part II
when salted tears won’t dry
welp so this is a lot more embarrassing than the others- so this was a prompt fill and the prompter (thanks bi) wanted smut, so I wanted to at least hint at that in the fic. However, before I even proofread this part I was like shit shit I can’t do this, leading to me deleting this entire part and getting yelled at by everyone in 7fics.
“You seen the showers?” Bambam asks suddenly, as Youngjae’s about to knock off, and the older boy shakes from his sleepy stupor, remembering the itch of eyeliner and concert attire.
“Mm?” he’s trying not to mess the makeup up, so he rubs around his eyes instead, blinking blearily. “Showers? No?”
“You know, Yugyeom and I were exploring earlier and I just so happened to notice,” Bambam’s tapping his chin with his forefinger and Youngjae is immediately suspicious. “It’s a huge shower, you know? Maybe big enough for two, even,” something lights behind Kunpimook’s eyes, something mischievous and dancing and Youngjae’s torn between laughing out loud and wearily giving in. This is the Bambam everyone’s used to, the Bambam he knows and loves. He wonders if this is how Yugyeom feels all the time. “It’d be a pity to let all that space go to waste, you know?”
“You’re shameless, you know that?” Youngjae makes a face, though he’s trying not to smile, and Kunpimook throws his head back to laugh.
“Only for you, hyung,” Bambam coos, patting Youngjae’s cheeks, before tugging his hand as he rolls gracefully off the bed, stretching luxuriously once he’s on his two feet, shirt deliberately riding up higher than it’s designed to as he does so. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”
Youngjae scoffs, sliding off the bed after him, brushing past him to head to the closet, and he can literally feel Kunpimook deflate with disappointment before he opens the door, tugging a robe free and tossing it behind him.
“Well?” Youngjae mimics weakly, his own robes in his hands, turning around to appraise the slightly surprised expression on Kunpimook’s face, and resists the urge to blush as he speaks next. “Show me how good these showers are, then.”
That seems to snap Kunpimook out of whatever shock paralysis he’d been in, and the grin that spreads on his face is near predatory.
“It’d be my pleasure,” the expression morphs to a cute, sunshiny smile, and Youngjae rolls his eyes as the younger boy throws an arm around his shoulders, walking them jauntily over to the bathroom. “If you don’t mind, I can show you a couple of other things that are good too, you know.”
“Bambam,” Youngjae says carefully, with some degree of exasperation. “You’re 19.”
“Legal,” Bambam reminds him importantly.
“Barely,” Youngjae reminds in turn, and Bambam blows a breath out through puffed cheeks in disappointment.
“Fiiiiine,” he mutters. “Damn, I was saving that line for something good.”
“You shouldn’t have used it on me, then,” Youngjae laughs, and Kunpimook pinches his cheeks.
“I beg to differ, hyung” he grins, pulling him into the bathroom after himself, door slamming behind them, turning to him with a smile. “I think you’re pretty good yourself.”
*
Youngjae discovers that the showers are good. And despite what anyone would have to say about what they’re doing or the constant sound of giggles, muffled by running water and lots of splashing, his discoveries thankfully stop there.
(Not permanently, though, Bambam emphasises, with a lot of bad eyebrow waggling he must’ve picked up from Jackson.)
***********
dreams you’ve killed
this is sort of a first, I guess- it’s an entirely unreleased fic I know I’ll never post, haha, and this was originally meant for the prompt “yugyeom feels like everyone is turning their backs on him” on 7fics. I had 16 pages on this, then changed tack to write “healing/don’t hug me, I’m scared” instead. Looking back, a lot of my characterisation had problems, I guess, and I bounced a couple ideas off a friend without telling her they were in my fic and got them shot down, so I guess it’s a good thing I scrapped this haha.
I’m just going to put out a couple of scenes here I’m not too ashamed of yay
*
If there’s one thing Yugyeom can pride himself on, it’s that he learns quickly. And if there’s anything that stardom has taught him, it’s that when your world goes to hell, there isn’t much you can do other than stand around and watch it all burn down to nothing.
*
“Share.”
Yugyeom tosses a kernel in Kunpimook’s direction- it hits him on the nose and makes Yugyeom laugh. Kunpimook kicks him in response, almost upending the popcorn bowl into his face.
This will be the part where Jackson reaches over Yugyeom’s abnormally long legs from where he’s sprawled on the couch, stealing a handful of buttery goodness and grinning as he somehow manages to cram it all in his mouth and chew victoriously. Mark isn’t paying attention- he’s listening to new mixtapes and telling them to keep it down, but this the start of a war between the maknaes and the Hong Kong native and nothing will stand in their way.
Yugyeom watches Kunpimook lunge, laughing as he does so, video game controllers from their weekly bronding ritual lying forgotten on the floor. Jackson yowls and pushes the boy off, sending him spiraling into Yugyeom, who stumbles ungracefully and ends up crashing into a passing Youngjae, sending the book in his hand flying reluctantly into the opposite wall.
Jinyoung comes out of his room through the maknaes’ door eventually, looking amused and followed closely by Jaebum, who’s scowling with a sort of weariness, before over to painstakingly peel the two youngest off a rather shell-shocked Youngjae. Jaebum, in turn, strides over to give Jackson a good flick to the forehead, causing a symphony of whines and indignant protests in three different languages to ensue.
And Yugyeom watches, beaming and breathless, feeling as invincible as the bond between the seven of them, like nothing can ever hurt him again.
He’s such an idiot sometimes.
*
There’s a convenience store between the company building and the dorms.
It’s quiet, tucked into a corner of the street, like a secret no one knows about yet (and Yugyeom knows how rare those are now). It’s there that the memories of sneakily bolting down cup ramen and unhealthy snacks are lost between white plastic shelves and peeling price tags, where the imprint of their feelings exist, hopeful and raw and transient, in whispers, floating like dust motes that blink at you in the glare of fluorescent lights. Yugyeom and Kunpimook had used to go there all the time before-…
Yugyeom walks in alone.
Like he’s done for the past five-odd weeks, with breaks in between, he picks a box of paracetamol off the shelf, along with little packets of breath mints or gum and the occasional magazine, and heads for the counter, feeling for his wallet and the allowance his mom had sent. They money comes in little wads of notes every month, crumpled and worn, like he’s taking them directly from her purse, in papery envelopes, enclosed with desperate pleas to just buy something for himself to eat for once and not worry about what the company says.
Maybe he’s thinking that if he staggers it, he’ll forget about it. Or maybe he might just gather the courage to actually do it.
It’s the fact he doesn’t know which one he wants more that scares him.
He pays and leaves and doesn’t look back.
Coming back to the building is like a constant, waking nightmare. Though Yugyeom’s long learned that no one could care less about what he does, he still glances around the dorm when he gets back after the ten-minute return walk, wondering what he’s looking for. Maybe a hello? A “hey, haven’t seen you around today yet, how’ve you been?”
Goodness knows how much he’d appreciate something like that.
Yugyeom locks the door to their room when he gets in- Kunpimook is never around anyway, and when he is, it’s so painfully obvious he wants to be anywhere but around Yugyeom that it’s starting to become something of a norm for the younger boy. The drawer squeaks when he opens it, stiff and unyielding, as if it’s telling him to stop.
He drops the plastic bag from the store on his bed, before using both hands to tug the drawer out. The bottle, lined carefully with paper towels to prevent the pills from getting wet, rolls out at the movement, hitting the edge of the drawer, tiny capsules within rattling forth eagerly, like they’re asking if he’s finally going to do it.
Yugyeom chooses not to think about that now.
Instead, he does what he’s been doing for the past month. He tears the box of painkillers open unceremoniously, taking out sheet after sheet of pills, popping them open from their packaging and dropping them on his blanket. After he’s done, he picks each one up, dropping them into the bottle. It’s weird, how his heart beats harder with every bit heavier the bottle gets. Like he already feels the weight of them in his stomach, the smooth, numbing burn of them in his throat.
Maybe he really believes he’ll do it one day.
When he’s surrounded by emptied sheets of pills and the ruined box, he lowers the bottle carefully into the drawer again, and eases the drawer shut, before slowly and systematically picking up every last bit of plastic, foil and cardboard, crushing it in his hand.
Sometimes he doesn’t hide the evidence as well as he can. Sometimes he wishes one of them would see it and ask what he’s doing, wishes they’d show for once that they can care about him as much as he cares for them.
But as a wish, it’s stupid, much like everything else about Yugyeom is, and he goes out, enters into an isolation that has nothing to do with the number of people in the room. He tosses the rubbish in the bin, the one in the dorm, because he’s less afraid of his members finding out than the waste disposal workers that come around to remove rubbish from the chute. At least the rubbish collectors might be worried if they think someone in the building’s about to die.
Yugyeom washes his hands, then he’s done, done with his work and free to realize all over again how terribly lonely he’s become in here.
//////
The sky’s gorgeous at night.
Yugyeom stares at the eternal blackness, wondering where the stars have gone and if they’ll ever come back. He realizes it doesn’t matter, because they have streetlights, and no one needs stars when you have streetlights in every direction shouting advice at you about where to go.
He wonders if stars, giant spheres of energy and light in space thousands and thousands of miles away, ever feel upset they’ve been replaced by little bits of metal and glass and electricity. It must be sad, being so beautiful and forgotten at the same time, just because something infinitely cheaper and more common and lifeless shines more clearly than you do.
It makes him think, makes him wonder if they glitter in naiveté, or if they’ve just accepted that they’re outshone, and continue to shine anyway. It’s like looking over an edge and realising, in shock, just how long the fall is, like walking a tightrope and losing your balance.
But the more Yugyeom thinks about it, the more he realises he’d lost his balance a long time ago, lost any semblance of security and assurance and boundary, and he’s falling, plummeting, waiting for the blissful day he hits rock bottom and is lost to the world forever. There’s a vital balance between welcoming and fearing death, and for Yugyeom, the scales are tipping dangerously towards the former.
He sits up after a while, back sore from having laid down on the roof for so long again, and he stands, brushing dust off his clothes. Eventually he realizes he has to do what he’s done every other night till now, and peers over the edge of the building, at the tiny people walking quickly by below, at the lights of the other buildings and the stray cats wandering around and life carrying on as usual.
Not tonight.
He’s glad when he comes to conclusion again. And though he’s not sure what’ll happen on the night that he doesn’t, he chooses not to think about that now.
It’s really all he can do at a time like this.
////////
(cut)…“Uh, you can have them,” Jackson says, before bursting into a sharp bark of laughter, one that Bambam follows rather uncertainly.
“What?” Youngjae’s frowning too, and Yugyeom’s grateful for the support.
"Well, just...yeah," Mark sort of shrugs, like he does when he's trying to find a way to phrase things tactfully and gives up when his Korean vocabulary limits him.
"Well, we do need people to shoot, I guess," Jackson says with mock thoughtfulness, before reaching over to clap Yugyeom on the back, and Yugyeom's brow creases slightly when he realises what they're implying. "Good call, kid."
"They don't look that bad," Yugyeom doesn't know why he's defending them, and decides that the question should be why he even has to defend them at all. They're fellow labelmates, with great voices and nice personalities. What right does Jackson have to judge them otherwise? Mark chuckles a little, mirth masking the impatience in his voice.
"Well of course you'll say that, you're-..."
Mark sounds a little exasperated, like Yugyeom's too dumb or inferior to see what they mean, and stops short just in time, letting the silence hang, thick and brutal, just long enough for Yugyeom to realize what he’s saying.
I'm what? Since I'm ugly too?
Yugyeom registers the lump in his throat long after it's risen there, and he doesn't hear a word of what Jackson says later, syllables quick and decisive as always, drawing everyone's attention away from the awkward break in conversation, ever ready to step in for his friend. Yugyeom remains mute, like he's been stung, burned, till his mind heart is raw and painful and nothing he ever imagined Mark would make it.
He'd always seen Mark as an inspiration, a great dancer, an adorable hyung, a brave guy who'd travelled halfway across the world to fulfill his dreams, and he'd made that opinion quite clear in the way he interacted with the older boy. He smiled whenever spoken to, hugged him both on and off camera, and watched Mark’s dancing through eyes glazed over with hero worship.
This isn’t the Mark he’s grown to look up to. This isn’t the Mark who tosses him a water bottle after practice and gives him reassuring smiles when Manager scolds him for slipping up on his diet or dance practice. The Mark he knows doesn’t laugh at girls’ bodies because they’re not up to his standards, or get impatient with him because he brings it up to the point he calls Yugyeom ugly to his face.
Yugyeom wonders where this Mark’s been all his life, if this Mark’s been carefully hidden behind that pretty face and those glittery, innocent eyes all this time, or if Yugyeom’s just been too stupid to realize he ever existed.
It’s not hyung’s fault, is the only way he can justify it in his head. It’s not Mark’s fault he’s been so attractive all his life he only knows how to accept someone as pretty, if not better.
It’s not Mark’s fault Yugyeom is ugly enough to think lesser people deserve to be called beautiful sometimes, too.
This doesn’t make the pain in his chest lighten one bit.
If it isn’t hyung’s fault, then it’s mine.
It’s my fault for holding him up to such high standards.
It’s my fault for expecting them to expect what I do.
It’s my fault.
/////
part III