right wrist, left ankle, heart [1/2] [for yummyda]
For: yummyda
Title: right wrist, left ankle, heart
Pairing(s)/focus: Mark/JB
Rating: PG
Word count: ~14K
Warnings: none, just some swearing
Author's notes: Happy new year yummyda! You requested band au so how could I resist? The prompt got a little away from me sorry u__u but the spirit of your request is still here, I think! Hope you like it :) Thanks to the mod for your endless patience and to C, N for severe handholding and intense cheerleading through all those late nights, and to M for your invaluable support and crit, as always. You guys were the ones keeping my dumb ass afloat!!!!! ♥
Summary: A month before GOTSTAR's first tour, Mark has to step down as the band's drummer. Turns out that this is the least of Jaebum's problems.
part one | two
right wrist, left ankle, heart
Less than a month before GOTSTAR is due to go on their first nationwide tour, Mark breaks his right wrist and sprains his left ankle. Jaebum reacts predictably.
"Hey, don't be mad," are the first words Jaebum hears when he slams into Mark's hospital room, cell phone still clenched in his fist, screen still flashing room c302, past the poster of the bballers in weelchairs. Jackson's standing by Mark's bedside, and actually, it's Jackson who says it, but Mark's the one Jaebum's looking at and Mark's expression says the same thing. Don't be mad, Jaebum, don't be mad.
The difference is that Jackson's voice is alarmed, tinged with fear, and Mark's face isn't. Mark's face is resigned and tired and paler than usual, and it's telling Jaebum that there's no use getting angry over something that can't be undone.
That just pisses Jaebum off more.
"You're all right?" he demands. Mark gives a short nod. "Good," says Jaebum, and takes a deep breath before shouting, "You landed wrong on a flip?"
Mark shrugs, then winces, because he's a dumbass who apparently forgets that his entire right arm is in a sling and he shouldn't move it. The same kind of dumbass who decides, twenty-eight days away from a very crucial, monumentous date, to perform acrobatics off a slippery surface without stretching beforehand-on a dare. Not even a dare. A casual remark.
Jaebum's gaze swings to Jackson. Jackson grimaces, holding up his hands. "I know, it was my bad, okay? I'm sorry," he says. "But we were just playing around, I wasn't pressuring him to do it or anything! I just thought it'd look cool. And it's not like he hasn't done that flip a billion times before."
"He hasn't done it at such close proximity to our band's first tour, you idiot," Jaebum snaps. He walks closer to Mark's hospital bed; Jackson takes a few steps back.
"It was an accident! Blame Mark too for going along with it!"
"You're both idiots!" Jaebum roars, swiveling between him and Mark. "What the hell were you two thinking? Did you even consider for a second what would happen if Mark screwed up the landing? Did it pass through your mind at all how dumb you were being?"
A look passes between Mark and Jackson-a millisecond too long for it to be meaningless. Jaebum tenses, but instead of Jackson admitting some crazy, ulterior motive, Jackson says, "Yeah, but. Like, come on. How were we supposed to know?"
"You told him to jump off a metal railing! From a height taller than he was!"
"He looked totally awesome midair though, want to see the pic I got?" Jackson digs out his cell phone.
Jaebum glares him down and Jackson immediately wilts, shoulders dropping. He shoves his phone back in his pocket.
"Sorry, it wasn't cool, I know," he says.
Jaebum swallows back whatever he was going to yell. "You realize how bad this is, right?" he says, jaw clenched. "If Mark can't play, we're screwed. The tour kicks off in four weeks-if we don't have a drummer, we need to cancel all our shows until he heals."
He'd expected at least a little bit of vindictive satisfaction to see Jackson go ashen with guilt, but it actually makes Jaebum feel worse. Jackson doesn't wear disappointment well. He looks actually more frustrated than subdued, unlike Mark. Mark's head is lowered, his eyes on his lap, remorse sloping his body like it's physical weight. He's so still, he could be a photograph. Jaebum's arm twitch at his sides-he considers reaching out, putting a hand on Mark's good arm to give him a silent reassurance that Jaebum is glad he's okay, because Jaebum is-but Jaebum doesn't. There's nothing to make light of in this situation. It's lucky that the injuries weren't worse, and Jaebum is grateful, but he realized as he rushed to the hospital that the short term results are unavoidably devastating: if the end result is that Mark can't perform, then their band is as doomed as Youngjae's college entrance test scores.
They'd been so close. And it just took one botched backflip for all their effort to come crashing down.
"Sorry," Jackson says again, voice rough. "Hyung-"
"Is it that big of a deal that I can't play?" Mark pipes up. He lifts his head to meet Jaebum's eyes. "You can play drums. You know our songs. Just sub for me."
Jaebum stares at him. "I'm lead singer."
"Sing while drumming," says Mark, shrugging again, but only his good shoulder this time. At Jaebum's continued disbelief, his eyebrows rise. "What?" he asks, turning to Jackson. "It should work out, right?"
"Sure, except for the part where Jaebum hyung doesn't like the drums," says Jackson.
That surprises Mark even more. "You don't like drums?" he asks.
"It's not tha-this isn't about me liking or disliking drums," Jaebum says.
"We talked about this and I said it might not work out, but Mark hyung's stubborn," Jackson says quickly. "But, listen. No pressure or anything, but if you can be the drummer, then-like, that'd be perfect, right? We won't need to cancel any shows or try to find a replacement-and BamBam and Yugyeom would hate us if we did that, anyway. It's not a bad-wait, wait, before anything else, just be straight with us. Is there something stopping you from doing it? Besides, uh, preferring just to sing?"
Bad memories and rehashed feelings of failure, thinks Jaebum. Given further proof of the distance between becoming a respected instrumentalist and keeping 4/4 time on a glitzy pop song. Ten years ago, this wasn't the life that Jaebum had pictured for himself, and being confronted with the reality of that is something Jaebum doesn't really mind avoiding. He's proud of GOTSTAR, but-
But nothing. He's proud of his group, and that's it. This group that the five of them (plus an honourary two) have shovelled years of work into in order to get to where they are now.
"I guess not," Jaebum admits. He wishes he were telling the truth.
-
"You? Drummer?" Jinyoung repeats, his voice buzzing in and out over the flow of traffic at his end of the line. He's panting a little as he runs. "But you hate drums."
Jaebum squeezes his phone, then consciously relaxes his grip. "I don't hate drums," he says, tamping down the defensive tone of his voice by upping the wryness instead. "I love drums. I played drums for years before GOTSTAR was formed, if you remember."
"Key word being played, past tense," Jinyoung says. "Hyung, you haven't picked up a pair of drumsticks in like, I don't know how long-seven months? Eight?"
"Then you do know how long."
"-and that was only because Mark hyung was in LA and couldn't record the demo. You wouldn't have done it if you didn't have to."
"Same thing here," Jaebum says. "Mark can't play, so I'm stepping in."
"This is a live tour we're talking about! Not just a few hours in a recording booth!"
"Yeah, exactly, this is a whole tour. This is our tour, and we all want it to happen, and it can only happen if I play Mark's parts."
An extended blast of car honking drowns out most of Jinyoung's reply.
"-stressed out that much won't benefit anyone!" Jinyoung finishes. Jaebum hears him exhale.
"What?" Jaebum asks.
"I just mean, okay, I support you, hyung! But I remember you told me you gave up drums for a reason and-"
"Things have changed. This is a special circumstance anyway."
"Sure," Jinyoung says doubtfully. "I guess it's true that this is the best solution, but..." He sighs.
"Just spit it out," says Jaebum.
"I don't know if it's such a good idea to do the concerts if it's going to put pressure on us to the point of you suffering and getting way overburdened." Jinyoung says in a rush. "Ah ah! Before you get snippy with me and say that you can definitely do it, think about it! Twenty shows is not going to be easy, no matter how you look at it. You'd only have a month to practise. And you're our lead singer so we can't risk your health, most of all. Things are bad now, but we'd be worse off if our leader fainted due to exhau-"
"Don't say that," Jaebum interrupts. "I'm not the leader."
Jinyoung's laugh is short and good-humoured. "Hyung, give me a break. Of course you're leader."
"We never voted," Jaebum says. "It wasn't official."
"There was consensus without need for a vote. We all know it has to be you."
Jaebum is silent.
Something from Jinyoung quiets. Somehow, the busy street he's jogging down quiets too, as if in sympathy. "Is it really that much of a burden for you?" Jinyoung asks.
"No, it's not that, you know it's not that," says Jaebum. The impulse comes to his mind again, just like it had with Jackson's question. Lie about it, shrug it off. It's too hard to explain-despite the fact that out of all of them, of course Jinyoung would understand best. But that's the same reason Jaebum can't bring himself to tell him. It'd make Jinyoung feel lacking, or worse, culpable, like maybe he did something wrong if Jaebum still gets so nostalgic for the past, gets so homesick for that naive, carefree time of his life that Jinyoung had pulled him from with promises of blinding spotlights and adoring crowds.
Too bad Jinyoung would see through any lies like water on glass.
"It's-I don't even know how to be a good leader," says Jaebum.
Jinyoung laughs again. "Are you crazy?"
"Yah," growls Jaebum.
"No, hyung, you're crazy. You don't know how to be a leader? You've always been the one we've looked to for direction, you're our lead singer, you have charisma-"
"Jackson has charisma-"
"He has a different charisma. But it's not even just that! Really, think about it. Back when Yugyeom was super desperate to join the band, he made lunchboxes to bribe you. When Jackson and Youngjae get excited about a new song, they always scream it out for you first. All our gigs, stage managers go directly to you to relay information to the rest of us. You waited in line for our tickets to Everland while everyone else dicked around taking pictures with the statues. No one pinned a sticker on you saying you were leader those times, did they? You can just feel it. You were first to reach Mark's hospital room today too, weren't you?"
"Only because you were running around getting stuff for Mark. And Mark called you first. It was Jackson who texted me."
"What's the difference? They always act in unison anyway."
"I'm only saying-"
"Have you ever read Macbeth?" Jinyoung interjects.
"What? That Shakespeare thing? No."
"Oh," says Jinyoung, disappointed, then says brightly. "Never mind then! But anyway, the point is that you-oh wait, hold that thought. Taxi! Here, here!" His voice drifts away for a second. "Hyung, I got a cab. Tell Mark hyung I'll be there soon!"
"Yeah."
"Also, can you just ask a staff to make sure that it's fine for me to bring outside food into the hospital? If it's not, you'll have to help me sneak this all in, okay?"
"Why," says Jaebum. "How much did you buy?"
-
"I can't believe you brought all this but it's still not enough," whines BamBam, watching Jinyoung carefully unpack bags bulging with take-out containers onto the tiny foldable table attached to Mark's hospital bed.
"What do you mean?" asks Jinyoung. He adds a fifth styrofoam bowl of galbitang to the stack of others, then bends down to rifle through the bag for cutlery.
"There's seven of us." BamBam points to the circle of them huddled in the room.
Jinyoung looks up. "These are all for Mark hyung."
"What!"
Mark grins at Jinyoung. "Thanks," he says. Jinyoung visibly melts, despite his arm shooting backwards to shove away Jackson sneaking towards the take-out.
"He's getting discharged tomorrow, he can't finish all this!" Jackson cries, pushing back. "And I've been here the whole time since he got admitted! I deserve food too!"
"You can't have Mark hyung's favourites. Here, I got you ramen." Jinyoung unties another plastic bag and hands Jackson a black container, then tosses him a pack of string cheese.
"Oh, sweet, cheese. Thanks."
"Can I have a string cheese?" Youngjae asks.
"How about half of one?" Jackson says in what he obviously thinks is a generous tone.
Youngjae laughs. "So stingy! But okay."
"Can I have the other half?" BamBam asks.
"No," says Jackson. "You're still under punishment for spilling soup on my bass."
"Unfair! That was only because I didn't see Yugyeom's stupid long legs sticking out under the table!"
"Hey!" Yugyeom yells. "Don't pin that on me!"
"Stop falling asleep near expensive equipment!" BamBam argues.
"You stop eating near expensive equipment! It's your own fault!"
"All right, band meeting, right now!" Jaebum yells, and everyone falls silent, BamBam and Yugyeom reluctantly halting their slapping contest. "Okay, so here's the current situation," explains Jaebum. "Mark is in no shape to play drums for the next eight weeks. I've decided to take over his parts, as well as sing. We'll need some modifications to set layout so I can still be heard above the drums, but it's doable. However, this means that we're going to play our first tour without Mark. There's actually no way around that, actually. Thoughts?"
"Hyung," BamBam whips to Mark. "Is that true? You're not going to be in the tour?"
Mark shakes his head. "Can't," he says. He raises his cast slightly as a reminder. On it, BamBam's doodles of various cartoon faces and dogs with human buttcheeks flaunt openly for everyone to see, the drawings bordered by GOTSTAR GOTSTAR GOTSTAR written in fluctuating sizes.
"Can't you drum one-handed?" BamBam asks.
"How would that work? Use your brain."
"Oh, would it be really hard? Did you know, there are drummers on Youtube who have like three fingers on each hand and they're awesome!"
"Then they still have two hands!"
"Why can't Youngjae hyung just sing more parts then? And Jaebum hyung takes the drums."
"Then the entire vocal colour of the song will be different," Jinyoung says. "Jaebum hyung and I agreed that we can't compromise that."
"But, wait, Mark hyung will still be travelling around with us, right?" asks Youngjae. "Your ankle is only sprained, right?"
Mark's eyelids dip.
"Of course he'll be travelling with us!" Jinyoung says. He puts a hand on Mark's good shoulder. "He's still part of the band; it wouldn't be the same without him. Right, Mark hyung?"
"Yeah," Mark murmurs, gaze still low. "I'd really like to come along."
Something twinges oddly inside Jaebum, hearing that. His mind flashes back to the silent look Mark and Jackson had shared before-except Jackson's preoccupied with carefully unwrapping his cheese string, he's not looking at Mark. But there's a furrow to his brows that doesn't sit well with Jaebum.
"You're coming along even if we have to strap you to a wheelchair," Jaebum says, and the way Mark's head shoots up, eyes huge, makes a different kind of feeling twang through Jaebum's body.
"Why couldn't you have been the one to break your wrist, hyung?" Yugyeom asks Jinyoung. "At least then I could sub in for you and GOTSTAR wouldn't be short a member."
Jinyoung's face briefly flashes with homicidal intent.
"Yugyeom!" Jaebum snaps. "You and BamBam will not be joining the band until you graduate, this isn't changing no matter how many wrists are broken. I'm not letting you miss that much school to go on tour with us."
"But hyuuung!" whines BamBam. "School's so boring! Yugyeomie sleeps through all our classes-"
"No I don't, that's you!"
"-and seriously, if one more person comes up to me to ask me to do my Thai rap, I'm going to start rapping in swear words."
"I thought your Thai rap already was swear words," says Youngjae.
"It's me talking about how cool I am."
"Wow," laughs Youngjae. "No wonder you keep bugging us to stick it in a song."
"We're derailing from the matter at hand," Jinyoung chides. He's feeding Mark soup in careful, loving spoonfuls, and Jaebum kind of wants to puke looking at them. "Jaebum hyung asked for your opinions about him taking over Mark's parts."
"What's the problem?" Youngjae asks, making a clumsy attempt to grab more cheese from Jackson. "Hyung knows all our songs, so it's a good idea. If hyung is okay with it, I'm okay too!"
"But can Jaebummie hyung play drums as well as Mark hyung?" Yugyeom asks. It could be construed as insulting, but Jaebum can tell he means it genuinely. Jaebum can't blame him. Back when Yugyeom started getting hardcore obsessed with the band, Jaebum was already weaning himself from the drums-and it's been years since then. Jaebum barely has enough confidence in himself to pull this off.
"Yo, rude much? Leader's really good at drums!" Jackson says.
Jaebum twitches. "I'll practise," he tells Yugyeom. "Don't worry."
"You are good though," Mark says. His smile is soft. "You've always been good."
"All right, that's enough," says Jaebum. "I already agreed to do this, you don't need to shove compliments at me."
Frustration quirks Mark's eyebrows for a split instant, but then he blinks and it's gone, and he's opening his mouth up for another spoonful of soup from Jinyoung.
That twinge comes again-Jaebum's been getting them all too often lately. Enough to notice a pattern.
Jaebum ignores it.
-
Three days after Mark gets discharged from the hospital, Jaebum finally stops procrastinating and decides to go pay him a visit. There's only so much practise he can get at home with his outdated drum pads, and his old trick of using overturned pots, pans and buckets made him sour in ways he didn't care to examine. They're bringing Mark's drum set on tour anyway, so Jaebum's got to get used to them, there's no way around it. He really shouldn't have put it off in the first place-it's not like they've got time in abundance.
But Jaebum's been feeling cold to the idea of other people lately. That morning, Jinyoung had accused Jaebum of some very inaccurate things ("Can you maybe not use pots as drums, hyung, so we don't get evicted from our apartment? And can you please remember to wash the pots, after you've put them on the floor? Or, honestly, can't you just stop avoiding Mark hyung and go use his drum set?") but had run away before Jaebum could get his hands around Jinyoung's neck and explain to him, very politely, that he wasn't avoiding Mark at all. Jaebum was giving Mark peace and quiet so he could recover faster and more comfortably. Jaebum was giving Mark space, because if, as Jaebum suspects, Mark and Jackson actually are hoarding some sort of useless BFF secret from the rest of the band, then Jaebum is going to leave them to it. He refuses to be the sort of leader who pressures his members to reveal things they weren't ready to.
Even if they were being so fucking obvious about it.
Jaebum can't pin this on Mark's recent injuries; it's been going on for a while. Ever since GOTSTAR's album came out, there's been something going on with Mark. Nothing startling, and Mark's never explicitly mentioned anything out of the ordinary, but there's a faint trace of melancholy that's been hanging over him that even Jaebum, nowhere close to the emotional guru level of Park Jinyoung, has sensed. Like a whiff of humidity in the air, portending tomorrow's thunderstorm. It's more noticeable when Mark's thoughtful. Not just quiet, but actually thoughtful, which Mark rarely is, and Jaebum's startled by how much it bothers him now that Mark's doing it more and more.
Also worrying is that Jinyoung can't really make head or tails of it either, and Jinyoung is the one who lives with the constant desire to make scrapbooks devoted to Mark.
Sometimes Jaebum will catch Jinyoung looking at Mark with such a put-out expression-like he's not sure if he should feel more worried or less worried, or betrayed that Mark hasn't opened up to him, or if it's his own stupidity that he can't figure it out. And sometimes that expression will gradually shift to Jaebum, becoming no less confused. Jaebum hates that. It's not like Jaebum has any answers. He and Mark are the same age, and Jaebum considers Mark one of his best friends, but they both know Mark wouldn't ever spill his heart out to Jaebum.
Jaebum isn't Jackson.
He's reminded of this fact immediately upon letting himself into Mark and Jackson's tiny condo and nearly tripping over a pair of Jackson's shoes. The front hallway is cluttered as usual, Mark's Timberlands and Jackson's sneakers littered around in disarray, skateboards propped against the closet door, snapbacks mounded on top of each other on the wall hooks. Also hanging from the hooks, various support signs made by fans that Jackson has collected over the years, all of them repeating the same keywords, JACKSON WANG, GOTSTAR, HONG KONG 852. Everywhere in their condo, Jackson has stamped his territory. As a kid he must have had a label maker and used it to conquer the world, proving the strength of his existence based on how many nooks and crannies he could decorate with his name. A person walking in here for the first time would have no idea there was a roommate.
But on closer inspection, yeah, you would. In the photos on the wall, there's a frequent partner. For every five decorations bearing Jackson's character, there's one that boasts another name. In the laundry basket by the front hall, there's a few colourful shirts mixed within the black sea of Jackson's clothing. Above the living room couch, in sight of the front door, there's an American flag taped next to a Hong Kong one, its candy cane stripes pinned with polaroids of blue skies and beaches.
"Mark!" Jaebum calls out. "I'm here! How are you feeling?"
A faint voice comes from the direction of the bedroom, too muffled to make out. Jaebum toes off his shoes, ordering them neatly by the wall, then steps inside. It's quiet today. Jackson's out working on one of his myriad side projects; he'd texted Jaebum to let him know he'd be back in time for practise later today, and not to mess up his "customized organizational system," which Jaebum took to mean, "don't touch my shit." But it's barely noon right now, Jaebum's got a few solo hours to spend with the drums before GOTSTAR plays their first song with four members.
Jaebum knocks on Mark and Jackson's bedroom door. The Jackson-faced tiger and Mark doll tacked at face-height grin at him in welcome.
"I'm in here," Mark says, poking his head out of the adjacent washroom. His hair is wet, dripping on the towel draped over his bare shoulders. He's in his boxers, no shirt yet, struggling with a garbage bag wrapped around his right arm. He looks like a drowned puppy.
"Hi," says Mark.
"You need some help with that?" Jaebum snickers.
Mark turns around-to keep the bag airtight, there's bands of scotch tape spiralling all the way up Mark's biceps, its end crawling across the right side of his back in a starburst. "Jackson helped me wrap it but he went... a bit overboard," Mark explains.
"I can see that." Jaebum picks a ripped end of the tape and starts peeling. Mark waits patiently, saying nothing, as Jaebum deftly plucks off the tape, revealing long inches of Mark's pale skin, left even paler by the adhesive. From somewhere inside Jaebum comes the urge to run his thumb down those lines, to press his fingerprints into Mark's skin and see it blossom pink from the rush of blood. He could flatten his hand over Mark's shoulder bone, feel the shift of Mark's muscle there, still strong. If he lay down his entire palm, it'd span most of the way across Mark's ridiculously narrow waist.
Jaebum doesn't usually let himself have these thoughts.
In the mirror, he can see that Mark's eyes are closed, his jaw tight, his breaths thin. He looks like he's in pain. Shit, maybe he is.
Jaebum hurriedly strips off the last piece of tape, yanking the bag off Mark's arm.
Mark's eyelids flutter open. "Thanks," he says. His smile seems weak.
"Do you have any painkillers?" Jaebum asks.
"I have some, but it's okay, it doesn't hurt much right now," says Mark, and Jaebum wonders how big of a lie that is.
Jaebum lets it slide. "You've been doing all right?" he asks. "Jackson hasn't been driving you crazy?"
Mark hobbles past him to the bedroom, grabbing a tank top from an open drawer. Jaebum watches him tug it over his head, deftly looping it around his cast as if he's been doing it all his life. Of course Mark would be okay handling his injury. Jaebum's not surprised. No doubt he didn't really need Jackson's help wrapping up his arm either.
"He's been mothering me nonstop," sighs Mark. "I practically had to force him out of the house today. I guess he feels guilty."
"No shit he feels guilty," says Jaebum. "It's his fault for suggesting you do the flip."
Mark pauses. "It's not his fault. He was just trying to cheer me up."
"Why? Something happened?"
"No, nothing," Mark says. "Hey, you're here to practise right? Let's go downstairs. Have you eaten? We have some leftovers from what Gukjoo noona brought us yesterday."
Evasion, from Mark? Jaebum's not impressed. "Wow, I'm amazed that Jackson didn't inhale it all," he says. "He must feel really guilty."
"She just made a lot," Mark says. He smiles again; it's fleeting. For the first time, Jaebum thinks that whatever Mark's upset about, it has to do with him. Like maybe he's scared of Jaebum, somehow.
"Listen," says Jaebum. "I guess you think I'm pissed at you for breaking your wrist, but I'm not, all right? I was, but I'm over it. And you'll be fine soon, so. This is only temporary."
He doesn't want Mark to misunderstand; Jaebum had been upset but in the hospital room, he'd been holding himself back. Except it's hard to articulate. There's a lump in his throat that's the sum of what he felt when he'd gotten Jackson's first text, four short sentences riddled with typos. mark landed bad on a flip, on way to hosptal now, ambulenc ppl said probs broken bone, call u l8r. Jaebum could tell Mark that Jaebum's anger that day was barely a drop in the bucket of how ignited Jaebum had been because Mark had hurt himself. Not just anger, but stark, icy fear that Mark had gotten hurt and Jaebum hadn't been there. That twisted, nauseous feeling of failing your responsibility.
Mark's looking at him carefully. Jaebum scratches his Adam's apple. "My point is that if you're feeling guilty too-stop."
"I-it's not-" For a second, something sits at the tip of Mark's tongue, ready to be spoken aloud. But then Mark swallows, closes his mouth. "Yeah," he repeats. "Okay."
For some reason, Jaebum gets the helpless feeling like they're not on the same wavelength. It's an odd sensation. He and Mark had always understood and accepted each other so naturally. Their relationship isn't as obvious as Mark and Jackson's, or as deep as Jaebum and Jinyoung's, but it's there, dependable, steady, a port for days of stormy seas. When had things become so off between them?
But Mark's already turning away, so Jaebum takes in a breath and lets the moment pass.
-
The bulk of GOTSTAR's band practises occur in the pink-wallpapered basement of Jackson and Mark's cramped two-floor condo building. After her grandson moved to America for university, the old woman who owns the building had planned to rent out both the first floor and basement separately, while she herself stayed on the second level, but once Jackson stepped in, that idea popped like a balloon. In true Jackson fashion (good-hearted, no forethought), he charmed her so much that she decided to let Mark and Jackson rent out the basement too, at a fraction of the original price. She puts up with a lot from them-band practise excluded-because while Mark is quiet, clean, unobtrusive to a fault, Jackson takes up the space of three and a half regular men. Every time the ahjumma comes into the basement to do laundry, she's tripping over another box of stuff Jackson's hoarded.
"It's soundproofing, okay?" Jackson's always yelling, to which Mark would always yell back, "But it doesn't matter, she's deaf!"
She can probably still feel the vibrations of their music though. Especially today, it's bound to be annoying. Jaebum keeps on starting and stopping in erratic fits, unable to keep up the beat whenever he has to diverge his concentration into singing.
"You just need more practise, hyung," Jinyoung assures him. He strums a few upbeat notes on his guitar. "Once you get the muscle memory down you'll be able to drum it all the way through with your eyes closed."
"The first concert is in three weeks," says Jaebum. He's not feeling too happy with himself.
"That's plenty of time!"
"Yeah," Jackson agrees. "Remember how Youngjae pretty much learned how to play like our entire garage discography in, like, three months? You're a lot better off."
"I did well though, didn't I?" Youngjae says. He presses down an octave on his keyboard, singing along. "Youngjae did very well! Because he's super hard-working! And Jaebum hyunggg! Will do well too!"
Jaebum shakes out his hands and picks up the drumsticks again. "Okay, let's go from the second verse."
"Yo, Mark," Jackson says. Mark, sitting on the first two steps of the basement stairs, shifts for the first time in probably over ten minutes. Not that Jaebum's counting. "Any tips for Jaebum hyung?"
Mark tilts his head from side to side, lips pursed. "He needs to stop thinking so much," he says at length.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Jaebum snaps, at the same time Jinyoung asks, "Isn't that what I just suggested?"
Mark briefly glances at Jinyoung, but he says to Jaebum, "I just-I can tell that you're concentrating a lot. You're thinking about your lines and controlling the beat and stuff, but-like, you know the song already. You helped write it. So just-I don't know, stop breaking it apart in your head. Think of it as one thing."
Jaebum huffs. So now the man had advice. In the hours of practise before the others members had shown up, Mark had sat in perfect, predictable silence while Jaebum banged, bashed, clanged on the drums, singing himself hoarse trying to overcome the volume of the percussion. Jaebum had been making plenty of mistakes then too, but Mark hadn't spoken up. He'd just stared contemplatively at Jaebum with the shallow interest of someone not taking anything to heart. Jaebum almost wanted to tell him to go back upstairs if he was just going to watch Jaebum make an idiot of himself, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. For all of Mark's incapacity to voice his opinion, his presence still counted for a lot. Jaebum is half-convinced that he wouldn't have sanely made it through their group's nascent stage-GOTSTAR before they even had their name-without Mark there, one step behind him, nodding his support whenever Jaebum had to put his foot down about something, helping diffuse arguments when Jaebum was making them worse, playing up his aegyo just to make Jaebum laugh.
But it doesn't mean Jaebum has to appreciate such useless advice.
"You're assuming I can naturally play through the song without screwing up, but I can't do that yet. I can't think of the lyrics and the percussion as one thing if the percussion is still a separate challenge."
"Yeah, I guess," Mark says. "But once you get more familiar with it-" He lifts his shoulders helplessly. Sitting there, in the shadow of the stairwell, in baggy sweatpants and his bare feet tucked into slippers, broken wrist cupped in his lap, crutches at his side, it's hard to ignore how frail Mark looks. Even BamBam has outstripped him in terms of weight, steadily packing inches as his body struggled to catch up to Yugyeom's unfair height, but Mark's their eldest and he stopped growing years ago, leaving him with permanently wispy limbs, a delicate shell hiding lithe muscles underneath.
There's a click of a camera phone shutter. Mark glares at Jackson.
"You look really cute! Cute and pathetic!" Jackson says. "What? It's for the photobook!"
"We're still doing the photobook?" Youngjae asks, bewildered. "I thought we decided it was too much trouble to ship them."
"It is, and we're not," says Jinyoung.
"The hell we're not," protests Jackson. "I've been saving pictures like crazy. Folders! Subfolders! They demand admiration from our fans."
"You want to spend hours and hours packaging them all up, then?"
"Pfft, no, that's what the maknaes are for."
"Why don't we just put the pictures up on our website?" Youngjae suggests.
Jinyoung makes an impatient noise. "We need to hire someone to make a new one. BamBam refuses to remove his ugly macros and no one else knows how to code."
Youngjae laughs. "Why don't we tell him he can't join the band until he fixes the website?"
"I've tried this. But BamBam said then he'd release our most embarrassing pictures until we let him join."
"Don't you guys know anything?" says Jackson. "You really can't threaten BamBam to do things. His brain is weird."
"He's too similar to you," Jinyoung says.
"Diss! Wow! You're calling me weird? You want to have a weird contest?"
"What does that mean? You can't possibly think I'm weirder than you?"
"But then doesn't this mean BamBam will update the site, either way?" asks Youngjae, oblivious to Jackson and Jinyoung kicking at each other's shins. "Maybe it'll be funny! How bad can the photos be?"
Jackson jerks his bass-a whine of speaker feedback pierces the room. "UHHHH," he bleats.
Jinyoung's eyes widen. "Jackson..."
"Nothing illegal," Jackson insists.
Jinyoung and Youngjae bear down on him with questions, one of them sounding significantly more delighted than the other. Jaebum looks back at the stairs, but they're empty.
"Let me see your grip," says Mark, from beside him. Jaebum jumps.
"Make some noise when you move!" he barks.
"Let me see your grip," Mark says again, and Jaebum grudgingly lifts his right arm.
Balanced carefully on crutches, Mark touches it with his left hand, fingers light on Jaebum's wrist and fingers, adjusting Jaebum's handle on the drumstick. He presses down on the base of Jaebum's thumb, massaging into the skin. Jaebum suppresses a shiver. He doesn't think Mark notices.
"Don't clench it so stiffly," Mark is saying.
"I'm not," says Jaebum. "This is how I'm used to holding them. Any looser and I'll drop my sticks." They both don't mention the fact that it's a bluff: Jaebum used to hold them with a lot more slack, used to drum a lot more fluidly.
"You won't drop them," Mark says. He takes Jaebum's wrist and wobbles it around. The drumstick swings, but doesn't fall. Mark shakes a little harder, giggling. "You used to do this to me," he says, amused, like he's recalling an old joke, but Jaebum's the last person who would need reminding of that.
Back when GOTSTAR was still just a half-concocted dream in Jinyoung's bright, pensive head, Jaebum, instead of contributing to insane amount of effort needed to form a band, was wiling his days away being bitter about new kid on the block Mark Tuan, fresh off American soil, whose name was being whispered with increasing frequency throughout the teenage busking community grapevine. The story: Mark had come to Korea to study music-with no pedigree, no previous knowledge, no background at all in anything to do with arts. He'd picked up a pair of drumsticks, landed himself a very expensive instructor at a very prestigious school, and in a little more than a year, was already drumming with enough skill that any casual observer might assume he'd been doing it his entire life. One (apparently) fated day, Mark came across Jaebum, drumming in an underground entrance that led to the subway, and-long story short-there was an impromptu competition. Jaebum won. He won because he'd been so pissed that this white asparagus shoot of a guy could get so good at drums in such a short amount of time when there were other kids like Jaebum, whose family couldn't afford to send him to top-of-the-line academies and who got his practise and earned extra cash by playing for busy passersby in a cold cement tunnel. He won because he'd wanted to shove Mark's handsome face into the dirt and prove to him who belonged where.
Spurred on by indignation and fury, Jaebum had never freestyled so hard, so fast, in his life. He'd been decimating. The timid look of surprise on Mark's face afterwards, soundtracked with the hearty cheers of a decent sized crowd of onlookers, had shot Jaebum's victory high to new stratospheric altitudes-until Jaebum had caught Jinyoung's face in the middle of the crowd, eyelids half-lowered with disappointment, smiling with the tiniest trace of sardonicism.
Im Jaebum, his gaze seemed to say. I thought you told me that you'd gotten control over your temper.
The stinging Jaebum felt from Jinyoung's reproving expression wasn't alone: when people began dispersing, resuming their separate, ordinary lives, Jaebum unclasped his hands and stared at the livid stripe of red flesh bisecting the middle of each palm, throbbing with each beat of his heart.
A week later, Jaebum and Mark crossed paths again. Or, rather, Jaebum was half-heartedly busking, and Mark had come back to the subway station to find him. For some reason, Mark had wanted to apologize. He'd thought he'd offended Jaebum somehow, that day, because Jaebum had been banging on his drums with such vitriol. "You sounded like you wanted to hurt someone," Mark had mumbled, Korean stilted but understandable.
"What's it to you?" Jaebum asked, wary.
"Nothing," said Mark. Then, out of nowhere, he blurted, "When you play drums, it doesn't make you happy?"
Jaebum stared. "What about you?" he snapped back impulsively. Mark didn't know Jaebum, he didn't get the right to ask personal questions. Jaebum tried not to think about how he didn't have an answer.
Mark's mouth scrunched. "I don't know," he said. "Sometimes."
What had been more surprising to Jaebum then? That he'd assumed Mark had his life in order solely because he was so much the opposite of Jaebum, or that one second later, Jaebum found himself standing up, forcing Mark down to sit down on the stool, and thrusting his drumsticks into Mark's hands?
"I don't know what you've been learning at school, but when you were playing before-last week-you held the sticks like you were afraid of them." He gave Mark's wrists a hard shake; Mark instinctively clenched his fingers tighter around the wooden sticks. "There, see," Jaebum said, not quite sure why the sight satisfied him. "Be more confident that these things belong to you."
Mark didn't thank him. But they'd spent the rest of the afternoon there together, among Jaebum's patchwork drumset, the rest of the world fading away to inconsequence.
Another few days passed and there'd been another competition, at Mark's school studio this time. Mark won, according to Jinyoung, but Jaebum couldn't rule out the possibility that Jinyoung was being purposely biased in order to woo Mark into the band. Either way, Mark's smile had been blinding; it'd made it easy for Jaebum to compliment him-Mark really had played well, grip looser and freer, much better than in the subway. Watching Mark play drums actually made Jaebum feel happier than playing the drums himself-he thought that spoke for something, but he couldn't figure out what.
One more week and Mark became part of the crew, and Jaebum started thinking of him as a friend.
Maybe that'd been Jaebum's first mistake. Getting close to Mark like that. Or maybe it'd been handing Mark his drumsticks that day. Or maybe it'd been haranguing Mark into a competition in the first place-out of kneejerk machismo pride-as soon as Jaebum recognized who Mark was-when Mark clearly wasn't comfortable with it. Or maybe it'd been that moment there, when Mark had met Jaebum's dare head-on, the challenge of some big-mouthed kid he didn't know, this kid sitting there in front of the dusty white-bricked wall, fists taut on his snare drum and homemade plastic bucket floor tom. Mark hadn't been afraid, hadn't been judgmental, and Jaebum hadn't expected that at all. Mark had said, "Fine, let's go," in a steady, low voice, and Jaebum hadn't expected to feel electricity spark up his back, like someone had plugged the jack of an audio cable into the base of his spine and turned up the volume.
-
Seven o'clock and the house is eerily silent after the nonstop racket of the preceding hours. The others have gone out to fetch take-out, leaving behind the temporary invalid and the one desperately in need of more practise, to get some rest and to get in some more practise, respectively.
Mark and Jaebum are drinking beer and sorting through Jackson's accessory collection.
"I think his friend Henry gave him that one," Mark says, when Jaebum holds up a necklace hung with a gaudy silver 852 medallion. "He stopped wearing it because whenever he jumped around it would smack him in the face."
Jaebum snorts. "This one?" he asks, picking up a pair of plain black bead earrings.
"Henry's sister?" Mark says, sounding unsure. "She has better taste than him. And Jackson, too." He pauses. "Actually, maybe those are from Youngji. But I think she usually gets him food gifts."
"Whatever," Jaebum says. "They don't count anyway." He puts them back into the box.
There's this long-standing question that the group of them have: how many items of clothing does Jackson own that show either his name or some sort of Hong Kong identification? Jackson's answer is always, "Never enough," but the truth is probably somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty. It's a useless piece of information to have, but it seems fair game, especially since they all know how many LP record hats Youngjae owns (9), how many fuzzy sweaters BamBam has (7), and how many snapbacks Jaebum buys per month (0.5). Out of boredom and the lure of procrastination, Jaebum and Mark are counting out everything in Jackson's jewelry box.
They're at 23. It's already old news that Jackson has minimum 5 shirts and 8 hats stitched with various derivations of WANG and KONG. So if nothing else, Youngjae has definitely lost the bet.
From the desk across the bedroom, Mark's cell phone buzzes. Mark jumps up to his good foot and limps over to answer it, but spends a few long seconds staring at the screen before picking up the line. "Hi dad," he says, switching to a mix of Chinese and English.
Jaebum opens up another compartment in Jackson's box, trying not to seem like he's eavesdropping.
"Yeah, yes," Mark says. Jaebum can at least understand that much from all the American R&B songs he listens to. "Umm... soon. Yeah. No, I-" Chinese. It doesn't sound like a particularly pleasant conversation. Mark goes silent for a while, staring at nothing, until his eyes dart to Jaebum, then just as quickly flit back to Jackson's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poster on the wall. "It's-hard," he finally forces out, like he's swallowing sand. "It's complicated because-" He lets out a fast spew of English words which Jaebum can't catch. Jaebum carefully gets up and goes to the washroom.
When he comes back, the phone call is over and Mark's sprawled on the floor again, sorting through Jackson's rings. He's examining one that has a Hello Kitty head. "Sorry," he says, sheepishly looking up at Jaebum. "I should have gone to the hallway, but-yeah, stupid. Thanks."
"It's fine." Jaebum sits down, picking up another small handful of rings out of the box. "Is there-" he says awkwardly, then revises. "I mean, things are okay?"
"Yeah, cool," Mark says, but the guilty, downwards cast of his eyes says otherwise.
Jaebum feels his chest constrict, as if he's opened his wallet and only just noticed that he's lost something. It's that familiar tugging sensation, a cousin to the one back in the hospital room, when Mark and Jackson had shared an entire silent conversation in the space of a blink and Jaebum had felt like they were standing at a distance that Jaebum had no way of reaching. It's not so much a feeling of loneliness, but more like acute awareness about the isolating quality of reality: there are things about Mark that Jaebum doesn't know, and might never know, even if Jaebum wants to.
Jaebum is GOTSTAR's leader, and more importantly, Jaebum is Mark's friend, but what good is that when he's clearly not good enough at either position for Mark to ask for help when he's troubled?
His bottle of beer has gone lukewarm from being ignored. Jaebum picks it up and swigs it down in a few thick gulps. It's his third one. He wants Mark to ask him for help. He wants to ask Mark to ask him for help. Out of all the members of GOTSTAR, BamBam and Yugyeom included, Mark is the least likely to request anything from Jaebum. It's been like that since the beginning, and Jaebum's always taken a sort of comfort in it, because he rarely wants favours from Mark either. He thinks it speaks to how they're both on equal ground with each other. But it's ironic that their reservation is as mutual as it is taken for granted, because who else in GOTSTAR besides Mark can Jaebum speak to openly, without having to filter himself under the role of hyung? Even to Jinyoung, Jaebum's partner through thick and thin, Jaebum has inherent superiority for being older. But with Mark there's more-
With Mark, there's-
"Do you remember when Jinyoung was trying to lure you into starting a band with us?" he hears himself ask.
Mark blinks at him blankly for a moment. Then he grins. "Yeah. I was like, why do you guys need two drummers in one band? And he told me that it's okay because Jaebum hyung could play other instruments." Mark shakes his head. "But you couldn't."
"I can play guitar," gripes Jaebum.
"Sort of. But you're a better drummer than I am anyway, so, like-yeah. I didn't really get it."
Jaebum clears this throat. It'd be awkward to tell him that Jinyoung wanted Mark in the band for the same reason that Jinyoung got obsessed with Mark initially: his face. "He's our visual, hyung!" he'd said. "Not that we're not handsome, of course, but don't you think Mark hyung's features have so much appeal? With his looks, we can snag fan attention right away! Did you happen to touch his stomach? Does he have abs?"
"It worked out better for me to be lead singer anyway," Jaebum says instead.
Mark nods. "Yeah."
"But I'm talking about when we started taking the band seriously. It was fun back then, like, uh, not as much responsibility, no deadlines, no contracts or whatever. We just did whatever we wanted. And speculating about the future got us excited, because everything felt new and amazing."
"Yeah," Mark says again, softer, sadder. "It was fun."
"When Jinyoung and I were talking about all the ways we could fuck up the band, you said something like, 'But no matter what happens, it's fine as long as we're together, right?'" Jaebum pauses, gathering his words. "That's what convinced me that you should join us. Jinyoung and I had that mindset too. The band is the people and our music, not our name, not what we accomplish."
"But we've accomplished a lot," Mark says. "Thanks to you guys."
"Everyone works hard," says Jaebum. "So what I'm saying is-" he falters. If Jinyoung were here, or even Yugyeom, they'd know what to say. Jaebum's a decent speaker, but he's not thoughtful the way the two of them are. It takes time for him to examine himself, to get his feelings across. What he wants to tell Mark is that it's okay for him to open up to Jaebum. They have this shared rock between them called GOTSTAR, weathered by their history together, and no matter what their future holds, that rock will hold firm. He wants to tell Mark that Jaebum is here for him, and has no plans to go anywhere.
A ring that Mark's fiddling with calls to Jaebum. Spontaneously, he reaches over and plucks it away, then grabs Mark's hand, sliding it over the ring finger of Mark's left hand.
"You can't refuse," Jaebum says, feeling ridiculous.
Mark's vacant face cracks as he lets out a huge burst of laughter. "What's this for?"
Jaebum has no idea how to answer that. "Doesn't matter. Just accept it."
How can Mark's giggling be so high-pitched when his rapping tone is so low? Jaebum's never figured that out.
"Accept what," Mark replies, but he's pleased, and it doesn't sound like a question, and he doesn't take off the ring.
-
The kids get back with pizza and drinks and a huge family-sized bowl of japchae. Yugyeom and BamBam are with them, and they toss down their backpacks by the front door, undisputedly abandoning whatever homework they had inside. Sometimes Jaebum really worries that the band is setting a bad example for them. But usually he doesn't. Yugyeom heads straight to the kitchen to wash his hands and gather bowls and utensils for everyone, and BamBam is helping Jinyoung spread the take-out over Jackson and Mark's checkerboard dining table. Jackson already has a slice of pizza in his mouth, immediately plopping down on the first fold-out chair that Youngjae pulls over.
"Well?" Jinyoung asks Jaebum. "Any progress with the drums?"
"Uh," starts Jaebum.
"Lots," says Mark. He lifts up his right arm, thinks better of it, then steps over to Jaebum's other side so he can raise his left arm to slide over Jaebum's shoulders. "Jaebummie's doing really well."
Jackson's eyes widen comically. "No way?" he says, a chewed glob of pepperoni flying out of his mouth. "Yo! Is that my ring?"
Mark shrugs, almost proudly. Jaebum doesn't really get it, but he's not complaining. It's rare when Mark takes initiative, even though Jaebum's not the biggest fan of skinship.
Over the meal, Jaebum keeps catching the glint of the ring on Mark's finger as Mark reaches for more food, for another can of coke, to feed Jinyoung, to pinch Yugyeom's cheek. And every time he sees it, Jaebum's heart thumps double time and he gets that guitar string twang in his gut, stronger and stronger, only it's a happy twang, it's in a major chord, it's uplifting, it kind of makes Jaebum want to sing.
After dinner, they go back to practise. Jaebum plays amazingly.
-
part one | two
Title: right wrist, left ankle, heart
Pairing(s)/focus: Mark/JB
Rating: PG
Word count: ~14K
Warnings: none, just some swearing
Author's notes: Happy new year yummyda! You requested band au so how could I resist? The prompt got a little away from me sorry u__u but the spirit of your request is still here, I think! Hope you like it :) Thanks to the mod for your endless patience and to C, N for severe handholding and intense cheerleading through all those late nights, and to M for your invaluable support and crit, as always. You guys were the ones keeping my dumb ass afloat!!!!! ♥
Summary: A month before GOTSTAR's first tour, Mark has to step down as the band's drummer. Turns out that this is the least of Jaebum's problems.
part one | two
right wrist, left ankle, heart
Less than a month before GOTSTAR is due to go on their first nationwide tour, Mark breaks his right wrist and sprains his left ankle. Jaebum reacts predictably.
"Hey, don't be mad," are the first words Jaebum hears when he slams into Mark's hospital room, cell phone still clenched in his fist, screen still flashing room c302, past the poster of the bballers in weelchairs. Jackson's standing by Mark's bedside, and actually, it's Jackson who says it, but Mark's the one Jaebum's looking at and Mark's expression says the same thing. Don't be mad, Jaebum, don't be mad.
The difference is that Jackson's voice is alarmed, tinged with fear, and Mark's face isn't. Mark's face is resigned and tired and paler than usual, and it's telling Jaebum that there's no use getting angry over something that can't be undone.
That just pisses Jaebum off more.
"You're all right?" he demands. Mark gives a short nod. "Good," says Jaebum, and takes a deep breath before shouting, "You landed wrong on a flip?"
Mark shrugs, then winces, because he's a dumbass who apparently forgets that his entire right arm is in a sling and he shouldn't move it. The same kind of dumbass who decides, twenty-eight days away from a very crucial, monumentous date, to perform acrobatics off a slippery surface without stretching beforehand-on a dare. Not even a dare. A casual remark.
Jaebum's gaze swings to Jackson. Jackson grimaces, holding up his hands. "I know, it was my bad, okay? I'm sorry," he says. "But we were just playing around, I wasn't pressuring him to do it or anything! I just thought it'd look cool. And it's not like he hasn't done that flip a billion times before."
"He hasn't done it at such close proximity to our band's first tour, you idiot," Jaebum snaps. He walks closer to Mark's hospital bed; Jackson takes a few steps back.
"It was an accident! Blame Mark too for going along with it!"
"You're both idiots!" Jaebum roars, swiveling between him and Mark. "What the hell were you two thinking? Did you even consider for a second what would happen if Mark screwed up the landing? Did it pass through your mind at all how dumb you were being?"
A look passes between Mark and Jackson-a millisecond too long for it to be meaningless. Jaebum tenses, but instead of Jackson admitting some crazy, ulterior motive, Jackson says, "Yeah, but. Like, come on. How were we supposed to know?"
"You told him to jump off a metal railing! From a height taller than he was!"
"He looked totally awesome midair though, want to see the pic I got?" Jackson digs out his cell phone.
Jaebum glares him down and Jackson immediately wilts, shoulders dropping. He shoves his phone back in his pocket.
"Sorry, it wasn't cool, I know," he says.
Jaebum swallows back whatever he was going to yell. "You realize how bad this is, right?" he says, jaw clenched. "If Mark can't play, we're screwed. The tour kicks off in four weeks-if we don't have a drummer, we need to cancel all our shows until he heals."
He'd expected at least a little bit of vindictive satisfaction to see Jackson go ashen with guilt, but it actually makes Jaebum feel worse. Jackson doesn't wear disappointment well. He looks actually more frustrated than subdued, unlike Mark. Mark's head is lowered, his eyes on his lap, remorse sloping his body like it's physical weight. He's so still, he could be a photograph. Jaebum's arm twitch at his sides-he considers reaching out, putting a hand on Mark's good arm to give him a silent reassurance that Jaebum is glad he's okay, because Jaebum is-but Jaebum doesn't. There's nothing to make light of in this situation. It's lucky that the injuries weren't worse, and Jaebum is grateful, but he realized as he rushed to the hospital that the short term results are unavoidably devastating: if the end result is that Mark can't perform, then their band is as doomed as Youngjae's college entrance test scores.
They'd been so close. And it just took one botched backflip for all their effort to come crashing down.
"Sorry," Jackson says again, voice rough. "Hyung-"
"Is it that big of a deal that I can't play?" Mark pipes up. He lifts his head to meet Jaebum's eyes. "You can play drums. You know our songs. Just sub for me."
Jaebum stares at him. "I'm lead singer."
"Sing while drumming," says Mark, shrugging again, but only his good shoulder this time. At Jaebum's continued disbelief, his eyebrows rise. "What?" he asks, turning to Jackson. "It should work out, right?"
"Sure, except for the part where Jaebum hyung doesn't like the drums," says Jackson.
That surprises Mark even more. "You don't like drums?" he asks.
"It's not tha-this isn't about me liking or disliking drums," Jaebum says.
"We talked about this and I said it might not work out, but Mark hyung's stubborn," Jackson says quickly. "But, listen. No pressure or anything, but if you can be the drummer, then-like, that'd be perfect, right? We won't need to cancel any shows or try to find a replacement-and BamBam and Yugyeom would hate us if we did that, anyway. It's not a bad-wait, wait, before anything else, just be straight with us. Is there something stopping you from doing it? Besides, uh, preferring just to sing?"
Bad memories and rehashed feelings of failure, thinks Jaebum. Given further proof of the distance between becoming a respected instrumentalist and keeping 4/4 time on a glitzy pop song. Ten years ago, this wasn't the life that Jaebum had pictured for himself, and being confronted with the reality of that is something Jaebum doesn't really mind avoiding. He's proud of GOTSTAR, but-
But nothing. He's proud of his group, and that's it. This group that the five of them (plus an honourary two) have shovelled years of work into in order to get to where they are now.
"I guess not," Jaebum admits. He wishes he were telling the truth.
-
"You? Drummer?" Jinyoung repeats, his voice buzzing in and out over the flow of traffic at his end of the line. He's panting a little as he runs. "But you hate drums."
Jaebum squeezes his phone, then consciously relaxes his grip. "I don't hate drums," he says, tamping down the defensive tone of his voice by upping the wryness instead. "I love drums. I played drums for years before GOTSTAR was formed, if you remember."
"Key word being played, past tense," Jinyoung says. "Hyung, you haven't picked up a pair of drumsticks in like, I don't know how long-seven months? Eight?"
"Then you do know how long."
"-and that was only because Mark hyung was in LA and couldn't record the demo. You wouldn't have done it if you didn't have to."
"Same thing here," Jaebum says. "Mark can't play, so I'm stepping in."
"This is a live tour we're talking about! Not just a few hours in a recording booth!"
"Yeah, exactly, this is a whole tour. This is our tour, and we all want it to happen, and it can only happen if I play Mark's parts."
An extended blast of car honking drowns out most of Jinyoung's reply.
"-stressed out that much won't benefit anyone!" Jinyoung finishes. Jaebum hears him exhale.
"What?" Jaebum asks.
"I just mean, okay, I support you, hyung! But I remember you told me you gave up drums for a reason and-"
"Things have changed. This is a special circumstance anyway."
"Sure," Jinyoung says doubtfully. "I guess it's true that this is the best solution, but..." He sighs.
"Just spit it out," says Jaebum.
"I don't know if it's such a good idea to do the concerts if it's going to put pressure on us to the point of you suffering and getting way overburdened." Jinyoung says in a rush. "Ah ah! Before you get snippy with me and say that you can definitely do it, think about it! Twenty shows is not going to be easy, no matter how you look at it. You'd only have a month to practise. And you're our lead singer so we can't risk your health, most of all. Things are bad now, but we'd be worse off if our leader fainted due to exhau-"
"Don't say that," Jaebum interrupts. "I'm not the leader."
Jinyoung's laugh is short and good-humoured. "Hyung, give me a break. Of course you're leader."
"We never voted," Jaebum says. "It wasn't official."
"There was consensus without need for a vote. We all know it has to be you."
Jaebum is silent.
Something from Jinyoung quiets. Somehow, the busy street he's jogging down quiets too, as if in sympathy. "Is it really that much of a burden for you?" Jinyoung asks.
"No, it's not that, you know it's not that," says Jaebum. The impulse comes to his mind again, just like it had with Jackson's question. Lie about it, shrug it off. It's too hard to explain-despite the fact that out of all of them, of course Jinyoung would understand best. But that's the same reason Jaebum can't bring himself to tell him. It'd make Jinyoung feel lacking, or worse, culpable, like maybe he did something wrong if Jaebum still gets so nostalgic for the past, gets so homesick for that naive, carefree time of his life that Jinyoung had pulled him from with promises of blinding spotlights and adoring crowds.
Too bad Jinyoung would see through any lies like water on glass.
"It's-I don't even know how to be a good leader," says Jaebum.
Jinyoung laughs again. "Are you crazy?"
"Yah," growls Jaebum.
"No, hyung, you're crazy. You don't know how to be a leader? You've always been the one we've looked to for direction, you're our lead singer, you have charisma-"
"Jackson has charisma-"
"He has a different charisma. But it's not even just that! Really, think about it. Back when Yugyeom was super desperate to join the band, he made lunchboxes to bribe you. When Jackson and Youngjae get excited about a new song, they always scream it out for you first. All our gigs, stage managers go directly to you to relay information to the rest of us. You waited in line for our tickets to Everland while everyone else dicked around taking pictures with the statues. No one pinned a sticker on you saying you were leader those times, did they? You can just feel it. You were first to reach Mark's hospital room today too, weren't you?"
"Only because you were running around getting stuff for Mark. And Mark called you first. It was Jackson who texted me."
"What's the difference? They always act in unison anyway."
"I'm only saying-"
"Have you ever read Macbeth?" Jinyoung interjects.
"What? That Shakespeare thing? No."
"Oh," says Jinyoung, disappointed, then says brightly. "Never mind then! But anyway, the point is that you-oh wait, hold that thought. Taxi! Here, here!" His voice drifts away for a second. "Hyung, I got a cab. Tell Mark hyung I'll be there soon!"
"Yeah."
"Also, can you just ask a staff to make sure that it's fine for me to bring outside food into the hospital? If it's not, you'll have to help me sneak this all in, okay?"
"Why," says Jaebum. "How much did you buy?"
-
"I can't believe you brought all this but it's still not enough," whines BamBam, watching Jinyoung carefully unpack bags bulging with take-out containers onto the tiny foldable table attached to Mark's hospital bed.
"What do you mean?" asks Jinyoung. He adds a fifth styrofoam bowl of galbitang to the stack of others, then bends down to rifle through the bag for cutlery.
"There's seven of us." BamBam points to the circle of them huddled in the room.
Jinyoung looks up. "These are all for Mark hyung."
"What!"
Mark grins at Jinyoung. "Thanks," he says. Jinyoung visibly melts, despite his arm shooting backwards to shove away Jackson sneaking towards the take-out.
"He's getting discharged tomorrow, he can't finish all this!" Jackson cries, pushing back. "And I've been here the whole time since he got admitted! I deserve food too!"
"You can't have Mark hyung's favourites. Here, I got you ramen." Jinyoung unties another plastic bag and hands Jackson a black container, then tosses him a pack of string cheese.
"Oh, sweet, cheese. Thanks."
"Can I have a string cheese?" Youngjae asks.
"How about half of one?" Jackson says in what he obviously thinks is a generous tone.
Youngjae laughs. "So stingy! But okay."
"Can I have the other half?" BamBam asks.
"No," says Jackson. "You're still under punishment for spilling soup on my bass."
"Unfair! That was only because I didn't see Yugyeom's stupid long legs sticking out under the table!"
"Hey!" Yugyeom yells. "Don't pin that on me!"
"Stop falling asleep near expensive equipment!" BamBam argues.
"You stop eating near expensive equipment! It's your own fault!"
"All right, band meeting, right now!" Jaebum yells, and everyone falls silent, BamBam and Yugyeom reluctantly halting their slapping contest. "Okay, so here's the current situation," explains Jaebum. "Mark is in no shape to play drums for the next eight weeks. I've decided to take over his parts, as well as sing. We'll need some modifications to set layout so I can still be heard above the drums, but it's doable. However, this means that we're going to play our first tour without Mark. There's actually no way around that, actually. Thoughts?"
"Hyung," BamBam whips to Mark. "Is that true? You're not going to be in the tour?"
Mark shakes his head. "Can't," he says. He raises his cast slightly as a reminder. On it, BamBam's doodles of various cartoon faces and dogs with human buttcheeks flaunt openly for everyone to see, the drawings bordered by GOTSTAR GOTSTAR GOTSTAR written in fluctuating sizes.
"Can't you drum one-handed?" BamBam asks.
"How would that work? Use your brain."
"Oh, would it be really hard? Did you know, there are drummers on Youtube who have like three fingers on each hand and they're awesome!"
"Then they still have two hands!"
"Why can't Youngjae hyung just sing more parts then? And Jaebum hyung takes the drums."
"Then the entire vocal colour of the song will be different," Jinyoung says. "Jaebum hyung and I agreed that we can't compromise that."
"But, wait, Mark hyung will still be travelling around with us, right?" asks Youngjae. "Your ankle is only sprained, right?"
Mark's eyelids dip.
"Of course he'll be travelling with us!" Jinyoung says. He puts a hand on Mark's good shoulder. "He's still part of the band; it wouldn't be the same without him. Right, Mark hyung?"
"Yeah," Mark murmurs, gaze still low. "I'd really like to come along."
Something twinges oddly inside Jaebum, hearing that. His mind flashes back to the silent look Mark and Jackson had shared before-except Jackson's preoccupied with carefully unwrapping his cheese string, he's not looking at Mark. But there's a furrow to his brows that doesn't sit well with Jaebum.
"You're coming along even if we have to strap you to a wheelchair," Jaebum says, and the way Mark's head shoots up, eyes huge, makes a different kind of feeling twang through Jaebum's body.
"Why couldn't you have been the one to break your wrist, hyung?" Yugyeom asks Jinyoung. "At least then I could sub in for you and GOTSTAR wouldn't be short a member."
Jinyoung's face briefly flashes with homicidal intent.
"Yugyeom!" Jaebum snaps. "You and BamBam will not be joining the band until you graduate, this isn't changing no matter how many wrists are broken. I'm not letting you miss that much school to go on tour with us."
"But hyuuung!" whines BamBam. "School's so boring! Yugyeomie sleeps through all our classes-"
"No I don't, that's you!"
"-and seriously, if one more person comes up to me to ask me to do my Thai rap, I'm going to start rapping in swear words."
"I thought your Thai rap already was swear words," says Youngjae.
"It's me talking about how cool I am."
"Wow," laughs Youngjae. "No wonder you keep bugging us to stick it in a song."
"We're derailing from the matter at hand," Jinyoung chides. He's feeding Mark soup in careful, loving spoonfuls, and Jaebum kind of wants to puke looking at them. "Jaebum hyung asked for your opinions about him taking over Mark's parts."
"What's the problem?" Youngjae asks, making a clumsy attempt to grab more cheese from Jackson. "Hyung knows all our songs, so it's a good idea. If hyung is okay with it, I'm okay too!"
"But can Jaebummie hyung play drums as well as Mark hyung?" Yugyeom asks. It could be construed as insulting, but Jaebum can tell he means it genuinely. Jaebum can't blame him. Back when Yugyeom started getting hardcore obsessed with the band, Jaebum was already weaning himself from the drums-and it's been years since then. Jaebum barely has enough confidence in himself to pull this off.
"Yo, rude much? Leader's really good at drums!" Jackson says.
Jaebum twitches. "I'll practise," he tells Yugyeom. "Don't worry."
"You are good though," Mark says. His smile is soft. "You've always been good."
"All right, that's enough," says Jaebum. "I already agreed to do this, you don't need to shove compliments at me."
Frustration quirks Mark's eyebrows for a split instant, but then he blinks and it's gone, and he's opening his mouth up for another spoonful of soup from Jinyoung.
That twinge comes again-Jaebum's been getting them all too often lately. Enough to notice a pattern.
Jaebum ignores it.
-
Three days after Mark gets discharged from the hospital, Jaebum finally stops procrastinating and decides to go pay him a visit. There's only so much practise he can get at home with his outdated drum pads, and his old trick of using overturned pots, pans and buckets made him sour in ways he didn't care to examine. They're bringing Mark's drum set on tour anyway, so Jaebum's got to get used to them, there's no way around it. He really shouldn't have put it off in the first place-it's not like they've got time in abundance.
But Jaebum's been feeling cold to the idea of other people lately. That morning, Jinyoung had accused Jaebum of some very inaccurate things ("Can you maybe not use pots as drums, hyung, so we don't get evicted from our apartment? And can you please remember to wash the pots, after you've put them on the floor? Or, honestly, can't you just stop avoiding Mark hyung and go use his drum set?") but had run away before Jaebum could get his hands around Jinyoung's neck and explain to him, very politely, that he wasn't avoiding Mark at all. Jaebum was giving Mark peace and quiet so he could recover faster and more comfortably. Jaebum was giving Mark space, because if, as Jaebum suspects, Mark and Jackson actually are hoarding some sort of useless BFF secret from the rest of the band, then Jaebum is going to leave them to it. He refuses to be the sort of leader who pressures his members to reveal things they weren't ready to.
Even if they were being so fucking obvious about it.
Jaebum can't pin this on Mark's recent injuries; it's been going on for a while. Ever since GOTSTAR's album came out, there's been something going on with Mark. Nothing startling, and Mark's never explicitly mentioned anything out of the ordinary, but there's a faint trace of melancholy that's been hanging over him that even Jaebum, nowhere close to the emotional guru level of Park Jinyoung, has sensed. Like a whiff of humidity in the air, portending tomorrow's thunderstorm. It's more noticeable when Mark's thoughtful. Not just quiet, but actually thoughtful, which Mark rarely is, and Jaebum's startled by how much it bothers him now that Mark's doing it more and more.
Also worrying is that Jinyoung can't really make head or tails of it either, and Jinyoung is the one who lives with the constant desire to make scrapbooks devoted to Mark.
Sometimes Jaebum will catch Jinyoung looking at Mark with such a put-out expression-like he's not sure if he should feel more worried or less worried, or betrayed that Mark hasn't opened up to him, or if it's his own stupidity that he can't figure it out. And sometimes that expression will gradually shift to Jaebum, becoming no less confused. Jaebum hates that. It's not like Jaebum has any answers. He and Mark are the same age, and Jaebum considers Mark one of his best friends, but they both know Mark wouldn't ever spill his heart out to Jaebum.
Jaebum isn't Jackson.
He's reminded of this fact immediately upon letting himself into Mark and Jackson's tiny condo and nearly tripping over a pair of Jackson's shoes. The front hallway is cluttered as usual, Mark's Timberlands and Jackson's sneakers littered around in disarray, skateboards propped against the closet door, snapbacks mounded on top of each other on the wall hooks. Also hanging from the hooks, various support signs made by fans that Jackson has collected over the years, all of them repeating the same keywords, JACKSON WANG, GOTSTAR, HONG KONG 852. Everywhere in their condo, Jackson has stamped his territory. As a kid he must have had a label maker and used it to conquer the world, proving the strength of his existence based on how many nooks and crannies he could decorate with his name. A person walking in here for the first time would have no idea there was a roommate.
But on closer inspection, yeah, you would. In the photos on the wall, there's a frequent partner. For every five decorations bearing Jackson's character, there's one that boasts another name. In the laundry basket by the front hall, there's a few colourful shirts mixed within the black sea of Jackson's clothing. Above the living room couch, in sight of the front door, there's an American flag taped next to a Hong Kong one, its candy cane stripes pinned with polaroids of blue skies and beaches.
"Mark!" Jaebum calls out. "I'm here! How are you feeling?"
A faint voice comes from the direction of the bedroom, too muffled to make out. Jaebum toes off his shoes, ordering them neatly by the wall, then steps inside. It's quiet today. Jackson's out working on one of his myriad side projects; he'd texted Jaebum to let him know he'd be back in time for practise later today, and not to mess up his "customized organizational system," which Jaebum took to mean, "don't touch my shit." But it's barely noon right now, Jaebum's got a few solo hours to spend with the drums before GOTSTAR plays their first song with four members.
Jaebum knocks on Mark and Jackson's bedroom door. The Jackson-faced tiger and Mark doll tacked at face-height grin at him in welcome.
"I'm in here," Mark says, poking his head out of the adjacent washroom. His hair is wet, dripping on the towel draped over his bare shoulders. He's in his boxers, no shirt yet, struggling with a garbage bag wrapped around his right arm. He looks like a drowned puppy.
"Hi," says Mark.
"You need some help with that?" Jaebum snickers.
Mark turns around-to keep the bag airtight, there's bands of scotch tape spiralling all the way up Mark's biceps, its end crawling across the right side of his back in a starburst. "Jackson helped me wrap it but he went... a bit overboard," Mark explains.
"I can see that." Jaebum picks a ripped end of the tape and starts peeling. Mark waits patiently, saying nothing, as Jaebum deftly plucks off the tape, revealing long inches of Mark's pale skin, left even paler by the adhesive. From somewhere inside Jaebum comes the urge to run his thumb down those lines, to press his fingerprints into Mark's skin and see it blossom pink from the rush of blood. He could flatten his hand over Mark's shoulder bone, feel the shift of Mark's muscle there, still strong. If he lay down his entire palm, it'd span most of the way across Mark's ridiculously narrow waist.
Jaebum doesn't usually let himself have these thoughts.
In the mirror, he can see that Mark's eyes are closed, his jaw tight, his breaths thin. He looks like he's in pain. Shit, maybe he is.
Jaebum hurriedly strips off the last piece of tape, yanking the bag off Mark's arm.
Mark's eyelids flutter open. "Thanks," he says. His smile seems weak.
"Do you have any painkillers?" Jaebum asks.
"I have some, but it's okay, it doesn't hurt much right now," says Mark, and Jaebum wonders how big of a lie that is.
Jaebum lets it slide. "You've been doing all right?" he asks. "Jackson hasn't been driving you crazy?"
Mark hobbles past him to the bedroom, grabbing a tank top from an open drawer. Jaebum watches him tug it over his head, deftly looping it around his cast as if he's been doing it all his life. Of course Mark would be okay handling his injury. Jaebum's not surprised. No doubt he didn't really need Jackson's help wrapping up his arm either.
"He's been mothering me nonstop," sighs Mark. "I practically had to force him out of the house today. I guess he feels guilty."
"No shit he feels guilty," says Jaebum. "It's his fault for suggesting you do the flip."
Mark pauses. "It's not his fault. He was just trying to cheer me up."
"Why? Something happened?"
"No, nothing," Mark says. "Hey, you're here to practise right? Let's go downstairs. Have you eaten? We have some leftovers from what Gukjoo noona brought us yesterday."
Evasion, from Mark? Jaebum's not impressed. "Wow, I'm amazed that Jackson didn't inhale it all," he says. "He must feel really guilty."
"She just made a lot," Mark says. He smiles again; it's fleeting. For the first time, Jaebum thinks that whatever Mark's upset about, it has to do with him. Like maybe he's scared of Jaebum, somehow.
"Listen," says Jaebum. "I guess you think I'm pissed at you for breaking your wrist, but I'm not, all right? I was, but I'm over it. And you'll be fine soon, so. This is only temporary."
He doesn't want Mark to misunderstand; Jaebum had been upset but in the hospital room, he'd been holding himself back. Except it's hard to articulate. There's a lump in his throat that's the sum of what he felt when he'd gotten Jackson's first text, four short sentences riddled with typos. mark landed bad on a flip, on way to hosptal now, ambulenc ppl said probs broken bone, call u l8r. Jaebum could tell Mark that Jaebum's anger that day was barely a drop in the bucket of how ignited Jaebum had been because Mark had hurt himself. Not just anger, but stark, icy fear that Mark had gotten hurt and Jaebum hadn't been there. That twisted, nauseous feeling of failing your responsibility.
Mark's looking at him carefully. Jaebum scratches his Adam's apple. "My point is that if you're feeling guilty too-stop."
"I-it's not-" For a second, something sits at the tip of Mark's tongue, ready to be spoken aloud. But then Mark swallows, closes his mouth. "Yeah," he repeats. "Okay."
For some reason, Jaebum gets the helpless feeling like they're not on the same wavelength. It's an odd sensation. He and Mark had always understood and accepted each other so naturally. Their relationship isn't as obvious as Mark and Jackson's, or as deep as Jaebum and Jinyoung's, but it's there, dependable, steady, a port for days of stormy seas. When had things become so off between them?
But Mark's already turning away, so Jaebum takes in a breath and lets the moment pass.
-
The bulk of GOTSTAR's band practises occur in the pink-wallpapered basement of Jackson and Mark's cramped two-floor condo building. After her grandson moved to America for university, the old woman who owns the building had planned to rent out both the first floor and basement separately, while she herself stayed on the second level, but once Jackson stepped in, that idea popped like a balloon. In true Jackson fashion (good-hearted, no forethought), he charmed her so much that she decided to let Mark and Jackson rent out the basement too, at a fraction of the original price. She puts up with a lot from them-band practise excluded-because while Mark is quiet, clean, unobtrusive to a fault, Jackson takes up the space of three and a half regular men. Every time the ahjumma comes into the basement to do laundry, she's tripping over another box of stuff Jackson's hoarded.
"It's soundproofing, okay?" Jackson's always yelling, to which Mark would always yell back, "But it doesn't matter, she's deaf!"
She can probably still feel the vibrations of their music though. Especially today, it's bound to be annoying. Jaebum keeps on starting and stopping in erratic fits, unable to keep up the beat whenever he has to diverge his concentration into singing.
"You just need more practise, hyung," Jinyoung assures him. He strums a few upbeat notes on his guitar. "Once you get the muscle memory down you'll be able to drum it all the way through with your eyes closed."
"The first concert is in three weeks," says Jaebum. He's not feeling too happy with himself.
"That's plenty of time!"
"Yeah," Jackson agrees. "Remember how Youngjae pretty much learned how to play like our entire garage discography in, like, three months? You're a lot better off."
"I did well though, didn't I?" Youngjae says. He presses down an octave on his keyboard, singing along. "Youngjae did very well! Because he's super hard-working! And Jaebum hyunggg! Will do well too!"
Jaebum shakes out his hands and picks up the drumsticks again. "Okay, let's go from the second verse."
"Yo, Mark," Jackson says. Mark, sitting on the first two steps of the basement stairs, shifts for the first time in probably over ten minutes. Not that Jaebum's counting. "Any tips for Jaebum hyung?"
Mark tilts his head from side to side, lips pursed. "He needs to stop thinking so much," he says at length.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Jaebum snaps, at the same time Jinyoung asks, "Isn't that what I just suggested?"
Mark briefly glances at Jinyoung, but he says to Jaebum, "I just-I can tell that you're concentrating a lot. You're thinking about your lines and controlling the beat and stuff, but-like, you know the song already. You helped write it. So just-I don't know, stop breaking it apart in your head. Think of it as one thing."
Jaebum huffs. So now the man had advice. In the hours of practise before the others members had shown up, Mark had sat in perfect, predictable silence while Jaebum banged, bashed, clanged on the drums, singing himself hoarse trying to overcome the volume of the percussion. Jaebum had been making plenty of mistakes then too, but Mark hadn't spoken up. He'd just stared contemplatively at Jaebum with the shallow interest of someone not taking anything to heart. Jaebum almost wanted to tell him to go back upstairs if he was just going to watch Jaebum make an idiot of himself, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. For all of Mark's incapacity to voice his opinion, his presence still counted for a lot. Jaebum is half-convinced that he wouldn't have sanely made it through their group's nascent stage-GOTSTAR before they even had their name-without Mark there, one step behind him, nodding his support whenever Jaebum had to put his foot down about something, helping diffuse arguments when Jaebum was making them worse, playing up his aegyo just to make Jaebum laugh.
But it doesn't mean Jaebum has to appreciate such useless advice.
"You're assuming I can naturally play through the song without screwing up, but I can't do that yet. I can't think of the lyrics and the percussion as one thing if the percussion is still a separate challenge."
"Yeah, I guess," Mark says. "But once you get more familiar with it-" He lifts his shoulders helplessly. Sitting there, in the shadow of the stairwell, in baggy sweatpants and his bare feet tucked into slippers, broken wrist cupped in his lap, crutches at his side, it's hard to ignore how frail Mark looks. Even BamBam has outstripped him in terms of weight, steadily packing inches as his body struggled to catch up to Yugyeom's unfair height, but Mark's their eldest and he stopped growing years ago, leaving him with permanently wispy limbs, a delicate shell hiding lithe muscles underneath.
There's a click of a camera phone shutter. Mark glares at Jackson.
"You look really cute! Cute and pathetic!" Jackson says. "What? It's for the photobook!"
"We're still doing the photobook?" Youngjae asks, bewildered. "I thought we decided it was too much trouble to ship them."
"It is, and we're not," says Jinyoung.
"The hell we're not," protests Jackson. "I've been saving pictures like crazy. Folders! Subfolders! They demand admiration from our fans."
"You want to spend hours and hours packaging them all up, then?"
"Pfft, no, that's what the maknaes are for."
"Why don't we just put the pictures up on our website?" Youngjae suggests.
Jinyoung makes an impatient noise. "We need to hire someone to make a new one. BamBam refuses to remove his ugly macros and no one else knows how to code."
Youngjae laughs. "Why don't we tell him he can't join the band until he fixes the website?"
"I've tried this. But BamBam said then he'd release our most embarrassing pictures until we let him join."
"Don't you guys know anything?" says Jackson. "You really can't threaten BamBam to do things. His brain is weird."
"He's too similar to you," Jinyoung says.
"Diss! Wow! You're calling me weird? You want to have a weird contest?"
"What does that mean? You can't possibly think I'm weirder than you?"
"But then doesn't this mean BamBam will update the site, either way?" asks Youngjae, oblivious to Jackson and Jinyoung kicking at each other's shins. "Maybe it'll be funny! How bad can the photos be?"
Jackson jerks his bass-a whine of speaker feedback pierces the room. "UHHHH," he bleats.
Jinyoung's eyes widen. "Jackson..."
"Nothing illegal," Jackson insists.
Jinyoung and Youngjae bear down on him with questions, one of them sounding significantly more delighted than the other. Jaebum looks back at the stairs, but they're empty.
"Let me see your grip," says Mark, from beside him. Jaebum jumps.
"Make some noise when you move!" he barks.
"Let me see your grip," Mark says again, and Jaebum grudgingly lifts his right arm.
Balanced carefully on crutches, Mark touches it with his left hand, fingers light on Jaebum's wrist and fingers, adjusting Jaebum's handle on the drumstick. He presses down on the base of Jaebum's thumb, massaging into the skin. Jaebum suppresses a shiver. He doesn't think Mark notices.
"Don't clench it so stiffly," Mark is saying.
"I'm not," says Jaebum. "This is how I'm used to holding them. Any looser and I'll drop my sticks." They both don't mention the fact that it's a bluff: Jaebum used to hold them with a lot more slack, used to drum a lot more fluidly.
"You won't drop them," Mark says. He takes Jaebum's wrist and wobbles it around. The drumstick swings, but doesn't fall. Mark shakes a little harder, giggling. "You used to do this to me," he says, amused, like he's recalling an old joke, but Jaebum's the last person who would need reminding of that.
Back when GOTSTAR was still just a half-concocted dream in Jinyoung's bright, pensive head, Jaebum, instead of contributing to insane amount of effort needed to form a band, was wiling his days away being bitter about new kid on the block Mark Tuan, fresh off American soil, whose name was being whispered with increasing frequency throughout the teenage busking community grapevine. The story: Mark had come to Korea to study music-with no pedigree, no previous knowledge, no background at all in anything to do with arts. He'd picked up a pair of drumsticks, landed himself a very expensive instructor at a very prestigious school, and in a little more than a year, was already drumming with enough skill that any casual observer might assume he'd been doing it his entire life. One (apparently) fated day, Mark came across Jaebum, drumming in an underground entrance that led to the subway, and-long story short-there was an impromptu competition. Jaebum won. He won because he'd been so pissed that this white asparagus shoot of a guy could get so good at drums in such a short amount of time when there were other kids like Jaebum, whose family couldn't afford to send him to top-of-the-line academies and who got his practise and earned extra cash by playing for busy passersby in a cold cement tunnel. He won because he'd wanted to shove Mark's handsome face into the dirt and prove to him who belonged where.
Spurred on by indignation and fury, Jaebum had never freestyled so hard, so fast, in his life. He'd been decimating. The timid look of surprise on Mark's face afterwards, soundtracked with the hearty cheers of a decent sized crowd of onlookers, had shot Jaebum's victory high to new stratospheric altitudes-until Jaebum had caught Jinyoung's face in the middle of the crowd, eyelids half-lowered with disappointment, smiling with the tiniest trace of sardonicism.
Im Jaebum, his gaze seemed to say. I thought you told me that you'd gotten control over your temper.
The stinging Jaebum felt from Jinyoung's reproving expression wasn't alone: when people began dispersing, resuming their separate, ordinary lives, Jaebum unclasped his hands and stared at the livid stripe of red flesh bisecting the middle of each palm, throbbing with each beat of his heart.
A week later, Jaebum and Mark crossed paths again. Or, rather, Jaebum was half-heartedly busking, and Mark had come back to the subway station to find him. For some reason, Mark had wanted to apologize. He'd thought he'd offended Jaebum somehow, that day, because Jaebum had been banging on his drums with such vitriol. "You sounded like you wanted to hurt someone," Mark had mumbled, Korean stilted but understandable.
"What's it to you?" Jaebum asked, wary.
"Nothing," said Mark. Then, out of nowhere, he blurted, "When you play drums, it doesn't make you happy?"
Jaebum stared. "What about you?" he snapped back impulsively. Mark didn't know Jaebum, he didn't get the right to ask personal questions. Jaebum tried not to think about how he didn't have an answer.
Mark's mouth scrunched. "I don't know," he said. "Sometimes."
What had been more surprising to Jaebum then? That he'd assumed Mark had his life in order solely because he was so much the opposite of Jaebum, or that one second later, Jaebum found himself standing up, forcing Mark down to sit down on the stool, and thrusting his drumsticks into Mark's hands?
"I don't know what you've been learning at school, but when you were playing before-last week-you held the sticks like you were afraid of them." He gave Mark's wrists a hard shake; Mark instinctively clenched his fingers tighter around the wooden sticks. "There, see," Jaebum said, not quite sure why the sight satisfied him. "Be more confident that these things belong to you."
Mark didn't thank him. But they'd spent the rest of the afternoon there together, among Jaebum's patchwork drumset, the rest of the world fading away to inconsequence.
Another few days passed and there'd been another competition, at Mark's school studio this time. Mark won, according to Jinyoung, but Jaebum couldn't rule out the possibility that Jinyoung was being purposely biased in order to woo Mark into the band. Either way, Mark's smile had been blinding; it'd made it easy for Jaebum to compliment him-Mark really had played well, grip looser and freer, much better than in the subway. Watching Mark play drums actually made Jaebum feel happier than playing the drums himself-he thought that spoke for something, but he couldn't figure out what.
One more week and Mark became part of the crew, and Jaebum started thinking of him as a friend.
Maybe that'd been Jaebum's first mistake. Getting close to Mark like that. Or maybe it'd been handing Mark his drumsticks that day. Or maybe it'd been haranguing Mark into a competition in the first place-out of kneejerk machismo pride-as soon as Jaebum recognized who Mark was-when Mark clearly wasn't comfortable with it. Or maybe it'd been that moment there, when Mark had met Jaebum's dare head-on, the challenge of some big-mouthed kid he didn't know, this kid sitting there in front of the dusty white-bricked wall, fists taut on his snare drum and homemade plastic bucket floor tom. Mark hadn't been afraid, hadn't been judgmental, and Jaebum hadn't expected that at all. Mark had said, "Fine, let's go," in a steady, low voice, and Jaebum hadn't expected to feel electricity spark up his back, like someone had plugged the jack of an audio cable into the base of his spine and turned up the volume.
-
Seven o'clock and the house is eerily silent after the nonstop racket of the preceding hours. The others have gone out to fetch take-out, leaving behind the temporary invalid and the one desperately in need of more practise, to get some rest and to get in some more practise, respectively.
Mark and Jaebum are drinking beer and sorting through Jackson's accessory collection.
"I think his friend Henry gave him that one," Mark says, when Jaebum holds up a necklace hung with a gaudy silver 852 medallion. "He stopped wearing it because whenever he jumped around it would smack him in the face."
Jaebum snorts. "This one?" he asks, picking up a pair of plain black bead earrings.
"Henry's sister?" Mark says, sounding unsure. "She has better taste than him. And Jackson, too." He pauses. "Actually, maybe those are from Youngji. But I think she usually gets him food gifts."
"Whatever," Jaebum says. "They don't count anyway." He puts them back into the box.
There's this long-standing question that the group of them have: how many items of clothing does Jackson own that show either his name or some sort of Hong Kong identification? Jackson's answer is always, "Never enough," but the truth is probably somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty. It's a useless piece of information to have, but it seems fair game, especially since they all know how many LP record hats Youngjae owns (9), how many fuzzy sweaters BamBam has (7), and how many snapbacks Jaebum buys per month (0.5). Out of boredom and the lure of procrastination, Jaebum and Mark are counting out everything in Jackson's jewelry box.
They're at 23. It's already old news that Jackson has minimum 5 shirts and 8 hats stitched with various derivations of WANG and KONG. So if nothing else, Youngjae has definitely lost the bet.
From the desk across the bedroom, Mark's cell phone buzzes. Mark jumps up to his good foot and limps over to answer it, but spends a few long seconds staring at the screen before picking up the line. "Hi dad," he says, switching to a mix of Chinese and English.
Jaebum opens up another compartment in Jackson's box, trying not to seem like he's eavesdropping.
"Yeah, yes," Mark says. Jaebum can at least understand that much from all the American R&B songs he listens to. "Umm... soon. Yeah. No, I-" Chinese. It doesn't sound like a particularly pleasant conversation. Mark goes silent for a while, staring at nothing, until his eyes dart to Jaebum, then just as quickly flit back to Jackson's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poster on the wall. "It's-hard," he finally forces out, like he's swallowing sand. "It's complicated because-" He lets out a fast spew of English words which Jaebum can't catch. Jaebum carefully gets up and goes to the washroom.
When he comes back, the phone call is over and Mark's sprawled on the floor again, sorting through Jackson's rings. He's examining one that has a Hello Kitty head. "Sorry," he says, sheepishly looking up at Jaebum. "I should have gone to the hallway, but-yeah, stupid. Thanks."
"It's fine." Jaebum sits down, picking up another small handful of rings out of the box. "Is there-" he says awkwardly, then revises. "I mean, things are okay?"
"Yeah, cool," Mark says, but the guilty, downwards cast of his eyes says otherwise.
Jaebum feels his chest constrict, as if he's opened his wallet and only just noticed that he's lost something. It's that familiar tugging sensation, a cousin to the one back in the hospital room, when Mark and Jackson had shared an entire silent conversation in the space of a blink and Jaebum had felt like they were standing at a distance that Jaebum had no way of reaching. It's not so much a feeling of loneliness, but more like acute awareness about the isolating quality of reality: there are things about Mark that Jaebum doesn't know, and might never know, even if Jaebum wants to.
Jaebum is GOTSTAR's leader, and more importantly, Jaebum is Mark's friend, but what good is that when he's clearly not good enough at either position for Mark to ask for help when he's troubled?
His bottle of beer has gone lukewarm from being ignored. Jaebum picks it up and swigs it down in a few thick gulps. It's his third one. He wants Mark to ask him for help. He wants to ask Mark to ask him for help. Out of all the members of GOTSTAR, BamBam and Yugyeom included, Mark is the least likely to request anything from Jaebum. It's been like that since the beginning, and Jaebum's always taken a sort of comfort in it, because he rarely wants favours from Mark either. He thinks it speaks to how they're both on equal ground with each other. But it's ironic that their reservation is as mutual as it is taken for granted, because who else in GOTSTAR besides Mark can Jaebum speak to openly, without having to filter himself under the role of hyung? Even to Jinyoung, Jaebum's partner through thick and thin, Jaebum has inherent superiority for being older. But with Mark there's more-
With Mark, there's-
"Do you remember when Jinyoung was trying to lure you into starting a band with us?" he hears himself ask.
Mark blinks at him blankly for a moment. Then he grins. "Yeah. I was like, why do you guys need two drummers in one band? And he told me that it's okay because Jaebum hyung could play other instruments." Mark shakes his head. "But you couldn't."
"I can play guitar," gripes Jaebum.
"Sort of. But you're a better drummer than I am anyway, so, like-yeah. I didn't really get it."
Jaebum clears this throat. It'd be awkward to tell him that Jinyoung wanted Mark in the band for the same reason that Jinyoung got obsessed with Mark initially: his face. "He's our visual, hyung!" he'd said. "Not that we're not handsome, of course, but don't you think Mark hyung's features have so much appeal? With his looks, we can snag fan attention right away! Did you happen to touch his stomach? Does he have abs?"
"It worked out better for me to be lead singer anyway," Jaebum says instead.
Mark nods. "Yeah."
"But I'm talking about when we started taking the band seriously. It was fun back then, like, uh, not as much responsibility, no deadlines, no contracts or whatever. We just did whatever we wanted. And speculating about the future got us excited, because everything felt new and amazing."
"Yeah," Mark says again, softer, sadder. "It was fun."
"When Jinyoung and I were talking about all the ways we could fuck up the band, you said something like, 'But no matter what happens, it's fine as long as we're together, right?'" Jaebum pauses, gathering his words. "That's what convinced me that you should join us. Jinyoung and I had that mindset too. The band is the people and our music, not our name, not what we accomplish."
"But we've accomplished a lot," Mark says. "Thanks to you guys."
"Everyone works hard," says Jaebum. "So what I'm saying is-" he falters. If Jinyoung were here, or even Yugyeom, they'd know what to say. Jaebum's a decent speaker, but he's not thoughtful the way the two of them are. It takes time for him to examine himself, to get his feelings across. What he wants to tell Mark is that it's okay for him to open up to Jaebum. They have this shared rock between them called GOTSTAR, weathered by their history together, and no matter what their future holds, that rock will hold firm. He wants to tell Mark that Jaebum is here for him, and has no plans to go anywhere.
A ring that Mark's fiddling with calls to Jaebum. Spontaneously, he reaches over and plucks it away, then grabs Mark's hand, sliding it over the ring finger of Mark's left hand.
"You can't refuse," Jaebum says, feeling ridiculous.
Mark's vacant face cracks as he lets out a huge burst of laughter. "What's this for?"
Jaebum has no idea how to answer that. "Doesn't matter. Just accept it."
How can Mark's giggling be so high-pitched when his rapping tone is so low? Jaebum's never figured that out.
"Accept what," Mark replies, but he's pleased, and it doesn't sound like a question, and he doesn't take off the ring.
-
The kids get back with pizza and drinks and a huge family-sized bowl of japchae. Yugyeom and BamBam are with them, and they toss down their backpacks by the front door, undisputedly abandoning whatever homework they had inside. Sometimes Jaebum really worries that the band is setting a bad example for them. But usually he doesn't. Yugyeom heads straight to the kitchen to wash his hands and gather bowls and utensils for everyone, and BamBam is helping Jinyoung spread the take-out over Jackson and Mark's checkerboard dining table. Jackson already has a slice of pizza in his mouth, immediately plopping down on the first fold-out chair that Youngjae pulls over.
"Well?" Jinyoung asks Jaebum. "Any progress with the drums?"
"Uh," starts Jaebum.
"Lots," says Mark. He lifts up his right arm, thinks better of it, then steps over to Jaebum's other side so he can raise his left arm to slide over Jaebum's shoulders. "Jaebummie's doing really well."
Jackson's eyes widen comically. "No way?" he says, a chewed glob of pepperoni flying out of his mouth. "Yo! Is that my ring?"
Mark shrugs, almost proudly. Jaebum doesn't really get it, but he's not complaining. It's rare when Mark takes initiative, even though Jaebum's not the biggest fan of skinship.
Over the meal, Jaebum keeps catching the glint of the ring on Mark's finger as Mark reaches for more food, for another can of coke, to feed Jinyoung, to pinch Yugyeom's cheek. And every time he sees it, Jaebum's heart thumps double time and he gets that guitar string twang in his gut, stronger and stronger, only it's a happy twang, it's in a major chord, it's uplifting, it kind of makes Jaebum want to sing.
After dinner, they go back to practise. Jaebum plays amazingly.
-
part one | two