Chapter Text
The bass from the main stage trembles through the walls, a low thrum that rattles the empty bottles at Yoongi's feet. He sits slouched on a folding chair, head tilted back against the plaster, the sharp scent of disinfectant clinging faintly to the backstage corridors. Another bottle, half-empty, sweats in his hand. He drinks because it’s easier than breathing, easier than the tug-of-war between stomach and lungs that flares each time his name is spoken beyond the door.
The mirror opposite is cracked in one corner, a thin lightning bolt splitting his reflection. He studies it without really seeing himself: the eyeliner smudged by his knuckle when he rubbed at his eye; the obvious pallor beneath even the dingy green room lights; the way his shoulders rise too high, too tense, as though braced against a shuddering storm no one else can feel.
He thinks about when music had been new to him — when the fire of it had kept him awake until dawn, scribbling verses on the backs of receipts, fingertips calloused from time spent furiously strumming at strings and hitting keys. It had been a hunger then, sharp and clean. Now it's something heavier, clotted with expectation. Fans waiting. Critics waiting. A thousand ears straining to dissect every word uttered by his lips until none of them feel like his own anymore.
Another gulp from the bottle, slick and easy. He wonders if he still loves it. If love can survive repetition, can survive being packaged and sold until even his own heartbeat feels commodified. Perhaps he is only clinging to the skeletal remains of passion, the guts and flesh of it long since decayed, mistaking the echo for the original sound.
Someone laughs outside — staff, maybe, or one of the younger rappers running through last-minute rehearsals. Yoongi presses thumb and forefinger to his temple, tries to shut it all out. His body hums with nerves he won’t name. If he admits to fear, the whole fragile construct collapses. And what is left of a man who cannot even face the stage he built for himself?
The door opens. A stagehand leans in, headset crooked, eyes bright with borrowed urgency. “Yoongi-ssi. They’re ready for you.”
He sets the bottle down. Stares at it for a moment, then picks it up again to drain what liquid is left. When he stands, the room tilts, but he squares his shoulders until it steadies itself.
The corridor to the stage yawns long and narrow, cables coiled like snakes against the skirting, the scent of sweat and dust and faint burning from overheated tech thickening the air. Each step he takes feels heavier than the last, as if the floor drags at his boots, reluctant to let him go. The roar of the audience is muffled here, a sea heard from underwater, but growing louder with every footfall.
He breathes once, twice, tastes alcohol at the back of his throat. He wonders if they will smell it on him, if the stage lights will magnify every flaw: the sheen of sweat too early, the stumble of a syllable, the weary shadows under his eyes.
The blackout curtain parts and the noise hits him like a wave.
A hundred lights blaze down. Momentarily blinded, he shields his eyes, steps forward into the heat of it. The crowd swells, a living organism — hands raised like a forest of branches, throats open in unison, his name already rising before he has said a word. He stands at the lip of the stage, microphone cool in his palm, and lets the adrenaline crawl over his skin until it shakes loose the tremor in his chest.
The beat drops. He begins.
The first verse claws out of him, sharp and practiced, the syllables riding the rhythm with mechanical precision. His tongue remembers even when his brain threatens mutiny. Rhyme after rhyme spat into the dark, refracted through smoke and laser, swallowed by the roar of approval. He paces the stage as if movement can keep the thoughts at bay, as if swagger can cover the gnawing question: do they still believe me?
Because he is not sure he believes himself.
There had been a time when every bar had burned his throat like a biblical truth, when his pulse had synced to the metronome and there had been no separation between flesh and sound. Now it feels as though he is chasing himself, reciting not for the sake of his own mental clarity, but because they expect it of him. He imagines his words turning to ash mid-air, caught in the glare of the spotlight and drifting to the floor where no one notices.
The crowd cheers anyway. They always cheer.
And sometimes he resents them for it. Tonight especially. They scream when he spits lines about the nights spent locked in a ward, the pills rattling in his chest like dice, the pressure that drove him to carve scars into his arms just to feel alive. Once, their voices rising had meant resonance, comfort, proof that his pain had a purpose. But now he feels stolen from, as though the most fragile truths he bled onto paper have been taken by thousands of grasping hands and repurposed as spectacle. They chant his trauma like a hook, clap for the shape of his suffering. And he wonders what is left for him if even his darkest moments no longer belong to him.
He scans the front rows, sees faces shining with devotion, phones lifted high to catch him pixel by pixel. For them he is untouchable, a man carved out of rhythm, the swaggering, confident rapper they came to see. They cannot see the way his fingers tighten too hard on the mic, the way his teeth clamp down between lines. They cannot hear the thrum in his skull that asks is this enough? Is it still you?
The hook arrives, and he throws his body into it. The alcohol loosens something at last; the rhythm courses through him like electricity, and for a breath he forgets the questions. He rides the beat, words spinning free, hair clinging damp to his temples. The lights paint the stage in strobes of red and blue, his silhouette fractured against the smoke.
And there — for a moment — he remembers.
The fire, the hunger, the child scrawling verses in a notebook under the covers, headphones bleeding tinny bass, believing that music could save him. He feels it in the way the crowd echoes his last line, a thousand voices layered over his own. He is still here, still alive inside the sound.
But the moment passes quick as lightning. The verse ends. The applause surges. And the emptiness rushes back in to fill the space left behind.
He bows his head between tracks, sweat trickling down the curve of his spine. The stagehand slips him a bottle of water, but he wants whiskey instead, something with enough burn to cauterise the hollow. He takes a gulp anyway, tilts his head back, then spits half of it into the air as if it were liquor, and the crowd screams as though it is performance, not necessity.
The next track begins. He moves through it, a figure on autopilot, muscle memory carrying where his spirit lags. His voice is strong, his body sure, and yet each cheer feels both too much and not enough.
Finally, as the set winds towards its close, Yoongi pulls the hood of his jacket up, throws one last verse like a blade into the night. The crowd catches it, hurls it back at him with their own fire, and for a moment it is enough — the noise, the devotion, the illusion that he is whole.
When the final note sounds, he lifts the mic high. The applause detonates. He bows once, shallow, and turns from the lights before they can see the tremor in his hands or the way he has begun to stumble.
Behind him the stage is still roaring, still alive. Inside him, the silence begins again.
***
The afterparty is a dark blossoming of noise and light, petals of smoke curling beneath strobing red. Bass rattles in his ribs even here, offstage, as if it has followed him like a second heartbeat. Artists gather in clusters, laughter loud, their bodies loose with adrenaline and alcohol. It should be a celebration, but to Yoongi it feels like static, the afterglow of a performance already burning out into dwindling embers.
He sits half-sunk in a leather couch, a drink once again in his palm, the liquid sharper now, golden and merciful. Around him, conversation hums like bees — producers, rookies, veterans, all trading stories too fast for him to care. He nods at intervals, smiles once or twice, but mostly he is listening to the ringing in his ears, to the ghost of a crowd that just won’t leave him.
Almost without him noticing, she appears. A girl with hair lacquered to shine, pretty lips painted the colour of ripe cherries. She leans over the table, perfume sweet and enticing, her smile a curve rehearsed in mirrors. Her words tumble — admiration, compliments, a coy mention of how long she has followed his work. He lets her sit close, close enough that her thigh brushes his. He likes the warmth, likes the easy script of it, the simplicity of being desired.
She asks about his music, and he answers at first, the way he always does, with half-smiles and evasions. But then she misquotes one of his lyrics, something from The Last, reducing it to a hashtag-ready punchline. His stomach twists. He takes another drink.
She laughs, presses her hand to his arm, leans in further, mouth near his ear now. A suggestion unspoken but loud. He imagines saying yes — imagines taking her back to his hotel, pressing her against the sheets, forgetting himself in her body. For a moment, temptation warms him.
But then she says his name like a brand, like a prize she has just claimed. And suddenly it feels unbearable.
The drink is gone too quickly. His words slur when he tries to answer. He asks her why she is here, what she thinks she wants. She giggles, takes it for banter, keeps leaning closer. He feels heat rising up his neck — not desire anymore, but irritation, claustrophobia.
The room tilts. His patience snaps.
He stands too fast, the glass clattering to the floor, spilling ice across the table. Heads turn. He tells her too loudly to stop talking, meaning to ensure his voice carries over the music. It does. It sounds cruel. He can’t stop himself.
He tells her she doesn’t know him, doesn’t know a thing about the nights carved open by silence, about the verses written with shaking hands, about the cost of what she is treating like a game. She recoils, eyes wide, and still he can’t stop. Words tumble from him, bitter and sharp, slashing at the air. He is not violent — never that — but his anger fills the space, pushes people back. The laughter around the room falters, replaced by whispers. Someone records on their phone.
He stumbles, tries to find his way out through the haze. A manager reaches for his arm, murmurs his name like a warning, but he shakes himself free. The room is suffocating, everyone’s eyes too bright, too hungry. He curses, voice cracking, then shoves through the crowd toward the door.
Outside, the night air is cooler but no kinder. Neon blurs in his vision, the city bending and spinning. He presses his back to the brick wall, breath ragged, chest hollow as he tucks a wobbly hand into his pocket for a cigarette. He knows he has made a scene, knows tomorrow there will be rumours, footage clipped and passed around.
But at this moment, none of it matters. He tips his head back, closes his eyes, and lets the smoke fill his lungs, numbing him further.
He does not wait for the manager to catch him. The man's voice is behind him, clipped and tight, the same warning repeated like a broken record — Yoongi, stop. Yoongi, don’t. Yoongi, think. He pulls his hood over his head and quickens his stride, tossing away the cigarette he only got to enjoy half of. He ignores the sting in his temples and the way the pavement sways under his shoes.
A taxi idles by the curb, headlights pale halos in the dark. Yanking the door open, he drops heavily onto the cracked leather seat, and slams it shut behind him before the manager can follow. The driver glances at him through the rear-view mirror, expression neutral, waiting.
“Nearest bar,” Yoongi mutters, voice rough with smoke and whiskey. He doesn’t name a place. He doesn’t care. Just wants another drink, another room, somewhere loud enough to drown out his thoughts.
The taxi pulls into the stream of traffic, the city sliding past in fractured colour. He presses his forehead to the cool glass and breathes shallowly, wishing the ride were longer. The alcohol is still burning in his veins, but beneath it is the familiar crawl of shame, thick and sour. Tomorrow he will be reduced to a piece of gossip, speculation, another piece of him chewed up for sport. He should care more than he does. He should feel the weight of what he has thrown away tonight. Instead, he feels only the thrum of emptiness, begging to be filled.
The car slows, then stops. “Here,” the driver says.
Yoongi blinks at the sign — a bar he doesn’t recognise, its doorway glowing blue, music thumping low through the walls. A rainbow sticker curls at the edge of the glass. His pulse stutters. He knows what kind of place this is.
For a breath, he hesitates. His manager would call it career suicide. He can already imagine the headlines, the speculation, the grainy photos taken on someone’s phone. He can imagine the firestorm that would follow, the way the industry would close ranks around him, choking.
But then the thought slips beneath the alcohol, and recklessness rises to the surface. He laughs under his breath, a sound half bitter, half relieved. He doesn’t care. Not tonight.
Haphazardly throwing some bills onto the front seat, he pushes the door open, and steps into the humid dark.
The air inside is warmer, denser, the scent of sweat and beer and something sweetly chemical clinging to it. Bodies press close together under the low ceiling, lights pulsing indigo and violet. The music is light and meandering, slower than the festival tracks, a heartbeat pulsing beneath the soft velvet ambience. This is not the kind of bar he was looking for.
The bartender glances up as Yoongi settles onto the stool, hood shadowing most of his face. For a moment there is only the clink of glass, the sweep of a rag across the counter. Then recognition flickers — a double take, eyes widening with something between surprise and disbelief.
The man says nothing, careful not to draw attention. A small smile softens his features. “Drink?”
Yoongi nods, fumbling his wallet from his pocket with clumsy fingers. The bartender waves the gesture off with a shake of his head. “First one’s on me.”
He pours without fuss, sliding the glass across the counter, and for once there is no ulterior motive, no angle. Just kindness, simple and unadorned. The welcome makes Yoongi’s throat tighten, though he drowns it quickly with the whiskey’s burn.
Around him, the bar is quiet in its own way. Conversations hum low, laughter soft and genuine. Couples lean into one another in corners, friends talk in half-whispers. There's no pretense. No one is posturing. The air feels gentle, protective — and Yoongi realises with a start that he is the only one here reeling, the only one who seems to be unravelling.
The bartender says something else — maybe a question about the festival, maybe a comment about the set — but the words barely register. Because Yoongi’s attention has already been pulled across the room, snagged and held fast.
On the small stage at the far end of the bar, beneath lights that wash the singer in gentle shades of blue, someone is performing.
A boy — no, a man, though young enough to make Yoongi’s chest ache with recognition — is perched on a stool, guitar cradled close, head bowed as though confessing to the strings. His voice is soft but steady, woven through with emotion that feels too raw for so small a space.
The melody drifts out like smoke, fragile and luminous. It's a cover of a song Yoongi only vaguely knows, but it's sung with a clarity that makes it new again, every syllable unfolding like a secret.
Yoongi can barely breathe.
It’s not polish that arrests him, not technique — though both are there. It is sincerity. A voice that does not pretend, does not demand, only offers. And in that offering, something in Yoongi cracks, the jagged places inside him catching on the sound like flint to steel.
The bar is hushed, all conversation dimmed to a murmur. Every eye is turned toward the stage, as though the room itself leans closer. But Yoongi hears it differently than the others — he hears the ache threaded through the notes, the quiet plea beneath the lyrics.
His drink sits untouched. His pulse thrums in time with the guitar. For the first time all night, the noise in his head goes silent.
The melody swells. The boy’s voice rises, steadier now, bolder, stretching into the corners of the bar. He closes his eyes as he sings, head tilted slightly, as though the song is not meant for the audience at all but merely to satiate some longing inside himself. There is no bravado, no armour. Each note feels as if it has been prised out of his chest and held up to the light in a show of striking vulnerability.
Yoongi’s eyes well up unexpectedly. Once, a long time ago, he had sung like this — not with technical precision, but with hunger, with a belief that music could be both wound and balm. That conviction has worn down to ash over the years, ground out by scrutiny, by expectation, by the crowd’s demand for pieces of him he never meant to sell. But now here it is again. Not in his own mouth, but in another’s. This boy — whoever he is — sings with the unscarred certainty Yoongi once had, and the sound cuts clean through him.
He drags his gaze away for a heartbeat, forces himself to sip his drink, but the liquid is tasteless, powerless. He sets it back down and looks again, helpless to resist.
The song continues to build as it ends. What began as a quiet confession rises into something aching, almost desperate. And then — eyes open, gaze lifting — the singer looks out into the room.
For a moment, he scans the crowd without seeing, the way performers often do. But then his gaze lands on Yoongi. And holds.
The connection is brief, perhaps only a second, but it catches like a match to the corner of a page, the life story Yoongi has crafted for himself going up in flames all at once. The boy falters almost imperceptibly, a half-breath skipped, before leaning harder into the note, singing straight through the space between them.
Yoongi cannot look away. It feels intrusive, intimate, like he has been seen when he least wanted to be, when he is unravelled and drowning in whiskey. Yet the sound does not judge him. It meets him where he is — raw, hollow, wrecked — and offers something he cannot name.
Voice and guitar woven together with urgency, the boy leans forward slightly on the stool, eyes still locked on Yoongi’s as though he has found an anchor there. Every word, every note, feels like an unspoken plea: to be heard, to be known, to matter.
Yoongi swallows hard. His chest aches with the weight of it. He tells himself it’s the alcohol, that he’s imagining the intensity, but deep down he knows it isn’t. There is something real here, something that has broken through the fog around him more cleanly than anything in months.
The final verse quiets, softening into fragility again. The boy lowers his gaze, lashes brushing his cheeks, voice tapering into something almost whispered. The guitar lingers a beat longer, then fades into silence.
For a moment, the bar is still. Then applause swells, not the raucous kind Yoongi is used to, but something gentler, almost reverent. People cheer, yes, but they also smile, lean close to one another, lost in what they have just witnessed.
The boy bows his head in thanks, lips pressed together, shoulders tense as if embarrassed by the attention. He does not preen, does not soak it in. He simply accepts the moment, then steps back from the microphone, clutching his guitar as though it is the only thing tethering him.
Yoongi exhales slowly. His glass sits forgotten. The noise of the bar filters back in — voices, laughter, clinking — but he hears none of it. His focus remains on the figure leaving the stage, head ducked, moving through the shadows toward some corner of the room.
Something stirs in him he had thought long dead. Not desire, though that hums beneath the surface. Not envy, though the sting is there too. It is something older, purer. The recognition of a fire he had once carried, the memory of how it had felt to sing as if his life depended on it. And he realises, with sudden clarity: maybe it still can.
The narrow corridor at the back of the bar smells faintly of hairspray, alcohol, and the ghost of cigarettes. Posters for past shows are taped to the walls, curling at the edges, colours faded by time. The air is warmer here, thick with chatter and laughter spilling through the half-open door at the end.
Yoongi hesitates. He should leave — return to the shadows, disappear into a cab, drown the night with more whiskey somewhere else. Yet his feet move of their own accord, carrying him closer until his hand presses against the frame of the door, pushing it fully open.
The dressing room is a riot of colour and texture. Sequins glint in fractured light, wigs of every shade sit perched on mannequin heads, the tables cluttered with palettes and brushes, false lashes fanned out like butterflies waiting to take flight. The air hums with perfume and hairspray. A handful of drag queens gather before the mirrors, mid-change, laughter sharp and sweet as they tease one another over crooked eyeliner and costumes not yet zipped.
And in the midst of them stands the boy.
Jungkook — Yoongi has caught the name from one of the queens, spoken fondly, as if it’s a name often on their lips. The guitar still hangs against his hip, strap slung carelessly over one shoulder, as though he has not yet fully returned to the ground from the song he gave away minutes ago. Beside him is another young man, shorter, hair bleached pale, features sharp but softened by a smile that comes easily. He leans close to Jungkook in the way of someone used to orbiting, a presence steady and familiar, protective even in laughter.
Yoongi stops just inside the doorway.
He doesn’t know what he expected. Applause again, perhaps. Recognition. Or perhaps nothing at all — perhaps just proof that the boy is real and not some figment conjured by alcohol and longing. Instead he finds himself surrounded by warmth he has no part in.
The queens are quick to notice him. Surprise ripples through the group, then amusement. One with a wig the colour of sunset claps her hands together. “Well, if it isn’t Daegu’s finest,” she says, eyes glinting. Another whistles, adjusting the strap of a floor-length gown. “Didn’t think you’d stumble into this dressing room.”
Their voices are teasing but not unkind, laughter spilling in his direction without malice. Still, Yoongi feels his ears heat beneath his hood. He isn’t sure whether they are laughing at him or simply delighted by the absurdity of his presence.
Jungkook has noticed him now. Their eyes meet again, and it is nothing like the spark of the stage. Here, under fluorescent bulbs and the scent of powder, the boy’s gaze is sharper, wary. He stands a little straighter, his friend at his side watching carefully.
“Uh… Hey,” Yoongi says. The word comes out thick, his tongue heavy. He steps further into the room, though regret gnaws at the edge of the decision immediately. His balance wavers; he forces his shoulders square.
No one answers. The queens glance between one another, expectant, lips quirking, waiting to see what the famous rapper will say next. Yoongi clears his throat, searching for language that refuses to come. His head buzzes with liquor, but beneath it is the raw memory of the song, the way it had cracked him open.
“You are…” He gestures vaguely with one hand, a clumsy arc in the air. The word he needs — transcendent, piercing, unforgettable — slips further away the more he reaches for it. “Talented. Really talented.”
Jungkook blinks, expression unreadable. He doesn’t bow his head in thanks or smile shyly the way rookies often do when complimented. He simply stares, then glances to his friend, who lifts his brows, mouth tightening slightly. A silent exchange passes between them — caution, suspicion.
The queens laugh softly among themselves, not cruelly but as if they are watching a play unfold they had not expected tickets for. Someone mutters, “Looks like he’s had a few,” and the room giggles, the sound feathered but pointed.
Yoongi pushes forward, words tumbling before he can stop them. “You’ve got something,” he insists, louder now, as though volume can steady him. He sways slightly, catches himself on the edge of the vanity. His reflection in the mirror startles him — eyes bloodshot, hood askew, mouth pressed thin with desperation. Still, he forces the words out. “Don’t waste it. Keep singing.”
The room goes quieter, the laughter dimming. Jungkook’s frown deepens, his body tightening as though bracing against an approach. He shifts his guitar higher on his shoulder, a shield more than an instrument now. His friend steps a fraction closer, subtle but deliberate, and Yoongi recognises the protective stance instantly.
Embarrassment hits him sharp as cold rain. He hears himself as they must hear him: drunk, intrusive, staggering into a space not meant for him. He wanted to honour the performance, to tell the boy he had something rare, but all he has managed is to sound like every other intoxicated man fumbling at the edges of sincerity.
“Forget it,” Yoongi mutters, voice cracking. His hand lifts briefly, a gesture of surrender, before falling uselessly to his side. He turns toward the door, steps heavy, humiliation pooling thick in his chest.
“Wait.”
The word halts him. It is soft, uncertain, but it stops him all the same. He turns back.
Jungkook is still tense, still holding his guitar as though it might shield him if needed. His friend hovers close, eyes sharp, ready to intercept. But there is something else in Jungkook’s expression now — a flicker of curiosity, of possibility, faint but undeniable.
“If you’re serious,” Jungkook says slowly, measuring each syllable, “about what you just said… I’ll be playing again next week.” He pauses, eyes narrowing slightly, as though testing if Yoongi can even comprehend him in this state. “Come back. If you mean it. You might catch my full set this time.”
The words land heavier than they should. A challenge. A chance. A door opened only a millimetre, but enough.
Yoongi swallows hard, throat dry. He nods once, deliberate, the only promise he can make without unravelling further. His chest is too tight to speak, and if he tries he knows it will come out wrong again.
He turns, steps back into the corridor, leaving behind the warmth of sequins and laughter, the wary gaze of the boy who sang as if the world was ending.
The hallway feels colder now, emptier. But beneath the shame, beneath the whiskey’s fog, something small stirs — the faintest pull toward next week, toward a voice that for a few minutes had silenced everything else.