Teenager

forty nine

"What are you doing?" Jaebum asks, peering his head around the doorframe. He was walking down the hallway when he spotted Yugyeom laying down alone on his bed, and decided to investigate.

Yugyeom's black bangs were covering his eyes, but Jaemin has a feeling they were closed anyways. Yugyeom wouldn't really like the feeling of hair pricking his eyes.

"Breathing exercises," is the answer Jaebum gets, mumbled to him by a Yugyeom with a very raspy voice.

Jaebum doesn't say anything after that, he just steps into the bedroom. He knows that Yugyeom does breathing exercises when he feels a bit uneasy, when he feels the familiar feeling of anxiety and panic bubble in his chest. It does a really affective job of calming the maknae down.

Not wanting to disturb Yugyeom's patterns and pace, Jaebum quietly slips onto the bed beside Yugyeom, laying on his back the same way the younger was.

About eight minutes pass in silence before Yugyeom silently rolls around in bed until his head is laying on Jaebum's chest, eyes still closed.

They don't say anything, even if Jaebum wants to ask Yugyeom if he was okay, if he wanted to talk about what triggered him to go through his breathing exercises, or if he just simply wanted to calm down.

And Yugyeom is okay with that, he's okay with silence.

Sometimes, silence could signify comfort and mutual understanding without actually speaking. And sometimes that came in handy and made a pretty good atmosphere filter around them.

"It's hard," the younger suddenly mumbles, drawing lazy patterns on Jaebum's thigh. "It's so hard, living like this hyung," he continues slowly. "But I don't care."

Humming, because Jaebum knows that Yugyeom will continue to speak, the leader simply nods his head, agreeing with the statement.

"You don't like it?" He asks, keeping his eyes trained on the little glow in the dark stars which Yugyeom had put up on his ceiling a little over two years ago.

At the time, Jaebum didn't understand why Yugyeom wanted those stars on his ceiling, those stars which are supposed to be for five year olds when they can't sleep.

But he soon realized that when Yugyeom had lived with his family, he'd always head to the roof of his house and gaze at the stars on restless nights.

Jaebum found it cute, that their maknae seeks comfort in the sky and in stars and stuff like that.

"I like it," Yugyeom denies nonchalantly. "I love it."

Jaebum knows that Yugyeom loves it, knows that all his boys love it. He never doubts that fact, always knows that they're all dedicated to their line of work and that they'd do anything to make and keep their dreams coming true.

His mindset is the same, so he never worries about those kinds of things.

The only thing in which Jaebum is remotely concerned about is the well being of his band mates, at all times.

And everyone seems to be doing fine recently, including himself. There hasn't been anything major, anything which puts the whole group in peril or has to make them halt promotions and practice and things like that.

And that's great, that's great news to Jaebum, who couldn't ask for anything more than healthy and happy members. With Mark hyung almost fully and completely recovered, and Yugyeom controlling himself, things have been going smoothly.

Jaebum hopes it stays that way.

He's ripped out of his thoughts when a sudden weight is on top of his body, causing him to grunt.

Yugyeom had rolled over and was now laying completely on top of Jaebum, looping his arms around the leader's shoulders and leaving his head on his chest.

"Go to sleep hyung," the maknae whispers, closing his own eyes. "And dream of me."

——

"You... Ordered an album?" Mark asks, cocking an eyebrow up as he watches Yugyeom from where he's sitting on the couch, legs crisscrossed.

The younger perks his head up, looking at Mark who was standing by a wall with his arms crossed.

He hums, nodding his head to answer the elder's question.

"And you got it today?" Mark asks with a frown. When Yugyeom nods, the elder is just really confused. "But you could've snagged a copy..." He says, tilting his head in confusion and making his way to sit down next to Yugyeom.

"Hyunjin bought twelve Eyes On You albums," is all the maknae says, turning his head to find Mark gaping at him. This makes the maknae giggle. "He wanted Jinyoung's photo card. And I mean, the purchases counted so," he shrugs.

"That kid's in love," Mark sighs, cocking his head to the album on the coffee table in front of them. "Who's card do you want?"

"Don't care," Yugyeom shrugs, picking up the album and unboxing it.

After sifting through, and squealing over how well the concept photos came out for this album, Yugyeom finds his photo card.

"Woojin hyung," he says, showing Mark the card. "He's handsome."

Mark hums in agreement, reading through the track list of the album.

Once they're both done with that, Yugyeom boxes everything away again nicely, flopping down against the couch.

Mark does the same, and they both close their eyes and sit in silence.

There were some untouched subjects mingling in the air between them, some things which were probably better left unsaid, unspoken out loud.

Although both situations were horribly unfortunate in every single circumstance, Yugyeom would be lying if he said that Mark hyung going through the journey and discovering the path to recovery didn't bring them closer together.

Because Yugyeom's went through that, and now Mark has. And Yugyeom isn't grateful that his hyung has had to go through that much suffering and pain, but everything happens for a reason, he guesses.

After a few minutes, Yugyeom feels nimble fingers reach for his hand, which he willingly flips so that his open palm was facing upwards.

Mark laces their fingers together, letting them rest in between them.

Both of their eyes were still closed.

"I love you Yugyeom," Mark mumbles into the silent air, which both boys have just noticed. It was awfully silent, and they didn't know what happened to the other five, but they didn't dwell on it for too long.

Smiling a small smile, just the simplest quirk of the corners of his mouth, Yugyeom sighs.

"Love you too Mark hyung."

__________

y'know what
i think i have a thing for jyp artists
just sayin
+
i woke up at 4:45am for idol to drop because in my time zone it drops at 5:00am and i regret nothing