double exposure | yuta/taeyong; nct

Chapter 8

Luckily, Taeyong's years of training make plastering a smile to his face and performing as usual almost easy. He attends music shows, variety shows, films for his channel. If anything, he just looks a little tired—and understandably so. He's at the end of a long promotional circuit. At fansigns, many people try to press bottles of vitamins and supplements into his hands, but that's how it always is.

"Don't work too hard," they urge him. "I hope you rest a lot when your schedules are complete!"

Taeyong accepts their gifts, passing them off to his staff, and thanks his fans for their consideration. It is sweet, and he knows most of them genuinely mean it. Obviously they love to get new content from him, but generally, real concern for his health always wins out over anything else. Still, it leaves him feeling a little empty. They have no idea the real reason behind his fatigue. If they did, Taeyong doesn't think they'd like him very much anymore.

And it really is awful. He misses Yuta. Of course he's still angry and hurt about everything he said the last time they spoke, but the ache for him, for his texts, his voice, his comfort, makes all the rest of it pale in comparison. He's lonely. It's not that he's more alone now than he was before he met Yuta, it's just that before, he didn't realize how much more was out there. He didn't know there was anything else, didn't know he was missing something. Now, the loss is evident, the pain sharp and fresh.

But there's no going back now. Right? Taeyong's manager canceled his flights, and he and Yuta haven't spoken, and that's all it's going to be. This fling will sink into the depths of their histories, and Yuta will move on to the next pretty, shiny toy that stumbles across his path, and Taeyong will spend the rest of his life trying to find something that feels the same, trying to fill the void that Yuta left behind.

Though his fans don't know anything is wrong, his friends certainly do. They try not to let him spend too much time alone, but it's tough since they're all so busy. Still, even Kun manages to make time to see him at least once a week.

Fortunately, the winter holiday season is coming up, and everyone's calendars are clearing, so they manage to all sit down for a meal—Taeyong, Doyoung, Johnny, and Kun—one evening at Doyoung's place.

Taeyong's really been trying not to talk to them about it a whole lot. There's not much any of them can do, and Taeyong knows that empathy and compassion are both finite resources, even for very close friends. Besides, they've all been busy. He doesn't want to waste anyone's precious free time dumping all of his turmoil on them.

So for the first couple of hours, they don't talk about it at all. They chat about their work, about how much success Taeyong's recent album saw, about their plans for the holidays. But eventually this talk peters out, and Johnny asks, "But, seriously, Taeyong. Are you, like, doing okay?"

Taeyong starts. "I mean, yeah," he says. "I'm fine."

"You keep saying that," Kun says. "But you can talk to us, you know. We want to help."

"I do talk to you," Taeyong says, almost defensively.

"You hardly mention him," Doyoung says. "Or any of it. It's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but—you can't just keep all of it inside, either. And if you don't tell us, who do you tell?"

Taeyong realizes now that in his attempts not to bother his friends too much with his problems, he's kind of just not really said anything to them about it at all. "Um," he says. "I mean, I just don't want to bring you guys down, like, it's kind of a bummer all around. And there's nothing anybody can do, so."

"But like—what did he even say?" Johnny asks. "All you told us is that it's over, because you started fighting about how much publicity you were getting, and how to use it. Which, yeah, is kind of a big deal, but I don't think that would be enough for you to cancel your flights and stop talking to him."