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The beads of sweat rolled down the back of his neck, his forehead, his back, and his stomach as he panted for air.
These were the days he wondered why he did it. Why he’d wanted this so badly...
Gasping to breathe, he leaned forward. With his hands on his knees, his body was so close to falling to the ground. But he couldn’t let it; he knew that if he let himself sit or lie down, he wouldn’t get back up.
He’d spent all afternoon in the studio with Jimin practicing this dance. It was originally supposed to be with Hoseok, but he hadn’t been feeling well so Jimin was quick to volunteer to take his place. Namjoon was fairly certain that Hoseok was struggling with an injury. His back had given him trouble in the past, but he hadn’t admitted to anything yet. Namjoon knew he needed to confront him about it, but he hadn’t decided how, nor had he found the time.
He took another particularly deep breath, mentally kicking himself for neglecting this.
Then there was Jimin himself. Jimin who was losing weight by the hour. Jimin who wasn’t eating. Jimin who was so desperate to spend time in the studio every second he got to the point that Namjoon had to force him to go home with him. He knew how hypocritical he was being though, as he himself snuck back here once the others had gone to bed.
But he, unlike the others, had a good reason.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t nail this dance.
He’d never been a strong dancer, and he’d never had hangups about being placed in the back so the stronger members could shine brightly in his place. But this choreography had them all in a line, so he definitely not be doing any hiding this time.
The song was set to debut in three days. And he simply could not get the moves down.
So here he was, now steadying himself on the mirrored wall, gasping for breath, practicing at 3:00 in the morning.
His thoughts returned to Jimin as he thought of how the younger boy had explained one part of the dance to him. It had made so much sense when Jimin said it and then showed him, but now it all just seemed so confusing.
He needed to talk to him too about his weight loss. He’d tried before, but Jimin had always shrugged him off, stating that he was following their trainer’s prescribed diet. Namjoon knew he was lying, but he wasn’t sure how to approach him about it. He hadn’t had time to think about it.
There was also Taehyung who had gone to see his family the week before and returned looking more sullen than Namjoon had ever seen him look. Normally when Taehyung got upset he would get over it in a couple of days, or he’d go to Jimin for help and things would resolve themselves. But this time, things were not getting better, and Namjoon knew he needed to talk to him as well.
There was so much to do and so little time to do it.
Another deep breath. One thing at a time.
He reached for the small remote in his pocket, restarting the song.
The beat kicked in, and he took his position, closing his eyes and hearing Jimin’s words.
Feel the beat, hyung, let it resonate inside you. Let it carry your movements.
Easy for you to say, Jimin. You have so much natural talent.
He could never resent the boy, he would only ever be proud of him.
So he tried. He tried to feel the rhythm in his limbs as he began moving his head along with the music. It felt heavy and difficult, but he pressed on. He glanced up at himself in the mirror to see how the movements looked and instantly felt nauseous.
Seeing himself in mirror was bad enough, but watching himself dance was just awful.
He’d always hated the mirrors in this room. He understood their purpose, but it didn’t make him dislike them any less. At least with the other members around he could watch them instead of himself. Most of the time he could set himself in the proper mindframe and objectively judge his own movements, but right now it wasn’t working.
He tried to press on, closing his eyes again and trying to keep his movements sharp and precise. But he couldn’t focus. And he hated himself for it.
Never fucking good enough.
Ugly.
Stupid.
A terrible dancer.
Can’t sing.
Can hardly rap.
How can he call himself a leader?
He’d be better off not leaving the studio.
The mixture of comments he’d heard over the years raced through his head and his hands flew to his ears as he dropped to his knees. He slumped against the wall. It was all true though, wasn’t it?
Fuck.
Days like this, when he was exhausted and not making the progress he wanted, that he believed it all. He knew it was the truth, but on good days, he told himself he could pull himself out of that. He could be better. Not today, though.
He felt so useless, so inadequate.
He had no right to be in the position he was in. He had no right to lead this extraordinary team. All he did was drag them down. A part of him wondered why he was still here? Why hadn’t he been kicked out? Why hadn’t he just left?
Because he still wanted to be there.
Even if he had no right, he wanted to stand on the stage with them. His best friends. His brothers.
But what right did he have? Why did he feel so entitled?
Hands dropped from his head. He forced his eyes open.
He stared into the mirror in front of him, dragging himself to his feet.
There in front of him was everything he hated. Everything he was.
The fire raced through him, burning as it went, the smoke suffocated him. His eyes watered and his pulse raced through his head. He was breathing quickly, gasping for air once more, glaring daggers into his own eyes.
He couldn’t do this right now. He needed to walk away, to go outside and calm down.
But he couldn’t break the stare with himself, as though if he looked away first, he’d lost.
But who was he kidding? He’d already lost.
Before he knew what he was doing, the image of himself was raising its fist, slamming his arm forward into his face.
The glass shattered around him, loud and piercing. He was falling to his feet.
He hardly recognized the scream that tore itself from his throat, as though ripping the sensitive flesh as it was carried out of him and into the room.
He looked down and saw blood.
And smiled.
His pulse slowed, his shoulders relaxed, and a slow breath left his lungs.
His eyes were glued to his right hand which was now covered in blood. He knew he should be feeling the pain, but he wasn’t. He felt nothing. All sense of emotion, feeling, hatred, guilt, all lost. It was like he’d been absorbed into the image in the mirror when it had hit him. Like it had destroyed him. It made him question whether any of this was even real. Did he punch the mirror? Or did it come from the other side?
Somewhere, way off in the distance he thought he heard a door slam.
Someone was calling his name.
It was like he was under water. Like he couldn’t hear properly.
Then there were hands on him.
And the person calling his name was right next to him.
“NAMJOON!”
He broke out of his trance and turned his head to find Yoongi.
White hair. Face paler than pale; paler than normal. He looked panic stricken.
“Yoongi-hyung?”
“Namjoon what happened? Are you ok?”
The smaller boy’s hand jumped to Namjoon’s face as he checked him over, feeling his forehead and then the pulse in his neck.
“You’re bleeding!”
Namjoon looked down, as though it were news to him.
A snicker escaped his mouth, and he turned his hand in his lap, finally feeling the burn from his fingertips, through his knuckles, the back of his hand and up his wrist.
Yoongi looked up, his movements lightening fast. He grabbed the towel namjoon had been using earlier and wrapped it around his hand, pressing down hard and eliciting a soft whimper from the other.
“Is it both hands? Or just one?” Yoongi asked, still sounding frantic.
Namjoon raised his left hand slowly, looking it over.
He couldn’t feel anything.
There was definitely blood, but he wasn’t sure if it was cut or just covered in blood from his other hand.
Yoongi took his hand from him, looking it over and wiping the blood with his own sleeve, examining closely for any signs of injury.
“Does this hand hurt?” Yoongi gently held Namjoon’s left hand, pressing on and off, watching for signs of pain in his face.
“I don’t think so,” Namjoon finally spoke. His voice sounded hollow and lifeless.
“Does anything else hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Namjoon,” Yoongi said firmly, looking him straight in the eye. “Did you hit your head?”
Namjoon looked up into Yoongi’s serious looking face and immediately felt guilty for worrying the other. Finally he shook his head. “No, sorry, I’m ok.”
Yoongi leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Namjoon, holding him tight and closing his own eyes. “You scared me,” he whispered.
“Sorry,” Namjoon said quietly, closing his own eyes and feeling his hyung’s warmth.
“Come on,” Yoongi said quietly, “you’re sitting in glass. You need to get up.” He pulled away from Namjoon, stood up and offered him his hand. The other took it, slowly rising to his full height, towering over Yoongi slightly. He led him out of the room, closing the door behind them, and depositing him on the couch in the small vocal studio. The studio that contained no mirrors.
“Can I see?” Yoongi asked, resting his hands on top of the blood-soaked towel. “Do we need to go to the hospital?”
Namjoon shook his head, but offered his hand.
Yoongi carefully unwrapped the towel, ready to apply pressure once more if the bleeding continued.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I heard you leave. Then when I went downstairs, I found Jimin at the door ready to chase after you,” Yoongi said, dabbing at the cuts on Namjoon’s hand with the towel. “Hang on.” He wrapped the hand back up and set it in Namjoon’s lap. He jumped up from the ground and ducked in the bathroom, pulling out the large first aid kid from under the sink. They spent hours here and someone was always falling or getting hurt. In fact, it was usually Namjoon. This wasn’t the first time Yoongi had patched him up.
“Jimin?”
“Yeah. He said you were having a rough day and would probably head back here to practice more. He wanted to come but I told him to go back to bed. I don’t think he’s eating or resting much these days,” Yoongi said, pulling the towel off again and tearing open an antiseptic wipe.
“I don’t think so either,” Namjoon said, hissing slightly in pain as Yoongi pressed a bit too hard. “Thanks for sending him back to bed.”
“There’s glass in your hand. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“Can you get it out?” Namjoon asked, leaning over to look at the wound.
“I’ll try,” Yoongi said pulling a pair of forceps from the first aid kit.
“What happened?” Yoongi finally asked, having pulled a couple larger pieces of glass from Namjoon’s knuckles.
Namjoon sighed in response, the pain having fully returned in both his hand and his head. His mind felt cloudy, like the volcano had erupted and now it was just littered with ash. “I just… lost it I guess,” he finally said.
“Any reason in particular?” Yoongi didn’t look up, but continued to poke around in the large wound between Namjoon’s knuckles.
“I have no idea,” he said. It was partly true. He didn’t know what had really set him off.
“Was it the dance?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Jimin said you were struggling with it,” Yoongi said.
“Traitor,” Namjoon whispered under his breath. “But yeah, probably.”
“You looked fine in practice today. If you’re comparing yourself to Jimin, you should just give up now. None of us can dance with his grace and elegance, not even Hoseok.”
Namjoon sighed again. Maybe he was expecting too much from himself. But then on the other hand, if he started thinking like that, he’d end up letting himself go.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Yoongi finally looked up from where he was kneeling on the ground to make eye contact with Namjoon.
“About Jimin?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi said, setting the forceps down and pulling out a small bottle of saline.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Taehyung too, am I right?”
“He’s seemed so down since he got back. I need to talk to both of them. Hoseok as well.”
“You think he’s injured, right?”
“Can you please get out of my head?” Namjoon said as Yoongi squirted the cleansing solution onto his hand.
“I notice these things too. If I can see them, I know you can as well,” Yoongi said matter of factly. “Can you move your fingers?”
Namjoon tried, but winced as he did. His face was scrunched up in pain, but he was able to move each digit.
“Where does it hurt?”
He pointed to the spot where his thumb connected to his hand down into his wrist. “I can move it, but it fricken hurts.”
“I’m not surprised. Look how swollen it is,” Yoongi said, his fingers tracing down the side of Namjoon’s hand. “As for the other three, you’re right about Hoseok, Jin-hyung got it out of him tonight.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to bother you tonight because you seemed stressed enough, but his back is acting up again. He’s going to go see his physiotherapist tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Namjoon said as Yoongi began applying a dressing to his hand. “Well, not great that he’s injured, but good that he’s going to get it checked.”
“I think you should try talking to Taehyung, I’m sure Jimin has tried, but see if you can do anything to help? You know how he is with his parents.”
“Hm,” Namjoon hummed in response, using his left hand to steady a piece of the bandage as Yoongi began winding gauze around his wrist.
“I want to talk to Jimin. I know you’ve tried, so let me give it a shot.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I know you mean well, but I don’t think the comments about eating healthy in front of the other members are really getting through to him. I haven’t said anything yet, but I’m going to try talking to him alone about it. That ok?”
“What? Yeah, of course.”
Yoongi finished the bandage, taping it off before tossing the supplies back into the bag. He held Namjoon’s hand gently in his.
“I know you’re the leader of BTS, but that doesn’t mean you’re solely responsible for taking care of us all,” Yoongi said.
“Clearly,” Namjoon said, gesturing to his hand with a small smile.
“If you’re bending over backwards to hold all of us up, what’s going to happen when you fall down?”
“Like tonight, you mean? I’m going to make a huge mess of our studio and of myself, that’s what,” Namjoon joked.
Yoongi laughed a bit, but resumed a serious tone. “Let us help. Don’t try to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders alone. You’re only going to end up getting hurt,” he patted Namjoon’s hand gently. “We’re a strong team. All you have to do is ask.”
“Thanks, Yoongi-hyung,” Namjoon said, taking his hand back and examining the bandages. “You’re getting pretty good at this.”
“Practice makes perfect, I suppose.”
Namjoon laughed at this.
“Are you ready to back to the dorm?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
They clambered up the stairs of their dorm together, Namjoon in front likely only due to the longer length of his legs.
“Ah crap,” Namjoon said, “Taehyung is gaming again.”
Just as Yoongi was about to ask how he knew, a loud shout came from the door of the bedroom Namjoon shared with Taehyung.
“Want to come hang out in my studio?”
“Really?”
Typically Yoongi didn’t like letting others in his studio. It was his personal space, and the one place in the house he didn’t need to worry about being disrupted.
“Yeah, come on in,” Yoongi said, leading him back down the stairs. “I can show you what I’m working on.”
Namjoon followed him into the studio, shoulders tense as he glanced around the room.
A regular looking computer monitor sat atop the glass desk which was situated perfectly between two speaker lined walls. A larger monitor, more of a TV screen really, was mounted on the wall above the smaller screen. His beloved keyboard was an easy chair wheel to the left of the computer, and to his right was a shelf full of figures and a mini fridge next to his pull out couch that doubled as a futon.
Yoongi pulled out a stool from underneath his keyboard and flicked the power switch on his computer.
“Here,” he said, ducking around Namjoon to pull out the futon. “Lie down if you want.”
Namjoon nodded, seating himself on the futon and instantly feeling cold. The mattress was comfortable, though. They all joked about how Yoongi spent more time and slept more often in his studio than his bedroom, but Namjoon was pretty sure, right here and now, that it was true.
“Hyung, are you ok?”
“Me?” Yoongi asked, spinning his chair around to face him. “I’m alright.”
“Yeah?” Namjoon asked, pulling his knees closer, wishing he hadn’t left his sweater in the rehearsal studio.
Yoongi reached under his desk and pulled out a thick fleece blanket, tossing it to Namjoon.
“No worse for wear,” he said, spinning back around to his computer screen. “We’re all tired and stressed and anxious for the comeback, but you don’t need to worry about me.” He clicked away at the computer, typing something in and spinning back around.
“What about you, Namjoon? Are you ok?”
He pulled the blanket around himself, resting his hand on top of his knees. It was throbbing. He chewed his bottom lip as he contemplated how to answer.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, letting his forehead fall between his good hand and his right wrist. “I really don’t know.”
He wasn’t sure if it felt good to finally say it out loud or awful because it made it real.
He dropped his head further, but heard the sound of movement as Yoongi moved from the chair to the futon next to him, the weight beside him confirming his suspicion.
A hand found its way around his shoulders, and he managed to tilt his head towards his friend.
“Do you want to talk?” Yoongi asked, not making eye contact, but still offering support in his proximity.
Namjoon thought about it. He really did.
“I don’t know. What’s to talk about?” He finally asked. He knew that Yoongi had heard it all before, whether in his lyrics or directly from his mouth.
“What started it? Was it the choreo?”
“Probably,” Namjoon said honestly, lying back against the bed.
“It’s kind of ridiculous choreography.”
“I mean it will look good… but it would look better if we were all as good as Hobi and Jimin… and Kookie and you and Tae.”
“Man, you can’t compare yourself to them,” Yoongi said, lying down next to him, cradling his head in his arms. “They’re just… built differently from us. Jimin and Hobi, I mean. And I guess Kookie as well. I don’t know. We’re just different.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re all different. We all look different, we sing or rap different, we dance different, we have different talents. If we were all the same, we wouldn’t be interesting.”
“I kind of get what you’re saying, but I don’t think we would be any less interesting if I could dance or sing better.”
“But your talents lie elsewhere. We’re cool because you write so much of our music. And we produce it too. Not many other groups do that.”
“Because not many want to.”
“Still, it sets us apart,” Yoongi insisted.
“I guess you’re right,” Namjoon said, rolling onto his left side to face Yoongi.
The other rolled toward him as well, so the two were lying on their arms facing each other.
Namjoon examined his bandaged hand. “I guess it’s always going to be the case,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?:
“I’m never going to feel good enough.”
“You’re a perfectionist. You need to adopt a lazy mentality like me.”
“The last thing you are is lazy, Hyung,” Namjoon said, shifting his eyes from his hand to his friend.
“It’s a mentality, not a habit,” he said.
“I disagree, though.”
“Don’t,” Yoongi laughed. “It’s part of my image.”
“Right, got it,” Namjoon laughed.
Yoongi scooted closer, shifting up slightly and advancing his arm under Namjoon’s head. The other got the idea, and moved closer, cuddling into him.
They curled together, their bodies fitting more perfectly than puzzle pieces. Yoongi pulled the blanket over the two of them, then reached up to hit the light switch. He was so used to sleeping here, yet tonight it felt different.
Namjoon cuddled closer, feeling small in Yoongi’s strong arms despite their size difference.
He snickered.
“What’s up?” Yoongi asked from beside him.
“Whenever I break things, you always fix them. Who would have thought you would have been putting me back together too.”
“I got you, little bro,” Yoongi said, hugging him tighter.
“Hey now, I’m bigger than you!”
“Only in stature. I’ll always be your hyung.”
Namjoon laughed, smiling as he curled tighter into Yoongi.
The storm had passed for now.
He was going to be ok.