Chapter Text
jeongguk fidgets with his fingers, chewing at his lip in an absent-minded way. the paint on his hands is flaking off, crusty and stretchy, and he just can’t fucking wait to get home.
it’s been a horrible day. no stroke on the canvas made sense, his eyes were spent and burning, and after a full day of absolutely zero creative productivity, he’s dragging his useless sack of bones back home to his bed, because sometimes that’s the only place he feels like he doesn’t need to create, to express, to release the incessant buzz from the wired knot of feelings that his brain is almost constantly. he can, for once, sigh and pretend it doesn’t exist at all.
the bus rolls down the deserted road leisurely. it’s not his usual bus, a dark grey a/c bus, but the number is the same as the usual one he takes so he doesn’t think much about it. he wishes it would reach him faster. the heat of the metal seat at the bus stop is scalding the bones in his legs.
it reaches him, finally, and the door folds open, releasing a loud hiss. the man inside doesn’t look familiar. in fact, jeongguk can’t see his face at all - the wide-brimmed black bucket hat covers most of it except his chin.
jeongguk’s on edge. something about this night feels off - the road is startlingly empty for ten in the night, and there’s no chatter coming from inside the bus. the music seems to be on, though, a record scratching, exactly the kind of music jeongguk freestyles to with his hyung when nobody else is at the dance studio.
the man turns towards him, jacket-clad knuckles leaving the thin steering wheel of the bus as he shifts in his seat, raising his head so he can look at jeongguk from under his hat. jeongguk sees pale, smooth skin, a long earring dangling from one ear, small lips pursed in a smile. the man looks young.
“well?” he asks, and his voice is deeper than jeongguk expected. “won’t you get on?”
the buzz in his brain is sparking up again, and the breath he takes doesn’t clamp it down. it’s making his judgement fuzzy, so jeongguk doesn’t think. he clambers on.
-
it’s… an unconventional bus, to say the least. the seats are stark white, no stains at all, and lined up at the sides like a subway. there are two poles in the middle too, along with a number of black handles dangling from the ceiling to aid standing passengers. no lights illuminate the interior; the only reason jeongguk can see at all is credit to the faint streetlights throwing in beams of pale, dusty blue onto the clean bus floor.
the weirdest part - nobody’s there.
nobody, not the old man with milky eyes who sits at the back and mutters incoherently, not the two girls that hold each other’s hands and hearts, short hair and funky clothes, not the father with the child that runs down the lane every few minutes. it’s empty.
“where are the rest?” jeongguk asks quietly. his first words for the night.
“i wasn’t here for them. i was here for you.” and with that answer, the doors of the bus close, straightening into place. there’s no way to get out. something about this doesn’t scare jeongguk, which is odd, since he’s usually wary and often skittish.
he takes a seat towards the middle of the bus, trying to search his buzzing brain for a question to ask the man that so openly claimed he was here for jeongguk, like he knew who jeongguk was. that’s it -
“how d’you know who i am?” jeongguk’s afraid his voice hasn’t carried through to the man, and suddenly, he gets vivid images of a paintbrush running out of paint, drying halfway and the stroke remaining incomplete. he turns to dip the paintbrush into paint and realizes the exact shade he’s made on the palette is bone dry. he doesn’t have the energy to ask the man again.
“i don’t know you,” the man says, voice soft and soothing. “let’s change that, hm? my name’s yoongi.”
“jeongguk.”
“hey, jeongguk.” yoongi hums, and his voice carries through the glass of the windows, settling at the temple jeongguk has now rested against it.
“hey,” jeongguk replies for the sake of it. it seems like the right thing to do.
he watches familiar buildings and shops pass by as the voice on the speakers goes, “okay, okay, okay, okay, here i go-”
jeongguk frowns. the sky is lightening. that doesn’t seem right.
he shakes his wrist out from his sweatshirt to check the time but -
the hands of his watch are rapidly twitching back and forth, sometimes even zooming right around the face of the clock to return to twitching violently in their original position. the ticking is silenced, just the hands moving back and forth like they don’t know which direction they’re supposed to go, like the flat palette knife jeongguk had used to try and make the sea which smudged the white foam in all the wrong places, like jeongguk’s eyes as he watched fault after fault present itself to him in full glory on the canvas, like -
“time doesn’t work very well here. you should put the watch away before the buzz in your brain gets even louder.”
jeongguk whips his head up to look at the back of yoongi’s in muted alarm, but immediately gets distracted by the scenery outside the window, because that’s not the road he takes to get home at all. it’s just strange glass buildings, vibrant graffiti decorating the pavement and the low brick walls that line the roads, and the stone of the road seems new but spotty, like it’s just starting to rub away under the soles of eager feet.
“uh… yoongi-ssi-”
“-hyung is fine.”
“yoongi-ssi,” jeongguk stresses in slight panic. “this isn’t the route i take to get home. i thought this was bus 07? please- please drop me off-”
“jeongguk,” yoongi calls softly, voice heavy but stable, and in an instant, jeongguk’s hands stop pulling at the cloth around his knees. it washes over him, the voice, and worms its way in from his ears to his skull, dropping like a stone on his brain and for the first time in a long, long, time, keeping it pinned there. “why does it even matter where you are if you’re already lost?”
the words ring in jeongguk’s ears. ‘lost,’ yoongi says, like jeongguk’s already wandering, like he’s ambling aimlessly in the dark, no light, like he’s stumbling into people and seeing through them, like he’s stumbling into himself and seeing a terrifying sort of hollowness in his own eyes.
his skin pricks at the music still playing, the beat retro, horns and heavy bass zipping back and forth, and jeongguk realizes with startling clarity that the person rapping on the track is yoongi himself.
jeongguk blinks, latches himself onto the pulsing synth in the track, and involuntarily taps his foot against the beat. he tries to focus on the words, but the one syllable, ‘lost’, is buzzing the loudest in his cranium.
“hey,” yoongi draws his attention. “you see that?”
jeongguk’s eyes drag on from yoongi’s - frankly, small - form slouched in the driver’s seat to his arm outstretched outside the bus, pointing upwards. jeongguk ducks to see past the ceiling, through the glass, towards the sky.
it’s the moon.
in the gradually lightening sky, the moon hangs pale, almost translucent, but without any city lights (which, again, very odd), it shines down glowing light onto the concrete.
“there’s paint on your hands,” yoongi whispers then, and jeongguk hears the understanding in his voice before he actively notices it. “you’re peeling it off. artists don’t do that when they’re happy.”
jeongguk stares down at his hands like he’s never seen them before. “i guess they don’t.”
yoongi stays silent. jeongguk thinks that’s an invitation, and something in him itches to continue talking.
“i’m tired. it’s just…” jeongguk inhales softly. he’s always been conscious of how much space he takes up, with his body and his brain, his words and his breath. but here, it’s just him and yoongi. a full, empty bus. “i don’t know what i’m doing anymore.”
he pauses for a bit. yoongi hums.
jeongguk gnaws at his lower lip, before hesitantly continuing. “i’m afraid i’m not who i used to be. i’m just - i’m afraid that because i’ve changed, i can’t… create like i used to. it’s stupid, but every time i pick up a paintbrush, i feel all kinds of shitty. i feel like i’ve lost something i thought i’d always have, and now… you said it. i’m lost. ”
yoongi hums again, before murmuring, “d’you know why i showed you the moon?”
jeongguk shakes his head, and watches yoongi adjust the rearview mirror to look jeongguk in the eyes. jeongguk notices, suddenly, that his bucket hat is off. his eyes are sharp, observant, but gentle. like bitter coffee. wakes you up and warms you up from the inside.
“the moon… it’s… your friend, of sorts.” yoongi watches jeongguk frown through the mirror. “have you ever seen it change colour?”
jeongguk shakes his head. under normal circumstances, he would’ve been confused about the direction of this conversation, but he accepts, with resignation, that yoongi seems to be too wise to talk straight. straightforward, sure, but not linear. too many beautiful things to say; jeongguk can hear them coming already.
“that’s because it hasn’t - changed colour, i mean. so its light? the white glow that settles over everything like stardust? that doesn’t ever change.” yoongi’s eyes are still on him, but jeongguk’s gut tells him he’s in safe hands, so he doesn’t worry about road safety. not when, for perhaps the first and only time in twenty three years, he can actually sense that this night will sprout new something in him. “they say change is inevitable, but that’s wrong.”
yoongi’s eyes narrow, gaging jeongguk’s reactions, seemingly wondering if jeongguk is following. his lips part again, and he says something that fits itself into the spaces between jeongguk’s ribs -
“you’re allowed to rest, jeongguk. you’re allowed to rely on constants. you might change, your world might change, but as long as the moonlight remains the same, you’re allowed to look for a home in it. you have one, already. that’s a constant that isn’t going away. you can be scared, and none of your fear will ever be stupid. you can lose and you can gain, but what will always remain with you are these constants, this moonlight, shining on your skin. let it ground you when everything else gets too much.” he takes a moment to turn right, before continuing. “and you know what the moon being constant means, jeongguk? it means that you have to be that goddamn unshakeable to be a constant. it’s not a crime to change, and really, if you can change, so can your art. it’s alright , jeongguk. this feels like suffocation, but maybe… just maybe, it’s progress.”
it’s the most yoongi’s spoken at a time, and it shakes jeongguk up. he looks up at the moonlight through the polished glass, eyes wide, turns yoongi’s words over in his head. in the smallest voice he’s ever used, he asks yoongi, “were you scared?”
yoongi laughs, the first laugh of the night (morning? dawn? time doesn’t work very well here, jungkook reminds himself). it’s a silent, huffing laugh, and jeongguk sees yoongi scrunch up his mouth in the rearview mirror in an attempt to reign it in, cheeks bunching up. something warm bubbles in jeongguk’s chest.
“i’m still scared, jeongguk. i’m scared shitless.” yoongi’s arm is hanging out of the window, and he loosely swings it up to point at the moon again. "but the light is here, right? the moonlight has got me when nothing else has, and that’s got to count for something.”
jeongguk runs his eyes over the empty seats in the bus, the metal poles glistening, and fixes them on yoongi. the moonlight has got me when nothing else has, jeongguk thinks as he watches yoongi’s eyes, alight with the very glow of the moon itself, his own buzzing brain oddly quiet. that’s got to count for something.