Chapter Text
Taehyung knew it was a dream, but that didn’t stop him from believing it. Everything was bright and loud. Strobe lights flashing, and music pounding in his ears. He thought he was maybe in a club, but he was looking down at his feet and saw high heels and gravel, bits of grass, a piece of gummy glass. Outside a club then. He tried to lift his foot to examine the strappy shoes, intrigued, but his body wouldn’t respond.
The lights flashed red and blue and red and blue and there was music pouring in through headphones while he sat on a curb, hunched against the cold. Cold? It was wet. Raining. He wanted to look up, but his eyes wouldn’t move. His head wouldn’t move. He tried to move his arms, his legs, anything, but he was stuck. His hands were shaking though. The lights weren’t in time to the music at all and it was jarring. He kicked at the bit of glass, watching the skin stretch and pull across his foot as he flexed, feeling the strap tighten around his ankle. He was soaking wet, but he could barely feel each new raindrop that fell. His skin must be numb.
He heard muffled voices, distant and discordant. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he knew he didn’t really want to hear it anyway. He wanted to drown them all out, lose them in the thrum and crash of the music, the familiar words and relentless rhythm. His shaking hands grasped his phone tightly, turning up the volume, but why was he wearing purple nail polish?
He woke with a start. Another weird dream. Nothing weird about that. But the details clung to him as he tried to shake sleep off. The cold drops of rain sliding along his arms, the pinch of the shoes against his pinky toes. He shivered. He wasn’t cold, but he felt the chill like a memory. He stretched his feet, rolling his ankles as though he expected to still feel the straps of those shoes restricting his movements, but of course his foot rolled just like it always had. He half expected his hair to be wet, but when he raked his fingers along his scalp, his hair was dry and cool.
He knew he should get moving. They had a busy schedule today and this little nap break had been a nice, if rare, thing. Their new song released yesterday and there was so much promoting ahead of him. He was warm and content, full of excitement and dread. He loved stage time, and there would be plenty of that coming up. He didn’t love all the other stuff. The hurry-up-and-wait of music shows and fansigns. Traveling all around only to see the inside of venues and what little he could sneak a peek at through the van’s windows. He flopped about a bit in his covers, trying to work up the energy to actually be functional.
“Tae, stop thrashing and just get up,” came a muffled voice from next him. He sighed, but complied, rolling out of bed and into the bathroom. His eyes widened in shock. They’d refreshed the dye yesterday and his hair was blindingly orange and sticking up at several decidedly odd angles. He stared at his hands as the water ran over them, brain still spinning with flashes of images from the dream. They hadn’t been his hands, he realized. In the dream. The hands, they hadn’t been his. That’s why he couldn’t move them. He had dreamed he was in someone else’s body. Neat!
---
Samantha couldn’t sleep. At least, not in a normal way. Twenty minute unintentional naps and running on caffeine and valium she’d borrowed from her mother. Hardly healthy, but then, nothing was normal anyway, so what the fuck did it matter?
It had been three days and everyone was pushing her to sleep. To eat. To take care of herself, but what was the point? Everything was wrong now. Everything was broken and nothing would ever be right ever again. Not since the day in the rain. Not since he’d looked at her with such fear and determination in his face as he turned the wheel sharply.
She’d screamed then. Her throat still felt raw with it, but she couldn’t remember hearing it, her voice lost in the sound of glass shattering, metal bending and the sickening crunch of it all. It was all she heard, so she kept music playing all the time. The house was never silent, the radio she'd never gotten around to getting rid of always on. If she had to leave the house, she put earbuds in, a constant background litany of mindless songs.
Tomorrow she would put on her new black dress, the one her mother had brought when she flew in. It was modest and warm enough for the short graveside service. She’d have to wear her boots. There were still two inches of snow on the ground here. She wanted to be back in San Francisco, laughing in the rain that had seemed so balmy and spring-like after Chicago’s bitter winters, but now she was back here. Back home in the dingy grey city where winter would stick around for another month at least.
Tomorrow she would wrap his scarf around her neck and tell herself that this was really happening, that this wasn’t just a horrible joke, a nightmare. She never wanted to set foot in San Francisco again, maybe just avoid the whole state of California for the rest of her life.
She closed her eyes and saw the pulse of the ambulance lights, how they danced on the slick pavement, reflected in a puddle and the patent leather straps of her heels. So she kept her eyes open until her body collapsed.
She pushed herself to do things to keep her hands from shaking. She threw away all the food they’d sent home with her, forcing herself to cook meals she probably wouldn't eat. She cleaned everything. Baseboards and ceiling fans. She pulled out all her clothes from every drawer, off every hanger, and sorted and refolded and rehung and reorganized. She played games on her phone. She sat on the floor of the kitchen, back pressed to the refrigerator and she stared at the tiny tiles on the floor, making patterns and tracing paths that all led nowhere.
And then she was dancing, heart pounding, sweat dripping down the back of her neck, too many lights shining, and yet in all that light, she could hardly see. A few feet in front of her was clear, then blackness and noise. So much noise. The music was loud and she moved without thinking, pushing her body past what seemed reasonable, singing loudly with a voice that wasn’t hers and smiling.
She was smiling.
That’s how she knew it was just a dream. She could feel the heat, the sweat, the burn in her muscles as she moved in ways she never could when awake. Nerves and energy made her skin crawl. She stared at the floor in front of her, patterns of light so different from the floor of her kitchen, but fascinating just the same. She moved with a grace and strength that left her breathless. She wasn’t alone, moving in tandem with other bodies, aware of the space they occupied without even looking. She felt free and alive.
She woke up, slumped over on the kitchen floor, sobbing. The elation still thrummed in her veins. She couldn't remember ever feeling that alive before. It was just a dream. She was happy, but that was just the dream. With her forehead pressed to the floor, eyes scrunched tight but unable to stop the tears from falling, she tried to shake off the feeling of being consumed with satisfaction and purpose. She had neither anymore. She wasn’t sure she’d have them ever again, and dreaming it was just a slap in the face.
---
"Hyung, have you ever dreamt you were in someone else's body?" Taehyung asked, eyes tracing patterns into the ceiling of the car.
"You mean dreamed I was someone else? Yeah, sure," Seokjin answered. His eyes were closed, head resting against the window, and he patted at Taehyung's knee absently.
"No, I mean actually dreamt that you were in someone else's body. Not that you were them, but that you were seeing through their eyes, but couldn't control where you looked or anything."
"Um... no? Not really. Can't say that I have."
"Oh. Ok. Thanks, hyung. Get some sleep." Seokjin murmured his assent with his face smushed against the glass. Taehyung took a deep breath and tried to sleep too.
It wasn't a recurring dream, though he'd had those a few times. The one with the acorn jelly in particular. But this wasn't the same dream over and over again. It was just... the same kind of dream. He was riding around like a tourist inside someone's head. A girl someone. Doing mundane tasks, like cleaning or folding laundry, always with music playing in the background. Sometimes songs he recognized and sometimes things he wasn’t sure were even really music, but all the details were bizarrely realistic. He woke up still smelling bleach, or feeling the texture of her shirts. It wasn't every night, or even every time he slept which was a very different, erratic, moving target, but he'd sort of started to look forward to them, these strange dreams of nothing special. He closed his eyes and let the motion of the car lull him to sleep.
He was pacing, phone pressed tightly to his ear. Her ear, really, whoever she was. Some strange concoction of his subconscious to help him process stress and stimuli by imagining very mundane things. Like talking on the phone. The voice on the other end was soothing and calm, but it irritated him. There was no hint of sarcasm or condescension, but he felt belittled and mocked. Which was strange, since he couldn’t make out a single word that was being said. He strained to understand. The voice was clear, no distortion, but the words… were in English. He was pretty sure it was English. None of the phrases that he knew, but English nonetheless.
And then it happened. He sighed and felt his mouth open, and out came words. In her voice. English words. Weird. Some of the words tickled his memory, like he should know what they meant, but understanding floated just beyond his reach. How was he supposed to relax and release tension in dreams that left him agitated and confused? Why dream a tense and frustrating conversation in a language he could barely order food in? But the conversation was definitely heavy with the weight of subtext, his voice strained and his words sharp. He could feel it in the way he gripped the phone, the pacing, tapping his fingers on every surface and picking at the label on the bottle of beer on the counter. He wanted a drink. Badly. He wanted to upend the bottle and drink until he was gasping for breath. But he didn’t like beer. And yet, he was craving it, spitting out words with increasing speed, trying to hurry up and get off the phone so he could slide down to the floor and just finish his damn beer already.
“Mom!” he shouted. Or she shouted? He still wasn’t sure how he felt about being sort of a prisoner in some dream-person’s head. But he knew that word, and could hardly believe the tone in which he’d said it. And then there was silence. A thick, oppressive silence. The voice, the mother voice, said something softly and then he was putting the phone down, grabbing the bottle, wet with condensation and lifting it to his lips.
It smelled good. It tasted better. Taehyung didn’t like beer, but this was amazing, sliding across his tongue, tickling his mouth with bubbles, bitter and sweet and delicious. He didn’t want to stop, but he couldn’t keep swallowing so fast without taking a breath. He slammed the bottle down, half afraid it would shatter. Half hoping it would. Cleaning up the mess would keep him from dwelling on the gnawing guilt from having yelled at his mother. Her mother? He’d never spoken to his mother in that tone.
He ran his hands through his hair. Long hair that draped over his shoulders and brushed against the insides of his elbows. He finished the beer and tossed the bottle in the trash can, taking slow steps. He wanted another one. And one more after that. And then a whiskey. Instead, he kept walking, taking purposeful steps out of the kitchen and away from temptation.
He stepped into a bathroom and pulled the handle of the shower without bothering to turn on the light. He just wanted to stand in the water, in the dark, letting the ambient light from the bedroom highlight enough of the sharp corners that he wasn’t in any real danger. He peeled his clothes off, taking a moment to be briefly fascinated and perplexed by the cotton panties. Wait. Panties. Girl voice. Girl hands. Girl body. He was dreaming himself into a girl body, who was about to get into the shower. Yes. Sweet. If only he could control the eyeballs that were looking at nothing but tile and the shapes of bottles in a hanger over the showerhead. Why was his brain against him seeing naked girls in his dreams?
He stepped into the shower and gasped at the heat. He couldn’t do more than just stand there, being slowly boiled alive as the water ran down his back, through his hair, soaking and drowning him, so much steam curling around in the half dark.
His heart was heavy and his throat felt tight, but he didn’t want to cry. He was tired of crying, hated the ache it left behind his eyes and beneath his ribs. He’d cried so much, and knew he wasn’t anywhere close to done with crying, but he hated it. He hated crying, and so he cried as he slid down the tile to crouch at the back of the shower, letting the water splash and tickle. And he cried. Because he was tired of crying and the only thing to do was weep for the futility of tears.
---
“How long have you been practicing?”
“Dunno, couple of hours?”
“Sam, you look wrecked. Take a break.”
“I took a break and now I need to practice.”
“You need to sleep. Possibly eat a real meal.”
“I’m fine, Jess. I just want to get back to normal.”
“This isn’t normal. This is insane. It’s been less than a week!”
“And we’re supposed to perform in three days!”
“I’m not letting you on my stage like this, Sam. You need to take some time off.”
“I don’t want time! I want to just get on with my life!”
“Ok. Fine. I understand that, but I’m in charge of this dance team, and I’m telling you that I don’t think you’re fit to perform right now.”
“I’m fine! Watch me, I’ve got this.”
“Yeah, the moves are great. Always have been. But can you even see your face right now?”
“Jess, I need this. I need to keep dancing.”
“You’re welcome in the studio any time Sam, but I’m telling you to take a break. We’ll perform without you. Just come back when things settle down a bit.”
“What does that even mean? ‘Settle down’? This is it, Jess. This is my life now. This is all I have. Work and dance. That’s it. This is all I have left.”
“Oh, Sam, honey, that’s not true. Oh, it’s okay, come here. We’ll figure this out, alright? You’re still a part of this team and we need you, but we need you to take care of yourself. It’s okay, just wipe your face on my sleeve. I don’t mind. We’ll figure this out.”
---
“Bereavement Leave sounds so stuffy and awful. Like something for old people to deal with,” Samantha said, sighing at the stack of paperwork in front of her.
“Well they can’t call it Too Sad To Function Like a Proper Human Leave. It wouldn’t fit in the designated space in the form letter.”
“You are obnoxiously pragmatic.” Samantha tapped her pen on the desk.
“Delightfully charming is the phrase you’re looking for. I’m delightfully charming.”
“Kayla, you are many things. But what I need right now is an adult.” Kayla rolled her eyes and Samantha threw a paper clip at her head.
“Technically, I’m an adult and so are you. At the ripe old age of 21 you can legally do all the things there are to do in this country, except become president and withdraw Social Security.”
“I’m not adult enough to handle this. I want someone to come do the adulting for me. I want an adultier adult. I want…” her voice trailed off.
“Your mom?” Kayla asked softly.
“Yeah.”
“Where is she, anyway?”
“Back in Germany.”
“Already?”
“It’s been a week since the funeral. What was she supposed to do, sit around and watch me be sad? I sent her home.”
“Sam, it’s only been a week. That’s really not a long time.” Kayla stretched out her hand, reaching for Samantha’s shoulder, but she twisted in her chair, gesturing to the towering folders covering half her desk.
“And yet here we are. My dad’s supposed to get his reassignment in a few days and they might be coming back to the States. Life goes on, the world turns, and I have to turn in paperwork with several different kinds of documentation proving that I wasn’t off taking some fantastic vacation the whole time and really was crying my eyes out and dealing with too many people trying to be helpful and instead just getting in the way.” Samantha shoved the papers across her desk, rolling her shoulders as she leaned back in her chair.
She was back at work even though she felt like she was held together with lipstick and willpower. But being the most junior member meant not a lot of privileges and leeway. She had used her precious two vacation days on the special Valentine’s Day trip that had turned into a nightmare and had to scrape together the rest of her time off with red tape, floating holidays and calling in every favor she could manage. Time waits for no man, or woman as she learned, returning to piles of unfinished work, deadlines looming and the ability to give a shit stretched very thin.
“Yeah, well. Cut yourself some slack, ok?” Kayla raised her eyebrows and tilted her head dramatically as she stepped backwards out of the tiny cubicle. “And holler if you need anything. I’ve got permits up through the first of the month for zones 1 and 2, but if you need a hand, you call me, ok?”
“Yeah, thanks Kayla. I will. It’ll be good to be busy.” Samantha gave her friend a tight smile and turned back to the mountain of work in front of her.
It was good to be busy. Busy meant less thinking. Busy meant less time to remember. Busy meant making a visible difference, an impact, a measurable change in the world from having existed for this short period of time. She needed that. Measuring herself in tangible ways was the only thing getting her through these days. She needed to know that it mattered that she was still here.
Trust me, he’d said as they got in the rental car. The whole trip was full of surprises, just like he was. She didn’t know the destination until he’d handed her a boarding pass at the airport. She’d packed her bag with the vague guidelines of a 10 degree temperature range, and a chance of rain.
She didn’t want to think about the rain. It was still far below freezing in Chicago and since it hadn’t snowed in weeks, everything was covered in dingy, drab, grey leftover snow, more oppressive than festive, the holiday cheer long gone. The cold was numbing, which is exactly what she wanted.
Her eyes burned as she stared at the file in front of her. She needed to sleep. She couldn’t seem to fall asleep during normal sleeping hours. Exhausted and dragging all day, the minute she climbed into bed her eyes were wide open and her brain started racing, but here at her desk, she could barely keep her head up. Just a few minutes. She’d just close her eyes for a few minutes.
She was sprawled on the floor, drumming her heels with laughter, desperately trying to catch her breath. Her voice echoed across the space, but it wasn’t her voice at all. This deep rumble that rose into high pitched giggles, that wasn’t her. She hadn’t laughed in almost two weeks, and even when she did, she certainly didn’t sound like this.
“Jiminie, you're an idiot.” The words were tumbling from her mouth. She could feel them reverberating in her chest, the laughter and the joy, but the voice was all wrong. Not hers.
“Ow, my ear! My nose!” came a voice from beside her, lighter and softer, but still masculine. Weird.
She felt the body next to her, arms tangled with hers, shaking with laughter too. She was exhausted, every part of her body aching, but was it even her body? She tried to lift her head, to turn and look at Jiminie but she couldn’t. She was stuck. Her breathing slowed though she was getting increasingly nervous. Without her permission, without her will, her arms stretched out above her head, fingers pressing against something cool and smooth. She was desperate to see it, but she couldn’t move her head the way she wanted. Her chin stretched to the ceiling and her eyes rolled closed. Why couldn’t she open her eyes?
“Samantha!” She started awake, hands slipping off her desk as her head shot up.
“Yes? Yes, I’m awake,” she said, wiping at her face clumsily.
“What was that?” Kayla asked, nose wrinkled.
“What? What’s wrong?” Samantha turned her chair around, then froze, finally hearing herself. “Oh, sorry. I was dreaming.”
“In Chinese?”
“Korean, actually.” Samantha looked around for the file she’d been reviewing. She hadn’t dreamed in Korean since she’d been back in the states. Why now? It had been uncommon enough back when they’d been stationed there. It seemed even more out of place here.
“Oh right. I forgot you lived there. Anyway, wake up. We’ve got a status meeting in five minutes.”
"Yeah. Thanks Kayla. I'll be right there." Samantha rolled her shoulders, stretching her hands above her head just like in her dream. Jiminie. Jimin. It made sense, it was a Korean name, but she hadn't had any friends named that when she was at Osan. And she hadn't really spoken Korean in almost a year, so why now? Three years at home and her brain was dragging up flashbacks to high school? She shook her head to clear the lingering traces of the dream, a smile still tugging at her mouth though she had no idea what has been so funny.
---
“What’s with the pouty face?”
“I’m not pouting. I’m thinking. There’s a difference.”
“You’re right. Only one of those things terrifies me.”
“Hyung!”
“What are you thinking about, TaeTae?”
“It sounds stupid if I say it out loud.”
“Lots of things do, but that rarely stops you. Oh, don’t give me that face, you know I always listen no matter how weird it gets, but just, you know, spit it out.”
“I was thinking about boobs.”
“And that’s enough information, thanks.”
“Aw, Yoongi-hyung, don’t go. It’s not like that, I swear.”
“I’m going to regret this, but what is it like, Taehyung?”
“I was just thinking, I mean… how do they walk?”
“Boobs? They don’t. They just sort of sit there, on girls, and bounce occasionally.”
“No, ok, yes, but I mean the girls. How do they walk?”
“The same way you do?”
“But don’t they get in the way? I mean, where do they put their arms? They’re always just… there! Sort of touching them.”
“Girls don’t sit around touching their boobs all day, TaeTae. That’s not how it works.”
“No, no, no, the boobs! The boobs are touching the girls, all the time. Like, just sitting there, and bam! Boob touching your arm. Isn’t that distracting?”
“Is your dick distracting?”
“Yes! Frequently!”
“Okay, bad example. You know what, forget I asked. You just go back to thinking your deep thoughts there and I’m going back to the studio.”