Chapter Text
Everyone was drained. They’d left it all on the stage tonight. This performance, the heartfelt thanks to their fans, and the scores of other people there for other bands had been amazing and humbling. Performing in front of such a huge crowd, very different from their tiny show in L.A. a few weeks ago, this KCon concert was overwhelming and the heightened emotion had left them all shaking and quiet. The van was full of subdued boys, each lost in their own thoughts, reliving the moments when they’d been blinded by the lights, ignoring the beaming faces in the audience when the enormity of the crowd became more than they could handle. Taehyung was pressed up against Hoseok, head resting on his shoulder, feeling the thrum of residual energy under his skin.The new album was being released in a few weeks and that meant more promoting. But first, more practicing. He’d thought the last choreography was difficult but this was just insane. His brain was constantly checking and rechecking the steps because his feet could just barely keep up.
His brain. What a mess that was. Since they were back in LA, he’d hoped he would have another one of his dreams, the good ones where he brushed long hair and felt peaceful and content. Instead he’d dreamed of saying goodbye to a pair of adorable kids, chubby cheeks and messy hands that waved clumsily. He dreamed he was spinning around, fists clenched as excitement and gratitude washed over him. Then he was sitting behind the wheel of a car, and the radio started playing "Tomorrow" and he was sobbing again, fingers wrapped around the wheel so tightly it hurt, words falling from his lips between sobs and so much hurt spilling out, his eyes squeezed tight but unable to hold back the tears. He sobbed and sobbed, trying to catch his breath, to keep singing in that soft sweet voice that wasn’t his, yet singing his part with such familiar emotions. It was overwhelming. He woke up shaking, wiping at his cheeks that were surprisingly dry. He had missed her. Sam. He missed her and it scared him, but now she was back, even if just for that one night, and that scared him too. Maybe it was no big deal. Maybe they were just dreams. But she had been singing his song, his part of the song and if felt like him even though it wasn’t his voice.
It was late now, and he was tired, but he was almost scared to sleep. What if he dreamed of her again? What if he didn’t? He honestly wasn’t sure which was better. Hoseok put his hand on Taehyung’s knee, pressing gently to quell the jiggling Taehyung hadn’t even noticed he was doing.
“Sorry, hyung,” he whispered.
“S’ok TaeTae. We’ll be at the airport soon and you can sleep on the plane.” Hoseok tapped his knee gently. “It was a good show tonight.”
“Yeah it was. Never seen so many people so happy to see us before.”
“Someday, we’ll have our own concert in an arena that big.” Taehyung nodded. Hoseok was good at imagining the big picture. Sometimes Taehyung forgot that, too busy making his own goals seem so ridiculously large that no one could expect them to come true. It saved him a lot of disappointment, but sometimes it also robbed him of the joy of seeing his plans actually happen. Like this. KCon was a big deal for them. Good exposure to a growing American audience. He’d have to work on his English more.
He wondered if dreaming in English was even helping. Three weeks in America had certainly helped, even if they were almost constantly surrounded by staff. He’d started understanding more of what he’d heard in his Sam dreams. That was good practice. That was a good thing his brain was doing. He would sleep on the plane a little bit, and if he dreamed of her, it would help keep his English skills sharpened. That felt logical, if a bit of a stretch, but he was grasping at straws suddenly. Searching for reasons to be okay with these dreams that scared him but he missed when they were gone.
The trek through the airport was thankfully uneventful this time and when he was finally tucked into his seat with his pillow and his earbuds, he sighed deeply. This was as good as it was going to get for a while, so he slipped his sleep mask on and tried to let the music and white noise of the plane quiet his jittery thoughts.
His hand hurt, tired from signing so many documents. He shook it out and briefly cracked each knuckle, grimacing as he popped his thumb. He eyeballed the stack of papers in front of him. Just a few more pages to go. His eyes scanned the words and even with all the English practice he’d been getting, this was all gibberish to him. There was a blank line at the bottom and he signed, a scrawl with many loops that looked nothing like his signature, which is when he actually noticed the hands. Her hands. Sam’s hands were now printing words. Her name, he thought, but it went faster than he could really focus on. He was turning the page and grabbing the next sheet of paper, repeating the process. Swirling loopy signature then printed name. Samantha. He caught that much before reaching for another page. Samantha C… something. He couldn’t quite make it out and now he was grabbing all the pieces of paper and stacking them neatly to the side. It looked like a small novel. What on earth could require this much signing? Still, he felt satisfied and proud looking over the pile. He had done something good here.
He jerked to the side a bit, hearing Hoseok’s mumbled apologies over the drone of the plane as an elbow jostled him. He bit back a groan and tried to get comfortable again, hoping he could get back to sleep quickly. Whether or not he wanted to get back to Sam, Samantha apparently, he still wasn’t quite sure.
---
“I’m not saying you should hop on the next plane to O’Hare, Mom, just that I wouldn’t wait too long before scheduling a visit.” Samantha tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. Her mother was always prone to exaggeration and making everything more dramatic than it needed to be.
“Alright darling. You know I worry.”
“Yes Mom, that’s why I’m telling you.”
“So when you say she seemed ‘off’ darling, what exactly is it she was saying?”
“I don’t know exactly. This visit was pretty mundane, actually. Talking about about her sisters, and she still thinks I’m you most times. But she kept rubbing my scar, and last time was even weirder. She was talking about Gramps and Little John, which is pretty normal, right? But then she grabbed my hand and starting rambling about dreams and something starting and I needed to be strong? It was just kinda spooky, Mom.”
“Oh the Dream thing.” Samantha could hear the emphasis in her mother’s voice, the same weird emphasis Nana had given.
“What dream thing, Mom? Nana talked like I should have some clue what she was talking about but I really, actually don’t.” She was rolling her eyes, glad they were on the phone and not Skyping because she didn’t want a lecture about politeness right now. She wanted someone to explain this thing that apparently everyone knew about except for her so she could stop feeling like such an idiot.
“It’s just some old Welsh legend. Don’t pay it any mind, darling.”
“What legend? I’ve never heard anything about this.”
“Of course not, it’s just a bunch of nonsense.” Samantha could practically hear her mother waving her hand dismissively.
“But,” Samantha pleaded, hoping to sound endearing and committed, not desperately curious, “it’s family nonsense.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” her mother sighed. “Mother is convinced that she comes from a long line of prophetic dreamers. It’s a legend about broken hearts seeking their healing in a… I don’t know, soulmate or something? It’s supposed to be comforting to people who’ve just gone through something traumatic, though personally I just think it’s cruel to try and give someone who’s grieving false hope like that, but Mother always insisted she had dreamed of your grandfather long before she actually met him. I don’t know, darling, it’s just something that helped her get past losing Uncle John in the war.”
Samantha’s hands had gone cold. She was gripping the phone so tightly her hand hurt. Because this was ludicrous. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. She was dreaming about a pop star because she loved music and was maybe just a little bit crazy, not because of some sort of family legacy of soulmates because if ever there were a delusion that would get her laughed out of polite society it was that she was destined for, fated to, somehow linked with in any way a member of a famous boy band. That just wasn’t a thing that was happening. There was no way. They were just dreams, bits of fiction from her subconscious based ever so tenuously in a smattering of facts she’d somehow absorbed through listening to music and talking to Hyemi. That was all. It had to be all. The alternative was too insane to wrap her brain around.
“How’s your new job going? I’m so glad you found something without that horrible commute.” Samantha cleared her throat and tried to shove her panic to the background so she could continue having a civil conversation.
“It’s great, Mom. I had to sign like a metric butt-load of paperwork for the agency for all the background stuff, plus a bunch of agreements about the daily schedules of these two toddlers. They’re three years old and have trust funds with more money than I will ever see in my life. But, the parents are pretty down to earth, despite being organized within an inch of their lives. The kids are actually really well-behaved and seem to like me a lot, so it’s really nice.”
“Well, being an au pair is great practice for when you start your own family someday.” The words, however kindly meant, were like a bucket of ice dumped inside her heart. Samantha sucked in a breath and prepared her goodbye speech, ready to get off the phone before she screamed obscenities at her well-meaning mother, but then she heard a small sniffle. “Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry. That was a horrible thing to say. I’m sorry.” She could hear the tears her mother was holding back and it made it that much harder to keep her own in check.
“Thanks for saying, Mom. I... I know what you mean.” She sniffled too, wanting to laugh instead of cry, but couldn’t find anything funny about anything just then.
“How are you really doing? I miss you.”
“I’m sad, Mom,” Samantha said, choking back a sob. “I’m just still so sad.”
“Of course you are, darling! It’s hardly been any time at all.”
“Six months and three days. I can’t stop counting.” Samantha wiped at her face, trying to remember the last time she went a whole day without crying.
“Do you need anything? Want me to send you some cookies? I could overnight a package. It’s so convenient being stateside again.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I’m okay, really. I mean, I’m not great or anything, but I’m doing better. Really.” Samantha didn't bother explaining that she was already past the worst part. She hoped she was past the worst part.
“Well, you just let me know if you need anything, and keep working. Keep busy, it will help make things seem more normal.” Samantha snorted a bit at that. She’d successfully kept her mother unaware of her disastrous summer activities, her Crooked phase as Hyemi had called it. She didn’t even know what normal was anymore, but she was trying to rebuild it, one day at a time.
“I will, of course. Now, go hug Dad for me and I’ll talk to you soon.” It took several more minutes of repeated assurances that she would, in fact, call if she needed help and she would, in fact, be fine, but Samantha finally hung up the phone, stopping her pacing to slide onto the couch. She couldn’t really blame her mom for worrying. After all, she hadn’t reached out to her family when she was saddest. She’d retreated and ignored and avoided, putting her own feelings first and forgetting that other people cared about her and might be hurt if anything had happened to her. She was trying to be better now. She was trying. She was.
---
Taehyung stared at his computer, mouth slack and eyes glazed. It had come to him in the wee hours of the morning, creeping through his brain, slithering into his consciousness and he’d been unable to let it go. Samantha Cale. That was the name he’d been writing in his dream, and the not knowing had been eating at him every time things slowed down enough for him to think. The dreams were back. Weeks without them and now they were back. Just as they were getting ready to release the new album, just days left until they made the new video public. Was it stress? This whole year had been a rollercoaster of events and promotions and recording and travel and mayhem. He thought he was coping well. Aside from not sleeping, he was the very picture of health and youth. Probably. Also probably a little bit crazy.
At this particular moment, he was leaning into the crazy. Embracing it. Taking a hold of it and shaking it with both hands. Shaking it at the internet, specifically. He was on a mission to convince himself. Of what, he still wasn’t quite sure. He’d typed her name into the search bar and now he was scrolling endlessly through pictures of random, mostly white girls. And some guys. And some random Instagrammed pictures of food that looked absolutely unappealing as he tried to keep his eyes open. He should be sleeping. He felt tired enough to sleep but he was afraid to let this go. He was also pretty sure that if he crawled into bed he’d be wide awake as soon as his butt touched the sheets. So he scrolled, looking for the face he’d seen in his dreams. The face that wore his expressions but wasn’t his face. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to prove to himself that she didn’t really exist, or looking to find her, because that was a whole other level of weird, but he’d read somewhere that you couldn’t dream a face you hadn’t seen in real life. So he was scrolling. Apparently Samantha was an annoyingly common name in America.
He wasn’t even really sure what he was looking for. He doubted there would be a picture of her with that eerily familiar look of terror and disappointment that he’d seen in his dream, but he thought he would recognize her face. But he wasn’t going to find her face, because she wasn’t real. She was just a dream. But still he scrolled, clicking over to the next page of results, eyes burning and he was going to give up. He was going to sleep and dream things that maybe meant he was losing his mind, but he thought, not for the first time, that it was an acceptable price to pay for a decent night of sleep.
He moved to close the tab when he saw it. Just a pair of red lips, not quite smiling, and something about the angle caught his attention, moments away from closing the whole thing down. He looked down at the picture, tilting his head to squint at it. Then, he scrunched his nose and squinted harder. It wasn’t the look he had seen, but the face was right. Long red hair, in braids this time. Nose just a bit too long. Mouth just a bit too wide. He clicked on the picture and it led to a site full of other pictures of vaguely serious looking girls and a lot of text that he was too tired to try to sift through. Dance. He recognized that word. He bookmarked the page to come back to later. He wished with his whole heart, more than he ever had before, that he could take dreams out of his head and show them to someone else, because the more he stared at the photo, the more he convinced himself simultaneously that this picture both was and wasn’t the girl from his dreams. He tried to calculate the probability that his brain had come up with both her face and her name at random and came up with a giant screaming blank because he had never been that good at math.
He was falling asleep. He knew better than to skip this moment, so, after checking that the page was indeed saved, he pushed his computer away and pillowed his head on his arms. He would just take a nap here on the desk. It would be fine. Just a little nap.
He woke to the sound of the door closing and Jimin humming a bit of the new single to himself as he toed off his shoes.
“Yah! Go to bed, TaeTae,” he chided, pulling off his hoodie and walking towards the bathroom. He was right. Taehyung knew he was right. He should be crawling into bed, but it was far and involved climbing a ladder and none of that sounded as appealing as just putting his head back down on his arms.
“What’re you watching?” Hoseok asked from behind him.
“Nothing. Just… browsing. Things,” Taehyung said sleepily, not caring to keep the suspicious tone out of his voice.
“Oh, it’s like that, is it? Just make sure the computer doesn’t get any viruses, yeah?” Taehyung could hear Hoseok’s chuckle and knew he wouldn’t be living that down anytime soon. He didn’t have the energy to defend himself, but suddenly, an idea struck him.
“Hey, Hobi-hyung, come look at this, would you?” Hoseok’s face scrunched up around the spoon sticking out of his mouth.
“Yah, pervert!” he muttered.
“No, not like that. It’s a dance thing.”
“What kind of dancing, Kim Taehyung?”
“I don’t know, the American kind? Just come look at this page and tell me if you’ve seen them before.” Hoseok ambled over with a skeptical grin. Taehyung pulled the page back up, a screen full of small pictures. Ten girls, all with varying degrees of serious smiles next to blocks of undecipherable text.
“Ooooh, pretty! It’s a dance crew?” Hoseok asked, skepticism quickly melting into interest.
“I think so. Do you know them?”
“No, but let’s watch this video thingy. See what they’ve got.” Hoseok scrolled down to the bottom of the page, clicking the video and as they watched, Taehyung felt his skin go clammy. It was six girls, dancing in a style that he was pretty unfamiliar with but looked beautiful. Fluid and strong, they bent and twisted around each other, each girl taking a few measures for a solo before melding back into the whole. When he watched her dance, the girl with the red hair, it felt familiar. Not like he’d ever seen it before--he was sure he hadn’t--but like he’d done it. He could almost feel the roll of her hips, the twist of her shoulders. He’d danced that way. In his dreams. He was sweating.
“They’re good,” Hoseok muttered, hand resting on his chin as he watched intently. “So in sync and whoa! Look at the flexibility. Oh, nice contagion!”
“You’ve never seen them before?” Taehyung tried to keep the fear out of his voice. He must have seen this before, somewhere, for his subconscious to have woven these details into his dream. He must have somehow seen it, even out of the corner of his eye, and Hoseok was his best bet for random American dance team practice videos.
“No, no I haven’t, but it’s good. Not our style at all, but good. Where did you find this, Taehyung?”
“I don’t even know,” Taehyung said with his eyes glued to the screen. It was too crazy to say out loud that he’d dreamed it.
“Well, send me this link, would you?”
“Sure, hyung. Of course.” Taehyung moved to copy the site’s address, mind whirling with possibilities. He’d ask everyone tomorrow. Everyone he saw. Members, staff, coordi noonas, interns. Someone would know this group. Someone would explain why he was dreaming the imaginary life of some American dancer. Someone would know. Someone would.
---
“You sound good, Sam.”
“I’m feeling better.”
“I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself. Finally.”
“Well, it turns out if you spend all day trying to talk tiny people into eating and sleeping, it kind of starts to sink in.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“And, hey, I’m dancing again, too.”
“That’s great! You should send me some videos. I’ll learn whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Hyemi. Friend. I love you, but you should not attempt these dances. You’ll break something. Possibly just my heart. Probably your own leg.”
“Samantha Branwen Cale!”
“Seriously, I’m amazed you can even pronounce that mouthful.”
“Shut up. I’m not as hopeless a dancer as you think I am.”
“You’re not hopeless. You’re enthusiastic. But not necessarily flexible, and you know, I’d hate for you to pull a muscle just for the hell of it.”
“Alright. Point taken. And you’re forgiven.”
“Yes, of course. Forgive me.”
“So, more sleep means more dreams?”
“...yeah… I guess so.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing.”
“It’s still weird. I know they’re just dreams, but I’m trying really hard not to fall down an internet wormhole of crazy kpop research trying to validate some insane family legend because that seems like some Grade A level wish fulfillment bullshit right there.”
“Eh, so long as you introduce me to Hoseok, I’m fine with your potential descent into madness.”
“Gee thanks, Hyemi.”
“Anytime, friend. Anytime.”