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First it’s white hot rage setting fires behind his stubborn eyes. They are silent on the drive home and Namjoon learns all too quickly that silence leaves space and in that space his fury grows.
It hurts
If it took physical form he would rip it from his body, from his stomach, from his heart, would pry it out with eager fingers and through the tearing of his skin he would know that he had chosen the lesser of two evils. If he could turn back the clocks, if he could do something, anything –
There is an itch in his bones and it’s stifling him, there is an itch in his brain and it’s driving him mad. Yoongi is silent next to him and as late night traffic rushes past them Namjoon wishes he could bring the earth to a halt.
They walk from the car to the dorm and everything is silent.
First it’s the smell of Seokjin’s cooking, five boys crammed onto one tiny couch watching horror movies together.
Yoongi is gone before Namjoon can blink and he won’t see him again till the next day, but Jungkook notices (as Jungkook always does) and is filled with questions. Little questions, big questions, awkward questions that Namjoon can only respond to with ‘we weren’t welcome’ as if that could begin to describe the fire threatening to burn him out.
Taehyung scrambles through his laptop and pauses when he finds it, “Oh.”
It takes seconds for them all to crowd him and minutes before they’ve caught up.
“Fucks sake…” Jungkook hisses and in the commotion that his punishment for swearing causes, Namjoon slips away.
First it’s the silence of an abandoned building that Namjoon makes a home of in heavy steps and messy breaths. The path to the studio is empty and silent and this is a Good Thing. Music twitches beneath his fingers and pours like sweat onto the blank slate of his computer screen.
It’s late. Tick tock. His blood roars loud in his ears but the music roars louder.
Outside the clamour of his headphones there is silence, he hears it just beyond the soundscape of his anger and works faster, harder. He will not bite his tongue.
First it’s the turmoil of a brain that always has too much to say. Sentences form, then evaporate before his eyes and as silence encroaches he screams in frustration.
The paper before him doesn’t carry a tune or a rhyme; he forgets how to handle more than the individual pinpoints of the storm. He reaches for the next line and can never quite find it.
It’s like drowning except no breath ever came so infuriatingly easy.
Namjoon closes his eyes and counts to ten, eleven, he’ll go one better. The mic is his friend as ever, too close to not lay lips on and too far to kiss and he knows, he knows, as paper collapses between his palms he knows he knows the words.
First it’s the music that he cannot keep at bay bending rhythm against poetry and the silence beyond that he cannot help but hear. His tongue skips down avenues never built for it because it’s more adaptable than he remembers it being. He recognises half formed sentences made whole and chooses to forget that he ever wrote them out on paper because he’s better than that.
He is so much better than that.
The music stops and Namjoon remembers that he has stopped with it.
First it’s uncertainty. Is it enough? Does it say it all?
He repeats it back to himself, he doesn’t know when he leant the words. They sound vast in the silence, they fill the room and for all he knows the building. They feel like weapons of war.
He types quickly because it suddenly feels like he could get caught. He wonders if the others are still online and if they’ll call Hobeom when they find out or if Hobeom will call them.
He’s one click away from the end, it feels like jumping and expecting to fly, it feels like mischief in the dark behind your parents' backs, it feels like justice.
Click.
First it’s silence, all consuming and omnipresent. He tries to scream but it feels like all the words have left him.
First it’s hearing the blood slow in his ears till his heart can manage again and his eyes behold the rising of the sun.
First it’s white hot rage burning paths through his erratic consciousness, then it all fades.
Then it all fades
Just let it go
And it’s gone