Chapter Text
when he was in his second-to-last year of high school, dylan had discovered his passion for music. music was the only thing that could quiet the chaos of his mind. he could lose himself in it for hours, he could use it to get out all the complicated, built-up feelings he had. when you have nobody to talk to, nobody that can understand you, sometimes talking through the music is the only way to fight the loneliness, the only way to say what needs to be said.
music had been the first thing that made sense to dylan when nothing else did. it had begun with writing. he’d had a school assignment to analyse some song lyrics that sent him down a deep internet rabbit hole. he found artists breaking down their writing process, and one video showed a rapper breaking down a verse line by line, how the metaphors represented his feelings and situations in his life.
he opened a blank document on his laptop and started typing. he wrote thoughts about his day, feelings he couldn’t even begin to name, frustrations he had with the world. he started fitting them all together like pieces of a puzzle, and suddenly things started to click for him. that night, he stayed up writing until 4am, his world narrowing to just his laptop screen and the words that were finally making sense of some of what went on up in his head.
he became addicted to it. he craved that state of hyperfocus where the noise in his head quieted into one single purpose. for the first time in his life, he was actually good at something. it made him feel worthy.
he would be at his desk from dusk until dawn, crafting beats and scribbling down rhymes and metaphors. he knew he should have been doing his schoolwork, but he didn’t care. this was the only thing that grounded him, the only thing that made him feel like he wasn’t completely lost to this world.
he grew tired from the lack of sleep, but he found he couldn’t sleep without this new habit anyway; the silence of his room was somehow louder than the music he created, filled with his relentless thoughts.
the consequence of this, however, was a slow but predictable collapse. his grades, which had never been that strong anyway, plummeted in just about every subject but music. his parents scolded him, letting him know they were immensely disappointed. they didn’t agree with his wanting to pursue music. they wanted a doctor, an engineer, a son with a respectable job.
dylan knew, beyond a doubt, that he would never be able to commit to that kind of life, it was a cage his brain would never fit inside.
his parents’ lectures turned into arguments, which faded into a cold and resentful silence that settled over their house. he lost himself more and more trying to please them, twisting himself into knots to try and become the son they wanted. but it never worked. he wanted to make them proud, but he just couldn’t get himself to focus on the subjects that mattered to them. their resentment grew, and his own shame grew with it.
his last year of high school was his loneliest. he had given up on trying to make friends. they always left once they saw the real him; the forgetfulness, the anger, the need to withdraw when it all got too much. his parents left him alone, save for the shouting that erupted each time a report card arrived.
so he just kept writing. he poured every ounce of his loneliness, every shred of shame, into his music. he started posting his songs on soundcloud. he hoped that if anyone else felt like him, live like him, trapped in a brain that would never shut up, they would find comfort in his words and not feel as alone as he did.
the day he received his final high school grades was one of the worst days of his life. he had stared at the piece of paper in his hands, the paper that held the confirmation of his future. he had failed several important subjects. standing there on the school steps, it felt like his whole world had come crashing down. he had tried so hard, burning himself out day after day, night after night, and yet he had still failed. he really couldn’t do anything right.
when he got home and showed them, his parents had flown off the rail. their voices surrounded him in an angry overlapping cacophony. why couldn’t he just try harder? why was he so stupid? so lazy? all the other kids managed fine. did they make a mistake in how they raised him? where did they go wrong? with every furious question hurled at him, dylan’s shame grew, thickening in his throat until he couldn’t speak.
then the final blow came. his mother told him she refused to acknowledge that she could have a child so incapable, she’d rather have no child at all. she had disowned him that day. so dylan left. he walked out with nothing but the clothes on his back and the sting of his mother’s words following him down the street.
however, this day was simultaneously the best day of his life. somehow, the universe had decided to look upon him a little kindly after the harrowing afternoon he’d just had.
he found himself in his favourite music cafe, nursing a cold coffee and dissociating as he tried to figure out his next step now that he had nothing. a call from an unknown number came through on his phone. he almost ignored it, but something in his gut told him that he needed to take that call, and so, he answered.
the voice on the other end was an employee from oner. everyone in the music industry knew oner. it was a company that held big names, they could take nobodies and turn them into somebodies overnight. the caller said that a producer of theirs had come across his profile on soundcloud. they were impressed by his talent and potential, they wanted him in their company.
dylan listened as they promised him real lessons in music production, in rapping. he knew he didn’t really have a choice. music was his only route in life, and now, he had nowhere else to go.
so that evening, he moved into the oner dorms for trainees. he arrived at the door with only his backpack, his laptop and a dream to finally be somebody worth something.
~~~
the first trainee he had met had been nano. he was still in school himself, a ball of endless energy who never seemed to stop talking. he was dylan’s opposite. friendly, easily excitable, could make friends with anyone and everyone. his stories always went at a million miles an hour, but that was okay, so did dylan’s brain.
nano didn’t seem at all bothered when dylan zoned out mid-sentence, or when he gave blunt responses. he just kept talking, smiling, pulling dylan into conversations no matter how terrible dylan was at them.
dylan watched his bright and boundless enthusiasm and felt very protective. he hoped nano could keep that innocence and happy-go-lucky attitude for as long as possible. this was an industry known to crush souls like that. dylan wouldn’t let that happen.
a small flame of hope flickered within dylan. maybe this could be the start of a friendship he’d been so desparate to have all his life.
then pepper came along. pepper was grounding. he was calm, kind, genuine with a maturity that commanded respect. he never got angry at dylan for messing things up. he didn’t get upset if dylan forgot to reply to him for days. instead, he would just quietly check in with him, to make sure everything was okay.
pepper had a steadiness to him that dylan envied, a way of existing in the world that seemed too effortless to be real. whenever dylan spiralled or snapped, pepper just waited. he was patient with him, completely unfased.
then he met thame. thame knew music, almost as well as dylan. he would sit in the studio with him for hours on end. they could talk about production and lyrics and everything they loved about songwriting, and never get bored.
thame didn’t mind when dylan got obsessive over a single sound, tweaking it endlessly until it was perfect. he understood the need for precision, letting a track consume you until nothing else existed. finally, someone on the same wavelength, even if only a little.
dylan liked thame. more than liked. thame had been the first person who felt like a real creative partner, someone who matched dylan’s intensity and didn’t flinch away. someone who was patient, who didn’t make him feel like he was too much. and so, dylan latched onto him.
he found himself noticing things. he noticed the way thame always chewed on his pen whilst concentrating, how he’d nod along when a beat was just right. dylan would think about their next studio session days in advance, the anticipation of that collaborative space, a bright light that came after the gruelling routine of training. it was an intensity he was familiar with, the same all-or-nothing focus he’d always had, but he’d never directed that at a person before.
the strength of that focus confused him. for a little while, he lay awake at night wondering if that warmth he felt in his chest when thame laughed with him was something more. those kind of thoughts were all kinds of messy and complicated, though. he decided it wasn’t worth the mental energy to figure it out. his attachment was deep, but it was simpler to say it was a close friendship built on the only language that ever made sense to him.
he cared about thame, deeply. but sometimes, a quiet jealousy sat in his stomach. he was jealous of how tahme could just decide he was done for the day and walk out of the studio, leaving a song half-finihsed. dylan didn’t have that ability, he had to see a song through from start to finish before he could rest.
he was jealous, too, of how easy everything seemed for thame. everyone loved him. he was oner’s ace. he could out-sing pretty much anyone, he could dance well, he was handsome without even trying. thame was everything that dylan felt he wasn’t, which only made the pull of his presence that much more painful.
over the next few months, the four trainees fell into a rhythm. mornings for vocal practice, afternoons for choreo. nighttime found them back in the studio, huddled around a laptop. in their shared exhaustion, something began to loosen in dylan. he stopped waiting for the moment he would say or do the wrong thing and make them leave. he started to believe that their presence was a given, not a temporary loan that the universe could strip from him at any moment.
so when oner told the four that they would be debuting together, they were ecstatic. dylan wanted to hope so badly that this was it, he’d done it. maybe he could become friends with these people he’d come to actually enjoy the company of.
from that moment on, their lives became inextricably linked. they lived together, played together, ate every meal side-by-side, travelled the country in each other’s pockets. every minute was spent intertwined. slowly, brick-by-brick, dylan built up a trust in these people he now called friends.
then came jun.
for some reason, oner decided that four people was not enough, and one more personality needed to be added to complete the perfect group. loud, boisterous, charming. a personality that clashed with dylan’s in every conceivable way. he’d just gotten used to the balance of the other three, found a rhythm there, and now it was all changed again.
jun burst into their lives like a storm. there was too much energy, too much presence, too much of everything that dylan usually avoided. on his first day, he’d walked into the practice room and immediately started talking to everyone like they’d known each other for years, something dylan had never been able to do. he’d teased dylan within the first ten minutes, grinning when dylan had given him an unimpressed stare in return.
so at first, dylan truly hated him. he avoided jun, snapped at him, closed himself off as best he could. he builts walls as high as he could make them, impossible for anyone to climb. but jun was relentless, like a steady drip of water on a rock, slowly, over weeks and months, wearing him down. eventually, dylan had no choice but to let him in.
his relationship with jun was completely unlike what he had with the other members. they argued almost daily, even over the tiniest things. it became known throughout the company that they were the tom and jerry of the group, that they never got along. some staff even thought they genuinely hated each other.
and it may have seemed that way to the outside eye, but this was not the case. despite tearing each other apart at any given opportunity, a fierce but unspoken loyalty hd taken route. they still cared about each other, even if they’d never admit it out loud.
that didn’t mean that jun didn’t piss him off. sometimes the noise, the constant chatter, the way jun was always in his line of sight, was just too much. dylan found him a little too much to cope with. on those days, he’d snap. he didn’t mean to, but sometimes he just couldn’t control it, his frustration boiling over before he could even stop it.
so, even with the insufferable jun added to the mix, dylan hoped, really hoped, against every part of him that expected betrayal, that this chaotic group of boys could become his new family.
~~~
>>back to the present<<
the sound of the concert hall came flooding back in. the screams of fans, the pounding beat, four other boys exerting themselves to their full extent beside him. his mind was locked-in, hyperfocused. his mind went quiet in a way that it only did during performances. his body moved almost on its on, carried by his muscle memory. but something was wrong. everything was wrong.
thame was leaving. they were pretending. it was all a lie. they were performing like nothing had changed, like the group wasn’t fracturing with every passing day.
dylan could feel the tension they were all trying so hard to hide, to not let the fans see. nobody was making eye contact with thame. nano was smiling brightly, just as he always did, but his eyes lacked the spark they had always had. pepper was calm, but his expression was a little too fixed.
and jun kept coming closer to him than the choreography required, not touching but near enough that dylan was constantly aware of his presence, a constant corner in his vision. dylan didn’t get why. did jun think dylan was going to mess up? was he trying to cover for him, anticipating mistakes he hadn’t even made yet? probably. dylan always made mistakes.
his thoughts spiralled as his body kept moving. he hated that jun was watching him so closely. he hated that he noticed how jun was watching. he hated that part of him actually found it steadying rather than suffocating.
during the chorus, the choreography moved him directly opposite thame. he kept his expression controlled and detached. he didn’t look thame in the eye, he couldn’t. if he did, he’d have to acknowledge what was happening. his mask would crack, and he didn’t know if he would be able to put it back together.
as he turned away from thame, jun caught his eye. he gave a tiny nod as dylan hit the counts perfectly, so small it could have been imagined.
dylan pretended not to see it.
as the song ended, for a couple of seconds, everything held still. the final pose, the ending fairy. their arms remained extended, heads tilted, smiles plastered on their faces for the cameras. the fans erupted in screams and cheers.
then the music stopped.
dylan dropped his arms to his sides immediately. the moment the stage lights dimmed, he was moving, turning his back on the screaming crowd and walking off. his heart pounded as he left the stage. he didn’t wait. jun, nano and pepper fell into step behind him, their own fake smiles gone, the silence between them heavy.
behind them, thame stayed, watching as his members left without him. he stood alone under the spotlight as the opening notes of his solo began to play. this was the first time they had left him on stage. the first time they hadn’t all walked off together as a single unit.
as he reached the wings, the realisation hit dylan like a ton of bricks. thame was performing alone now. he didn’t need them. the group was already breaking.
dylan kept walking, his steps quickening with every thought. his brain was relentless, it just wouldn’t leave him alone. it battered him with a cold truth he couldn’t escape.
of course thame left. i was always too much for people. even him.
it truly made sense that thame would choose to leave, that mars would fall apart, that nothing dylan ever tried to hold onto would ever stay.
~~~
backstage was chaos of bodies and props and incoherent instructions overlapping each other. cameras were being pushed into his face from every angle. the roar of the crowd was gone, replaced by a jumble of orders and movement that made no sense.
dylan’s skin began to crawl and his heart began to race. a wrongness spread from his chest to his fingertips. his breathing became shallow, each gasp too small to fill his lungs as his performance high crashed, leaving him feeling hollow and shaky. his hands found his sleeves, fiddling as his leg bounced on the floor and his bottom lip caught between his teeth, pulling at the skin.
he needed to get out, to leave. he needed quiet, he needed-
“dylan.”
jun’s voice cut through the static. dylan couldn’t face him. if he stopped moving now, if he let jun see him, he’d break, everything would spill out. the anger, the grief, the overwhelming truth that he should have known better than to hope for anything to last. it would all break through that fragile dam he’d built.
the thought of jun figuring that all out sent a fresh wave of panic through him. he felt faint, the edges of his vision blurred. he had to go. now.
he started walking, weaving through crowds of people with his head down and his shoulders rigid. his hands trembled around a water bottle he didn’t even remember picking up.
someone called his name again- maybe jun, maybe someone else. he didn’t stop. he shoved open a heavy fire door into a quieter corridor, the noise fading behind him. he kept walking until he found an empty dressing room and slipped inside.
a tv monitor displayed on the wall was silently replaying their performance. dylan stood in front of it, his breathing still uneven. he watched himself intently, his eyes searching the screen for the tiniest mistake, the smallest crack that would prove he was falling apart inside.
to the untrained eye, he looked normal, though. he looked like he could handle things. no wonder nobody ever knew when something was wrong. he kept staring, caught in a strange awe of the version of himself that worked, that functioned, that held himself together no matter what was breaking underneath the surface.
a shift in the light broke his focus. dylan turned his head to see jun standing in the doorway, backlit by the corridor, just watching him. had he followed him the whole way?
dylan spun back to the monitor, choosing to ignore him. he didn’t know what he would say to him if he even tried.
jun didn’t approach him, nor did he speak. he just stayed in the doorway, a quiet presence that dylan couldn’t bring himself to send away, but couldn’t bring himself to face, either.
dylan watched himself on the screen until the images started to blur together, until his own pale reflection in the dark edges of the monitor was the only thing he could see clearly.
he wondered which version of him the other members saw. the one on the screen who held it all together, or the one in this room who was already coming apart.