Work Text:
Here it is:
the new way of living with the world
inside of us so we cannot lose it,
and we cannot be lost. You and me,
are us and them, and it and sky.
-we are surprised, ada limón
[the aftermath of the incident]
“Lee Minho-ssi, I'm sorry I've been an asshole. I–” Jisung stops, looks down at the note he's clutching in both hands, clears his throat. “It won't happen again. I'm going to do better.”
“What,” Minho says flatly.
Everything went silent in the dressing room. Changbin glances around, tries to make eye contact with someone so they can share the 'are you seeing this shit ' compassionate eyebrow raise they've perfected over the years. Everyone is conveniently too absorbed by the thing happening to pay attention to him, though.
Jeongin almost twists his neck as he tries to look at them over his shoulder from the makeup chair. Hyunjin hasn't even noticed that the peach he's been eating has slowly started to drip on his very much clean dress pants which are also his stage outfit. Not a thought spared for the wrath of the coordi-noonas.
Felix tries to inconspicuously take out his phone and start recording, but Changbin kicks him in the ankle. Not on his watch.
“Right,” Jisung says and turns on his heel to walk away.
Changbin then watches as Minho looks down at his hands and whispers a quiet what to himself.
What, indeed.
[the incident and a few parts in between]
It all starts when Jisung starts acting really weird around Minho. Like, really fucking weird.
Or, no, it all starts when an oblivious asshole meets another oblivious asshole who then stack up on top of each other to form a giant oblivious asshole in a trench coat that starts haunting Changbin's life in the form of–
“Hyung. Would you still love me even if I were turning into a worm every night?”
Changbin was trying to peacefully take a sip out of his protein shake, clear of mind after a neat workout when the words trickle in from the living room. Unwittingly, he pauses to listen.
“Han Jisung, what corner of the internets have you been lurking in now?”
Of course.
“Hyuuuung, just answer.”
“I wouldn’t care even if you were the most disgusting pantry moth worm as long as you collect all your socks from the laundry and fold them.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And your underwear too.”
“No one folds their underwear. Who is–” Jisung sounds frustrated. “Someone keeps texting you.”
There's the shuffling of house slippers on the wooden floor coming closer to the corner Changbin is (definitely not hiding, just leisurely sipping on his shake) behind, and so he slowly (since he's not hiding) slides back into the kitchen.
“Yes. It’s someone who folds their underwear.”
°°°
The point is, Jisung starts acting differently. Considering his usual moods are a) the hyperactive 5-year-old or b) the tortured artist, this whole persona a day sends them all spinning and grasping at the edges of the proverbial Han Jisung straw to somehow make him talk.
The point is, Minho starts hanging out with someone, and Jisung is irritated. The two have nothing to do with each other, obviously.
He growled at Changbin the other day. Growled.
Then, he suddenly drags his feet around and Changbin is worried he’s going to fashion a little bundle on a stick out of a handkerchief and disappear never to be seen again. Too bad they all know the code to the studio.
Dating as an idol is, to put it inelegantly, a mess. It’s weird and difficult, and they always knew it was going to be, but just also somehow it isn’t. Somehow Minho makes it look easy.
Obviously, they don’t actually know if he’s dating someone, even though Chan tried to use his leader privileges and he cornered him this one time – cornering means he literally sat down on him when Minho was lying down on the couch and tried to weasel the hot news out of him. He didn’t count on the fact that Minho could most likely lift even Changbin himself if he tried hard enough. Which he did. So, Chan flew. So, no one knows anything.
Maybe Jisung does. Those two know everything about each other even without actually sharing the stuff there is to know.
Maybe Minho having a really good new friend suddenly is the reason Jisung stops being obsessed with him. But Changbin is just guessing.
Or, no, Jisung doesn’t stop being obsessed with Minho. He just starts making it really obvious that he’s trying not to be.
Usually, when they’re at photo shoots, Jisung stands off to the side throughout Minho’s turns and yells loudly about how handsome he is. He then takes pics of the pics on the laptop where they’re monitoring, for safekeeping. For birthdays or other occasions to post.
Now, he stands off to the side, but quietly staring down at his phone, lips pursed. And Minho–
“Han Jisung, how do I look,” he calls from the other side of the room, taking up space, shimmery eyeshadow catching in the overhead lights and Jisung doesn’t even lift his head.
“If Minho-hyung so much as looked at me that way, I’d simply evaporate,” Felix comments next to Changbin, “but that’s just me.”
Jisung looks back eventually when the camera is focused on Minho once again and Minho is focused on it, eyes half-lidded and lips parted. Jisung looks and then he keeps staring as if there was nothing else more important in the scale of things than his gaze on Minho.
“Hyung looked especially heart-devastating today,” Jisung mumbles eventually, close enough for Minho to hear through the chaos of the photoshoot. Then, he turns and walks away very quickly, the walk turning into an almost run as soon as he is out of Minho’s range of vision.
“What,” Minho says.
(“What,” Minho said the first time Jisung passed him almost half of his grilled pork plate.
“What,” Minho said the first time Jisung pulled down the beanie Minho was wearing down to cover his ears, made sure no strands of hair were poking out and the zipper of his jacket was pulled up to his throat. “Oh, you don’t have to–”
What, Minho’s face went the first time he stared at Jisung from across the practice room as if he’d never seen him before, the first time he did the math, the first time all the thoughts aligned. Oh, fuck, what. )
°°°
Changbin overhears them again, and he starts believing the universe is playing an elaborate prank with Changbin in the forefront of it.
“Hyung, I miss you,” Jisung whispers into the dark, the half-opened bathroom door almost inviting and so Changbin can’t be blamed for stopping to listen, not at all. “I miss you so much.”
“Han Jisung, I’m right here, yeah?” Minho says and there’s the shuffling of slippers, the intimate sounds of clothes when two bodies get close.
“Promise?“
Changbin leaves quietly, leaves the moment, and revisits the memory later, sorts through it like he’s been doing for all this time. Doesn’t come up with a solution, but factually, there is something he knows.
°°°
The something is this: Jisung wants love that is loud. Love that crashes like a piano thrown down the stairs, a cacophony of everything that is good and unabashedly out there. But he also wants something quiet, Changbin knows that. The early morning kind, or something.
The Lee Minho kind.
°°°
And then–
Lee Minho is standing at the bar and looking at Jisung on the dance floor.
Lee Minho is looking at Jisung with the distance of an Olympic athlete who knows that he must not, under any conditions, step his toes over the starting line.
And then–
Ouch, his face goes.
Oh shit, Changbin’s brain goes.
He will admit that he did, for a few moments here and there, doubt him.
It gets lonely, right, this constant pressure to do good and look good and so no one would actually blame Minho if he were to get into a relationship. But Minho wasn’t moving on from that, from the thread that tied them together, or whatever the hot take is on soulmatism these days, not at all. He was just better at hiding shit than Jisung.
And so when Jisung turns around in the arms of the man he’s dancing with and tilts his chin up as if he were actually going to kiss him, Minho’s face goes ouch.
And Changbin is too far away from either of them to do anything but watch the train wreck unfold, but Felix is closer, he grabs Jisung almost immediately and starts tugging him through the crowd.
“Are you insane, we said no bringing attention to ourselves.”
“Whatever.”
“Han Jisung, ouch. That hurt,” Minho says jokingly and his voice goes a bit high-pitched like when he tries to pretend it didn’t hurt when it actually did and he’s not joking in the slightest.
“Why do you care, go back to your boyfriend,” Jisung says and he is a bit mean about it. Arms crossed, defensive, but feet turned away as if ready to bolt immediately.
“But I don’t have a boyfriend?” Minho says, confused.
°°°
Outside, in the underground parking garage when they separate into two camps for the two oblivious assholes, Jisung squats down with his face in his hands
“Why the hell did I do that? Why?”
“Oh, you’re gonna be in trooouble,” Hyunjin says gleefully and does a little dance around Jisung who is doing a very good job of blending into the concrete pillars in his miserable state.
“You like him. You like him so fucking bad,” that’s Felix, but he’s curling his fingers into Jisung’s hair.
“It makes him look stupid,” Hyunjin goes and joins Felix’s hand in its gentle scratch over Jisung’s scalp.
“Nah, it’s kinda cute. How he wants him.”
And then Jisung starts crying.
[the after aftermath]
So, all in all, it doesn’t end up that terribly.
Turns out Minho has been texting his new coworker Minji about their boy-boy, girl-girl troubles. Hanging out with the MC squad more frequently to bitch and gossip and generally be more social than he’s ever been. That’s what he gets for acting out of character.
And, Changbin thinks, when Chan said: Changbin-ah you have my permission to smash their heads together, that was kinda mean of him. Because this is torture.
He thought they’d already sappily talked it out after that night and the apology and all. Were now on their way to the eternal holy matrimony like they’d been heading towards from the first moment Jisung took Minho’s hand or something.
Instead, Changbin spends torturous minutes of their early morning mountain climb (as a punishment for a stupid bet or two made weeks ago) watching and filming and seething quietly on top of all the sweating he’s been doing.
The view is magnificent, he must admit. Dark clouds parted and Seoul in the distance, the edge of the visible world coated in sunlight like liquid gold. Changbin has all of three seconds to enjoy it before his attention is elsewhere.
“And here we can observe the rare oblivious assholes in their natural habitat,” Changbin whispers as he points his camera and zooms into the way Jisung is nervously passing a heat pack from one hand to another.
It’s gonna happen any moment.
“Hyung,” Jisung says, with the weight of his whole world in his mouth. Gives the heat pack to Minho.
“What,” Minho says back softly, but he already knows what. He knows what the boy standing in front of him is gonna say, the boy who deserves epic love quests and quiet mornings. The boy who waited.
This is it.
“Close your eyes,” Jisung goes and for a second there’s no movement until he looks right at Changbin.
“Me?”
“Hyung, just… put down the camera and close them,” Jisung insists. Changbin is going to have a fucking coronary.
“Why would I do that?”
“God, then put your fingers in your ears and sing ‘Any’,” Minho tries.
Changbin is retiring from this job. Tomorrow at the latest.
“Not ‘Any’, Minho-hyung, I don’t want ‘Any’ in the background as we smash bits. Lips. Our lips. Fuck.”
But by then Changbin closed his eyes, started the ‘Wow’ pre chorus, and turned around for good measure.
A few seconds pass. A minute.
“Guys?” He calls after what he deems sufficient enough time for the gratification after all the endless yearning because he’s many things but he’s not a monster . “You done?”
No answer.
“You walnuts, I wanted to look at the view too? Hello?”
And there’s giggles and the tell-tale smacks as two mouths meet, two mouths meeting at the center of everything. And Changbin standing there, lips stretched into a smile so wide his cheeks hurt.