{i know your legs are pleading to leap} | soohyun-focused

Sometimes Soohyun feels like he’s standing on the edge of the world. With nothing but the grip of his shiny black dress shoes keeping him secure, he teeters on the cusp of the universe. He looks down at the infinite void and can feel the weight of the entire Earth behind him. People and cars and buildings. Oceans and forests and deserts. People he knows and loves, all with the power to send him falling headfirst into time and space with only a whisper of his name. The slightest exhale and the ground slips from beneath him and he’s gone. They could say “I love you” or “Get away from me” or “Pass the salt” and he’d disappear as if he was just a figment of their imagination. It’s a lot of power, and he’s lucky they don’t notice him much anyways, choosing to talk amongst themselves instead. Their breath moves in the opposite direction as him and he’s safe, always pulled back just enough that he can never get a chance to see what’s at the bottom of it all.

Soohyun is aware this is a weird thought to have in the middle of a concert, but to his credit he’s not actually on stage right now. In fact, he’s wandering around backstage with the other main vocalists, watching the rappers perform through the small monitor they have set up. Kevin and Hoon are sitting, already changed into their next outfits, while Soohyun paces and tries to secretly take another pain pill. It’s not that he’s necessarily injured, definitely not according to the company, but years of untreated aches and pains will inevitably catch up to you and Soohyun feels about 60 years old right now. The throbbing pain in his left shoulder is relatively new, but he doesn’t dare bring it up now.

Another pain pill will do, even if they’re only the mild, non-prescription kind. He’s had friends offer to get him the real ones—the secrets of the music industry, Soohyun thinks and laughs a little to himself—and even his little sister suggested giving her doctor symptoms she didn’t have, and mailing the medication over to him. But Soohyun is nothing if not an honorable guy, and maybe a slight martyr, and would rather not have any nefarious drug deals traced back to him. He tells himself it’s the right choice, even as the throb in his shoulder tries to convince him otherwise.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, of course, but one can only be ignored or rejected so many times before they give up.

He passed out after their third straight hour of dancing; they told him, “Let’s finish filming the music video first.”

His throat seemed to close up on him and he couldn’t sing; they told him, “This music festival is extremely important.”

He said his back was so sore he could barely stand; they told him, “You’re starring in a musical next month.”

He gets it, he really does. No one can properly cover his lines. They need him there because no one can be his replacement. Though with the way they’ve given Hoon musical after musical, it seems they’re training him to do just that. Sometimes he sees the younger boy practicing the older songs they rarely perform anymore, and he runs through not only his lines but Soohyun’s as well. He’s still not sure if he should be worried or flattered.

Sometimes Soohyun wonders if at the bottom of the endless dark is just a warm bed, an eternity of rest for weary bones. Some would have him believe it’s churning seas of lava, a molten core moving the continents and the stars and the souls that live between them. Realistically, Soohyun thinks, it’s probably just nothing. A sentence that trails off before it finishes, a metronome, a hospital flat line.

Anytime he tries to take a glance, risk falling just to satisfy his curiosity, he is always tugged backwards by the force of a million voices. They keep their backs to him as they discuss Other Men and Other Sons and Other Singers. This Other must be an amazing guy, one who calls his mother often and knows how to sing and shut up, without ruining it for everyone else. Other is only a few letters away from Better.

The missing letters form a rope around his neck—nothing so morbid as a noose, but more like a collar. He ever strays too far and it tightens, reminding him of exactly who he answers to. But he finds it’s loose enough to stand just on the edge of it all, Earth at his back and eternity below the tips of his shoes. There’s just enough give to let him wonder, to dream and hope, but never to see. The curiosity is natural, Soohyun has learned, but you’re never, ever supposed to act on it.

Soohyun swallows another pill for good measure as he steps back on stage. The screams of the fans rise up like an ocean wave. Showtime.

The rope tightens.