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.・゜゜・ ☆ ☆ ☆ ・゜゜・．
It’s 2 weeks after the post surfaced online when Jihoon’s late birthday celebration rolls around. It is at least 12 days since Soonyoung has last talked to Wonwoo, not counting the ignored text he’d sent last night asking him if he were coming. Their last talk was bad enough that Soonyoung had merely blinked at his accidental double entendre without sending Wonwoo a follow-up to celebrate his wittiness. It’s been way too long since he’s last tried to flirt; practice with the staff doesn’t count.
Regardless it would be lying to say that Soonyoung wasn’t expecting Wonwoo to show up, but he hasn’t mastered facial expressions from the other side of the spectrum yet. It’s a different kind of effort to pull the corners of your lips up and keep it there, while letting them fall is comically easier--
“What’s wrong with your face?” Jihoon asks.
“Nothing?” Soonyoung says, sitting down. His cheeks strain from the effort. It's shaky, but it is what it is--a smile. Sort of.
“Wonwoo’s outside,” Junhui explains, unnecessarily sympathetic, like talking to a sad kid. Soonyoung’s shoulders stay stubbornly rigid, spine straight. “Smoking,” he adds, sensing Soonyoung’s silent question.
“I wasn’t asking,” Soonyoung says.
“Asking what?” Wonwoo asks, his sudden arrival almost driving Soonyoung’s heart out his chest in shock. “Hi, Soonyoung.” His tone is suspiciously out of place, more subdued than what should accompany the cheeky smirk he shoots Soonyoung with as he goes around the table to sit in his seat, diagonal from his. Easier to stare at, from the corner of your eye, because straight ahead is too direct too soon. Maybe Junhui and Jihoon realised.
“Hi,” Soonyoung greets, as his pulse calms down, and finds it's easier to smile, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
*
Junhui leaves first, planting a drunken kiss on all of their cheeks. Once on both of Jihoon's tomato red cheeks, who squawks but does not push Junhui away. Wonwoo is calmer during his turn, grinning ear to ear, his entire face glowing with potent happiness, the contagious your-smile-makes-me-smile kind. Soonyoung turns away from it, blinded and feeling undeserving, and only turns back once it's his neck Junhui latches onto, who slurs against his skin, "Debut soon, Soonyoung-ah."
He stays to wait until Jihoon’s Uber arrives, and pointedly ignores Jihoon’s beatific smile over Wonwoo’s shoulder when they hug goodbye. Have fun, he mouthes.
Fuck you, Soonyoung mouths back, quickly transitioning his middle-finger salute to a quick wave goodbye when Wonwoo lets go and turns back to look at him. “Bye, Jihoon! Happy 13th birthday!” The driver turns back in alarm, during which Soonyoung cackles so hard he grips onto Wonwoo's shoulder for support.
“Is it just me or was Junhui way too happy tonight,” Wonwoo later wonders aloud as they walk back to his car. Like you were, Soonyoung thinks, and doesn't wander far from that simple fact, Wonwoo being happy.
They're huddled close against the night chill. It’s way too comfortable to Soonyoung’s liking, but he bears with it and grants himself the tiniest satisfaction. Soonyoung laughs lowly in agreement, and sees the way Wonwoo looks down to catch his expression, his subsequent grin. Inside his chest is a ticking time bomb. Where they touch as they walk, a hearth.
It’s started to rain lightly when they reach Wonwoo’s car. Soonyoung attempts a quick escape, already bidding goodbye see you soon, take care Wonwoo-ya , but Wonwoo acts as if he’d expected him to: hand suddenly wrapped around Soonyoung’s wrist he had pulled, strength more from the speed he did it in than his insistence, and let go just as it’d happened, equally as surprised as Soonyoung was, but more unsure. He looks at everything but Soonyoung, as if searching for the right words to say to make him stay. He takes so long to speak that already Soonyoung feels the rain soak into his thin sleeves, before eventually, quietly, Wonwoo offers, "I'll drive you."
Soonyoung had walked to the restaurant that evening, resolute in walking back home afterwards. It’s a 15-minute journey, if he sped up, but it’s also 12 days since he’d last talked to Wonwoo, and almost 3 months since he’d last seen him in person to see how his face moved up close, the worry setting in his brows like it does now, his unsure posture, his already-wet fringe. The pink hue high in his cheeks from the alcohol, and what Soonyoung wants to believe is from something else.
It speaks more about the time he'd spent without it that when Wonwoo grins widely after Soonyoung agrees, it effectively catches him off guard.
*
More as a futile attempt at fixing a fissure than an actual apology, he’d said, slowly, trying to prove a point, “That wasn’t how I wanted to say it.”
“Then say it better,” Wonwoo had replied, equally as measured, as impatient. It’d brought out the worst in both of them, the jagged, fragile parts. Painful but equally susceptible to breaking. “I don’t know what you want me to do about it, Soonyoung, but don’t make it sound like I’m the only one at fault here.”
He wasn’t, and Soonyoung didn’t make it sound as bad as it did in Wonwoo’s voice. But Soonyoung was on a 20-hour no-sleep steamroll, following an endless schedule of dance practice to vocal practice to more dance practice, only to be pulled aside and made to confront something he had no control over, demanding answers, intrusive clarifications he couldn’t provide, and he was livid not because Wonwoo shared part the blame, but because Wonwoo was involved in the first place. But how does one say that through the phone in a state Soonyoung was in, as exhausted and heartbroken as he was, listening on as Wonwoo’d misunderstood half of what he wanted to say, hearing his increasingly frustrated tone, his longer pauses.
“I just wanted you to know,” Soonyoung said in the end, throat closing up, vision blurry. He’d run out of excuses. I didn’t know what to do, he should’ve admitted, but that was way too much raw honesty for a phone call. I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I'd call you.
“I’m sorry,” he hears Wonwoo say now. Soonyoung rips his eyes from his uninteresting nails to stare at Wonwoo’s undisturbed side profile. He doesn't follow it up with anything because he doesn't have to. Soonyoung knows what this about, has dreaded talking about it the entire dinner, skillfully changing topics every time someone brought up the internet. If they noticed, no one said a thing. Instead they'd talked about Junhui's new job, Jihoon's annoying neighbor, Wonwoo finally seeing someone new. Steering the conversation away from the most pressing topic, and yet Soonyoung still isn't sure which was worse.
“It’s not--” Soonyoung starts, grasping for the right words this time, already feeling frustration simmer in the pit of his stomach. “It’s not something you should be apologising for.”
“What you said made it seem otherwise,” Wonwoo replies.
“Look--” but Wonwoo is smiling at him, before turning back to the road. He’s joking, or at least attempting to. Soonyoung feels his chest tighten and then release in the same beat.
It takes Soonyoung a second to recover before he resolutely gets back on track. “And besides,” he continues, unperturbed, as if Wonwoo didn’t just drive his pulse overdrive, “it’s nothing to be worried about. It shows nothing. Whatever we did that could’ve ruined my career, they wouldn’t be able to see.”
The car slows at a red light, giving Wonwoo a chance to tear his eyes off the road. “What do you mean?”
“You know, how like everything we did afterwards we did behind the curtains. I closed them, remember?”
The light turns green. Wonwoo grows quiet once he starts driving again. Soonyoung doesn’t think much of it until he steals a glance and sees red: Wonwoo’s ears, as red as Jihoon's entire face was. The color travels high up his cheekbones, but his mouth is a straight line, his eyes unwavering. No fucking way, Soonyoung thinks in disbelief.
Wonwoo notices. “What?”
“Nothing,” Soonyoung says, and feels something inside his chest give way, a rhythm starting anew.
*
The truth of the matter is that nobody is actually, genuinely worried. A blurry predebut picture is barely a dent on the engine that is D-64 to their inevitable debut. It’s a teenage boy in a skirt bent over an injured friend versus a recent boy group’s controversy involving a string of ex-girlfriends, a fake anecdote, and a very angry fanbase. It’s a losing battle even before the post got enough traction to break through the Trending posts, its dislikes more than thrice the likes and hate comments combined of a sad bunch of people who latches onto the demise of barely formed idol groups. By the first week it’s quieted down, the next it’s practically gone. There wasn’t even a need for a statement. The noise settled down as quickly as it had started. Everybody was way too busy; nobody had the time to fill a Soonyoung-shaped hole in the group if it came to that point.
Does not mean to say the company’s going to let the case rest easy just like that, however. They’re safe because they’re new and barely marketable. More so because it’s Kwon Soonyoung, trainee of 3 years, in possession of an unproblematic behaviour, a seemingly clean past, and only the scary, intimidating pursuit of self-improvement and almost nothing else.
But this isn’t the last it’s going to be brought up, Soonyoung is perfectly aware. The internet never forgets. Soonyoung will not underestimate the prowess of a bunch of bored people who feast on the privacy of people they know only the surface of, not the culminated histories, not the personalities behind the manufactured smiles.
It comes as no surprise, then, that during practice Soonyoung is pulled outside by a lower executive to ask him for a picture.
“A picture?” Soonyoung asks. “Like, with me?”
She might’ve thought he was flirting, and thought it cute. Any other staff would’ve shut down his cheekiness. “No, Soonyoung-ssi. A picture of you two--the kid in the infirmary. They want to know if you have pictures from the same day.”
Photos of Wonwoo’s black robe and the hair he grew long enough for the role, dodging warnings with ease with a disarming smile and well-placed hairpins, of Wonwoo’s injured eye, purpling and closed shut, of Wonwoo’s cheery v-sign to the camera, his neck littered with red lipstick stains, and Soonyoung beside him out of his own costume, lips pale but smile wide, as if conspiratory. Raunchy, he’d accused as they posed to take the photo, while Wonwoo rolled his eyes and placed a palm against the column of his neck, suddenly shy.
There are a hundred photos from that day, hundreds more that he’d already deleted, but what comes out of Soonyoung’s mouth is a quiet, but firm, “No, I don’t think so, ma'am.”
"Stop lying, Soonyoung-ah," she says playfully, but the quiet threat in her voice is there, in the way she refuses to budge, her posture straightening, showing authority. He's her favorite, he knows, the same way he knows that he isn't irreplaceable.
Soonyoung attempts again, as honestly as he can manage, “I deleted everything from my past,” which is the half-truth. The whole truth is that he’s kept some for himself. He’s long memorised the ones he’s kept--innocent, playful, unmarked with malicious intent. They’re of two friends, through childhood and beyond; Wonwoo’s wiry frame beside Soonyoung’s slowly thinning face in the same shot, sometimes with Jihoon, sometimes with Junhui, sometimes with just the two of them. He’s planned to throw them out eventually. Already he's learned the frightening reality of holding onto the past through one person only, his boyish grins in your photos, the feelings that accompanied the memories it summons. In the wrong hands they had become weaponised, thrown out like dirty laundry for the world to see, stained with the wrong context.
The photo that got posted--Soonyoung didn’t even know it had existed. It’d seemed surreal, seeing his own back, the hand that curled through the hair behind his ear, knowing what’d happened and who it’d happened with. Fear made home in his bones, in the crevices between his tissues. His team was as surprised as he was, but not as shaken, the earth cracking beneath his feet. More than that he’d felt the rage grow, at the intrusion, at the insinuation, at the merciless, thoughtless ways people come up with to ruin someone else’s life.
But more so at the fact that someone dared make public one of the only things he’s wanted to keep private in his life.
*
Soonyoung kept mum about his past so well and so insistent that no one’s tried to probe into his history further than who his family consists of, how small their tiny farm is, the number of chickens he’d helped raised. His school, the friends he’d made company with, anecdotes from his teachers--these the company collected at first, and then never forgot. They were especially strict about these kinds of things, quick to latch onto anything that made you a bad kid. Wonwoo’s name had come up in the past, during the initial interviews, and Soonyoung had felt himself the most mature then, hearing his name with a straight face, feeling only the slightest jump in his pulse. Introducing him as one of his closest friends, and nothing else.
He’d kept people he loved private and hidden, not knowing one night Wonwoo’d walk up to the company’s receptionist, introduce himself, and then utter Soonyoung’s name in the same sentence--which is what Wonwoo explained he really would’ve done if Soonyoung hadn’t seen him loitering outside the building, hidden behind the shadow of a nearby lamppost, the faint glow of a cigarette the only indication of his presence.
“Fine,” Wonwoo says after Soonyoung’s minute-length sermon, running a hand through his hair. The universal sign language for frustration. He sounds as irate as Soonyoung is feeling, which is never a good sign, which just means he’s stopped listening halfway. “Fine. I won’t do it again.”
Soonyoung squints. “I don’t think you understand what you might’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I do,” Wonwoo says in a way that says he actually does not.
“You’ve got to promise me, Wonwoo,” Soonyoung insists. "Please."
“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo says, annoyingly reverent. “I promise. Pinky swear.”
Soonyoung stares at Wonwoo’s proffered pinky, then his blank face. It is impossible to take him seriously nowadays.
“Why’d you come, anyway?”
It is a testament to how much he’d seen it in the past that when Wonwoo’s face goes weird, Soonyoung recognises it as him hesitating. “I wanted to help.”
“You wanted to help,” Soonyoung echoes, confused.
“You know how the school nurse is Seungkwan’s aunt? And how she wasn’t in the infirmary that day because she was watching his class’s stage play?”
Seungkwan, round-cheeked and loud, easily Wonwoo’s favorite out of the freshmen they befriended. Soonyoung remembers him as clearly as he remembers juvenile pettiness, the unreasonable jealousy over a friend’s new toy. That kind of embarrassing association. Wonwoo never really realised. “Yeah, and?”
Wonwoo hesitates again. “Well, she has a photo.”
“Of us,” he adds, after Soonyoung’s lack of reply. “That day. At the infirmary.”
Soonyoung feels his chest cave in, his pulse slow. “She saw us?”
“Not really. No,” Wonwoo says quickly, placating. He scratches his nape the way Soonyoung knows he does when nervous. “I asked her.”
“You asked her,” Soonyoung echoes again. “To take a photo?”
Wonwoo looks like he was beginning an eyeroll but thought better of it. His face doesn't know whether to show guilt or annoyance, so it's done a mixture of both: a frown and the insistent way he avoids Soonyoung's eyes. “Yes, Soonyoung, so she did.”
“Where is it now?”
“With me,” Wonwoo answers, finally looking up. “I’ll show you.”
It’s on Wonwoo’s phone. Not the original, but a photo of the solid copy, Wonwoo’s thumb on the corner when he’d held it under the light.
Soonyoung recognises Wonwoo’s horrid black eye, his black robe. His hood’s on so he couldn’t make out the lipstick stains on his neck, but he knows they’re there. His noticeably pink lips despite the pale sheet that is his face covered in powder. Wonwoo holding up a thumbs up as Soonyoung himself slept peacefully beside him, fetal style, smearing blush and lipstick and foundation on the pillows.
He looks up to catch Wonwoo looking down at the picture with a small, amused smile. “I was gonna use it for blackmail,” Wonwoo explains as Soonyoung returns his phone. “Didn’t get to use it, though.”
Soonyoung doesn’t have to ask why, because he’s already known. That same year, they graduated. Afterwards Soonyoung wasted no time auditioning immediately, sending out clips of his dancing and singing to a number of companies, which looked at him once and then forgot. He wasn't accepted as quickly as he’d hoped, but ultimately it only took him half a year. When Soonyoung had called Wonwoo to give him the good news, Wonwoo was in the middle of his midterm exams, awake at odd hours, readily available at 2 AM in the morning. “Wow,” Wonwoo’d said, the same way you say Wow at watching the impossibility of something become suddenly possible, “wow, Soonyoung. We should celebrate!” But they didn't, in the end.
“Anyway, I thought it could help to, I don’t know, prove that we weren’t doing what they thought we were.” The way Wonwoo gives his screen a look longer than should be necessary, Soonyoung doesn’t miss. It’s like intruding on something he shouldn’t be present for. And yet he finds it difficult to look away. “You can have the original copy, if you want.”
Soonyoung opens his mouth, then closes it. Again, he tries, wincing at the way it comes out scratchy, “Wonwoo,” and Wonwoo looks up from his coffee deliberately slowly, as if knowing what’ll come next, bracing himself for it. “Are you still--“ Soonyoung does not finish, finding himself unable to.
There are things his burnt out brain is still able to process, like how Wonwoo stiffens momentarily, then deflates, slouching in his seat, forcing a calm that is not really as apparent as he tries to make it to be; his half-hearted shrug, the barely there trembling of his fingertips, wrapped around his mug to keep warm. The telltale signs of someone tensing up, ready for an impact that would never come, resigned to his fate; Wonwoo’s smile, just lips pulled over teeth, as he scoffs, “Of course not, Soonyoung.”
And then there are other things he is able to recognise only by virtue of having already seen it a thousand times now, like Wonwoo’s transparent lie, before he excuses himself out to smoke.
*
By the time he’d found out, Wonwoo’s been doing it for quite a while. Months, Junhui had explained. This was the year after graduation, way into Wonwoo’s first year at the university.
They’d met for a friend’s birthday, Soonyoung forgot who, because he’d remembered only seeing Wonwoo outside the restaurant with a glowing stick in hand and a cloud of smoke in front of his face. Soonyoung hadn’t seen him in only a few months and already he was unrecognisable, a stranger with Wonwoo's face and deep-set voice and an odd expression Soonyoung couldn't recognise.
“Only when I’m nervous,” Wonwoo’d reasoned, when Soonyoung got near enough to hug him and complain about how he reeked.
Soonyoung had said, “Hey, I don’t judge,” when he should’ve asked, Nervous about what? but he might’ve said the right thing because Wonwoo’d beamed bright at him afterwards, the tension in his shoulders dispelled by only a few of Soonyoung's words.
*
Last week they’d asked, Kwon-ssi, be honest with us—was that you in the picture? Were you lying when we’d asked about past relationships? Is there any other picture we should be wary of? to which he’d managed, after the first few seconds of stunned silence, “It’s not what it looks like,” the lie’s gross aftertaste making his tongue curl against the inside of his cheek.
3 years ago he’d said, “I’ve never been in any past relationships. I’ve never had a girlfriend, sir, and I’m not planning on having one if it meant I won’t get to debut.” They asked about family, acquaintances, close friends—“No, sir. I’m not in love with anyone, sir. Nobody I know is going to be a problem after debut.” The interviewer merely laughed, “you won’t believe how many liars we have wrongly accepted, but you seem like a good kid,” and didn't notice the way Soonyoung had curled up his hands into fists, nails digging into his skin, just to keep himself from screaming.
3 and a half years ago, he’d said, “I’m going to be an idol,” to his best friend, and laughed softly when Wonwoo’d joked, “I hope you fail,” and raised a hand to curl at the hair behind his ear, fingertips lightly scratching the sensitive skin there, before pulling him down.
*
By D-40 Soonyoung’s slept more in the dorm living room than he does in his own bed, scared he’ll pass out mid-climb to his bunk and instead drop onto an unsuspecting Jeonghan below and accidentally kill him days before debut. Some things he is willing to trade, aware of the quick gratification, like his bed for the floor, evening shower for extra hours of sleep, dinner for a more defined jawline.
Things usually negotiable are now set in stone, uncontested. Jeonghan missing his sister’s birthday. Seungcheol missing a hospital visit to a sick relative. All of them collectively missing years to meet people their age and socialise, because God forbid they have fun like normal kids their age, meet someone, and fall in love. Mingyu hasn’t even been in a relationship yet. In a sense Soonyoung is one of the luckier ones.
“You went there to sleep?” the executive asks, finally tearing her eyes away from the picture Wonwoo gave him to give her. They'd met a few days ago for Soonyoung to get it. A large part of his being didn't want to. The smaller part, housing guilt and the sense of indebtedness, pushed himself out of his dorm to walk to where Wonwoo was already waiting at and say, "You're right. I need the photo."
“Yes, ma’am," he answers now.
“Why beside him?” she asks, more curious than suspicious.
Soonyoung steels his nerves and talks slowly, so the trembling there wouldn't catch her attention. “I didn’t want to use a bed someone could’ve used instead.”
She looks back at the picture and doesn’t say anything else. Soonyoung had shown the picture to Mingyu first, testing waters. “What am I looking at, hyung?” he’d asked, which meant it’d look the same to a lot of people as well: Soonyoung, napping. Soonyoung, tired. Soonyoung, hiding from his responsibilities. Soonyoung, not in love with his best friend.
“Thank you trusting us, Soonyoung,” she says finally. Her smile is small, but warm, placating. That's when Soonyoung realises: she'd been nervous as well. “This will help you immensely in the future.”
Ultimately giving her the picture was not him trusting the company. In an environment that cultivates rivalry, instilling the concept of the fittest surviving while the weak giving up, having to suddenly work with people you were trying to outrun meant you had to slow back down and run at their pace instead. He’s got to think about people other than himself now. When he goes, everybody goes with him, whether up or down. His privacy is a small price to pay in exchange for the reassurance that they get to be spared.
“How’d it go?” Jeonghan asks when he returns. “Think you convinced her?"
Soonyoung thinks about her knowing smile, the look of pity she gave him that said more than she let on. “Probably not,” Soonyoung says.
"It's going to be okay, Soonyoung," Jeonghan tries.
"It's a small company," Seungcheol had said the night the post got uploaded, the first one to find Soonyoung and calm him down, hands on both his shoulders. He could've cried then, but he didn't, feeling like he didn't deserve to. "They'll forget, Soonyoung-ah. It's going to be okay."
"Thanks, hyung," Soonyoung says now, the same thing he's told Seungcheol, only this time he actually believes their words.
"You don't have to apologise, Soonyoung-ah," Wonwoo says later when he calls to tell him what he did.
Soonyoung is filled to the brim with apologies. "Still..."
"They don't know who I am."
But they might. They will. "You're right. You're no superstar."
Wonwoo's laugh is deeper through the phone. If Soonyoung closed his eyes he can almost see him outside wherever he is, smoke spilling in between his lips at each word he says. He really should've asked him what he was getting all nervous about, just to appease the hungry monster inside of him that already knew why.
"I'll ask them to blur your face," Soonyoung promises. "That is, if the situation called for them to upload it."
"And have the world miss seeing my handsome face? Whatever, Soonyoung."
Soonyoung gets taken over by the strongest urge to see him, suddenly. The crooked grin he usually teases with, Soonyoung can perfectly recreate in his head, which should be enough. The thought of Wonwoo smiling, unhurt, undisturbed, should be enough. And yet the hollow in his chest remains barren, empty.
He'd asked, "How do you tell if someone's still in love with you?" and had Jeonghan reply, first, "What, is there a secret ex-girlfriend we should know about?" and then, "Holy shit, you're actually serious."
The same question to Mingyu and he'd said, probably listing off from the top of his head scenes from whatever movie he'd recently been obsessed with, "They blush around you. They get nervous around you. They do everything for you," and Soonyoung had thought, "How oddly specific," and then the next wasn't exactly a thought, but a memory of red, of eyes not meeting yours, of the lengths people go through to protect you.
"What are you, 12?" Seungcheol had asked, ruffling Mingyu's hair with a fond laugh, unaware of Soonyoung having an epiphany just beside him.
*
"Joshua," Jeonghan explains, when Soonyoung arrives to their tiny living room after added hours of practice, unable to trust himself to fall asleep immediately if he'd gone home earlier. Soonyoung peers into Jeonghan's bright screen, squinting, to see a grainy, frozen smile. "It's just Soonyoung."
The image says, "Hi, Soonyoung," before it moves. When it waves, Soonyoung waves back before excusing himself to hide in their tinier kitchen instead. Soonyoung knows how long these calls can get. Joshua is miles away on a different timezone, and Jeonghan's been awake almost 22 hours, give or take. Give it a rest, hyung, he thinks, hearing Jeonghan's subdued laugh from where he's drinking water. It's less than a month before their debut. Their bodies are going to self-destruct at one point if they kept this up. But more than rest they've all been yearning for some kind of reassurance that their goal's only a few days away, that nobody's going to pull the carpet under their feet and launch them into the air without catching them as they fall. Seungcheol's been calling home a lot. Mingyu's been keeping himself busy with the chores inside the dorm, things he never really did unprompted. All of them, keeping busy when they didn't need be, because it's scary, having something within your grasp without the reassurance that it'd stay within reach. That having it within grasp guarantees its going to come true. Soonyoung himself has called more people these past few days than he has during the entire time he was training.
"D-25!" Junhui said. "25 days Soonyoung! Fuck, I'm getting nervous."
"What do you want," Jihoon said, "It's fucking 4 AM in the morning, you dipshit."
"Me too," Wonwoo had said, when Soonyoung called him because he couldn't sleep, and found that he could sleep easy with Wonwoo's voice talking about his day, the hours he'd spent staring at his laptop, the amount of coffee he'd consumed, enough to replace his entire bloodstream. "20 days, Soonyoung. Hang tight."
"How do you know you're ready to give something up before you have to?" Soonyoung had asked, on a night he felt particularly brittle, having sobbed just minutes ago at the tiniest, yet most impactful reasons, like seeing his father posing with produce he'd harvested, his mother's wistful message Wish u were here, our Soonyoungie, sent with it, and before long he'd called Wonwoo after he'd calmed down, rambling, "because I never fucking know. Like, sometimes I have something, and then I do something else, and then suddenly I have nothing left, you know? Like I'd left home thinking I could survive on my own, and I can, but see--my parents, they've grown old without me there, and sometimes it fucking hits me. Not how old they are getting, but how much time I've lost without them. How--how the fuck do I know, Wonwoo, that whatever I gave up for this was the right one. That I've made the right decision to even give something up. That I didn't just decide on my own that somewhere along the way I was right to have given up what I had, and that I've always been ready for it, that I had been readying myself for when the time actually came, just to convince myself I was right when I wasn't, ever since the beginning."
"You don't," Wonwoo had said, and it'd taken too long that Soonyoung had thought he'd fallen asleep, listening to an empty line with increasing anxiety. "Nobody knows, Soonyoung-ah. We just gotta live with the regret, I guess. But that's only if you really did make the wrong choice."
"That sucks," Soonyoung had said. "You're being very unhelpful, Wonwoo."
Wonwoo'd laughed, the breathless kind, like he was keeping his voice so low that no sound came. "Sorry."
"Sorry, too," Soonyoung had replied, and Wonwoo didn't ask him what he was apologising for, because he probably already knew. Soonyoung wasn't sure whether it was better he knew or didn't, but he'd stayed silent all the same, listening to Wonwoo's sharp intake of breath, and then the quiet, careful way he said, "You don't have to keep apologising, Soonyoung-ah."
"Sorry, still," Soonyoung had insisted, feeling stubborn, his throat on the verge of closing up for the nth time that day, and not just because of the constant effort of hitting a note higher than what he was capable of hitting. "I'm so fucking sorry, Wonwoo," he'd said, hearing a sniffle that didn't sound like his own, feeling the wetness line his cheeks as his tears travelled down and fell. "Sorry for giving you up."
*
The heat in the hallways was cranked up high with the swell of bodies. He’d already run across the entire floor before realising he’d forgotten what he was supposed to bring, and ran back to the classroom and squeezed through the crowd at the door to retrieve it.
The text had read: dying, pls bring ice cream. The next one that arrived, as he’d poised his thumbs to reply, was not a text but a selfie, half of Wonwoo’s face with a v-sign framing one eye, the other obscured, the white sheets under his head the only indicator of his current location.
“Christ,” Soonyoung said, finally seeing the other half, Wonwoo’s previously hidden eye purpling and swollen and shut, while the other one crinkled up as soon as he’d seen him. “You look awful.”
“You look pretty,” Wonwoo snickered. Soonyoung was perfectly aware of his melting face, the way his hair is sticking up in all possible directions when he'd taken off the wig as he sprinted the entire school grounds, his nape hot and wet with sticky sweat.
Little shit, he’d thought, before swiping under his hairline and wiping Wonwoo’s smug smile off with the same hand.
Some guy punched me when I jumped to scare him, Wonwoo had explained. It’d hurt like hell, made him stagger a bit as the pain registered, but it was the dude that cried over his crumpled form after he’d collapsed, and manhandled him to the infirmary as his nose bled all over his collar.
"I told Jihoon the haunted house idea sucked balls," Soonyoung reminded him.
"Yeah, but all I had to bring was myself, powder, and a black robe," Wonwoo'd grinned. "I'm not one to complain."
"A blackeye for less shit to carry home? I am impressed, Wonwoo-ya. Really, I am."
“He was very sweet about it, though,” Wonwoo reasoned. The bar of ice cream had melted long ago, even before he was able to stick it against his swollen eye. It laid limp beside his head. Soonyoung stared at it and pointedly ignored the tight squeeze in his chest at Wonwoo’s shut eye, the crust of blood under his nose still, the words that come out his mouth. “Very gentlemanly, and all. Strong, too.”
“Domestic abuse, huh,” Soonyoung said, going for Bored out of My Mind and instead sounding like Extremely Jealous Not-Boyfriend. “Didn’t think you had very specific type in men.”
“My type is annoyingly obtuse and incapable of looking at me straight in the eye,” Wonwoo readily replied. “Nice dress, by the way.”
“Thanks.” The elephant in the room remained unaddressed, but Soonyoung tried his hardest to play along. “What would you like me to do, master?”
“I’m hurt. Call the nurse for me,” Wonwoo deadpanned.
“I can do everything you ask me to, master,” Soonyoung coo'd in the grating high voice he’d been practicing on the entire one month before the cultural festival, chatting with Wonwoo as they’d walked home until Wonwoo’d gotten immune to it and stopped getting red whenever they’d passed by anyone on the streets who heard. “Just ask.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” Soonyoung crooned, and immediately regretted it. He saw Wonwoo see him regret it. Trying to salvage what little he can, he’d managed, “Um--I mean.“
Wonwoo shook his head and refused to look him in the eye. “Go back to your room, Soonyoung-ah. They might be needing your help.”
Junhui alone in his fishnet stockings and skirt length way beyond what was considered appropriate can single-handedly earn the entire class enough to last at least until graduation. Soonyoung didn’t need to come back unless Junhui suddenly disappeared, or got expelled.
“Try again,” Soonyoung he encouraged, this time in his normal voice.
Last time he’d thought, and then put into words, so Wonwoo could hear: I’m gonna train to be a K-Pop idol, and Wonwoo’d said, seriously, Are you breaking up with me? What he didn’t say, Wonwoo understood completely. Didn’t mean he’d accepted it, if his subsequent actions were to go by. The entire week after he’d addressed him as Soonyoung-ssi, tone unfamiliar and detached, latched more onto Junhui’s readily available neck, laughed louder and more animatedly at Jihoon’s unfunny jabs. In the background Soonyoung had done the paperwork needed for the audition and taped hours of practice footage. When he arrived in class with his scratchy voice, limbs heavy like lead, Wonwoo didn’t seem to care, which hurt more than his swollen throat, the blisters that littered his toes.
He’d come around on week 3. His guilty face was never the payoff he’d wanted, but he understood ways people manifested hurt, and let it slide.
“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo had said, handing him a jar of homemade ginger tea he would ingest for days after. “I was being mean. I didn’t mean to. I wish you only the best, Soonyoung-ah.”
What he was thinking then, in the infirmary, but couldn’t articulate well enough that Wonwoo couldn’t hear: I can’t do this without you.
There are hundreds of hours of footage he’d scrapped because he’d stopped mid-practice to answer Wonwoo’s call. Haha, you fucking dumbass, tell me everything, he’d said, ignoring the blinking red dot of the camera a few feet away. He could’ve ignored the call, could’ve sent a quick I’m practicing text, and yet found that he couldn’t, his entire body unwilling to.
Wonwoo’s face was a mess. The powder’s grouped in patches, his eyeliner smudged with his sweat. And yet Soonyoung found it impossible to look away.
“I’m hurt,” Wonwoo repeated. The way his voice slightly tapered off, Soonyoung did not fail to notice. Wonwoo licked his lips, and Soonyoung zeroed in on the movement, felt himself square up in tension. “Kiss it better?”
Soonyoung stood from his seat and leaned down, let his lips touch the tender skin of Wonwoo’s swollen eyelid.
“Fuck, ow,” Wonwoo breathed out, just as Soonyoung added more pressure.
He leaned back to survey his masterpiece: bright red puckered up lipstick stain, visible even under Wonwoo’s unruly fringe.
And then, before Wonwoo can further complain, he leaned down again and changed directions. Wonwoo’s lips were cold, and chapped, and his squeak was only the slightest bit arousing, but Soonyoung’d be lying if he said it didn’t egg him on, encouraging. Wonwoo’s quieter than he thought he would be, and also moved less, but his fingers against Soonyoung’s nape were electric, feeding into live wire that enabled Soonyoung to push more, breathing in Wonwoo’s sounds of disbelief and surprise, and then his subsequent giggles.
It’s fucking stupid, Soonyoung realised, relishing in the warmth of Wonwoo’s yielding mouth, his hurried breathing—it’s so fucking stupid, thinking he was ready to give this up. That he will eventually be ready to give this up, being held by Wonwoo. That he’d be able to walk away from this and turn back to the cold, unforgiving lens of his camera, and grin at the people who’d watch it, and not feel a part of him perish at the thought of once having the world in his hands and still trading it for something that could not, and would never be able to compare.
“I’m going to be an idol,” Soonyoung whispered against the side of Wonwoo’s neck, when they separated, and felt Wonwoo tremble when he bit on the skin there, hard but not enough to cause pain.
“I hope you fail,” Wonwoo joked, hand coming up to scratch against Soonyoung’s scalp, the tender skin behind his ear. “I’ll root for you, Soonyoung-ah.”
Wonwoo’s lips were red with Soonyoung’s wet lipstick. He grinned when Soonyoung pointed it out, and wiped Soonyoung eyes with the back of his hand once Soonyoung started crying, throat clogged, words incomprehensible. He still smelled like blood, the second time Soonyoung leaned back down to kiss him again, but he became more responsive, a little bit more breathless, like he got desperate, a thirsty man’s first encounter with water. His hands he used to wipe Soonyoung's cheeks, which must've felt gross, but he'd wiped and touched and pulled him further down with relentless insistence, until Soonyoung's on the bed himself.
(Afterwards, they had laughed at Wonwoo’s state, the lipstick stains, and ask how he’d managed to be raunchy in his state, and with who (“The nurse?!” Soonyoung could say, because he liked seeing embarrassment simmer under Wonwoo’s skin). Soonyoung had removed his makeup by then and shown no evidence.
Much later when he passed the auditions they had asked him about past relationships they should be concerned about, and he was able to confidently say none, but that would be because they wouldn’t ask about the boy he loved, still.)
Nothing else had mattered, except Wonwoo under him, sweet little thing, eyes shut at Soonyoung’s clumsy ministrations, their hurried pace and the added excitement of only being separated from the world by a single curtain—Soonyoung couldn’t care less about anything else, except, well—this.
*
The week before they are set to debut, Soonyoung wakes up with a burning throat and finds that he can’t find his voice. Fuuuuuuuck, he rage-whispers, as Seungcheol ushers out everyone from the room and calls their manager.
“Sick,” Soonyoung rasps with an involuntary wince, pointing at his throat. “Can’t stay. Dorm. Contagious. Sabotage debut.”
“So you decide to expose me to your deadly disease instead?” Wonwoo asks, and then laughs, “Wait, no, stop. I’m kidding,” steering Soonyoung back into the apartment by the shoulders. The mere act of being jostled around is a heavy toll on Soonyoung’s limbs, on his tender, useless muscles, but he sinks into Wonwoo all the same as he stumbles through the short walk, his legs uncooperative, Wonwoo's reassuring arms around his shoulder as he says, every time, "I got you, Soonyoung."
His exact orders were: “Go home, take a break, be back on time. Stay alive.” Home is miles away, with a hopeful mother and a father with tired smiles, always older than he remembers leaving them as, ready with his favorite dinner and a funny story he's never present to witness himself.
Wonwoo’s is not home, doesn’t even compare, and it’s also not the nearest, but being inside his apartment does not make Soonyoung as unwelcome elsewhere, as out of place. Wonwoo tucks him in bed the same way his mother does whenever he’s sick, years ago, ridiculously careful as if he were some fragile thing, and Soonyoung briefly feels alarm at the association, the blurring line between who Wonwoo is and who Soonyoung wants him to be. He blames his delusions on the fever, just to help his brain fucking rest.
Soonyoung ends up monopolising Wonwoo’s bed, but it’s not like Wonwoo to put up much of a fight against a dying person. He goes in and out of the room fetching Soonyoung more blankets, glasses of water, and a handful of medications, before finally leaving for the last time, keeping the door open an inch as Soonyoung watches, still awake, throat too raw to ask him to stay.
He wakes up hours later, still alone, still feeling like shit. It’s still dark out, and his throat’s on fucking fire. He walks out the room and rinses his mouth in the bathroom, where he sees a pair of toothbrushes in the same cup, toiletries that are twice too many for one person only. Soonyoung rushes out as if the tiny room suffocated him. He gropes in the dark for any sign of a light switch, and trips some more not because the hallway was messy, but because his brain had abandoned motor skills in favor of imagining another person in this small apartment, another set of shoes by the door, another person on Wonwoo's bed that isn't him, that is able to sleep beside Wonwoo through the night until the morning.
"It's nothing serious," Wonwoo'd said that night on Jihoon's birthday. "We met, like, 2 weeks ago."
Wonwoo is in the living room, in front of his laptop, its bluish glow casting shadows that make his eyelashes look longer than they are, his features friendlier. It takes a while, but Soonyoung realises, after Wonwoo’s third dip of the head, that Wonwoo’s fallen asleep sitting down, while working, in the middle of his empty living room.
The realisation that somebody that isn't him have already seen this, has probably woken up Wonwoo when they did, hits Soonyoung harder than the cough he lets out that racks his entire body. Wonwoo jerks awake then, squinting in the dark. “Soonyoung?”
A dozen pinpricks to the heart, it feels like, hearing Wonwoo call out his name once again. Soonyoung manages to call out, “I'm here,” just to help Wonwoo find him. "I'm here," Soonyoung repeats, as Wonwoo's hands find him in the dark, dragging his hand down his back in comforting strokes.
"I'm here, too," Wonwoo reminds him, and Soonyoung finds that he can't look him straight in the face, in fear of whatever reaction Wonwoo can elicit out of him. In fear of what he can do, wound up like he is right now.
Later he’s nursing a fresh mug of tea while Wonwoo dozes off for real beside him, head buried in his arms, one arm outstretched, palm up. Wake me up when you’re done, he’d said with a yawn, before closing his eyes. Within minutes he's already quietly snoring.
Soonyoung reaches for Wonwoo’s open palm and remembers how the last time he’s held hands with Wonwoo was years ago, before he made the choice. The last time Wonwoo'd probably held hands with someone, probably more recent.
In a while Wonwoo’s hand curl around his in his sleep, maybe unknowingly, maybe on purpose. Live with the regret, Wonwoo’d said, because maybe that’s what he’s been doing all this time.
He watches him silently, sleep elusive. When he places his cheek against the cold surface of the dining table, he's face to face with Wonwoo's peaceful, undisturbed face, and finds that he wants to kiss him. He's always wanted to still kiss him, he realises, not the sudden kind, but a realisation long coming, finally arriving to its destination.
When Soonyoung's vision blurs he closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and thinks about the tradeoffs he’s willingly made in the years that have gone by and the ones he’s going to have to learn to live with in the years that are still to come.
Wonwoo's cold hand warms up in his hold. It takes a while but finally he lets go, and decides to wake him up for the last time.