Work Text:
Section 1: Song of a Star
He should be used to it by now. Whatever ‘it’ was, Soobin wasn’t entirely sure: the empty house he came from school to, the small scrap of paper with rushed handwriting mentioning no dinner but a very large deposit into his bank account, the oppressive silence of what began to feel more and more like proper abandonment. He’s not, though, and it’s starting to wear him down, leaving him exhausted and irritable, easily annoyed at Beomgyu not understanding something in class and whispering him a question, or Huening Kai trying to show him a choreography he wants to learn or Taehyun. Taehyun just fucking existing. Taehyun ignoring his calls and ignoring his texts, leaving him on read or replying with a goddamn thumbs-up emoji, or always dodging the subject when Soobin asks about Yeonjun. They’re best friends, right? Yeonjun has a Letterboxd tag for him, for fuck’s sake. So, how come he doesn’t know anything about what’s happening with him? How come this empty house is all he’s going to come home to? How come this empty house is expanding and engulfing him?
He crumples the paper in his hand and throws it at the wall, his lungs crushed under the weight of whatever is happening in his head. His phone rings with a new text message, and for a second he feels hopeful. Maybe Taehyun decided to stop being a dick for no reason, or maybe he’ll look at the screen and see yeonjunnie hyung at the top of the text. It’s just Beomgyu. With another question about class. Soobin rolls his eyes and wipes the notification away, but is soon feeling guilty about it. Beomgyu didn’t do this to him. Beomgyu is nice, Beomgyu is probably the only person he’s got left. He walks over to his kitchen to find something to cook—maybe occupying his hands will make sure his thoughts are also busy—as he unlocks his phone and quickly types a reply. He finishes it with a smiley face but then deletes it because it’s stupid and pointless and it won’t really make him sound normal. Beomgyu’s reply is overly enthusiastic but it does something to his heart, he guesses. He turns on the TV for some background noise, though it’s in vain and as soon as he starts peeling carrots for his bibimbap, his mind starts reeling again. His hands shake as he cuts up the mushrooms, empty night after empty night after empty night weighing on him, and by the time he’s frying the egg, he’s crying. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. He doesn’t understand what has happened to him.
He thinks back to Yeonjun, he thinks back to when he was with them. This didn’t happen, then, he thinks as he gasps for air. He came back to the same deserted, big house, but it wasn’t as hopeless, it wasn’t as soulless, it was filled with his laughter or with music Taehyun showed him or with Taehyun’s voice as they called because Taehyun was the only one who truly knew —who knew his parents were never home apart from a few days, who knew if he didn’t have someone he wouldn’t be able to really do anything and then his parents would be home and it’d be something, to say the least. And now Yeonjun is gone, and Taehyun won’t reply to him because he’s being a fucking child about it, as if he ’s the only victim here, as if Soobin wasn’t the one who introduced Yeonjun to them all, and Beomgyu keeps getting clingy, and maybe that’s also Yeonjun’s fault ‘cause he’s definitely leaving him too. It can’t just be Soobin.
He’s only ever known emptiness.
He remembers being a child and being carefree and now that he thinks about it he remembers his babysitter’s face more clearly than he does his own parents’. He remembers having a few friends that didn’t really like him apart from the fact he had games they liked at home, he remembers said few friends leaving him the second they found someone better. He remembers being a child and needing an embrace and to be taken care of, but being told he was too old. He remembers meeting Beomgyu and no longer feeling that vacuum in his soul, it slowly fading away as he met everyone else. But now it was back and it was bigger than ever before, and Soobin doesn’t know if he can handle being abandoned again. He’s tired and he’s angry and he hates Taehyun so much and he hates Yeonjun more for giving him those smiles like their friendship meant fucking anything to him.
He loses track of time where he sits and only gets up when he starts to smell smoke, turning off his stove and putting everything away as he orders from Yogiyo, tears drying on his cheeks and sobs dying in his throat, his hatred calmer now but not gone.
If he doesn’t deserve love, he’ll make sure no one else gets it.
Section 2: Promise
Yeonjun fights for his life to light the blunt to his lips, taking three quick drags followed by a fourth longer one when the job is finally done. He runs his hand through his hair, his temples starting to pound from how loud his music is playing. He couldn’t really care less, not when it’s possibly the only way to drown out his parents, as well as his own brain, that keeps telling him to just move to the bathroom and kill himself. What is he living for, anyway? He’s all alone now, left behind by his friends (he was the one that left them, but who can blame him when he knows they’ll all be gone soon?), passively watching the days go by, and his brain so fuzzy from weed and what a professional would probably call depression to the point he has no clue what day of the week it is. He turns the volume up on his remote and puts the blunt on top of it after another drag, getting rid of his shirt after. He stares at his arms. Mostly clean, at least from what he can tell, but there’s an annoying welt in the middle of his forearm that reminds him he’ll always be this. He’ll never really escape hurting his body because his mind is, too. He really wishes he’d stolen more cigarettes from his dad, now.
He looks over at his phone screen when he gets a notification from Beomgyu, followed by one from Huening Kai, this time in their group chat. They don’t know, he realizes. They don’t know he spends his days lying in bed fantasizing about his own death, about how he’ll eventually cause it, because he will cause it. It’s only a matter of time until he’s fully dedicated to it, until he’s not lazy and draws a bath and gets his favorite razor out and bleeds out fast and painful and lies in a pool of his own watered down blood. He blinks and gets up to get some food from the kitchen, as quickly as he manages (which isn’t terribly, given how high he is now and how everything feels like it’s on a much lower resolution and frames per second). He decides on some chips, before glancing up and noticing his mom is crying over bills. His dad is standing next to her. It’s silent and Yeonjun dreads it. At this point, he hates silence much more than the loudness that fills the house constantly. His dad makes eye contact with him but doesn’t move. Yeonjun starts to wonder if he even exists. Will he really die if there’s not even a life within him in the first place? Where will he go when he slits his wrists?
He lies down in bed and stops the music, reaching for laptop and opening Netflix to watch something, maybe a K-Drama Huening Kai has mentioned to him. He’s met with some show with the words LGBT under its title and he makes up his mind.
He’ll die tomorrow.
Section 3: Room No. 17
Beomgyu chips off his nail polish with his nail, a subconscious act as he watches his computer screen load the League of Legends app. He’s given up on trying to contact Yeonjun through KakaoTalk, or Twitter DMs, or Discord, and desperate times call for desperate measures. He bites at a cuticle and his hand flies to the mouse as soon as it’s loaded, his friends sidebar on full display as well. He quickly types a message to Yeonjun, “hi, idk why ur not replying elsewhere and ik u haven’t been online in a while but idk, i miss u!!”, but after reading it once, twice, thrice, his cursor hovering over the Send Message button, he presses the Ctrl and A keys and deletes it, closing the game shortly after staring at Taehyun’s username.
He groans into his hands, looking up when he hears his phone ping. It’s only Soobin, though, complaining once more about the fact Taehyun is leaving him on read.
soobinie <3
he’s pissing me off again
idk i jst don’t think it’s that fucking hard to reply to a text
Beomgyu tries to think of the best way to reply to him, all while ignoring the fact Yeonjun isn’t really replying to him either. The text Soobin sends after just makes it harder.
soobinie <3
he’s probably talking to yeonjun hyung
It’s so annoying
me
maybe he’s not
idk maybe they’re just busy yk?
soobinie <3
beomgyu yah
i think it’s best if we just both admit it
taehyun probably convinced yeonjun to not talk to u
me
don’t say that
that’s not true
ur just mad at taehyunnie and like that’s ok and all but i don’t think u should be dragging yeonjun hyung into it, he didn’t do anything
soobinie <3
??? he fucking disappeared??
and so did taehyun, not shortly after so like
idk it makes sense to Me
Beomgyu sobs as he types his reply, trying his best to stay true to what he’s feeling. To what he thinks he’s feeling, anyway. He’s starting to doubt himself more and more, the longer he talks to Soobin, the more he understands his side of the story.
me
that doesn’t mean anything
okay?
yeonjun hyung is probably just busy and so is taehyunnie
It’s ok that ur mad but yeonjun hyung didn’t do anything
soobinie <3
don’t be so naive beomgyu geez
yeonjun hyung stopped talking to u right? that’s something
and i’m so sure it’s cause of taehyun ah
idk it just makes sense?? like
why else would they BOTH stop talking
He makes a good point. He doesn’t, but he does, but he doesn’t and Beomgyu is starting to feel scared and angry. Taehyun wouldn’t do something like that, it’s just not him. But then again, neither is quitting talking to them completely out of the blue, so does he really know him?
soobinie <3
don’t tell me yeonjun hyung didn’t do anything either
he stopped talking to us too
and he stopped coming by to visit
me
soobin ah stop
i’m mad at him too okay but it won’t do anything, i just have to wait until idk
he’s back
soobinie <3
what if he never gets back though
what if all you get is radio silence from him forever
Beomgyu locks his phone and throws it on his bed, his hands shaking as he tries to calm himself down from crying too loud. He can’t breathe and his thoughts are a mangled yarn of anger and confusion, all of them pointing to Yeonjun and Taehyun, and he wishes he knew who to trust for once , because he knows it’s not Yeonjun’s fault, or Taehyun’s, but does he? Soobin isn’t totally wrong, after all. They both stopped replying in the group chat not too far apart from each other. Yeonjun hadn’t replied to his texts much, apart from some one or two word replies, mostly abbreviations, if he’s lucky, a stupid emoji if he’s not. And Taehyun hasn’t really talked to him either, even when he asked if Yeonjun was okay, because they’re best friends, so he should know. If Beomgyu doesn’t, and he’s his boyfriend, then Taehyun should. But he never replied, he just read the message and kept barely replying to Huening Kai’s texts in the group chat, and that was it. So, maybe Yeonjun was okay? And maybe this was just his weird way of dumping Beomgyu. He groans again. He feels like throwing everything off his table, like breaking everything in his room, frustration making his blood boil under it all.
If this was true, what Soobin was telling him, then what was he supposed to do? But, more importantly, what if it wasn’t? What if everything was okay, and it was just that Taehyun had been busy with studying or something, and Yeonjun was just busy looking for jobs, or trying out for colleges, something that required his full attention?
What if Soobin was wrong? But Soobin knew Taehyun. Beomgyu wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and moves to lie down in bed, his eyes meeting the Oasis poster on his wall and his lips remembering the first time he had kissed Yeonjun on that very mattress. And now he’s gone and Beomgyu doesn’t know what to believe.
He picks up his phone. Soobin still hasn’t texted him further.
me
what do i do then?
i don’t wanna lose him
He watches as Kakao tells him Soobin is typing, still crying, though now silently, and a headache starts to make his head feel like it’s splitting in two. Beomgyu feels like he is, too.
Section 4: Moratorium of Rest
Taehyun’s been waiting for 15 minutes now, and it’s starting to wear his patience out. He’s called Yeonjun a good five times (which he doesn’t feel like are that many, to be honest!) and still nothing, not even an “omw” typed out for him. The polite person in him thinks to wait a bit longer, maybe he’s just really busy, but the impatient side, the one that keeps reminding him that he hasn’t seen his hyung in about a month or more (he thinks they’ve both lost count), reminds him that he’s already in front of his apartment door, thanks to the kind security guard who knows Yeonjun by name, and he knows his code from before, so why not just break in? It wouldn’t really be breaking in, anyway, Yeonjun is home and he knows him.
He huffs and quickly types in the code, the lock giving him a positive sound in reply. He walks in, quickly gets rid of his shoes, and calls out, “I got tired of waiting, I’m here now, Yeonjun hyung!”
The house keeps its silence. Something feels wrong. Taehyun isn’t sure what, but his heart is beating faster and his intuition is telling him there’s something very off about the apartment. Maybe it’s because he knows Yeonjun only ever hears his parents fight all the time, so being in a quiet house when there’s usually noise is bothering him a little. He walks in and looks into the living room and the kitchen, but the only hint that Yeonjun has been there is the lit TV screen that tells him it’s going to turn off in 35 seconds, 34 seconds, 33 seconds… and the pile of unwashed dishes from a delivered meal.
“Yeonjun hyung?” he calls, his voice wavering. He clears his throat and calls his name more clearly: “Yeonjun hyung. It’s Taehyun. Yeonjun hyung?”
He moves to the empty hall and notices the bathroom door is ever so slightly open. A shower?, he thinks. But he’d tell him. Right? He’s starting to panic, the lack of messages from his hyung flashing in his brain as he tries to recall if he’s checked on him right before. He’s awfully slow to the bathroom, not because he’s choosing to be, but because he’s finding out for the first time in his life he’s more of a ‘flight’ person in an honestly terrifying situation.
He’s wrong.
He’s a ‘freeze’ person.
Yeonjun is on the bathroom floor. His head gently rests against the porcelain white bathtub edge, his arms are limp beside him, wrists lying on dark red pools that fill the air with their metallic smell, and Taehyun tastes the blood on the back of his tongue. The light above him flickers, or maybe it’s his mind processing he’s looking at his friend’s attempted suicide scene, his nerves sent into an overdrive as he takes it in, realizing how pale and peaceful Yeonjun looks, noticing how his wrists keep slowly bleeding out.
“Yeonjun hyung?”
It looks like him. It is him. It was…?
“Yeonjun hyung!” He flies to kneel by his friend’s body, he refuses to call it a corpse, it can’t be a corpse, and he immediately searches for a towel. He’s met with about ten clean towels by the sink and he’s never been happier that Yeonjun is rich. He’s quick to bring his arms together so that he can put two white towels to the bleeding wounds and apply pressure, as he tries to keep himself calm, hands trembling, throat dry and breath failing him. With his free hand, he grabs his phone and calls 112, putting his phone on speaker so he can hold Yeonjun close to him. He starts crying. He hasn’t cried in a year.
“112. What’s your emergency?”
“My, my friend is bleeding out. Suicide. Help, please,” he sobs, still applying pressure to his skin, and he’s realizing he’s doing it a bit too hard in an attempt to hurt Yeonjun enough he’ll wake up.
“Where are you?”
He spits out the address he remembers, followed by the apartment floor.
“Okay, we’re dispatching paramedics to you. We need you to be calm.”
“I don’t wanna lose him, I’m scared,” he admits. His left hand gently places Yeonjun’s head on his shoulder and he feels a faint heartbeat on his temple. “I think he’s still alive. Please, hurry.”
“We’re doing our best. Your friend will be okay.”
He stops replying when the sobs get too in the way, simply holds Yeonjun close and tries his best to stop the bleeding, his arms sore and throat raw from crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, hyung. Please, don’t die on me…” He still feels his heart at his fingertips. “It’s okay, Yeonjun hyung. You’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay,” he whispers in reassurement as he rocks him gently as he would a child.
Section 5: Girl of Eternity
Huening Kai stares at his phone screen until it turns off from inactivity, his messages to their group chat left on read, a single thumbs up reaction on his last one, a link to his most recent K-Pop cover. It’s not like them to not reply, or it used to not be like them to not reply, usually Yeonjun hyung sending him a little red panda or cat sticker with a cute, supporting message on it, or Beomgyu hyung encouraging him or laughing at his jokes. Taehyun didn’t reply a lot but when he did Huening Kai’s heart soared just a little bit (not that he’d admit it to anyone except himself, if that), and Soobin hyung was always the quiet but warm type, so Kai never really expected a reply from him.
But this was pathetic. He was talking to the void, to himself, to no one at all. He doesn’t really know why he’s still trying to reach out when the most he gets is Beomgyu’s replies which, sure, aren’t bad and he really does love his hyung, but they’re not his friends, plural, talking to him. If anything, Beomgyu being the only one to reply just makes him feel worse; it makes him feel like Beomgyu is just talking to him out of pity. He sets his phone aside, turns it around so he can look at the cute stickers he has on his case, some of the only things he doesn’t hide at home that, if looked at any deeper, would send this whole secret business crumbling down. He thinks about Yeonjun hyung. Taehyun had let it slide once that he deals with things similar to him but Yeonjun noona is so quiet about it all that Kai feels bad for even thinking about asking him, about reaching out, about finding comfort in someone like himself. He knows the rest of the boys like guys too, obviously , he’d have to be stupid not to, but it doesn’t feel the same and he’s sure they feel like that about him and Yeonjun noona, too.
It doesn’t really matter now, though. Not when every attempt he makes at establishing a connection is completely in vain. He hates how easy he cries when he’s alone, choking on his sobs, quick to grab a pillow so he’s not heard outside of the limited privacy of his own room. He slips into panic attack territory too fast, sobbing hard to the point of hyperventilation, his fingers numb as they grip his pillow so tight. It’s moments like these, when he’s crashing like a car without breaks contraflow driving through the highway, with no one to comfort him but himself, with his house silent apart from his mom’s footsteps in the hallway, that make him realize how truly alone he is. They make him understand how, despite trying his very best every single fucking time, there’s truly no one out there for him. The one person he counted on as an older sibling, who he saw himself in, left him behind, and everyone else did, too, almost immediately after. Kai starts to think that he was never meant to find a place he could fit in, that his attempts are meaningless, that he deserves nothing more than solitude.