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Soonyoung has no idea what time it is when he wakes up, other than that it’s absurdly late.
He sits there for only a moment, sleeping bag bunched around his lap and listening to the cicadas singing their violent tune, until Mingyu’s body heat next to him becomes too stifling. He had always been impressed by the Going Seventeen staff, but shoving six very grown men into one small tent and was admittedly not one of their better ideas.
Groggily, he pulls himself up, careful not to elbow a sleeping Junhui in the eye or a snoring Mingyu in the stomach, and carefully feels his way through the dark to the tent flap. As he opens it up, he’s hit with a gust of fresh, late summer air, and although the night is still uncomfortably humid, it feels good on his skin.
He sits right outside the tent for a second, crouched on all fours, just taking in the night as he thinks through his options. He could go on a walk, but the staff probably wouldn’t be too happy with him wandering off alone. Briefly, he also considers having another drink, but quickly shoots down that idea too; after all, it was his low alcohol tolerance that had sent him to bed too early in the first place. Instead, he settles on grabbing some water from the cooler. It’s as he goes to stand up that he hears it.
It’s quiet, mostly masked by the overpowering cicadas, but there’s an airy voice coming from the far end of the fire pit. When he listens a little more closely, it doesn’t take him long to place the tune or the voice behind it.
Water long forgotten, Soonyoung stands up and slowly walks towards Jihoon’s figure, where he sits reclined in one of the camping chairs.
“Smile Flower, eh?” Soonyoung asks quietly.
Jihoon doesn’t startle, but he does stop singing. “Didn’t think you’d be awake for at least another six hours.”
Soonyoung pokes him sharply in the side before plopping into the seat next to him. “Mingyu was snoring.”
“You say that like you don’t also snore.”
“That’s different,” Soonyoung pouts, crossing his arms to let Jihoon know that he is definitely offended.
“Oh? How so?”
“It’s cute when I do it.”
Jihoon smirks as if to say he doesn’t buy it, but Soonyoung knows him better than that.
When Jihoon doesn’t say anything further, Soonyoung gets up and grabs a water bottle from the cooler, grabbing one for the other boy as well, who happily takes it when Soonyoung sits back down next to him.
“So why are you up?” he finally prompts when they’ve been silent long enough that Jihoon has started humming again.
Jihoon takes a moment to think. “Couldn’t sleep, I guess. Brain wouldn’t shut off.”
And Soonyoung knows that feeling all too well. Sleep was already hard to come by as an idol, but quality sleep was an even rarer phenomenon. So many exhausting nights had been plagued by his restless thoughts, forcing him to stay awake no matter how tired he felt. He sometimes thinks that once he’s old and gray and retired from idol life, he might just spend all his free time sleeping. He knows Jihoon gets it more than anyone else; there’s a special kind of burden that comes with being a leader in a self-producing idol group. Responsibility, Soonyoung mentally corrects himself, not burden. Never burdensome.
Soonyoung nods at Jihoon’s words, and unscrews the lid of his water before taking a large gulp. He doesn’t press the other boy at all—he knows he’ll elaborate if he wants to.
“I was thinking about what Seungcheol said,” Jihoon finally offers after a couple minutes.
“Yeah?”
“About how he used to think about us going our separate ways. And then Seungkwan saying he gets anxious about it sometimes....”
Oh. It’s spotty—because, truth be told, Soonyoung had had a lot a little more to drink than he intended to—but he does remember parts of their conversation earlier that night. He does, however, clearly remember Jihoon bringing up “Smile Flower” and suddenly Jihoon’s humming makes sense.
“I don’t ever want it to end,” Jihoon admits a little desperately, interrupting Soonyoung’s thoughts. “Like, realistically, I know it will. I know that we’ll all still talk, and I know I’ll still be doing music. But one day everything will be different. I guess I just got so caught up in life that I hadn’t really considered it before tonight....”
Jihoon isn’t looking at him, gaze instead very concentrated on the blackened fire pit, but Soonyoung can see the familiar crease in his brow. It’s the same one that appears whenever he gets stuck on a particularly troublesome lyric. In moments like those, Soonyoung doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know music the same way Jihoon does, doesn’t have the same way with words. But Soonyoung is good at expressing his own feelings, even if he’s not eloquent. Besides, after so many years together, he and Jihoon always managed to be on the same page. And so he speaks his mind now, too, hoping that Jihoon will understand as usual. After all, SEVENTEEN is his dream just as much as it is Jihoon’s. So he gets it. They all do.
“It will be different one day,” he begins, looking earnestly at the other boy’s profile. “We’ll all have families, Seokmin will probably have about ten babies, Myungho will have started at least three fashion lines, and you’ll probably have a good dozen Producer of the Year awards under your belt.”
Jihoon’s objection is on the tip of his tongue when Soonyoung cuts him off. “Hear me out, Jihoon-ah. This,” he gestures grandiosely towards the tents behind him, “will end. But SEVENTEEN won’t. What you did, what Seungcheol did, what Wonwoo did, what Hansol did, what we all did together. That’ll last forever.”
He waits for Jihoon to argue again, but when he doesn’t, Soonyoung continues. “I don’t want things to change either, even if it’s twenty years from now, but don’t you think how wonderful it will be to tell our grandkids about this one day? About all the memories we’ve made?” He unscrews his bottle again, unceremoniously taking a large sip of water after his grand speech; he always got a little too excited thinking about his future. “Besides,” he says, smacking his lips and taking a deep breath as he looks up at the sky. “I don’t know about you but I plan on letting my kids know they have the coolest dad ever.”
When Soonyoung looks at him again, Jihoon is looking back in a way that makes him feel like they’re sitting closer than they were before. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Soonyoung suddenly feels incredibly self-conscious. He hasn’t misread the situation, right? Surely he and Jihoon were thinking the same thoughts, just as always? As he defiantly holds Jihoon’s stare, he’s not sure which is louder, the cicadas or his heartbeat, but he hopes it’s the former.
“Yah, Kwon Hoshi. You fool,” Jihoon finally sighs as he lightly shoves at Soonyoung’s shoulder and leans back in his chair again. And just like that, the tension is gone. “Twenty years from now you’re still going to be trying to convince your kids that you’re a tiger.”
Soonyoung doesn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until it puffs out of him in a nervous laugh.
Jihoon doesn’t seem to notice, though. “And I’m still going to be right there telling them you’re a human. And that you’re insane.”
“They’re my children. They’ll believe me over you.”
“No, I think they’ll believe their favorite Uncle Jihoon.”
“Favorite uncle, eh?”
“Definitely.”
Soonyoung had never questioned Jihoon’s permanence in his life, but hearing the other boy talk so candidly, so assuredly, about it brings a warmth to his cheeks that he can’t blame on the humid night.
“I worry about it, too,” he admits when Jihoon seems to have gone back to normal. “But I think it’s better not to linger on these things and just enjoy them as they are. There will always be more good days anyways, you know?”
“You’re very wise, Soonyoung.”
He says it softly, but the words reverberate in Soonyoung’s head like a siren. Jihoon was the kind of guy who had many layers; only those closest to him got to see what was underneath his shy and incredibly tough exterior. In their years spent together, Soonyoung’s come to love many different sides of Jihoon but he thinks that if he had to choose, this quiet and earnest layer was his favorite.
“Thank you,” he says, and although he throws his arm around Jihoon’s shoulder in the most casual of ways, he means the words from the bottom of his heart. And because he knows him so well, he knows Jihoon knows he means them too. Even when his next words are:
“You got so drunk and so sappy so fast tonight.”
“I was only saying what we all were thinking!”
Jihoon hums at that before stretching. Soonyoung can hear his bones crack in the quietness of night; it’s a stark reminder that they really are getting older.
A sharp clap on his back breaks him out of his reverie and he looks up to see Jihoon’s retreating form. “‘Night, Soonyoung,” he calls with a wave over his shoulder.
Soonyoung doesn’t have time to say it back before Jihoon hunches over and crawls into the tent. Instead he just smiles to himself. The cicadas are still singing, but now he likes to think they’re cheering for him for a job well done. But when he realizes that Jihoon stole his place in the tent, damning him to the hammock outside, he thinks they might be mocking him instead.
—
An airhorn wails through the chilly autumn morning, startling Soonyoung from his sleep. If it weren’t for getting tangled in the hammock, he would’ve fallen right out of it.
As he squints through the sunlight, he can see the cameras are already rolling and he takes a moment to thank his past self for not swearing at being woken up so suddenly.
Seungcheol is already in one of the camping chairs and as Soonyoung disentangles himself from the hammock, the other members start to spill out of the tents. Jihoon is one of the last ones to emerge, second only to what Soonyoung can tell is an incredibly hungover Wonwoo.
Seungcheol does his best at pretending to be awake for the sake of everyone else (that’s what years in the idol industry will do to you), but truthfully the only ones actually awake are Seokmin and Seungkwan. The staff has already given them some kind of instructions to do something or another, but in Soonyoung’s sleep-riddled brain it all just becomes a garbled mess. He smiles and nods like he understands anything that’s happened in the last five minutes and sees about four other members do the same out of his peripheral. It’s okay—he knows Carats will enjoy it either way.
“Rough night?” Junhui asks him once the cameras have cut and they’ve all sat down to eat breakfast.
Soonyoung glances at him and shakes his head. “Hmm? Not particularly. Why do you ask?”
“You didn’t come back last night.”
He could be honest. After all, the previous night had left them all a little sentimental and Junhui wasn’t the kind of person to pry. But when he thinks for a moment and realizes he’d rather keep some details to himself, he opts for another explanation that is no less true. “Mingyu kept snoring.”
“Say no more,” Junhui says solemnly as he pops a piece of sausage into his mouth. “Between him and Jihoon, I couldn’t sleep either.”
“Jihoon?” Soonyoung can’t help asking.
Junhui purses his lips as he chews. “He kept singing.”
“Ah,” Soonyoung replies, doing his best to feign disinterest by focusing intently on his orange juice. “‘Smile Flower?’ I heard someone singing that last night.”
“I wish,” Junhui says with a debilitating sigh. “He kept singing ‘Bring It.’”
Soonyoung almost chokes on his juice, but covers it up with a hearty laugh. “As he should!” he announces boisterously. “It’s a great song!”
And across the semicircle of chairs and tables littered with rappers and plastic cups, he catches Jihoon’s gaze. He rolls his eyes at Soonyoung, he always does, but there’s an unmistakable fondness in their depths when he looks back at him. And Soonyoung finds himself hoping that Jihoon will never stop looking.