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Taehyung
Storm clouds. They’re all Tae can think about as he stares at the ceiling, the quiet ticking of the clock on his bedside the only thing keeping him grounded because he swears to god if it wasn’t for that sound, that small, stupid, inconsequential sound rushing to keep time with his heartbeat, the storm clouds in his head would have swallowed him whole by now. They’re there every time he closes his eyes to blink; fat, purple-gray monsters roiling over a violent, green-black ocean, their colors bleeding together like a fresh bruise, crackling with so much unshed possibility that he can feel the surge right down to his fingertips, to his toes, to the fucking ends of his fucking hair.
Tick. Thump. Crackle. Tick. Thump. Crackle.
He’s been in this position before, and those same damn storm clouds have always kept him company. Like fucking harbingers of doom, but instead of four horsemen he gets an entire army ushering in the apocalypse. He figures to anyone else they would seem pretty menacing—a threat, even, but Tae just licks his lips, the corner of his mouth quirking into a small smile as he welcomes them into his head and down his chest, spreading through the rest of his limbs like medicine, like poison, like lifeblood. They rush through him, descending like a heavy woolen blanket on his skin. The whisper of fabric on flesh, is it time?
Storm clouds. They’re all Tae can think about, and his entire being vibrates with the electricity from them, with all that unshed possibility.
The clock beside him stops ticking, and in the awful, awful silence Tae’s heart whoops and soars. He swings his legs out of bed, uncharacteristically socked feet sparking with static as they touch the carpet. Is it time? The storm clouds roll over in his stomach, thunder, demand. Isittimeisittimeisittimeisittimeisit—
A knock on the door, and Tae’s face breaks into a grin. It's time.
Seokjin
Seokjin doesn’t know how many times he’s played the Bowser In The Sky boss level on Super Mario 64, but he’s played it on every night before a comeback and like hell he wasn’t going to play it tonight. As he steers Mario off a tilting platform and onto another block, effectively avoiding a Piranha Plant in the process, a small part of his brain reminds him that he should be worried that the house was so quiet, that the great room was empty and where the hell is everyone?
The thought is so distracting that he misses his jump from one spinning disc to the next, and he stares at the screen of his DS in disbelief for a few (okay, a lot of) long moments. He finally sighs and shuts it, tossing it onto the cushions like it had offended his mother, rubbing at his face tiredly with one hand. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep, the last time any of them had gotten proper rest at all for that matter, but he doubts it’s going to happen tonight.
The evenings before a comeback were always like this. Everyone would go their separate ways, thinking that they could deal with their nerves and feelings on their own: Namjoon would retreat into his bedroom and listen to music on his headphones so loudly sometimes Jin worried he would go deaf, Hoseok would saunter into the garage and return two hours later covered in sweat, Taehyung would go catatonic in his bed for an hour before flitting from room to room like the freaking Tasmanian Devil come to life, Jungkook would be on his cellphone watching videos of himself as some weird method to self-soothe, Jimin would work out until he injured himself or broke something (sometimes both), and Yoongi would pace tracks into the hardwood of his bedroom floor until he eventually exhausted himself into a near-catatonic state. Eventually, though, each member would find their way here, to the great room where Seokjin was, where Seokjin always was, ready with a joke to lighten the mood.
There were a lot of things he didn’t understand about his housemates in general, owing primarily to the fact that they were all slightly insane, slightly evil musical geniuses, but he especially didn’t understand why they worked themselves up to the point of breaking before a comeback. It wasn’t that he himself was possessed of any supernatural ability to remain calm in a stressful situation; it was just that Jin wasn’t scared. He was nervous, sure, but he was nervous every day that he was with BTS. He was nervous for concerts and performances, photoshoots and hell, even guestings and interviews, but he wasn’t worried when it came to releasing new music because he had the utmost faith that whatever they had come up with was the best version of itself it could possibly be. How could it be anything but, with how much love and devotion each of them had poured into it?
Sure, there would be people who would love it and people who would hate it, but none of that mattered to him. He was happy when people liked it, sure. He loved being able to use his platform to express himself, loved the journey he was on with his Bangtan brothers and every member of ARMY, but all of it paled in comparison to how ridiculously proud he was to be part of the whole machine. He was proud of the way Yoongi obsessively wrote music into the wee hours of the morning, the way Namjoon fretted over every arrangement, how Hoseok would practice the same move hundreds of times before he was satisfied with it, how Taehyung would spend hours digging through the internet for music that would inspire them, the way Jimin would work so hard to keep himself strong because he loved them so much he didn’t want to disappoint them, and how Jungkook worked twice as hard as every one of them to prove himself worthy of his role in a family and in a life that he still had trouble accepting as his.
So Seokjin was content and happy and the farthest thing from scared because he had Bangtan by his side. Everything else was just a bonus.
He leans back into the couch cushions, propping his Mario-slippered feet on the coffee table. He eyes the clock on the wall across from him and waits for his brothers to return.
Jimin
It wasn’t his fault, Jimin thinks as he stares at Jin’s favorite frying pan in his hands. Formerly favorite, he corrects himself. Former frying pan. The handle had melted clean off the rest of it where it was supposed to be attached to the actual pan, because how the hell was he supposed to know you weren’t supposed to pre-heat a frying pan to 350 degrees and that it only applied to ovens?
Jimin sighs, dumping the slightly twisted pieces of metal and plastic into a bottom cabinet, wondering if he could get it to Yoongi to fix before Jin found out and gutted him like a fish. The thought makes him shudder, and he pouts at his reflection on the granite countertop. It wasn’t his fault, he thinks again. All he wanted was a goddamn cookie and to decorate it with the ice cream sprinkles Namjoon had brought home the week before, to take a picture of it and send it to ARMY to reassure them that he was fine, that they were fine, because sugar and sweets made everything better and Jimin was absolutely screwed if he wasn’t going to be fine instead of the mess of feelings he really was right now, raw and bare like an exposed nerve ending.
Because, frankly, Jimin wasn’t good with feelings. Jimin wasn’t good at a lot of things, if he was being perfectly honest with himself, but he was good at working them off in the gym and dancing from his demons instead of with them. Right now he was too tired to work out and too wired to dance with Hoseok and too much of everything, really, to do anything but stand like an idiot in their big, empty kitchen and want, with every fiber of his being, a stupid cookie to shove into his mouth.
He wanders from the kitchen like a lost puppy, unsure where his feet are taking him until he reaches Jungkook’s door. Jungkookie would understand, wouldn’t he? Jimin nervously fingers the ARMY necklace around his neck, chewing on his lip, before shaking his head and continuing down the hallway. He wouldn’t know what to say to him anyway, because sometimes words weren’t enough, couldn’t possibly be enough to explain how badly he needed a hug, how he felt like there were butterflies the size of Boeing 747 airplanes in his stomach and that they were threatening to lurch up his body and escape into the hallway like ashes from a fire, staining everything they touched with soot and fear and maybe the dirtiest thing of all, failure.
Namjoon
The house is full. It’s an odd realization, but it’s the first time in weeks that Namjoon feels like it is in every sense of the word. The analogy is so cliché he almost kicks himself for it, but it’s exactly what it feels like: a pot that’s about to boil over—like Jin forgot to tilt the lid on a pot of noodles and all that starch was coming to the surface, bubbling over and flooding out the fire below it, effectively ruining dinner to a chorus of Does this mean we can get takeaway from Taehyung and I’ll eat it if no one else will from Jungkook and Jesus fucking Christ, Jin-hyung from Yoongi like he could do any better. (Which he probably could, let's be honest, Yoongi-hyung has ramyon down to a science.)
If he closes his eyes he feels like he can almost imagine where each member is in the house—like if he reaches for the wall or the floor he can tell just by the vibrations what music Hoseok is dancing his nerves out to, if it’s Jungkook or Taehyung that’s winning their videogame, if Jin is on the couch on his DS or his iPad, how many push-ups Jimin has done to work off his excess energy, if Yoongi has broken anything in his room yet from the stress.
Leadermon, he thinks wryly, face screwing up at the role that had always and probably would always make him uncomfortable. He hadn’t asked for it, yes, of the personal belief that if anyone should be the leader, it should be Hoseok with his incredible work ethic and magical ability to keep all of their spirits up. But after all these years Namjoon has grown into the role to the point that he can’t even think about himself without thinking of everyone else in this full-to-the-brim goddamn house. Between the stress and tension and hope and heartbreak and fucking love he wonders how any of them even fit, if they’ve somehow mastered this virtual game of Tetris and the lines at the bottom just continue to disappear, like only an act of God is even allowing them any room to breathe above it all.
He rips off his headphones, the cacophony of bass and treble and how in the hell does that growl even come from Tae echoing in his ears as he abandons his attempt at a nap for a bad job and makes his way to the great room.
Leader, he thinks with each echoing thump of his clumsy feet on the stairs as he hurtles down them. He was their fucking leader and right now the guilt over thinking he could leave them alone on the night before a comeback and nap, of all the impossible, improbable things, instead of be with them is making his stomach twist.
He reaches Taehyung’s door first, and to his surprise the maknae is already standing there, his arm outstretched for the doorknob if only Namjoon hadn’t gotten to it first, the slightly unhinged and manic glint in his eyes sending an involuntary shiver of fear down Namjoon’s spine.
“Is it time,” Tae asks, his voice sounding like it was coming from everywhere but his mouth, and Namjoon nods his head, dislodging the thought as an auditory hallucination from how much sleep he hasn’t been able to get.
“C’mon, let’s get the rest of the boys.”
For some reason, with V at his back, he starts to feel like Dante descending into hell.
Jungkook
Whatever the fuck Hobi is doing, Jungkook wishes he would keep it down because it sounds like he’s dropping hundred pound weights onto a concrete floor in an empty room. He regrets, not for the first time, calling dibs on the first-floor bedroom closest to the garage. At the time, it had been a purely knee-jerk reaction born of convenience: closest to the garage, closest to bed. He hadn’t, however, anticipated Hoseok turning part of said garage into a practice space, or that being next to a big, empty room would send the strangest sounds throughout his.
A loud bump is followed by what sounds like cymbals crashing, but none of that made any sense because Hobi’s space was literally empty and where in the world would he even get a drumset in the middle of the night?
The sound of flesh hitting cement echoes through the wall, and Jungkook decides that he’s just about had enough. While he typically let his hyungs have the run of the house and do whatever they wanted, he wasn’t having it tonight, couldn’t have any of it tonight. All Jungkook wanted was some peace and quiet and maybe even a little room to think about how just when he was getting the hang of things, it was all going to change again, leaving him the only upright thing in a topsy-turvy world. He just wanted to be prepared. Jungkook liked being prepared. He didn’t like being caught off guard and he didn’t like not knowing what he was supposed to do or say and he especially didn’t like not knowing what the hell was going to happen now.
Yeah, he was the youngest, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get tired. It didn’t mean he was as secure as his hyungs in what they were doing, as confident in moving about the world they had created for themselves. It wasn’t his fault that these things came easy for him; they asked him to sing and he sung, to dance and he danced, to rap and he rapped. Seokjin would probably berate him for his hubris, but that was the way it was and so that was the way Jungkook regarded them. He hadn’t fit in in the normal world, where these things came by through hard work and practice. Jungkook was used to trying something a couple of times before getting the hang of it, and if Jin or Yoongi or Tae called him conceited for it and gave him shit then he supposed they could—they were his hyungs and he wasn’t in any position to tell them otherwise.
All of those things came easy for him, but the one thing Jungkook struggled with, the one thing that he could never get the hang of no matter how hard he worked or how much he practiced, was being part of Bangtan. He hadn’t fit in with the outside world, and so to find a place, a home, with six other impossibly talented and skilled men who were all older than him was just something that he couldn’t believe, couldn’t get used to, couldn’t get the hang of. Even on good days he always felt like he had one foot in and one foot out, constantly wondering in the back of his mind what he would be doing, what he could be doing, if he wasn’t with Bangtan.
He had realized over the course of his first year that there was a difference between being good at something and wanting to be good at something. He just so happened to be good at these things and so he did them, and this was the only thing it made sense to be. But being around all of them had infected him with their impossible work ethic and passion, and over time he had learned to love it, all of it, this life and the music and the fans and performing just as much if not more than they did. They had taken care of him, helped him grow, turned him into the man he now was. He worked hard to be worthy. How could he not?
But then he would watch them develop a new skill or discover a new talent and wonder how in the world he was supposed to keep up, if he even could keep up, worried that he had already given the extent of his abilities, unraveled too soon, reached his limit, shown his full potential and now, this, this is where it stops. This is where it would end, and his hyungs would leap even farther ahead and leave him behind.
He groans and flips over to his stomach, burying his face into his pillow and shoving another over the back of his head as Hoseok’s noise turns into a steady thump that makes his walls vibrate.
He just wanted to be prepared, and here was this whole other chapter waiting to be turned and all Jungkook wanted was to slow time down and maybe even press pause if he could, just to breathe and remind himself that he could do this, that there was nothing to be scared of, that his hyungs were right outside his door, waiting for him.
Hoseok
Hoseok isn’t sure if the screaming is coming from inside his head or from somewhere inside the house, but he hopes that whoever or whatever it’s coming from is okay, especially if it’s coming from him. He hasn’t slept in days, only pretended, running on fumes and pasting a brittle smile on his face that has started to look fake, even to him.
J-Hope, they named him, and he always tried his best to live up to it. The past week had been hectic, chaotic even, and he hadn’t been able to help the extra surge of energy it had given him as they flitted like bees from one thing to the next, the possibilities seemingly endless of whether this flower or that would bear more nectar, plant more seeds, bear more fruit. It wasn’t Hoseok’s fault that he was easily (read: a lot) excitable, that he could tap into a reserve of seemingly superhuman energy and drive that more often than not left him feeling barely human after. It was only by sheer force of cheerfulness and well-timed jokes that he even managed to get away with his obsessive-compulsive behavior, when everything had to be perfect and wonderful and happy and okay, because if it wasn’t he would feel like he hadn’t been enough, wasn’t good enough. That he could possibly let everyone down.
He turns up the volume on the television he’s stashed away in his practice space, trying to drown out his own thoughts with the gore movie on the screen. Nobody ever came here except Jimin anyway, and even then he would just sit at Hoseok’s feet and watch him watch other things, quietly decompressing before inevitably asking if he had any sweets or how to do that move he pulled the other day at practice. Hoseok never minded, just glad that he could be this for the other boy because it reminded him that he was still Hobi, that somehow maybe the sum of his parts still equaled to more than just the music or the dance or the photo or, god help them all, the job and the persona itself.
The edges of his vision start to blur, and he wonders if it’s the television or reality before he gets to his feet and does a couple of jumping jacks. It’s no good and his eyes are somehow more tired than the rest of him, how is that even possible, and he decides it’s probably time to head inside and check if everyone has filed into the great room the way they always do; Yoongi managing to look murderous and all of twelve years old at the same time, Taehyung manic and still strangely serene, Jin expectant and relaxed, Namjoon anxious but trying valiantly to be calm, Jimin on the verge of tears but still fighting, Kookie vacant but resigned.
Their faces flash through his head like scenes from the flip-books he used to love as a kid, and for the first time all week he finally feels a strange sense of peace wash over him at the thought of them waiting for him. He takes a deep breath and flashes the first real smile at his reflection in the dead TV screen, steeling himself.
It's comeback time.
Yoongi
Yoongi is the last, as usual, to make his way to the great room, having already broken his newest computer mouse in a fit of frustration by throwing it at the wall. The damn thing just wasn’t working, would any of this even work, what if they hated it, what if it flopped, why did he even feel so goddamn fucking responsible when that was Namjoon’s area of expertise, all fueling the fire in the pit of his stomach that was slowly burning away all of the carefully-placed walls he had built to keep it contained. There was just so much pressure both inside and outside of him that maybe it was the only thing even keeping him whole right now, but he swears to god one wrong word from Tae or one eyeroll from Jungkook and he was going to kill them, he really was.
He needs Seokjin. He needs Seokjin to make a stupid, corny-ass joke to poke fun at and Jimin to make fun of and Taehyung to do something ridiculous and for Jungkook to accept it and play along and for Hobi to hold him and for Namjoon to tell him it's going to be okay and he hates it with every fiber of his being because he hates needing things the way he so desperately needs his teammates right now.
He hates comebacks; he hates the chaos, he hates the gimmicks and he hates and he hates and he hates almost as much as he loves, because that's the only reason he's doing it, the only reason he's still here. Because he loves what he's doing and he loveds that he's doing it with them and he loves writing music and he loves performing and godfuckingdammit has anyone in the history of the universe ever loves anything as much as he does right now? He swears to god he’s going to explode with the sheer force of it running through his veins that if he doesn’t hit something soon he’s going to spontaneously combust.
The first thing he sees is Taehyung with his legs wrapped around Jungkook’s pink-tinged face in a headlock, and the younger boy is somehow breathing and yelling for Tae to let him go at the same time, a feat if Yoongi ever saw one. Jimin is on his stomach, lying on the floor watching them, his eyes slightly desperate when they meet Yoongi’s as he steps into the doorway. Namjoon and Hoseok are on the couch with Seokjin between them, looking for all the world like a poly-amorous couple watching over their dysfunctional brood, except Jin is egging on Tae and Hobi is trying to get Jungkook to listen to him and you idiot, angle your arms behind his knee and push up if you want to live.
Yoongi shakes his head at the tableau, making his way to the armchair that no one else is ever allowed to sit in for fear of a cruel and usual death. He collapses into it, letting out a long breath and already feeling more stable just by being around actual, living people, like maybe his jaw won’t fall off from how hard he’s been grinding his teeth and maybe he’ll even get through tonight without reading every comment before the sun starts to bleed its way into his bedroom.
Namjoon catches his eye, and he shrugs at the question he finds there. Are you okay?, like any of them were on these nights. He can’t stop the growl that escapes him then, and instantly Taehyung stops laughing and Jungkook stops struggling and Jimin is on his feet and Seokjin is fishing for the candy he always keeps in his pockets and Namjoon’s wrist is sprained but he’s still reaching for him with it and Hoseok’s arms are already around him and fuck.
From seven individual men they turn into a tangle of limbs and tears and there’s a lollipop already sticking out of Jimin’s mouth how in the world as they all try to angle their lanky bodies, trying to find a spot on, beside, or around him as they hold him. He’s left wondering where in the world the wetness on his cheeks has come from, where did the pressure that was keeping him together go.
But then Taehyung is laughing, mumbling something about storm clouds under his breath, and Hoseok’s smile is like sunshine peeking out from behind clouds on a winter day and Yoongi has Jungkook in his arms with Namjoon wrapped around his shoulders and Jimin’s face is on his knee and Jin is complaining about someone’s elbow in his face and there are so many tears and laughter and Yoongi breathes for the first time since they started planning this comeback. Yoongi breathes and Taehyung sings and Namjoon smiles and Seokjin laughs and Jimin tries to hide his tears and Hoseok is burying his face in someone’s shoulder and Jungkook is looking at everyone like they’re a fucking revelation.
Eventually they disentangle from each other, returning to their own bodies. Yoongi breathes and realizes it was never the pressure that was keeping him together but this. Always, above all, this.