Chapter Text
If you asked Yeonjun about ADHD a couple of years ago, the best answer he would give you maybe was something along the lines of “it's that thing they say kids have when they can’t sit still, right?”. But after meeting Soobin he discovered that most of the time it was actually the equivalent of hell on earth.
Yeonjun didn’t really pay attention to him when he entered the trainee program. Soobin was just the boy who would always show up late to the practices and wouldn’t talk to anybody for more than 5 minutes, except for that one other kid. They would always be glued to each other, playing games on their phones.
Soobin was quite nice, to be honest. When he did talk to people he was very polite and smiled a lot, and like pretty much all the trainees, he was also very handsome, with his tall frame, sharp features and raven hair, although he more often than not looked like an overgrown puppy with the way he was clumsy and uncoordinated, yet always ready to please. Yeonjun didn’t mind him.
But sadly, his opinion quickly changed after the debut lineup was decided and it included Yeonjun, two other boys — Beomgyu and Taehyun —, Soobin, and his friend, which he found out was called Hueningkai.
At first it didn’t seem like a bad thing, he was genuinely happy for them because they all worked hard and deserved the place. However, when the five boys finally moved to one dorm and started training together for the debut, Yeonjun felt, on a daily basis, the strongest desire to kill Soobin with his bare hands.
The kid was all over the place. He couldn’t organize his clothes and other belongings so he just left them anywhere, then he would come whining about having lost something, only for it to be in the most random places like inside the fridge or the bathroom cabinet. Besides that, Yeonjun had a hard time talking to him because Soobin would always forget the things he said or interrupt him and sometimes even himself, which made extra hard to follow his line of thought. And he also somehow still managed to show up late to almost all the practices.
Yeonjun could write a whole essay about things Soobin did that made his skin crawl, but the worst of it all, without doubt, was that you just couldn’t rely on him for anything.
It was a sunday night, they had dance and vocal practice the next day and Taehyun had a cough. It wasn’t anything serious, but earlier that day he had asked Soobin to buy him some medicine, since the boy was going out anyway. Yeonjun even texted him to make sure he wouldn’t forget, knowing better than to trust Soobin's memory.
He was chilling in the living room playing some mobile games while Beomgyu, Taehyun and Hueningkai were cuddling on the couch and watching a documentary about polar bears or something like that and Yeonjun almost couldn’t fight the little smile threatening to appear on his face over how cute they were. While he didn’t know any of them very well yet, he was quickly warming up to the boys and just had this urge to protect them from all the bad things in the world. They were younger than him, after all.
“I’m home!” His warm thoughts were abruptly interrupted when he heard that voice, followed by the sound of the front door closing.
Taehyun, however, grinned and perked up from where he was seated on the couch.
“Welcome back, hyung!” which was met with a warm dimpled smile from Soobin “Did you get the meds I asked for?”
Everyone watched in real time as Soobin’s face paled in horror and something just snapped inside Yeonjun’s brain. He knew this would happen, and he was done. Before the taller could say anything, Yeonjun was out of his seat, charging towards Soobin’s direction in anger.
“What the fuck, Soobin? Taehyun was counting on you! All you had to do was buy some cough syrup or something but you still managed to fuck that up?”
Soobin was stunned, looking at Yeonjun with his mouth open in shock without saying anything.
“Whoa, it’s okay hyung. It’s not like I’m dying or anything like that. I’ll just make some tea and I bet I’ll be okay to sing tomorrow.” Taehyun objected, looking at Yeonjun with wide eyes, surprised at his sudden outburst.
“No! It’s not okay, Taehyun!” Yeonjun yelled back, tearing his eyes away from Soobin to look at everyone else in the room “I’m just tired of this shit! It’s clear he doesn’t care about any of us! We are all working hard to make this work, to be strong so we can debut but then there is Soobin who cannot move a muscle to help people around him. I’m tired of his lazy ass!”
The room was silent for a few moments, only Yeonjun’s heavy breathing could be heard.
“I'm… I'm sorry” Soobin was looking like a kicked puppy, shoulders slouched and glaring at the floor while he fiddled with the hem of his hoodie. But somehow that only made Yeonjun angrier.
“You don’t get to be sorry! It’s always like that. You fuck things up, say ‘oh, I’m so sorry' and everything it’s fine. Well, here are some news: you’re not a child anymore!”
Yeonjun was fuming, all of the feelings he bottled up until now for the sake of the group were spilling and he just couldn’t stop. Just looking at Soobin made him want to scream.
“I wish you weren't in this group.”
Okay so, Yeonjun was angry at Soobin, and he felt like he did have a reason to be upset but, at the same time, somewhere in his brain he knew that he had crossed a line, though he never got to take back his words because as soon as he finished his sentence there was a loud bam and Soobin was out of the apartment.
He knew he had fucked up big this time and maybe destroyed his relationship with all of the boys. He felt awful. Soobin could be annoying and tiresome, but he didn’t deserve to be humiliated like that in front of everyone.
“Yeonjun, what the hell was that?”
He stopped staring at the front door and turned to see Beomgyu, who was looking at him with an incredulous expression.
“I..I..” Yeonjun’s eyes scanned the room and noticed Hueningkai was also gone, certainly following Soobin, making him feel even worse. He definitely ruined his friendship with the little boy.
Dropping his body on the sofa, he ran his hands through his brown hair, sighing. “I don’t know what came over me. I… I feel frustrated because Soobin is always doing these kinds of things and It feels like he’s just here for the sake of it.”
Taehyun then approached him with an unreadable expression.
“Hyung…If you actually talked or paid attention to him you’d realize that Soobin-hyung works just as hard as we do, maybe even harder. Yeah, he’s always late to practice, but almost every time he stays overtime, even when he doesn’t have to. He may have forgotten the medicine I asked for but he also was the one who made me breakfast today because I was feeling sick.” The boy paused, yet again looking at Yeonjun with those eyes, but that time, he thought he’d seen a hint of disappointment in them. “What you did tonight was unacceptable, though. I really like you, hyung, and I hope you’ll take some time to think about what you did and apologize to Soobin-hyung.”
Yeonjun felt almost nauseous. He looked at Beomgyu, the person he was getting along the most since they started living together, but all he saw was a grim face.
“Yeah… you’re right.” He said while getting up “I'll… I'll just be in our room. Let me know if Huening finds Soobin.”
No one answered, but he didn’t really wait for anything.
He closed the door and immediately started crying. It wasn’t that ugly and loud crying, just some tears spilling with light sniffing. But the pain in his heart was there.
Yeonjun felt like the worst person in the whole world. He knew he could be pretty intense, and he really gave everything he had to be where he was, so the thought of someone destroying all his hard work was almost painful to Yeonjun. But that didn't mean he could act like a spoiled child and say hurtful things to people that didn't deserve. If he just talked to Soobin and tried to work things out like a normal person, none of that would've happened and maybe they could even be friends in the future.
But not only had he ruined his potential friendship with Soobin, but also with the rest of the members.
Yeonjun didn’t know how much time he spent crying by the door until he decided to lay down on his bed, but he was sure he heard Soobin’s voice coming from the living room before he fell asleep.
No one woke him up to let him know the boy was back, though.
—
The following days were hell for Yeonjun. The house was quiet. Taehyun and Beomgyu only talked to him when necessary. Hueningkai didn’t even look at him. And every time he came closer he could see Soobin tense up as if he expected Yeonjun to start screaming again.
He hadn’t apologized yet. It’s not like he didn’t want to. He was just… scared. Deep down he knew he had no right to be scared, after all, he was the one who caused everything and it was his responsability to fix it. But he couldn’t help it. What if Soobin never forgave him? What if he was kicked out of the group because he couldn’t get along with the members?
It was four days after the whole mess, and Yeonjun just got home after completing all of his individual schedules, but the second he stepped into the apartment he regretted not staying longer.
Sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a thick fluffy blanket, was Soobin.
It would be a cute sight if Yeonjun wasn’t terrified. The boy looked like he’d just woken up, hair messy and face puffy from sleep, with eyes half closed that widened upon noticing Yeonjun’s entrance.
“H-hey.” The older said while taking his shoes off, avoiding eye contact.
“Hi.” came the answer, so quiet he almost didn’t catch.
They fell silent and it felt like torture. Yeonjun knew the others were still finishing their respective solo activities, making this the perfect opportunity to apologize. He just had to muster all of his courage for it, so he stared deep into Soobin's wide eyes and blurted before he could second guess himself.
“Hey Soobin, can we talk?"
The younger immediately tensed even more under his blanket and broke eye contact.
“Y-yeah. Sure”
Yeonjun took a deep breath and sat on the sofa, making sure there was a big distance between him and Soobin, who still refused to look at him and kept fiddling with a loose thread from his blanket.
“Look, I just wanted to apologize. I know what I said a few days ago was terrible and inexcusable. I can’t even express how sorry I am. You have every right to be mad at me, but I hope we can still be friends after all of this.” Yeonjun was surprised at how he managed to say all of that without his voice breaking from how much he was trembling.
Soobin stared at the floor, appearing to be deep in thought and it felt like hours passed until he started talking.
“I… hum…” he paused and sighed. “I have this thing… you've probably heard of it… it’s called ADHD.”
Yeonjun then said what perhaps was the best thing you could in that situation, which was:
“Huh?”
Soobin didn’t look surprised at all, though. “ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyper-"
“Yeah, I know what it is. Sorry, I just… wasn’t expecting that.” Yeonjun sputtered.
He glanced at Soobin and noticed that the boy was looking more and more nervous with every second that passed. He was frantically biting his lips and bouncing his legs as well as scanning the room as if he was looking for a quick exit if something went wrong.
“W-well, that makes my brain work in a different way than it does for the majority of people, you know? Most of the time my head is accelerating and I'm thinking about one thousand things at the same time. A-and I can’t control it. One minute I might be paying attention to you but then you say something that makes me think about some totally unrelated topic and I get trapped in this big vortex of thoughts. I physically cannot re-relax regardless of how much I want to a-and it’s so d-difficult for me to do pretty much any-anything.
Yeonjun could see that Soobin was trying really hard to hold back tears, if the way his eyes glistened and his voice trembled were anything to go by, and it broke his heart because the older couldn’t shake the feeling that he had caused that and he wanted to hug the boy so bad, tell him he didn’t need to explain anything, but Soobin continued after taking a deep breath.
“B-but sometimes it’s also like I’m trapped in this fog and I can’t focus or remember anything. I simply c-cannot do things even if I really want to, and p-people say “oh you should just do it" but I can’t! And I try, I try so hard, b-but I keep hearing t-that I’m lazy, that I do-don’t care. B-but I do.”
By that time, Soobin was already crying, curling further into his blanket cocoon.
“T-There's a lot o-of other things too, b-but I can’t even… I can’t e-even organize my thoughts enough t-to explain.” He sniffled, drying the tears with his sweater sleeve.
To say Yeonjun was shocked was an understatement. All of this time he saw Soobin as the annoying and bothersome kid. He never imagined that there was so much more behind everything, and his heart broke when he realized how mean he was to Soobin during all this time, when the younger just couldn't control how he acted, and how probably it wasn't the first time Soobin had to deal with that.
The boy was still sobbing hard and Yeonjun couldn’t take it anymore. He slowly approached the Soobin, doing his best to not scare him away, and raised his arms, silently inviting for a hug. Yeonjun didn’t want to make him uncomfortable but, surprisingly, the next thing he knew he had a armful of the sobbing boy.
“Hey Soobin… it’s okay. You don’t owe me any explanation and I’m truly grateful for everything you told me until now. I’m sorry I was so inconsiderate and insensitive towards you. You didn’t deserve any of it.” Yeonjun whispered while carding his fingers through the younger’s hair, hoping it would calm him down a little.
“It’s okay, y-you didn’t know. I actually never told this to anyone besides Kai.”
That only made Yeonjun feel sadder because he basically forced that piece of information out of the boy when he wasn't obligated to tell him anything.
However, since the past couldn’t be altered, Yeonjun decided right there, sitting on their second-hand blue sofa in their tiny living room with Soobin’s body pressed against his, that he would protect this kid from the world, no matter what.
And he would start right now.