Work Text:
Lin Mo is just a little out of breath as he reaches the dressing room, hoping (although he knows that it’s in vain) that he is not the last one there. He bursts into the room perhaps a little too loudly, and he’s forgotten how bright the lights in this room always were.
It takes his eyes a moment to adjust before he could properly see. Zhan Yu’s sitting in front of one of the mirrors, watching something on his phone as two of their stylists works on him. He looks up when the door opens, though, catching Lin Mo’s eyes in the mirror and raising an eyebrow at him. Lin Mo rolls his eyes. “I’m not that late,” he says, and Zhan Yu grins before turning back to his phone.
Cheeky, Lin Mo huffs to himself, then walks over and drops onto the couch. He doesn’t get a chance to pull out his phone before there are voices approaching, and then Zhen Nan and Jin Fan are in the room, trying to talk over each other again – probably over some stupid topic like whose outfit looks better or something, Lin Mo reckons. Jin Fan sees him first and yells, “Leader!” and Lin Mo thinks it’s been a while since someone’s called him that. Zhen Nan comes over too, slapping Lin Mo on his back when he reaches. “You’re late,” Zhen Nan says, and Lin Mo just rolls his eyes again. “You are,” Jin Fan says and gestures and himself and Zhen Nan. “We’re both done with makeup and styling.”
“And now I’m done with both too,” Zhan Yu says as he walks over. “Up and at them, leader,” he smiles, and Lin Mo glares at all three of them as he gets off the couch and walks over to where the stylists now fuss over him. He blanks out as they do his makeup and his hair, staring off at a corner of the ceiling and listens to the others chitchat without really hearing what they’re saying. Two tugs on his collar jolts him out of it and tells him that his make up is done, and he follows the stylists into the dressing room, where they hand him a heap of white and tells him to change. And he does, feeling slightly self-conscious in his fishnet shirt – he wouldn’t really call it a shirt – when he steps out.
He’s the last one in the room (again) when he walks into the shooting room next door. The staff and cameramen are still setting up the equipment and he looks around, finding Jin Fan and Zhen Nan standing around, on their phones, and Zhan Yu sitting on a chair and showing the person next to him something on his phone and oh, that’s Jia Yi.
The last time Lin Mo saw Jia Yi in person was his birthday party last year, he thinks, if he remembers correctly. He still remembers when Jia Yi came onstage with his cake, the surprise he’d felt, the way they hugged. But it hadn’t changed anything, not really, and he told himself he’d gotten used to it, but that didn’t really change anything either.
The director claps, then, and starts them off with individual shoots. Lin Mo goes first, and he clears his thoughts as he stands in front of the white screen, the shutter and flashes going off more times than he can count, until blinding white is the only thing he sees. It almost feels like he’s back in 2018, doing this photoshoot, with all the same people in the same place, just different outfits.
He takes a chair when he’s done, pulls out his phone and is greeted by 99+ messages from the SKY group chat during the time he was shooting. He clicks into WeChat, where the conversation seems to still be ongoing, and quickly back reads before he joins in, typing furiously into the text box before the children decide to go ahead and make a bad decision. Don’t take him wrong, he loves and trusts Xikan, but it’s just that sometimes, he finds that the experience he gained from Tyger really helps.
The conversation pauses and Lin Mo looks up for a brief moment, and he finds Jia Yi filming Zhan Yu dancing to some girl group song off to the side of the room. Lin Mo would never admit it, but he always has found himself feeling a bit uneasy, about the fact that Zhan Yu’s still on good terms with everyone despite joining them 1.5 years late and despite not having seen some of them for so long. But Lin Mo knows that’s not true, not really, because he knows Zhan Yu makes an effort to keep in contact with everyone. Lin Mo gets random WeChat messages from him sometimes, comments on his red-carpet appearances or whatever, and he knows Zhan Yu and Jia Yi spent New Year’s last year together, and he knows Zhan Yu’s closer with Zhen Nan and Jin Fan now that both Lin Mo and Jia Yi are away. So it’s your own fault, his brain tells him, that you’re more distant from them now. You got mad at Jia Yi before, but see, you’re the exact same right now.
Shaking his head, Lin Mo looks back down at his phone. It takes a while before they finally agree on something – texting is one of the least efficient ways to resolve problems in Lin Mo’s opinion, especially in a group chat – and when he looks up again Jia Yi is shooting. He watches Jia Yi, changing poses fluidly and shifting expressions smoothly in between flashes, and it’s the first time he feels, firsthand, that Jia Yi is really all grown up. Gone was the boy from two years ago who got scolded for not looking natural enough, not knowing his best angles and poses, and in his place was a proper idol, who knows what he’s doing, what he should do, how he looks good, and he knows it all too well. Gone was the little boy who whined for Lin Mo’s affection and needed Lin Mo’s protection.
They’re rushed to change into white dress shirts after Jia Yi is done, and now they’re really back in 2018. He knows he’s not the only one to feel this when he hears Jia Yi’s voice, still sounding childishly whiny, saying incredulously, “It’s been two years, and we’re still wearing white dress shirts when releasing a new album.” Lin Mo smiles to himself, just a little.
They’re told to lie down on top of each other for this shoot, something Lin Mo rolls his eyes internally at, but somehow Jia Yi ended up with his head on Lin Mo’s chest. Lin Mo tries to control his breathing, to keep it steady, and he hopes Jia Yi doesn’t hear how fast his heart is beating. They’re not the same people they were two years ago, and even though it’s not like they’re on bad terms, not anymore, they’re still not talking much, not really, and Lin Mo supposes that’s more of his own fault, but it also takes two people to have a conflict, and it makes him feel emotionally drained every time he tries to think about where exactly they went wrong.
Too often at night did he find himself wondering what if they never went onto survival shows, what if the five of them were never separated, what if Jia Yi never debuted, what if Lin Mo didn’t let his ambition get to him more than once, would they be different now? Would they still have what they had before? Would they still be happy together? Not just him and Jia Yi, but all five of them, like they were supposed to be? And what if, just what if Star Master had actually promoted them properly, would they have gotten popular without needing to have gone onto survival shows?
But that’s all in the past, and none of it matters anymore, he knows, not when they barely see each other now, and Lin Mo can just pretend like nothing’s ever happened and he’d be just fine, because there’s not much of it left anyways. It’s 2020, Jia Yi’s come back from UNINE a solo artist and an actor, and Lin Mo’s in SKY, and the rest of them have also released singles and have started acting and even created their own group, and that should be good enough for him, for all of them, for now, because at least it’s more work and more pay than before.
And he tells Zhen Nan as much, when they wrap up shooting and are lying around in the dressing room, saying, “I think we all know we’re better off doing our own things, you know, at least for now.”
Zhen Nan looks at him, just looks at him for a bit, and Lin Mo finds himself holding his breath. But then Zhen Nan nods and Lin Mo feels more relief than he should. “Yeah, it’s not bad. I’m really looking forward to going on tour with Kidult. I know Zhan Yu is too.”
“Of course,” Lin Mo says. “It’s always the stage.”
“It’s always the stage,” Zhen Nan echoes.
And when work ends, when Zhan Yu makes all of them take a selfie together (of course he does), when they shift around so everyone can fit into the picture and Jia Yi ends up almost next to Lin Mo but not quite, Lin Mo holds up a peace sign and looks into the camera, trying not to think about what the five of them could’ve been, because tomorrow he will be back with SKY and Jia Yi will be back filming his second drama this year and Zhen Nan and Zhan Yu are going to do another magazine shoot with Kidult and Jin Fan’s going to prepare for his drama. Because life is all about moving on, isn’t it, because you can’t stay at the same place forever, not unless you’re living in the past, but that’s not a good thing to do. Now, they’re all finding their own ways to keep going forward, even if they’re not doing it together like they were so used to doing before, but Lin Mo thinks it’s okay if they let go of them, of the past, of their past, as long as it helps.