by P’Mick arriving with instructions about the official story that Oner decided on.

“If anyone asks, you are to say that Thame accidentally walked into the street due to exhaustion and overexertion,” P’Mick tells them, his expression grave. “His schedule was overbooked as he prepared for both the concert and his Korean debut, making him so tired that he imagined it was safe to cross the street, even though it wasn’t. Khun Pemika has already agreed to take full responsibility for working him too hard. At the press conference tomorrow, she’ll explain that his exhaustion was her fault and then announce her resignation.”

They all stare at him with varying levels of confusion and suspicion—in part because of what he said, and in part because they so rarely see P’Mick take anything this seriously.

“You are to act as though he was staying in the group house with you this entire time. You can say that you hadn’t seen him sleep at all this last week and that he didn’t seem like himself. Khun Pemika even said you can claim that you came to her with concerns about his health and were ignored. Just do not mention that Thame was unhappy about going to Korea alone or that he was isolated. And,” Mick adds, glancing uncomfortably in Po’s direction, “I don’t think I have to tell you not to mention that he was upset for… other reasons, either.” He clears his throat, then meets each of their eyes in turn. “Exhaustion was the only cause here. Got it?”

Pepper nods, although he’s still unsure about the whole thing. On the one hand, he doesn’t exactly want everyone to know what really happened. He wants to protect Thame from the world’s prying eyes, keep his heartbreak private. On the other hand…

“Why can’t we just say that it was a regular car accident?” Dylan asks, confused. “Bad drivers hit pedestrians all the time.”

P’Mick shakes his head, shutting that line of thinking down immediately. “Too many people could have seen him step into the road. Someone might have even gotten part of it on camera. This way, we have an explanation that accounts for whatever people may have witnessed. It’s not unrealistic that an idol might have been overworked in a situation like this.”

“How do we know that’s not what happened?” Nano says suddenly, desperation leaking out of his voice. “Maybe P’Thame was just really tired, and…”

“No,” Po interrupts, staring at the floor even as he speaks. “I saw it happen. I saw him… choose it.”

It makes Pepper’s heart squeeze painfully to think about, and after P’Mick leaves, their efforts to persuade P’Po to come find food are forgotten for a while. Eating feels much less important in the wake of a conversation like that.

But eventually, they try again, and again, frustrated when Po refuses to even entertain the idea.

“I’m staying here,” he says, resolute. “I left Thame before, and look what happened. I can’t leave him again.”

“That’s not…” Pepper starts.

“Yes, it is.”

No matter what they say, Po shuts down all of their suggestions—food, a shower, a nap, a change of clothes. After a while, he stops responding to them altogether, ignoring their carefully reasoned arguments, refusing to even engage. He stares at the wall instead, his eyes red-rimmed from crying and glassy with grief.

“What do we do?” says Nano, twisting his fingers around and around in the sleeve of his sweater. “It’s getting late. We can’t just… leave him here.”

They’ve convened in the hallway, out of Po’s earshot, trying to think of some way to persuade him to leave.

“Does he have anyone we can call?” Dylan suggests. “Family, friends?”

“Oh, what about his bestie? He talks about her all the time. Her name is…” Nano trails off, trying to remember.

“P’Bay… no, it’s P’Baifern.” At least, Pepper thinks that’s her name. She came up in conversation a few times when they spent all those long days with P’Po, trying to shoot their MV. “She’s a fan, too, right? Do we think she’d come help him?”

Jun frowns. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“She’s not just a fan.” Jun sighs, running his hands through his hair. “I’m pretty sure she runs the main Sphere account.”

Pepper feels ice creep into his chest. The last time he’d thought specifically about whoever was running their fanbase account was the day that account had temporarily gone on hiatus after the news broke about him and P’Gam.

“How do you know that?” Dylan is looking strangely at Jun, almost as if he’s suspicious.

“P’Po told me,” he responds, then pauses and winces, adding, “Well, P’Po told Thame, not realizing that I was in the other room and could hear everything he said.”

“P’Jun!” Nano exclaims, smacking Jun’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop! That’s P’Dylan’s thing.”

“Hey!” Dylan glares at him from underneath his gray fringe.

“Anyway,” Jun continues with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, “from what P’Po said, I think that the only reason the Sphere account came back online so fast during Per’s… uh, scandal”—and here, he glances sidelong at Pepper, as if worried he’s accidentally set off some kind of bomb—“is because P’Po called his friend and talked her out of resting it. Apparently, Per is her bias.”

Pepper feels the ice taking over him now, cracking apart all of the carefully constructed walls that he’s built around the emotions from that day. Grief and heartbreak, to be sure, but also rage—freezing, infinite anger that he’s been terrified to articulate, afraid that if he faces up to it, acknowledges its full power, he won’t ever be able to think about Sphere the same way again. He hates to be angry, hates to be bitter, and yet…

Today has made it so very difficult to keep his fury in check. First Khun Pemika, and now this… P’Baifern.

That’s how she treats her own bias? Selfish asshole.

“Okay, but doesn’t that just mean she and P’Po are really close?” Nano chews on his bottom lip. “If he could convince her not to rest the account, I mean. If they know each other that well, maybe she could convince him to leave.”

“Can we trust her, though? If we ask her to help get P’Po home, she’s gonna want to know why he won’t go on his own in the first place, and how would we explain all of this”—Dylan waves his hand at the private waiting room behind them—“without explaining about Thame and P’Po and Korea and the reason that Thame…” He shakes his head. “Maybe Jun is right, and this isn’t a good idea.”

Jun immediately shoots him a horrified look. “Don’t start agreeing with me! No, if Dylan’s against it, I’m changing my vote. Let’s go find her.”

“I’ll go find her,” Per says, his mind already made up, his anger already too far gone to tamp back down. “I’ll talk to her first, make sure that she’s trustworthy. If it seems like she really can help P’Po without blowing everything up, I’ll bring her back here.”

“Per, are you sure…?”

“It’s not like we have that many options. I’ll be back soon.”

He turns on his heel and strides away before they can stop him, whipping out his phone to text P’Ming and P’Tae about getting a car from the company to pick him up.

By the time the car arrives, he’s already located Baifern through Po’s social media. It’s not hard to figure out where she works, and on the drive over, he scrolls through her Instagram, her Facebook, trying to get a handle on who this person even is.

He thinks she looks vaguely familiar, but he’s met so many different fans over the past few years that it’s hard to tell.

Despite his best efforts, from the moment he meets her, Per starts to like Baifern. She tries so hard to be cool, to keep herself together even as her favorite idol walks into her office, and if he weren’t so angry, he might have even found it cute. But he is angry—and at first, it’s easy enough to lean into that, to channel all his rage into finally getting to say what’s been on his mind these past few weeks. For a moment, it feels good to tell a fan what he actually thinks about Sphere’s possessive, controlling nonsense. There’s a brief flash of satisfaction at the way Baifern crumbles, ashamed and contrite when confronted with her own selfishness.

After the day he’s had, it’s hard not to want to feel good, even if only for a minute or two—even at Baifern’s expense.

But it doesn’t last long, because Per can tell how worried she is about P’Po, how much she genuinely cares about him—and about all of them, about MARS, even if she hasn’t always done the best job of showing it. Shouting at her feels like lancing a boil without curing the disease, his anger leeching out and leaving him feeling drained and only somewhat satisfied. After all, he can’t place all of the blame onto Baifern alone. She might run the account, but she doesn’t control the rest of Sphere, and she isn’t solely responsible for what happened with P’Gam.

As they ride back to the hospital, Per realizes that while he might not fully trust her yet, he does like her—likes how she commits herself fully to everything she does, likes how she jumps in with both feet and as much passion as she can muster. She’s immediately willing to drop everything and come with him—and to give up her role within Sphere—if it will help Po. And even back when she got upset about his photos with P’Gam and decided to rest the account, her decision came, Per thinks, from that same impulse towards devotion and loyalty, even if in a misguided, unintentionally selfish form. Because it’s clear to him that Baifern loves with her whole heart, and he can’t help but admire her for it, the same way he admires…

He swallows hard, turning toward the windows so she won’t see him tear up. All that passion, all that conviction, the way she opens herself up to the world…

She reminds me of Thame.

Once she wraps her head around it, Baifern is also all-in for the relationship between Thame and Po—although it does take her a second to actually comprehend what Pepper is saying when he explains that P’Po blames himself for the situation because he broke up with Thame.

“But…” she says, her face freezing up for a moment like a glitching computer. “But to break up with someone, you… First you have to be…”

Per gives her a look and waits for her to figure it out. She has to know that her friend is attractive, so surely it can’t be that hard to believe that one of the five of them—maybe even two, he thinks—would fall for him.

“Mr. B… is Thame?!” she finally manages to say.

Now it’s Per’s turn to be confused.

“Wait, what? Who’s Mr. B?”

“Po was trying to ask for my advice about… Oh!” Baifern has to pause to catch her breath, her voice coming out in little squeaks. “He said there was a Mr. A and a Mr. B, and clearly he was Mr. A, but I thought… But if it was… And that means that Thame… Eeee!”

He watches a dozen different emotions that he can’t quite follow flit across her face as she processes that information.

“But why would Po break up with him?” is the question she lands on eventually, still a little breathless. “I thought… I mean, it seemed to me like he was really falling for Mr. B.”

“Why do you think?” Pepper tries to keep the bitterness from creeping back into his voice, although he’s not really successful. “Thame was getting ready to debut in Korea. The company wasn’t about to let him walk into that contract with a secret boyfriend, so our CEO forced P’Po to break things off.”

“Oh.” Her face falls, hands plucking awkwardly at the strap of her bag as she puts the pieces together. “So… Po didn’t actually want to end it, then?”

Per shakes his head. Understatement of the year.

“And now he won’t leave the hospital, not only because he feels guilty, but because… he still loves Thame?”

“Yeah. He keeps saying that he left Thame once before, so he’s not gonna do it again.”

Baifern lets her head fall back against the headrest behind her, eyes fluttering closed, and it’s like watching all the outer versions of her fall away—the professional businesswoman, the awestruck fangirl, the confused and contrite young woman trying to maintain some semblance of politeness—until she’s just a person, exhausted and worried about her friend. 

“If I ever meet whatever cosmic entity is responsible for messing up Po’s love life, I swear…”

Per can’t help but smile a little at that.

“So you’re not upset that Thame has… well, had… a secret relationship?”

Her eyes pop back open as she turns her head to meet his gaze.

“I thought I would be,” she says slowly, as if she’s surprised by her own reaction. “Probably if you’d told me about this yesterday, I…” She pauses, shakes her head. “But I’ve heard the way Po talks about him… about Mr. B, I mean. And Thame could have died, and if he really… If that’s what he was trying to do, because he was heartbroken…”

“It’s not P’Po’s fault,” Per insists, suddenly struck by the desperate need to make that part clear. “It wasn’t just about the breakup. The company kept pushing this solo Korea deal, even though Thame didn’t want to leave MARS. They’ve been keeping him away from us so that we couldn’t try to mess up the deal again. He was completely isolated. We haven’t seen him in weeks.”

Baifern watches him speak, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.

“Yeah, Thame was heartbroken, but that’s not on P’Po. You have to help us convince him of that, okay?”

He reaches out to place one hand on her arm, pleading, and she glances down to look at it in surprise, her mouth falling open a little—and he only belatedly realizes why it might freak her out a bit to have her favorite idol physically touching her.

“I… yeah, okay,” she whispers eventually.

Per squeezes her arm gently and then removes his hand, turning back to face the window, once more trying to hide the way his eyes fill with tears that he only barely manages to keep from spilling down his cheeks.  

From the way Baifern is sniffling beside him, it sounds like she’s having significantly less success on that front.  

The car takes them past the front of the hospital, where a sizable crowd of fans has already gathered with signs and candles and garlands to show their support for Thame, and around to a side entrance where the nurses had told Per he could come in without being noticed.

They check in at the visitor’s desk, and then Baifern follows him into the maze of nearly identical hallways, clutching her bag tightly at her side, looking more than a little overwhelmed.

When they arrive back in the hall where Per left the others, Dylan and Nano are nowhere in sight, but Jun is leaning against the wall with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets… and to Per’s surprise, he’s not alone.

There, in a green jacket that he instantly recognizes as her favorite, is P’Gam, her usually perfectly styled hair pulled back into a hasty ponytail, her expression tense and worried. The sight of her makes Pepper’s heart stutter, makes him pause halfway between one step and the next, his throat tight.

“This is her?” Jun pushes himself off the wall, giving Baifern a suspicious once-over. “She’ll behave?”

Per nods, and he has to force himself to tear his gaze away from P’Gam for a moment, to look at Jun.

“I filled her in on the way here. She’ll help. She’s… a good friend to P’Po.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Baifern glance up sharply at him in surprise, a small but irrepressible smile spreading across her face.

“Great. I’ll trade you.” Jun jerks his head toward P’Gam, then beckons for Baifern to follow him into their little waiting room.

Gam rolls her eyes at his retreating form, but it’s fond in a way that makes Per’s chest ache.

“P’Gam,” he murmurs, once it’s just the two of them.

“Hello, Per.” Her voice is soft, and his eyes immediately fill with tears at the sound of it.

He wants to hold her, wants to be held, wants to retreat into the familiar circle of her arms until everything and everyone else disappears—but he’s not sure that’s allowed anymore.

“How are you holding up?” she asks, kind as ever.

When Per opens his mouth, he intends to say that he’s okay, that he’s keeping it together, but what comes out instead is half a sob, and a moment later, she’s pulled him into a tight hug.

It unlocks a dam inside him that’s been keeping the worst of his tears at bay since this morning, since the moment he got that frantic phone call that something awful had happened to Thame. He’s cried a little, here and there, but has somehow managed to tamp down the full force of his emotional breakdown all day. Now, though, he lets the tears spill over without restraint, sliding down his cheeks and onto the collar of P’Gam’s favorite jacket, fogging up his glasses as he cries into her shoulder. The sobs rip through him, and he clutches P’Gam as if she’s the only thing keeping him anchored to this very plane of existence, the only thing keeping him from crumbling away completely.

He knows they should probably move somewhere more private, that they shouldn’t be embracing like this in a hallway where someone could walk by at any moment, but he cannot bring himself to move, to pull even a millimeter away from P’Gam.

He has no idea how they ever managed five meters.

Chapter Text

In their little waiting room, P’Po is exactly where Jun left him, in the same seat he’s been in for almost the entire day now. He’s so clearly exhausted, and yet when Jun and the others had tried, earlier, to physically pull him up and take him home, he’d demonstrated a surprising strength for someone so tired, stubbornly staying put. 

On the far side of the room, Nano is stretched out across several chairs with his head in Dylan’s lap—which is decidedly not how Jun left them ten minutes ago when P’Gam appeared in the hall. It’s more than a little strange to see Dylan, out of everyone, being so tender, first with Jun by the vending machines and now with Nano. But there’s no denying it—Dylan has let their nong collapse into his lap to rest his eyes, and he’s even gently carding his fingers through Nano’s orange hair.

“Po!” P’Baifern exclaims as she comes into the room behind him.

Dylan drops his hand at the sound of her voice, and Nano cracks open one eye blearily to peer at the newcomer.

“Fern?” Po mumbles, glancing up at her in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

Baifern is at his side in an instant, kneeling beside his chair as she takes in his disheveled appearance—red and puffy eyes, bloodstained shirt. She ignores his question and immediately presses against his forehead with one hand, wiping stray tears from his cheeks with the other.

“You’re going to make yourself sick if you keep sitting here,” she says as she continues to fuss over him. “When was the last time you ate anything? Ai Po, come on, I’m taking you home.”

She stands and grabs his hand, trying to pull him up and towards the door, but P’Po doesn’t budge.

“Fern,” he breathes, his voice wet and crackling. “I can’t leave him. Not again, I can’t…”

Baifern keeps ahold of his hand as she sits in the chair beside him, clasping it tightly in both of hers.

“Po, look at me.” Her voice is earnest and firm, her eyes locked on P’Po’s face. “You’re not leaving him, okay? Leaving isn’t about how far away you are. You of all people should know that the distance doesn’t matter so much, right? Because someone can abandon you, even if they’re still sleeping in your bed every night.”

As she gently pushes some of Po’s hair out of his eyes, Jun has a feeling that this is another item he should add to his running mental list of reasons to murder Po’s ex.

“And you can be there for someone,” she continues, “even from thousands of miles away, even across oceans and continents. Like you were for me.”

P’Po tries and fails to stifle a little sob, his shoulders trembling visibly. Part of Jun wants to go over and wrap an arm around him, but he knows it wouldn’t be welcomed now, not like it was earlier, in the immediate aftermath of everything—and he’s surprised to find that the part of him which wants desperately to be Po’s primary source of comfort feels much smaller and quieter than it did a few weeks ago.

“You’re not leaving him,” Baifern reiterates. “You’re taking care of yourself so that tomorrow, you can be there for Thame, whatever he needs.”

“What if he…” Po starts to argue, tears dripping from his chin, but she immediately cuts him off.

“What happens if Thame is ready for visitors, but you can’t see him because you didn’t eat anything and fainted and are now in the hospital yourself? What happens if he needs someone to advocate for him and you can’t step up because you haven’t gotten any sleep? If you don’t want to leave him again, you have to give yourself the energy to stay by his side. Okay?”

After a long moment, Po nods, and Jun watches with relief as he lets Baifern pull him to his feet. She slings Po’s bag over her shoulder on top of her own, then hooks one arm around her friend’s waist to guide him towards the door.

“Phi,” Jun calls before they can leave. “I, uh… Thank you.”

Baifern glances toward him, then looks at Dylan and Nano still sitting behind him, her ears and cheeks suddenly looking a little pinker than they were before.

“No problem, nong,” she manages to say, clearly flustered. “I’ll, uh, make sure he gets some rest.”

Jun nods. “We’ll see you tomorrow, P’Po,” he adds. “Call us if you need anything.”

And then they’re gone.

Jun feels himself sagging back into a chair, all of his energy draining out of him at once, as if solving the problem of getting Po home has removed the only stopper keeping any of it inside of him. He’s not sure he can move, but when a nurse appears a few moments later to tell them that visiting hours are almost over, he somehow finds a sliver of momentum, enough to push himself up and towards the exit, Dylan and Nano trailing behind.

They collect Pepper in the hall—“I need to be with my members tonight,” he tells P’Gam, who nods and presses a kiss to his temple, promising to stop by tomorrow—and make their way out to the parking lot where Jun had left his car all those hours ago. They’re careful to cover their faces on the way out, not wanting to be spotted by the crowd of fans Per says is gathered outside the front doors, holding a vigil for Thame.

The masks aren’t really necessary, though, because as they step outside, they realize it’s begun to rain. All but a few of the most dedicated fans have disappeared, and the clouds building up into a proper storm above them have made the night fall even faster than normal, giving them the added privacy of darkness.

They pile into the car—Jun and Per up front, Dylan and Nano in the back—and then just sit for a moment as Jun stares at the wheel in front of him, keys hanging uselessly from his fist. He knows he needs to start the car, get them all home, but…

“Jun?” Per says softly. “Are you okay to drive?”

No, he thinks, but that doesn’t really matter. He’s the only one of them with a license. Nano never bothered with the whole driving thing to begin with, Per’s probationary license expired last year, and Dylan’s is only valid for his motorcycle, so that leaves Jun. He just needs to get his shit together long enough to get them back to the group house.

Come on, move!

The key is still not in the ignition, and Jun’s vision is now blurry with tears and exhaustion. He doesn’t want to fail everyone, not today, and yet he can’t seem to make his muscles work, no matter how much he’s screaming at them internally to fucking move, already!

Distantly, he’s aware of movement behind him, the sound of a car door opening and closing, and then suddenly, Dylan is beside him, swinging open the driver’s side door and holding out his hand expectantly.

“I’ll drive. Keys,” he demands.

“But…”

“Just give me the keys, Jun.”

His voice is so sharp, so commanding, and Jun doesn’t have it in him to argue, so he dutifully hands over the keys and steps out, moving numbly to join Nano in the backseat instead.

“Can you even drive a car?” he hears Per murmur up front, but Dylan doesn’t dignify that with a response.

The answer is clearly yes, anyway, and Jun lets himself sag against the window as the city passes by in a haze of lights and drizzling rain. He feels Nano lean on his shoulder and wishes that he had the energy to do a better job of comforting him.

When they arrive at the house, it feels dark and empty in a way it never did before, not even during the worst and loneliest moments when everyone had gone their separate ways and Jun was the only one spending time there anymore, sitting on dusty furniture and occasionally tossing water onto the sour orange tree in the living room. The house had felt sad back in those days, a reminder of everything Jun had lost—but it had never felt devastatingly painful like this, never like the entire building was collapsing in on him.

They all stand in the living room for a minute, and Jun wonders if the others feel it, too—the fear of facing the rest of the night alone, in a house that feels so haunted, surrounded by the sound of uncaring, ceaseless rain.

“Can we sleep out here tonight?” Nano finally asks.

The speed with which the others agree lets Jun know that yes, they do feel that same terror, even Dylan. Although perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised at that—Dylan has never liked being alone during a storm, and even if the sky hasn’t erupted in thunder yet tonight, it certainly feels like they’re already trapped in the middle of a raging tempest, the kind that makes even the bravest of souls feel fragile and frightened.

(He also can’t imagine that Dylan wants to go back to the room he used to share with Thame and try to fall asleep there all by himself.)

It doesn’t take long to amass a pile of sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets on the living room floor. They take turns showering while Per orders delivery from a nearby restaurant, because even if none of them feel like eating, it has been more than ten hours since they last had anything other than vending machine snacks.

While Dylan is in the bathroom, Jun sneaks into his and Thame’s room, digging through the closet to find one of Thame’s favorite hoodies—plain black, impossibly soft, worn thin at the cuffs and elbows. He pulls it on over his pajamas and tries not to cry.

They eat—more than Jun expected them to, but still less than they would on any other day—and then roll out their sleeping bags side by side.

It almost feels just like old times—but not quite.

Nano curls up in the middle between Jun and Per, his arms wrapped tightly around a pillow. They’re closer together than Jun would normally allow, especially since he knows Nano will end up tossing and turning and kicking in his sleep, but he can’t bring himself to pull away from where their shoulders brush or from where Nano’s foot lays against his calf.

When Dylan comes to lay down beside them, Jun still expects him to keep some measure of distance, but to his surprise, Dylan ends up just as close as the rest of them.

And eventually, when the lights have been off for a good while and the only sound is the increasingly intense rain drumming on the roof above them, Dylan leans closer still, rolling over until his breath is warm against Jun’s neck, one arm draped over Jun’s torso.

Jun isn’t quite sure if Dylan is trying, once again, to be nice, or if this is for Dylan’s own benefit, seeking comfort he’s too proud to ask for in the daylight. Either way, Jun says nothing—and if it’s a little easier to go to sleep after that, that’s no one’s business but his own.

Chapter Text

Po doesn’t really remember the ride home from the hospital. He doesn’t know, afterwards, what their rideshare driver looked like, sounded like—even if they were a man or a woman. It’s all a blur, and suddenly he’s in his own condo, sitting on his own couch, while Fern orders dinner.

“Why don’t you take a shower, Po?” She pushes him gently in the direction of the bathroom. “Yell if you need help, okay?”

He nods and does as instructed, going through the motions, relying on muscle memory and the force of habit to get himself clean. It’s hard to tell if the water is hot or cold, if he’s even really feeling the sensation of it on his skin.

Afterwards, he sits in his towel on the edge of the bed for far too long, remembering all the nights that Thame slept in it. The second pillow is still there—even after the breakup, Po hadn’t had the heart to move it.

Being in this room, of all places… It’s full of too many memories: the blissful contentment of waking up beside Thame, the exhilaration of Thame pressing into him for the first time, that awful night after he left Thame on the rooftop and came home to cry in an empty bed, and the night, even more awful, almost a year ago now, when Po himself had considered…

Guilt wells up around him and threatens to drown him again. More than anyone, Po should have noticed that something was wrong, because he knows the signs. He knows exactly what it feels like to stare into that empty place inside yourself—and maybe if he’d just been a little faster this morning, just a little quicker to act, he could have stopped Thame from jumping headfirst into it.

Suddenly, Po wants more than anything to be able to wrap Thame up in his arms, hug him so tightly that all of those dark and soul-sucking thoughts leave him forever. He’s overwhelmed with the need to hold Thame, and the idea that he can’t makes him feel like he’s dying. If only he could just…

“If you want to hug me, you can put your hands in the pockets.”

He’d almost forgotten about Thame’s jacket. The moment Thame handed it over, Po knew he couldn’t bear to put it on, already aware of the creeping dread in his gut which whispered that he wouldn’t get to keep Thame’s love. Even if he hadn’t made up his mind yet to break up with him, some part of Po already knew what would happen, knew that he would leave Thame alone, and that part refused to let him take comfort in the familiar smell and warmth of Thame’s jacket. He’d immediately hung it up in his closet, and then, after the breakup, carefully folded it into a box full of other painful reminders of all the happiness he wasn’t allowed to have anymore.

But now…

Still in his towel, Po goes to sit in front of his closet, digging out the box to find the leather bundle he’s been trying not to think about for the past few weeks.

Po is perhaps a bit broader in the shoulders than Thame, but the jacket still fits, the soft gray fabric of the inner lining clinging to his shower-damp skin. He turns his nose into the collar and inhales, hoping to catch the lingering scent of Thame’s cologne, but it’s been too long, and the smell has faded completely.

He goes to put his hands in the pockets, hoping that—even if it’s not as good as a real hug—Thame’s suggestion will give him at least some comfort.

Instead, he pauses as his hand brushes up against something tucked into the right-hand pocket, sheets of paper rustling gently beneath his fingers.

When he pulls out the letter and opens it with shaking hands, he finds that it’s almost impossible to read through the tears that crowd his vision at the first sight of Thame’s familiar handwriting.

P’Po, I have so much to tell you, and I’m afraid that if we talk in person, I won’t be able to get it all out…

*

When Baifern comes to fetch him for dinner a few minutes later, Po’s entire world has been reduced to the ink on those pages, blurred in several places by tears that have dripped off his nose and chin.

“Po!” she exclaims, and he distantly realizes that he must look a mess—wearing nothing but his towel and a leather jacket, lying sideways on the floor where he’d collapsed after the second page, sobbing silently over the now-crumpled stack of paper. “What happened?”

His attempts at words come out as nothing more than broken hiccups. He finds himself being scooped upright into a sitting position, Fern wrapping her arms around his shoulders, and despite the fact that she is objectively tiny in comparison, Po ends up feeling impossibly small next to her.

Gently, she takes the letter from Po’s hand, and even though he hates the idea of letting it go, he doesn’t fight to keep it—because that’s what he’s best at, isn’t it? Going with the flow, letting things happen, following everyone else’s lead even when his heart knows he should take a stand. That’s what he’d done with Earn, with Khun Pemika, even with the fucking paramedics this morning, the ones who wouldn’t let him into the ambulance.

“Thame wrote this?” Fern asks softly as she skims the first page.

Po nods miserably. “But I didn’t…” he says, trying to push through the tears. “It was hidden.” He pats at the jacket pocket and hopes that it’s enough for her to figure out what he means.

“Oh,” she exhales, her own eyes welling with tears as she continues reading. “So he…”

“I didn’t know.” The words spill out of Po in a rush, his voice hoarse and ragged. “His dream changed and I didn’t even know.”

“Po…”

“All he wanted was… was for me to stay by his side,” Po sobs. “To be with the people he loves, and I… I left him alone. I let go of his hand.”

His face hurts and his eyes are hot, and at this point, he can barely breathe out of his nose, but he can’t stop crying, can’t stop remembering Thame’s face that night on the roof. And then his brain replays that godawful sound of Thame hitting the pavement, again and again and again…

This, Po thinks, is the worst pain he’s ever felt in his entire life. Worse than the night he broke up with Thame, worse than living through his parents’ divorce, worse than the day he realized Earn’s love for him had always been conditional. It’s somehow even worse than the night he’d understood his own cowardice and inadequacy, that night a year ago when he’d sat on his balcony and thought very seriously about jumping off of it.

It’s worse because this pain isn’t about what he feels. Instead, this pain comes from knowing exactly what he made Thame feel, from knowing that all the very same emotions which had once nearly crushed him have now made a home for themselves inside of Thame’s heart—and that Po helped to move them in.

Just as she’d done a year ago, Baifern anchors him—although this time in person and on purpose, rather than inadvertently keeping him grounded by babbling on about MARS gossip over the phone. She squeezes his shoulders with a strength that’s surprising for someone so small, pulling him down until he’s basically lying in her lap. He feels a little bad about getting tears and snot all over her skirt, but he can’t bring himself to move.

“Po,” she says again, and for a moment, he worries that she’s going to try to say something empty and trite to make him feel better, but she doesn’t add anything else, instead simply massaging the still-damp strands of his hair with one hand, gently petting at his arm with the other.

He’s not sure how long they sit there, but eventually, his tears slow down, his sobs dwindling into sniffles against the wet patch he’s left on Fern’s skirt.

“I feel like it’s my fault,” he murmurs eventually, without preamble, because he has to say it or else he might genuinely combust.

Fern’s hand stills in his hair. “Why would it be your fault?”

Po wants to sit up, wants to blow his nose, but he doesn’t think he can manage to look her in the eye right now, so he stays put, staring at the bottom edge of his wardrobe instead.

“I wasn’t brave enough to fight for him,” he replies, sounding miserable even to his own ears. “I never am. Even when I’m in a terrible situation, I’m never brave enough to do anything about it. I just… sit there and take it.”

“You mean like with Earn,” Baifern says softly—and it isn’t really a question.

He nods into her thigh.

“Even when he…” He pauses, because he’d never really told her the full truth of what happened, and he knows that if he brings it up now, it will derail the entire conversation—because his friend is nothing if not predictable. She will immediately want to go and track down Earn to eviscerate him and hoist his innards up on a flagpole somewhere, and Po can’t bear to focus on anyone other than Thame right now. So he says instead, “Even when he was so awful to me, I didn’t leave. I waited for him to go. And when he did, I wasn’t brave enough to clean out his clothes or tell our classmates the truth at our reunion. I couldn’t even tell the sandwich guy to stop making two sandwiches for me. I don’t fight for what I want. I’m always just… frozen.”

Even when he’d almost gone crazy with how much he wanted Thame, he’d waited for Thame to make the first move. He’s never been able to tell his parents to stop sending him their pity or their endless bank transfers, couldn’t ask his previous neighbor to turn down their music, can never do anything no matter how annoyed or upset he might feel. And even when he’d spiraled into his own void of unfathomably dark feelings last year, he hadn’t done anything about it.

Unlike Thame, Po had never dared to actually jump.

Baifern hums as if she’s really considering his words. “Maybe,” she says eventually. “But Po, it doesn’t sound like that’s what happened this time.”

He finally sits up, scrubbing at his wet cheeks with the back of one hand.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Pepper said that you were the one who broke up with Thame. Right?”

Po nods uncertainly.

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, because… because I thought I would get in the way of MARS getting to go to Korea. I thought… it would be better for him, better for all of them, to focus on their dreams as a group. I didn’t think someone like me would be worth all the trouble.”

“So you’re saying you were in a bad situation, and you did something about it. You weren’t frozen. You cared enough about Thame and MARS to try being brave.”

I… What? Po frowns, trying to make sense of her words. No, but I didn’t…

“Wouldn’t it have been braver to take the risk?” he can’t help but argue. “To stay with him and fight for our happiness?”

“Maybe. But it doesn’t change the fact that you did something. You didn’t just sit back and let things happen. You made a choice. And even if it turned out to be a bad one, it was still brave of you to make it, I think.”

Po feels like his head is spinning as he tries to find a counterargument. Fern can’t be right… can she? He doesn’t do the brave thing, the assertive thing. He never has. It’s never mattered what inconvenience, discomfort, or even pain it might bring him—he’s always just stayed stuck.

But when faced with the certainty of long-term inconvenience, discomfort, and pain for someone else—for Thame—he had…

Fuck. He’d done something, hadn’t he? He’d done something deeply terrible.

“So the one time I take action, I do it wrong?” Despair creeps up in his chest, and he feels tears pooling in his eyes again, somehow, even though it feels like there isn’t any liquid left in his entire body to cry with.

To his surprise, Fern gently flicks his forehead in response.

“No, idiot. Why is that your takeaway? Dammit, Po, just…” She shakes her head hopelessly. “What I mean is… if you were brave once, it means that you can do it again. It doesn’t matter if you made the right choice or the wrong choice before. You chose something. And so you can go back to that hospital tomorrow, and the day after that, and whatever Thame needs you to do, you can be brave enough to do it, because you’ve already proven you can be brave.”

Po swallows, suddenly feeling very small again, standing on the shore beneath some vast wave about to crash over him.

“But what if… he doesn’t want to see me? What if he blames me for leaving him?”

Baifern frowns, tilting her head to one side, considering. “If he were really that angry at you about the situation,” she says slowly, “I don’t think he would have tried to hurt himself.”

Po feels the weight of that settle like concrete in his gut, and oh.

Of course.

Because he does know that feeling, and he remembers that it wasn’t Earn who made him want to climb over the railing of his balcony and just let go—not really, not even after Earn lost his temper and shoved Po into the table so hard that his hip was bruised for a week. No, in the midst of that darkness, the only person Po had truly hated was himself. The pain hadn’t come from Earn’s actions, but rather from his own inability to do anything in response: fight back, leave, something, anything. He was frozen and cowardly, inadequate in every way possible, stuck—maybe forever—in a situation he felt powerless to change, and that was the truth that had seemed impossible to live with.

And if Thame had felt even the smallest fraction of that self-loathing…

“Besides,” Fern adds, pulling him away from those painful memories, her voice suddenly brighter in a clear attempt to change the mood. “Based on his letter, it seems like he’s absolutely crazy in love with you. I can’t imagine that the same person who’d write all this”—she picks up the pages from the floor beside her, waving them in the air to emphasize her point—“wouldn’t want to see you as soon as he possibly could.” She laughs and passes the letter back to him. “Who knew that my kid was such a romantic?”

Po rolls his eyes instinctively, and even though there’s a part of him that wants to sink back into all of that misery and guilt, he lets his usual faux irritation at her Sphere-isms bubble up over it for a moment instead.

“Oh my god, Fern, please do not refer to someone I slept with as your kid,” he says without thinking, trying so hard to follow her lead to a lighter mood that he doesn’t really consider the consequences of such an admission until it’s already out of his mouth.

Baifern’s eyes go wide, her jaw dropping a little. “You… and Thame… shia!!”

“Wait, I didn’t…”

She scrambles up before he can finish his thought, letting out a little squeal. “Eeeee! Po! You have to tell me everything!”

“No, I really don’t.”

He takes the hand she offers and lets her pull him up, too, his legs a little sore after being curled up underneath him for so long.

“Yes, you do! You owe me for letting me find out about you dating Thame from my freaking bias while riding in an actual Oner vehicle. I almost died, Po!”

And this is the dramatic, silly, upbeat Fern he knows and loves. He’s grateful that she would sit in silence with him while he cried, but he’s perhaps even more grateful for this—an opening, a path back to something almost normal. The guilt and the worry are still there, the pain burrowed too far in his chest to come out that easily, but he finds a smile creeping across his face despite himself.

“I want to know absolutely everything,” she says, then pauses, looking him up and down as if suddenly remembering he’s still dressed in nothing but a towel and Thame’s jacket. “Buuuuut only after you put some clothes on.”

She yanks playfully at the edge of his towel and he swats at her in return.

“Our dinner is probably getting cold. I’ll go reheat it. And yes, you are required to eat something. Don’t even try to fight me on this.”

“Yes, mom,” he snarks at her retreating form as she heads back out into the main room of his apartment.

He carefully smooths out the pages of Thame’s letter and places them on his bedside table, tracing his fingers for a moment over the tearstained shapes of Thame’s handwriting.

For Thame, perhaps, he can try being brave. 

Chapter Text

When Dylan wakes, still tense from the remnants of indistinctly terrible dreams that linger just at the edges of his consciousness, he’s not sure at first where he is—or who is wrapped around him like a koala bear.

It comes back to him in pieces—Thame, the hospital, the living room sleepover—and he realizes that Jun must have rolled over at some point and ended up cuddling Dylan in his sleep. It’s still raining out, but for the moment, at least, there’s no thunder, and being tangled so closely with Jun’s warm, familiar presence is more comforting than he would have expected.

But Dylan isn’t sure that he wants to be comforted right now.

Careful not to wake anyone, he slides out of Jun’s arms and away from the island made of blankets in the middle of the floor. He stands, treading lightly around where Nano has predictably kicked everyone and everything away, giving himself plenty of room to spread out like a starfish, and where Pepper is curled tightly around a throw pillow. Even with the storm outside, there’s enough ambient light from the windows for Dylan to navigate back to his and Thame’s room without knocking into anything.

He crawls into Thame’s bed, disturbing the neatly arranged covers for the first time in three weeks. Dylan had made the bed himself the morning after that disastrous livestream, when Khun Pemika had sprung Thame’s solo Korean contract on them without warning and then forbidden Thame from even going home with them. Everything had hurt, that night, and Dylan hadn’t been ready to share that pain with the rest of the group, needing to be alone—but he couldn’t resist curling up to sleep in Thame’s bed instead of his own, already aching with the loss of his best friend.

Dylan’s never been one to make his bed, but Thame always has, taking a moment every single morning after he showers to straighten out the duvet and tuck the sheets back under the sides of the mattress—and so when he woke up, Dylan couldn’t bear to leave it mussed, even if there was a good chance Thame would never sleep in it again.

He knows he will make it again tomorrow, when he wakes, because it’s what Thame would want.

For now, though, he wraps himself up in Thame’s favorite blanket and presses his face into the pillow, wishing it smelled more like his friend than it actually does.

All of the others already have cried, he knows, and he wonders if maybe now he’ll be able to do so, as well. He wants to—has wanted to, for hours and hours. But the moment he walked into the hospital this morning, something inside of him shut down, sealing everything up behind a cold, metal wall.

He hasn’t really spent much time in hospitals since his mother died, but those awful months have carved out so much space in his mind that part of him always feels like he’s still stuck in that sterile white room anyway, no matter where he is. It haunts him: the endless beeping of the monitors tracking his mom’s progress towards death, the sleepless nights in the chair beside her bed, the pitying looks he got from doctors and nurses and moderately concerned aunts and uncles.

Up until today, Dylan’s never really tried that hard to shake those ghosts. Avoidance isn’t really his style.

He’s not like Jun, who tries to avoid feeling bad about anything by focusing on caring for all the people around him instead. Jun might seem like a selfish asshole, but Dylan knows him well enough to see that under his cocky, careless attitude, Jun is always bending over backwards to make other people happy. Jun has somehow perfected the art of fussing over his friends while simultaneously driving them all crazy—mostly, Dylan suspects, to ensure that nobody starts fussing over Jun in return. Because whenever people start trying to take care of Jun, it quickly becomes all too apparent that he desperately needs caring for, that he’s hurting, and letting that pain become visible defeats the whole purpose of his covert people-pleasing.

It’s obvious, if you look hard enough—and Dylan has. Jun wants to fix things for other people to avoid confronting all the ways he’s broken himself, so he disguises his love with arrogance and insults to dissuade anyone from loving him back.

Dylan still tries, every once in a while, in his own prickly way, but Jun always makes it impossible to keep that up for very long. Even when Jun likes someone, he makes it impossible, and Dylan thinks that even if P’Po hadn’t already been completely head over heels for Thame by the time Jun started flirting with him, there’s no way in hell Po would have ever gone for someone who actively tries to sabotage any attempt at caring for him.

(Dylan also suspects that Jun’s crush is less about liking P’Po and more about Jun attaching himself to someone who needs so much help seeing his value that the tatters of Jun’s own floundering self-esteem become practically invisible in comparison—but that’s not exactly the sort of thing you can just tell your bandmate in between dance practices.)

He’s never really understood that desire, the drive to bury bad feelings by helping everyone else. For Dylan, pain and sadness and anger feel like close friends, and wallowing in those emotions, indulging the full range of them, has at the very least always been productive for him. Some of his best music has come from embracing all of his darkest feelings. It hurts to sit with them, but it also makes him feel alive and creative, connected to something deeper, maybe even powerful. Why would he want to avoid them?

When Dylan is angry, he becomes a walking furnace of rage. When he’s lonely, he drowns in aching isolation. When he’s sad, he willingly sinks into the black hole that forms inside his chest. When he’s hurt, he lets the pain eat him alive.

But today, he’d walked into the hospital and felt his heart shutter behind an icy, iron fortress, and he would have done anything to keep all of his worst emotions there behind its walls. He’d finally encountered a pain so awful, so haunted by the overlay of his own previous grief, that he had absolutely no desire to wallow or indulge, to let himself be consumed.

Comforting Jun, taking care of Nano, trying to persuade P’Po to go home—these had suddenly been the easiest things in the world. If it was a choice between hugging Jun in the hallway while he cried or facing the cold, empty feeling inside his own chest, between driving them all home or confronting the pain hidden beneath this sudden numbness, then… there wasn’t really a choice at all, was there?

For the first time, he wonders if maybe he understands why Jun is the way he is.

Today was all backwards, he thinks, remembering how Jun was the one who’d nearly punched Khun Pemika in the face, only barely held back by the others’ combined strength. Today, Jun had attacked, while Dylan took care of people.

Ridiculous.

And yet—Thame has always been the one who holds them all together. Perhaps it makes a strange sort of sense that almost losing him—and really almost losing him, this time, rather than just being separated from him—would scramble the rest of them around, mix up their personalities a bit.

Dylan feels lost, like he’s spinning haphazardly around a hurricane with no eye to anchor it. It’s the same thing he felt in the days immediately after his mother died, adrift and spiraling out of control.

There’s no one to take care of here, and nothing to distract him from the rapidly melting fortress in his heart. Now that he’s away from the hospital, with its stringent, antiseptic atmosphere and oppressive blank walls, the initial numbness is fading, and there’s nothing else to do but face it, alone, wrapped in a blanket that only vaguely smells like Thame.

It happens all at once, like shattering—one moment holding it together and the next, unable to breathe—and still, he can’t seem to cry.

Once, Dylan believed that working under a company like Oner was a tolerable trade-off. He’d always known that they didn’t really want him for his music, even though he’d tried to push his way into writing and production roles whenever he could anyway. He’d known from the beginning what they wanted to make him—an idol rapper, merchandise-ready, sexy and palatable for the fanbase—and he’d been willing to submit to their control. It was better than submitting to the alternative: the father who’d suddenly shown up again out of nowhere after hearing that his ex-wife had passed, offering a new life, a new home, but at a price Dylan wasn’t willing to pay. His dad was controlling in a way that would always be unbearable and suffocating—and at least under Oner, he could network, practice, build, getting his foot in the door for a better, freer future.

But he knows, now, that submitting to this industry is a dangerous bargain in its own right. It shrinks you into ever smaller versions of yourself, flattening you out until there’s hardly anything human left.

Dylan has been so caught up in his own pain at that shrinking, flattening process that he missed how it was shriveling up something fundamental in Thame, too. He can’t believe he didn’t see it happening, can’t believe that after years of watching his own soul be crushed in the idol machine, he never thought to check and make sure Thame’s wasn’t being crushed alongside it.

Maybe if he’d just been more like Jun, caring for the people around him instead of wallowing in his own misery all the fucking time…

And yet, Jun hadn’t stopped it either. None of them had.

In the end, his eyes remain stubbornly and steadfastly dry, but his chest feels ragged, like someone’s punched a hole through his lungs.

He must doze off eventually, somehow, because the next thing he knows, he’s being jolted awake again by a sudden crack of thunder.

He sits bolt upright, clutching at Thame’s pillow, immediately flooded with embarrassment that this is still a problem for him. He’s a grown man, for fuck’s sake. Why does something as stupid and simple as a thunderstorm still make his heart stutter and his limbs go weak with fear?

There’s no helping it now, though, and before he can fully think it through, he’s already slipping out from under the covers and heading back towards the living room. He pauses in the door and considers trying to make Thame’s bed first—but another flash of lightning with its inevitable echoing thunderclap has him abandoning that plan. He’ll come back and make the bed in the morning.

Dylan tries not to make much noise as he once again settles into his sleeping bag on the living room floor—but when he turns to pull a blanket up over his body, he finds Jun watching him quietly.

Neither of them say anything, although Jun does raise one eyebrow, and at first, Dylan can’t quite tell if the question he’s implicitly asking—you okay, bro?—is mocking or not. But after a moment, Jun sighs as if he is the most wretchedly inconvenienced man in the entire world and holds up one arm in an invitation—and Dylan knows he’s being sincere.

It’s what Jun always does, caring for others while being as irritating as humanly possible.

Dylan considers refusing him. After all, if Jun is acting normally again, having escaped the strange personality switch that’s haunted them both all day, then perhaps it’s time for Dylan to get back to normal, too. (And under normal circumstances, Dylan Zhou does not cuddle, and most certainly not with someone like Jun.) But his chest is still aching and the sky is still full of thunder—and Thame is still in the hospital—so he rolls into Jun’s warm and open arms.

Chapter Text

P’Mick had explained yesterday that they didn’t have to go to the press conference if they didn’t want to: “Everyone will understand if you’re not ready to talk about it yet. All of you can go, or just some of you, or you can all skip it. It’s up to you.”

But Jun doesn’t trust Khun Pemika for a single second, and he’s not about to just let her speak for the group again, even if they’ve supposedly been filled in already on what she’s going to say. The last time he assumed he knew what Pemika would tell the public…

Well, it hadn’t exactly gone very well, had it?

So he wants to attend the press conference, if only to keep an eye on her, and he tells the others as much over breakfast.

“You can’t try to attack her again if she says something awful, though,” Pepper cautions him.

“I know that! I’m not an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Dylan grumbles into his coffee, and Jun swats his arm.

“And you’ll probably need to say something to the fanclub,” Nano adds. “Thank them, let them know we’ve seen all their well wishes.”

Truth be told, Jun hasn’t seen the well wishes, or the conspiracy theories, or much of anything online. Aside from sending a few texts to family and close friends, he’s barely been able to look at his phone, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of notifications. He knows most people mean well, and he does appreciate the support he knows Sphere is providing, but… something about the idea of reading their endless messages makes him feel sick.

“If you can’t do that, someone should probably go with you.” Nano looks pointedly at Pepper, and Jun finds that his gaze is automatically drawn towards Pepper, too. In Thame’s absence, Per is always the one who handles this sort of thing best, being the face of the group and conveying everything to their fans in a way that feels polished-yet-genuine.

But one look at Per tells Jun that he’s not going to be able to play that role this time around. His expression reminds Jun of a suitcase spilling over with private things that haven’t been reorganized and tucked back out of sight yet, the sort that the staff are always reminding them to keep out of frame during their inevitable hotel room photo shoots and vlogs when they travel.

“I’ll go,” Dylan says suddenly, and they all swing around to gaze at him in surprise.

“Really?” Nano narrows his eyes dubiously. “You?”

“I can keep Jun from punching anybody, at least.”

“Can you give a statement to Sphere, though?” Pepper’s voice doesn’t exactly sound confident in Dylan’s ability to do so.

Dylan shrugs. “It’s just words, right? I can do words.”

The face Nano makes in response looks so scandalized and horrified and normal that Jun can’t help but laugh.

“I mean, I guess I could also go…” Pepper starts to say, but Jun quickly cuts him off.

“I can talk to the fans. Don’t worry about it.” Jun still feels a bit nauseous about the whole thing, but his competitive streak—and especially the part of him that would like to beat Dylan in every possible category for the rest of forever—makes him feel like he can probably do it. “Why don’t the two of you go back to the hospital? We’ll meet you there later.”

He and Dylan take a taxi to the Oner building. Normally, Jun prefers to drive himself, and he thinks that he’s recovered enough from yesterday that he could probably manage it, but just in case he freezes up again, he’d rather not have a repeat of last night’s failure to even start his car. Watching Dylan swoop in to save the day while Jun just sat there, trembling and useless, had not exactly made his list of top ten favorite moments.

Being back at the company feels strange. Even though Jun knows he was there only twenty-four hours before, it feels like a lifetime ago. So much has shifted since then, since the sound of squealing brakes and angry horns outside had thrown the entire office into disarray. It feels heavier now, somehow, to walk the same old hallways, knowing what this place did to Thame.

As with the press conference they held after Pepper’s dating scandal, everyone is gathered in the main atrium of the Oner building, a crush of people with cameras and prying curiosity. Unlike that day, however, there’s no table to sit at—just a single podium crowded with microphones from every conceivable media outlet.

“We didn’t think any of you would come,” P’Ming tells Jun and Dylan as she waits with them in a side room, holding them away from the crowd until it’s time to begin. “You can make your statement in between Khun Pemika and Khun Jay. We don’t have a script for you, though. Do you know what to say?”

Jun nods—he’d been turning it over and over in his mind on the ride over. We want to say thank you to everyone in Sphere for supporting us during this difficult time…

“And P’Mick told you what you can and can’t include, right?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Jun snaps. He regrets it immediately—Ming is nice, and none of this is her fault—but before he has time to apologize, P’Tae swings the door open and motions for them to follow him out.

As an idol, Jun is always aware of the fact that people are watching him, but the feeling of eyes and cameras on him is stronger than usual, almost overwhelming, as he and Dylan walk into the atrium. It feels like a physical force trying to worm its way under Jun’s skin, trying to steal the truth of his feelings, clawing and pushing at his chest to demand answers.

Khun Pemika speaks first, and although she isn’t reading from anything, it’s so clearly practiced, prepared. Scripted. She thanks everyone for coming, gives a few reassuring—if vague—details about Thame’s condition, and then begins spinning the narrative that the company decided on, one in which exhaustion and overwork are the culprits.

“I take full responsibility for this terrible accident,” she says, her voice as steady as ever. “I had the final say over Thame’s schedule, and given the magnitude of his opportunity in Korea, I was more involved in managing it than usual. Mick and the other staff who work with MARS cautioned me against adding to Thame’s workload, and his fellow members came to me on several occasions to express their worry for his health. I continued with my strategy despite their advice and their concerns, leaving me to bear sole blame for this situation.”

As she continues, Jun notes with satisfaction how the crowd is looking at her, shock and disgust clear in many expressions—but even that isn’t enough to dislodge the lump that grows in his throat. All of those people now believe that he went to Pemika with concerns, that he was looking out for Thame’s wellbeing to the best of his abilities, when in reality, he hadn’t even tried to contact Thame once. He’d just assumed…

“In my excitement to grow the T-pop industry and see Oner artists succeed, I took an unacceptable risk with Thame’s health, and for that, I am deeply sorry. To Thame and his family, to MARS, to my staff, and to the fans, I offer my sincerest apologies for this error in judgement which has caused so much harm. Given the severity of my recklessness with the safety and wellbeing of our artists, I would also like to announce my resignation as CEO of Oner, effective immediately.”

The crowd begins to murmur at that, and Pemika waits for a moment until the buzz of voices dies back down.

“In a moment, a representative from our board of directors will provide more details on the Dream to MARS concert and the change in Oner leadership, and he will be happy to answer any questions you may have. But first, Jun and Dylan would like to share a message to the fans on behalf of MARS.”

She steps aside and gestures for the two of them to step up to the podium, but even with such an obvious cue, it takes Jun a moment to realize that it’s their turn now.

“C’mon,” Dylan whispers, pushing his shoulder gently against Jun’s to prompt him to move.

As they walk towards the podium, Jun feels like his entire body is moving through wet concrete, his stomach churning unpleasantly. He’s never felt all that nervous to talk to the press or to fans before, but the idea of having to perform for them now, having to make everyone feel better about the situation when he still feels like he’s about to fall apart, is horrifying in a way he can’t quite describe. Someone needs to do it, but he shouldn’t have volunteered, because he can’t even seem to open his mouth…

To his surprise, Dylan steps in front of him and clears his throat, taking the center position in front of all the microphones as if they’d planned for him to speak from the beginning. He greets the audience with a wai, and Jun follows suit out of habit more than anything else.

“We’d, uh, like to thank, y’know, Sphere, and… everyone… for all of your… I mean, we… and Pepper and Nano, too, of course, we…” He trails off, looking horribly overwhelmed.

And it’s like magic the way that Jun feels suddenly able to step up, gripping Dylan’s arm reassuringly as he takes over the statement. It’s not even because of the competitive tension that exists so often between the two of them, which Jun felt so strongly at breakfast and which he might have expected to feel in this moment, too. No, there’s no competition—instead, it’s just knowing exactly how much Dylan struggles to put his feelings into words outside of lyrics on a page, how close Dylan is with Thame, how difficult this must be for him. It’s just gratitude, strange and unexpected, for all the ways that Dylan has been there for Jun in the last twenty-four hours, for the fact that Dylan agreed to come with him to this shitshow of a press conference in the first place.

On his own, speaking to the fans right now would be impossible, but if it’s to help someone else, if it’s coming to Dylan’s rescue and making things easier for his friend, then it’s the simplest thing in the world.

(As he catches Dylan’s gaze out of the corner of his eye, Jun notices a flicker of something there, something almost like satisfaction, and suddenly he wonders if Dylan did this—trying to speak first, knowing he’d fail miserably, knowing Jun would be able to save everything only if everything needed saving first—on purpose.)

“What Dylan means to say is that we want to thank all of our fans, here and around the world, for your support. Although we’ve been busy trying to be there for Thame, we’ve seen your messages and your videos and the vigils you’ve planned, and we really appreciate knowing that we have such a loving fanbase behind us, even during such an awful situation. We…”

He pauses, tearing up a bit despite his best efforts not to let the emotion of it get to him, but his voice doesn’t give out completely, and he’s able to keep going.

“We’re very grateful that Thame is still with us and that he’ll be able to recover. Thame is the heart of MARS, not only our leader but also our best friend. Thame is the only reason our group ever made it this far. He’s done so much for…”

This time, he has to bite his lip to keep everything in—the secrets of Thame’s solo work, his fight to keep them all together, the real reason for his accident. A few tears escape and run down his cheeks, and it takes him a beat longer to compose himself.

He feels Dylan’s hand grab his behind the podium and squeeze, just a little.

Later, Jun is positive that he’ll be annoyed about it, but for the moment, at least, it does help, knowing that Dylan is in this with him.

His silent encouragement, in fact, makes Jun feel brave enough to risk taking a shot at Khun Pemika and the company in public. Glaring sideways at her and the other executives in a way he knows the cameras are bound to catch, he adds, “If anything ever did take Thame away from us, I don’t know what we’d do.”

Pemika’s mouth twitches in her version of a frown, and Jun cheers internally. Gotcha.

“Please forgive us if we are less active on social media for a little while as we take care of our brother,” he continues, returning a much friendlier gaze to the crowd in front of him. “I promise that we will convey all of your love and support to Thame, and that we’ll try to come and meet you all again as soon as we can. We love you, Sphere. Thank you for always standing by us.”

He can tell that some reporters are already trying to ask questions, but P’Ming steps forward and guides them away from the podium again so that Khun Jay—one of the directors from the board—can speak instead, ignoring the invasive queries shouted after them.

Jun feels a kind of buzzing numbness set in now that he’s done speaking, now that the adrenaline rush of jumping in to rescue Dylan has started to wear off. He misses a lot of what Khun Jay says at first—something about the search for a new CEO, something about updating company policies regarding artist schedules, all of it vague and sanitized of any real feeling.

Jun comes back into himself enough to actually follow the statement right near the end, as Jay explains how Oner will be refunding all of the concert tickets.

“We would like to eventually reschedule Dream to MARS,” Khun Jay is saying, “but we don’t yet have a sense of the timeline for Thame’s recovery. Of course, we will be prioritizing Thame’s wellbeing, which means that any plans for the concert or other MARS events will need to wait until he is fully ready to return to work. In the meantime, if anyone encounters any issues with their refunds, please direct them to our customer service team. I’ll take your questions now.”

The crowd erupts with noise, sudden and loud enough that Jun flinches a little.

It takes Khun Jay and the staff several long moments to get a handle on the situation enough to be able to pick out any specific questions, let alone answer them, but eventually, things quiet down to a low murmur as someone demands to know about Thame’s Korean contract.

Jay offers a faux-magnanimous smile that makes Jun feel positively queasy.

“All negotiations with our Korean friends have been paused for the foreseeable future. When Thame is recovered, we will reopen that discussion, as we would obviously still love to see him succeed on an international scale. For the moment, however, Thame’s health must come first, and so we cannot speak to the outcome of any future negotiations for a Korean debut.”

Jun feels Dylan bristle beside him, and his own fists tighten involuntarily at the thought that even after everything that’s happened, Oner might still try to send Thame away. He breathes carefully through his nose to calm his racing heart and tries to remind himself that just because an executive says something in a press conference doesn’t make it true. Khun Jay is probably just trying to be diplomatic. He doesn’t want to give too much away.

“Can you say more about how you’ll handle artist schedules differently in the future? What specific policies will be changed?” another reporter calls out.

“We will be working with an external party over the next few weeks to identify the most effective policy interventions,” Khun Jay says carefully, his words polished but empty, exactly the sort of response you’d expect from a corporate puppet…

And then he glances sidelong at Jun and Dylan.

Something heavy sinks in Jun’s stomach, and he has a feeling his warning shots are about to be returned.

“However, we do know that we need to focus not only on ensuring that Oner staff do not overbook our artists, but also on making sure that our artists are given more guidance on setting realistic goals. In addition to the overloaded schedule Thame was assigned to prepare for the concert and his Korean debut, he and the other members had also pitched the idea of producing their own song from start to finish as a way to increase their experience in all aspects of the music industry. MARS actually took the lead on creating their most recent single, from songwriting to production to the MV.”

Jun hears murmuring from the crowd at that, but he can’t bring himself to look away from Khun Jay, from the tidal wave he can feel bearing down on him.

“It was an admirable idea, and as you’ve all seen, their work was an undeniable success. But it was not a realistic endeavor given the condensed timeline the group had available to them, and I fear that taking on so much extra work was also a contributing factor in Thame’s exhaustion. Part of our job in managing up-and-coming artists is to provide mentorship in how to navigate this industry successfully, and the fact that no such mentorship was provided to temper Thame’s excitement reveals a gross failure on the part of our previous leadership. As we adjust our policies and as we look to name a new CEO, rest assured that Oner will be providing better career guidance and oversight for our artists. We want to encourage their ambition and talent without letting them accidentally make choices that will only hurt themselves in the long run.”

Jay glances over at them once again, and it feels like a sucker punch to the gut. The press might not understand the full meaning of his answer, but Jun does, and it makes him want to crawl into a hole where he can wither and die from shame, even as anger boils through him.

Because if “exhaustion” is now the company’s codeword for Thame wanting to kill himself, then when Khun Jay says their song was a “contributing factor” in that exhaustion, what he really means is… You hung all your hopes on an unrealistic goal. You got yourselves into this mess by letting Thame feed you fantasies instead of bringing him back down to earth. You spent all this time and energy on your little song, your little MV, and it broke your friend’s heart. He was naïve and overexcited, and anyone who encouraged him is complicit. What happened to Thame is your own damn fault. 

And for a moment, part of Jun thinks that maybe he’s right. It’s not just that they didn’t try harder to check on Thame while he was isolated—it’s that they refused to let MARS go when they had the chance. Perhaps if Thame had gone to Korea three months ago when he was originally supposed to leave, perhaps if Jun had put a stop to all of this instead of letting himself get swept away in a vision untethered from reality, then maybe Thame might have been okay. It would have sucked, being alone—for all of them—but maybe without the renewed hope and camaraderie of these last few months, it wouldn’t have been such a bad way for things to end.

Maybe it wouldn’t have broken Thame on the way down.

Jun is angry at Khun Jay for implying it, especially in front of so many cameras—but for a brief moment, he’s not fully sure that it’s wrong.

Dylan, on the other hand, seems to have landed much more firmly on rage as a response. Jun sees him move from the corner of his eye and only just barely manages to get ahold of him before Dylan can actually take a full step towards the podium.

He can’t, however, stop Dylan from saying exactly what’s on his mind.

“Don’t fucking talk about Thame like that, asshole!”

The whole room falls quiet, and Jun knows without looking that every eye and every camera is turned towards them, watching their every move.

“Come on, Dylan, let’s go,” he whispers, pulling him back towards the doors they’d come in through.

P’Ming and P’Tae move as if to accompany them, but Jun fixes them each with a look that clearly says, back off! and shakes his head.

Dylan angrily shrugs off his grip, but he stalks away without making any more of a scene, so Jun doesn’t try to grab him again, merely following in his stormy footsteps instead. He can practically hear Pepper’s disappointed sigh, feel the weight of Nano’s scorching, judgmental gaze. He can already imagine the scandalous headlines, the way that reporters will press and prod to find out why Dylan reacted that way. He wonders what the fans will think—if they’ll come for Dylan like a digital mob and demand apologies for his poor behavior, if they’ll start cooking up even more conspiracy theories, if they’ll try to get something like #DefendDylan trending.

Jun already knows exactly how much of a mess this will be, and yet as he watches Dylan disappear through the doors in front of him, as he feels the crowd’s eyes on his own back, Jun can’t help but turn and add just a little more fuel to the fire.

Because even if it might be better for PR in the long term, Jun cannot bear the thought of people assuming that Dylan is just having some kind of silly outburst due to the emotional strain of nearly losing Thame. Even if it raises questions that MARS isn’t prepared to answer, he needs people to know that it’s not just grumpy, hotheaded Dylan who is angry at the company about this—because if anything, Dylan’s actions have helped clear his own head and remind him that no, actually, it is not MARS’s fault for letting Thame get his hopes up.

It isn’t Thame’s fault, either, which Jun now realizes was also heavily implied in Jay’s answer. He’d jumped, in his guilt, to the interpretation that Jay was blaming Jun, blaming the group, but Jay had also tried claim that Thame himself was responsible for the situation, hadn’t he? He’d accused Thame of getting his own hopes up, of being too naïve and too eager to destroy himself for a dying dream.

But Thame’s hopes never should have been endangered in the first place, not if the company had done their job and handled things better.

Jun might not have been there for Thame the way a best friend is supposed to be, and it still feels like what happened yesterday is ultimately his fault, but he’s always known that Pemika and Oner were pushing Thame—pushing all of them—into whatever contracts would be most profitable, regardless of the cost. For Jay to imply that Thame’s dream was simply unrealistic, that he naïvely brought this all upon himself, that he wasn’t being manipulated and coerced into smaller and smaller forms of happiness at every turn…

Yeah, Dylan is right. Don’t fucking talk about Thame like that.

Jun can’t tell everyone the truth, but he can certainly tell Oner that MARS won’t just be standing quietly by anymore, content to be muzzled and yanked around on a tight leash—and however the fans and the press react to Dylan’s behavior, Jun can at least make sure they all know Dylan wasn’t acting alone.

He catches Khun Jay’s gaze, then slowly and deliberately flips him off with both hands.

Ignoring the flashing of cameras and the sudden cacophony of questions shouted in his direction, Jun turns and follows Dylan out of the room.