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"Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Ensure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Thank you."
Namjoon shuts his laptop closed and shoves it into the leather bag his mother gifted him last Christmas. It was a sturdy thing, an item of quality he will probably carry on for years on end. He supposes it will just be another thing he takes with him on tour—the pieces of home that will remind him who he is and what he'll return to after long days spent in buses and airplanes.
There used to be a time when Namjoon was anxious to go on tour, where he was so desperate to hit the road and never look back. He hated the feeling of being useless and stuck at home with nothing much to do except write and fuck around with recordings. Being on the road and playing music in front of crowds night after night was a particular type of high not even the best of drugs could replicate. There was just something about that energy and that… that intimate dance between himself and his fans. He would yell out lyrics that left him raw and vulnerable, and the crowd would sing them back to him like a welcoming embrace and safety net.
It was everything to him.
It was everything up until Namjoon climbed into his bus bunk or tapped his room card to get into another generic hotel room. Because despite being surrounded by his bandmates, sound technicians, interviewers, managers, and fans, he still felt incredibly alone.
It wasn't something he'd ever been able to adequately express, this loneliness. The feeling just overtook him in the late night or when there were stretches of time on a bus where he couldn't do anything but just sit alone with his thoughts. When he was younger, it had been easy to deflect with drugs, alcohol, or just fucking around with his friends until he forgot about the gray cloud constantly following him.
The feeling only surmounted as he got older, and his body was too overfilled with a heaviness that he couldn't go on carrying.
But music helped a lot. It was his escape, creating lyrics and melodies that made up a language expressing precisely what was going on within him. Namjoon has been told he was good with words, but that didn't really mean much when even trying to voice his frustrations out loud left him paranoid and embarrassed. Was anyone listening? Did anyone care?
So he made songs, and he could only hope someone would listen because that's all he's got.
Luckily, Seokjin listened.
He remembers like it was just yesterday when the shy lanky teenager with the Sleater-Kinney shirt came up to ask what he was playing.
It wasn't anything special, really. Many people (mainly girls) were always curious about him playing guitar. It was mostly just to see if he knew how to play their favorite song or because they were interested in him. Not Seokjin, though.
Seokjin had always been different, and Namjoon treasured that close to his heart. It wasn't super apparent right away; it took some time before he'd realized just how deep his care for Seokjin went. Falling in love was a gradual process that made him fiercely protective over the relationship they've built together.
During a fall tour back when he was twenty-one, Namjoon just knew he would end up marrying Seokjin one day.
They were exclusive, as exclusive as young adults could be. There was still a bit of space between them, the word 'forever' too scary to bring up in everyday conversation. The future had not been cemented, and Namjoon was fully aware that Seokjin could easily leave him at any moment and vice versa.
The expectations were lax, and Namjoon knew he couldn't ask Seokjin to wait on him through every tour or festival or recording. Seokjin had his own life and responsibilities that were more important (at least, to Namjoon.)
So it came as a significantly life-altering surprise when Seokjin dropped everything to go and comfort a broken-down Namjoon strung out on laced weed and mourning the death of his grandfather.
Seokjin had missed days of college courses to come and see… him.
It could have been nothing, but for Namjoon, it was everything.
"You shouldn't have come. I'm so sorry, Jin. You didn't need to fly out—"
"Why not? I'm your boyfriend, and you needed help," Seokjin said as casually as if he had offered Namjoon an extra pencil in class or something equally minor.
They were lying on the bed of yet another nameless hotel—Namjoon had stopped caring about the names after time. Everything blurred together, and time was a vague concept when on tour.
"It makes me feel stupid and selfish." Namjoon wipes harshly at his eyes, his eyelids puffy and sore with how much he'd been crying. "I let everyone down by postponing these dates. It probably cost the label all of the merch sales."
"Shush now," Seokjin cooed as he ran his slender fingers through Namjoon's oily hair. "You're a human being before you're a rockstar. When was the last time you showered?"
Namjoon breathes slowly, trying to focus on when he last washed his hair. "Maybe… three days ago? We had a show in three different states, and we had no time to stop."
"Well, we've stopped now."
And so Seokjin bathed an emotional Namjoon, whispering words of comfort and reassurance. It was not sexy, and quite frankly, Namjoon felt the act a bit humiliating. He was shut tight like a clam, putting that distance between himself and everyone else the way he's always done. I don't need to be babied or pitied.
But throughout the night and the following day, Seokjin had slowly but surely opened him up. His boyfriend had been stubborn and refused to be pushed away because "God damn it, Namjoon! I fucking care about you!" And Namjoon needed to trust that it was true because if this wasn't love, then what was?
This love was like a cocoon of warmth that enveloped Namjoon like a scarf, telling him everything was going to be okay.
With Seokjin, he believed it.
The next time Namjoon had a tour, he found a knitted scarf packed in the corner of his briefcase with a single note that read:
While you are away
My heart comes undone
Slowly unravels
In a ball of yarn
The devil collects it
With a grin
Our love
In a ball of yarn
He'll never return it
So, when you come back
We'll have to make new love
Namjoon never told any of his bandmates or even the interviewer that day why he kept bursting into tears without warning. Nor did he explain to his fans why "Unravel" by Bjork had been permanently added to the setlist indefinitely. It was too intimate—too precious. Namjoon wanted to protect it with everything he had.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to O'Hare Airport. Local time is 3:45, and the temperature is 15 degrees Fahrenheit."
"Man, I should have bought that winter jacket, after all. Smart thinking bringing a scarf, bro."
Namjoon turns towards his guitar tech, Jungkook, next to him. "I always bring it. You never know what the weather is going to be like."
"Word," Jungkook mutters, turning on his phone to send out a litany of messages to someone named Jimin.
Namjoon just smiles softly, thumbing at the yarn strands of his scarf while looking out the plane window. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, and he can already imagine the warm broth of jjigae waiting for him at home.
No one gives him shit as he speedwalks down the airplane chute and out into the terminal. The crew just knows.
And it's like Namjoon is a man starving as he engulfs Seokjin into the tightest of embraces in the middle of the airport. This is what made touring worth it: getting home to his other half, his warmth, was what made this tour life tolerable.
Namjoon would give it all up just so he didn't have to leave his home.
"I don't want you to have to give it up. It would break my heart," Seokjin says to him, all soft and full of endless beauty.
And Namjoon concedes because at the end of the day, Namjoon may love music, but he definitely loved Seokjin more.
"You're my music, my muse," he says, a coded language that carries a heavier weight that started and ended with this person in front of him that managed to accept him despite all his flaws.
On the drive back home, Seokjin tells him all about the new furniture he's refurbished and sold while he was away. It used to be a passion project his husband would do while still working as a financial analyst. In the last year, Seokjin's creations were so popular, he'd decided to take a chance and make it his full-time job.
Namjoon had been so supportive, going so far as to give up the garage so Seokjin could have a workshop instead of the at-home recording studio he'd dreamed of. He didn't mind not one bit—he'd gotten to follow his dreams. It was his husband's time now.
"So I just said fuck it and painted the dresser hot pink and added little sugar skull handles," Seokjin continues, his eyes lighting up with excitement in the cutest way.
"And it sold?" Namjoon asks, staring at his neighborhood streets passing by. He can see Yoongi's childhood home from here, and he's taken back to that summer when he first met Seokjin, and endless possibilities were at his reach, just there for him to grab onto and run.
"It sold!" Seokjin exclaims, his cheeks all high and proud. "Can you believe it, Joonie?"
Namjoon reaches between the cup holders to grab onto Seokjin's hand, squeezing once and running into the future with his life partner. "Of course I believe it."
Yeah, Namjoon was fiercely protective of this love.