Chapter Text
They’re in the bathroom, and Jisung figures they’ve got about five minutes before someone comes in to make them go back to practice. It’s a routine, now. Jisung and Hyunjin go off to fight and if they don’t work it out in the time it takes the others to finish their water break, someone is sent off to find them.
You can’t keep doing this, Chan had told him, the day before. If we want this to work, you have to stop.
But Jisung doesn’t know how to stop. He needs his anger towards Hyunjin like he needs food and water; he feeds on it and it sustains him, it gives him something to draw from when he’s run out of everything else. When he hates himself so much that he can’t write another lyric, he can’t go to another dance lesson, he can’t do another evaluation, he can remind himself that he hates Hyunjin more, and then he can live on the spite for days.
“Just be better,” Jisung says now, staring into Hyunjin’s narrowed eyes. “Be a better dancer, and we won’t have to keep stopping practice so you can figure out how you fucked up! You’re supposed to keep up with Minho-hyung and you can’t.”
As soon as Jisung says Minho’s name, Hyunjin’s posture changes. He slumps sideways so he can lean against the wall beside the automatic hand dryer and the contrast is almost funny, this furious boy in this impossible situation collapsing against the wall of a bathroom so mundane it could be anywhere.
“Why are you like this?” Hyunjin asks. The anger on his face seems to crumple, like a body that’s been drained of consciousness, and then it falls away. In its place is a desperate sadness, an expression that makes Hyunjin look so much younger than he is. He looks confused. He reminds Jisung of a sleepwalker, someone who’s just awoken and realized nothing makes sense.
“Like what?” Jisung snaps. “Good at things?”
“No,” Hyunjin says. His eyes are glassy with tears and then suddenly they’re overflowing and he’s crying, and Jisung has no idea what to do about it. “Why do you hate me so much? You’re not like this with anyone else. You’re not like this with Minho!”
Jisung opens his mouth and closes it again. His hatred for Hyunjin isn’t something he considers very often; it’s just something that is.
“I don’t get it,” Hyunjin goes on, and his breathing is unsteady now, little gasping hiccups of air. “I didn’t do anything to you. I just showed up and you hated me.”
“You hate me just as much,” Jisung says. He tries to sound as sharp and vicious as he’d sounded earlier, but he can hear the slightest of trembles in his voice, and he hates it. He hates all of it. He hates how much harder he has to work than Hyunjin to have half as good a chance at debuting. He hates how beautiful Hyunjin is, and how easy everything becomes as a result. He hates that Hyunjin can look people in the eyes when he talks to them without his body giving way to anxiety, he hates that Hyunjin makes him think about all the parts of himself that he wishes he could change.
“I hate you because you hate me.” Hyunjin wipes at his eyes with the back of his wrist and he even looks gorgeous when he cries, Jisung thinks, because the world is fundamentally unfair. “You were here first! Channie-hyung picked you first! What do I have that you don’t?”
“It’s all so easy for you,” Jisung snaps. He smacks his hand on the granite of the countertop in his hurry to cross his arms over his chest, and then cradles it against his stomach in a fist. “Someone handed all of this to you on a plate and you barely even want it! I tried for years to get here and they just gave you everything I worked for!” He pauses, and breathes. “I just think you should be grateful, is all. You should dance better.”
Hyunjin gapes at him.
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” Hyunjin says. “You think I wanted that?”
“I think you’re an idiot if you didn’t,” says Jisung. “You’re guaranteed what the rest of us would kill for.”
“I’m not guaranteed anything! I could lose all of this just as fast — faster, because what if they decide that I’m not good enough? Who cares what I look like if it all falls apart when I go on stage?”
He’s crying harder now, almost sobbing, and Jisung feels a throb of sympathy. He thinks about Changbin, and how often Changbin’s begged him to be nicer to Hyunjin. He thinks about Chan, and how tired Chan looks when they fight, and how terrifying it is when you’re not the best. He thinks about it, and he has no idea what to say to make any of it better.
“You can hit me, if you want,” is what he lands on.
Hyunjin looks up, eyes red. “What?”
“Hit me. It’ll make you feel better. I won’t tell anyone.”
Hyunjin takes a step towards him, unsteady and confused. He raises a hand, like he’s going to slap Jisung across the face, and then he reaches out and punches Jisung in the chest. It’s so light Jisung can barely feel it.
“Do it,” Jisung says. He knows what he’s saying isn’t hit me, it’s hurt me. Hurt me so I can hurt myself.
Hyunjin punches him again, an odd sort of movement like banging on a drum. He reaches out with his other hand, too, and the other hand joins the first. He steps closer to Jisung until he’s hammering on Jisung’s chest with both fists, and he still hasn’t stopped crying. It still doesn’t hurt.
“Jisung,” Hyunjin says, through tears. “Jisung, Jisung, Jisung.”
And Jisung gets it, somehow. He knows what Hyunjin is trying to say. He closes the last bit of distance between them and grabs Hyunjin, tugging Hyunjin so tight to his chest that it feels hard to breathe. He digs his fingers into Hyunjin’s back as hard as he can and he backs Hyunjin up into the wall until the tile is digging into his knuckles and Hyunjin’s spine. Now it hurts. Now it hurts, and it feels good.
They’re still standing like that, holding each other so hard that the pain has turned into love, when Chan comes in to find them. Hyunjin’s still crying, desperately, into Jisung’s shoulder, and Jisung’s letting him.