Bad headspaces

“Can we please just… stay at home?” Kibum asks in a small voice. Jinki eyes him suspiciously before he sighs.

“But I wanted to go out to celebrate,” he says and Kibum curls in on himself in the couch.

It’s not that Kibum doesn’t like partying, it’s just that today feels more like a day in. If Kibum is to be completely honest, it may also have to do with his social anxiety and how he just can’t deal with people right now. He feels suffocated in the presence of the SHINee members and if four of his closest friends are too much to handle right now, then a club full of strangers will undoubtedly send him into a panic attack at best. He just doesn’t want to admit that he’s having a bad headspace day.

He feels so guilty every time he has one of these days, every time he prevents the other four members from doing what they want to do because they decide to take care of him instead.

He closes his eyes and buries his head in his knees, unable to see Jinki’s frown turn worried and exhales deeply.

“You can go,” Kibum says in a whisper and feels the couch dip beside him and a hand on his back, rubbing soothingly along his spine.

“Are you okay?” Jinki asks and Kibum nods, head still buried in his knees. Jinki’s hand stills on his back for a moment before it starts moving again. Kibum bites his lower lip and tries to force himself to show a more upbeat facade. He doesn’t want to go to the club but he can always send Jinki away, can always tell him to have fun with other friends.

“Yeah, just … not feeling the club today.”

Jinki doesn’t believe him. It shows in his eyes when Kibum looks up to get eye contact with him.

“Bad headspace?” Jinki asks bluntly and Kibum whimpers and buries his face back in his knees.

There are many things he shows to the public, confidence, trust, colours and independence, but behind closed doors, Kibum is mostly just alone. Loneliness and anxiety has been clouding his life for far too many years but he’s too afraid to really do something to change it.

He knows people worry about him; Jonghyun has suggested therapy more than once, Minho tried to convince him to go to the hospital and Taemin tried to trick him into one but none of it works because Kibum is not stupid.

Somewhere above the rainbow is the faint promise of no more anxiety but by now he has grown so accustomed to his life that he can’t imagine not having these periods of anxious loneliness.

Kibum is brought back to the darkness of the living room by Jinki’s humming. He hasn’t confirmed his bad headspace but Jinki doesn’t need the confirmation, not really. His reactions are enough to prove that he is indeed in a bad headspace.

They sit in silence for Kibum doesn’t know how long. His back is starting to ache in his odd position and he somehow wishes he could get up, leave the living room and hide under his blankets and forget about the world, about Jinki and SHINee and about himself. With Jinki there besides him, however, he’s too scared to leave.

It feels like it’s a disappointment if he is to get up and leave, like someone will judge him for being unable to stay with one person as well. His anxiety is silently telling him how incompetent he is and Kibum would do anything to just shut it out, but he knows that there is no way to do that.

Instead he sighs and lifts his head from his knees. The moon is shining in through the open window and Jinki is still sitting beside him, hand caressing his back in a soothing way. As he turns his head and gets eye contact with Jinki, Jinki sends him a small smile.

“Do you want me to find a blanket?” Jinki asks and Kibum nods a little, movement restricted by the way his cheek is resting on his knee cap.

When Jinki gets up from the couch, the room turns completely silent. Kibum can almost hear his own heartbeat and it’s a bad thing. He doesn’t want any sound to obscure the silence because the silence is safer than the sounds. The weight of the blanket falling on his back has him groaning a little and Jinki hums a small sound before he leaves the living room.

In the minutes Jinki is away, Kibum hurries to reposition himself. He drags the blanket around his shoulders, leans against the back rest and pulls his knees against his chest. It’s very like his former position, but better for his back with the support from the couch and it feels safer with the blanket. He doesn’t need to be hunched over when he has the blanket.

Jinki returns a couple of minutes later with two cups of something steaming hot. Kibum’s first guess is hot chocolate but when he’s handed the cup the liquid is too black to be hot chocolate and the scent of coffee is too strong for it to be anything else. He warms his hands on the cup, the warmth more needed than the actual caffeine but he appreciates that Jinki has taken the time to make him coffee nonetheless.

They sit in silence while Kibum soaks up the warmth and slowly accepts that tonight he is in a bad headspace but he’s not alone. The moon dips behind a few clouds and the living room darkens for a moment. Kibum is too focused on his coffee to notice that Jinki turns around to look at him with worried eyes.

“When did you last eat?” he asks and Kibum almost drops his cup of coffee at the sound of the words spoken out loud. The silence has become such a welcome companion that Kibum had almost forgotten Jinki was even there. Jinki just takes Kibum’s cup from him and puts it on the coffee table in front of them, making sure that more words won’t cause Kibum to actually drop the cup of now lukewarm liquid.

Kibum tries to think of when he last ate but he wasn’t eating lunch because everybody was at home during lunch and he couldn’t deal with the loud voices and the presence of people at that time. He didn’t have breakfast either because he was too anxious in the morning to eat when he realised he was in a bad headspace today and he obviously hasn’t eaten dinner either, not with how he has lost appetite throughout the day.

The only reasonable answer is that he ate some time yesterday, Kibum isn’t even sure what meal he did eat yesterday, but he decides yesterday is the better answer.

“Yesterday,” he whispers and keeps his voice quiet. It doesn’t matter much, though, because Jinki’s stomach growls a little with a sound far louder than Kibum’s voice and Kibum covers a little and sinks against the couch. Jinki concludes today must be really bad.

“Do you want me to cook ramyun?” Jinki asks and Kibum shrugs a little under his blanket. He doesn’t care. He’s not hungry. He never is when he’s in a bad headspace. Food just matters less.

Jinki’s stomach growls again before he gets up from the couch again. Kibum can hear him in the kitchen, can hear the electric kettle boil the water and the ripping of paper when Jinki uncovers the ramyun-bowl.

The scent of food spreads across the apartment 10 minutes later and Kibum’s stomach twists in disgust. He’s not hungry. The scent becomes stronger when Jinki takes the food with him to the living room. There’s only one bowl of ramyun like he already knows that Kibum won’t be able to eat a full bowl.

Jinki slurps while he eats and Kibum sinks further into the couch, this time more relaxed. The sound of Jinki eating is comfortable and familiar.

“You should eat something,” Jinki says after a while and grabs a noodle with his chopsticks before he points it in the general direction of Kibum. Kibum doesn’t want to uncover from his blankets, however, so instead he leans forward, grabs the noodle and eats it.

Eating again after a day of no food makes his stomach twist uncomfortably in a desire to eat more and not being big enough to support the amount of food it really wants and Kibum tries to suppress the small smile on his lips.

If he’s honest, he’s happy Jinki is here. A bad headspace is difficult enough to deal with but had he been left alone he would have been the victim of his own mind, self-hatred would have clouded every breath he took and he wouldn’t have been eating.

With Jinki here, it’s like it becomes just a little easier to breathe, the self-hatred is a little less.

Jinki continues to eat his ramyun while he feeds Kibum a noodle or two every 30 seconds or so. Kibum eats what he’s given but not more than that but little is better than nothing.

When the bowl is finally empty, the clock strikes midnight. Somewhere throughout Seoul, young people are partying away, mingling with strangers and enjoying their life like tonight is their last and Kibum knows that he could have been a part of that. Except tonight this is far better for him, cold coffee and strings of noodles from ramyun means more to him than strangers in a night club ever will, even if it’s as mundane as things can be.

As time ticks by, the moon shows itself from behind the clouds again and the light streams into the living room. Kibum doesn’t know what time it is when he stands from the couch and stretches his legs from their awkward bended position as he walks towards the window.

He can hear Jinki following him but he doesn’t care. He’s staring at the moon. The moon that is usually Jonghyun’s comfort brings a comfort with it, a reminder that even though the world scares him there are people out there that he can trust.

Jinki’s arm breaks his view when the other man points towards a star constellation.

“Look,” he says. “It’s Cassiopeia!”

Kibum follows his line of sight and connects the 5 stars that make up the constellation.

“I don’t know what it means,” Jinki admits. “But it’s the only constellation I can identify.”

It has Kibum snorting a little and Jinki turns around with a big smile. Kibum quickly looks towards the sky again, watches the stars blink at them.

Kibum hates his life when it’s filled with anxiety and loneliness, but somehow, the man beside him understands him just like the rest of them. But unlike Jonghyun, Minho and Taemin, Jinki just accepts without trying to heal. It may mean nothing to Jinki, but to Kibum it means the world.

Tonight is not perfect, tonight is not what it should have been, but given the circumstances, Kibum is positive tonight could have been much worse had it not been for Jinki.

author's notes

This is an emotional piece to me, ok. Kibum's social anxiety is almost a direct replica of my own, his bad headspace days exactly like mine and the way he deals with them - well, also identical to my way of dealing with my days. But not only is Kibum in this piece a part of me, so is Jinki. 

Because Jinki is the part of me that aids my friends, the part of me that understands that understanding is sometimes better than healing and it's what helps me help my friends in their times of struggles. 

The two characters are technically both me, the dark side and the light side, aiding to one another in times of mental stress. This was a prompt on tumblr, but it flowed so easily. I really love this piece.