Chapter Text
“Sir.”
The suit was uncomfortable, cripplingly agitating. Like an itch that wouldn’t go away until you scratched your skin raw. The sleeves seemed too tight, cropped around his wrist in a tight chaffing of stiffened cotton. The jacket bunched at his waist where it sat, just that slight bit of extra fabric around his middle pooling in his lap. He smoothed it down and watched as it crinkled right back up the second his palms had passed over.
“Sir…Excuse me, sir.”
Dongil whipped his head upright, reeling at the sudden bit of whiplash that clouded his vision in a spotty pool. His eyes met the driver through the empty space.
“We’re here,” the man told him.
“Oh, sorry.”
His gaze drifted over the throngs of glittering bodies clustered outside the house, chattering and chiming as they passed through the gates and began their way up the long, winding driveway which tucked the actual building into the hillside.
“Thank you.”
These types of things are always too bright, too bright and too loud, where a million prying eyes sat in wait, cold and harsh and unforgiving. He stepped out of the car to a chorus of clicks and shouts. He sometimes heard it chanting in the back of his head when it was quiet: the calling of his name and the flutter of a camera lens. He’d been raised on it after all.
The very second the tip of his shiny black shoe hit the darkened concrete of the driveway, he was met with his own brand of chaos: shoving paparazzi and a blinding cacophony of flashes, grabbing hands and clambering feet, a few short smiles from some of the other guests and a look of pity from his driver as he shoved the door closed.
“D1!”
“Are you back in talks with Alexander Wheckum or the Townsend Agency?”
“D1, over here!”
“What’s your relationship with Changmin of ACCOM?”
He stopped to breathe a little air into his chest and straightened his back at the sound, face slackening into an apathetic mask and answering none of them. Dongil’s steel eyes swept across the flashes and the clicks, running over them as quickly as he left in the next moment, making his way toward the house. He was met immediately with a sickeningly familiar face, one which drove a dizzying breathe of his old life straight into his lungs. And so Dongil did what Dongil did best and he ran.
He must have been diminishing in his skills because, by the time he made it to through the house - weaving through the crowds and furniture and around the gentle curve of the illuminated pool – and deposited a weary body onto the cliffside rail, Heechan was right there to meet him. Only a step behind. Always a step behind.
“Long time no see,” Heechan drawled.
Dongil shot the other a look and plucked a drink out of a wandering girl’s hand, downing the liquid in a single thrown back swig. “That was kind of the point,” he coughed out, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth the catch a drip on his lip.
Heechan teetered back on the heels of his shoes with an awkward tut, choosing to rub a hand along the back of his neck. “Oh yeah. I suppose it was, wasn’t it?”
Dongil gave him one last lingering look before settling his gaze on the tiny shining dots of the city on the horizon.
“It’s good to see you,” the younger boy offered, brilliantly white smile and wide eyes that had made him famous when one casting agent found him dancing in the street (and kept him famous long after that too).
“I’m serious,” Heechan continued into the silence. “It’s… it’s good to have you back.”
“I thought,” Dongil whispered into the air above the cliff, barely audible above the thumping music of the party. “…that you would be the last person to say that.”
“D1, come on.”
“What?”
Heechan huffed out a sigh and settled his elbows on the railway beside Dongil’s, elbows just a breath away from each other.
“You here with Lune?” he asked.
“Actually no,” Dongil replied tersely. “He’s in Milan right now.”
“Oh shit. Already?” the genuine excitement in his tone caught Dongil off-guard. “I seem to be losing days here and there, you know?”
Dongil glanced over at the younger boy, immaculate fitted navy suit and strategically tousled hair. “I seem to have a lot of lost time to make up for,” he said, retuning his eyes to the city beyond.
“Gotta start somewhere.”
A long silence reined where Dongil let the younger fester in the awkward ambiguity, readjusting himself against the railway.
“It’s been slow coming for me since you left,” Heechan added. “Thought that might make you happy.”
“How was the gig?” Dongil asked.
Heechan seemed taken aback, blinking at the question. “What gig?”
“Prague.”
“I didn’t…” the boy’s eyes lit up in some sort of realization mid-thought and left him gaping slightly at the other. “No one told you?”
“Told me what?”
Heechan broke into a smile. “Come on,” he pushed back from the rail and motioned for Dongil to follow him. “There’s someone I have to introduce you to.”
“No, Heechan. That’s not-”
“Come on,” the younger insisted with a familiar old smile. “I promise you’ll want to meet him.”
Dongil reeled back, on hand on the cold metal rail and the other extended forward in defense. “I don’t think that’s-”
He was cut off when Heechan wrapped a thick hand around his wrist, tugging the other along with exacted steps steady and strong. A couple people floating along the edge of the pool excitedly called out to them as they passed, gleefully distracted smiles lopsided on their soaked faces. Heechan, in a fashion befitting to his occupation, smiled back and greeted each one of them by name. There were others too, people that all adored him. People that all adored Heechan, the dazzlingly blinding mess that he was. The dazzlingly blinding mess that Dongil used to be.
The house which Dongil hadn’t given himself a chance to really look at before as he darted through it sat in a foreboding bastion of modern architecture on the hillside. It was strong and harsh and white in that clinical sort of fortress that seemed to be popular with people now-a-days, spacious and open with mingling crowds dotted beside the few pieces of furniture strewn across the grey slate floors. As soon as they passed inside the cracked glass sliding doors, a couple more placated party-goers passing by with short comments and waves, Dongil rooted in his heels and stopped cold.
“Heechan!” he hissed out, wearily eyeing the growing mass of people.
“Can you just trust me for one second,” the boy pleaded.
Dongil leveled him with an impassive glare. “Look, I don’t even know what you’re trying to do. I don’t want to-”
“Dongil,” Heechan said and he froze.
He couldn’t remember the last time Heechan had called him that. Lune barely even said it anymore, so familiar with the new personas they both had adopted. It was strange it to hear it again after all these years. Dongil was almost half convinced the other would have forgotten it by now.
“You’ll want to meet him,” he insisted, hand tightening around Dongil’s wrist.
When he finally started to follow Heechan and they had made into the next room – a dizzying expanse of floor length windows that shone their own reflections back on themselves against the hard paint of night. There was a throng of people, and in the center stood an impossibly bright boy with a sort of untarnished boundless joy about him that just seemed to radiate an innocent exuberance Dongil hadn’t seen in a long time. Not something that bright. Not anything quite like it really. He laughed and it made Dongil’s ear ring in the melody of a nostalgic song he couldn’t remember the words to. And then, with a wave of Heechan’s hand in the air, the boy’s eyes were on him all of sudden, growing wider, clear with excitement. He stepped through the group, slowly making his way towards the two actors.
“Oh my god, you’re here! Like really here!” the boy chocked out through a grand smile. “I- I- You inspired me to act!”
“Yuku here,” Heechan smiled back at the younger boy before them, clapping hand on the kid’s shoulder, “took over the Prague role when you left.”
Dongil just stood there stunned, looking at Heechan for clarification, blinking into the empty stretch of Heechan’s expectant eyes and Yuku’s bright smile. “But I thought that…”
“He’s doing a great job too,” Heechan tacked on, grinning at Yuku with an amount of ease that let Dongil know how close the two must have gotten.
“I was actually really nervous because you’re so amazing and I wasn’t sure I was going to fit in,” the small boy rambled. “I mean I came in after you and you’re like… you’re the best.”
“You’re an actor?” the idiotic words slipped out of Dongil’s mouth before he registered even mouthing them.
Yuku laughed. “Yeah, I am! Thanks to you!”
“Yuku is a fan favorite. They had to reshoot the whole first half of the movie but everyone liked him so much they didn’t really care,” Heechan added, looking fondly at the young boy, voice dripping with pride. “Kind of amazing, right?” he asked Dongil.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding along almost numbly. “Yeah that is amazing. Congratulations.”
“Thank you!” Yuku beamed back. “It’s honestly so wonderful to meet you. When I heard you came back I was so happy you were okay. You are okay, right?”
“…Yeah?” Dongil chuckled at the other’s endearing sincerity. “I’m okay.”
“Thank god!” Yuku yelled, slightly too loud that it caused himself to flinch. “I mean that’s awesome!” he corrected. “I mean you’re my role model.”
“Role model?” Heechan scoffed teasingly at the younger boy. “Hey, I thought I was your role model?”
“You’re cool and all that…” Yuku sheepishly answered, eyes fitting from Heechan’s face to Dongil’s. “But you’re no D1,” he smiled.
Heechan threw his hands in the air with a grin. “What use is raising these kids anymore? They don’t respect you!”
“Hey, wait,” Yuku interrupted. “I have the best idea. I mean only if you’re free and only if it isn’t rude of me to ask. Gosh I probably should have asked first.”
“Yuku,” Heechan stopped him, grabbing the kid by the shoulders to get his attention. “What’s the idea?”
“Oh,” the boy seemed to realize he hadn’t actually said anything. He turned to Dongil. “Will you come to set?” he asked. “Work with me? Work with me on set?”
It took a moment, and then it took two. Dongil breathed in the unbridled enthusiasm, tossed it around his head with the unfiltered adoration of a naïve boy, and then blew them back out into the room. “You want me there?”
“Of course I do!” Yuku said. “I’m sure everyone would love to see you and it’s like a dream of mine.”
Heechan nudged him, a gentle push into his shoulder that drew his eyes to the other’s “You should go sometime.”
“Okay, yeah,” he murmured and then glanced back at the young boy practically bouncing, the fluff of his long hair waving up and down at his excited tremble. “I’d love to come, Yuku.”
“Wow,” he breathed. “You… you’re really amazing, D1.”
For some reason, a very real and very human reason, compliments get harder as you hear them. They loose the luster and the sincerity. They lose any semblance of the words they carry, just speaking out things they don’t mean. But then, out of nowhere, someone that hasn’t been groveling comes along, a very real and very human person, and they make you feel special again.
“I-” Yuku reached out and shook Dongil’s hand awkwardly. “Thank you so much. Really.”
“Yuku!” someone called out from the group of people across the floor which he had previously been entertaining. “This dude doesn’t think you know how to b-boy!”
Heechan threw his head back and laughed at Yuku’s shocked and offended expression.
“That’s a bad bet!” Heechan yelled back. “Kid’s a legend!”
“Kid’s a legend.”
“Why does that sound so…” Dongil started to mumble to himself and then it hit him.
“D1?” he heard someone from his side murmur, but his eyes were unfocused and his brain muddled. “Hey, you alright? D1?”
He jolted as Heechan’s hand came to rest on his bicep, relaxing once he noticed the other’s concerned gaze.
“Where’s…” he asked looking around the room and finding Yuku very much indeed proving someone wrong on their assumptions about him.
“You alright?” Heechan pressed, hand still there to steadily hold him down to earth. “You kind of spaced out there for a second.”
“Sorry, I just… miss someone,” he admitted after a second. “He’s a really good kid,” Dongil whispered under his breath, eyes locked onto Yuku.
“He reminds me of you,” Heechan told him.
Dongil’s brow pinched inward confused.
“When you started out you had that same light in your eyes and everyone wanted to be you,” Heechan said, glanced over at Dongil as he watched the young actor. “I wanted to be you,” he admitted.
Dongil leaned back onto the wall. “I was naïve,” he said.
“You were like a god,” Heechan mumbled in some eerie sort of wistful nostalgia. “Still are,” he added. “Fallen from grace and all that but still...”
Dongil looked at the other for the first time without any rivalry or contempt, just looked at him and let him be. They didn’t have an easy acquaintanceship or whatever someone might call them: friends, rivals, something in between and something entirely different. Heechan was dangerously passionate and it just seemed to always rub Dongil the wrong way, stapling itself to his neck in a pricking irritant that bled when he tugged it and bled when he didn’t. But it was then that Dongil realized he didn’t hate Heechan. No, the younger was so similar that it scared him.
“They don’t want me anymore,” Dongil argued. “They won’t let me come back easily.”
“Everyone worships you,” Heechan laughed in response, gaze flitting over the party and the people. “They always will,” he tacked on the end more seriously.
“What if I don’t want that?”
Heechan shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone want that?”
Someone in the group called Heechan’s name, a boisterous laugh propelling the words across the space. Heechan waved back with a big smile and started to move toward the group before he paused, a few steps away, and turned back to Dongil.
“You know…” Heechan started. “I don’t really care if you hate me or we’re just… whatever it is. But…”
More laugher sounded in the distance in a resonant ring.
“I’m still going to help you,” Heechan told him and with an oddly placed smile gracing his face, he ran over to find Yuku, leaving Dongil alone with a sentence in his head.