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“So what’s the deal between you and S.Coups?” Jun asks.
Wonwoo lies in bed and stares at the ceiling in the dark, counting his breaths. The unfamiliar hotel sheets are scratchy against his back, and the pillow is a little too soft beneath his head. With his glasses off he can’t actually see anything, because he’s always been blind as a bat, but Wonwoo imagines that if he looked over he would see Jun’s profile in the dim light of the street, shining through the cheap curtains.
“There’s nothing between me and S.Coups.” Wonwoo replies. He taps his fingers gently against the covers, in fours, until he hears Jun’s breath even out as he falls asleep.
---
Wonwoo likes to listen. He likes listening to the other members, as they laugh among themselves, piecing together their jokes in his mind. He likes listening to music, hearing song lyrics and imagining how he would sing them if the song was his story to tell, letting himself ride the melody and harmony until there’s nothing left of him on the earth. He likes listening to silence, to the music that can only be heard in between sounds, because home is with his family and with his members and no two places ever sound the same.
Wonwoo also remembers. He remembers the harshest of criticisms, often in the dead of night, when sleep refuses to be found and the moon sings high in the sky. He remembers the softness of love, too, in the midnight car rides and the crowded airplanes and in stadiums with thousands of people, all of them calling his name. Their names.
Wonwoo listens, and he remembers, and sometimes he offers his own piece of humanity into the world and tells his own story, because he owes it that much. After everything the universe has given him, the least he could do is offer a bit of his soul back.
---
The stage feels empty with only eleven people. It makes very little sense from an outside perspective, because eleven people is a lot. It’s eleven people splitting the profits of one group, eleven people splitting the lines of one song, eleven people in two dorms and one bus and being carted around everywhere like sardines.
Only, it’s eleven people, and everything feels wrong. Wonwoo turns around sometimes, his mouth already open, only to be speaking to nothing but air. Members find comfort in each other, holding on to what little they have left, because when the very pillar of who they are is gone it leaves an aching gap in their midst.
Wonwoo clings to the people around him as best he can– Mingyu, Jun, The8, whoever. It doesn’t matter, because his hands reach out and his mouth is already open to speak and there’s nothing there. No one.
---
Wonwoo dreams again and again of being barely twenty years old and offering his still-beating heart on a silver platter, both hands extended. It’s gushing blood, the edges shining with mucus and pus, the center of his being rotting before his very eyes.
In this dream, Seungcheol is kind about it. He takes the platter from Wonwoo’s hands and places it on the floor next to him before lowering himself to where Wonwoo is kneeling, eyes soft, hands tender.
“It’s okay.” He whispers, over and over again. “It’s okay. I love you, I love you.” Still, Wonwoo’s hands are slick with blood, tears falling silently from his eyes one by one.
“This isn’t mine to accept.” Seungcheol tells him, and only then does Wonwoo speak up, because he can’t spend the rest of his life listening if he’s listening to a lie.
“It is.” He insists. “It’s yours to take, it’s yours to have, forever and ever and ever.”
Wonwoo thinks that even one hundred years later, after he’s woken up and lived out his day, he will always remember the way Seungcheol’s eyes look in this moment. There’s a hint of regret, and a hint of sadness, and all of it is nearly completely overshadowed by love. Pure, unadulterated, love.
Seungcheol shakes his head. “You’re misunderstanding me.” He says, and takes Wonwoo’s hands in his own, ignoring the blood and the guts and the pain. Wonwoo looks down and traces the curves of Seungcheol’s fingers with his eyes because Seungcheol is wearing white and Wonwoo has his own blood on his hands and vomit in his throat.
“This can’t be mine to accept.” Seungcheol continues, and Wonwoo knows that this is the truth. “SEVENTEEN will always come first, to me.”
Wonwoo always wakes up here. He wakes up and goes to the bathroom and scrubs at his hands until he can’t see the blood anymore and the skin around his fingernails is red and cracked. He wakes up with regret because there’s a gaping hole in his chest where his heart should be and Seungcheol isn’t Seungcheol anymore– he’s S.Coups, their untouchable leader.
Wonwoo wakes up before he can reply, and it’s the universe’s way of mocking him, for a voice that is stuck in his throat and words that refuse to be said.
To me, you do. Wonwoo says it again and again, breathing it out in whispers as his body shakes and his stomach twists, but the words never reach their destination. They are never heard, not by the one who needs to hear them.
(Haven’t you figured it out by now? This is no dream– it never was.)
---
S.Coups comes back to them, and for the first time in months, Wonwoo finally feels like he can breathe again.
It’s different now, how he holds himself. Before, he was bright and bold— a beacon of light for the rest of them to behold. Now, though, there’s something more subdued about him. He’s strong in all the ways that matter, filling his days with late hours and unrestrained care, but he’s more confident about it now, like he knows he’s what he’s doing is right.
S.Coups acts like he’s walked into hell itself. Like he’s fought whatever monster that resides inside his soul and won. He laughs and makes jokes and the rest of the members fold in around him like flowers to the sun, and Wonwoo wonders what it’s like to look your own personal demon in the eyes and walk away with your heart intact.
“Did you miss me?” He asks Wonwoo. S.Coups asks all the members this, one by one. He springs the question on them in the practice rooms, in the studio, in the vans, in the dorms. It doesn’t matter where, because S.Coups is confident in his softness and the members love their leader.
“Yes.” Wonwoo replies. He sticks to honesty, because being SEVENTEEN without S.Coups has been like living without both his heart and his lungs.
S.Coups looks pleasantly surprised, like he wasn’t expecting that answer. Wonwoo doesn’t know why— everyone had answered yes. Even Jihoon, who loves quietly with his heart behind stone walls, had answered yes.
“I love you.” Wonwoo says, because he’ll go the rest of his life repeating those words, whether they’re accepted or not.
S.Coups smiles, his eyes crinkling in the corners in genuine happiness, expression twisted with regret. “I love you too.” He replies, and Wonwoo does not reach out to touch, because his hands are soaked in blood.
---
Wonwoo doesn’t have a stage name.
He thinks it’s funny, sometimes, because most of the members have stage names. (Or, in Joshua and Vernon’s case, have permanent identity crises.) But Wonwoo goes by his birth name, and his fans call him by his birth name, and he’s never had to reshape himself to respond to and become another name because the only name he’s ever had is Wonwoo.
Wonwoo wonders how the rest of them do it. Wonders if it was hard for the other members at first, remembering their new identity, forcing themselves into a character, becoming someone new and different and loved.
Wonwoo has only ever been Wonwoo. For him the difficulties lie in remembering how to call the other members, how to be polite and give the Hyungs the respect they deserve and use the right words and the right dialect. But no one is shortening his name, and he doesn’t have any funny nicknames, and he’s only ever been Wonwoo. Wonwoo, Wonwoo, Wonwoo.
(Sometimes, he wonders what it would be like to be someone else. To shed this skin of his and to become someone new, in a new body, with a beating heart and breathing lungs.)
---
Wonwoo likes it when S.Coups wakes him up. He’s not rude about it, not like some of the other members can get. He gently shakes Wonwoo’s arm and brushes his hair away from his forehead and whispers morning calls until Wonwoo’s eyes are blinking open, crusted at the edges.
“Hey.” S.Coups smiles. “Good morning.”
Wonwoo breathes, but all he can feel is love. Love in his lungs, love in the back of his throat, love in the heart that beats viscerally in S.Coups’ pocket.
“Hey.” Wonwoo croaks back, and S.Coups laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all morning. It probably is, since it’s early, and the rest of the members are no doubt half awake and stumbling around the dorms like zombies.
“The members are asking about us, you know.” S.Coups sits on the edge of the bed, his hand warm and heavy on Wonwoo’s shoulder, and Wonwoo sinks into the feeling. “Why you keep sleeping here instead of in your own bed, in your own room.”
Wonwoo snorts. “Not my room.” He says, because it isn’t. He shares with Mingyu, now, which makes it their room, and Mingyu might be his best friend, but he also snores terribly. Wonwoo had spent two nights lying awake, listening to the snores, counting the rests between them and composing lyrics to the beat before he had given up and started looking for a different place to sleep.
That, and S.Coups hadn't come back to the dorms last night, his bed left empty until Wonwoo had claimed it. Wonwoo blinks heavily, because he can't see, but he knows there was a beautiful lady in S.Coups arms last night, who had offered him everything she had only for S.Coups to politely return it.
“Besides.” Wonwoo manages to get out, somehow, because he’s warm and tired of thinking and S.Coups’ presence is sending him right back to sleep. “Half of me is in this room, which means it’s mine too.”
S.Coups laughs lightly. “You hardly game anymore, I didn't think your computer still means that much to you.”
Wonwoo isn’t talking about his computer. He’s talking about the most vital organ in his body, and how there’s an empty space in his chest in between his ribs. He’s talking about the rotting heart that isn’t his to own anymore, because he gave it away years ago, to someone who couldn’t accept it but took it anyway.
“I could pick it up again.” Wonwoo says, because it’s better than whatever alternative S.Coups might be thinking of.
Fingers running through his hair. A warm weight by his side. A familiar scent on the pillow. Birds chirping faintly outside the window. Wonwoo stores these moments up for when he inevitably has to let them go.
His memory is good, though. He won’t forget.
“Sleep in your own room.” S.Coups tells him, softly. Wonwoo doesn’t want to look at his face and see the regret there. “You can play music to block out Gyu’s snoring.”
Wonwoo takes one last deep breath before he lets go. He tastes the scent of S.Coups’ shampoo on his tongue for the rest of the day.
---
Sometimes, S.Coups touches Wonwoo like he didn’t mean it, when he said he couldn’t accept Wonwoo’s heart. He leans on Wonwoo’s shoulder in the vans and rests his hand on Wonwoo’s thighs when he’s not paying attention, and all of it makes Wonwoo sick with wanting.
“Please.” He begs again and again, when it gets to be too much. “Please.”
And S.Coups will take a step back, his own hand twitching. They will go their separate ways, Wonwoo to Mingyu and Jun, S.Coups to Jeonghan and Joshua, and Wonwoo will teach himself how to breathe once more until he inevitably falls in love all over again.
“This isn’t working.” Wonwoo says, tucked under S.Coups arm.
“This isn’t working.” Wonwoo says, his head resting on S.Coups lap.
“This isn’t working.” Wonwoo says, until there are no words left to say.
Wonwoo doesn’t remember what it’s like to not be in love. It’s like a fire, burning through him, surging in his veins instead of blood, kept circulating by his stupid lungs that breathe in and breathe out.
“I love you.” Wonwoo says, in the dead of night. He is always the one who says it first.
Wonwoo listens, and he remembers, and S.Coups’ response is always the same. “I love you too.” He replies every time, just as many times as Wonwoo does.
Wonwoo’s heart sits in the pocket of a man who cannot accept it. But in his own hands, there’s another heart. It beats quickly, quicker than Wonwoo’s does, and Wonwoo holds it like it’s something precious, because it is.
This heart isn’t Wonwoo’s to accept, either. It can’t be. But Wonwoo holds it, and he listens to the beats, counting in fours the way he always does, until it’s time to give it back.
---
“SEVENTEEN will always come first, to me. So whatever’s between us… It’s not meant to be. It shouldn’t happen.” Seungcheol tells him, eyes strained with the weight that only a twenty-one year old holding the futures of thirteen people can carry.
Wonwoo swallows back whatever words he’s going to say, because this is something bigger than the two of them. This is love, the force that starts wars and breaks apart nations and is currently ripping his heart from his chest.
“I love you too.” Seungcheol says. He sounds longing— not for a different life, but perhaps a different circumstance, one where he can stand on the stage and sing as S.Coups, and one where they can hold hands in private as Seungcheol.
“Yeah, okay.” Wonwoo replies. He bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds, and swallows the blood before S.Coups can see.