http://troubleseason.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
troubleseason.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
writetomyheart2015-12-05 12:51 pm
troubleseason.livejournal.com) wrote in writetomyheart2015-12-05 12:51 pm
Team Sonic - Nothing Comes from Nothing
first words taken from ‘detruire ton langage'
Written while listening to 'Butterfly' and 'House of Cards' on 화양연화 pt.2 and Olafur Arnalds “Living Room Songs” album.
The Pathos Project
1. Atelophobia - the fear of not being good enough.
1. The Safe Places - Cars
warnings family issues, components of abusive or neglectful parenting, physical and mental fatigue, canon-ish* (interpretative liberties were made)
notes: inspired by this and this
In a strange way, it feels like home.
Cutting the car engine, the key turned to ‘Off’ in the ignition, Seokjin leans forward with a long exhale to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. Closing his eyes, he swallows down a throat that has felt too tight in the last half hour drive back from Jeongguk’s high school.
Home is a place.
It takes a little bit of time for the engine to cool down, Seokjin waiting and just sitting in the car, feeling his skin cool with the machine as he stares at the blank gray cement of the parking garage and waits it out. He doesn’t move until his breaths are even, the itch from his eyes is gone, and he can feel the steady beats of his heart. A brief check in the mirror leaves him knowing it’s okay before he opens the door and gets out, a familiar easy and practiced smile spreading over his face.
“Back so soon?” greets with a grin from Jimin, draped over the back of the couch as Seokjin walks back into the dorm. Jimin’s hair is still standing up all over, definitely cheated out of a shower by Taehyung or Hoseok and waiting his turn.
“I had to make sure the rest of you got breakfast before Namjoon tried to use the toaster again,” Seokjin says, smiling as Jimin laughs, slipping down the couch and his tee shirt rides up his tummy.
“That was one time!” shouts from the kitchen in protest and Seokjin lets a laugh slip past cracked lips as he walks into the kitchen. Namjoon is waiting for him, eyes sharp even through his early morning scowling squint. “You’re so mean to me.”
“You stuck a knife in a toaster,” Seokjin reminds him easily, walking to the cupboard and taking out a few plates. “I have reason to be concerned.”
“How else was I supposed to get out the donut?” Namjoon grumbles, his eyes still on Seokjin, burning into his back. Choosing not to bring up the fact that Namjoon had tried to toast a donut (which is beyond him), Seokjin simply pulls out ingredients for a quick breakfast. “Is Jeongguk at school?”
“He is,” Seokjin answers, lining up the foods on the counter top. Eggs with tomatoes and cheesy toast should be good, hopefully satisfying even Taehyung’s picky pallet. “I’ll pick him up later.”
“You know, I could drive him some mornings,” Namjoon continues, his voice the same rough smooth comfort that Seokjin has learned to trust over the years they’ve known each other. “If you-“
“I don’t mind,” Seokjin cuts him off, glancing over his shoulder with a soft smile. It’s fine.
“I know you don’t mind, but I’m just offering,” Namjoon continues, and Seokjin’s hand falters as he reaches for the frying pan.
“I like driving him to school,” Seokjin says, turning to the stove and away from Namjoon’s eyes. “It’s good to see him go to school and do well.” The sound of the stove clicking to ignite fills the kitchen as Seokjin watches and waits. “I’m proud of him.”
The blue and yellow flames of the stove shudder under the frying pan when Seokjin gets the stove lit, busying his hands with oil in the pan and pulling eggs from the refrigerator.
“I know you are, hyung,” Namjoon says, though it almost sounds sad. Seokjin turns to him with his smile before he turns back to the pan and swallows the spit in his mouth down a dry throat.
*
“It’s a parent’s job to mess up their kids. That’s what we do, it’s our right as parents to fuck up our kids. We mess them up so they can learn to deal with it and figure out how to live on. We put in enough hard work and suffering that our kids are going to show it. Children should bear the scars of their parents.” - anonymous
*
It’s always a nightmare in the morning to get Jeongguk out of bed. It’s gotten worse with the tight schedules, the lack of sleep, caught between shows and events and rehearsals and curled up in chairs for a few hours, maybe less. None the less, Seokjin is up, picking his way through the dark room to find the youngest and haul him to school.
That morning had broken empty and cool, gray dawn showing the empty bed on the other side of the room, telling that neither Yoongi nor Namjoon had made it home last night. Burning the midnight oil.
Home is a place.
Jeongguk whines when Seokjin doesn’t have the patience to play nice and try to wake him gently. A few swift pinches and he’s up, hands over his nipples and looking groggily scandalized before Seokjin pushes him in the direction of the shower.
Mornings are like poorly rigged autopilot, Jeongguk barely remembering his homework and bag before he’s bundled into the passenger seat of Seokjin’s car. Mornings are the drive to school with Jeongguk unable to form words as Seokjin nags at him to eat his breakfast that he brought in the car before a few bites of food have Jeongguk fiddling with the radio. At full volume.
It’s better than the silence, and Seokjin can relax as Jeongguk slowly wakes up to bass that will probably blow out the car’s speakers. It’s better though, and Seokjin’s grip on his steering wheel relaxes slightly, the tension easing,
Every morning, Jeongguk finally wakes up fully about ten minutes before they get to his high school, making sure his hair is okay in the mirror, checking his reflection, before he turns to Seokjin. It’s the same sweet smile that Seokjin hopes will never change on a boy who seems to grow up too fast.
“Thanks, hyung,” Jeongguk says, about two minutes before they drive into the drop off area. He goes quiet but the smile remains, and Seokjin lets out a breath he always holds.
“Remember to eat all your lunch this time,” Seokjin reminds him, watching as Jeongguk gathers himself in the seat beside him. “I’ll be back to pick you up after. And make sure you pick up any make-up work you missed. We’ll work on it later.”
It had been a huge effort to keep Jeongguk in school. There had been a lot of arguments, between the push back against the pressures, the relevancy towards the career path their on, and idealistic dreams and social protests that stepped over Seokjin’s lines. In the end, he’d won.
It hadn’t been easy then either, usually getting enough days of Jeongguk in school is a huge effort, getting enough assignments in so that he could pass to the next year. Getting Jeongguk out of bed is easy compared to getting schedules to cooperate when a career seems more important than a test.
In the end, Seokjin had won that too.
“Hyung,” Jeongguk asks, turning to him as they stop by the school, a little early but not by much. Jeongguk is in time for homeroom, talking to classmates, and checking in with his teachers.
“I promise you can ask Namjoon for help on your math and English after,” Seokjin tells him with a knowing smile.
“We can make another English Lesson video,” Jeongguk teases and Seokjin indulges him with a laugh.
“If that helps.” It’s hard, Seokjin knows it, pushing to stay in school and working the exhaustion of being an idol. It’s almost impossible, but Jeongguk is sticking with it, albeit with Seokjin’s help. “I’m proud of you.”
Though he says it each morning, the smile on Jeongguk’s face is enough to make it worth it every time. And every time, Jeongguk looks a little less nervous, a little more awake and like he can go into classes and not think of giving up like he almost did. “Thanks, hyung.”
Seokjin’s smile stays on his face even as Jeongguk closes the door, as he walks into school with his backpack and a wave and a final look cast over his shoulder. That smile stays until Jeongguk is out of sight.
In a dorm full of people, there’s not a lot of time to be quiet, to be by himself and just breathe. Lying quiet in his room and breathing in the air of Yoongi still not yet home from the studio is different. It’s not quite alone. Most of the time, there are jokes, schedules, laughter, bickering, games and moments to just sit quietly are reserved for sleeping. Even then, that sleep is with others, and more often than not he’s at risk of waking up with Taehyung’s camera in his face and the shadows of giggling boys.
Here, there’s no one but him.
As the turn signal blinks on and Seokjin carefully eases onto the gas, his breath shakes and the water runs. It’s quiet on most days, the radio turned back to silence as Seokjin drives back to the dorm, just feeling the vibrations of the car as emotions he isn’t sure the source of spill down his face.
It started years ago, and Seokjin still doesn’t always know why it happens, but it’s become the one outlet when habits and hobbies weren’t enough to restore the balance. Yoongi has his music and Namjoon has his words woven into art, Jimin dances, Jeongguk following him into the fluidity of physical movement, Hoseok dances and loses himself in that, and Taehyung has his myriad of activities, of people, of experiences to spread himself across in the wonder of the world outside of himself.
Seokjin has the stretch of the highway and long reaching roads where he lets whatever feelings have dug themselves too deep inside to be remembered spill from his eyes and soak into his shirt as they fall.
By the time he leaves the car, there’s no memory of it, his chest empty and smile easier to breath back onto his lips before he faces the world again.
Sometimes he wonders if it’s right, if being like this is okay. Just as with the many things Seokjin considers part of the world he lives in, there is the element of doubt, wondering quietly the question ‘if’.
If telling Jeongguk he’s going to school, making sure he gets there, making sure he’s fed, and telling him he’s proud even if Jeongguk barely scrapes a passing score, is enough.
It’s scary, and maybe that’s why he cries, afraid of messing it all up and doing the wrong thing despite best intentions.
But then he’s pulling into the garage for the dorms, the cold gray cement wall staring back at him, and he’s drying his face on his sleeve. The ache in his throat soothes as he regulates his breathing, erasing the soft gasps he might have let out seven or twelve minutes ago. The redness in his eyes, the puffiness of his face fades as he waits, eyes closed, and breathes.
He’s home.
He doesn’t move until his breaths are even, the itch from his eyes is gone, and he can feel the steady beats of his heart. A brief check in the mirror leaves him knowing it’s okay before he opens the door and gets out, a familiar easy and practiced smile spreading over his face.
Taehyung is spread out on the floor, bare feet and toes wiggling slightly when Seokjin steps back into the dorm. “Kookie forgot his pencil case,” he tells Seokjin, pointing to the small pouch resting on Taehyung’s chest. “So I ate all the candies he hid inside of it.”
“As long as you don’t eat the erasers, I’m fine with it,” Seokjin tells him, stepping over his prone body to head to the kitchen. Yoongi and Namjoon are back, a half finished pot of coffee on the counter with a note. 1/2 is property of Y. You have been warned. – N.
“They got back a little while ago,” Taehyung explains, padding into the kitchen to prop his chin on Seokjin’s shoulder. “Namjoon-hyung took his half already. Yoongi-hyung is sleeping for a few hours. Said I couldn’t wake him up even if there was a fire.”
“I’ll wake him up if there’s a fire,” Seokjin tells him with a laugh, pulling a clean mug from the drying rack and turning on the hotpot beside the coffee maker for tea. “Then you’re safe.”
“You’re the best, hyung,” Taehyung hums, his face spreading into one of his wide warm full-faced smiles, wrapping his arms around Seokjin in a firm hug. It’s not uncommon, all of them used to hugs and Taehyung’s need for physical affection, but small moments caught here and there are enough to get a fond laugh out of Seokjin.
“I try,” he says, wrapping Taehyung in a one armed hug before ruffling his hair. For a few moments, Taehyung doesn’t let go, just holds on a bit more than needed, just the extra seconds that pull in Seokjin’s controlled breaths.
“If I steal the rest of Yoongi-hyung’s coffee-“
“You brought that wrath on yourself,” Seokjin laughs, and leans back as Taehyung finally releases him, ruffling his hair again at the pout on Taehyung’s face. “I can only do so much.”
The look Taehyung leaves him with gives Seokjin the impression Taehyung had wanted to say something after that, but didn’t, answering instead with a brief squeeze to his hand. It’s okay though. Seokjin understands that sometimes, Taehyung communicates better with touch than words, trusting that more than his mouth.
Sometimes, he’s right, when his mouth gets him into trouble more often than not. Sometimes, Seokjin wonders if he’s just bottling up, holding it all inside until he can’t feel it either.
It’s easier to let it go though, trusting Taehyung to know himself, and finding himself with a smile that feels easier as he makes his tea and sips it slowly. It’s warm, heating him up from the inside as he looks at the note on the counter and feels Taehyung’s lingering arms, just there, just… enough.
“You’re home,” Hoseok says, padding into the kitchen, freshly showered and with a half smile.
Seokjin offers him that same smile, leaning against the sink. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I am.”
*
”It doesn’t matter how many times you apologize if you don’t mean it. If you’re actually sorry, you show me, I know it, can hear it in your voice and feel it in my heart. Words have meaning but they’re empty if the aren’t shown. Actions speak louder than words. How am I supposed to believe you when after every time you apologize and say you’ll never do it again, you’re still the one that makes me hurt so much?” - anonymous
*
Some mornings, it’s different. Some mornings are harder, long weeks piling back and back and back, drilling reminders of where they still need to improve. Success isn’t grown overnight.
Some mornings, it’s been too many near fights, too many arguments, and not enough sleep in between. It’s been watching homesickness spread contagiously between those who pine for loved ones, and listening to crying phone calls that end too early.
Some mornings, all Seokjin wakes up with are the messages that are missing, the loud silences, and knowing when Jimin whimpers ‘mom’ in his sleep, he’s not asking for Seokjin. Those mornings, Seokjin can’t be the one that falls apart. Those mornings, he needs to be the glue that keeps these fragile boys from crumbling into pieces, and even if it doesn’t look like much, he hopes it’s enough to be worth something.
It has to be.
Those mornings, when he drops Jeongguk off at school after a completely silent car ride and stewing emotions he knows better than to bleed out, Seokjin takes a little longer to drive back. Those mornings, as soon as Jeongguk is out of sight, it’s not silent, the quiet release, but a whole body experience.
Those mornings, Seokjin doesn’t cry. He sobs.
The Greeks had a word for it. Catharsis. A complete emotional release, draining all of the feeling from inside of him where it’s twisted up inside of itself to make him sick, pouring out of him.
It’s never really clear why he’s crying
It’s only the encore, where he grips the steering wheel to keep himself grounded and sobs until there’s nothing left. Until he’s hollow, until the storm has passed and left him used up, exhausted with cheeks raw and mouth sticky, throat sore and aching.
It’s this feeling he wants to force out, to drag out of the hands of the people he loves, of strangers he sees with that dead look in their eyes. In the fans who search for being an ideal type for a fantasy when they should understand they’re fine they way they are. In the forlorn look on the faces he cares about, worrying about how they’re not ‘good enough’ to be wanted and loved.
Those mornings, there isn’t often coffee on the counter, the others already moving out for their schedules, and Seokjin only wants to curl up and rest, drained.
Those mornings are the mornings that Seokjin gets to see the rare side of Hoseok, where he’s quiet and soft light touches. Those mornings are when Seokjin feels like both of them will break if Hoseok steps too close and Seokjin remembers that he’s not the only one who knows that sometimes others need his smiles more than he does.
“Hyung.”
“I’m fine,” Seokjin says, and he is. It’s been years since he could tell himself that and believe it with sincerity. Hoseok’s hand doesn’t leave his shoulder and Seokjin reaches up to close his own hand around it, squeezing gently.
“I know we aren’t all great at listening, but if you ever want to talk,” Hoseok ends there, waiting, offering, and Seokjin looks up with a mending smile.
“Thank you,” he says, genuine. “But I’m more worried about who last cleaned the bathroom, honestly.”
“Me,” Hoseok tells him, a soft laugh bleeding into his eyes. “And I made Jimin vacuum earlier.”
It’s small things, small gestures like this, the little things that Hoseok will do and Seokjin knows that he understands, that he sees even if he doesn’t completely know everything. There’s a part of Hoseok that Seokjin is sure Hoseok himself doesn't even know he has, but it’s there.
It’s there and Seokjin doesn’t want it to get hurt, just like he doesn’t want any of them to get hurt. To feel that horrible need to cry and not knowing why and not being able to until they’re locked behind four metal doors and speeding past machines completely removed from the people inside them. To feel that the only safe place to let go and just be vulnerable and weak is where no one can see, where no one can watch in silence that hurts more than words.
It’s the small things, after Hoseok has left to go to practice, like walking into his room and finding the beds made and the laundry in hampers. It’s those small actions that speak louder than the words Seokjin knows Hoseok is trying to find.
This silence Seokjin doesn’t mind though, because the actions beyond the words are louder and fill him up rather than leave him hollow.
*
”Everyone has issues with their parents. We’re born with it, and it’s part of our journey as human beings. The first thing we need to overcome is the issues we have with our parents; that’s our first life lesson.” – anonymous
*
The first time Seokjin thought about it was during the graduation ceremony. Not his own, but Jeongguk’s. Standing at the side with Yoongi and Jimin, Yoongi’s shoulder brushing against his arm as they gathered among the parents and families, clearly too young to have children in the crowd, it began to click. By then, Jimin and the others had already taken to calling him ‘mom’ teasingly, labeling Yoongi with ‘dad’ in the same playful affection.
But standing with the parents and looking out to find Jeongguk among the other students, jackets around them as they stood in a world of adults celebrating their children’s accomplishments as they move on from middle school, he began to think about it.
Watching the nervous boy standing and waiting to get his diploma to move onto the next year of schooling, Seokjin listened to the parents around him chattering about their children. About their dreams, their accomplishments, about how well they had done in school, about how proud they were.
About how much they loved them and cared about them. About what it was like to be parents, taking care of their children, about the worries they had, about the mistakes and how they wanted the best for their kids. Standing with his band mates at his side, Seokjin could see Jeongguk’s parents a little ways away, watch how Jeongguk would look around, catch their eyes, and a shy nervous and excited smile would peek across his mouth. They would smile, and Seokjin was too many things at once.
Happy, proud, excited and yet it hurt. A part of it hurt.
“This is so weird,” Jimin had laughed, hands tucked into his pockets as he looked around, checking with him and Yoongi. Yoongi just stood, watching Jeongguk with a soft smile that felt so quietly proud it made the ache worse in Seokjin’s chest.
“What?” Seokjin asked, trying to push through the feeling.
“It feels like we’re parents,” Jimin laughed. “Standing here and watching him with all the other parents.” Jimin laughed again, his cheeks drawing up into cute humor. “It’s like Jeongguk has two moms and dads today. I’ll be the cool uncle.”
It was a joke, but also a compliment, but even more, it was the kick. It was remembering back to other graduation ceremonies, watching parents mingle about, talking about their children, and waiting to hear one word of pride. You worked hard. You did well. I’m so proud of you. Remembering years before when he’d stood and waiting for a diploma and had a dream that was met with empty looks and closed lips.
“Just the uncle,” Yoongi says, and his mouth quirks as Jimin scrunches up his nose and yet still manages to pout. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jimin.”
It had started off as a bit of a joke, the mom and dad thing, but at the same time Seokjin understood it in a way. Standing there though, glancing to Yoongi’s quiet figure beside him, watching Jeongguk with a soft smile and eyes warm, it hits home and it hits hard.
Taking life lessons early from the first teachers and reflecting that, showing what you learned from your first teachers. What you want to be, and what you don’t want to be.
A support, someone who cares, who gives what was never given.
Reassurance. Support. Pride. Acceptance.
Standing among parents watching their children, Seokjin puts together his pieces and pushes it down, shaking hands tucked into his jacket pocket calmly. He smiles as they take the picture, Jimin joking around about the ‘family portrait’ as Seokjin keeps his arms around Jeongguk who is still so young, still needs his parents, but doesn’t have them nearly enough.
In the cold air after the graduation ceremony, Seokjin realizes that part of himself he’d locked away has shaped who he is. It’s strange, watching how the same happens to people around him, and seeing who understands and who is still learning.
That’s before Seokjin first had a long drive, before those feeling resurfaced, backwards sideways as they clawed their way out of him, and before the pieces began to fall into place.
*
”The thing is, when you hold back tears, they don’t go away. They stay and wait until they can come out. Sometimes, it’s better to just let it out. Even if you don’t know why you’re crying, it’s okay. Those sobs have been waiting a long time to be set free.” - anonymous
*
Home is a place?
There are a lot of things wrong with the world, but there are a lot of things that are right. It’s those good things that Seokjin wants to hold onto. Not for the first time he is reminded that the good things and bad things need a constant ratio, a 3:1, where the good things aren’t ruined by the negative, the balance thrown and the few pieces of light shrouded in darkness.
There are moments when it can just be a thought, a memory that will set it off. It was what taught him to just let Yoongi go when he needed to, stand back and watch over him when he needed to yell out everything he’d let stew for too long. Not even words, just raw sound, a storm that had to rage to get out of his system before he could calm down enough to let someone near him.
It’s times like that where Seokjin is very sure that it’s more important to understand himself than to find himself. There’s components of soul searching, Namjoon always looking for answers, for reasons, for solutions to his questions that he can’t sleep from pondering over, locked in rooms to try to figure them out in lyrics and melodies.
They are exposed, they speak their stories, words threading through the air to release from them where they turn black and torrid from being caged for too long. It works for them, but not for everyone.
The gentle merging onto the highway where everything he needed to let out pours from him and he can work through himself here, one burning track down his face at a time. It’s safe here, and exposing through words or gestures or baring his conflicted emotions raw isn’t.
Home is a person?
“Hyung.”
Seokjin can taste the vague flavor of copper against the corners of his tongue, the sticky feeling still in his mouth after driving back from dropping Jeongguk off. He’d woken up early to find his and Yoongi’s beds pushed together again, the other man curled up and sound asleep beside him. It’s always a little strange when he wakes up to it, usually the one to push them together with Yoongi there. On those rare nights Yoongi came back without Seokjin having to drag him home and shifting their beds together, it means one of two things.
Yoongi needs him or he knows that Seokjin needs something. Someone.
It’s why he’s not surprised to see Yoongi in the kitchen, standing by the counter with a cup of coffee, another mug waiting on beside the pot.
“Did you make me coffee?” Seokjin asks, eyeing the mug on the counter before he lets his gaze drift back to Yoongi’s face.
“Do you want it?”
“I’ll go with tea,” Seokjin says, and finds the smiles a little easier when Yoongi doesn’t even pause before turning and flicking the hotpot on.
“More for me,” Yoongi shrugs, raising his mug to his lips and taking a slow sip. There’s something easier about this, where Seokjin knows Yoongi isn’t going to try to touch him, to ask what’s wrong, or figure him out. It’s different.
Yoongi, in his own sort of way, gets it.
Perhaps that’s why it works, the two of them, ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ of the dorm who on some nights, when Yoongi is home with their beds pushed together, fill up the preferred silence with words long needed to be said.
Talking about the other members, the ‘kids’, talking about the group, talking about the world around them, and sometimes, when they don’t mean to, the secrets they forgot they had that just get dragged out between the patient silences.
“How did Jeongguk do on his exam last week?” Yoongi asks, watching Seokjin as he fixes his tea, not moving from beside the counter.
“He passed,” Seokjin informs, carefully pouring the boiling water. “He seemed scared to show me the score though. Like I’d be mad at him for not –“
“You have to remember that Jeongguk idolizes Namjoon as much as he ridicules him for snoring,” Yoongi reminds over the rim of his coffee cup. “And that goes for brains as well as hip hop musical genius. Passing might not be enough.”
Sighing, Seokjin rests both hands on the countertop, breathing out once and letting the cool travel up his arms, grounding him. “It should be,” Seokjin says quietly.
“It’s enough for you,” Yoongi says. “And me, but we’re not Jeongguk. Neither of us is the person he really has to convince he’s done enough.”
Seokjin knows the answer, they both do. They’ve both had the conversation and reminded each other on those nights the beds are pushed together. A reminder, a reassurance, a check in to make sure they’re still on track.
The problem is that Seokjin knows that, he knows all of it, he knows why Yoongi likes to pretend he doesn't care when at the core of his being he cares too much. The problem is that Seokjin sometimes wishes he cared in the same way, that he didn’t sometimes look in the mirror and feel empty, filling up the space with compliments he wanted to hear.
“It’s okay to still care,” Yoongi tells him quietly between the long drawn out quiet. The other members are either out or hiding. It had all come out at one point, back when Seokjin had taken double the time to come home and arrived just as Yoongi was waking up.
Seokjin didn’t know Yoongi could read him so easily back then, or that it would be something he’d bring up, but Yoongi knew without room for excuse that Seokjin had been crying. What’s more, he knew pretty quickly why it was so masked and removed.
It had begun to unravel then, and kept on until now when Seokjin still doesn’t know if he can wind himself back together.
“She’s just one person,” Seokjin says, fingers wrapped around the warmth of his mug, telling him it’s just as simple as those words.
“One person can make the biggest difference,” Yoongi says, and while Seokjin knows that in part he’s not speaking specifically to him, it still echoes in him.
“I wish it didn’t,” Seokjin admits, and closes his eyes, breathing in calming rhythms and focusing on that as he feels Yoongi’s hand carefully rest against his back. It doesn’t move for a long time, and neither do they, and there’s something about that simplicity that makes Seokjin feel both raw and comforted at the same time.
“Sometimes,” Yoongi says after a long pause. “When they talk about us being ‘parents’, it scares me shitless.”
“Their parents or just parents in general?” Seokjin asks, opening his eyes finally, some of the storm that ached through his bones abated.
“What if we fuck up?” Yoongi asks, looking down into his coffee. Seokjin’s tea has cooled. “Like they did?”
“Then we’d just be real parents, I guess,” Seokjin says, feeling brittle and hollow. They’re too young to think about this, and Seokjin is still waiting for the call from his mother saying she actually watched, she saw him doing what he loves and is good at, and she’s proud. It’s been years, and he’s still waiting for that silence to break, a little boy with a burned pot where he just wanted to show her he cared and had tried his best with fragile dreams.
“People used to tell me,” Yoongi begins, standing beside Seokjin as they lean against the counter, side by side. “That children are the reflection of their parents.”
The tea is a soft pale amber, sitting in the white mug Seokjin recognizes as Yoongi’s favorite. Perfectly white china, porcelain and thin, never holding the taste of other liquids and washing pure after every use. “What do you think?” Seokjin asks, knowing better than to just let that statement hang. It wouldn’t be good, for either of them.
“I think they used to tell me that because of how I didn’t behave how they thought I should. I think it was they trying to intimidate me. I also think they’re right,” Yoongi says slowly. Glancing at him from the side, the raw empty and worn out feeling he’d walked in with grating against his sensitive nerves as he looks at Yoongi. Rather than look perplexed, or intensely contemplative, Yoongi just looks almost reassured, eyes on Seokjin’s mug of tea. “But not entirely. A photo can’t be changed once it’s captured, but a mirror- a reflection, ripples and changes into something new.” Slowly, Yoongi’s eyes rise to meet his own.
“So we’re the ripple.” It doesn't quite make sense, but Seokjin knows there’s more to it, more that Yoongi still isn’t sure how to explain yet, keeping it locked inside until he knows how to put it into words he likes. “We’re not our parents, but we still reflect them.” A tightness wraps around Seokjin’s throat, old, familiar, and the itch that he’d left in the front seat of his car is back. “A success or a failure.”
Damnit.
Home is an idea?
“But the failure isn’t us,” Yoongi muses, and the insistency he says it with suggests he knows where Seokjin went, and he wasn’t supposed to go there. Redirect, and slowly guide, precisely and carefully. “I guess that’s why we feel it though, because we’re the reflection, but we’re not really the reality that’s flawed. That’s theirs.”
“I hate talking to you before you’ve had coffee,” Seokjin sighs, and can’t help the slightly bitter laugh that spills from him, cracking slightly as Yoongi’s eyes widen before he relents, face pinching slightly in defeat. “It’s like a maze.”
“I’m talking before coffee, that’s enough of a miracle,” he grumbles into his coffee cup, taking another sip as he waits for Seokjin’s brittle laughter to fade.
It does, but it also doesn’t and as Seokjin’s laughter fades into silence, his shoulders continue to shake, unbidden. He knows before he feels his throat tighten that he’s lost, relinquishing his teacup when Yoongi’s hands guide it out of his grasp gently. Eyes squeezed shut, there isn’t a chance to breathe, to calm himself down before he’s crying.
Dry crying.
There’s a horrific difference between the release of tears and letting go and dry sobbing where the body wracks itself in misery and pain that come from an endless pit within and nothing breaks out. It’s all stoppered up behind a closed throat and eyes that refuse to weep, a face covered with hands in shame.
Shame to break down like this, to have lost control in front of someone even if he knows Yoongi doesn’t judge him or think any less of him for showing weakness like this. It doesn’t matter.
It’s still there.
Inadequacy is a feeling.
Just as there is the barrier when Seokjin watches Yoongi break down, explode in a space where he can move, yelling wordless at everything and nothing as he lets go and Seokjin knows not to touch him, Yoongi knows him now. There are no comforting hands, arms wrapping around him like Taehyung might. There is no reassuring hand on his shoulder, resting against his head or gently rubbing his arms as Hoseok might offer. No hands try to hold his, pulling him to lean against a shoulder in silence if Namjoon were here.
Yoongi just stands a foot away, there if he wants him, but not moving forward or touching him. Just waiting.
Letting him know he understands that sometimes being fragile like this can be shattered by just the slightest touch. Being there just in case, the place to come back to after the storm stops inside, is really what matters.
When it stops, Yoongi’s coffee cup is empty, and he’s watching Seokjin carefully, dark eyes fixed as Seokjin finally gets his shaking breaths to even out, hands dropping from a dry face. It’s awful, knowing it happened, the crippling sobs where he can’t move from their intensity, and ending with no sign that it happened at all.
Only the exhaustion remains.
“I think this is why it scares me,” Yoongi says softly, his eyes still so intent as they remain on Seokjin. They’re not judging, just full with all the things that matter: concern, empathy, investment, compassion, the love that exists in any pure form. “I don’t want someone to feel like this. I don’t want to be the one that made that.”
“You won’t,” Seokjin tells him, voice rough and raw. “If you know what it feels like, and you know you don’t want it to happen, you won’t. You’ve already learned.”
Just like so many others times, it clicks, sliding into place that it’s not for Yoongi, but for himself. It’s not for one of them, it’s both.
Mom and dad, two people in a partnership. Checks and balances.
It’s for him.
“So have you,” Yoongi tells him, and only then, after they’ve come where Seokjin needs, where can feel another piece fall into place, does he move closer. It’s not the bear hug Taehyung would wrap him into, or the complete embrace Jimin would end up dragging him into. It’s just enough, not too much that it would smother the small flame that’s once more let itself flicker into life, but enough to protect it from wind and rain.
It starts as just a small touch, a hand to his wrist, then sliding up his arm when Seokjin lets him, gently holding at the elbow, until Seokjin moves, opening up with permission, saying yes, I need you as he shifts and opens his arms. That’s all it is, all it takes, before a careful hug that doesn't hold too tightly, but is the soft stable support Seokjin needs.
The lack of judgment for not being strong enough, for being who he is instead of who he’s supposed to be. Yoongi’s hands resting gently against his back, his breath warm against Seokjin’s shoulder, is acceptance, the words I’m here that are so simple and yet mean so much they are too enormous to speak aloud.
Home is where you are loved.
Even if Seokjin can’t hear them, he knows the words are there, and they mean the world.
*
There are some mornings when the bad mornings don’t seem to exist. When the mornings come when there wasn’t any rest the night before just seem to fade into distant memory.
Mornings when Seokjin wakes up to normal beds, sleeping members all resting as he pulls himself up and can go about his morning routine. Those mornings are better, more frequent, though sometimes forgotten on hard days.
It’s a rare morning when Jeongguk is the one nearly walking into him, barely awake as he trudges from his and Namjoon’s room with one eye open to the shower when Seokjin goes to rouse him. “Morning.”
Jeongguk manages a yawn and a mumbled, “morning, hyung,” before shuffling off. It’s nice though, watching him become a bit more responsible rather than sleeping until the last second when Seokjin has to practically drag him out of bed.
It’s only when Seokjin has meandered back into the kitchen he notices Jimin, half hunched over a bowl of dry cereal, and a slow smile spreads over his face.
“You’re up early.”
“Kookie has a test,” Jimin yawns, and frowns at his cereal. “And kept hogging the blankets last night. Hyung, can’t we just switch Taehyung to Namjoon-hyung’s room and have Jeongguk sleep with me and Hobi?”
“You’d all end up in the same room eventually,” Seokjin laughs, grabbing the milk from the fridge and plopping it down for Jimin. “It wouldn’t make much of a difference.”
“Sure it would,” Jimin grumbles. “Jeongguk wouldn’t keep hogging my bed. He’d have his own.”
“You can always go sleep in Namjoon’s room,” Seokjin suggests, an amused smile on his face as he watches Jimin groggily grab for the milk he’d forgotten in his breakfast. “Take Jeongguk’s bed.”
“Stop trying to solve things when I’m just trying to complain at my cereal, hyung, you’re ruining this experience for me,” Jimin almost whines but ends up smiling when Seokjin laughs. “I’m stealing your bed after you take Jeongguk to school. At least Yoongi-hyung is silent when he sleeps.”
“Go ahead,” Seokjin tells him, getting started on lunch boxes and breakfast toasts. “Just don’t be late for schedules today.”
“I won't, I promise.” Jimin smiles at him, watching as he makes breakfast with slow bites of cereal that gets soggier and soggier with each delay between bites. They chatter a bit, waiting until Jeongguk finally manages his way into the kitchen, sighing that Taehyung was threatening to break into the bathroom if he didn’t hurry up.
That morning, Jeongguk seems a bit brighter, the radio turned down as they drive to school and telling Seokjin stories about school, about his friends, about his teachers, and his assignments. About all the things in his life that mean something, that help him grow.
“We’ll work on your homework after practices today,” Seokjin tells him as Jeongguk gets out of the car. “Just remember to talk to your teacher about the extension you need.”
Jeongguk flashes him a brilliant smile and a small laugh. “I feel like all the other kids have their parents call in for stuff like this,” he says, hand on the door, “but I should just have my teachers call you.”
It’s not the first time there’s been a joke made about this, but it doesn’t feel like a joke, and Seokjin stumbles for a moment before he laughs. “Why would they be calling me? I’m just your hyung.”
“But I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Jeongguk tells him, the rush of words showing it’s unintentional. Raw and honest.
Even through the shock, Seokjin realizes he’s smiling, that the feeling in his chest isn’t too big or too much, and it’s not specific pride, just reassurance. Jeongguk doesn’t give him a chance to reply, cheeks pink as he quickly steps back and calls a “I’m late, bye, hyung!” before the door slams shut. With a final wave, Jeongguk is gone, walking quickly into the school.
From the front seat of his car, Seokjin watches until Jeongguk has disappeared inside, gone from view, and lingering in the soft warmth that had washed over him moments before.
Turning on the signal to merge back into traffic, Seokjin doesn’t turn the radio off, only turning down the volume, as the smile that had started surprised at Jeongguk’s words spreads through him, filling him up. When he arrives back at the garage, facing the gray cement wall, it’s still there, and there’s no pause before he leaves the quiet space and steps back into everyone else’s world.
There are other ratios that matter. Sometimes forgotten, but they exist, much more impressive ratios than 3:1. Some like one in a million, or once in a lifetime. They aren’t immediately apparent, and there’s never a way to know when it happens, but it does.
“Good morning, hyung,” Namjoon greets him as he walks back into the dorm.
“Yes,” Seokjin says, still smiling as he pauses on the way to his room to rouse a presumably sleeping Jimin, curled up quiet and gentle in his bed. “It is.”
When he gets to his room, the bed is made, Yoongi still curled up under his blankets on the other side of the room. His own bed is nicely made in the style Seokjin recognizes as Hoseok’s, a small candy left there with a smiley face drawn on it in Jimin’s style.
It’s the little things that matter, that stick out and can change everything, and Seokjin feels his eyes burn as his smile grows wider, brimming inside and out.
*
I would like to give a huge thanking metaphorical hug (because *hoseok voice* touchy touchy no no) to R, who has been there for me on so many occasions, who I knew I could trust with this before it was ready, and who helped to guide and support me in pulling this. Thank you, for so many things.
Full note can be found on my journal if desired~
Thank you for reading.
Written while listening to 'Butterfly' and 'House of Cards' on 화양연화 pt.2 and Olafur Arnalds “Living Room Songs” album.
The Pathos Project
1. Atelophobia - the fear of not being good enough.
1. The Safe Places - Cars
warnings family issues, components of abusive or neglectful parenting, physical and mental fatigue, canon-ish* (interpretative liberties were made)
notes: inspired by this and this
In a strange way, it feels like home.
Cutting the car engine, the key turned to ‘Off’ in the ignition, Seokjin leans forward with a long exhale to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. Closing his eyes, he swallows down a throat that has felt too tight in the last half hour drive back from Jeongguk’s high school.
Home is a place.
It takes a little bit of time for the engine to cool down, Seokjin waiting and just sitting in the car, feeling his skin cool with the machine as he stares at the blank gray cement of the parking garage and waits it out. He doesn’t move until his breaths are even, the itch from his eyes is gone, and he can feel the steady beats of his heart. A brief check in the mirror leaves him knowing it’s okay before he opens the door and gets out, a familiar easy and practiced smile spreading over his face.
“Back so soon?” greets with a grin from Jimin, draped over the back of the couch as Seokjin walks back into the dorm. Jimin’s hair is still standing up all over, definitely cheated out of a shower by Taehyung or Hoseok and waiting his turn.
“I had to make sure the rest of you got breakfast before Namjoon tried to use the toaster again,” Seokjin says, smiling as Jimin laughs, slipping down the couch and his tee shirt rides up his tummy.
“That was one time!” shouts from the kitchen in protest and Seokjin lets a laugh slip past cracked lips as he walks into the kitchen. Namjoon is waiting for him, eyes sharp even through his early morning scowling squint. “You’re so mean to me.”
“You stuck a knife in a toaster,” Seokjin reminds him easily, walking to the cupboard and taking out a few plates. “I have reason to be concerned.”
“How else was I supposed to get out the donut?” Namjoon grumbles, his eyes still on Seokjin, burning into his back. Choosing not to bring up the fact that Namjoon had tried to toast a donut (which is beyond him), Seokjin simply pulls out ingredients for a quick breakfast. “Is Jeongguk at school?”
“He is,” Seokjin answers, lining up the foods on the counter top. Eggs with tomatoes and cheesy toast should be good, hopefully satisfying even Taehyung’s picky pallet. “I’ll pick him up later.”
“You know, I could drive him some mornings,” Namjoon continues, his voice the same rough smooth comfort that Seokjin has learned to trust over the years they’ve known each other. “If you-“
“I don’t mind,” Seokjin cuts him off, glancing over his shoulder with a soft smile. It’s fine.
“I know you don’t mind, but I’m just offering,” Namjoon continues, and Seokjin’s hand falters as he reaches for the frying pan.
“I like driving him to school,” Seokjin says, turning to the stove and away from Namjoon’s eyes. “It’s good to see him go to school and do well.” The sound of the stove clicking to ignite fills the kitchen as Seokjin watches and waits. “I’m proud of him.”
The blue and yellow flames of the stove shudder under the frying pan when Seokjin gets the stove lit, busying his hands with oil in the pan and pulling eggs from the refrigerator.
“I know you are, hyung,” Namjoon says, though it almost sounds sad. Seokjin turns to him with his smile before he turns back to the pan and swallows the spit in his mouth down a dry throat.
*
“It’s a parent’s job to mess up their kids. That’s what we do, it’s our right as parents to fuck up our kids. We mess them up so they can learn to deal with it and figure out how to live on. We put in enough hard work and suffering that our kids are going to show it. Children should bear the scars of their parents.” - anonymous
*
It’s always a nightmare in the morning to get Jeongguk out of bed. It’s gotten worse with the tight schedules, the lack of sleep, caught between shows and events and rehearsals and curled up in chairs for a few hours, maybe less. None the less, Seokjin is up, picking his way through the dark room to find the youngest and haul him to school.
That morning had broken empty and cool, gray dawn showing the empty bed on the other side of the room, telling that neither Yoongi nor Namjoon had made it home last night. Burning the midnight oil.
Home is a place.
Jeongguk whines when Seokjin doesn’t have the patience to play nice and try to wake him gently. A few swift pinches and he’s up, hands over his nipples and looking groggily scandalized before Seokjin pushes him in the direction of the shower.
Mornings are like poorly rigged autopilot, Jeongguk barely remembering his homework and bag before he’s bundled into the passenger seat of Seokjin’s car. Mornings are the drive to school with Jeongguk unable to form words as Seokjin nags at him to eat his breakfast that he brought in the car before a few bites of food have Jeongguk fiddling with the radio. At full volume.
It’s better than the silence, and Seokjin can relax as Jeongguk slowly wakes up to bass that will probably blow out the car’s speakers. It’s better though, and Seokjin’s grip on his steering wheel relaxes slightly, the tension easing,
Every morning, Jeongguk finally wakes up fully about ten minutes before they get to his high school, making sure his hair is okay in the mirror, checking his reflection, before he turns to Seokjin. It’s the same sweet smile that Seokjin hopes will never change on a boy who seems to grow up too fast.
“Thanks, hyung,” Jeongguk says, about two minutes before they drive into the drop off area. He goes quiet but the smile remains, and Seokjin lets out a breath he always holds.
“Remember to eat all your lunch this time,” Seokjin reminds him, watching as Jeongguk gathers himself in the seat beside him. “I’ll be back to pick you up after. And make sure you pick up any make-up work you missed. We’ll work on it later.”
It had been a huge effort to keep Jeongguk in school. There had been a lot of arguments, between the push back against the pressures, the relevancy towards the career path their on, and idealistic dreams and social protests that stepped over Seokjin’s lines. In the end, he’d won.
It hadn’t been easy then either, usually getting enough days of Jeongguk in school is a huge effort, getting enough assignments in so that he could pass to the next year. Getting Jeongguk out of bed is easy compared to getting schedules to cooperate when a career seems more important than a test.
In the end, Seokjin had won that too.
“Hyung,” Jeongguk asks, turning to him as they stop by the school, a little early but not by much. Jeongguk is in time for homeroom, talking to classmates, and checking in with his teachers.
“I promise you can ask Namjoon for help on your math and English after,” Seokjin tells him with a knowing smile.
“We can make another English Lesson video,” Jeongguk teases and Seokjin indulges him with a laugh.
“If that helps.” It’s hard, Seokjin knows it, pushing to stay in school and working the exhaustion of being an idol. It’s almost impossible, but Jeongguk is sticking with it, albeit with Seokjin’s help. “I’m proud of you.”
Though he says it each morning, the smile on Jeongguk’s face is enough to make it worth it every time. And every time, Jeongguk looks a little less nervous, a little more awake and like he can go into classes and not think of giving up like he almost did. “Thanks, hyung.”
Seokjin’s smile stays on his face even as Jeongguk closes the door, as he walks into school with his backpack and a wave and a final look cast over his shoulder. That smile stays until Jeongguk is out of sight.
In a dorm full of people, there’s not a lot of time to be quiet, to be by himself and just breathe. Lying quiet in his room and breathing in the air of Yoongi still not yet home from the studio is different. It’s not quite alone. Most of the time, there are jokes, schedules, laughter, bickering, games and moments to just sit quietly are reserved for sleeping. Even then, that sleep is with others, and more often than not he’s at risk of waking up with Taehyung’s camera in his face and the shadows of giggling boys.
Here, there’s no one but him.
As the turn signal blinks on and Seokjin carefully eases onto the gas, his breath shakes and the water runs. It’s quiet on most days, the radio turned back to silence as Seokjin drives back to the dorm, just feeling the vibrations of the car as emotions he isn’t sure the source of spill down his face.
It started years ago, and Seokjin still doesn’t always know why it happens, but it’s become the one outlet when habits and hobbies weren’t enough to restore the balance. Yoongi has his music and Namjoon has his words woven into art, Jimin dances, Jeongguk following him into the fluidity of physical movement, Hoseok dances and loses himself in that, and Taehyung has his myriad of activities, of people, of experiences to spread himself across in the wonder of the world outside of himself.
Seokjin has the stretch of the highway and long reaching roads where he lets whatever feelings have dug themselves too deep inside to be remembered spill from his eyes and soak into his shirt as they fall.
By the time he leaves the car, there’s no memory of it, his chest empty and smile easier to breath back onto his lips before he faces the world again.
Sometimes he wonders if it’s right, if being like this is okay. Just as with the many things Seokjin considers part of the world he lives in, there is the element of doubt, wondering quietly the question ‘if’.
If telling Jeongguk he’s going to school, making sure he gets there, making sure he’s fed, and telling him he’s proud even if Jeongguk barely scrapes a passing score, is enough.
It’s scary, and maybe that’s why he cries, afraid of messing it all up and doing the wrong thing despite best intentions.
But then he’s pulling into the garage for the dorms, the cold gray cement wall staring back at him, and he’s drying his face on his sleeve. The ache in his throat soothes as he regulates his breathing, erasing the soft gasps he might have let out seven or twelve minutes ago. The redness in his eyes, the puffiness of his face fades as he waits, eyes closed, and breathes.
He’s home.
He doesn’t move until his breaths are even, the itch from his eyes is gone, and he can feel the steady beats of his heart. A brief check in the mirror leaves him knowing it’s okay before he opens the door and gets out, a familiar easy and practiced smile spreading over his face.
Taehyung is spread out on the floor, bare feet and toes wiggling slightly when Seokjin steps back into the dorm. “Kookie forgot his pencil case,” he tells Seokjin, pointing to the small pouch resting on Taehyung’s chest. “So I ate all the candies he hid inside of it.”
“As long as you don’t eat the erasers, I’m fine with it,” Seokjin tells him, stepping over his prone body to head to the kitchen. Yoongi and Namjoon are back, a half finished pot of coffee on the counter with a note. 1/2 is property of Y. You have been warned. – N.
“They got back a little while ago,” Taehyung explains, padding into the kitchen to prop his chin on Seokjin’s shoulder. “Namjoon-hyung took his half already. Yoongi-hyung is sleeping for a few hours. Said I couldn’t wake him up even if there was a fire.”
“I’ll wake him up if there’s a fire,” Seokjin tells him with a laugh, pulling a clean mug from the drying rack and turning on the hotpot beside the coffee maker for tea. “Then you’re safe.”
“You’re the best, hyung,” Taehyung hums, his face spreading into one of his wide warm full-faced smiles, wrapping his arms around Seokjin in a firm hug. It’s not uncommon, all of them used to hugs and Taehyung’s need for physical affection, but small moments caught here and there are enough to get a fond laugh out of Seokjin.
“I try,” he says, wrapping Taehyung in a one armed hug before ruffling his hair. For a few moments, Taehyung doesn’t let go, just holds on a bit more than needed, just the extra seconds that pull in Seokjin’s controlled breaths.
“If I steal the rest of Yoongi-hyung’s coffee-“
“You brought that wrath on yourself,” Seokjin laughs, and leans back as Taehyung finally releases him, ruffling his hair again at the pout on Taehyung’s face. “I can only do so much.”
The look Taehyung leaves him with gives Seokjin the impression Taehyung had wanted to say something after that, but didn’t, answering instead with a brief squeeze to his hand. It’s okay though. Seokjin understands that sometimes, Taehyung communicates better with touch than words, trusting that more than his mouth.
Sometimes, he’s right, when his mouth gets him into trouble more often than not. Sometimes, Seokjin wonders if he’s just bottling up, holding it all inside until he can’t feel it either.
It’s easier to let it go though, trusting Taehyung to know himself, and finding himself with a smile that feels easier as he makes his tea and sips it slowly. It’s warm, heating him up from the inside as he looks at the note on the counter and feels Taehyung’s lingering arms, just there, just… enough.
“You’re home,” Hoseok says, padding into the kitchen, freshly showered and with a half smile.
Seokjin offers him that same smile, leaning against the sink. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I am.”
*
”It doesn’t matter how many times you apologize if you don’t mean it. If you’re actually sorry, you show me, I know it, can hear it in your voice and feel it in my heart. Words have meaning but they’re empty if the aren’t shown. Actions speak louder than words. How am I supposed to believe you when after every time you apologize and say you’ll never do it again, you’re still the one that makes me hurt so much?” - anonymous
*
Some mornings, it’s different. Some mornings are harder, long weeks piling back and back and back, drilling reminders of where they still need to improve. Success isn’t grown overnight.
Some mornings, it’s been too many near fights, too many arguments, and not enough sleep in between. It’s been watching homesickness spread contagiously between those who pine for loved ones, and listening to crying phone calls that end too early.
Some mornings, all Seokjin wakes up with are the messages that are missing, the loud silences, and knowing when Jimin whimpers ‘mom’ in his sleep, he’s not asking for Seokjin. Those mornings, Seokjin can’t be the one that falls apart. Those mornings, he needs to be the glue that keeps these fragile boys from crumbling into pieces, and even if it doesn’t look like much, he hopes it’s enough to be worth something.
It has to be.
Those mornings, when he drops Jeongguk off at school after a completely silent car ride and stewing emotions he knows better than to bleed out, Seokjin takes a little longer to drive back. Those mornings, as soon as Jeongguk is out of sight, it’s not silent, the quiet release, but a whole body experience.
Those mornings, Seokjin doesn’t cry. He sobs.
The Greeks had a word for it. Catharsis. A complete emotional release, draining all of the feeling from inside of him where it’s twisted up inside of itself to make him sick, pouring out of him.
It’s never really clear why he’s crying
are you ashamed of me?
or why the tears hurt more, dragging from deep inside; a locked away place even he doesn’t know the source ofis that why you never say anything? did I do something wrong?
aside from long ignored memories. It’s those mornings it doesn’t stop, and when he pulls into the garage and faces the concrete wall, there is no calming breath.am I not enough? still?
It’s only the encore, where he grips the steering wheel to keep himself grounded and sobs until there’s nothing left. Until he’s hollow, until the storm has passed and left him used up, exhausted with cheeks raw and mouth sticky, throat sore and aching.
It’s this feeling he wants to force out, to drag out of the hands of the people he loves, of strangers he sees with that dead look in their eyes. In the fans who search for being an ideal type for a fantasy when they should understand they’re fine they way they are. In the forlorn look on the faces he cares about, worrying about how they’re not ‘good enough’ to be wanted and loved.
Those mornings, there isn’t often coffee on the counter, the others already moving out for their schedules, and Seokjin only wants to curl up and rest, drained.
Those mornings are the mornings that Seokjin gets to see the rare side of Hoseok, where he’s quiet and soft light touches. Those mornings are when Seokjin feels like both of them will break if Hoseok steps too close and Seokjin remembers that he’s not the only one who knows that sometimes others need his smiles more than he does.
“Hyung.”
“I’m fine,” Seokjin says, and he is. It’s been years since he could tell himself that and believe it with sincerity. Hoseok’s hand doesn’t leave his shoulder and Seokjin reaches up to close his own hand around it, squeezing gently.
“I know we aren’t all great at listening, but if you ever want to talk,” Hoseok ends there, waiting, offering, and Seokjin looks up with a mending smile.
“Thank you,” he says, genuine. “But I’m more worried about who last cleaned the bathroom, honestly.”
“Me,” Hoseok tells him, a soft laugh bleeding into his eyes. “And I made Jimin vacuum earlier.”
It’s small things, small gestures like this, the little things that Hoseok will do and Seokjin knows that he understands, that he sees even if he doesn’t completely know everything. There’s a part of Hoseok that Seokjin is sure Hoseok himself doesn't even know he has, but it’s there.
It’s there and Seokjin doesn’t want it to get hurt, just like he doesn’t want any of them to get hurt. To feel that horrible need to cry and not knowing why and not being able to until they’re locked behind four metal doors and speeding past machines completely removed from the people inside them. To feel that the only safe place to let go and just be vulnerable and weak is where no one can see, where no one can watch in silence that hurts more than words.
It’s the small things, after Hoseok has left to go to practice, like walking into his room and finding the beds made and the laundry in hampers. It’s those small actions that speak louder than the words Seokjin knows Hoseok is trying to find.
This silence Seokjin doesn’t mind though, because the actions beyond the words are louder and fill him up rather than leave him hollow.
*
”Everyone has issues with their parents. We’re born with it, and it’s part of our journey as human beings. The first thing we need to overcome is the issues we have with our parents; that’s our first life lesson.” – anonymous
*
The first time Seokjin thought about it was during the graduation ceremony. Not his own, but Jeongguk’s. Standing at the side with Yoongi and Jimin, Yoongi’s shoulder brushing against his arm as they gathered among the parents and families, clearly too young to have children in the crowd, it began to click. By then, Jimin and the others had already taken to calling him ‘mom’ teasingly, labeling Yoongi with ‘dad’ in the same playful affection.
But standing with the parents and looking out to find Jeongguk among the other students, jackets around them as they stood in a world of adults celebrating their children’s accomplishments as they move on from middle school, he began to think about it.
Watching the nervous boy standing and waiting to get his diploma to move onto the next year of schooling, Seokjin listened to the parents around him chattering about their children. About their dreams, their accomplishments, about how well they had done in school, about how proud they were.
About how much they loved them and cared about them. About what it was like to be parents, taking care of their children, about the worries they had, about the mistakes and how they wanted the best for their kids. Standing with his band mates at his side, Seokjin could see Jeongguk’s parents a little ways away, watch how Jeongguk would look around, catch their eyes, and a shy nervous and excited smile would peek across his mouth. They would smile, and Seokjin was too many things at once.
Happy, proud, excited and yet it hurt. A part of it hurt.
“This is so weird,” Jimin had laughed, hands tucked into his pockets as he looked around, checking with him and Yoongi. Yoongi just stood, watching Jeongguk with a soft smile that felt so quietly proud it made the ache worse in Seokjin’s chest.
“What?” Seokjin asked, trying to push through the feeling.
“It feels like we’re parents,” Jimin laughed. “Standing here and watching him with all the other parents.” Jimin laughed again, his cheeks drawing up into cute humor. “It’s like Jeongguk has two moms and dads today. I’ll be the cool uncle.”
It was a joke, but also a compliment, but even more, it was the kick. It was remembering back to other graduation ceremonies, watching parents mingle about, talking about their children, and waiting to hear one word of pride. You worked hard. You did well. I’m so proud of you. Remembering years before when he’d stood and waiting for a diploma and had a dream that was met with empty looks and closed lips.
“Just the uncle,” Yoongi says, and his mouth quirks as Jimin scrunches up his nose and yet still manages to pout. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jimin.”
It had started off as a bit of a joke, the mom and dad thing, but at the same time Seokjin understood it in a way. Standing there though, glancing to Yoongi’s quiet figure beside him, watching Jeongguk with a soft smile and eyes warm, it hits home and it hits hard.
Taking life lessons early from the first teachers and reflecting that, showing what you learned from your first teachers. What you want to be, and what you don’t want to be.
A support, someone who cares, who gives what was never given.
Reassurance. Support. Pride. Acceptance.
Standing among parents watching their children, Seokjin puts together his pieces and pushes it down, shaking hands tucked into his jacket pocket calmly. He smiles as they take the picture, Jimin joking around about the ‘family portrait’ as Seokjin keeps his arms around Jeongguk who is still so young, still needs his parents, but doesn’t have them nearly enough.
In the cold air after the graduation ceremony, Seokjin realizes that part of himself he’d locked away has shaped who he is. It’s strange, watching how the same happens to people around him, and seeing who understands and who is still learning.
That’s before Seokjin first had a long drive, before those feeling resurfaced, backwards sideways as they clawed their way out of him, and before the pieces began to fall into place.
*
”The thing is, when you hold back tears, they don’t go away. They stay and wait until they can come out. Sometimes, it’s better to just let it out. Even if you don’t know why you’re crying, it’s okay. Those sobs have been waiting a long time to be set free.” - anonymous
*
Home is a place?
There are a lot of things wrong with the world, but there are a lot of things that are right. It’s those good things that Seokjin wants to hold onto. Not for the first time he is reminded that the good things and bad things need a constant ratio, a 3:1, where the good things aren’t ruined by the negative, the balance thrown and the few pieces of light shrouded in darkness.
There are moments when it can just be a thought, a memory that will set it off. It was what taught him to just let Yoongi go when he needed to, stand back and watch over him when he needed to yell out everything he’d let stew for too long. Not even words, just raw sound, a storm that had to rage to get out of his system before he could calm down enough to let someone near him.
It’s times like that where Seokjin is very sure that it’s more important to understand himself than to find himself. There’s components of soul searching, Namjoon always looking for answers, for reasons, for solutions to his questions that he can’t sleep from pondering over, locked in rooms to try to figure them out in lyrics and melodies.
They are exposed, they speak their stories, words threading through the air to release from them where they turn black and torrid from being caged for too long. It works for them, but not for everyone.
The gentle merging onto the highway where everything he needed to let out pours from him and he can work through himself here, one burning track down his face at a time. It’s safe here, and exposing through words or gestures or baring his conflicted emotions raw isn’t.
Home is a person?
“Hyung.”
Seokjin can taste the vague flavor of copper against the corners of his tongue, the sticky feeling still in his mouth after driving back from dropping Jeongguk off. He’d woken up early to find his and Yoongi’s beds pushed together again, the other man curled up and sound asleep beside him. It’s always a little strange when he wakes up to it, usually the one to push them together with Yoongi there. On those rare nights Yoongi came back without Seokjin having to drag him home and shifting their beds together, it means one of two things.
Yoongi needs him or he knows that Seokjin needs something. Someone.
It’s why he’s not surprised to see Yoongi in the kitchen, standing by the counter with a cup of coffee, another mug waiting on beside the pot.
“Did you make me coffee?” Seokjin asks, eyeing the mug on the counter before he lets his gaze drift back to Yoongi’s face.
“Do you want it?”
“I’ll go with tea,” Seokjin says, and finds the smiles a little easier when Yoongi doesn’t even pause before turning and flicking the hotpot on.
“More for me,” Yoongi shrugs, raising his mug to his lips and taking a slow sip. There’s something easier about this, where Seokjin knows Yoongi isn’t going to try to touch him, to ask what’s wrong, or figure him out. It’s different.
Yoongi, in his own sort of way, gets it.
Perhaps that’s why it works, the two of them, ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ of the dorm who on some nights, when Yoongi is home with their beds pushed together, fill up the preferred silence with words long needed to be said.
Talking about the other members, the ‘kids’, talking about the group, talking about the world around them, and sometimes, when they don’t mean to, the secrets they forgot they had that just get dragged out between the patient silences.
“How did Jeongguk do on his exam last week?” Yoongi asks, watching Seokjin as he fixes his tea, not moving from beside the counter.
“He passed,” Seokjin informs, carefully pouring the boiling water. “He seemed scared to show me the score though. Like I’d be mad at him for not –“
“You have to remember that Jeongguk idolizes Namjoon as much as he ridicules him for snoring,” Yoongi reminds over the rim of his coffee cup. “And that goes for brains as well as hip hop musical genius. Passing might not be enough.”
Sighing, Seokjin rests both hands on the countertop, breathing out once and letting the cool travel up his arms, grounding him. “It should be,” Seokjin says quietly.
“It’s enough for you,” Yoongi says. “And me, but we’re not Jeongguk. Neither of us is the person he really has to convince he’s done enough.”
Seokjin knows the answer, they both do. They’ve both had the conversation and reminded each other on those nights the beds are pushed together. A reminder, a reassurance, a check in to make sure they’re still on track.
The problem is that Seokjin knows that, he knows all of it, he knows why Yoongi likes to pretend he doesn't care when at the core of his being he cares too much. The problem is that Seokjin sometimes wishes he cared in the same way, that he didn’t sometimes look in the mirror and feel empty, filling up the space with compliments he wanted to hear.
“It’s okay to still care,” Yoongi tells him quietly between the long drawn out quiet. The other members are either out or hiding. It had all come out at one point, back when Seokjin had taken double the time to come home and arrived just as Yoongi was waking up.
Seokjin didn’t know Yoongi could read him so easily back then, or that it would be something he’d bring up, but Yoongi knew without room for excuse that Seokjin had been crying. What’s more, he knew pretty quickly why it was so masked and removed.
It had begun to unravel then, and kept on until now when Seokjin still doesn’t know if he can wind himself back together.
“She’s just one person,” Seokjin says, fingers wrapped around the warmth of his mug, telling him it’s just as simple as those words.
“One person can make the biggest difference,” Yoongi says, and while Seokjin knows that in part he’s not speaking specifically to him, it still echoes in him.
“I wish it didn’t,” Seokjin admits, and closes his eyes, breathing in calming rhythms and focusing on that as he feels Yoongi’s hand carefully rest against his back. It doesn’t move for a long time, and neither do they, and there’s something about that simplicity that makes Seokjin feel both raw and comforted at the same time.
“Sometimes,” Yoongi says after a long pause. “When they talk about us being ‘parents’, it scares me shitless.”
“Their parents or just parents in general?” Seokjin asks, opening his eyes finally, some of the storm that ached through his bones abated.
“What if we fuck up?” Yoongi asks, looking down into his coffee. Seokjin’s tea has cooled. “Like they did?”
“Then we’d just be real parents, I guess,” Seokjin says, feeling brittle and hollow. They’re too young to think about this, and Seokjin is still waiting for the call from his mother saying she actually watched, she saw him doing what he loves and is good at, and she’s proud. It’s been years, and he’s still waiting for that silence to break, a little boy with a burned pot where he just wanted to show her he cared and had tried his best with fragile dreams.
“People used to tell me,” Yoongi begins, standing beside Seokjin as they lean against the counter, side by side. “That children are the reflection of their parents.”
The tea is a soft pale amber, sitting in the white mug Seokjin recognizes as Yoongi’s favorite. Perfectly white china, porcelain and thin, never holding the taste of other liquids and washing pure after every use. “What do you think?” Seokjin asks, knowing better than to just let that statement hang. It wouldn’t be good, for either of them.
“I think they used to tell me that because of how I didn’t behave how they thought I should. I think it was they trying to intimidate me. I also think they’re right,” Yoongi says slowly. Glancing at him from the side, the raw empty and worn out feeling he’d walked in with grating against his sensitive nerves as he looks at Yoongi. Rather than look perplexed, or intensely contemplative, Yoongi just looks almost reassured, eyes on Seokjin’s mug of tea. “But not entirely. A photo can’t be changed once it’s captured, but a mirror- a reflection, ripples and changes into something new.” Slowly, Yoongi’s eyes rise to meet his own.
“So we’re the ripple.” It doesn't quite make sense, but Seokjin knows there’s more to it, more that Yoongi still isn’t sure how to explain yet, keeping it locked inside until he knows how to put it into words he likes. “We’re not our parents, but we still reflect them.” A tightness wraps around Seokjin’s throat, old, familiar, and the itch that he’d left in the front seat of his car is back. “A success or a failure.”
Damnit.
Home is an idea?
“But the failure isn’t us,” Yoongi muses, and the insistency he says it with suggests he knows where Seokjin went, and he wasn’t supposed to go there. Redirect, and slowly guide, precisely and carefully. “I guess that’s why we feel it though, because we’re the reflection, but we’re not really the reality that’s flawed. That’s theirs.”
“I hate talking to you before you’ve had coffee,” Seokjin sighs, and can’t help the slightly bitter laugh that spills from him, cracking slightly as Yoongi’s eyes widen before he relents, face pinching slightly in defeat. “It’s like a maze.”
“I’m talking before coffee, that’s enough of a miracle,” he grumbles into his coffee cup, taking another sip as he waits for Seokjin’s brittle laughter to fade.
It does, but it also doesn’t and as Seokjin’s laughter fades into silence, his shoulders continue to shake, unbidden. He knows before he feels his throat tighten that he’s lost, relinquishing his teacup when Yoongi’s hands guide it out of his grasp gently. Eyes squeezed shut, there isn’t a chance to breathe, to calm himself down before he’s crying.
Dry crying.
There’s a horrific difference between the release of tears and letting go and dry sobbing where the body wracks itself in misery and pain that come from an endless pit within and nothing breaks out. It’s all stoppered up behind a closed throat and eyes that refuse to weep, a face covered with hands in shame.
Shame to break down like this, to have lost control in front of someone even if he knows Yoongi doesn’t judge him or think any less of him for showing weakness like this. It doesn’t matter.
It’s still there.
Inadequacy is a feeling.
Just as there is the barrier when Seokjin watches Yoongi break down, explode in a space where he can move, yelling wordless at everything and nothing as he lets go and Seokjin knows not to touch him, Yoongi knows him now. There are no comforting hands, arms wrapping around him like Taehyung might. There is no reassuring hand on his shoulder, resting against his head or gently rubbing his arms as Hoseok might offer. No hands try to hold his, pulling him to lean against a shoulder in silence if Namjoon were here.
Yoongi just stands a foot away, there if he wants him, but not moving forward or touching him. Just waiting.
Letting him know he understands that sometimes being fragile like this can be shattered by just the slightest touch. Being there just in case, the place to come back to after the storm stops inside, is really what matters.
When it stops, Yoongi’s coffee cup is empty, and he’s watching Seokjin carefully, dark eyes fixed as Seokjin finally gets his shaking breaths to even out, hands dropping from a dry face. It’s awful, knowing it happened, the crippling sobs where he can’t move from their intensity, and ending with no sign that it happened at all.
Only the exhaustion remains.
“I think this is why it scares me,” Yoongi says softly, his eyes still so intent as they remain on Seokjin. They’re not judging, just full with all the things that matter: concern, empathy, investment, compassion, the love that exists in any pure form. “I don’t want someone to feel like this. I don’t want to be the one that made that.”
“You won’t,” Seokjin tells him, voice rough and raw. “If you know what it feels like, and you know you don’t want it to happen, you won’t. You’ve already learned.”
Just like so many others times, it clicks, sliding into place that it’s not for Yoongi, but for himself. It’s not for one of them, it’s both.
Mom and dad, two people in a partnership. Checks and balances.
It’s for him.
“So have you,” Yoongi tells him, and only then, after they’ve come where Seokjin needs, where can feel another piece fall into place, does he move closer. It’s not the bear hug Taehyung would wrap him into, or the complete embrace Jimin would end up dragging him into. It’s just enough, not too much that it would smother the small flame that’s once more let itself flicker into life, but enough to protect it from wind and rain.
It starts as just a small touch, a hand to his wrist, then sliding up his arm when Seokjin lets him, gently holding at the elbow, until Seokjin moves, opening up with permission, saying yes, I need you as he shifts and opens his arms. That’s all it is, all it takes, before a careful hug that doesn't hold too tightly, but is the soft stable support Seokjin needs.
The lack of judgment for not being strong enough, for being who he is instead of who he’s supposed to be. Yoongi’s hands resting gently against his back, his breath warm against Seokjin’s shoulder, is acceptance, the words I’m here that are so simple and yet mean so much they are too enormous to speak aloud.
Home is where you are loved.
Even if Seokjin can’t hear them, he knows the words are there, and they mean the world.
*
There are some mornings when the bad mornings don’t seem to exist. When the mornings come when there wasn’t any rest the night before just seem to fade into distant memory.
Mornings when Seokjin wakes up to normal beds, sleeping members all resting as he pulls himself up and can go about his morning routine. Those mornings are better, more frequent, though sometimes forgotten on hard days.
It’s a rare morning when Jeongguk is the one nearly walking into him, barely awake as he trudges from his and Namjoon’s room with one eye open to the shower when Seokjin goes to rouse him. “Morning.”
Jeongguk manages a yawn and a mumbled, “morning, hyung,” before shuffling off. It’s nice though, watching him become a bit more responsible rather than sleeping until the last second when Seokjin has to practically drag him out of bed.
It’s only when Seokjin has meandered back into the kitchen he notices Jimin, half hunched over a bowl of dry cereal, and a slow smile spreads over his face.
“You’re up early.”
“Kookie has a test,” Jimin yawns, and frowns at his cereal. “And kept hogging the blankets last night. Hyung, can’t we just switch Taehyung to Namjoon-hyung’s room and have Jeongguk sleep with me and Hobi?”
“You’d all end up in the same room eventually,” Seokjin laughs, grabbing the milk from the fridge and plopping it down for Jimin. “It wouldn’t make much of a difference.”
“Sure it would,” Jimin grumbles. “Jeongguk wouldn’t keep hogging my bed. He’d have his own.”
“You can always go sleep in Namjoon’s room,” Seokjin suggests, an amused smile on his face as he watches Jimin groggily grab for the milk he’d forgotten in his breakfast. “Take Jeongguk’s bed.”
“Stop trying to solve things when I’m just trying to complain at my cereal, hyung, you’re ruining this experience for me,” Jimin almost whines but ends up smiling when Seokjin laughs. “I’m stealing your bed after you take Jeongguk to school. At least Yoongi-hyung is silent when he sleeps.”
“Go ahead,” Seokjin tells him, getting started on lunch boxes and breakfast toasts. “Just don’t be late for schedules today.”
“I won't, I promise.” Jimin smiles at him, watching as he makes breakfast with slow bites of cereal that gets soggier and soggier with each delay between bites. They chatter a bit, waiting until Jeongguk finally manages his way into the kitchen, sighing that Taehyung was threatening to break into the bathroom if he didn’t hurry up.
That morning, Jeongguk seems a bit brighter, the radio turned down as they drive to school and telling Seokjin stories about school, about his friends, about his teachers, and his assignments. About all the things in his life that mean something, that help him grow.
“We’ll work on your homework after practices today,” Seokjin tells him as Jeongguk gets out of the car. “Just remember to talk to your teacher about the extension you need.”
Jeongguk flashes him a brilliant smile and a small laugh. “I feel like all the other kids have their parents call in for stuff like this,” he says, hand on the door, “but I should just have my teachers call you.”
It’s not the first time there’s been a joke made about this, but it doesn’t feel like a joke, and Seokjin stumbles for a moment before he laughs. “Why would they be calling me? I’m just your hyung.”
“But I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Jeongguk tells him, the rush of words showing it’s unintentional. Raw and honest.
Even through the shock, Seokjin realizes he’s smiling, that the feeling in his chest isn’t too big or too much, and it’s not specific pride, just reassurance. Jeongguk doesn’t give him a chance to reply, cheeks pink as he quickly steps back and calls a “I’m late, bye, hyung!” before the door slams shut. With a final wave, Jeongguk is gone, walking quickly into the school.
From the front seat of his car, Seokjin watches until Jeongguk has disappeared inside, gone from view, and lingering in the soft warmth that had washed over him moments before.
Turning on the signal to merge back into traffic, Seokjin doesn’t turn the radio off, only turning down the volume, as the smile that had started surprised at Jeongguk’s words spreads through him, filling him up. When he arrives back at the garage, facing the gray cement wall, it’s still there, and there’s no pause before he leaves the quiet space and steps back into everyone else’s world.
There are other ratios that matter. Sometimes forgotten, but they exist, much more impressive ratios than 3:1. Some like one in a million, or once in a lifetime. They aren’t immediately apparent, and there’s never a way to know when it happens, but it does.
“Good morning, hyung,” Namjoon greets him as he walks back into the dorm.
“Yes,” Seokjin says, still smiling as he pauses on the way to his room to rouse a presumably sleeping Jimin, curled up quiet and gentle in his bed. “It is.”
When he gets to his room, the bed is made, Yoongi still curled up under his blankets on the other side of the room. His own bed is nicely made in the style Seokjin recognizes as Hoseok’s, a small candy left there with a smiley face drawn on it in Jimin’s style.
It’s the little things that matter, that stick out and can change everything, and Seokjin feels his eyes burn as his smile grows wider, brimming inside and out.
*
I would like to give a huge thanking metaphorical hug (because *hoseok voice* touchy touchy no no) to R, who has been there for me on so many occasions, who I knew I could trust with this before it was ready, and who helped to guide and support me in pulling this. Thank you, for so many things.
Full note can be found on my journal if desired~
Thank you for reading.