Chapter Text
February 7th, 2024; 06:13 AM
Hanbin had really fucked up this time.
Clearing his throat after a particularly brutal purge caused by a miscalculation of calories for his way-too-early breakfast, he shakily stood up, flushing the toilet on his way up. He remembered after he ate that he had to get lunch with Hao at some point today, and his breakfast was about to be his one meal for the day. Not on his watch! He feels so weak that he’s practically dragging his feet over to the bathroom sink, placing a hand on the wall to steady himself. After spraying an unhealthy amount of Febreeze to cover up the smell of bile and regurgitation, he rinses his mouth then gargles mouthwash. He avoids his own reflection until he cleans the vomit off his face. When he looks up, he freezes.
A red splotch is covering more than half of his left eye. It was a broken blood vessel, so it wasn’t painful. However, Hanbin had a practice to lead in a whopping thirty minutes from now. He looked closer, cursing under his breath and beginning to panic. How the hell was he going to get out of this one?
Hanbin looked for anything to cover his eye, and nearly screamed in joy when he remembered that they had a huge box of medical grade eyepatches in the medicine cabinet from when Gyuvin had conjunctivitis and they overestimated just how many they might’ve needed. Hanbin breathed and allowed his nerves to settle. Pulling the box from the medicine cabinet, he covered his eye and adjusted the eyepatch so he looked almost normal. He knew the redness on his cheeks would clear up enough that it could pass off as his regular natural blush.
Hanbin takes a deep breath, thankful that it was so early in the morning and that Hao had slept in his own room the night prior so there was no way Hanbin would have woken him up. He walks out of the bathroom and changes his clothes in his room. When he’s fully dressed, he shakes Matthew’s shoulder to wake him up. Noting that he had to put a bandaid on his raw knuckle that was actively bleeding.
“Wake up if you want to be ready in time, Mashu.”
Matthew grumbled into the pillow he had suffocated his face into, and Hanbin took that as a ‘I’ll be ready!’ because Matthew usually woke up pretty well. He went into the kitchen to fumble around with the first aid kit. It was comically large, with way too many different things in it that seemed useless. However, Hanbin realized that there were bandages that were specifically for knuckle wounds and he swallowed his words and actually didn’t purge them up for once (Haha… Not funny).
He made sure to disinfect his wound with an alcohol wipe, only grimacing and swearing under his breath in the process, then placed the knuckle bandage over his wound. He inspected his work with his singular useful eye before putting the first aid kit back into its place. He hummed before heading to the other rooms in the dorm, letting everyone know they had a few minutes to get ready. When everyone else was in a panic trying to get ready, they never noticed the very obvious eyepatch covering his eye. That is, until Hao looked at him for his morning kiss.
“Hey, what’s up with your eye?” Hao was sleepy a second ago, but seemed to jump into full consciousness when he saw the eyepatch shielding Hanbin’s eye.
Now, he knew that conjunctivitis was no excuse because he wasn’t in pain. However, he remembered that Gunwook had a stye a little while back, and decided that it was the perfect excuse. He would treat it as a light inconvenience because it was. Hanbin almost smiled at how proud he was of his excuse.
“I woke up with a stye.” Hanbin pouted. “It’s so annoying.”
“Oh, no. My handsome boyfriend has a stye.” Hao pinched his cheeks and pretended to be heartbroken at the idea. “I’m sure you’ll make it, baby.”
“Oh, I dunno. I guess I’ll have to push through!”
Hao places a kiss on Hanbin’s non-covered eye. “Pretend I did that for the other side. For the road?”
Hanbin laughed. “Get up, dumby.”
In the van waiting for their assigned manager to get in the van and drive to the practice room, Hao cuddled up into the crook of Hanbin’s neck. All of the managers usually talked for a while before getting to the practice room, and the members usually just used that time to sleep a bit more before dancing for however many torturous hours. Hanbin held Hao’s hand in his lap. Hao sleepily picked at the bandaid on Hanbin’s knuckle before drifting off. He listened to Hao’s rhythmic snores as if they were a lovely song from the heavens.
“Did you get a stye, Hanbitna?” Gyuvin questioned, just realizing the eyepatch on Hanbin’s face.
“Guilty!” Hanbin looked back at Gyuvin. “When I saw myself in the mirror I nearly screamed.”
“I’m sure even your stye is handsome, hyung.” Gyuvin fanned himself as if Hanbin was the hottest man on earth, then grinned. “You’re like a sexy cyclops.”
“I'm sexy no matter what.” Hanbin said sassily, then flipped his imaginary long hair back, and turned back to face forward.
As he heard Gyuvin’s giggles trail off, Hanbin cuddled into Hao and drifted off almost instantly.
Suddenly, he was in the weighing room. He stepped on the scale and furrowed his eyebrows. He stepped on and off a few times before he realized that the number wasn’t wrong.
103.85 kilograms.
What the actual fuck?
“How much fatter can you possibly get?” A familiar voice spoke from behind him.
Instantly, he recognized the woman. She was one of his old dance teachers, his first ever dance teacher to be exact. He realized he was really interested in tutting back in early middle school days. He was around thirteen when he was enrolled in classes.
This woman decided to pick on Hanbin for whatever reason, never forgetting to poke and prod at him until he nearly broke down in tears. It was when that woman told Hanbin outright that he would never look elegant while dancing when he was that huge that he decided to switch studios.
Though, it stuck with him, obviously. It was from that moment on that Hanbin began his downward spiral into his Anorexia. He began starving himself and puking up whatever he was forced to eat. Even after being hospitalized, Hanbin was still sure that he could just move past it.
The woman began laughing. “Right back to square one, Hanbin-ah. Isn’t it funny?”
Hanbin blinked, too terrified to move, to think, to even breathe.
The woman stepped closer. “This is exactly what happens when you think you can relax. You lose it all.”
“I never stopped. I never stopped and you know that!” He yelled, his body trembling. “I never stopped, this isn’t fair!”
“Hanbin, maybe you just shouldn’t be eating at all, right?”
Hanbin froze. Somehow, he found himself nodding. It was stupid, so, so stupid. This wasn’t real, she wasn’t real, not anymore. Last time Hanbin checked, that woman had died around two years ago. Why the hell was she still haunting him?
“You know exactly how to make it as an idol, Sung Hanbin.” She walked even closer. “It’s do or die.”
Hanbin nodded, stupidly.
“If you don’t do it, you’ll die.” She shoved him back, causing him to fall through a hole in the floor and-
Hanbin woke up with a gasp. He breathed out, sweat glazing his skin. He breathed, realizing where he was. Hanbin felt his heart slam against his ribcage.
“Hyung?” He heard Ricky call out from the backseat. “Are you okay?”
Hanbin cleared his throat. “Yeah, all good. I must’ve had a nightmare.”
“You seemed really shocked, it even scared me!” Gyuvin frowned.
“I guess I’m extra tired these days.” Hanbin decided to make this into a joke rather than say anything of value. “Leader stuff, you wouldn’t get it, Vin.” A wink.
Ricky bursted out laughing beside a very dejected Gyuvin.
He shook Hao awake to let him know that they had arrived. Hao peacefully woke up, his eyes fluttering open with such glory. He looked like he had dreams about rainbows and unicorns, the total opposite of what Hanbin had just experienced. Hanbin wiped his forehead and smiled at Hao when he looked at Hanbin.
“Let’s go, baby.”
Hanbin nearly moves his eyepatch a solid five times before he shakes his head and stands at the front of the practice room to watch everyone with a serious glare from his single eye, his hands interlocked with each other. They’re practicing for their Japanese debut, and Hanbin is not letting this one be lackluster, because no matter what he did, he was a perfectionist. Hanbin spent hours studying the choreography and meeting with the choreographer to discuss.
Hanbin makes sure he’s concentrated. He focuses so hard he unconsciously nods along to the tempo of the song. By the time they’re all finished with marking and move onto the details, Hanbin is stressed out. It’s been four hours all together, and in the last hour of making them focus on details, he makes them restart a careful eight times, pointing out certain members more than others because they were struggling. He could tell they were getting fed up, but this was part of their first few practices, it was his job. Hanbin was responsible for everything, and that everything happened to include performance related stuff too. To him, it didn’t seem too hard to understand, but by the look of annoyance on a few certain member’s faces, it was hard for them to understand. Hanbin had to snap out of his own head because he was about to get upset.
“One more time, correctly, please!” Hanbin shouted, restarting the music.
Ricky and Yujin were both getting stuck at one part, and Hanbin had demonstrated it four times now. Hanbin shut his eyes then sighed. He stopped the music once again and looked at where Ricky and Yujin were standing side by side.
“Guys, I’ve shown you how to do that exact move.” Hanbin sighed. “…Four times now.”
“If we got a break maybe we’d be able to actually perform better. I’m exhausted.” Yujin mumbled under his breath and Ricky just looked at the floor.
Hanbin was really on the verge right now, his ears turning a burning red. “Han Yujin, watch your tone.”
“I’m only being honest. You’re the one who’s so uptight. We have hours to perfect it.” Yujin challenged.
“Oh, so because we have a few hours today that means we can just slow down?” Hanbin glared at Yujin. “Are you going to say that the day we go on stage and you’re unprepared? Is that going to be your excuse then?”
“Oh, come on–” Yujin was cut off.
“Okay, guys, this is going nowhere. A break is needed I think, we’re all a little antsy right now.” Hao spoke, and Hanbin lost all his patience. “Guys, eat some lunch and rest up. We’ll start again in a bit.”
“Great, take a break. I give up.” Hanbin exclaimed, a bitter smile on his lips. “Since I can’t lead properly, you guys just might as well sit around and do nothing for the next six hours. How does that sound?”
“Hanbin, stop.” Hao pleads.
Hanbin sighs for the nth time, and makes his way for the door. He’s usually not like this, he supposes the usual irritability he feels in his day to day caused by his constant starvation and purging is slowly bleeding over into his work life. To be fair, who would be happy when they were constantly starving? He just let it get too close to his work-life, he supposed. That enough made Hanbin feel like shit, so he decided to run away. He didn’t want to cause anymore chaos. Closer to the door, Hao grabs him by the wrist and looks at him with a look that says ‘this is stupid’. Hanbin breathes, and Hao takes him by the hand and takes him out of the practice room.
“Look, I’m sor–”
“No, there’s no need to apologize or talk about it at this very second. You need time to process it. For now, we have lunch plans, remember?” Hao raises an eyebrow. “You’re just hangry, I didn’t see you eat this morning.”
Hanbin wants to bury his head into the ground. He doesn’t want to eat right now, it’s quite literally the last thing he would ever want when he’s feeling like this. However, Hanbin knew ways out of physically consuming a lot of food, so he let a beat pass before he nodded.
Knowing Hao, he would probably want to just walk down to the convenience store down the street to eat cup ramen. So, Hanbin would get a chicken breast and two boiled eggs. He would insist that it was because his stomach wasn’t feeling good and pray that Hao wouldn’t realize that Hanbin had used that excuse five separate times last month alone. He would watch Hao eat, and he would only end up eating half of the chicken breast and one of the boiled eggs. He would mention to Hao how he thinks he might need to stop by the pharmacy because his appetite is off. Hao would go back to the practice room, and Hanbin would go and grab laxatives from the pharmacy because he needed something to purge with. Crisis would be adverted, and Hanbin wouldn’t have to puke up his egg and chicken breast.
“CU?”
Hanbin almost laughed, he knew Hao so well. “Sounds good, Haohao.”