Work Text:
Sometimes, he just needs to shut down.
Clap down the lid of his laptop, unplug the speakers from the faint but ever present white noise they produce, even when they’re switched off. To lean back in his seat instead of crunching his back into a position that is doing more harm than good, hunched over lyrics strewn around the desk, or staring blindly at the taunting blinking cursor on his screen. The screen that is too white, too empty. To turn the lightswitch and call it a day, leave the studio and go to his bed, to sleep and shut down, revel in the soft darkness of his covers and the gentle sound of people already far away in their dreams nearby.
Sometimes, with all the might he can muster to want this, Yoongi just can’t do it. The white of his screen screams at him until spots float over his eyes and it becomes an even louder mess for his mind. Snowblindness, someone had once called it when he described the feeling. He had huffed at the irony of it all. Snow was supposed to numb, to break sound, to dampen smell, and minimalise colours. Not in this case, not now. It only shouts at him in the form of a blank page, and with a grunt of frustration he manages to tear his eyes away to look at the ceiling. It’s also white, and when he blinks he thinks he sees the same splotchy blots of colour dancing across the tiles. If only he could draw.. Pull those colours from wherever they appear and make them stay put, somewhere out of his sight.
Yoongi runs a hand through his hair, feeling the beanie on his head slide away with the movement to fall onto the wooden floor of his studio. He can’t be bothered to pick it up now, what is the point anyway. Sooner or later he’ll relent and pack his stuff, move back to his room and sleep, but now is not the time for that. There’s tracks to be finalised, sounds to be perfected, words to be conjured up from nowhere and put into a form where it all blends together like one glorious, intricate and infuriating puzzle. Gods.. even the skin on his hands rubs his face the wrong way when passing over his cheeks to his hair, feeling dry and rough from not eating or drinking enough and an overzealous air conditioner. Screw the beanie.
So this is frustration, again, he realises a little bit too late. That moment when whatever he does is going to end badly, whatever he’ll want to put into sound or word is going to sound wrong. Yoongi hates this moment with a passion, because it starts off a whole sequence of things that are just.. Worse. He doesn’t mean to, but it always happens regardless. He knows creating things works this way, but he is also very headstrong and used to fighting against himself, so he won’t give in, not yet, and he inwardly curses himself for never knowing what side to chose at a time like this. The logical parts says to call it quits, stop, put everything down and just sleep. The loyalty in him says to keep going, he needs to finish this, everyone is waiting on him, on the new album, the new sounds, the new bits of genius Suga from BTS. The mind says, hold on, wait a minute, you know how this works, stop it you stupid stubborn bastard. It sounds a little bit like Namjoon, how about that..
His insecurity makes things worse, splitting that side of the equation into more options, one where he needs to prove himself, and one where he knows his friends, his brothers, will want him to sleep and give it time to perfect, that he is only human just like them. He’ll tell Hoseok to stop practising after finding him in front of the mirror at the crack of dawn and to get his ass to bed without a second thought. He’ll put the larger cut of meat on Jimins plate automatically, or lean his chin on his shoulder at a dull moment to complain it’s too bony to be comfortable. Hell, he’ll even let Jungkook play a little longer on his PC, knowing that while the youngster pretends to be making lyrics, he has a tab open with the last leaks from Blizzard on new characters or whatever. It’s not like they’ll notice these things, he himself hardly does, but they’re there. If he can let the others be themselves, why so hard on himself? But the thought never enters his mind consciously. He is Min Yoongi, he has to prove himself, for too many reasons and doubts he could ever count.
He slaps both hands over his face, groaning softly at nothing and everything at the same time, but even this simple gesture comes with something else, a soft tapping on the wood below his chair, a forced attempt at a rythem. Yoongi can’t keep it up however, and it blends messily with the honk of some idiot driving outside, interrupting whatever pathetic attempt at a flow he was trying to get to. He tries again, tapping the toes of his sneakers against the wood, trying to find the pattern in the sound, to force some sort of inspiration out of his limbs if his mind can’t do it.
Outside the room, Taehyungs butt collides with his studio door. It’s shut, but the crash still jolts the door handles with a good rattle, followed by a muted slap on the boys shoulder. Namjoon, he assumes. Yoongi almost scowls at himself how he can tell it was the grey haired kid, simply by the sound of excess cloth against the glass door, draped over his body like he always seems to favour, and the low mischievous rumble of a hushed chuckle.
Yoongi drops his hands by his chair, gazing up at the ceiling where the spots have taken up residence, for now, moving in awful yellows and blues across his vision. Rolling his head to the side, he finds them on the wall too. This is madness.. How is this a focus, isn’t a focus supposed to happen when a place is quiet (which it sort of is..), and void of visual input (which it is, all his stuff is mostly behind him), and lacking any sort of distraction?
He knows this, he knows this, he knows how to deal with this. Why isn’t he doing what he needs to do, why is he still going, why can’t he make the choices that are so obviously laid out in front of him? Stop working, go to sleep. No, keep working, it needs to be finished. Stop, the light from the screen is making everything worse. It can’t be helped, we need to push through this. Have you drank anything at all in the past two hours? Why is this pen leaking all over my fingernails, oh god.. I can’t get it off, why are my hands so rough, did Taehyung hide the lotion again, where is the damned bottle?
He immediately gets up, the back of his mind adding the popping of his shoulders and back to the mayhem that’s already whirling around in there. Sure, why not.
Finding nothing in his own bag to either distract him from the chaos, nor the bottle he was hunting for in the first place, he does find Hoseoks duffel bag, covered in an embarassing smattering of dust and fluff. Ignoring the voice to not nose around in other people’s belongings, he sticks a hand in to rummage around the bag, finding nothing but some discarded packaging of God knows what, and what feels like something soft and smooth. Huh.. Pulling it out he finds the item to be one of Hoseoks old scarves, one of the thick heavy ones he used to wear in the dead of winter.
Yoongi runs a hand over the checkered fabric, it still looks like new, maybe the dancer had forgotten he had it in this bag, or that said bag was in this studio. Everyone knew not to stick their heads into the studio when nobody was inside, or face Yoongi’s wrath, and everyone respected that unspoken rule.
He sank back into his chair and leaned his head back, scarf draped over his lap, thumbs idly brushing across the soft cotton surface. For some reason, it seemed to be calming his head down a little bit, having something to focus on instead of letting all thoughts run rampant. It didn’t help those annoying flecks against the ceiling one bit though, and in a moment of utter not caring about things anymore, he threw the scarf over his eyes and nose, blocking out the spots by soft force.
The smell of Hoseok immediately assaulted his nose, but Yoongi didn’t mind at all. He’d always known the man to smell good, earthy.. Even if he was sweaty and disgusting from dance practice, there was always a fresh tang to him, and he guessed it was just the way Hoseok smelled. Sort of like a forest, he imagined. A forest that was wet with fresh rain, and there’s that particular earthy smell that he only found in autumn, just before the cold took all scents from the forests near his parents’ home. No.. it wasn’t just that, he realised. There was also something specifically warm and inviting to it, bark in hot summer sunlight, his brain decided.
Yoongi chuckled at himself, sound muffled into the cloth over his nose. Ridiculous, Hoseok did not smell like a forest. If anything, people described him as the sun, he’d read so often in comments on their social media. Would the sun smell like the forest? Nah, it probably smelled like heat, or coal, or sulphur. He laughed harder this time, coming to realise that sulphur practically smelled like farts. The sun was a fart bomb. Hoseok was farts? What. He forcefully willed his brain to stop spinning off into these random directions for no reason. A last fleeting thought he noticed passing by was a wonder if this was how it was to be in Taehyungs mind when he had had too much sugar. Yoongi hoped not..
The forest in his mind worked much better to calm him, he found. The darkness of the scarf covering his eyes was enough to pull him into a warm, soft lull. It came slowly, but it was there, and he welcomed it, deciding on this being a form of meditation. He had his eyes closed, shutting away the colours, and he tried to focus on his breathing.
Breathe in.., count to three, and out, count to three, and in, count to three. Every inhale brought with him the scent of Hoseok, and the now inevitably tied vision in his mind of a forest, and he let himself drift off in the image, thinking of how there’d be no sound except the faint rustle of needles of pine trees. The soft moss, warmed by the sun, under the back of his hands if he were to lie down on the ground. Faint, gentle wind flowing over his face when he did, eyes closing in his mind as well to relish in the tranquility. He let his mind craft a world to go to for just a short moment, while he had his eyes closed and his face warmed by softness, the forest image growing bigger around him, spreading as if he was the center, grounding him to the moment there and then, even if his physical body was in a completely different place. Plants rose up around him, colouring the thought in just greens and faint specks of gentle broken whites and muted blues. Ferns grew beyond his personal clearing, and above him rose strong, tall pine trees, swaying in the wind. Beyond them, more of them, filling the image with just greens, until they spilled over onto other clearings, with white sand dunes and tall, tough grass.
Gentle fingers curled around his shoulders, so careful it may have been a leaf falling down on him. Yoongi smiled and rolled his head to the side, exposing his throat to what he hoped his mind would grant him beyond his control, another leaf to float down and fall, just like he was sinking into the depths of dreams. It seemed his wish was granted, and he revelled in the barely there touch on his collarbone.
He faintly registered a low sound, but he decided to ignore it now that he was finally starting to relax, his mind conjuring up someone pulling him into a careful hug from behind, where warm hands covered his always cold ones. It made him feel at peace, as if he could fully be himself without worrying about anything, without losing himself to thoughts he knew were toxic and destructive and sadly, too present most of the times. No, not this time.
Threading his fingers through the others’, he sank lower into his chair where he could, inhaling the deep green calming scent he’d been clinging to for what must’ve seemed like hours, but in reality had been nothing more than mere minutes.
Soft hands hesitated, and then folded around Yoongi’s with more confidence, tugging the chair a little bit backwards for a firmer hold. A thumb stroked the webbing on the hand beneath it, idly and caring, another came up to brush the sharp angle of his jaw. The pad moved towards his chin, only to be joined by a whole hand to turn his face the other way. He followed easily, melting into the gesture and the care it seemed to speak of, the touch so light and fond it was as if it wasn’t the scarf anymore that gave him warmth, but an entire person did. Only vaguely, far away, did a little thought rear it’s head to pipe and shout to wonder who it was, but the pad of a finger moved over his lower lip to sweep away the notion.
He never even knew his imagination was strong enough that he could taste the forest too, when soft lips closed over his.