Chapter Text
Sung Hanbin is not a jealous person.
As a young child, he had never stared at the other kids’ nice toys with envy in his eyes, wishing that he had the same shiny actions figures or pokemon cards as them, nor had he ever went home and begged his mother for the newest elementary-school fad after seeing his classmates parading around the school showing it off like a prized trophy, bragging about how cool or expensive it was. In middle school, as a prepubescent and slightly-older boy, Hanbin didn’t ever care for comparing iPhones or laptops with his peers, having always found no jealousy within himself whenever he saw a student walking around the school decked out with the latest technological gear, flashing it around in the hallways during passing period like it made them better than everybody else or something. And in high school, during the one big popularity contest that everybody just loses, Hanbin had never spared the shiny-white Mercedes in the school parking lot or the gold-plated Rolex on somebody’s wrist more than just a fleeting glance, and had found no interest in messing around with his male classmates comparing girlfriends or being jealous over another’s.
It was just the way he was raised, taught from a young age by his mother to stay away from the green-eyed monster and to put in the hard work for his achievements. He didn’t care about all the flashy things the kids around him owned from mommy or daddy’s money, as it held no significant meaning to themselves if they hadn’t been the one to work for it, and to choose it.
All those toys that he had had as a child, the stylish clothes on his back, and the ranks he got later on in his life as a trainee, those things had all either been given to him or had been simply just completely out of his control, things that he had never had control over to choose on his own account. Therefore, he had never felt the need to be jealous over another fellow trainee’s rank being higher than his during the monthly evaluations because he knew that the numbers were out of his own control, simply left up to the training instructors and the capabilities of himself and his peers.
Scratch that, Sung Hanbin is not a jealous person over the things he didn’t choose.
And there has only been one thing in his entire life that he chose on his very own behalf, completely independent of any outside influence to his decision. The one and only thing that he had truly ever let his heart choose for himself, all on his own.
Not some thing, but some one.
———
The first time it happens, Hanbin doesn’t even realize that the emotion he was feeling was jealousy.
The half an hour proceeding the final broadcast of Boys Planet is filled with nothing but an infinite amount of tears and emotions, with eliminated and non-eliminated trainees alike going around and pulling each other into tight hugs while sobbing into the fabric of pink and blue lined suits. Parents and families of the contestants embraced and congratulated their sons for their accomplishments despite whether they had made it into ZeroBaseOne or not, whispering sweet words into shaking ears as siblings patted each other on the back and indulged in a familiar practice of back-and-forth banter amongst themselves.
Hanbin had definitely not been in his right mind at the time, not after everything that had happened to him over the past hour or so. In a singular hour, he had performed the killing part of Hot Summer , gotten announced as a Top 2 candidate, gotten the P02 spot in the final elimination, and had went from Gl1de Studio Trainee Sung Hanbin to ZeroBaseOne Sung Hanbin all in a matter of what felt like a tyrannical whirlwind of announcements. So no, he really hadn’t had a good grip on his emotions for the time being.
But no one in the room really did, either. Every single person cramped into that large backstage room had either been crying their eyes out or congratulating someone else, as he had seen Park Hanbin sobbing into the arms of a barely put-together Taerae, the eliminated Yuehua trainees happily jumping around the ones that had made it while loudly chanting their names, and Takuto being fiercely hugged between some of the bodies of the older trainees, adoring hands cooing at him and pulling at his squishy cheeks.
Hell, he had even seen Ricky embracing Ma Jingxiang at one point during the night, his head of blonde hair disappearing behind the taller man’s chest as they exchanged words in a language that Hanbin could not hear nor understand, the sound of their voices being completely drowned out by the roar of the room. But judging by the way Ricky’s expression seemed to be teetering on the edge of a smile for the entirety of the time he was conversing with the taller man, the complete opposite of the frustrated grimace he had worn for the majority of Rush Hour preparations, Hanbin guessed that the two of them had truly made up in the end.
Also, despite his tear-blurred vision and spinning head, Hanbin could have sworn that he had seen Jingxiang press a quick kiss to the edge of Ricky’s lips disappearing back into the crowd, leaving shell-shocked and slightly blushing Quanrui behind in his wake. Perhaps it had only been a figment of his adrenaline-filled imagination, but a little something inside his head told him that it wasn’t, and that his eyes and memory really hadn’t been deceiving him. He hadn’t dwelled on it.
Anyways, Hanbin had been high off of the adrenaline of the final elimination and completely whiplashed by the entirety of his world being flipped upside down by a single, prolonged announcement, when he had first laid eyes upon them. It hadn’t seemed real to him back then, as the true reality of what he had just accomplished hadn’t truly set in until April twenty-first, where he had woken up tangled around in a pair of soft creme bedsheets that definitely weren’t the rough Planet Camp blankets that he had been accustomed to, a bare back pressed against his chest and a head of messy red hair clouding his morning vision, where then Hanbin had truly grasped ahold of the gravity of the previous day around his head.
But back there, in that humid, hot, jam-packed room filled to the maximum capacity with approximately two hundred and fifty people being crammed into a single backstage tech room, Sung Hanbin really hadn’t even been nearly halfway into his right mind. Immediately after being ushered off the stage by a hoard of staff members (the same ones that he and Zhang Hao had subsequently ignored about fifteen minutes prior to walk up the steps together), Hanbin had almost immediately fallen into the arms of his awaiting mother the second he pushed through the backstage doorway and laid eyes upon her, sobbing into her probably-expensive blouse as he let all of his bottled up emotions run free. He didn’t quite remember the proceeding five minutes or so, as all it had really consisted of was him switching between crying in his mother’s embrace and hugging his dear younger sister so tightly that she started complaining that her ribcage was cracking, letting all of his truest feelings out as he was just so happy to see his family again.
After finally being able to let go of his mother, Hanbin had then proceeded to walk around the room and embrace any familiar faces he knew, putting on his perfect people-pleaser smile as he accepted the million congratulations! that were thrown his way along with a flurry of back pats and side hugs that he received from his fellow trainees. Having been the center of K-Group and all, he was immediately surrounded and domed in a mass pile of boys in blue-lined suits praising him and offering their congratulations for his rank and future debut, with familiar faces that he hadn’t seen in so long like Hyunbeen and Yedam flashing past his tear-blurred vision amongst the sea of other faces as his body was jostled around within the pile of gray and blue.
It had been so much, a time filled with so much extreme emotion and pent-up stress that the thought of finding Zhang Hao had almost completely slipped Hanbin’s mind as he went around greeting everyone that he knew and didn’t know (he had finally met Matthew’s older sister, and had found her quite similar to Matthew himself, personality-wise). He knew that Zhang Hao, out of everybody, would be getting the most praise tonight and for many days onward, having literally won the entire show and all, and would most likely be busy and caught up with all of the eager people in the room waiting to see and congratulate their new P01, but a little something deep inside of his heartstrings told him to go find and seek the older man out.
Before their final rankings had been revealed, even before Zhang Hao had been announced as the winner of Boys Planet, Hanbin had already halfway predicted the final outcome. A week prior, a dejected Hanbin had seen that his midterm ranking had dropped him to fifth place out of the remaining eighteen trainees, something that had greatly thrown his perception of the show entirely off rocker. Having been ranked at the safe spot of P01 at every elimination up to the final one, Hanbin had kind of gotten used to the cushion below him that was eight places that would ensure his ranking into the final group, something that brought him both the reassurance that he was good enough but also the stress that was to keep improving and holding his P01 spot. Although, it had been that very stress that had led Zhang Hao to him on that one fateful night in the laundry room during Tomboy era, so he really couldn’t complain.
But it was that dropped midterm ranking that had really gotten him thinking and worrying about his future, so much so that he had barely gotten a wink of sleep on the night of April 19th. Nerves were high amongst the remaining eighteen trainees at Planet Camp that night, with even higher tensions and anticipations waiting for the life-changing announcements the next day would bring, and Hanbin had definitely been no exception to such worrying.
Now, the only thing he remembered from that very night was the last prayer that had fallen off his lips just moments before his exhaustion had overtaken him and dragged him into the abyss of dreamland, a quiet, inaudible wish up to the heavens above that he wanted fulfilled so more than anything else he had ever wished for in his life.
Please, let me debut with Zhang Hao. I don’t care what my ranking is, I’ll take P09 in a heartbeat if it means that I can spend the next two and a half years with him.
And his wish had been fulfilled. Hanbin had burst out into tears the second he had seen his and Zhang Hao’s faces filling up the screen as the two candidates for first place, fiercely thanking the heavens above for whatever they had done to make his one dream come true through his warm tears and heaving sobs. Everything around him, from the deafening roar of the crowd to the excited hands of his fellow trainees patting his back, seemed to blur out on him as his mind spun to catch up with the all-too fast reality whirling around his head, all until a pair of wet lips were pressed to the back of his neck and soft, familiar voice whispered a quiet sentence of don’t cry, Hanbin-ah, into his skin.
And then boom, he was revealed as P02, Zhang Hao was revealed as P01, and Sung Hanbin’s wildest dreams were all fulfilled. They had climbed the steps together, hand in hand, absolutely high on their own emotions that they didn’t think could get any more intense until Yujin joined them and the entirety of ZeroBaseOne was formed, their home for the next two and a half years.
What more could a man ask for? Sung Hanbin didn’t know. He had debuted as a K-Pop idol, ranked number 2 amongst Star Creator’s favorites, achieved his teenage dream of becoming a superstar, and had even gotten himself a boyfriend in the mix.
So really, what else could he have ever wished for?
Probably to find Zhang Hao right now.
Shooting out charming smiles and swiftly dodging some random attempts at conversation, Hanbin slowly weaved his way through the stuffy crowd of bodies crowding around the room on a mission to find his boyfriend (well, not yet, but Zhang Hao had promised him that they could become boyfriends if they both debuted, so), carefully stepping around sneakers and high heels as to not step on any unsuspecting toes as he went. He caught the eye of Master Solji somewhere in the middle of his journey, who simply just shot him a kind smile and a knowing wink as he passed by in her peripheral view amongst the crowd, where he then highly suspected that she knew who he was looking for and didn’t want to bother him on his way. Damn these Star Masters, knowing Hanbin and his (romantic) ambitions too well.
After approximately five minutes of squeezing his way through a sweaty crowd and weaving around a million pairs of feet, Hanbin finally caught a glimpse of a familiar head of red hair over Lee Jeonghyeon’s left shoulder. His heart jumped for a second as he sidestepped a running Kamden (was that Kamden, or his twin brother? Hanbin couldn’t tell, those two were basically born out of mitosis or something) to gain a wider pathway through the mass to Zhang Hao, the fog in his head clearing up a little bit when he finally found the person he had been looking for.
The Chinese man was turned away from him when he emerged on the other side of Jeonghyeon’s figure, talking to someone whose identity was shielded within the crowd. Shuffling a bit to the left, Hanbin craned his neck up to see the familiar face of Shen Xiaoting appear in his line of sight on the other side of Zhang Hao’s shoulders, her lips quickly moving in an inaudible pattern as she conversed with the other man.
Hanbin knew who she was, one of the beloved visuals of WakeOne’s girl group Kep1er, the girl group that had been formed out of the earlier female version of Boys Planet, Girls Planet 999. Back in late 2021, when Hanbin had still been a mere, unknown trainee in an unknown company, he had watched the survival show with great interest and passion, having even gone as far as to lose sleep on the nights where new episodes aired to watch them all in one sitting. So obviously, having been a fan of GP999 and the group that came out of it, he would know very well who Xiaoting was, the one Chinese trainee to overcome MNET’s Sinophobic editing to barely make it into the final group as P09. She was like ZeroBaseOne’s Yujin, in a way.
Hanbin hadn’t talked to many of the Kep1er members before, only having once exchanged a short conversation with Yujin a couple years back while he had still been under Cube Entertainment and she was still promoting with CLC, so he was pleasantly surprised to find that she was the one Zhang Hao was talking to. Her presence in the room (and all of the other Kep1er members’ presences, as he had seen Huening Bahiyyih’s bleach-blonde hair whip by his vision sometime earlier in the night) wasn’t a surprise to him, as they had been at the final elimination ceremony as guests, so he quickly gathered himself and started walking his way over to the pair, and almost got knocked over by someone’s father heading towards his son in the process.
“Ah, Hanbin-ssi!” Xiaoting’s face lit up when she noticed him walking up, dropping into a small bow as she temporarily halted her conversation with Zhang Hao to greet him, “congratulations on making it into the group!”
Zhang Hao’s head whipped around at her words and wow , were his eyes so bloodshot from all the crying the two of them had done over the last half an hour. The Chinese man made no moves to pull Hanbin into a side hug or even to entwine their hands as he usually would in these sorts of situations as he approached, the times where he would always make sure that Hanbin’s body was at least touching him in one way or another whenever they were together, making the younger man internally frown in confusion but still keep a smile plastered across his face for politeness matters. He was a proper idol, after all, well-practiced in the art of ignoring his own feelings to draw up a good facade.
“Thank you so much, Xiaoting-sunbaenim,” Hanbin respectfully dropped into an even deeper bow (she was older than him, after all) and shuffled over to the side to where he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Zhang Hao, whisker-dimples on full display as he shot a brilliant smile at her. Xiaoting immediately raised her hands in front of her face and made an X motion with her arms as she shook her head, a playful smile pulling across her lips.
“Just noona is fine, sunbaenim seems a little too high of me when we both debuted out of almost the same survival show,” she laughed.
Hanbin smiled. “Xiaoting-noona, then,” he dipped his head in greeting, mirroring her action. “How did you enjoy the show?”
Zhang Hao snorted at his words, turning his head slightly to the side to eye him with a mock-judging sort of glint in his eyes. Hanbin looked straight back at him and slowly reached his hands out to take a hold of his right wrist, slowly curling his fingers around the thick material of his suit covering the skinny bone to try to initiate some sort of skinship. He had been looking for Zhang Hao through a chaotic crowd of emotional people, after all, so a little reassurance that his troubles hadn’t been completely wasted didn’t seem too selfish of him, right?
“Honestly?” A sudden thoughtful expression crossed Xiaoting’s face as Hanbin tore his eyes away from Zhang Hao’s face to look at her again, his soft hands still on the older man’s wrist while he angled his shoulders to properly face her. “It was scary. Reminded me too much of my own ceremony, with all the nerves of being the last one to be announced and all,” she sadly looked at him and tilted her head, “but everything worked out in the end, didn’t it? I found Yujin in the crowd earlier and he literally almost knocked me over trying to give me a hug, that lovely boy.” Hanbin giggled at her last sentence, mentally storing the piece of information away to possibly tease his future maknae with later on.
“Sounds like Yujin,” Hanbin agreed with a nod of his head, “I was worried for him, too. He really did look like he was about to pass out from relief when he came up the steps earlier.”
“I would be surprised if he didn’t!” Xiaoting exclaimed, “I think my knees almost completely buckled when my name was announced at the end. He handled it so much better than I did, and at such a young age, too,” she continued to praise him, sounding very much like a proud older sibling to the younger boy that it started to sound so uncannily similar to Gyuvin himself. Hanbin couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh at her statement.
“You had seemed so calm, though! Super professional!” He assured her, to which she raised an embarrassed hand to her mouth and waved him off with the other one.
“Oh stop it, don’t flatter me during your own finale ceremony. P01 and P02! You two are going to be absolutely groundbreaking when ZeroBaseOne debuts.”
Hanbin’s cheeks flushed a pale shade of pink at the praise as he looked over at the man beside him to graze his reaction, only to be met with a slightly-blank stare directed back at him. It was only then that he realized Zhang Hao hadn’t returned his skinship or had made any attempt to do anything with Hanbin’s hands on his wrist, something that was entirely uncommon of the usually touchy-feely man who liked to spend every second of his free time attached to Hanbin’s side.
And that’s when he realized.
Oh, I’m intruding on their conversation, aren’t I?
It had seemed as if Zhang Hao had been having a very nice conversation with Xiaoting before he had arrived and popped in on them, most likely in Mandarin to both of their comforts. Hanbin knew that Zhang Hao’s family wasn’t at the finale, with Fujian being just a little too far away for all of them to fly over with their busy lives (Hanbin had actually been seeking out Zhang Hao with the intention of bringing him to meet his family, his mom having been very excited to meet the handsome Chinese trainee that my son has not shut up about ever since he went on the show ), so perhaps the action of talking to someone who also spoke his native language was comforting to him.
Hanbin hated being a nuisance to people under any circumstances, hated being the reason people got annoyed or got distracted from their tasks, so he immediately mentally slapped himself over the head for doing the one thing he tried to avoid the most when the realization hit and started to back off, his brain scrambling to come up with a smooth way out.
“Thank you so much, Xiaoting-noona!” He quickly dropped into another (probably too deep to not suspicious) bow, “and thank you so much for being here! I wish Kep1er the best of luck on your future activities.”
Xiaoting seemed a little surprised at his abrupt exit but smiled back at him all the same, congratulating him one more time before he quickly dropped Zhang Hao’s wrist and stepped forward to plunge headfirst into the crowd behind her back, resolutely not looking back at Zhang Hao as he went.
He missed the confused glance that the redhead had shot at his retreating head, eyebrows furrowed together as his pupils traced his black hair through the crowd behind him.
Hanbin let himself get swallowed up by the wall of people whirling around him and didn’t stop walking until he was located a safe distance away from the two of them and turned back around, mentally beating himself up to quickly compose his racing thoughts. After a few long moments of painful introspection and battling with his own mind, the man looked up back over the shoulders of a couple trainees to zero in on Zhang Hao’s smiling face a couple yards away.
The Chinese man seemed to have happily gone back to conversing with Xiaoting in his mother tongue after Hanbin had left, eyes shining with excitement as he laughed at something she said.
Hanbin sighed. He had sought out Zhang Hao with the intentions of having him meet his mother and sister only for his other half to barely even positively acknowledge his presence, only to happily go back to talking with Xiaoting after he left. Hell, he hadn’t even realized Hanbin’s attempt at skinship when the younger man had approached.
Something ugly stirred inside Hanbin’s chest, a dark, weird feeling that he couldn’t put a name to engulfing his brain like a pair of venom-laced tentacles, pulling at the bars of his masked facade. He didn’t know what it was, not quite anger but definitely something worse than dissatisfaction, a foreign feeling that he hadn’t felt in years.
All he knew was that he didn’t like it, not one bit. Deep down inside, he knew that he wished that it was him that Zhang Hao was currently enthusiastically smiling and laughing with, and not Xiaoting. It wasn’t the fact that she was a woman that was setting him off, as he knew very well that the Chinese man was about as straight as a roundabout and had approximately zero interest in women, but something else , green and envious festering inside his heart strings like toxic gas spilling out from between the cracks and filling his ribcage.
Hanbin tore his eyes away from Zhang Hao’s face when he felt a pair of eyes burning a stare into the back of his head, and wildly whipped around to find the source when his eyes landed on a familiar face staring back at him from amidst the crowd.
A mysterious look flickered in Chen Kuanjui’s eyes from where his cat-like eyes bore holes into Hanbin’s own, his thin pink lips pulled up into a slight smirk as he stared at him through the mass of people. Hanbin had seen Kuanjui’s crying figure on the massive screen when Zhang Hao had been announced as P01, doubled over into his knees as he cried into the ground at the success of his best friend, and had only felt so much warmth in his chest when his eyes laid upon the image, knowing that Zhang Hao’s best friend was so overwhelmingly happy for him that he had literally collapsed . Nothing like the weird, definitely not warm feeling he had been fighting a couple moments prior.
The unreadable glint in Kuanjui’s eyes didn’t fade once Hanbin’s eyes met his, only continuing to glimmer in the sea of brown as his pupils continued to flip between Hanbin’s face and something just over his right ear, the smirk on his face ever-growing as his line of sight went back to the Korean man.
Slowly but surely, Kuanjui lifted his left hand up to his face to reveal a bright red bottle of Zero Cola clutched between his fingers, holding it up to his face to glint under the light. Hanbin gulped.
The white-haired boy then proceeded to shoot him a knowing wink before tilting his chin up to pour some of the can’s contents into his slightly parted lips, maintaining straight eye contact with him the entire time as his adams apple bobbed up and down with the fizzy brown liquid traveling down his throat.
And before Hanbin could even process what had just happened, Kuanjui was gone, disappearing back into the mass of people and out of his sight.
It was only long, long after when Hanbin had truly realized the meaning behind that wink.
He didn’t have time to think about the implications behind it at the moment, not when a group of trainees dressed in pink-lined suits were heading towards him with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces, no doubt coming over to congratulate him on debuting.
Half an hour later, Zhang Hao suddenly reappeared by his side while he was in the middle of a conversation with his sister, standing tall in all of his P01 and Hanbin’s soulmate glory as he softly shuffled his arm into the crook of Hanbin’s elbow and greeted the two women. So, as it had ended up, Hanbin had been able to introduce him to his mother, who had immediately let out a gasp and started to rant about how she was so honored to finally meet him and that Hanbin literally would not stop talking about him whenever he came home , much to the Chinese man’s amusement and Hanbin’s embarrassment.
And by the time Hanbin awoke the next morning, basking in the afterglow of the previous day and with Zhang Hao’s naked body pressed up against his own, both Kuanjui’s wink and that ugly, green feeling in his chest had been long, long forgotten into the back of his mind.