Work Text:
"You lost me, hyung. Explain again, we have two of them now?"
Sunggyu, to Myungsoo: "Tell them like you told me."
"I woke up, and he was just there."
Hoya looks at Myungsoo, bracketed tight between Dongwoo and Sungjong, and at the other one, sitting alone.
Woohyun is inspecting the other one from about an inch away; suddenly he pokes him in the face.
The other one calmly scoots back a few inches.
"What about you, how did it seem to you?" Woohyun asks him. "Do you know where you came from?"
"How do you know I wasn't there first?" the other one answers.
"Don't even," Sungyeol snarls. "Don't even, L."
**
Hoya flinches, as if until someone said it out loud, there was still a chance they could come up with a less insane explanation.
But he can't deny it - someone who looks exactly like Myungsoo, but acts all cool? That person already has a name, in his head.
"L," he says, trying it out. "You're L."
"Yes," L agrees.
"Nice to meet you," he says automatically.
"Hoya," L says, rolling his eyes a little, "How long have we been in Infinite together?"
Hoya frowns. "That was him," he says, nodding towards Myungsoo, who is still holding on to Dongwoo with both hands. "We called him L, L wasn't a separate person."
Woohyun nods, watching L intently.
"How can you be sure?" L asks.
Hoya frowns again. "Sometimes I go by Hoya, sometimes I'm Howon," he says, "That doesn't mean Hoya is going to walk in the door."
L shrugs.
"What," Woohyun jokes, looking from L, to Hoya, to Sungyeol, still glaring at everybody, "And then Yeolna shows up next?"
"Absolutely not," Sunggyu barks.
**
Sunggyu stands up, feet planted, fist in palm. "There will be no more duplicates, alter egos, or any weird appearances of any sort," he announces. He frowns in a way that makes it clear that he is Taking Responsibility, like if only he had spelled this out before, the whole mess might have been avoided.
Hoya is usually glad when Sunggyu takes charge - someone has to, and he's glad it isn't him - but the present situation does seem a bit beyond his authority as leader. Or maybe it's not - for all Hoya knows the management-hyungs had specifically warned Sunggyu about idol roles taking on life of their own, and he had uncharacteristically failed to pass that on to the rest of them. It doesn't seem likely, but what about any of this seems likely?
Sunggyu isn't done. "L is right," he tells everyone, "He's been in Infinite with us for a long time. Even if he shouldn't be here like this, he is now." He claps L on the shoulder. "Let's figure out what to do with you, dongsaeng."
***
Three things happen at once - Songyeol takes a sharp breath in, Myungsoo lets a long sigh out, and L gives a small smile.
"He's part of Infinite now, just like that?" Songyeol asks. "What about Myungsoo? What about me, am I out of maknae line?"
"Of course not," Sunggyu says dismissively, "All the choreography is for seven, and we can't have both of them seen at once. No. Here's what we'll do, they take turns. When we leave for practice, we'll take L, but then when we change for dinner, L stays behind, and..."
Hoya watches as - really? - Sunggyu takes out his phone and starts flicking through his calendar, and Woohyun does likewise, making suggestions to Sunggyu. Hoya has to shake his head a little. Five minutes ago the group was facing a metaphysical crisis, and now it's a scheduling problem.
Looking away from his hyungs, he sees that maknae line doesn't seem to have gotten the message that the situation is under control except for logistics. Myungsoo has wilted onto Dongwoo, face smashed awkwardly into his thigh in a clear "I am hiding from the world and never coming out" posture.
Sungjong is halfheartedly patting him on the back.
"Is he okay?" Hoya asks Sungjong.
Sungjong shrugs.
"Would you be?" he asks.
Hoya considers it for a second. "You know," he says, sitting down on the floor, near Myungsoo and Dongwoo's legs, "It's not so bad. If you and L split up your schedule, then half the time, you get to stay home! Get up late, go to bed early…" When he thinks about it like that, he almost envies Myungsoo. Having a second self to send to interviews and photo shoots when he was tired? He could get so much sleep.
Dongwoo meets his eyes for a moment over Myungsoo's back, and Hoya can tell that he's thinking the same thing.
Myungsoo shakes his head without lifting it.
Hoya is gathering breath to argue further - he really wants Myungsoo to see what a priceless opportunity has opened up for him here, is there a chance L could even serve his military time?? - when Sunggyu interrupts.
"Here's how it's going to work," he announces, and lays out a scrupulously fair division of Myungsoo's schedule.
L, and Myungsoo, and Songyeol all nod, Myungsoo rolling enough in Dongwoo's lap to look up at Sunggyu.
Hoya wonders if any of them remember how to object to schedules.
***
The whole first day, Hoya feels like he's holding his breath. Myungsoo comes with them to practice, then slips out with Woohyun, who comes back with L, now wearing Myungsoo's jacket. To Hoya, the difference is obvious, and he can't help but think that at any moment, some manager must surely point out that this is a different person. But no one does.
They swap back and forth. The substitutions are their own kind of choreography, Hoya thinks. Sometimes he's there for the swap, watching the handoff of sunglasses or scarf that marks the "active" member that day. Sometimes someone has to hide in a bathroom, and once there is some silly business with Myungsoo, Dongwoo, Songyeol, Woohyun, and L all stuffed together under a blanket fort, hoping the managers don't think to count feet.
Skinship with L is weird. The first time Hoya puts his hand on his arm, he half expects him to feel cold and plasticky. But it's just an arm. If he's not looking, if L or Myungsoo is just a warm shoulder beside him, he can't tell the difference.
***
The excuses start to wear thin. There are only so many times someone can forget their phone, or need the toilet, or oversleep. They have been trained for years to follow their schedules, and every time one of Sunggyu's maneuvers makes room for Myungsoo and L to swap, Hoya sees the management-hyungs becoming more irritated, more suspicious, less forgiving. Worse, Myungsoo and L are each missing half of their practices, and they are slowly but surely starting to fall behind in their mastery of the new choreography.
Sunggyu gets them together to yell at everybody.
"Management-hyungs are asking me if we are having any problems!" he rants. "After every practice, you must help each other, show each other what you need to work on! Myungsoo, if you go to the interview Friday, then L can't swap until the afternoon, so you're going to need to - what?"
L had shifted subtly, a certain tilt of the head that had interrupted Sunggyu as effectively as a waving hand.
"This is not necessary, hyung," he says respectfully, "I should just do all of it."
"You - what?"
"The appearances, the performances… I'm better at it. This is what I'm for."
Sunggyu frowns, seeing his elaborate scheduling schemes crumbling before him. "If you do all of it," he says, "What about him?" He tips his head towards Myungsoo.
L shrugs. "He can take pictures," he says, "Catch up on his reading. Whatever he wants." He turns to Myungsoo. "That's what you want, right? You don't want to keep going like this."
Myungsoo looks away. "No," he mumbles, "I guess I don't."
"Well, then." L nods to Sunggyu. "Problem solved."
Songyeol leaps to his feet. "No it is not," he snarls. "That is not the only - "
But he is stopped, falling silent, by Myungsoo's hand on his wrist.
***
For awhile it's not that different. Hoya sees Myungsoo at meals, and Myungsoo shows them photos, or tells them about some anime he started watching. Sometimes he makes dinner. For a couple of weeks it's almost like Myungsoo is like their spy they've sent out into normal life, reporting back on what it's like to choose what to do with your time and not follow a schedule every hour you are awake.
Then things get really busy, even more than normal, travel and interviews and practice practice practice blurring together until Hoya can hardly go an hour without checking his own phone to remember where he is now. He's sleeping, but only just, only enough that the collapse will be in weeks rather than days.
Everyone else is just as busy, in subtly different ways. Their schedules make conjunctions and epicycles around each other, bringing them together and swooping them apart again. He raps with Dongwoo. He dances with Sungjong. He interviews with Woohyun. He arrives at what he thinks is rehearsal only to realize, when they start doing his makeup, that they're filming today.
"Myungsoo," he says once, and Songyeol shoots him a look of such betrayal that he forgets what he was going to say next, please pass me the water, are you done with that magazine.
"That's L," Woohyun says, in an interested tone that is worse than blame.
Hoya had been sure, at the beginning, that at least this wasn't going to be a mistaken identities plot. He feels like he's letting himself down.
***
"Hoya," Songyeol comes to him in a panic, "When was the last time you saw Myungsoo?"
Hoya blinks, pulls out his phone by reflex. Lunch. No, that was L. Last night waiting his turn for the bathroom. No, also L. Breakfast? He hadn't had breakfast.
"I don't know," he realizes.
"We were supposed to - well, anyways, I can't find him anywhere, I think he's gone!"
"Maybe he just went out," Hoya says slowly, trying to think about it sensibly. Myungsoo has been very careful about going out - they can't exactly have fans spotting him when L is appearing elsewhere - but he does, sometimes, in a germ mask and ball cap and no eyeliner. It's not a perfect disguise, but it's pretty good.
But Songyeol shakes his head. "It's been over twenty-four hours," he says, "That's not just out, that's missing."
A sick, cold feeling is starting in Hoya's stomach. "It's going to be okay," he tells Songyeol automatically, squeezing his shoulder. "We'll go to Sunggyu right away and - "
"I already talked to Sunggyu," Songyeol interrupts, "He says we just have to be patient."
That doesn't sound right to Hoya at all. One of his dongsaengs is missing, and his hyung is saying they can't do anything about it?
"Let's try Woohyun," he says.
***
But Woohyun sides with Sunggyu.
"What do you want us to do," he says tiredly. "Go to management and tell them that someone is missing, who they can see is right there? They would think we were crazy. Myungsoo has been at every practice, every interview where he's supposed to be. We can't say, no, no, he's gone."
"But that's L," Hoya says.
"I know," Woohyun says, "But we have no way to prove that. We decided to keep it a secret, Myungsoo agreed, and now, I don't know what else we can do."
"We can't just do nothing," Songyeol insists.
"He'll turn up," Woohyun says. "I really want to believe that. Maybe he just met some noona and went back to her apartment, hm? Here we are worried, and he's having the time of his life."
"He didn't meet a noona," Songyeol says, shaking his head. "He doesn't want a noona. He - I - "
"Okay, hyung," Hoya says to Woohyun, taking Songyeol's arm. "I hope you're right. I'll bet he'll be back before we know it," he adds to Songyeol, steering him out of the room. The panic is fluttering in him like he might faint, but fighting with his hyung or freaking out on his dongsaeng are not going to help.
***
"He doesn't have a phone," Hoya says to Dongwoo.
Dongwoo shakes his head. "L has it."
"And his laptop and camera are here, and haven't been touched."
"Not for the past two days."
"And none of his clothes are missing."
Dongwoo shrugs. "Between what's in the laundry, and in the closet, and what L has with him - I don't think so? I don't think he packed a bag. The suitcases are all still here, anyways."
"But his wallet is gone."
"I couldn't find it."
"And his shoes."
"So... whatever was on him."
"I think so."
"No sign of a struggle in the apartment."
"No sign."
"Sunggyu and Woohyun probably already thought about all of this."
"Probably."
Hoya throws up his hands. "So, what, do we just - wait for a ransom note? This is insane!"
Sungjong has been waiting, looking back and forth between them. "If you're done playing detective," he says, "You know we have to talk to L."
***
Hoya has been keeping away, even in his own thoughts, from the reality that they have to talk to L.
L, for weeks, has been part of Infinite. The possibility that one of them, someone he has danced with in perfect step, could have something to do with the disappearance of Myungsoo - he feels sick.
And, worse, as long as L isn't involved, then whatever happened to Myungsoo, he's - somewhere. Maybe he's not okay, and that makes Hoya want to curl up into a tiny ball and scream, but he's somewhere, he's in someone's house, he's in a closet, he's in a hospital, he's in a ditch, and Hoya can feel all the grief of that held back by the thin thread of it only being, so far, his imagination, but if he's somewhere, he can be found.
But L is impossible. L can't exist, and so if L has something to do with it, then maybe something impossible happened to Myungsoo. Maybe he's turned into a fox, or a teapot, or gone to the land of the spirits, and Hoya could call the police right now and they could look in every ditch in Korea and never find anything. If L is involved, that's not an answer they can use for anything.
***
In the end it's Dongwoo who asks the questions.
"Do you know where Myungsoo is?" he asks L.
"No, I don't," L answers.
They're all there except Songyeol. Sungjong had sat down with L, Hoya had gone to get the hyungs, and Songyeol had trailed in after them, only to turn around and stalk back out when he saw L.
They hadn't talked about how they were going to go about it, but Hoya thinks Dongwoo being friendly, and Sunggyu doing stern-and-silent over Dongwoo's shoulder, is about the best they could have come up with anyways.
"He didn't tell you he was going anywhere."
"That's right."
"Did you - does you being here - have something to do with it?"
Dongwoo's careful phrasing doesn't help. Did you do something to him rings in the room anyways.
L frowns a little. "Does me being here have something to do with how your last interview went? Any one of us touches all of us. That's Infinite."
"But he wouldn't have disappeared if you hadn't... appeared."
"I have no idea," L says. "That's like asking how your life would have gone if you weren't in Infinite. I don't know that any more than you do."
"You must know something that can help us."
L shrugs. "I really don't. I'm sorry, hyungs."
Sunggyu turns away like he's going to just leave it like that, and the cold feeling inside Hoya lurches, like he can't hold it down any more.
"Doesn't it bother you at all?" he says to L, getting in his face. "Here we're, we're terrified, and you just don't care?"
L just blinks at him, and Hoya feels ashamed. He drops his gaze, backs away. His eyes look so much like Myungsoo's, but whatever's behind them, he doesn't think it's very much like Myungsoo at all. It's something else, something alien. Yelling at it feels like yelling at a missed train, like expecting an empty pot to care that it can't feed you.
L won't be their map to Myungsoo. He's just the exact size and shape of the hole he's left behind.
***
Somehow, they keep singing, and dancing, and smiling, and flirting. Hoya expects that at any minute someone must point out that this is ludicrous, that they are stumbling through the motions like robots, or zombies, that something is obviously very wrong. But then, these are the people who never caught on that L wasn't Myungsoo. If Infinite, now, is just an imitation of Infinite, who is going to notice? Or care?
***
He stumbles on Songyeol and L in the hall, and wishes he hadn't. Songyeol's hands are fisted in L's shirt, L pressed against the wall, Songyeol wild-eyed before him. "You have to take me to where he is," he's begging. "Even if I can't come back. He shouldn't be there alone. I can't be here without him." His voice is ragged, and Hoya does not want to see this, it's too raw, it's too personal.
But he still steps forward to put his arm around Songyeol and detach him gently from L, because as little as this is for him to see, it's even less for L.
"Come on," he murmurs to Songyeol, "Come on."
Songyeol cries, ugly wracking sobs, and Hoya cries too. He thinks that this, right here, is the end of Infinite, unless someone can come up with a plan to get Myungsoo back. He thinks they've finally found the limits of their ability to keep going.
***
Woohyun has come up with a plan. He's cooked it up with Sungjong and who knows how much alcohol. It's straightforward but insane, and the only reason Hoya is even considering it is that the same thing could be said about the whole situation.
"We used to call Myungsoo L, and L appeared," Woohyun explains. "Maybe if we start calling L Myungsoo it will bring Myungsoo back."
"I'm not calling that Myungsoo," Songyeol spits, pointing at L without looking at him. His anguish has boiled down to a sort of thick hopelessness. It hurts Hoya to see it.
Sungjong steps into his line of sight. "Pretend Myungsoo can hear you," he says. "Pretend every time we use his name, he'll know we miss him."
"It might even be true," Woohyun says, "It might work exactly like that."
Hoya frowns. "Do you mean - all the time?" he asks Woohyun. "Because..." He makes circles with his hands, trying to encompass everything he can't sum up in a sentence: Twitter, interviews, television credits, Myungsoo's book, the whole world of image presentation in which L is the name they've put to Myungsoo's face.
"I will talk to the management-hyungs," Sunggyu says, smiling tightly, and Hoya takes a second look at him and realizes that he has something. Some one piece of leverage, Hoya can't imagine what, and all this time that Hoya has been feeling helpless, Sunggyu must have felt tense like a drawn bow, waiting for a target, waiting for something he could use his one shot to do.
"Do you really think this will work?" Songyeol says softly, and the naked hope in his eyes is even more unbearable than the despair was.
"We can do this," Sunggyu replies, and it's not an answer, but it's the only answer they have.
***
Sunggyu's reach has limits. He can't change the comet-tail of printed merchandise stretching back along Infinite's path, or what the fans squeal. But whatever he says to the management-hyungs is effective. No one blinks when they start calling L Myungsoo. Management starts calling L Myungsoo, and slowly, the cloud of interviewers and choreographers and everyone around them starts following suit. He gets Myungsoo's Twitter handle changed, and they all retweet each other in a flurry. Hoya suspects that somewhere, a heroic publicist is making most of this happen for them, and he vaguely thinks they should do something nice for that person. But he can't worry too much about that, when every time he uses Myungsoo's name he feels a secret flare of hope that this will be the time, that this is the repetition that will conjure Myungsoo back for them.
"It could take months," Woohyun cautions them. Or years, Hoya thinks, as long as it took to get L in the first place, but he doesn't say anything, what would that help.
L takes the whole thing in stride. If he minds being called Myungsoo, he doesn't show it. Sunggyu's sense of responsibility for him seems to have vanished with Myungsoo, and his impenetrable calm seems to excuse any one else from having to worry about him either.
"Try saying it more casually," Woohyun suggests, "It might help if it's - real. Not just acting. Some of you still pause before the name." He looks around, but doesn't point any fingers.
"When you call my name, it like a little prayer," Sungjong says in English, and so of course they end up dancing and lip-synching at each other with Madonna blasting from someone's laptop. Hoya pulls Songyeol in before he can claim he doesn't feel like dancing, and hams it up for all he's worth, down on his knees waving his arms to the sky. Only L stays on the sidelines, watching and silent.
"Sorry you don't feel like dancing, Myungsoo!" Woohyun calls, over the music and the scuffle of boys competing for who gets center floor, and Hoya almost snaps at him for having given him a hard time when he forgot, before he remembers. "Yeah, too bad, Myungsoo, we miss you," he adds, and then they're all calling to him, telling him they need his singing, his style, that he'd better join in next time for sure, much more breathless than they should be after just a minute of dancing, somewhere between laughing and crying.
***
In the end, it takes three weeks. One morning Hoya comes out of his room thinking about breakfast and finds Myungsoo sitting there with Songyeol plastered over him, knees clutching his hips, arms tight around him, face buried in his neck, muttering something Hoya can't hear.
In just a moment, Hoya thinks, Myungsoo will be a nucleus drawing all of them in; they will cluster around him like desperate fans, grabbing on to his shoulders, his wrists, his ankles, thrilled to connect and be sure of him. But for now it's enough to just lean against the wall, and breathe, and watch Myungsoo stroke his hands through Songyeol's hair.
***
L lasts forty-eight hours, during which nobody speaks to him or acknowledges him or looks at him too long beyond the absolute minimum necessary to not actually sit down on him, and then is gone. It's rude and uncomfortable while it lasts, but they are building the strongest wall they can around Myungsoo, and L is, in fact, the exact thing that needs to be outside it. Wherever L goes, it's not their problem.
***
He never asks Myungsoo what it was like, where he was. He wonders. But maybe Myungsoo was a fox, or a teapot, or a ghost, and Hoya just wants the whole thing behind them. Myungsoo doesn't seem shadowed. He's spacey, and obsessed with his camera, and entirely as he's always been; really the only differences are a certain new significance to his cuddles with Songyeol, and that he's way behind on the new choreography. In time, when he catches up, even that difference will be erased.
***
(Hoya only ever hears anyone mention it one more time, and he wishes he hadn't. One night Sungjong gets up to get a drink, and after awhile, when he doesn't come back, Hoya goes to look for him. From the hall, he can hear Woohyun in the kitchen, sounding drunk.
"But what I worry about is, what if we didn't really get Myungsoo back?" Woohyun is saying. "What if we made him, the way we made L, what if he's just... our expectations of Myungsoo?"
"Songyeol thinks he's real," Sungjong says.
Woohyun makes a dismissive noise. "Songyeol can think what he has to. I want to know what you think, is he real, or is he just a copy of a copy?"
There's a long silence from the kitchen, and then Sungjong sighs. "He's an idol, hyung," he finally answers. "What are any of us?"
"But we never - " Woohyun starts, and breaks off. Whatever Woohyun sees in Sungjong's face, Hoya
feels a sudden relief to be around the corner, to not have to see it too.
He slips back to his room and crawls into his bed. He wills himself to sleep, to wake up in the morning with the night forgotten.
"He's an idol," he hears Sungjong say, and he whispers his names to himself, Lee Howon, Hoya, Lee Howon, Hoya, interlacing his fingers like he can hold on to himself.)